God's covenant with Noah

9 God blessed Noah and his sons. He said to them, ‘Give birth to many children so that you become very many people. Your descendants will live all over the earth. ² All the animals and all the birds will be afraid of you. You have authority over them. You also have authority over all the living things that move across the ground and all the fish in the sea. ³ You may now eat anything that lives and moves. Before, I gave you the green plants to eat. Now I give you everything to eat as your food.

⁴ But you must not eat meat that still has the blood of life in it.

⁵ If any person or animal kills a human, I will certainly punish them. Their punishment will be death.

⁷ But as for you, you should give birth to many children so that you become very many people. There will be many people and they will live all over the earth.’

⁸ God said to Noah and to his sons, ⁹ ‘I promise you that I will obey the covenant that I am making with you.^[b] I promise this to you and to all your descendants. ¹⁰ I also promise this to all the animals and birds that came out of the ship with you. That is everything that lives on the earth. ¹¹ This is the covenant that I promise to keep: I will never cause water to destroy all living things on the earth again. Deep water will never again come again to destroy the earth.’

¹² Then God said, ‘I will show you clearly that I have made this covenant with you, and with every living animal. I will keep this promise for ever, for as long as people live on the earth. ¹³ I have put my rainbow among the clouds in the sky. It will show you clearly that I have made this covenant with everything on the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth, a rainbow will sometimes appear. ¹⁵ Then I will remember the covenant that I have made with you and with all the different kinds of living things. Never again will the water become so deep that it destroys everything that lives. ¹⁶ When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember my covenant. It is a promise that I have made with every kind of living thing on the earth.’

¹⁷ Then God said to Noah, ‘The rainbow will show you that I will certainly keep my promise. I will keep my covenant that is between me and everything that lives on the earth.’

Noah's sons

¹⁸ The names of Noah's sons were Shem, Ham and Japheth. They all came out of the ship with Noah. Ham later became the father of a son called Canaan. ¹⁹ All the people who live on the earth are descendants of Noah's three sons.

²⁰ Noah was a farmer. He was the first person to plant vines.

²¹ He used the grapes to make wine. One day, he drank some of the wine and he became drunk. He lay inside his tent and he slept. He was not wearing any clothes. ²² Canaan's father, Ham, saw that Noah was not wearing any clothes. He went out of the tent. He told his two brothers what he had seen. ²³ Then Shem and Japheth took Noah's coat and they put it between their shoulders. They walked into Noah's tent with their backs to Noah. In this way they covered their father with the coat. They looked away from their father so that they did not see him. They did this because Noah was not wearing any clothes.^[c]

²⁴ Later, when he was no longer drunk with the wine, Noah woke up. He found out what his youngest son, Ham, had done. ²⁵ He said, ‘I curse Canaan! He will become a slave that must serve his brothers.’

²⁶ Noah also said, ‘I praise the Lord, the God of Shem! Let Canaan become Shem's slave! ²⁷ I pray that God will make the land of Japheth and his descendants grow bigger. I pray that the descendants of Japheth will share good things with Shem. I pray that Canaan will become Japheth's slave.’^[d]

²⁸ Noah lived for 350 years after God covered the earth with deep water. ²⁹ In his whole life, Noah lived for 950 years. Then he died.