Genesis 9:6

Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed,.... That is, he that is guilty of wilful murder shall surely be put to death by the order of the civil magistrate; so the Targum of

Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood. The Hebrew verb denotes not to commit homicide, but to kill from premeditation or malice (cf.

Whoso sheddeth man’ s blood, wilfully and unwarrantably. For there is a double exception to this law: 1. Of casual murder, expressed . 2. Of death inflicted by the hand of the magistrate for crimes deserving it, mentioned in the following words, and elsewhere. By man, i.e. by the hand of man, namely, the magistrate, ; who is hereby empowered and required, upon pain of my highest displeasure, to inflict this punishment. See . Or, for that man, i.e. for that man’ s sake, whose blood he hath shed, which cries for vengeance. In the image of God made he man; so that murder is not only an offence against man, but also an injury to God, and a contempt of that image of God which all men are obliged to reverence and maintain, and especially magistrates, who being my vicegerents and servants, are therefore under a particular obligation to punish those who deface and destroy it.

Genesis 9:6 Whoso sheddeth man’ s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. Ver. 6. Whoso sheddeth man’ s blood.] Some are of the opinion, that before the flood, the punishment of murder and other capital crimes, was only excommunication and exclusion from the Church and their father’ s family. And that now first, God made murder to be a matter of death. The firstborn had power, at first, over their own families, to bless, curse, cast out, disinherit, yea, and punish with death, even in case of adultery, as some will have it thus among the people of God. But what a madness was that in the Egyptians to make no conscience of murder, that they might enjoy their lust! And what a blindness to make less account of murder than adultery!. I have seen, saith the Preacher in his Travels, the king of Persia many times to alight from his horse, only to do justice to a poor body. He punishs theft and manslaughter so severely, that in an age a man shall not hear either of the one, or of the other. A severity fit for France; where within ten years, six thousand gentlemen have been slain, saith he, as it appears by the king’ s pardons. Godw. Heb. Antiq. The Preacher’ s Travels, by Jo. Cartwright. Les Ombres des Defunets Seiurs de Villemor et de Fontaines, p. 46.

(6) By man . . . —This penalty of life for life is not to be left to natural law, but man himself, in such a manner and under such safeguards as the civil law in each country shall order, is to execute the Divine command. And thus protected from violence, both of man and beast, and with all such terrible crimes for bidden as had polluted Adam’s beginning, Noah in peace and security is to commence afresh man’s great work upon earth.

Verse 6. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood] Hence it appears that whoever kills a man, unless unwittingly, as the Scripture expresses it, shall forfeit his own life. A man is accused of the crime of murder; of this crime he is guilty or he is not: if he be guilty of murder he should die; if not, let him be punished according to the demerit of his crime; but for no offence but murder should he lose his life. Taking away the life of another is the highest offence that can be committed against the individual, and against society; and the highest punishment that a man can suffer for such a crime is the loss of his own life. As punishment should be ever proportioned to crimes, so the highest punishment due to the highest crime should not be inflicted for a minor offence. The law of God and the eternal dictates of reason say, that if a man kill another, the loss of his own life is at once the highest penalty he can pay, and an equivalent for his offence as far as civil society is concerned. If the death of the murderer be the highest penalty he can pay for the murder he has committed, then the infliction of this punishment for any minor offence is injustice and cruelty; and serves only to confound the claims of justice, the different degrees of moral turpitude and vice, and to render the profligate desperate: hence the adage so frequent among almost every order of delinquents, "It is as good to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb;" which at once marks their desperation, and the injustice of those penal laws which inflict the highest punishment for almost every species of crime. When shall a wise and judicious legislature see the absurdity and injustice of inflicting the punishment of death for stealing a sheep or a horse, forging a twenty shillings' note, and MURDERING A MAN; when the latter, in its moral turpitude and ruinous consequences, infinitely exceeds the others? * (* On this head the doctor's pious wish has been realized since this paragraph was written - PUBLISHERS)

6. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, &c.] In the first clause of this verse the principle is laid down, that murder is to be punished with death. Blood for blood and life for life is to be the penalty (cf. Genesis 9:5). The sanctity of human life is thus protected by Divine sanction. The custom of blood-revenge (cf. Genesis 4:10-15), which has entered so largely into the social conditions of Semitic life, whether civilized or barbarous, is here stated in its simplest terms. The murderer’s life is “required.” The sentence reads like a line of poetry, Shτphκk dγm hβ-βdβm Bβ-βdβm dβmτ yis-shβphκk. LXX seems to have misread bβ-βdβm (= “by man”), rendering ἀντὶτοῦαἵματοςαὐτοῦ = “for his blood” (? b’ dβmτ): while in the Latin it is omitted altogether. for in the image of God, &c.] This clause contains the foundation-principle for the tremendous sentence just promulgated. Man is different from the animals. God made him expressly “in His own image” (see note on Genesis 1:27). Violence done to human personality constitutes an outrage against the Divine. Man is to discern in his neighbour “the image of God,” and to honour it as the symbol of Divine origin and human brotherhood. As that “image” is not physical (for God is spirit), nor moral (for man is sinful), it must denote man’s higher nature, expressed by his self-consciousness, freedom of will, reason, affection, &c. The prohibitions of blood eating and of murder form two of the so-called “commandments of Noah” which were held by the Rabbis of the Jewish synagogue to have been Divinely imposed upon mankind before the days of Abraham; and were, therefore, in theory required from Gentiles living among the Israelites and from Gentiles who attached themselves to the Jewish community. The “commandments of Noah” are seven—the prohibitions of (1) disobedience, (2) idolatry, (3) blasphemy, (4) adultery, (5) theft, (6) murder, and (7) the eating of blood.

6. Whoso sheddeth — The command is here repeated and enforced more explicitly.