Why Did God Make His Covenant with Every Living Creature?
The Covenant That Included Creation
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Figure 1. Artistic representation of God’s covenant with Noah and every living creature after the Flood in Genesis 9:8–17. The scene emphasizes the covenant’s broad scope, with the rainbow serving as its visible sign. |
The waters have receded, but the central tension explored in Why Did God Send the Flood in Genesis? has not disappeared. The Flood judged a world filled with human violence, yet its destruction also reached the land animals and birds that shared that world.
When people think about God’s covenant after the Flood, one image almost always comes to mind: the rainbow. It has become one of the Bible’s most recognizable symbols, representing God’s promise never again to destroy all flesh by a flood.
Yet Genesis 9 repeatedly draws attention to something many readers overlook. Before introducing the sign, the narrative carefully identifies those included in the covenant.
God does not speak only to Noah, nor does he limit the promise to Noah’s descendants. Again and again, Genesis declares that the covenant includes every living creature that came out of the ark.
Why are the animals mentioned so insistently? The most direct answer is that the covenant concerns the future of the world preserved through the ark, not humanity in isolation. The Flood affected the wider community of earthly life, and the promise that follows is deliberately described with a similarly broad scope.
The First Covenant After the Flood
Genesis 9 opens with language that recalls the beginning of Scripture. God blesses Noah and his sons and says:
“Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”
Genesis 9:1, NIV
The words echo the blessing given to humanity in Genesis 1:28. After the waters recede, human beings are again commissioned to multiply and fill the earth. Life is beginning again in a world that has passed through judgment.
This is not, however, a simple return to Eden. Animals will now fear human beings, meat is permitted as food, and new instructions are given concerning blood and the value of human life. The post-Flood world continues, but its conditions have changed.
The word “covenant” first appeared in Genesis 6:18, when God promised to establish his covenant with Noah before the Flood. In Genesis 9, that promise becomes the sustained focus of the narrative and its scope is stated in detail.
“I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you.”
Genesis 9:9–10, NIV
The covenant is therefore announced to Noah and his sons, but it does not end with them. From its first full description after the Flood, the promise extends beyond one family and beyond humanity itself.
The Covenant Repeatedly Names Its Recipients
Genesis does not mention the animals once and then move on. Their inclusion is repeated throughout Genesis 9:8–17.
In verse 10, the covenant includes the birds, livestock, and wild animals that came out of the ark. In verse 12, God describes the covenant as being between himself, Noah’s family, and “every living creature” for all generations. Verses 15 and 16 again join humanity with every living creature and “all flesh,” while verse 17 closes the passage by referring to the covenant between God and all life on earth.
This repetition is the clearest evidence that the animals are not an incidental addition. The narrative keeps naming them because the breadth of the covenant is part of what Genesis wants readers to notice.
The pattern also mirrors the preceding story. The Flood brought destruction upon human beings and the land animals and birds outside the ark. The preservation within the ark likewise included Noah’s family and representatives of animal life. When God promises that such a flood will not again destroy all flesh, the covenant corresponds to the scope of the world that has just been preserved.
This does not mean every participant occupies an identical role. Noah and his sons receive commands and responsibilities that are not addressed to the animals. What the text explicitly states is that the animals are included within God’s covenantal commitment concerning the future of the earth.
Why Can Animals Be Included in a Covenant?
Modern readers may associate a covenant with an agreement negotiated between two parties, each accepting obligations. That model does not fully describe Genesis 9:8–17.
Within this passage, God does not ask Noah, his descendants, or the animals to negotiate the promise. No condition is attached to the declaration that a flood will never again destroy all flesh. God establishes the covenant, identifies its recipients, and appoints its sign.
This helps explain how animals can be included. The effectiveness of the promise does not depend on their understanding it or responding to it. The covenant is presented as God’s commitment concerning them and the world they inhabit.
Calling the covenant “unconditional” is a common theological description of this feature. More precisely, Genesis places commands concerning human life in the surrounding chapter, but the pledge in verses 8–17 is not introduced as a reward that depends upon future human obedience.
The promise is especially striking because the Flood has not cured the human heart. Genesis 8:21 still describes the inclination of the human heart as evil from youth. God nevertheless commits himself to the continuing order of the world and promises that the waters will never again become a flood that destroys all flesh.
The Rainbow Is a Sign of a Larger Promise
The emphasis on the covenant’s recipients does not make the rainbow unimportant. Genesis returns to the sign several times and gives it a clear function.
“Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
Genesis 9:16, NIV
In popular retellings, the rainbow often functions primarily as a reminder to humanity. In Genesis, God says that he will see the sign and remember the covenant. Biblical language about God “remembering” commonly signals that God is acting in faithfulness to an established commitment; it should not be reduced to the idea that God might simply forget.
The sign therefore cannot be separated from the promise it represents. Each appearance of the rainbow points back to God’s commitment to Noah, future generations, and every living creature. The rainbow is memorable precisely because the covenant it signifies is so extensive.
The order of the passage reinforces this point. Genesis identifies the recipients in verses 9–12 before naming the sign in verse 13. That sequence does not prove that the recipients are more important than the rainbow, but it does show that readers are meant to understand the scope of the promise before interpreting its visible sign.
What Scholars Mean by a Universal Covenant
Commentators frequently describe the covenant with Noah as universal because it is not restricted to one nation, territory, or later covenant community. It reaches Noah’s descendants, future generations, and the living creatures associated with the renewed earth.
Gordon J. Wenham, Victor P. Hamilton, Kenneth A. Mathews, John H. Walton, and Bruce K. Waltke differ in their larger theological emphases, but each gives attention to the breadth of the promise and its role in securing life after the Flood. T. Desmond Alexander places the Noahic covenant within the Pentateuch’s wider covenantal movement, where the preservation of the world provides the setting for the more particular story that will begin with Abraham.
Robert Gnuse has drawn special attention to the animals as participants in the covenant and to the ecological implications of taking their inclusion seriously. That contemporary application goes beyond the immediate wording of Genesis 9, but it begins with an explicit textual observation: the animals are repeatedly named among those with whom God establishes the covenant.
The academic interpretation should not obscure the simpler narrative point. Genesis presents the continued existence of the earth as the setting in which both human and nonhuman life will endure. The covenant guarantees that the Flood will not become a recurring answer to the corruption of the world.
The Deeper Discovery
The initial question appears to be why God included animals in a covenant usually remembered as a promise to Noah. Closer attention reveals that Genesis never presents the promise as belonging to Noah alone.
The Flood story is concerned with more than the survival of one righteous man. It depicts the preservation of a living world: a family, generations still to come, birds, livestock, wild animals, and every creature that emerged from the ark. The covenant follows the same expansive pattern.
The rainbow remains essential, but Genesis never allows the sign to become detached from those embraced by the promise. God will see it and remember an everlasting covenant with all living creatures of every kind on the earth.
The deeper discovery is therefore not that the rainbow matters less than readers thought. It is that the covenant represented by the rainbow reaches further than many readers realized.
Genesis next traces the descendants of Noah as they spread into families and nations. Then those scattered lines converge upon a single city, where humanity attempts to secure its own name and resist dispersion across the earth.
The covenant guarantees that another Flood will not destroy all flesh. It does not guarantee that human ambition will disappear.
That tension produces the next question in the story:
The Tower of Babel: Was It Really About Language?
Selected Sources
T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch. 4th ed. Baker Academic, 2022.
Robert Gnuse, “The Covenant with Noah in Genesis 9,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 52.2 (2022), pp. 68–76. DOI: 10.1177/01461079211040147.
Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Eerdmans, 1990.
Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26. New American Commentary 1A. Broadman & Holman, 1996.
John H. Walton, Genesis. NIV Application Commentary. Zondervan, 2001.
Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15. Word Biblical Commentary 1. Word Books, 1987.
Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary. Zondervan, 2001.
