CHAPTER 9
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Increase ye, and be ye multiplied, and fill ye the earth;
2 and your dread and trembling be on all [the] unreasonable beasts of the earth, and on all [the] birds of heaven, with all things that be moved in earth; all fishes of the sea be given to your hand.
3 And all thing which is moved and liveth shall be to you into meat; I have given to you all things, as I gave the green worts before,
4 except that ye shall not eat flesh with the blood,
5 for I shall seek the blood of your lives, of the hand of all unreasonable beasts and of the hand of man, of the hand of man and of his brother, I shall seek the life of man.
6 Whoever sheddeth out man’s blood, his blood shall be shed; for man is made to the image of God.
7 Forsooth increase ye, and be ye multiplied, and enter ye on [the] earth, and fill ye it.
8 Also the Lord said these things to Noah, and to his sons with him,
9 Lo! I shall make my covenant with you, and with your seed after you,
10 and to each living soul which is with you, as well in birds as in work beasts and small beasts of [the] earth, and to all things that went out of the ship, and to all unreasonable beasts of [the] earth.
11 I shall make my covenant with you, and each flesh shall no more be slain of the waters of the great flood, neither the great flood destroying all [the] earth shall be any more.
12 And God said, This is the sign of bond of peace, which I give between me and you, and to each living soul which is with you, into everlasting generations.
13 I shall set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of bond of peace between me and [the] earth;
14 and when I shall cover [the] heaven with clouds, my bow shall appear in the clouds,
15 and I shall have mind of my bond of peace which I made with you, and with each soul living that nourisheth flesh; and the waters of the great flood shall no more be to do away all flesh.
16 And my bow shall be in the clouds, and I shall see it, and I shall have mind of the everlasting bond of peace, which is made between God and man, and each soul living of all flesh which is on [the] earth.
17 And God said to Noah, This shall be a sign of [the] bond of peace, which I made between me and each flesh on earth.
18 Therefore they that went out of the ship were Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; forsooth Ham, that is the father of Canaan.
19 These three were the sons of Noah, and all the kind of men was sown of them on all [the] earth.
20 And Noah, an earth-tiller, began to till the earth, and he planted a vinery [or a vineyard],
21 and one day he drank wine, and was drunken; and he was naked, and lay in his tabernacle.
22 And when Ham, the father of Canaan, had seen this thing, that is, that the shameful members of his father were made naked, he told his two brethren withoutforth.
23 And Shem and Japheth putted a mantle on their shoulders, and they went backward, and covered the shameful members of their father, and their faces were turned away, and they saw not the privy members of their father.
24 And Noah waked of the wine, and when he had learned what things his lesser, or younger*, son had done to him,
25 he said, Cursed be the child Canaan, he shall be a servant of servants to his brethren.
26 And Noah said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan be the servant of Shem;
27 God alarge Japheth, and dwell he in the tabernacles of Shem, and Canaan be the servant of him.
28 Forsooth Noah lived after the great flood three hundred and fifty years;
29 and all the days of him were filled nine hundred and fifty years, and he was dead.
* CHAPTER 9:24 Most modern translations and Bible dictionaries refer to Ham as Noah’s youngest son, though he is second in all the lists in the Bible. The KJV, like the “Wycliffe Bible” (both versions), uses ‘younger’ in this verse.