Genesis 9:1-3

"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the heavens; with all wherewith the ground teemeth, and all fishes of the sea, into your hand are they delivered. Every living thing that moveth shall be food for you; as the green herb have I given you all."

Here is the repetition of exactly the same commission that was given to Adam and Eve in the beginning (Genesis 1:28,29, and Genesis 2:16,17). It is a recognition in Noah of a second progenitor for the human race. Noah was no better than Adam, as would quickly appear, but God took some precautions against the unrestrained violence that preceded the Flood. The use of [~'Elohiym] as the name of God in this verse does not stem from its having been in the Elohist document, but from the fact that, "Here the deity is exhibited in his relations to his creation."[2]

"And the fear of you and the dread of you ..." There seems to be revealed here some fundamental change in the human creation's relationship to the animal kingdom. Just what it is we are unable to say, but apparently this divinely-instilled fear might have been for the protection of man. As a rebel against God, it was inevitable that hostility should also exist between men and the rest of God's creation. The "image of God" was still in man (Genesis 9:6); "but it had been marred."[3]

"Every living thing that moveth shall be food for you ..." There is much difference of opinion about whether or not man had been permitted to eat meat before this, and our opinion is that nobody knows for sure. Our assumption here is that it had not been intended from the first, but that the introduction of animal sacrifices in the days of Abel supports the conviction, that after the Fall and the institution of sacrifice, men surely ate meat. Also, we have noted that the preponderance of "clean animals" in the ark was also presumably related to the food supply. We agree with Alford, Keil, Whitelaw, and others that, "Whether permitted or not, prior to the Flood, it was used, and here for the first time was formally permitted by Divine edict."[4] There is more than sufficient reason for the special mention of animal food just here because of the restriction about to be placed on it, without the necessity of supposing that for the very first time men were allowed to eat animals. Willis and many other respected scholars take a different view.