Beware Of The "Noahide Laws"

They were not given to Noah, and they are not God's Laws.

The following post is Appendix 16 of Friends With God: The Unscriptural Teaching of the so called “Noahide Laws”.

Many people today are promoting these “Laws”, and they are even mentioned in a statute passed by United States Government (1). However, as this post will explain, the “Noahide Laws” deserve no credibility, as they don’t have anything to do with the Word of God, and in fact actually oppose many of the principles clearly stated in scripture.

Search The Scriptures

If you do a quick internet search on the “Noahide Laws” you will find people claiming something like: “The Seven Noahide Laws are believed by Jewish teachers to have been given by God to Noah after the Flood. They have many elements similar to the Ten Commandments, and are intended to be the foundation for any civilized society”.

• Yet, if you search God’s Word, you will not find the term “Noahide” in scripture, nor any mention of God giving Noah any “laws” after the flood.

The truth is that these “laws” were most probably developed by the medieval Jewish Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1135-1204 AD). However, it is very difficult to determine when they were developed, because, as they had been supposedly given by God to Noah, the Jewish Rabbis who promote them will not say exactly who developed them or when, as to do so would just undermine the myth of their supposed authority and antiquity.

What are these “laws”?

The following is what you will quickly find in any internet search, yet these seven points are absolutely not all there is to these Noahide concepts by a long shot, however it is generally all that is ever promoted about them:

1. Do not worship any idol.

2. Do not blaspheme.

3. Do not murder (or injure).

4. Do not engage in forbidden relations.

5. Do not steal.

6. Do not eat meat taken from a living animal.

7. Establish laws and courts.

The Jewish Rabbis who teach these “laws” (and there are many Rabbis who don’t) claim they can all be found in the book of Genesis, or in Leviticus. They state that God provided these laws to non-Jews (gentiles), whereas he gave the Ten Commandments specifically for, and only to, the Jews.

Neither of these claims is supported by scripture, yet many people don’t bother to read the scripture to try to check the Noahide teachings. They simply believe the “Rabbis” who teach them with great authority and conviction. Yet these “laws”, and the many other teachings that accompany them, are not only not in scripture, but are most often opposed to the very basic truths scripture reveals.

While the above seven laws seem reasonable enough, (although they are very vague when compared to the Ten Commandments) it is what is missed out in them that is as interesting and strange as what has been included in them.

Yet why should Jewish Rabbis promote something that is not in scripture, as if it were? Their motives for lying about God’s word are not something I can judge. Jesus, however, warned us to be wary of those who make up such lies:

This people draws near unto me with their mouth, and honour me with their lips;
but their heart is far from me.
But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
(Matt 15:8-9)

Jesus is talking about the Jewish Rabbis of his day, who back then were also teaching things that were not in scripture.

It should not be surprising, therefore, if their descendants today are still teaching errors and commandments of men. They, like their ancestors, have rejected Christ and his teachings.

Jesus often told us to be wary of these false leaders of the Jewish religion. (Matt 16:6-12, Mark 12:38, Luke 12:1, Luke 20:46)

Yet, it is not for us to change these people, but we are clearly told by Christ to keep well away from them and their doctrines:

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind.
And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
(Matt 15:14)

The Jewish Rabbis have continued to fall into ditches for the past 2,000 years, and we should not be deceived by them, or we will fall in with them!

Comparison With The Ten Commandments

While these Noahide ideas may seem reasonable at first glance, if you take just a very few minutes to compare them with the clear words of God, you will see how simply foolish and ignorant they are. It is important therefore to take the time to remember the clear words of God in the Ten Commandments. Please now take the time to read them, they are listed in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-22.

Photo by Author

The first thing you will notice, in comparison with the “Noahide” list, is that God’s Laws are clearly stated as being spoken by God, with accompanying great thunder, and lightning, from within a dark cloud on Mount Sinai. There is no record of the “Noahide” list being mentioned in scripture, let-alone spoken by God, and as such it has no authority from God.

The second obvious difference is that the Ten Commandments are long and detailed in comparison to the “Noahide” list. God is not interested in a simplistic “do this and don’t do that” approach to his Law. God is our Father, and wants a relationship of love with all mankind. This relationship is to be similar to a Family, as God made us in his image in order to make us into his eternal children, as discussed in previous Chapters of Friends With God. Yet the “Noahide” list is just simplistic very short statements, which have no detail or explanation given within them.

The next major difference you will see at a glance, is that five of the Ten Commandments are left out of the “Noahide” list! These are:

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy…

3. Honour your father and your mother…

4. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

5. You shall not covet…

The omission of one of these would be significant cause for concern, but having five of God’s laws omitted just shows how ridiculous this “Noahide” list is!

So, even from this above quick assessment, we can see that there is clearly no valid comparison with this “Noahide” list and God’s profound and wise Commandments that he clearly spoke with great authority and power. It would, therefore, be more appropriate to call these “Noahide laws” the “whatahide laws”!

But there is much more to this perversion of the truth of God than the absence of God’s authority, and most of the detail, and half of what he said- for the proponents include, as part of these “laws”, a great deal of blatantly blasphemous material incorrectly stating what God has supposedly said about non-Jews/ gentiles.

The Sabbath Was Made For Man

The more you read about the Noahides’ various lists of things they think gentiles and Jews should or should not do, the more it becomes apparent that their understanding of anything pertaining to God, including the scriptures, is seriously lacking.

Perhaps the most striking omission of the laws of God by the Noahides is the Sabbath, which was made at creation, yet they claim it was given only to and for Israel, and not until over 2,500 years after creation.

The Sabbath is the only one of the Ten Commandments that is clearly recorded as being given by God prior to Moses, as the fourth commandment clearly states:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labour and do all your work.
But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.
You shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger within your gates.
For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.
Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.
(Exo 20:8-11)

The fourth commandment is simply repeating what God said in Genesis 2:1-3, where he first rested and blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it at the time of creation. The word “sabbath” simply means “rest”, which is what God did on the seventh day of creation.

• Please notice also that this commandment is talking about the Sabbath of the Lord your God. It is not called “the Jewish Sabbath”, as claimed by the Noahides, it is God’s Sabbath which he gave to all mankind.

To hallow something is to set it apart. God obviously set apart the seventh day at the time of creation as the day of rest for all mankind (whom he had made on the sixth day), which is exactly what Jesus said:

“And he said unto them, The sabbath (day of rest) was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: (Mark 2:27)

This time of rest was made and given to all mankind at the time of creation, it was not given 2,500 years later to the Jews only.

Mercy And The Sabbath

Why did Jesus say “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath”? Because the Jewish teachers were making things up about the Sabbath day of rest back then too!

The Sabbath commandment tells us not to do any work, because God rested on this day at creation as an obvious example for mankind to also rest. Yet the Pharisees considered that doing any work (including helping people or animals who were starving, and healing them of their illnesses) was breaking the Sabbath. However, Jesus often confronted the Pharisees on their ridiculously strict and callous determinations of what constitutes rest and acceptable “work” on the Sabbath day. (Matt 12:1-12, Mark 3:1-6, Luke 6:6-11, John 7:21-24)

Jesus demonstrated from scripture and logic that the Sabbath day of rest was not made to restrict mankind into some kind of ritual observance of ‘no work’, but to bless us in giving us a much needed rest to help us regenerate in body and mind. It is also a very important time of rejoicing in the blessings that God has given us, and in focusing on the love of God in doing all this for us, including the understanding that we may become his children by showing the love of God to other people.

In the account of the same incident in Matthew, Jesus also said to the Pharisees:

And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. (Matt 12:7)

Mercy must be applied when keeping the Sabbath, such that the command to “not do any work on the Sabbath” is not more important than helping people, or animals, who may be in need. It was mercy that was the critical factor the Pharisees neglected when applying the law:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. (Matt 23:23)

The Pharisees of 2,000 years ago, and the Noahide proponents of today, are of the same mindset, for they don’t understand the intent and purpose of the Laws of God which is to develop in us Justice, Mercy and Faith.

As Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for all mankind, not just for the Jews, as claimed by the Noahide adherents. And the way to keep the Sabbath is by understanding its intent and purpose and foundation, which is to love God and to love your neighbour:

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked, tempting Him and saying,
Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?
Jesus said to him,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like it,
You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
(Matt 22:35-40)

The intent and purpose of God’s Laws are to develop love, mercy, faith and justice in the minds of all people who follow the creator. The Noahide list is just a meaningless, purposeless list of what to do and not do, and has no scriptural support, nor any place in worshiping God.

The Sinister Aspect Of The Noahide Laws

The Noahide proponents claim that by keeping these laws, and the dictates that the Jewish Rabbis include in them, (including that gentiles must not keep the “Jewish Sabbath”), the world will be a perfect place. Yet that is not how God has revealed his way of life to ALL humanity.

The Noahide dictates seek to isolate gentiles from the truth of God, and discourage them from being in covenant with God, which is only possible through keeping the spirit and intent of all of God’s righteous commandments.

This false teaching about gentiles is also what the Pharisees taught at the time of Christ. (Acts 10:1-48) Those who teach the Noahide doctrine today are of the same spirit and attitude as the Pharisees who shut up the Kingdom of God to others:

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men.
For you neither go in, nor do you allow those entering to go in.
(Matt 23:13)

Christ also told a parable, aimed at the Pharisees, about the wicked tenants of a vineyard. Please take the time to read it in Matthew 21:33-46. It concludes with Christ saying that as they have not respected God, or welcomed Christ when he came, then God would remove them from their role of preaching to the world about the coming Kingdom of God:

…But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.

When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?

They (the Pharisees whom Jesus was talking to) said unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.

Jesus replied unto them, Did you never read in the scriptures,” The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?”

Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. (Matt 21:38-44)

This “nation” which God has given the responsibility of preaching the Kingdom instead of the Jews is the Church, which is Spiritual Israel, as is explained in previous chapters of Friends With God.

The warning is clear to us, we should keep well away from the modern day Pharisees who teach these Noahide concepts, or we too will be in danger of being ground to powder by the stone which those foolish builders have rejected.

The Covenants With God

The Rabbis also teach that gentiles who keep the Noahide requirements will receive eternal life, which just shows that they don’t understand anything about the covenant relationship that God wants with anyone who chooses to follow him- be they in the New Covenant or the Old Covenant.

The term “New Covenant” or “New Testament” is mentioned only 10 times in scripture, whereas the term “Old Covenant” is found only once. (2Cor 3:14) However, to identify the specific covenant with Israel as “the Old Covenant” is not correct, as there are many covenants that God made which are far older than the one with the nation of Israel.

The first is a covenant between God and Noah (Gen 6:18) and another between God and all living things at the time of Noah (Gen 9:15-17). We also have God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen 15:18-21), and with Isaac (Gen 17:21), and with Jacob (Lev 26:42) and with David (Jer 33:21) and even with day and night (Jer 33: 25). In all this you will not find the Noahide “covenant”, with its simplistic list of dos and don’ts.

The covenant with Noah, while it is the first mentioned covenant, is not a list of “laws” but is simply about the protection from the flood that God would give Noah and his family:

And behold! I, even I, am bringing a flood of waters upon the earth
in order to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under the heavens.
Everything which is in the earth shall die.
But I will establish My covenant with you.
And you shall come into the ark,
you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you.
(Gen 6:17-18)

After the flood God used the rainbow as a symbol of his covenant with all living things:

And it shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud. And I will remember
My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh;
and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
(Gen 9:14-15)

The rainbow is a symbol to remind people that God promised that He would never again destroy all living creatures with a flood.

The purpose of God’s covenants with mankind is to establish a relationship with us, not to simply get us to do a list of things that somehow “please God”.

For example, physical circumcision is required in the Israelite covenant, but is not required in the New Covenant, however circumcision of the heart is required in both the New Covenant and the Israelite Covenant. (Deut 30:6, Jer 9:25-26, Rom 2:28-29, Acts 7:51)

Circumcision of the Heart means to voluntarily yield to God. This parallels the voluntary nature of being in a covenant, and the voluntary nature of showing love to God and neighbour.

The covenants that God has made with mankind are intended to enable us to develop the very mind and character of God, so that we may become his children, and be one with him. They require that God grant us his Holy Spirit, so that it can be joined with our spirit that we may be one with God.

The simplistic Noahide teachings are made up and promulgated by people who don’t understand anything about how to please God, nor about developing the fruits of God’s Holy Spirit in their lives.

More Detailed References

The following three internet links go into more detail on the Noahide teachings, showing how they don’t conform to scripture, and even how they are highly likely to be used to persecute Christians in the not too distant future:

And the dragon was wroth with the woman,
and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which
keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
(Rev 12:17)

We who have the testimony of Jesus Christ keep all of God’s commandments, not just the simplistic “laws” that the Noahides promote.

Yet, the Noahides can’t admit that Jesus is the Messiah, nor that gentiles can come to know God and are to keep his commandments, including God’s Sabbath Day.

The following references provide some more detailed information on the Noahide concepts.

I have no relationship with any of the groups or individuals from the following links, and may not even agree with all their other teachings, however, they have explained the issue of the Noahide teachings well, with scriptural clarity and understanding.

1) 119 Ministries

https://119ministries.com/teachings/video-teachings/detail/the-7-laws-of-noah/

2) Dr. Nehemiah Gordon

3) Beware the Noahide Laws

US Government Mentions Noahide Laws

1. In 1990 the Noahide Laws were mentioned in a US Congress public law:

   PUBLIC LAW 101-267—APR. 6, 1990
   https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/house-joint-resolution/104/text/enr