Dominic Bnonn Tennant (the B is silent)

Genesis 9

1

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and abundant1 and fill the land,

2

and your fear and your breaking2 be upon every living thing of the land, and every flier of the air, in everything that crawleth on the ground, and in every fish of the sea; into your hand they are given.

3

Every crawler that is alive,3 for you it is for eating; as unto the green herbage, I have given to you everything;

4

just flesh with its lifebreath, its blood,4 eat ye not;

5

and just, your blood for your lifebreath I shall require; from the hand of every living thing I shall require it, and from the hand of adam, from the hand of a man’s brother I shall require it, the lifebreath of adam:

6

whoso ‹poureth out› the blood of adam, by adam his blood shall be poured out, in that in the image of God made he adam.

7

And you, be fruitful and abundant; teem in the land and become abundant in it.

Footnotes

  1. abundant (ravah). See note on Gen 1:22. ↩

  2. breaking (chat). This is a concrete verb applied to e.g. bows and enemies (1 Sam 2:4, 10). The sense is to be psychologically broken with fear. ↩

  3. alive (chay). This is an adjective in Hebrew, not a verb. It probably functions as a verb, but perhaps we are supposed to see a connection to Leviticus 11:39. ↩

  4. with its lifebreath, its blood. Or, “in which is its lifebreath, its blood.” ↩