Genesis 8

8 : 1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that were with him 2 in the ark : and God make a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged ; the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from 3 heaven was restrained ; and the waters returned from off the earth continually : and after 4 the end of an hundred and fifty days the waters decreased. And the ark rested in the 5 seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month : in the tenth month, on the first 6 day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. And it came to pass at the end of 7 forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made : and he sent forth a raven, and it went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. 8 And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of 9 the ground ; but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth : and he put forth his 10 hand, and took her, and brought her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other 11 seven days ; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark ; and the dove came in to him at eventide ; and, lo, in her mouth an olive leaf pluckt off : so Noah knew that the 12 waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days : and sent 13 forth the dove ; and she returned not again unto him any more. And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth : and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, 14 and, behold, the face of the ground was dried. And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dry. 15 And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, 16 and thy sons’ wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee 17 of all flesh, both fowl, and cattle, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth ; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. 18 And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him : every 19 beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, whatsoever moveth upon the earth, after their 20 families, went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD ; and took 21 of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled the sweet savour ; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake, for that the imagination of man’s heart is evil from 22 his youth ; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, 9 : 1 and day and night shall not cease. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto 2 them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air ; with all wherewith the ground teemeth, and all the fishes of the sea, into your hand are they 3 delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you ; as the green herb have I 4 given you all. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

5. And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it; and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

1. The Lord remembered Noah.** He had never been absent from him. Speaking after the manner of men the Lord is said to remember him, whom he had at no time forgotten, when the time had come that he should manifest his knowledge of him, his kindness for him, and his remembrance of him. Kit.

3. Returned continually.** “Going and returning;” such is the expressive idiom of the Hebrew; it is most pictorial language, and denotes a sort of ebbing subsidence having its intervals of standing and sinking until it reaches the lowest and settled state. T. L.—In the sixth month the rain probably ceased altogether. Some time before this, the depressing of the ground had reached its lowest point, and the upheaving had set in. This is the main cause of the reflux of the waters. All this is described, as we perceive, according to appearance. It is probable that the former configuration of the surface was not exactly restored. Hence it is vain to seek for a spot retaining the precise conditions of the primitive Eden. The Euphrates and Tigris may substantially remain, but the Pishon and Gihon may have considerably changed. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the prevalence of the waters begins to turn into a positive retreat. M.

4. The ark rested.** We are told that the ark “rested upon the mountains of Ararat,” meaning the mountains of Armenia, for Ararat in biblical geography (2 K. 19:37; Jer. 51:27) is not the name of a mountain, but of a district—the central region, to which the name of Araratia is assigned by the native geographer Moses of Chorene. But nothing is more natural than that the scene of the event should in due course of time be transferred to the loftiest of the mountains of Armenia, and that the name of Ararat should be specially affixed to that one: accordingly all the associations connected with the ark now centre in the magnificent mountain which the native Armenians name Macis, and the Turks Aghri-Tagh. This is the culminating point of the central range of Armenia, the Abus of the ancients. It rises majestically out of the valley of the Araxes to an elevation of 17,260 feet above the level of the sea, and about 14,350 above the valley, and terminates in a double conical peak, the lower or Lesser Ararat being about 400 feet below the other. The mountain is very steep, as implied in the Turkish name, and the summit is covered with eternal snow. Until recently it was believed to be inaccessible, but the summit was gained by Parrot in 1829, and the ascent has been effected since his time. P. S.

6-13. How can any serious soul fail to be struck with this strange combination of the minutely familiar and the inexpressibly sublime? Nothing in the most modern times, fictitious or real, could surpass it in this air of simple verity. And in reading this whole story, so simply yet so grandly told, we are impressed, as by a real passing scene, with the belief that there actually was such a man as Noah in the early world, a very righteous, honest man, who had on his mind, whether deceived in his idea of inspiration or not, a real conviction that there was coming such a flood of waters over the whole known land, that, under the influence of this belief, he built a vessel, that he took into it his family and the known animals of the surrounding country, that in all this he religiously regarded himself as prompted by a divine power, that the waters did come, that they rose gradually as is so graphically described, that they as gradually abated, that he sent forth the dove, that she returned with an olive leaf in the evening as is so touchingly told, that he “put forth his hand and took her and pulled her in unto him in the ark,” that “he waited other seven days,” and finally came forth from the ark on that very month, and day of the month, of which he had made so careful a register for those who were preserved with him, and for those who should be after him upon the earth. T. L.

9. No rest for the sole of her foot.** Though the heart once gone from God turns continually further away from Him, and moves not toward Him till it be renewed, yet, even in that wandering, it retains that natural relation to God, as its centre, that it hath no true rest elsewhere, nor can by any means find it. It is made for Him, and is therefore still restless till it meet with Him. It is true, the natural man takes much pains to quiet his heart by other things, and digests many vexations with hopes of contentment in the end and accomplishment of some design he hath; but still the heart misgives. Many times he attains not the thing he seeks; but if he do, yet he never attains the satisfaction he seeks and expects in it, but only learns from that to desire something further, and still hunts on after a fancy, drives his own shadow before him, and never overtakes it; and if he did, yet it is but a shadow. And so, in running from God, besides the sad end, he carries an interwoven punishment with his sin, the natural disquiet and vexation of his spirit, fluttering to and fro, and finding no rest for the sole of his foot; the waters of inconstancy and vanity covering the whole face of the earth. Coleridge.

11. In her mouth an olive leaf.

What messenger of returning happiness could be more appropriate than a dove, the lovely type of purity and atonement, through the Spirit of God, offering an olive-leaf, the symbol of the renewed fruitfulness of the earth? Kalisch.—It was a significant and merciful appointment of God’s providence that the dove brought a bough from this useful tree, the oil from the fruit of which is an emblem of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Gerl.—From this event, the olive branch became the symbol of peace, and the dove the emblem of the Comforter, the messenger of peace. After seven other days, the dove being despatched, returns no more. The number seven figures conspicuously in this narrative. Seven days before the showers commence the command to enter the ark is given; and at intervals of seven days the winged messengers are sent out. These intervals point evidently to the period of seven days, determined by the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest. M.

10,12. There is strong probable evidence, from the practice of measuring time by weeks, that the Sabbath was never entirely lost sight of, and that in certain families, at least, it continued to be applied to holy purposes. Not only did the original reason of the Sabbathic appointment remain; it increased with every addition which was made to man’s knowledge of God. The impartation of such knowledge to the young would form part of the appropriate employment of the patriarchal Sabbath, as it did subsequently of the Jewish Sabbath, into which probably it was copied. For the pious among the patriarchs could not fail to perceive that the highest design alike, of the Sabbath and of the family economy, was, “that they should make (such truths) known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children, that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments;” that the knowledge of the laws and purposes of the Divine manifestation might be carried forward from age to age. In other words, the Divine Procedure in the past is never lost to the present or the future. J. H.

14. In the second month, etc., was the earth dried. The following table will exhibit a tolerably correct calendar of the time of the continuance of the flood and of Noah’s abiding in the ark.

600. 2. 17. Noah enters the ark—fountains broken up. " 3. 27. Forty days’ rain elapsed—ark borne up and floating. " 7. 17. One hundred and fifty days (including the 40) elapsed—ark rests. " 10. 1. Mountain-tops become visible. " 11. 11. Raven sent out. " " 18. Dove sent out—returned. " " 25. Dove again sent out—returned. " 12. 2. Dove again sent out—returned not. " " 28. Unaccounted for in the narrative. 601. 1. 1. Waters dried from off the surface—the body of the earth still saturated with moisture. " 2. 27. Ground fully dried; Noah leaves the ark.

The aggregate is one year and ten days. If, however, as Ainsworth supposes, the Jewish year consisted of only 354 days, six of the 12 months having each 30 days, and the remaining six but 29 = 354, then by adding 11 days for the 27th of the second month completed, the amount will be 365 days, or a full solar year. Bush.

16. The garden of Eden probably lay near the eastern foot of Mount Ararat; and now, Noah and his sons went forth from the ark, to repeople the earth, near the very spot where Adam settled when he went out from Eden. This part of Western Asia is thus distinguished pre-eminently as the birthplace of the human family. And it was not with the seeds of physical life only that this region was charged; intellectual life, and still more, spiritual life, had their sources, not in the same spot, but in the same district. A circle, with its centre at Haran, and a radius of 400 miles, will embrace Eden and Ararat; Babylon and Nineveh, the early seats of learning and science; Mesopotamia, where God revealed himself to Abraham; Phœnicia, where commerce and many of the arts of peace arose; Palestine, the birthplace of prophets, apostles, and evangelists innumerable, and the scene of the birth, labors, and death of our blessed Lord; Tarsus, where Paul was born; and part of Asia Minor, where the labors of the apostles were chiefly carried on. W. G. B.

29. Even after the earth was quite dry, Noah awaited the express command of God before leaving the ark. His first act after that was to build “an altar unto Jehovah,” and there to offer “burnt-offerings” of every clean beast, and of every fowl. Nor was it merely in gratitude and homage to God, but also in spiritual worship that he thus commenced his life anew, and consecrated earth unto Jehovah. In bringing an animal sacrifice Noah followed the example of Abel; in calling upon the name of Jehovah he once again and solemnly adopted the profession of the Sethites. But there was this difference between his and any preceding sacrifice, that now for the first time we read of building an altar. A. E.

No sooner is Noah come out of the ark, but he builds an altar: not a house for himself, but an altar to the Lord: our faith will ever teach us to prefer God to ourselves. Delayed thankfulness is not worthy of acceptance. Bp. H. —To look back upon the world, and reflect that in so short a space of time all his contemporaries were blotted from existence, while he and his little household were now the sole survivors of an extinguished race; to see the whole face of creation so entirely changed, and no trace of former scenes remaining; and then to think of what he owed to the preserving goodness of God, that had kept him safe in the midst of such an awful catastrophe;—all this could not but inspire him with overwhelming emotions of thankfulness, which he would naturally express. Bush.

Every fit animal is included in this sacrifice, as it is expressive of thanksgiving for a complete deliverance. We have also here the first mention of the burnt-offering; the whole victim, except the skin, being burned on the altar. M.

21. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour.** This expression is used in condescension to human thought and language; and is intended to signify that God was pleased with the devout service of Noah, sacrificing to him from a pure heart, as men are wont to be pleased with sweet odors. A comparison taken from things human serves in some measure to illustrate things divine: and though it is not exact, yet it helps to convey a more lively and affecting idea of the thing than could be given without it. “A sweet-smelling savor” is Paul’s phrase in the New Testament; where Christ is said to have “given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.” Waterland. —Noah’s sacrifice was greatly accepted and highly accounted of by God. Such is God’s condescending love to believers, that he looks more at their will than at their work; he minds more what they would do than what they do; he always prefers the willing mind before the worthiest work; and where desires and endeavors are sincere, there God judges such to be as good as they desire and endeavor to be. Brooks.

The charming simplicity of man’s intercourse with God in the garden of Eden was here renewed through the second father of the race. Noah’s first thought, on finding himself once more upon the solid ground, was to render to God gratitude and devotion for the preservation of himself and his family. And God, who ever delights in mercy, and welcomes the least sign of love and gratitude in man, accepted this offering as grateful to his own heart, and responded to it by a new covenant to preserve the earth in the orderly succession of its seasons, in the beauty and fruitfulness of its harvests. Observe how closely related are physical blessings to religious faith and obedience. He who loves and serves God receives not only gifts of grace, but the pledge of divine favor in all things; and the very earth in its teeming prosperity is a witness to the loving faithfulness of God to a righteous man. J. P. T.

Noah, Abraham and Isaac built altars wherever they were sojourning and offered bloody sacrifices thereon. We are shut up to this alternative: Either the whole system of altars and bloody sacrifices, as practised by Abel, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, was a thing of no significance, meaning nothing and good for nothing; or, God himself originated the system and enjoined it, and these good men were observing it in obedience to special revelation from God. The first side of this alternative is perfectly precluded by the fact that God approved their sacrifices. God “had respect to the offering of Abel.” He “smelled a sweet savor” in the sacrifices offered by Noah. The other alternative therefore, viz. that bloody sacrifices originated in a direct revelation from God—is the only supposition left us. These sacrifices must have been practically valueless unless their expiatory significance was in some good degree understood. That God ordained them for the sake of their moral value, who can for a moment doubt? The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that God not only enjoined these bloody sacrifices, but gave his people to understand in general their significance to the extent of fulfilling that unconscious prophecy of Abraham (Gen. 22 : 8) : “My son, God will provide for himself a lamb for a burnt-offering.” These views, if just, are of vast historic value as showing how much God taught his people at that earliest day, pertaining to his great thoughts of redemption for a lost race. H. C.

The Bible is the history and development of Christianity, and nothing else. It is “the Gospel according to” Moses and David, Isaiah and Daniel, just as truly as it is the Gospel according to Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. And this is manifest from the unity of idea that underlies all “the divers manners” of the revelation. For of all the books in the world, the Bible is emphatically the “book of one idea.” That idea is the grand enterprise of “the seed of the woman” in conflict with the Serpent and his seed, gathering his elect body, the Bride of the Lamb, out of all the successive ages. It is this Redeemer, Jehovah Jesus, who, assuming transiently the shadowy form of humanity, speaks with Adam and Noah, with Abraham and Jacob, with Moses and Joshua. In these cases, just as truly is it the record of Jesus Christ, as when it is the story of his walking on earth as “the Son of man” or of his communicating his will through the Holy Spirit to his Apostles after his ascension.

Not only is this Great Personage the subject of all the revelation alike, but the fundamental articles of its theology, even to the detailed forms of their expression, are one and the same from first to last. The wrath of God appeased, and sin pardoned by vicarious blood, is the theology of Adam, Abel, and Noah. Vicarious blood shed for sin, is the central thought of the theology of Abraham and Moses, of David and Isaiah, just as truly as in that of Peter and John and Paul, who declare “In him we have redemption through his blood ;” and “His blood cleanseth from all sin.” So the central idea of the worship which embodies this theology in ritual form. In the worship of Abel the sacrificial lamb was the peculiar feature. In the worship of Noah and Abraham, and of Moses four hundred years later, it is still the lamb whose blood is sprinkled, and which figures in the gorgeous ritual of the tabernacle. Seven hundred years later, in the visions of Isaiah it is still the “Lamb led to the slaughter.” Again, seven hundred years, and John the Baptist, pointing to Jesus the antitype of all the preceding types, cries, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,” and, at the close of the revelation, as John the Evangelist is permitted through “the door opened in heaven” to catch a glimpse of the glorious Church of the future, the worship has still the same central attraction—“the Lamb in the midst of the throne ;” around whom are gathered the shouting myriads who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” S. R.

22. The gracious announcement that, while the earth remained, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night were not to cease, implies not only His purpose to spare our earth, but also that man might henceforth reckon upon a regular succession of seasons, and that he was to make this earth for the present his home, to till it, and to possess it. A. E.—It is an exceedingly profound and true thought that the normal succession of days and years, on which depend the existence of the earth and the welfare of man’s life and therefore the regular course of nature, are no fixed course of things, but a voluntary gift of divine grace. The unbroken continuance of creation in beautiful harmony and the unbroken development of the history of humanity are the fruit of divine grace, which will not let God’s glorious plan in reference to creation and humanity be frustrated by man’s sin. And that gracious decree is linked to Noah’s name, and was carried out in the sparing of Noah and in the unchecked growth of his posterity, though that posterity became in great part inwardly estranged from God. Orelli.

God’s covenant of mercy in the unalterable fixtures of the seasons, is full of heavenly lessons in every part. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not cease. Seed-time and harvest are of all the Seasons the deepest, most direct, most profoundly thoughtful and suggestive in their instructions and their warnings. There is solemn meaning and warning in a seed ; though it be out of sight, and dead beneath the ground, it speaketh. And every growth from seeds, the fruits, the trees, the harvests good or bad, all are laden with the lessons of character and consequences. Seed-time and harvest cannot come and go as seasons, and their laws cannot be familiarly known to us from year to year, without impressing on the mind a sense of opportunity and responsibility. The great lesson of a moral probation is borne upon the seasons of the year, is hidden in the very processes of nature, even as the seed itself is deposited in the earth, to germinate and be developed. These are stated ministries, knocking at the door of our hearts ; forms of light and suggestion visiting every man that is born into the world. Cheever.

The course of nature is always changing. As it is with the times, so it is with the events of time, they are subject to vicissitudes, day and night, summer and winter, counterchanged. Yet nature is constant in this inconstancy; these seasons have never ceased, nor shall cease, while the sun continues such a steady measure of time, and the moon such a faithful witness in heaven. This is God’s covenant of the day and of the night, the stability of which is mentioned for the confirming of our faith in the covenant of grace, which is no less inviolable (Jer. 33:20). We see God’s promises to the creatures made good, and thence may infer that his promises to all believers shall be so. H.—This promise has been kept. So long and faithfully kept, that even the unbelieving and infidel world has come to believe it. We look for the seasons in their course and duration as a matter of course. Why do we not believe God’s other promises as readily and firmly? Have we not experience in matters spiritual as well as temporal? Spurgeon.

9:1-7. He repeated to Noah and his sons the blessing pronounced on Adam and Eve, that they should “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth,” and that the inferior creatures should be subject to them. To this He added the use of animals for food. Three new precepts were given to Noah, in addition to the laws of the Sabbath and of marriage, which were revealed to Adam—namely, the abstinence from blood, the prohibition of murder, and the recognition of the civil authority. P. S.

1. “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,” is a command given to those who had seen and experienced the wickedness of the old earth, with as much emphasis, with as large a benediction, as it was given on the day when the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. Maurice.

2. The old world was buried in the flood, that a new order of things might rise from its grave. For, manifestly, after the mixing up of the Sethite with the Cainite race, an entirely new commencement required to be made if the purpose of God in grace was to be carried to its goal. Hence, also, God once more pronounced upon Noah the blessing of fruitfulness which he had spoken to Adam, and gave him dominion over the lower creation. But in this new grant there was this essential difference—that man’s dominion would now be one of force, and not, as formerly, of willing subjection. If God had at the first brought “every beast” and “every fowl” before Adam, as it were to do homage to him, and to receive from him their names, it was now said to Noah and to his descendants, “The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth; into your hand are they delivered.” A. E.

3. Two grants were made: one to Adam, and one to Noah. To Adam it was said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree, bearing seed, to you it shall be for meat. To Noah it is said, Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. God’s original grant of the use of his creatures for food was confined to the vegetable creation; now for the first time the use of animal food is authorized. Magee.

3-6. Here, the blood of even those animals whose flesh might be eaten by man is forbidden for food; because it is life itself, and therefore sacred to the Author of life. And the blood of man must not be shed by man, except where man is made God’s minister of justice, because man is formed in the image of God, and only God has a right to take away, directly or by his minister, the life from one bearing God’s likeness. Trumbull.

4. Flesh with its life, its blood, shall ye not eat. The animal must be slain before any part of it is used for food. One design of this restriction is to prevent the cruelty of mutilating or cooking an animal while yet alive and capable of suffering pain. The draining of the blood from the body is an obvious occasion of death, and therefore the prohibition to eat the flesh with the blood of life is a needful restraint from savage cruelty. M.—Though animal food was granted, yet the blood was most solemnly forbidden, because it was the life of the beast; and this life was to be offered to God as an atonement for sin. Hence the blood was ever held sacred, because it was the grand instrument of expiation; and because it was typical of that blood by which we enter into the holiest. A. C.—This law was prior to that of Moses, but it came from the same legislator. It was given to Noah, and consequently obligatory upon the whole world. Moses, however, insists upon it throughout his law. He positively prohibits it four times in one chapter of Deuteronomy, and thrice in one of the chapters of Leviticus. Bruce.—The reason for the prohibition of blood as food is primarily religious and evangelical and not merely natural. The great fundamental fact of this revelation is redemption by blood from first to last—the substitution of life for the forfeited life of the sinner. This was that which gave its significance to all sacrifice. And therefore while sacrifice of bulls and goats continued it behooved that reverence for the blood and the life which is in the blood should fill the souls of men. Nothing would tend so to degrade the notions of the fundamental idea of their religion as in their daily food to eat that blood which in the sacrifices of their worship represented to them their great reliance for salvation. Hence it was subsequently ordained for the Jews in connection with their ritual of sacrifice. The decision in Acts 29 requiring the Gentiles also to abstain from eating blood was chiefly, no doubt, to protect Jewish converts and prevent a seeming irreverence for the method in which they had been reared, of teaching salvation through “the life that is in the blood.” S. R.

5. At the hand of every beast will I require it.** That is, any beast that kills a man, shall itself be killed : not as if beasts were to blame if they killed a man ; but this was ordained with respect to men, for whose use beasts were created. God hereby instructed them, that murder was a most grievous crime, the punishment of which extended even to beasts. At the hand of every man’s brother. And, therefore, “if at the hand of every beast, much more will I require it at the hand of every man.” whom He calls brother, to show that murder is the more heinous on this account, because we are all brethren. Patrick.—God says in effect—Every human life is of great value ; every man must set great store by his own life ; and every man must consider himself in a high degree responsible for the life of his brother,—“Of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.” J. P.—Every man is his brother’s keeper. Every man is shedding his own blood when he sheds his brother’s blood. The word brother was addressed to a family ; Noah and his sons must have interpreted it by their own experience. But the words “every man’s brother” expanded the principle of the family to a higher power. They declared that the race was a family ; they intimated that society was to be built up on the recognition of an actual relationship among the different members of it. Maurice.

6. He that sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.** Such is the accountability to which God holds man for the blood of his fellow-man. The reason for this requirement is added : For in the image of God made he man. He that violates the sacredness of that image in his fellow-man, shall forfeit it in himself. Unquestionably, God here requires that the murderer shall be punished with death, and holds men guilty who disregard the requirement. If he intended by these words (as they are sometimes evasively interpreted) merely to predict that men would, unauthorized and criminally, put the murderer to death, then they are out of place in the connection with his own requirement in the preceding verse, and he follows them here with a reason for the act (“for in the image of God made he man”) that has no force or pertinence. This was not a requirement of the Jewish law, to be abolished with it. It was made binding on all the races of men, descendants of Noah, and has never been revoked. T. J. C.

The passage should be construed in harmony with the scope of the context. Its close connection with the use of animals for the food of man and with the “requiring” of human blood shed by the violence of beasts compel us to find here precept and not prediction. Still more does the historic place of this precept, standing upon the ruins of the old world and in the presence of the yet unwanted bones of thousands whose wickedness had culminated in such recklessness of human life that “the earth was filled with violence.” It was pertinent to lay a new and more effectual foundation for maintaining the peace of society and the sacredness of human life. The solemn lessons of the past required, not a prediction of retributive vengeance under the social law of self-preservation, but a divine precept demanding it and enforcing it with its logical reason—that “God made man in his own image.” You may take the life of the lower animals for no higher cause than human sustenance—food for man’s wants ;—but let no man put forth his hand against the blood of man, for he bears the very “image of God.” To make this new law the more solemnly impressive, man must himself be the executioner of this divine behest—“By man shall his blood be shed.” Society itself must commit to some of its members this solemn function and they must take the murderer’s life. Nothing less can shield the life of man from bloody violence ; nothing less will duly honor God’s image in man. . . . It was doubtless wise for God to begin as he did with Cain ; but when the race started anew after the flood, the Lord advanced to the true doctrine and enjoined on social man the solemn duty of shielding human life by taking the murderer’s blood. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” This was one step of manifest progress in the revelation of God’s will as to the responsibility and duty of men in their social and governmental relations. It was progress in the origination of society—progress built on the great lessons of human history H. C.

As Luther says, God has here instituted the temporal sword. This law is to be put into execution “by man,” who in God’s room inflicts God’s punishment. Hence the divine right of the magistracy. However much the reason of man may speak and write against the punishment of death, here it stands as a divine enactment, and this is practically enforced through the whole Sacred Scriptures. C. G. B.—By man shall his blood be shed. Chal. “With witnesses by the sentence of the judges shall his blood be shed.” The welfare of society requires that capital punishments should be inflicted, not by the stroke of private revenge, but by the arm of the authorized magistrate, and through the medium of a judicial sentence (Rom. 13:1). Bush.—Against murder the Lord thus provided by an early law, enacted and published before him out of whose loins the whole world after the flood was to be repealed: to show that it was not meant for a national and temporary ordinance, but for an universal and perpetual law. Bp. Sanderson.—For in the image of God made he man. Murder is a great trespass upon God, as it destroys His likeness. And self-murder upon this account is forbidden, as well as the killing of others. Bp. Kidder.—Death is ordered to be punished by death, not because one is equivalent to the other, for that would be expiation and not punishment; nor is death always an equivalent for death. But the reason upon which this sentence is grounded seems to be, that this is the highest penalty that man can inflict, and tends most to the security of mankind by removing one murderer from the earth and setting a dreadful example to deter others; so that even this grand instance proceeds from other principles than those of retaliation. Blackstone.

The passage recounts the renewed covenant of God with spared and restored man—the terms of his new lease of the earth. He was sanctioned in killing and eating every living animal inferior to man—“every creeping thing that liveth.” Here is the fallen creature, liable to passion, and open to temptation, now to be familiarized to the frequent use of the slaughtering knife; and open, at the same time, to the consciousness that a similar act would as easily remove a rival or avenge an injury. The Author of the permission proceeds, therefore, at once, in close association with the permission to slay and eat flesh, to throw the protection of a further law round his frail and mortal creature, man. “And surely the blood of your lives will I require at the hand of all that liveth.” Then the law proceeds, “From the hand of man, from the hand of each his brother, or man his brother, will I require the life of man;” i.e. the Lord has a controversy with every man that takes away the life of his fellow-man, and will follow out that controversy and make inquisition for blood. And then the Lord proceeds to show how he will deal with such men, what his law is in such a case, and what, as the result of that law, he authorizes to be done. “The shedder of the blood of man”—i.e. in the force of the Hebrew idiom, “when a man sheds the blood of man” (and evidently in the same deliberate and intentional way in which he has just been authorized to shed the blood of the beast; for that, and not casualty or mortal accident, is the case in point)—“by man his blood shall be shed.” Fair interpretation can make nothing of this but the authorizing the judicial punishment of death. The Lord knew that he was legislating for a race that would gather into society, that would take cognizance of crime. When he instituted a special society, he so interpreted his own law, and authorized the Israelites to slay the murderer; and universal man, throughout all ages, has so understood it. The only plausible way of escaping from this meaning, is to assume that the sixth verse is not a law, but a prediction; that at a solemn moment, when the communication was most unquestionably institutive and legislative, a sudden change should take place in its grammatical character and mood; and that a prediction should be uttered of what should afterward occur as a matter of casualty. The objection to this is, first, its inconsistency with the tenor of the passage. The words lo tocalu, “thou shalt not eat of it,” in the fourth verse, are, though in the future tense, evidently imperative. Why should we interpret the future tense in the sixth verse as only predictive? If the one is to be read as predictive, then the other should; but it would be a false prediction that men should not eat the flesh with the blood in it; for many do. The consistency, then, of the whole passage requires to translate both these verbs in the same imperative mood and tense. Again, if it is a prediction, it is a false and failing one; and then, upon this very point of our postdiluvian lease stand the terms of a prophecy which God has not fulfilled. It is not true that, in the certain providence of God, every wilful shedder of blood has been brought to a condign and sanguinary death. An.