Why did God mandate capital punishment for murder (Genesis 9:6)?

But if God now first gave every moving thing that lives to be food for man (Gen. 9:3), as freely as green herbage had been originally given to beast and bird and reptile (Gen. 1:30), there was marked restriction put on the blood. Of this man was not to eat (Gen. 9:4). It was the life, and this God reserved for Himself. The liberty for animal food to man's use made the divine claim more conspicuous. Life belonged to God; and woe be to those that despise or defy His rights. It is the condition of a fallen world, and God is a Preserver, or a Saviour, of all men as says the apostle, especially of those that believe. He governs in His providence. It is no longer the dominion given by the Creator. Now He licenses, and He prohibits.

For this reason God stringently guards human life and death. The very governing authority placed in man's hand would soon be misused and perverted by his will without the fear of God; and rivers of blood would flow, not merely through lawless corruption and violence as before the deluge, but by ambitious kings and governors after it. Therefore does God in His prescient wisdom and considerate goodness declare from the starting point of the new tenure, "Surely your blood [that is] of your lives will I require; at every animal's hand will I require it." Specially of course would He require the life of man at man's hand, even at the hand of each man's brother (Gen. 9:5). And this is set on its sacred and sound principle in Gen. 9:6; By man should his blood be shed who shed man's blood; for in God's image did He make man.

The image of God expresses man's place and responsibility of representing God. Man alone has that image generally, Christ of course specially and alone perfectly and pre-eminently. It is not His likeness; for alas! man lost this by sin and begat in his own likeness, however grace might act as it does by faith to God's glory. But His image, even when fallen as here, man retains; and the man who slays another (save by competent authority) is guilty of denying God's right in this respect; which we see here that God asserts with the utmost plainness, precision, and solemnity. The murderer meddles not merely with man and injures him to the last degree, but he also defaces God's image by killing a man, and God sentences him to die. Murder is unwarrantable assumption of what belongs to God. In no other way but by death of the murderer is God's honour vindicated, and God's will maintained. Men may have decreed otherwise; but they that do so are flying in the face of Him from Whom they derive their own title to govern. For here it is laid down before separate nations began, and before His special legislation for Israel where it was guarded with minute care, and not least in the exceptional case of manslaughter. To Noah was said what binds all mankind since the deluge.

The principle, then, of the divine charge to Noah and his sons remains true and obligatory till the day of the Lord. Now what is its chief characteristic? Clearly it is God's committal of the sword, or the power of life and death, into the hands of man. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, BY MAN shall his blood be shed." Such is the true source and basis of civil government. It did not spring from social contract. It did not grow by degrees out of family relationships. It did not originate 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 hear or forbear. If there be any one part of the charge which stands most prominent, it is the responsibility of man to visit capitally him who sheds man's blood. Such is the requirement of God, grounded upon the fact that He made man in His image. But though the reason of the thing might apply from Adam downwards, no such power was delegated till Noah. The notion, therefore, of its being, in any sort or degree, a right inherent in man, is thus cut off. It is a right of God, which He, ever since the flood, has been pleased to entrust to human keeping, which those in authority are bound to enforce in subjection to Him, and for the exercise of which they must by-and-by give account to Himself (Psalm 82).

Noah and his sons were blessed and made specially fruitful, so that mankind should multiply rapidly on the renewed earth, and their dominion over the beasts of the earth was emphasized. Moreover man was now given animal food for his sustenance as well as vegetable. And yet further, in the new regime established the sanctity of human life was clearly stated in connection with a primitive form of government. Murder had filled the earth before the flood, and from the time of Cain any human vengeance had been forbidden. But now God would require the blood of man's life at the hand of the slayer, and He would authorize mankind — Noah in particular, no doubt — to be the executor of His judgment. The penalty of death for murder was thus instituted by God Himself, and that from the very start of the post-diluvian age, and not merely as enacted in the law of Moses centuries later. It is of universal validity. Efforts recently made to overturn the Divine enactment are significant, especially if taken in connection with efforts to overturn other basic enactments as to marriage, parental responsibility, etc. The end of the age is marching upon us. It will arrive not with a flood of waters, but in the revelation of the King of kings and Lord of lords, when "He treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God."

Thus did Jehovah impress on the heedless heart of man, that as human life was forfeited to God through sin, so He forbids the profane levity of turning the blood which is the natural life of earthly creatures into food. So had He enjoined after the deluge when liberty was first given to partake of flesh. The blood was strictly reserved for Himself. Even with natural animals, born to be taken and destroyed, and suitable for food, the claims of God must be maintained. This was long before the law, or even the fathers who had the promises. It was for those rescued from destruction, and standing on what Jehovah saw in the holocaust Noah offered on the altar. But when God thereon blessed Noah and his sons, who began the world that now is, while every moving thing that lived was now given for food as the green herb previously, "flesh with the life (or, blood) ye shall not eat." Man's life has a value attached to it never before declared; and the more because now for the first time it was for government responsible to God to vindicate. "And surely your blood, [the blood] of your lives, will I require." Even if a mere animal with no reasonable soul slew a human creature, this was no reason to pass it by. "At the hand of every animal will I require it; at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man" (Gen. 9:3-6).

After the flood God gave to Noah the law that "whose sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," Gen. 9:6; and to this day in the East it is considered the solemn duty of the relatives of a slain man to see that his blood is avenged. The law made a distinction between murder and man-slaughter: when a person was killed accidentally the man-slayer could run to a City of Refuge (q.v.) and be protected. God has invested man with governmental authority to carry out this universal command, which was given long before the law by Moses, and which has never been repealed or relaxed. In the N.T. the magistrate bears not the sword in vain, for he is the minister of God for the punishment of evil-doers. Rom. 13.

(2) Next we have, and in intimate connection with this, the ordinance of the cities of refuge. Blood was in an especial way — and here is contemplated above all one deed, yet in the future, which was to give the people their "field of blood," through centuries of banishment from the land into which they were now entering, — that which defiled the land before God. The design of the city of refuge was in no wise to turn away judgment from one who was in His sight a "manslayer." (Comp. vv. 16-18.) Where it could be shown that there was intent to slay, the image of God in which He had made man effectually pleaded against pity. God had already long before pronounced in this case (Gen. 9), and there has been, and can be, no revocation of it: "whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man." That ground remains, and the guilt upon the land that does not avenge it here affirmed may well be considered by those who in these days would annul the death-penalty: "the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it."

When God prohibited man from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He had added, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). The giving of life, and the taking of life, was the prerogative of God. Cain must have known this, for after having taken the life of his brother, and being asked by God as to Abel, he said “I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper” (Gen. 4:8-9). Cain had not only acted wickedly towards his brother, he had also challenged God as to His right to take away life. After the flood, God gave man the right to act for Him in taking away a man’s life, but it was not to be at the discretion of man, for His word is, “at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man” (Gen. 9:5-6). God put the sword into the hand of man to execute His judgment.

But wonderful as the power of God in His works may be, and the more as we think truly of all He has made, much the most wonderful is man even now, though fallen; for he is still responsible as the image of God, if not His likeness. And this is why murder can only be wiped out by death; for man has destroyed the image of God in another. Yet there has never been a good man born into this world.

But wonderful as the power of God in His works may be, and the more as we think truly of all He has made, much the most wonderful is man even now, though fallen; for he is still responsible as the image of God, if not His likeness. And this is why murder can only be wiped out by death; for man has destroyed the image of God in another. Yet there has never been a good man born into this world.

123 The natural good of creation in the hands of the first man had not only proved fallible and corruptible, but it had failed, and become corrupted; and destructive judgment had been executed upon it by the hand of God, few, that is eight souls, being spared, together with what was with them in the ark, out of all in whose nostrils was the breath of life. To Noah (as I have before said) the principle of government was communicated, in order to restrain evil in its effects; that violence might no more cover the earth, but that in detailed instances the wrath of God might be vindicated against it - life belonging unto Him. Sin, however, in its principle, still remains at work, exhibiting itself in the failing of Noah the saint, and in the recklessness of the disrespectful father of Canaan.