◄ Genesis 9:6 ►














Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
The New Life Of Man On The Earth
Genesis 9:1-7
R.A. Redford
under a new revelation of the Divine favor. The chief points are -

I. UNLIMITED POSSESSION OF THE EARTH, and use of its inhabitants and products, whether for food or otherwise; thus supplying -

1. The scope of life.

2. The enjoy-meat of life.

3. The development of life.

II. Absolute RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE, and preservation of the gentler feelings (the blood being forbidden as injurious to man in this case), promoting -

1. The supremacy of the higher nature over the lower.

2. The revelation of the ethical law.

3. The preparation of the heart for Divine communications.

III. Man living in BROTHERHOOD,

(1) revealing the image of God,

(2) observing God's law,

(3) rejoicing in his blessing, he shall multiply and fill the earth.

The earth waits for such inhabitants; already by Divine judgments prepared for them. - R.

Biblical Illustrator
Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.
Genesis 9:6
Death for murder a Divine decree
G. Venables, S. C. L.
I. First, I ASSERT THAT THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH FOR MURDER IS A DIVINE DECREE. As some persons are opposed to the execution of any murderer, it is well to examine both the objections they urge and the command by which this law is asserted. Death for murder is recognized from the beginning of the world. It seems to be written on the conscience of man by God that such a doom rightly awaits a murderer. The case of Cain — the strong case of the opposers of death for murder — is, when rightly understood, a strong case against them. Cain declared that the first person that met him would slay him. Who but God had written this in the tables of his heart? who save He could have engraven this on his conscience? It was a recognized principle from the beginning that the murderer should not live. But it is objected, "God interfered and saved his life." Quite true. But then, if God had not interfered, his life would have been justly taken in obedience to the general laws of God implanted in the consciences of all men; and therefore, unless God similarly interferes now by a special and marked revelation, the original rule holds good, and the murderer is put to death. Observe, in order to save Cain, "God set a mark upon" the man. Why? Because without this he was liable to death. The exception in this case clearly proves the rule! Again: you cannot but be struck with the remarkable care which God manifests in His laws to Israel concerning blood. He warns them against suffering their "land to become polluted with blood." The law of inquest is founded upon one part of the Jewish law; and the humane provisions which rendered the owner of any infuriated animal a loser of a vast fine if the animal caused the death of any person not only commends itself for its justice, but again shows the value which is set upon human life. And with a view, I deem, yet further to impress this truth upon mankind, the blood even of the animal, since "it is the life thereof," is distinctly ordered to be in nowise eaten, but to be "poured upon the ground like water." You may say that these were laws to the Jewish nation, and it is true; but I am persuaded that the polity of the Jewish nation is given as a specimen for all nations to follow. It involves a very great principle, namely, the care which is to be taken over life. It is important also on physiological grounds, or rather physiology supports the great wisdom of this command, for it is known that disobedience to it produces pernicious results on the body and the mind of man.

II. And now, secondly, WE HAVE TO INQUIRE INTO THE REASON WHY THIS COMMAND OF DEATH FOR MURDER IS GIVEN. It might suffice indeed for our guidance to know what God had decreed, and in some instances we have His direction given without any reason being added; yet it is not so here. God, in giving this universal law, has added a reason equally universal. Man is to put the murderer to death because in the image of God man was made. I have heard men contend, "Oh! let the murderer live, for life will be more miserable to him than death; and if he is so unfit to live, surely he is unfit to die; why, therefore, put him to death?" There is here a strange fallacy, however; for the argument presumes, in the first place, that the sparing of the man aggravates his woe, while the concluding sentence intimates a desire to prevent this agony. Others, again, contend that the murderer being locked up in perpetual prison, society is as safe as though he were executed. This also may be true as far as the individual felon is concerned, but is incorrect probably so far as the example to others is regarded. But the truth of the matter simply is, you have nothing at all to do with it. God has decreed it, and God has assigned a reason for that decree. It is no question about society, or policy, or necessity at all — it is a matter of revelation. God asserts that man was made by Him in His own glorious image; and "therefore," and without any other reason, you are to execute death upon every murderer. And mark you, God watches to see that this is done.

III. And, in the third place, I must ask you to observe A REMARKABLY IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE WHICH IS INVOLVED IN THE REASON WHICH GOD ASSIGNS TO ORDERING DEATH AS THE PUNISHMENT FOR MURDER. To those who have been accustomed to view this matter as a simple act of the community in defence of social safety, the principle which I am about to allude to cannot, of course, have presented itself; but to the attentive student of the reason appended in the text, it will follow, I think, as a matter of necessity. It is there plainly enough commanded that death shall by man be inflicted upon the murderer, because man was made in the image of God; so that death is thus inflicted because that which was made in the likeness of God had been destroyed. Now, you need not be reminded that the great destroyer of man as the image and glory of God is sin. I will not detain you on a subject which you all agree upon. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." What then follows? Sin must be destroyed. It is the thing which brought destruction upon man; it is the defiler of that which was the temple of the Holy Ghost; it is the murderer of man, both body and soul. How shall it be destroyed? By one man it entered: can it be by one Man punished and removed? God Himself has, in the text, announced a principle on earth to man. This principle on earth is only a material image of that which is true in the spiritual kingdom. How shall it be made manifest? Behold, then, slowly toiling up the ascent to Golgotha, One whom the Eternal has singled out as "the Man that was His Fellow," and who Himself had said, "Lo, I come." The sin which ruined us all and secured our destruction is there borne by Him. "God made Him," though sinless, "to be sin for us"; and when at that hour "it pleased the Father to bruise Him, to put Him to grief," and to "lay on Him the iniquities of us all" — when thus bearing that on Him in our stead, which would murder us, He suffered the penalty, and was "cursed" as He "hung upon the tree." He was at once thus suffering that we might have the means of escape, and was as a personal Being, on whom all sin was placed in its highest and most spiritual meaning, undergoing the penalty of that law which enacts, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man." All nature, every physical law, and every revealed law of God on earth, is but a material image of the spiritual; "as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." The heavenly laws are presented to us in our earthly state in an earthly form, and are images to us of the spiritual truths which we shall recognize in our heavenly condition. Sin destroyed the image and glory of God in man. Christ undertook to restore all, and in doing so must bear sin away. It is man's destroyer. Christ takes it; and with it His blood was shed.

(G. Venables, S. C. L.)

Capital punishment
G. Calthrop, M. A.
"Whoso sheddeth blood, by man shall his blood be shed." "A prediction," say some, "not a command." Nay, we reply, not so; for what says God in the preceding verse? "Your blood of your lives will I require." Yes; and so sacred is human life, that even the unreasoning beast who kills a man is to be put to death, and no use made of his carcass. "At the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man." It is, then, a distinct command.

I. Now notice THE GROUND UPON WHICH THE COMMAND IS BASED; and notice also, in passing, how completely applicable it is to present as well as former times.

1. In the first place, murder is a sin against human brotherhood. God made men members of one family, and this particular offence strikes at the very root of the tie which binds us together. "At the hand of every man's brother" — he is brother to the man he has slain — "will I require the life of man."

2. God made man in His own image; and though man has fallen, he still retains something of the heavenly resemblance. Murder, in its essence, if you trace it far enough, is not merely an injury inflicted on our fellow — not merely an act by which pain and deprivation are caused to the individual, and loss to society. It is all this, of course; but it is also more than this — it is a striking at God in the person of him who was made in the image of God. Now it is obvious that these two reasons assigned for the treatment of the murderer are of universal and permanent application. Men are brethren now, men are made in the image of God now; and therefore our conclusion is that this commandment given to Noah in the days when God was making a covenant with the whole human race, centred and represented in those eight persons, stands unrepealed on the statute book of heaven, and will stand there so long as there are men to be murdered, and other men who for gain or lust or hatred or malice are willing to murder them.

II. IT IS IDLE TO OBJECT, as some do, that Christianity forbids revenge. It is worse than idle — it is a blundering confusion of thought. Revenge is the gratification of personal feeling, a desire to inflict upon another the suffering which he has inflicted on you; whilst the act which God here commands is the carrying out of a solemn, judicial sentence, the assertion of Divine justice, the practical announcement of God's eternal wrath against unrighteousness. More idle still is it to say, as some do, that the murderer too is made in the image of God, and is therefore to be spared. Accept this view, and the Divine command before us becomes a nullity. God says expressly that he is not to be spared; God demands his life in return for the life he has taken; God affirms that the offence committed will not be expiated except by the murderer's death, that the land in which such a thing is done will remain under the curse of pollution, and that "it cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it." Now, if the view thus placed before you be really correct, it follows that there is no room really left for much of the discussion upon the subject of capital punishment which occasionally goes on about us. Let me say that we speak only of the crime of murder. We see no warrant in the Word of God for taking human life for any other offence. But if the view be right, a people, a nation, professing to serve and obey the God revealed to us in the Scripture, has really no option in the matter. It is useless to heap up statistics, to accumulate precedents, to construct elaborate arguments, to make tender and touching appeals — God has spoken, not to Noah only, but to the whole human race; not to one generation only, but to the whole of the successive ages of mankind; and from His authoritative decision there is, and there can be, no possible appeal. And let me say, in conclusion, that I dread these humanitarian views, for this reason, among others — because they seem to shift the basis on which human society rests, and on which alone it can permanently stand. They go upon the assumption that what men decide shall be right, thus ignoring God's eternal laws of right and wrong. But you must go up to God ultimately for the decision of such a question as this.

(G. Calthrop, M. A.)

Our relationships
R. Thomas.
The terms of the passage are too general to make any narrowing of them down within family limits legitimate. They contain the very advanced truth that every man belongs to every other man; that there is but one great human family; and that our action is not according to the will of God when it is conducted on lines of exclusion. Whether we see it or not, the fact is everywhere assumed in Scripture that that which is good for the whole humanity is good for each member of it. Our policy is to be broadly sympathetic. In Church, in State, religiously, politically, everywhere. The charge is put upon us to preserve human life, not simply our own individual life, but to do all we can to preserve human life everywhere. And this is every man's duty. "The life of man," what is it? The true human life, what is it? That which is fitting and proper to you and me and all men, what is it? Because that is the life we have to preserve. We are not allowed to live in the front of great human problems we never so much as touch with the tip of our finger. Almighty God will not have that. It is contrary to His idea of man and his responsibility. But how many, how very many, even now, in these Christian times, live on a very much lower plane than that! How often do we find ourselves saying, "It's no concern of mine whether people are this, that, and the other; if only I can be let alone to do my own business and enjoy my own life, that is all I ask." But that is not all that God asks; it is not all of which our nature is capable; and every man is accountable to God for the capability within him. We live in a world indefinitely improvable. In a right condition of society we live in a world capable of supporting an almost countless population. Now, in this movement the Christian Church has a very important place to fill, and for this simple reason, that it is the trustee of the truth which is to leaven the mass of human opinion and feeling. No life ever yields comfort to its possessor until it is conformed to the idea which He had for it who originally gave it. Everything has its state of fixity, and there is no content and no satisfaction until that state is reached. This is specially and emphatically true of the life of man. We are members of a great human race, in every one of whom there is the feeling of something attainable which has not yet been attained. As to what the something is there is endless diversity of opinion. Now, the Church has something more to do than to take care of itself. Very little good can it do on the principle of simply caring for itself. It has to sound in the ear of humanity, of men everywhere, the truth that is in these words, "At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man." It has to illustrate by its spirit and temper and by its deeds this fact, that all men belong to all other men. Missionary it must be or die. It has to declare God's ideas, God's favour, God's will to the world, as these have come to us in Jesus. It has to live those ideas before the world, and thus gradually but surely renew the world. It has to be the leaven in the meal. It must be that every man is accountable for the right use of the noblest ideas which ever come into his soul. Quench them he must not. Stifle them he must not. He must nourish them into growth, or his soul will be a graveyard in which are buried the murdered innocents which would have grown into manhood but for the strangling hand of his scepticism. And so, while I speak of the Church as the collective of all God-inspired souls, I beseech you to note that in our text there is no absorption of the individual into the mass. "At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man." The whole life of man concerns each of us — all of us. That is the truth at the base of universal suffrage. We are responsible for the high or low tone of the life of man in the community in which we live, in the town, in the city, in the state, in the nation. "At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man." Why, says one, should I be punished for what another man does? Because we are all partakers of one life, and are related, and are a family, and the law is that if one member suffer, all the members shall suffer with it. And so, if there be small-pox in the poor streets, you who live in the better streets begin to be concerned. You don't ask, What have I to do with that man's small-pox? You say to the authorities, "Get the man off to the hospital; disinfect his house. Go in and do it." But what right have you to enter that man's house and haul him away to the hospital? What right have you to send the health officer with his disinfectant? You see, your doctrine of individualism breaks down in presence of a contagious and desolating disease, and very properly so. But is it not a miserable confession to make, that we have to learn the doctrine of our relationship to others on the lowest side of it, because we will not recognize it on its highest side? Soul and body are so closely married in this life that no one can divorce them. They act and react on each other. Organization does not produce life; life produces organization. We cannot separate the material and the spiritual. The life of a man is too much of a unit to allow us to do that. And, says the Almighty One, "At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man." We are part of a nation's life. All its questions are our questions; all its struggles are our struggles; all its failures are our failures; all its triumphs are our triumphs. Not till the regenerated brotherhood of the Church rises above its sectisms and boldly puts itself in the fore-front of the nation's life as the truth teller, the evangelizer, claiming the life of man for Christ, and testing everything by the principles of life He has given us, does it do its duty or fulfil its mission.

(R. Thomas.)

People
Ham, Japheth, Noah, Shem
Places
Tigris-Euphrates Region
Topics
Blood, Image, Man's, Shed, Sheddeth, Sheds, Takes
Outline
1. God blesses Noah and his sons, and grants them flesh for food.
4. Blood and murder are forbidden.
8. God's covenant, of which the rainbow was constituted a pledge.
18. Noah's family replenishes the world.
20. Noah plants a vineyard,
21. Is drunken, and mocked by his son;
25. Curses Canaan;
26. Blesses Shem;
27. Prays for Japheth, and dies.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Genesis 9:6

     1194   glory, divine and human
     1325   God, the Creator
     1347   covenant, with Noah
     4060   nature
     5002   human race, and creation
     5003   human race, and God
     5020   human nature
     5023   image of God
     5034   likeness
     5040   murder
     5061   sanctity of life
     5257   civil authorities
     5483   punishment
     5493   retribution
     7346   death penalty

Genesis 9:1-17

     7203   ark, Noah's

Genesis 9:4-6

     7315   blood, basis of life

Genesis 9:5-6

     4016   life, human
     7318   blood, symbol of guilt

Library
Capital Punishment
Eversley. Quinquagesima Sunday, 1872. Genesis ix. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6. "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. . . . Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you . . . But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require: at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require …
Charles Kingsley—All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

Noah's Flood
(Quinquagesima Sunday.) GENESIS ix. 13. I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. We all know the history of Noah's flood. What have we learnt from that history? What were we intended to learn from it? What thoughts should we have about it? There are many thoughts which we may have. We may think how the flood came to pass; what means God used to make it rain forty days; what is meant by breaking up the fountains of the great deep. We may …
Charles Kingsley—The Gospel of the Pentateuch

Death.
PSALM CIV. 20, 21. Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. Let me say a few words on this text. It is one which has been a comfort to me again and again. It is one which, if rightly understood, ought to give comfort to pitiful and tender-hearted persons. Have you never been touched by, never been even shocked by, the mystery of pain and death? I do not speak now of pain and death …
Charles Kingsley—Westminster Sermons

Covenanting Enforced by the Grant of Covenant Signs and Seals.
To declare emphatically that the people of God are a covenant people, various signs were in sovereignty vouchsafed. The lights in the firmament of heaven were appointed to be for signs, affording direction to the mariner, the husbandman, and others. Miracles wrought on memorable occasions, were constituted signs or tokens of God's universal government. The gracious grant of covenant signs was made in order to proclaim the truth of the existence of God's covenant with his people, to urge the performance …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

That the Ruler Should Be, through Humility, a Companion of Good Livers, But, through the Zeal of Righteousness, Rigid against the vices of Evildoers.
The ruler should be, through humility, a companion of good livers, and, through the zeal of righteousness, rigid against the vices of evil-doers; so that in nothing he prefer himself to the good, and yet, when the fault of the bad requires it, he be at once conscious of the power of his priority; to the end that, while among his subordinates who live well he waives his rank and accounts them as his equals, he may not fear to execute the laws of rectitude towards the perverse. For, as I remember to …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

The Doctrine of Non-Resistance to Evil by Force Has Been Professed by a Minority of Men from the Very Foundation of Christianity. Of the Book "What
CHAPTER I. THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE HAS BEEN PROFESSED BY A MINORITY OF MEN FROM THE VERY FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY. Of the Book "What I Believe"--The Correspondence Evoked by it-- Letters from Quakers--Garrison's Declaration--Adin Ballou, his Works, his Catechism--Helchitsky's "Net of Faith"--The Attitude of the World to Works Elucidating Christ's Teaching--Dymond's Book "On War"--Musser's "Non-resistance Asserted"--Attitude of the Government in 1818 to Men who Refused to …
Leo Tolstoy—The Kingdom of God is within you

Original Righteousness.
"For in Him we live and move, and have our being: as certain also of your own poets have said. For we are also His offspring." --Acts xvii. 28. It is the peculiar characteristic of the Reformed Confession that more than any other it humbles the sinner and exalts the sinless man. To disparage man is unscriptural. Being a sinner, fallen and no longer a real man, he must be humbled, rebuked, and inwardly broken. But the divinely created man, realizing the divine purpose or restored by omnipotent grace …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

The Sixth Commandment
Thou shalt not kill.' Exod 20: 13. In this commandment is a sin forbidden, which is murder, Thou shalt not kill,' and a duty implied, which is, to preserve our own life, and the life of others. The sin forbidden is murder: Thou shalt not kill.' Here two things are to be understood, the not injuring another, nor ourselves. I. The not injuring another. [1] We must not injure another in his name. A good name is a precious balsam.' It is a great cruelty to murder a man in his name. We injure others in …
Thomas Watson—The Ten Commandments

Being Made Archbishop of Armagh, He Suffers Many Troubles. Peace Being Made, from Being Archbishop of Armagh He Becomes Bishop of Down.
[Sidenote: 1129] 19. (12). Meanwhile[365] it happened that Archbishop Cellach[366] fell sick: he it was who ordained Malachy deacon, presbyter and bishop: and knowing that he was dying he made a sort of testament[367] to the effect that Malachy ought to succeed him,[368] because none seemed worthier to be bishop of the first see. This he gave in charge to those who were present, this he commanded to the absent, this to the two kings of Munster[369] and to the magnates of the land he specially enjoined …
H. J. Lawlor—St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh

Mosaic Cosmogony.
ON the revival of science in the 16th century, some of the earliest conclusions at which philosophers arrived were found to be at variance with popular and long-established belief. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy, which had then full possession of the minds of men, contemplated the whole visible universe from the earth as the immovable centre of things. Copernicus changed the point of view, and placing the beholder in the sun, at once reduced the earth to an inconspicuous globule, a merely subordinate …
Frederick Temple—Essays and Reviews: The Education of the World

Mount Zion.
"For ye are not come unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that no word more should be spoken unto them: for they could not endure that which was enjoined, If even a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned; and so fearful was the appearance, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake: but ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto …
Thomas Charles Edwards—The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews

Covenanting According to the Purposes of God.
Since every revealed purpose of God, implying that obedience to his law will be given, is a demand of that obedience, the announcement of his Covenant, as in his sovereignty decreed, claims, not less effectively than an explicit law, the fulfilment of its duties. A representation of a system of things pre-determined in order that the obligations of the Covenant might be discharged; various exhibitions of the Covenant as ordained; and a description of the children of the Covenant as predestinated …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

Covenanting Predicted in Prophecy.
The fact of Covenanting, under the Old Testament dispensations, being approved of God, gives a proof that it was proper then, which is accompanied by the voice of prophecy, affording evidence that even in periods then future it should no less be proper. The argument for the service that is afforded by prophecy is peculiar, and, though corresponding with evidence from other sources, is independent. Because that God willed to make known truth through his servants the prophets, we should receive it …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

The Promise to the Patriarchs.
A great epoch is, in Genesis, ushered in with the history of the time of the Patriarchs. Luther says: "This is the third period in which Holy Scripture begins the history of the Church with a new family." In a befitting manner, the representation is opened in Gen. xii. 1-3 by an account of the first revelation of God, given to Abraham at Haran, in which the way is opened up for all that follows, and in which the dispensations of God are brought before us in a rapid survey. Abraham is to forsake …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Discourse on Spiritual Food and True Discipleship. Peter's Confession.
(at the Synagogue in Capernaum.) ^D John VI. 22-71. ^d 22 On the morrow [the morrow after Jesus fed the five thousand] the multitude that stood on the other side of the sea [on the east side, opposite Capernaum] saw that there was no other boat there, save one, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples went away alone 23 (howbeit there came boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they ate the bread after that the Lord had given thanks): 24 when the multitude …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Genesis
The Old Testament opens very impressively. In measured and dignified language it introduces the story of Israel's origin and settlement upon the land of Canaan (Gen.--Josh.) by the story of creation, i.-ii. 4a, and thus suggests, at the very beginning, the far-reaching purpose and the world-wide significance of the people and religion of Israel. The narrative has not travelled far till it becomes apparent that its dominant interests are to be religious and moral; for, after a pictorial sketch of …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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