Genesis 9:8-11 - The Recipients of God’s Covenant with Noah
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Referring back to Problems with Interpreting the Flood - Conclusion - All of what? - Guidelines for Interpreting The Flood, let me recall for you my guideline for interpreting “the earth”…
The word for “world” means “the earth”, indicates local region
Read “Why the Flood cannot be Global”. For other articles on The Flood by Morton: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/fld.htm. The basic idea is that the words translated to mean the world also mean a region, or the entire known world, or the entire area that one is talking about. It does not necessarily mean the planet.
To support this interpretation of “the earth”, I also explained why Adam’s descendants were not the only people on the earth at the time, but why there were the only ones God wiped out. I also explained why “every” and “all” are not absolutes; they act more as intensifiers in the context of the flood. So then we come to God’s covenant with Noah.
Who was the covenant with?
“I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you” (Gen 9:9)
In other words, the people in the rest of the world were not recipients of this covenant. Only Noah and his descendants received this covenant.
Which animals was the covenant with?
“with every living creature that was with you” (Gen 9:10)
“all those that came out of the ark with you”(Gen 9:10)
“every living creature on earth” (Gen 9:10)
In other words, animals outside the lands God flooded were not recipients of this covenant. Only the animals on the ark and their descendants received this covenant.
What was the covenant?
“Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood”
“never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth”
What does this mean?
I was raised to believe that God would never flood the entire earth ever again. However, that isn’t what He did in the first place. So, if He flooded the entire world, it would not be again. However, Noah’s descendants have since spread throughout the world, and so this covenant has followed them. By now, the recipients of the promise have probably spread sufficiently throughout the world that the covenant in fact protects the world from a flood that destroys all life and the earth.
This does not mean there won’t be floods here and there, but even the worst floods of our time (Take Katrina for an American example, or the tsunami in Indonesia for a more global one) have not cut off all of Noah’s descendants. Furthermore, these days, people are more likely to evacuate. But even if they don’t, none of them have wiped out all of Noah’s descendants, and none of them have re-destroyed the land that was destroyed by the Great Flood.
It would seem that God is keeping His promise.