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?
A new thing after the flood
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.
The value of a human life
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 reason given: God's image
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."
Where authority comes from
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.
Murder, not every killing
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 ruler who could not rule himself
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.
Summary
- 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.