אך בשר בנפשו, but the flesh of living animals, while its life-force is still inside it,

i.e. this life-force is equivalent to its blood; you must neither eat its flesh nor its blood,

לא תאכלו, only in that state must you not eat it; once the blood has left the body, gentiles are allowed to eat blood.

ואך את דמכם לנפשותיכם אדרוש, although I will not punish you for spilling animal’s blood, I will hold you responsible for shedding the blood of fellow human beings. Human beings, all human beings, are more precious to Me than the lives of animals. This retribution for spilling the blood of human beings may on different occasions be applied in different ways: It all depends on the worthiness of the person under attack or potential attack. If, for instance, the person deserves saving, the words מיד כל חיה אדרשנו ומיד אדם are meant in the preventive sense, i.e. G’d will save such a person’s life be it under attack from animals or from human beings. If, in the eyes of G’d, the person under attack does not deserve being saved from violent death, this still did not give the animals or other human beings the right to kill him. Therefore, in such instances, ipso facto, G’d will exact retribution from the killers.

This is the meaning of the apparently redundant words מיד איש אחיו אדרוש את נפש האדם, where the word אדרוש refers to the life of a human being that has already been killed. We find the word אדרוש in both senses depending on circumstances, compare Ezekiel 34,10. The emphasis on איש את אחיו, refers to G’d exacting such retribution from humans for killing humans, seeing that this is not their nature, or should not be their nature. He will not exact retribution from an animal which killed a human being who, in G’d’s eyes, had already forfeited its right to live.

באדם דמו ישפך, a reference to a human tribunal.

כי בצלם אלוקים, this is the reason why G’d exacts retribution for killing human beings, whereas He does not exact retribution from man for killing animals, [even though killing, say for sport is prohibited. Ed.] The animals have not been created in the image of G’d, so that their death does not deprive the earth of a divine image. Only human beings are described in the Torah, on occasion, also as אלוהים, as for instance in Exodus 22,8. את האדם, from the moment G’d had said (Genesis 1,26) נעשה אדם, “let us make a human being,” He had endowed His creatures with an independent intelligence, able to defy Him either collectively or individually. It is this “divine attribute” of man that makes him sufficiently important for his Creator to demand an accounting from those who destroy that divine image by killing a human being.

ואתם פרו ורבו, not only must you not diminish the human population on earth, but you are commanded to increase it by being fruitful and by multiplying.

ואני הנני מקים את בריתי, this promise is conditional on man keeping his part of the bargain, bringing murderers to justice. If, however, innocent blood will be shed in the manner it had been before the deluge, this may lead to destruction of the earth (not necessarily by water). This is what is meant in Numbers 35,33 הדם הוא יחניף את הארץ ולארץ לא יכופר לדם אשר שפך בה כי אם בדם שפכו “for blood turns the earth into a hypocrite and there will be no atonement for the land except through the blood of him who has spilled it.”

ולא יהיה עוד מבול לשחת הארץ, there will not ever again be the kind of catastrophe which will destroy the whole surface of the earth at the same time.

את קשתי נתתי בענן, I have arranged that the rainbow become a natural phenomenon.

והיתה לאות ברית, there is a dual function to the rainbow; it is true that the scientists have already tired of trying to explain the phenomenon of the various colours of the second rainbow, something which appears in the opposite order of the colours in the original rainbow, [according to the encyclopedia Britannica, there are primary and secondary rainbows, the secondary rainbow having a colour pattern in a reverse order of that known as the primary rainbow. Our author may understand that which has baffled scientists in his time, as a hint of the dual nature of the rainbow, i.e. as a warning, or a promise respectively. Ed.] According to the view of the sages in Ketuvot 77 the very appearance of the rainbow is a reminder that the generation in which it appears is a guilty generation. It is reported there that two generations were fortunate enough that in their time no rainbow was ever observed. This was interpreted as a sign that the people of that generation did not need the phenomenon of the rainbow to alert them to become penitents. Their religious leaders did an outstanding job in prevailing on the people to be Torah-observant. [according to the של'ה, it is not reasonable to assume that there were periods when the laws of nature were suspended and there was no rainbow; rather if the Jewish people during certain periods were very deserving, had lots of merits, so that they did not need to be reminded of the deluge, the rain descended at night when no rainbow would become visible even if they had not been a deserving generation. Ed.]

בענני ענן, a reminder that the rainbow will not be visible unless there are dark clouds in the sky after the atmosphere had been very moist.

וראיתיה לזכור ברית עולם, I will take a close look at how the righteous of that time call the ordinary people to order, and whether their prayers are on behalf of their contemporaries. If they make their weight felt, I, in turn, will remember My covenant in their favour, and My wrath at them will be turned aside.

ויאמר אלוקים לנח זאת אות הברית, the word זאת refers to the “secondary” rainbow, [I mentioned earlier. Ed.] which acts as the sign of the warning aspect of the covenant. When this rainbow appears it is high time to call people to order and to warn them of impending natural calamities unless they change their ways.

Cham was the father of Canaan. Canaan infamous for his wickedness and Cham was similar in character, thus he was the father of Canaan in the spiritual as well as the biological sense.

שלשה אלה בני נח, seeing that all of them were Noach’s sons, G’d blessed them all, even though one of them was wicked, when He said “be fruitful and multiply and fill the globe.” As a result of this blessing, באלה נפצה כל הארץ, the entire population of the earth traces its origin to one of these three sons of Noach.

Noach began. Since his first undertaking was an unworthy one it led to disgraceful consequences, illustrating that a small flaw at the outset of an endeavor leads to a large one in the end.

וירא חם אבי כנען את ערות אביו, he saw the shameful deed his son כנען had done to his father Noach when he had castrated him. (according to some of our sages in Sanhedrin 70) According to the historian Berussi Hacaldaii, (compare Genesis 6,9) Canaan castrated his grandfather not surgically, but by some means of sorcery. His father Cham watched his son invoke the witchcraft without protesting or trying to stop him. Disgrace, shame, is also called ערוה, “nakedness.” Compare Ezra 4,14 וערות מלכא לא אריך לנא למחזא “it is not right that we should see the king being disgraced.” Also, in Deuteronomy 21,4 the expression ערות דבר does not refer to either literal nakedness, or to sexual licentiousness, or incest, but refers to “a disgraceful thing.”

ויגד לשני אחיו בחוץ, he revealed that he had enjoyed what his son had done.

ופניהם אחורנית, even when only covering their father they walked with their faces averting their eyes from him. It would have caused them additional grief to behold their father in such a state.

עבד עבדים יהיה לאחיו, his being in a position of dependence to his senior brothers, i.e. a plain עבד, was merely natural, and would not have been a special curse, especially in view of his disgraceful conduct. Solomon paraphrased this in Proverbs 11,29 when he spoke about ועבד אויל לחכם לב, that “a fool is a slave to the wise-hearted.”

ויהי כנען, his offspring [seeing that the word ויהי is in the future tense; Ed.]

עבד למו, to the G’d as well as to the offspring of Shem. The formulation is parallel to Joshua 9,27 where the Gibeonites are condemned to be “hewers of wood and carriers of water” for the Israelites (having duped them into thinking that they were not Canaanites)

באהלי שם, (the plural mode) is a reference to Torah academies in addition to the Temple.

עבד למו, both to Yaphet and to Shem, even at times when the Temple will not stand.

וימות, not before Avraham had already become active, and begun to proclaim the name of G’d, as a true descendant of Shem