Genesis 8:20–9:9

God’s Covenant with Noah

²⁰Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹And when the Lord smelled ^kthe pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again ^lcurse¹ the ground because of man, for ^mthe intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. ⁿNeither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. ^22oWhile the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, ^pday and night, shall not cease.”

9And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ^q“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. ^2rThe fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. ^3sEvery moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And ^tas I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. ⁴But you shall not eat flesh with its ^ulife, that is, its blood. ⁵And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: ^vfrom every beast I will require it and ^wfrom man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

^6x“Whoever sheds the blood of man,

by man shall his blood be shed,

^yfor God made man in his own image.

⁷And you,¹ be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

⁸Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹“Behold, ^zI establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you,