Blessing Redux (Gen 9:1)
The Flood
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9:1 God blessed Noah and his sons.
וַיְבָ֣רֶךְ אֱלֹהִ֔ים אֶת־נֹ֖חַ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֑יו
Our story so far: Noah and Co. have come out of the box in which they survived the Flood; Noah has built an altar and offered animal sacrifices on it; YHWH smelled the “sweet savor” of the cooking meat and said to himself, “I’m not going to do that again.”
Before we launch into the always-illuminating details, let’s take a quick glance at the big picture:
Christian Bibles start a new chapter here; a (Jewish) Torah scroll gives no indication that there is something new.
The Jewish Bible marks a semi-paragraph at the end of v. 7; Christian Bibles simply continue with v. 8.
From our perspective, it makes sense to consider some slight separation from the surrounding material in both these places:
In v. 8, God (who has been speaking throughout vv. 1–7) speaks a second time.
In v. 1, God is referred to by title, though the last four verses of Genesis 8 employ God’s personal name YHWH.
So I’m going to treat this section as a unit of its own. Itzhak Amar of Bar-Ilan University, in a recent article, says that this paragraph “exhibits only a tenuous connection to the flood narrative,” and we’ll be listening to some quite important things he has to say. Nonetheless, it’s quite obvious that 9:1–17 as we have them now are describing the aftermath of the Flood. I’ll just point out two aspects of this, after which we’ll get started on the details:
We’ve seen over and over again that the end of the Flood marks the beginning of Creation 2.0. (I haven’t said so, but this means I’ve been treating human life outside Xanadu Park as Creation 1.1.) So our unit will correspond in some very interesting ways to the original creation.
This version of the story is in a priestly voice, so we should expect to see some non-sacrificial parallel to the sacrifices at the end of Genesis 8.
Now we resume — as promised last time — with blessing: “God blessed Noah and his sons.” We use bless and blessing in English today, just as Hebrew uses ברך and ברכה, somewhat casually for such a remarkable idea. I discussed that briefly when we first encountered the word. Let’s quickly review where we’ve seen it before:
“God blessed them,” that is, the fish and the birds (1:22).
“God blessed them,” that is, the earthlings (1:28).
“God blessed the seventh day” (2:3).
“Male and female he created them; and he blessed them and named them adam” (5:2).
This last example is not a new blessing but a reminder of the blessing at the end of Genesis 1. Our verse is a similar reminder, not (however) directed at the original earthlings of Creation 1.0 but at the new earthlings of Creation 2.0. What’s wrong with this picture?
The answer, of course, is that he should be saying this not to Noah and his sons but to Noah and Mrs. Noah (or to all eight of them). I really shouldn’t have to tell God about the birds and the bees (and the flowers and the trees, and the moon up above); what’s happening here that explains this difference? Says Hendel:
The scope of the blessing includes the unnamed wives, who are implied but not named (as is frequent in P).
Okay, but the original blessing of Genesis 1 is from P also — or at least, if we are making such distinctions, it is from a priestly voice. More on that in a moment. First, let’s take another, closer look at that original blessing:
Gen 1:26 God thought, Let’s make an earthling — in our image, according to our likeness. Let him control the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the animals, the beasts, and all the things that creep over the ground. 27 God created the earthling in his image. In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them: Reproduce, proliferate, and fill the earth and subdue it so that you control the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and every beast that creeps over the ground.
First God made ha-adam, which I translated at the time as “the earthling.” Nonetheless, we saw over and over again, in that chapter and subsequently, that such singular nouns were used as collectives — e.g., ha-b’hema did not seem to be a single animal but “the domestic animals” as a group. It’s possible, then, that 1:27 is adding two background points:
Humans (unlike birds and fish) were created in God’s image.
Humans were created in both sexes, something that had to be mentioned specifically in their case.
Then the text goes on to say that God blessed “them” and told “them” to reproduce. We think of this as being directed at two people, Adam and Eve, but that is because of what we read when the story continues in Genesis 2, in J’s non-priestly voice. In context it might refer to all the earthlings that were created, as many of them as of lions and tigers and bears. So perhaps Hendel’s explanation is correct.
What’s clear is that in our verse we have … not exactly a Wiederaufnahme (though I do love to say that word), but a repetition that rephrases the beginning of creation, as with a musical theme is repeated but transposed into a different key. As David Kimhi says (in my Commentators’ Bible translation):
Even though humanity had been blessed at the beginning of creation, the earth had returned to being “unformed and void” (1:2) when it was covered with water, so this was the equivalent of being created anew.
As Mark Twain never actually said, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” When the same writer is telling the story, we should not be surprised at such rhyming. We’ll see it continue when we go on next time.