Notes on Genesis | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 4, 1867

Notes on Genesis.

CHAPTER IX, verses 3, 4: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things; But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”

“PERHAPS before the flood men had taken the liberty of eating flesh; but it seems not to have been explicitly allowed. The distinction of clean and unclean must relate to the use of them in sacrifice: and the eating of blood seems principally to have been prohibited because blood typified the great atonement. (Acts xv; 19-20.—Scott.)”

“Meat.] “We may safely infer that the earth was less productive, and its productions less nutritive, after the flood than before; and that the human constitution was greatly impaired (as appears in the diminished length of life,) by the alterations in the whole economy of nature.”—Dr. A. Clarke.

“Which is the life thereof.] “That blood is the seat of life (a living fluid) could not be known to Moses but by revelation, it being a secret in nature never discovered till of late, and that by many experiments and observations, of which the age of Moses, and following ages, knew nothing.” Dr. WILSON. “Hunter has confirmed the doctrine that the living principle is inherent in the blood.”—Hales.

Verse 13. I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

“How vast the extent, how delicate the texture, of that shadowy arch! elegant its form, and rich its tinctures; but more delightful its sacred significance. While the violet and the rose blush in its beautiful aspect, and the olive branch smiles in its gracious import, it writes, in radiant dies, what angels sang in harmonious strains, ‘Peace on earth, and good will to men.’ ”—Fawkes, in Hewlett.

Verse 25. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

“The devoted nations, which God destroyed before Israel, were descended from Canaan: and so were the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, who were at length subjugated, with dreadful destruction, by the Greeks and Romans.”

Verse 26. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

“The descendants of Shem, in the line of Arphaxad, Eber, and Peleg, included all the posterity of Abraham; and the Lord Jesus, ‘in whom all the nations of the earth are blessed,’ sprang from him.—Thus Jehovah was especially ‘the God of Shem.’ His descendants comprised a vast majority of the worshippers of the true God, till the coming of Christ; and afterward they were the first and principal instruments of bringing other nations to share the blessings of his salvation; so that the descendants of the other sons of Noah, when converted to Christianity, are taught to worship and ‘bless JEHOVAH the God of Shem.’”—Scott.