Genesis 9:1-17 The Message Bible
[1-4] God blessed Noah and his sons: He said, “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill the Earth! Every living creature— birds, animals, fish— will fall under your spell and be afraid of you. You’re responsible for them. All living creatures are yours for food; just as I gave you the plants, now I give you everything else. Except for meat with its lifeblood still in it— don’t eat that.
[5] “But your own lifeblood I will avenge; I will avenge it against both animals and other humans.
[6-7] Whoever sheds human blood, by humans let his blood be shed, Because God made humans in his image reflecting God’s very nature. You’re here to bear fruit, reproduce, lavish life on the Earth, live bountifully!”
[8-11] Then God spoke to Noah and his sons: “I’m setting up my covenant with you including your children who will come after you, along with everything alive around you-birds, farm animals, wild animals-that came out of the ship with you. I’m setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything living be destroyed by floodwaters; no, never again will a flood destroy the Earth.”
[12-16] God continued, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you. I’m putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth. From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life. When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth.”
[17] And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I’ve set up between me and everything living on the Earth.” …
These 17 verses cover the ocean front today for many of our cultures misconceptions read and heard as official proclamations, perhaps even science. Our hearts are saddened when God’s sacred profound symbols such as the rainbow, are repurposed as possibly profane cultural religiosity whims. Consider how man’s lustful desire for sex has trivialized God’s plan for marriage and sanctity of life.
“Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue” (Psalm 120:2).
“One of the hardest things on earth to bear is deception, especially when it comes from friends. We do not need the grace of God to stand the deception or slander of an enemy; human pride will stand that; but to be wounded in the house of our friends takes us unaware.” Oswald Chambers The Highest Good – The Pilgrim’s Song Book, 527 L