Genesis 9:4-7 - Loss of life, or loss of righteousness?
 4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
 6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
      by man shall his blood be shed;
      for in the image of God
      has God made man. 7 As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”
What a curious passage. Not because it’s inconsistent with Christianity or Judaism or something I already believe however. It is curious because of the context. Somehow, in the context of a flood that killed all of Adam’s descendants except Noah and his family, it was logical for God to say that a person’s life is worth something to God. It is worth enough in fact that your own is forfeit for taking another’s. Like I said, curious. People certainly don’t think this way, at least not today. People these days are increasingly likely to say that because all lives are equally precious, it is wrong to take one person’s life, even though he took another’s. Let us analyze these two philosophies for a moment.
Both modern man and God are trying to say that life is precious. But only one of them can be right on what that should mean. When a child breaks his brother’s toy, he must replace that toy. When a banker is negligent with another person’s money, he is responsible to replace that money. It is an easy concept to grasp, because value can be replaced by value. But taking even a murderer’s life in return for those he killed does not bring back the dead. It is different than a monetary or material debt, which can in fact be measured and paid back. A life can be paid with a life, but that original life is still gone.
It would like saying that replacing the toy brings back the original toy, or that replacing someone’s money brings back the original money. It does not. However, the purpose of compensation is not to bring back what was lost, but to hold the wrong-doer accountable for his actions, and to hopefully compensate the victim for what they have endured. But if this parallel is to hold, where the toy is not the victim, or the money is not the victim, then the person who is killed is not the victim… whoever lost that person is the victim.
In our modern way of thinking, to say that a murdered person is not a victim sounds ridiculous. However, can a dead man be repaid? Can a dead man be compensated for his loss? Not at all. It is through this insight that modern man can take a position against capital punishment, pointing out that the murdered cannot be paid back, and that killing the murderer merely robs one more person of life just as absolutely as the one originally murdered. It would seem then that either God is illogical, religious people are illogical, or modern people are missing God’s point.
Notice above in Genesis 9:5, who is demanding the accounting. It is God. God created us. For our parallel to work, we need to find someone other than the murdered person to compensate. We need to find someone who has suffered loss. What we need to find in our assessment of justice is God.
Every person was given life by God, and not just life, but spiritual insight, a unique awareness of good and evil, and the existence of that which is outside physical experience. Beyond even that is the awareness of God Himself, whom we knowingly betray in our sins. That last insight is what God gave uniquely to Adam, and had passed on throughout the generations of Adam’s descendants. It is in fact God’s basis in verse 6 above for the value He places on our lives. It is the value He freely lends, and the value that must be repaid by one who would take it.
Lends? Yes, absolutely. The action God took that pushed Adam from the point of being mere man to being man in God’s image is the knowledge of God Himself. It was something to believe, followed by something to obey. It is the Biblical definition of righteousness to believe God and obey Him. Just God accounted righteousness to Abraham for believing God, so he accounts it to us. It is our capacity and opportunity for righteousness that is our value to God, but its value is only accounted to us. Our value, funny enough is not inherent. Only God’s value is inherent. It is why we can live in God’s image, yet are not God’s image per se. He credits us for belief; it is the value He gives away, and the value He loses when one of us is killed.
So now we see that the parallel above was on the money, and that even modern man’s insight is correct insofar as it goes. The person killed cannot be paid back. However, this insight should have led us then to ask God who then must be compensated? What was the loss incurred? The loss is in the currency of righteousness, with which God deals with us. It is not the loss of good deeds, or the loss of potential. It is the loss of righteousness, a tip against the balance of justice, that must be repaid, and it can only be repaid to God.
It would not be lost on God that a murderer is far less likely to have any righteousness credited to him. However, righteousness only makes sense in the context of our earthly life. It can only be dealt in life. It is not something that be paid back without the paying of life for life, for you cannot take away a man’s belief and you cannot undo his obedience. However, you can remove the opportunity. Whatever chance the person had for righteousness in the future is what gets forfeited to God. As murder is a physical act, lifeblood contains the physical potential for righteous, and so lifeblood becomes the physical accounting that God puts upon us all for what we do. It is symbolic in a spiritual way, as much as it is real to us physically. It is why God even demands the lifeblood of an animal who takes the life of a person.
While an animal has no potential for believing God, and so no real potential for righteousness, the sacrificial animal has great symbolic importance for the sacrifice that Christ would give on the Cross. The Jewish people obediently gave sacrifices to God for many hundreds of years, as payment to cover their sin. The lifeblood of the animal has been historical currency for human righteousness, all the way until Jesus washed away what animal sacrifices can only cover. It is therefore unsurprising that God would take even the life an animal as currency for the lost righteousness that animal wiped out upon the death of a precious person.
This explains as well why God can demand payment the lives taken by others, but can take lives of those He chooses. He gave them life. He credited them with righteousness. If killing someone is like robbing in the currency of righteousness, is it then truly robbery if the owner is who takes it back? Our righteousness is God’s. Therefore, our lifeblood is God’s. We live here with it as long as God allows, and He takes it at His will. It’s His to take… and therefore His to account for. And we are respect it.
To lead us toward the respect of God, and the righteousness He credits us with, He has us respect the lives around us, even the animal lives we encounter. While there is no robbery of righteousness when killing an animal, they are as much God’s creation as we are. Disrespect the life an animal, and we disrespect ourselves, and by extension, God. It is why God gave us the animals to eat in Genesis 9:1-3, but told us to do it respectfully. It is why we drain their blood before we eat them. It is why we kill them humanely.
 4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
 6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
      by man shall his blood be shed;
      for in the image of God
      has God made man.
But then notice the end of God’s pronouncement. Not only are we respect life, and potential for righteousness in God’s image, we are to nurture it.
 7 As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”
Before the flood, Abel showed respect for life. Eventually, nobody alive did. They ate for enjoyment, and that was it. It meant they killed for the enjoyment of eating. Perhaps they ate more than the fat, which lends meat its flavor, but perhaps the ate the blood as well, which in fact is quite flavorful I hear by itself. No respect for life. No respect for righteousness.
The robbing of life is the robbing of righteousness, credited by God. It would seem that God had credited nobody with righteousness in that generation before the flood except for Noah. Though God grieved over the loss of those godless people whome He loved, when measured in righteousness, there was no net loss at all. It explains our strange perception of coldness, yet emotion, when looking at what God did. Indeed God’s ways are higher than ours. When we seem to disagree with Him, when we think we have discovered higher ways than God’s, it is our ignorance at work lying to us, not our cunning or intelligence. In our mere humanity, those insights into a new smaller truth seem to blind us to the larger truth. It is why we can look upon God’s loving justice, and to us it just seems cold. However, if we could in fact understand everything, we would see that it is not that God is cold, but that people are generally lukewarm.