Genesis 8:20–9:9

God’s Promise to Noah

²⁰Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.^{* 21}And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humans, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.^*

²²As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

summer and winter, day and night

shall not cease.”^*

The Covenant with Noah

⁹God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.^{* 2}The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. ³Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.^{* 4}Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.^{* 5}For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.^*

⁶Whoever sheds the blood of a human,

by a human shall that person’s blood be shed,

for in his own image

God made humans.^*

⁷“And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and have dominion over^a it.”^*

⁸Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you^*