A Renewed Commission — Fruitfulness and Life after the Flood
Genesis 9:1–5 deliberately sounds like Genesis 1 while making clear that the post-Flood world is not simply Eden restored. God blesses Noah and his sons and again commands humanity to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. Yet animals now fear humanity, animal flesh is explicitly given for food, and blood receives special treatment because it represents life. The prohibition against consuming flesh with its blood introduces a blood-and-life principle that Leviticus 17 later develops: “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” God also declares that human blood will be required, preparing the explicit image-of-God rationale in the next verses. The integrated story is creation commission → violence and Flood → creation commission renewed under continuing fallenness → blood and life placed under divine accountability. The command to fill the earth also prepares the tension with Babel, where humanity will resist scattering across the earth.