Genesis 9

1 God was good to Noah and his sons. God said to them, “You can have lots of kids, and lots of people will come from those kids, so that there will be lots of people, and they will live everywhere on the earth.⋮

2 I’m making you boss over everything that lives on the ground, all the animals and all the birds, and I’m making you boss over the fish and everything in the sea too. They will be frightened of you.⋮

3 I gave you bush tucker to eat, and I’m giving you meat to eat too.⋮

4 But I’m telling you this about blood. It is important. It keeps a body alive. So don’t eat any blood. You have to drain the blood out of the animal before you eat it. Don’t eat any meat that still has the blood in it.⋮

5 And I will punish anything that kills a person dead. If it kills somebody, it spills that person’s blood, so I will punish it. If an animal kills somebody, it has to die. And it is the same for a person that kills dead another person.⋮

6 If somebody murders another person, you have to kill dead that murderer. You see, I made people to be like myself, so they are important.⋮

7 But you mob here, I want you to have lots of kids, so that there will be lots of people everywhere on the earth.”⋮

8 Then God told Noah and his sons,⋮

9 “I promise this to you and to your kids, and your grand kids to come.⋮

10 And I promise this to all the animals that live on the earth, too, all the birds, and all the quiet animals, and all the wild animals. I promise this to all of the animals that came out of the big boat with you.⋮

11 I promise that there will never again be a big flood of water that will ruin the whole earth. There will never again be a big flood that kills all the living animals.”⋮

12 And God said, “I will give you something to help you remember what I promised to you, and to all of the animals living on the earth, and to all your grand kids to come.⋮

13 It is my rainbow, up there in the sky. I’m putting it there to help us all remember what I promised to you, and to everything that lives on the earth. I promised that I will never send such a big flood again.⋮

14 I will send rain clouds into the sky, and there will be a rainbow in the clouds, too.⋮

15 Then I will remember what I promised to you, and to all the living animals. There will never again be a flood that will kill all of the animals on the earth.⋮

16 Every time I look at the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember what I promised to you, and to all the living animals on the earth. I will never break that promise. It will last for ever.”⋮

17 And God said to Noah, “This is very important. That rainbow will show us that I myself promised this for every living thing.”⋮

18 Noah’s sons came out of the big boat with him. Their names were Shem, Ham and Japheth. Then those 3 men had sons and daughters, and later those kids had more kids, and it kept going like that. All the people in the world came from that family. Ham had a son called Canaan.⋮

19 After Noah came out of the big boat he started growing a garden. He planted some grape vines and they got some fruit, then he made some wine from those grapes.⋮

20 Noah drank some of that wine and got drunk. He took his clothes off and went to sleep in his tent.⋮

21 Ham (Caanan’s father) went into the tent and saw his naked father. Ham didn’t respect his father, but he went outside and told his brothers.⋮

22 Shem and Japheth got a coat. They held it over their shoulders and walked backwards into the tent. They put the coat on their father to cover his naked body. They didn’t turn around and look at their naked father.⋮

23 After Noah woke up he found out what Ham, his youngest son, did to him.⋮

24 Then Noah said, “I’m going to curse Canaan, Ham’s son. He will have to work hard without pay for his relatives.⋮

25 I’m going to ask God to look after Shem, but Canaan will work hard for him with no pay.⋮

26 I’m going to ask God to give Japheth lots of land. Japheth and Shem will share this land, and Canaan will work hard for them with no pay.”⋮

27 Then Noah lived for another 350 years after the flood.⋮

28 He lived till he was 950 years old, then he died.⋮