Genesis 9:11

Summary

Genesis 9:11 records the content of the divine establishment of a covenant: the commitment that no flesh will again be cut off by floodwaters, and that no flood will again come to destroy the earth. The verse uses two parallel negative clauses to state this twice, with slightly different verbs.

Key words

• ha.ki.mo.Ti ("I will establish", H6965I) — hiphil causative perfect, first person: the speaker causes the covenant to stand; the sequential form ties this action directly to what precedes it in the narrative chain.
• be.ri.T ("covenant", H1285) — feminine singular noun in construct with the following suffix, meaning "covenant of [me]," i.e., "my covenant."
• yi.ka.Ret ("will be cut off", H3772I) — niphal (passive) imperfect: flesh is the grammatical subject but does not act; it undergoes the cutting off, and the imperfect marks this as an ongoing future prohibition rather than a single past event.
• ba.Sar ("flesh", H1320) — masculine singular noun, here in construct with kol ("all", H3605), forming "all flesh," a collective expression for living creatures.
• sha.Chet ("destroy", H7843) — piel infinitive, intensive stem, expressing purpose ("to destroy") after the preposition le ("to", H9005); it explains the function a future flood would have had.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on ha.ki.mo.Ti ("I will establish", H6965I), a hiphil perfect that continues a preceding sequence of speech, presenting the establishment of the covenant as the next act in a chain of divine statements. The object is bereet-i ("my covenant", H1285 + H9020), marked by the untranslated direct object particle 'et (H0853), with the covenant explicitly directed 'itte-khem ("with you", H0854 + H9036).

The rest of the verse consists of two negated clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002), each built on an imperfect verb governed by lo' ("not", H3808). The first, yikkaret ("will be cut off", H3772I), is niphal, placing "all flesh" (kol basar, H3605 + H1320) in the grammatical position of one acted upon rather than acting — the flesh does not cut itself off nor is an agent named; the cutting off simply will not happen to it. The second clause uses yihyeh ("will be", H1961), a qal imperfect of ordinary existence, applied to mabbul ("flood", H3999) itself: no flood will exist. The final infinitive le-shaChet ("to destroy", H7843), piel stem, states the purpose such a flood would serve, intensifying the verb of destruction beyond a simple qal sense.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yikkaret ("will be cut off", H3772I) with ἀποθανεῖται ("will die"), shifting the niphal passive of "cutting off" toward death specifically, whereas the Hebrew verb's core sense concerns severance/removal rather than dying per se. The Vulgate's interficietur ("will be killed/destroyed") follows a similar interpretive path as the LXX. The Hebrew construct phrase mei ha-mabbul ("waters of the flood", H4325G + H3999) is rendered by the LXX as ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ and by the Vulgate as aquis diluvii, both preserving the "waters of the flood" construction closely.