Genesis 9 - Easy To Read Version

¹ God blessed Noah and his sons. God said to him, “Have many children. Fill the earth with your people.

² Every animal on earth, every bird in the air, every animal that crawls on the ground, and every fish in the sea will be afraid of you. All of them will be under your control.

³ {In the past,} I gave you the green plants to eat. Now, every animal will also be food for you. I give you everything on earth—it is yours.

⁴ But I give you one command. You must not eat meat that still has its life (blood) in it.

⁵ I will demand your blood for your lives. That is, I will demand the life of any animal that kills a person. And I will demand the life of any person who takes another person’s life.

⁶ “God made people as a copy of himself. So any person who kills a person must be killed by a person.

⁷ “Noah, you and your sons should have many children. Fill the earth with your people.”

⁸ Then God said to Noah and his sons,

⁹ “I now make my promise to you and to your people who will live after you.

¹⁰ I make my promise to all the birds, and to all the cattle, and to all the animals that came out of the boat with you. I make my promise to every living thing on earth.

¹¹ This is my promise to you: All life on the earth was destroyed by the flood. But that will never happen again. A flood will never again destroy all the life on the earth.”

¹² And God said, “And I will give you something to prove that I made this promise to you. This proof will show that I have made an agreement with you and every living thing on earth. This agreement will continue for all times to come. This is the proof:

¹³ I have made a rainbow in the clouds. That rainbow is proof of the agreement between me and the earth.

¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth, you will see the rainbow in the clouds.

¹⁵ When I see this rainbow, I will remember the agreement between me and you and every living thing on the earth. That agreement says that a flood will never again destroy all life on the earth.

¹⁶ When I look and see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the agreement that continues forever. I will remember the agreement between me and every living thing on the earth.”

¹⁷ So the Lord said to Noah, “That rainbow is proof of the agreement that I made with all living things on earth.”

¹⁸ Noah’s sons came out of the boat with him. Their names were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.)

¹⁹ Those three men were Noah’s sons. And all the people on earth came from those three sons.

²⁰ Noah became a farmer. He planted a field of grapes.

²¹ Noah made wine and drank it. He became drunk and lay in his tent. Noah was not wearing any clothes.

²² Ham, the father of Canaan, looked at his naked father. Ham told his brothers outside the tent.

²³ Then Shem and Japheth got a coat. They carried the coat on their backs into the tent. They walked backwards into the tent. In this way, they did not see their father without clothes.

²⁴ Later, Noah woke up. (He was sleeping because of the wine.) Then he learned what his young son, Ham, had done to him.

²⁵ So Noah said,

²⁶ Noah also said,

²⁷ May God give more land to Japheth. May God live in Shem’s tents. And may Canaan be their slave.”

²⁸ After the flood Noah lived 350 years.

²⁹ Noah lived a total of 950 years; then he died.