And indeed your blood, [the blood] of your lives, will I require at the hand of every animal will I require it, and at the hand of Man, at the hand of each [the blood] of his brother, will I require the life of Man.
After the flood, God sets up a new order for Noah's family. They may eat animals, but not the blood. And God warns that He will call every killer of a human being to account. Two questions follow. Why does God claim the blood? And does a word spoken to one family still hold for everyone?
Permission to eat meat came with one limit: not the blood. That limit sets up the demand here. Giving man more freedom made God's own claim stand out.
Man was not to eat the blood. It was the life, and God kept it for Himself. Letting man use animals for food made God's claim stand out all the more. Life belonged to God, and it will go badly for those who despise or defy His rights. This is the state of a fallen world. God is a Preserver, or a Saviour, of all people, as the apostle says — especially of those who believe.
God's claim reaches past human killers. He says He will require the life at the hand of every beast.
The life of a man killed by a beast — "from every beast I will require it." So we see that God keeps His right over life, even a beast's life. They must come and offer the blood to God. Man had no meat to eat until God gave it to him. Many are seeking to do away with capital punishment; but what do they care about God? The whole order of God is broken up now. Even a beast that kills should die.
The wording reaches down to the closest human relationships. Cain's question — was he his brother's keeper — is answered here.
Above all, man's life is sacred. What Cain did is to go unpunished no longer. Man is plainly declared to be his "brother's keeper": he is to require blood for blood, and to do it as the instrument and deputy of God on earth.
That raises a question from the earlier chapters. Why did the first murderer go free?
No government had yet been set up on the earth, so God would allow no one to punish Cain. Once government began in its simplest form, men were to act, as we see in verses 5 and 6 of Genesis 9.
God foresaw that this authority would be abused. Writers read His demand here as a guard set against that abuse.
Man would soon misuse and twist the very governing authority God placed in his hand, following his own will without the fear of God. Rivers of blood would flow — not only through lawless corruption and violence, as before the flood, but through ambitious kings and rulers after it. So God, in His foreseeing wisdom and thoughtful goodness, declares at the very start of the new order, "And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it."
Commentators see this word as the starting point of all lawful government.
The words of Genesis 9:5-6 — "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image" — first laid the primary basis of human government as it is. Life belonged to God, and He passed that principle on to Noah. From then on man was responsible as God's servant to carry out wrath, even to the shedding of blood if blood had been shed; for he must not carry the sword for nothing.
This demand also set a law in place. Writers note how long that law has stood.
Life is what lets a created being enjoy the place the Creator has set it in. Sin has come in, so that life is forfeited, and God claims it in the words of Genesis 9:5. That established capital punishment for murder, and the law has never been cancelled or changed.
- Claim — Life is God's. He reserved the blood for Himself and treats every human death as a debt owed to Him.
- Reach — The claim runs to the beast, to man, and to a man's own brother; no killer is outside God's reckoning.
- Contrast — Cain went free because no government existed yet. Here God puts the sword in man's hand for the first time.
- Restraint — The same word that arms rulers also warns them. God knew authority would be twisted, and rivers of blood would follow.
- Permanence — This word established capital punishment for murder, and writers say that law has never been cancelled or changed.
Whoso sheddeth Man's blood, by Man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God he hath made Man.
After the flood, Noah steps out of the ark into a fresh start. God lays down one rule to guard human life: whoever takes a life forfeits his own. Two questions follow. Where does a government get the right to put a killer to death, and what makes killing a person an offence against God Himself?
Government is not as old as the human race. It began at a fixed point in history.
Notice that nothing like civil government was set up at the beginning. Man did not invent it in all the centuries before the flood. God established it for the first time after that great event... This is why Cain was not punished by man, as responsibility would have required after the sword was committed to Noah. From then on God solemnly required blood for blood.
This rule does more than punish a killer. It also says what a human life is worth.
God attached a value to man's life that He had never declared before. It counted for more still, because now for the first time it fell to government, responsible to God, to defend that life.
The verse does not argue from what society needs. It argues from what man is.
The image of God expresses man's place and responsibility of representing God... It is not His likeness, for man lost this by sin and fathered children in his own likeness. But man keeps His image, even fallen as he is here. So the man who kills another (except by proper authority) is guilty of denying God's right in this respect... The murderer does not just interfere with a man and harm him as badly as possible. He also defaces God's image by killing a man, and God sentences the murderer to die.
The verse uses only one of those two words, and the difference matters.
What is insisted on here is the image, not the likeness. So Genesis 9:6. But in James 3:9 it is "likeness," not "image."... An image "represents"; a likeness is "conformed to."
God handed this right down. It did not grow up from below, so no theory about how societies form can explain it — or cancel it.
Clearly it is God's committal of the sword, the power of life and death, into the hands of man... Such is the true source and basis of civil government. It did not spring from a social contract. It did not grow by degrees out of family relationships. It did not begin in the usurpation of man or of a class. As God's command gave it being, so it can never cease to be clothed with His authority, whether men listen or refuse... It is a right of God, which He has been pleased ever since the flood to entrust to human keeping.
This command targets murder, not accidental death. And it puts the sword in official hands.
The law separated murder from manslaughter. If someone killed a person by accident, that killer could run to a City of Refuge and be protected there. God has given man governmental authority to carry out this universal command. It came long before the law of Moses, and no one has ever repealed or relaxed it. In the New Testament the magistrate does not bear the sword in vain, for he is God's servant for the punishment of evildoers. Romans 13.
One writer takes this verse straight into today's argument over the death penalty.
God had already spoken long before on this case (Genesis 9); no one has revoked it, and no one can... That ground remains, and so does the guilt on a land that does not avenge such blood. Those who today would abolish the death penalty should weigh it: "no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it."
The same chapter that hands man the sword also shows him drunk. That failure is part of the lesson.
Man fails with government as well as without it — not only the governed, but the governor. Noah — that is, man — proves completely unable to wield the sword in righteousness before God, because whoever governs must first know how to rule himself. But Noah got drunk... Part of God's purpose is to show this, and so to show that the Man of His right hand must come to rule the earth.
- Given — Government starts here, not in Eden. No human court punished Cain, because God had not yet handed man the sword.
- Grounded — The reason is the image of God. Man represents God, so killing a man defaces God's image and denies His right.
- Guarded — The authority is God's, only lent to man. No social contract made it, and no vote can cancel what no man granted.
- Governed — The sword belongs to the magistrate, and it answers murder, not accidental death.
- Given up — The first man trusted with the sword got drunk. Every failed ruler since points to the Man who must come to rule in righteousness.