Ver. 1. Be fruitful and multiply.] Here God reneweth the world by the same word wherewith he had created it; and being reconciled to mankind, he blesseth them in like manner as before the fall. Sin once pardoned, is as if it never had been committed. Christ tells his returning Shulamite, that she was as amiable in every point as she had been before her relapse, (Song of Solomon 4:1) her hair, teeth, temples, all as fair and well-featured as ever.
Ver. 2. And the fear of you, &c.] Timor, quo a bestiis timeamini, et terror quo bestias terreatis.(Piscat.) This is a piece of God’s image yet remaining to man, that every nature of wild beasts, birds, creeping things, and things in the sea is tamed, and hath been tamed of the nature of man. (James 3:7, marg.) Monoceros interimi potest, capi non potest.— Solin.
Ver. 3. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you.] God of his goodness grants here to mankind, after the flood, the use of flesh and wine, that the new and much weakened world might have new and more strengthening nourishment. For it is not to be doubted but that, by the deluge, a great decay was wrought both in the earth with its fruits, and also in man’s nature. Various ridges and scars, as it were, of God’s wrath and malediction abided and appeared in the earth. Sundry maladies also and infirmities befell man’s body, not felt before the flood. God therefore in great mercy provides, penum quoddam et pharmacopolium mundo senescenti, new food and physic for the languishing world. “Every moving thing that liveth,” &c., only, that as the green herb have I given you all things; that is, as you may use them as freely as you used to do herbs, so you must use them soberly, and without curiosity; taking such things as are at hand, and eating to live, not living to eat, as the rich glutton, that fared deliciously every day:— “ Ingluvies, et tempestas, barathrumque macelli.”— Horat. Flac. Illyric.
Ver. 4. But flesh with the life thereof, the blood.] Blood was forbidden: First, as not so wholesome food: Secondly, lest by being fleshed in blood, they should become bloody-minded: Thirdly, blood, the organ of life, is holy to God the author of life (who was also to be pacified by the blood of his Son), and therefore they should not pollute or profane it, by devouring thereof.
Ver. 5. Your blood of your lives will I require,] i.e., I will punish it either by the magistrate, or if he fail to do his office, by mine own immediate hand; as he did in David, Charles the Ninth of France, Richard the Third of England, Felix Count of Waterburg, and others, that either were above law, or escaped the lash of it. See for this, “The Thunderbolt of God’s Judgments,” lib. ii. cap. iv. 5,16. Richard the Third used the instruments of his bloody plots, as men do their candles; burn the first out to a snuff, and then having lighted another, tread that under foot. Daniel’s Chron. continued by Trussel.
Ver. 6. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood.] Some are of the opinion, that before the flood, the punishment of murder and other capital crimes, was only excommunication and exclusion from the Church and their father’s family. And that now first, God made murder to be a matter of death. The firstborn had power, at first, over their own families, to bless, curse, cast out, disinherit, yea, and punish with death, (Genesis 38:24) even in case of adultery, as some will have it thus among the people of God. But what a madness was that in the Egyptians to make no conscience of murder, that they might enjoy their lust! And what a blindness to make less account of murder than adultery!. (Genesis 12:13) I have seen, saith the Preacher in his Travels, the king of Persia many times to alight from his horse, only to do justice to a poor body. He punishs theft and manslaughter so severely, that in an age a man shall not hear either of the one, or of the other. A severity fit for France; where within ten years, six thousand gentlemen have been slain, saith he, as it appears by the king’s pardons. Godw. Heb. Antiq. The Preacher’s Travels, by Jo. Cartwright. Les Ombres des Defunets Seiurs de Villemor et de Fontaines, p. 46.
Ver. 7. Be fruitful.] [See Trapp on “Ge 1:28”]
Ver. 8. And God spake.] [See Trapp on Genesis 9:9”] [See Trapp on Genesis 9:10”]
Ver. 9. And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you.] This covenant God had made with them before the flood; but here he renews it for their further confirmation: for he knows our infirmities, and therefore seals again. This covenant is said to be made with an oath, (Isaiah 54:9) yet we find no such thing here expressed, because God’s bare word is as sure as an oath. So God is said to have sworn to Abraham, that which he said to him only. (Exodus 32:13, with Genesis 12:7)