Introducing the Noahic Covenant

As we have seen with the covenant of works, so it will be here. We will first examine those things more generally agreed upon when it comes to this covenant with Noah, and then we will look the next two times at matters of controversy. First, we must locate our grounding text. It comes from the material in between Genesis 6 and 9. One could say that the covenant proper stretches from 8:20 to 9:17, though there is one level of difficulty there as we will see.

The least controversial thing is the layout of the text itself. There is not much to argue about structurally speaking.

8:20-22 Sacrifice and Promise

9:1-4 Creational Blessing and Dominion Reaffirmed

9:5-6 Reckoning Required for the Blood of Man

9:7 Summary Creation Mandate Reaffirmed

9:8-11 The Parties and Substance of the Promise

9:12-17 The Rainbow: Sign of the Covenant

That is one way to order our material. However, the best course to follow is to recall those basic elements of a covenant. We will proceed under the following heads: (i.) the identity of the covenant; (ii.) the parties of the covenant; (iii.) the conditions of the covenant; (iv.) the promises of the covenant; and (v.) the sign of the covenant.

The Identity of the Covenant

The difficulty in identifying this covenant as either solely under Adam or solely under Christ is that you do not have a third human race. There are only two—one in Adam and one in Christ—and yet Noah, as the new universal head, (1) is in Christ as to covenant, (2) will birth children in Adam as to inherited nature, and (3) is now standing at the head of a world that is under the same natural design as the first. So there is a convergence of two issues—soteriology and ethics—and an overlapping of two covenants to parse out while one is keeping those two issues distinct.

An additional problem is comparing 6:18 to 9:8-17. Are these two covenants that God makes with Noah or is the first what is sometimes called a “proleptic reference, or anticipation”1 of the latter? Francis Roberts saw them as two distinction covenants, the latter “super-added to the former,”2 and says that both “were a renewed discovery and administration of the Covenant of Faith.”3

In argument for two distinct covenants, there are three points of consideration:

First, the Hebrew personal pronoun is the singular “you” (אַתָּה) to Noah in 6:18 and nine times in the plural “you” (אַתֶּם) in chapter 9.

Second, two different scopes of provision may be detected: salvation from the flood in the first (6:19); guarantee of no more flood for the duration of the world in the second (9:11, 15).

Third, two different “rememberings” seem to point to each of the two. Bruce Waltke and Miles Van Pelt reference that “God remembered” (8:1) to the promise already made to save Noah, whereas the promise to remember (9:15) is forward-looking, and thus has reference to the promise to the whole world regarding any future floods.4

I do not find any of these three decisive on this question. To the first point, the words directly following 6:18 include a mention of the sons of Noah following his headship, so that the person of direct address is no more decisive than that Adam was addressed directly and Eve only indirectly. The second point has to reckon with the fact that the chosen family remains subject to both mercies, so that the same embryonic people group is still addressed by both. It advances nothing. The third point falls flat for roughly the same reason. One must bear in mind that the everlasting covenant of grace would also see its remembering that connects past with present and anticipates future remembering. In those cases, this is an argument for continuity, not discontinuity. Seeing 6:18 as proleptic is far more persuasive.

Hence, on the other side, O. Palmer Robertson makes a reasonable case for a singular covenant here:

The pre-diluvian and post-diluvian covenantal commitments of God to Noah fit the frequent pattern of covenantal administration in Scripture. It is not necessary to posit two covenants with Noah, one preceding the flood and one following the flood. Preliminary dealings precede formal inauguration procedures. God’s commitment to ‘preserve’ Noah and his family prior to the flood relates integrally to the ‘preservation’ principle, which forms the heart of God’s covenantal commitment after the flood.5

One piece of evidence has already been given for all this being, in some sense, a development of the same gracious covenant that Adam and Eve and Seth’s line found themselves in. Recall that the Hebrew of 6:18 said, “And I will establish” (והקמתי), or confirm, reaffirm, or strengthen. However, there is more evidence. We will have to fast-forward to the scene after Noah and his family come back out of the ark after the flood. There is a good reason that the sacrifice comes first here. In fact, we should not even start only at 8:20-22 for our clues here. There is the first statement about the covenant itself.

For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you (6:17-18).

Here we have universal judgment and particular salvation in the same breath. Another detail often missed regards the number of animals. We focus on the much more famous “two-by-twos” of all the animals. But what about those other animals? Of these it is said,

Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth (7:2-3).

The significance of these sets of animals to the identity of the covenant is that these are animals set aside for sacrifices to God. That is why they had to be clean. Here we have not only a continued human race, but a continued church—not only a continued old creation, but a continued new creation; not only a continued common society, but a continued holy society. This explains why this covenant presents the complexity that it does for covenant theologians. It illustrates the difficulty in dividing up what aspects of this covenant have continuity with the original covenant with Adam, and which aspects are discontinuous and must be considered as a further unfolding of the covenant of redemption.

The Parties of the Covenant

As in the original covenant with Adam, so here—God and man are the parties, the latter being principally Noah, whom Roberts called, “The parent and common father of the new world.”6 Of course, just as with the other covenants, there is an immediate consenting party and then others included by the representative principle.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him (9:8).

Even when He makes this covenant, in a sense, to encompass the whole of life on earth—when it comes to the sign—notice the scope in terms of time: “And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations’ (v. 12). The same is reiterated in verses 16 and 17.

There are five basic reasons to view the whole human race as included as the subordinate party.

First, the plain fact that Noah was the first man of the human race following the Flood, there being no other survivors but those after his seed—consequently, the members are simply everyone in Noah’s line.

Second, the Hebrew words in verse 9 for “you” (אתכם) and “your seed” (זרעכם) are in the plural, and thus the focus on the three sons and their offspring makes any attempt to see this as Noah’s “spiritual children” all the more unnatural.

Third, the promise of mercy is not merely that God would not universally judge the church, but that, until the end of time, He would not judge the whole world in the same manner (8:21-22, 9:11, 15).

Fourth, animals are included as the recipients of the benefits (9:10, 16-17), which would be even more strange if this had to do exclusively with the salvation of souls.

Fifth, the more dominant use of the universal name for “God” (אֱלהִים) throughout the passage, rather than the covenant Name of “LORD” (יְהוָֹה).

On the one hand, the sacrifice, God’s rationale for it, and a threefold use of the covenant name LORD in 8:20-22, imply a “particular grace” element. The language surrounding this sacrifice itself requires sophisticated analysis. Kuyper points out the fact that the LORD “said in his heart” (v. 21) is actually “counsel God took with himself,” rather than an address to the same parties of the covenant to Noah.7 Lest we forget, at the center of the story is Noah’s family as a type of the church; he, the head, as type of Christ; and the ark as a type of the work of Christ—not only the wooden beam in the sea of God’s wrath, but the tomb out of which the new creation rose. So the central salvation story belongs to the gracious covenant for God’s people.

On the other hand, even of the sacrifices and language about the blood of animals in 9:5, one has to make distinctions about the moral and ceremonial law. Calvin, for example, comments about Noah’s sacrificial act,

This passage teaches us that sacrifices were instituted from the beginning for this end, that men should habituate themselves, by such exercises, to celebrate the goodness of God, and to give him thanks.8

By this logic, one can point to either a precursor to the ceremonial law in this universal people on the basis of the primary covenant to God’s holy people, or else a moral law foundation to even the sacrifices, given that worship—in the first table of the law—belongs to the very nature of human beings. As all were obliged to render obedience unto God beginning in Eden, so now all were obliged to make atonement unto God on this side of Eden. The fact that the people outside of God’s covenant of grace were given no such acceptable provision is a distinct matter.

The Conditions of the Covenant

Before new conditions are given, original ones are reaffirmed.

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (9:1)

As in Genesis 1, so here in Genesis 9—blessing and calling go together. Matthew Henry puts it simply: “The first blessing is here renewed: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth (v. 1), and repeated (v. 7), for the race of mankind was, as it were, to begin again.”9

Because this is a continuation of the line of God’s people, there are immediate implications for the link between grace and nature, or between new creation and old creation. In other words, God is redeeming human nature when He redeems a particular people. That means that God’s people will not retreat from the totality of human life; they will witness to the world the proper way to be human.

Robertson summarizes this well:

The explicit repetition of these creation mandates in the context of the covenant of redemption expands the vistas of redemption’s horizons. Redeemed man must not internalize salvation so that he thinks narrowly in terms of a ‘soul-saving’ deliverance. To the contrary, redemption involves his total life-style as a social, cultural creature. Rather than withdrawing narrowly into a restricted form of ‘spiritual’ existence, redeemed man must move out with a total world-and-life perspective.10

While we will get more deeply into the command of 9:5-6 in the next few weeks, some surface grammar must be dealt with up front. Here is the text.

From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

Some have argued that God is only pointing forward to what will happen in the case of murder and not prescribing a particular action. The Hebrew conjunction ‘for’ (כִּי) is the real hinge of the matter. Kuyper’s refutation of this is true enough. He asks us to consider how it would read if what followed were merely a descriptive norm. So and so will murder the first murderer “for” (or “because”) God made man in his image. That is exactly what we need to consider. “But that is absurd,” Kuyper says, “since [in such a view] the avenger kills the murder not because the avenger was created in the image of God but because he is a sinner.”11 Certainly both the avenger and the perpetrator are both sinners, but this is no mere realistic prognosis, as in 8:21. I would want to make a finer point than Kuyper did.

Think again of how Genesis 1:26-27, and even 4:9-10, offer a backdrop to 9:5-6: (1) The image of God is the immediate object of violence which is to be avenged; (2) it is the grounding for the nature of the wickedness in the act of murder; (3) the ultimate divine requirement recalls the crying out of innocent blood; and (4) the obligation for just counterforce demands that mankind is indeed his brother’s keeper. Henry adds, “Thus God showed his hatred of the sin of murder, that men might hate it the more, and not only punish, but prevent it.”12

The last thing I will say about the conditions of the covenant is that even here the unconditional must be remembered.

Calvin returns to the sacrifice and what, in the narrative, manifests God’s response:

And the Lord said in his heart. The meaning of the passage is, God had decreed that he would not hereafter curse the earth. And this form of expression has great weight: for although God never retracts what he has openly spoken with his mouth, yet we are more deeply affected when we hear, that he has fixed upon something in his own mind; because an inward decree of this kind in no way depends upon creatures.13

Here we have a view of the divine decree in Calvin as robust as in Aquinas or Turretin. Yes, God is depicted as responding to the temporal sacrifice with all of its physical properties; yet in what may be ascribed properly to God’s essence, in eternity, there is no cause back behind the will of God—“no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17).

The Promises of the Covenant

The first promise in that second section is in the context of that sacrifice.

And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (8:21-22).

The rationale related to sin is worth reflecting on by itself—‘for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth’ (v. 21b). One would think that this would function as a reason for a more severe penalty.

Michael Horton says of this,

We will not find here, however, a promise to redeem sinners or to reconcile them to him through the gift of his Messiah. This is a unilateral oath that does not depend on what humans do, but it is not redemptive.14

There is potential for something unique here. Horton pairs unilateral grace with universal application. In and of itself, that is not an innovation. All mankind is in Noah. In saving Noah and his family, God gave to mankind what it did not deserve. We will see how this plays out in different conceptions of common grace. For now, we only observe that all mankind—those still in Adam and those in Christ—receive a stay of execution. This is at least a general and temporary mercy.

There is a reiteration of the promise to restrain or restrict judgment: “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (9:11). This is often misunderstood. The promise is not that God will never again judge the world.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed (2 Pet. 3:10).

Rather, the promise is twofold—that is will not be by water; by many hints, that those remaining would not be so small a band. This seems a paradox. The final judgment must be universal in a sense, and with even greater totality; yet in his Revelation, John says, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number” (Rev. 7:9). One such hint is given in the prophet Isaiah, which couples the original promise with a more particular promise to His people in the covenant of grace.

This is like the days of Noah to me: as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you, and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you (Isa. 54:9-10).

Another blessing of this covenant is a restraint on natural dangers. As modern people, we are essentially oblivious to the world of fear that early humanity lived within. Kuyper remarks that, “The greatest problem then was how human society could defend itself and be safe from the animal kingdom.”15 For this reason the relation of humans to animals took up so much of the Noahic Covenant. It was out of disbelief about this very provision that another sin of the Tower of Babel springs, as safety was central to the attempt to gather mankind to one point. As to reconciling what seems unnatural in the taking of animal life and the divine provision of the animals for food, Kuyper enlisted Calvin under his view that, “Killing an animal is an act of violence that goes against a sense that has been created within us … by nature we recoil from shedding blood also with animals.”16

Yet Calvin seems more indifferent, saying,

For I hold to this principle; that God here does not bestow on men more than he had previously given, but only restores what had been taken away, that they might again enter on the possession of those good things from which they had been excluded. For since they had before offered sacrifices to God, and were also permitted to kill wild beasts, from the hides and skins of which, they might make for themselves garments and tents, I do not see what obligation should prevent them from the eating of flesh. But since it is of little consequence what opinion is held, I affirm nothing on the subject. This ought justly to be deemed by us of greater importance, that to eat the flesh of animals is granted to us by the kindness of God; that we do not seize upon what our appetite desires, as robbers do, nor yet tyrannically shed the innocent blood of cattle; but that we only take what is offered to us by the hand of the Lord.17

The other issue for Calvin was the pride of man is binding the conscience where the Lord has left us free.18 At any rate, that raises a few questions, beginning with the fact that the provision is first mentioned in the Genesis account before the fall. So these two issues are related—protection from animals and provision of animals—so, according to Kuyper, this was “achieved by means of God’s twofold action. First, he armed man with with heroic courage, ingenuity, and weaponry, in order to overpower the beasts of prey; and secondly, he instilled fear into the predatory animal so that it would withdraw as soon as people approached it.”19

The Sign of the Covenant

The text draws out the sign—its institution, the imagery used, the substance, and God’s remembrance of it.

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (9:12-16).

Roberts divides his treatment of the sign into three segments: “{1} what bow this is, {2} when this bow was set in the cloud, and {3} what manner of sign or token it was, and is, in respect of this covenant … It is called a bow, because it resembles a bended bow in the figure of it … When this rainbow was set in the cloud, is variously disputed.” As to the manner, Roberts utilizes the same breakdown that Augustine does in On Christian Doctrine between natural and voluntary signs—smoke signaling fire being an example of the first, the bread and wine of the Supper being an example of the second. Which is the rainbow? It is both. However, “When we look upon it, we are not so much to take notice of its natural, as of its supernatural and instituted signification, and in God’s great favor in resolving never to drown the world again, remembering thereby.”20

I will not delve into the implications for the debate between young earth and old earth creation. It is instructive that not everyone before the modern era required that this was the first time it rained in any degree. For instance, Henry comments: “The seal of this covenant of nature was natural enough; it was the rainbow, which, it is likely, was seen in the clouds before, when second causes concurred, but was never a seal of the covenant till now that it was made so by a divine institution.”21 But as to its signification, he continues,

A bow bespeaks terror, but this bow has neither string nor arrow, as the bow ordained against the persecutors has (Ps. 7:12, 13), and a bow alone will do little execution. It is a bow, but it is directed upwards, not towards the earth; for the seals of the covenant were intended to comfort, not to terrify.22

Others go further, namely that the message is that God aims the consequences of breaking this covenant at Himself, showing how impossible it would be that such promises would fail.

Does the rainbow have any significance in the covenant of grace? Or is it just a part of what pertains to the whole human race in common? Like other aspects of the covenant narrative (e.g., the sacrifices) there is overlap in application. This is different than a conflation of common and particular grace. Consider that God made a promise in that sign, and all of God’s promises find their Yes in Christ (2 Cor. 1:10). So does Christ purchase anything redemptive in that common covenant for the reprobate? No. Not in any sense that should be confused with the everlasting covenant of grace. But does it follow that the redemptive work of Christ does not have common effects toward them? No. They benefit from every sunrise, sunrises which would never have emerged if God had been simply done with the world. This is the subject that we will explore next time in the first of two major controversies about this covenant.

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1. Miles V. Van Pelt, “The Noahic Covenant of the Covenant of Grace,” in Covenant Theology, 117.

2. Roberts, God’s Covenants, I:504.

3. Roberts, God’s Covenants, I:515.

4. Van Pelt, “The Noahic Covenant of the Covenant of Grace,” 118; cf. Bruce Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 141.

5. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 110, footnote 2.

6. Roberts, God’s Covenants, I:507.

7. Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace, Volume I (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), 25.

8. Calvin, Commentaries, I:281

9. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 28.

10. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 110.

11. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:70.

12. Henry, A Commentary on the Whole Bible, 29.

13. Calvin, Commentaries, I:283.

14. Michael Horton, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006), 114.

15. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:43.

16. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:49.

17. Calvin, Commentaries, I:291-92.

18. Calvin, Commentaries, I:292-93.

19. Kuyper, Common Grace, I:59.

20. Roberts, God’s Covenants, I:512-13.

21. Henry, A Commentary on the Whole Bible, 29.

22. Henry, A Commentary on the Whole Bible, 29.