The Hebrew Bible says God established a covenant with Noah, setting the rainbow as its sign (Genesis 9:12-17). Targum Onkelos renders every instance of "between Me and you" as "between My Word and you." Six times in this chapter, Onkelos inserts the Memra—the divine Word—as a buffer between God and creation.
This is Onkelos's most systematic theological intervention. The God of the Targum does not make covenants directly with humans the way one king treats with another. God's Word—an emanation, an expression of divine will—serves as the intermediary. The covenant is no less binding. But the nature of the relationship is clarified: God remains transcendent even in His most intimate commitments.
The post-Flood laws are translated with precision. "Flesh with its lifeblood you shall not eat" (Genesis 9:4)—the prohibition against consuming blood, one of the seven Noahide commandments. "He who spills the blood of man, through man shall his blood be spilled" (Genesis 9:6)—Onkelos adds: "by witnesses, according to the word of judges." Capital punishment is not mob justice or blood vengeance. It requires a judicial process, witnesses, and legal authority.
The chapter's second half—Noah's vineyard, his drunkenness, Ham's transgression, the curse of Canaan—Onkelos translates without significant alteration. Ham "told it to his brothers in the marketplace" (an addition specifying where Ham gossiped), while Shem and Japheth walk backward to cover their father's nakedness. The moral lesson needs no Aramaic enhancement. It speaks for itself.