📜 Genesis 9 – The Real Covenant with Noah
Let’s break it down exactly as written, with no additions.

🔹 Genesis 9:1 – Be fruitful and multiply
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.”

✅ This is a direct command.

🔹 Genesis 9:3 – You may eat animals
“Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.”

✅ This permits eating animals, not a law, but a change from Eden.

🔹 Genesis 9:4 – Do not eat blood
“But flesh with its life, its blood, you shall not eat.”

✅ This is a law: Do not eat blood.

🔹 Genesis 9:5-6 – Do not murder
“Surely your blood of your lives will I require... Whoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God He made man.”

✅ This is a law: No murder — life is sacred.

🔹 Genesis 9:9–17 – Covenant with all creation
YHWH makes a covenant with Noah, his sons, and every living creature, sealing it with the rainbow.

✅ This is not a list of laws, but a sign of God’s promise never to flood the earth again.

🔥 Summary — Real Laws Given to Noah in Genesis 9:
Be fruitful and multiply (Gen 9:1)

Do not eat blood (Gen 9:4)

Do not murder (Gen 9:5–6)

✅ These are the only explicit commandments in Genesis 9 — nothing more.


📖 Genesis 9:13 (Hebrew):
אֶת־קַשְׁתִּי נָתַתִּי בֶּעָנָן
“I have set My bow in the cloud…”

קַשְׁתִּי (qashti) = “My bow”

From root קֶשֶׁת (qeshet) = a weapon of war (used in Genesis 27:3, 2 Kings 13:15)

This is not a decorative rainbow — it’s YHWH’s battle bow — the weapon of judgment He used to destroy the world in the flood.

✨ What did He do with it?
He hung it in the sky, pointed away from the earth — not aimed at mankind anymore.

This act was deeply symbolic:

🔹 He laid down His weapon of wrath
🔹 He promised never to use it against the earth again
🔹 The bow faces upward, away from mankind, as a sign of peace

🕊️ A Covenant of Restraint — Not of Weakness
YHWH didn’t change.
He showed mercy, and He set a sign in the sky that He would withhold destruction, even though mankind still had sin in their hearts (Genesis 8:21).

This war bow is a visual oath — that judgment by water would never again wipe out all life.

🪶 Paleo-Hebrew Word for Bow:
קֶשֶׁת (qeshet) = WAR BOW

𐤒𐤔𐤕

✅ The Deeper Meaning
YHWH destroyed the world with water because of violence (חָמָס – hamas)

Then He retired His bow — an act of divine mercy

He made a binding promise to all generations

It was never called a "rainbow" — that came from later Greek and English translations

The bow was a sign of war — now turned into a sign of peace