God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. 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. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 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.
Whoever sheds the blood of a human,
by a human shall that person’s blood be shed;
for in his own image
God made humankind.
And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.’

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ 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 clouds, 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.’ God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.’

For many years the bible has been used to justify all kinds of atrocities. After all if it is in the bible, then that must be the way God intended it. For instance a passage that we will look at next time, Genesis chapter 9:18-28, has traditionally been used to justify slavery in the United States of America before and during the civil war. As well, this same passage was fundamental to the Dutch Reform Church in South Africa in their theological justification of Apartheid.

Our sacred texts have often been used to justify people’s earthly desires through the evoking of God’s holy name and scripture. And it can be hard to argue if your belief of scripture is that it is the inherent accurate word of God. But that also assumes you take each passage separately from the whole and ignore many contradictions. But then again that is the whole purpose of this blog, which is to explore some of these contradictions.

But our passage is one in which I actually wish people would use to help justify a position and that is the environmental position. While God tells Noah and his son that they are to have the plants of the fields to eat as well as the animals, birds and fish, God does something absolutely remarkable here; God makes his covenant with all of creation. Not just with humanity, not just human centric, but with all of creation.

Listen, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.”

This passage is often sited for the “bow in the sky”, the rainbow, as a sign of the covenant. But the covenant itself, I believe, is much more important and striking. The covenant is made between God and all of creation. We are all, human, animal, bird, fish, creepy thing of the earth, we are to all go forward and multiple. And God places the bow in the sky, the rainbow, to remind him of his covenant with not only humanity, but with the all of creation.

God is presenting to us something fundamentally important. We are not to have dominion over the earth and subdue it, as often quoted reason for raping the earth of its natural resources. That command was giving before the flood, at creation and God saw the evil that is humanity and eliminated humanity from the earth, all but Noah and his sons and their wives.

Having seen the type of evil that humanity, unchecked, can produced when they have dominion, God chooses now, to exercise his free will and change his mind, and instead he makes his covenant with everything and not just humanity.

Something to keep in mind the next time you throw your coffee cup out the window of the car I would think.