פירוש על בראשית 9:2

וחתכם means AND THE DREAD OF YOU, similar to (Job 6:21) “ye see a terror (חתת)." The Agada takes the word as signifying “life”, “vitality” (חיות): So long as a baby, even one day old, has life you do not have to guard it against the attacks of mice, whilst Og, king of Bashan, when dead needs to be guarded against the attacks of mice, as it is said, “And the fear of you and the terror of you shall be [upon the beasts of the field etc.].” When will the fear of you be upon the beasts? So long as you are alive (חתכם) (Shabbat 151b).

ומוראכם, this formulation is parallel to the words וכבשוה, which also referred to dominance over other creatures on earth (Genesis 1,28).

ומוראכם וחתכם יהיה על כל חית הארץ, “and the fear and dread of you will be upon all the animals of the earth.” This was not natural, as the animals for the year they had been provided for by Noach and his family had already gotten used to man as their provider. They had become so familiar with man that to be in awe of him would be a new experience for them.

וחתכם, the root of this word is חתת, and it appears in this sense in Job 6,21 or 41,25. The grammatical construction is similar to פת-פתים-פתכם.

בכל אשר תרמוש האדמה, in the first half of the verse the Torah employed the preposition על, i.e. על כל חית הארץ, whereas now it uses the prefix ב as preposition. Both prepositions are perfectly normal in classical Hebrew. It is as if the Torah had written בכל חיה שתרמוש על האדמה.

ובכל דגי הים, even though the fish do not share the same habitat as you, and are therefore presumed to have nothing to fear from you, G’d puts the fear of man in them also, regardless of their relative immunity from man. בידכם נתנו, the Torah adds these words to include reptiles, etc., be they large of small, whose movement on earth is very slow, seeing that they too move on the face of the globe. The reason why the Torah describes their movements as תרמוש in the feminine mode, is to remind us that each of these creatures possesses a נפש, a non-tangible life force, and this life-force called נפש is a feminine noun. The basic definition of “life” is the ability to move from one place to another.