Genesis 9:5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

◄ Genesis 9:5 ►

Parallel Verses

Cross References

Genesis 42:22
And Reuben answered them, saying, Spoke I not to you, saying, Do not sin against the child; and you would not hear? therefore, behold, also his blood is required.

Exodus 20:13
You shall not kill.

Exodus 21:12
He that smites a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.

Exodus 21:28
If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.

Exodus 21:29
But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it has been testified to his owner, and he has not kept him in, but that he has killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.

Judges 9:56
Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did to his father, in slaying his seventy brothers:

2 Samuel 4:11
How much more, when wicked men have slain a righteous person in his own house on his bed? shall I not therefore now require his blood of your hand, and take you away from the earth?

2 Chronicles 24:22
Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The LORD look on it, and require it.

Psalm 9:12
When he makes inquisition for blood, he remembers them: he forgets not the cry of the humble.

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Commentaries

Matthew Henry's Commentary

9:4-7 The main reason of forbidding the eating of blood, doubtless was because the shedding of blood in sacrifices was to keep the worshippers in mind of the great atonement; yet it seems intended also to check cruelty, lest men, being used to shed and feed upon the blood of animals, should grow unfeeling to them, and be less shocked at the idea of shedding human blood. Man must not take away his own life. Our lives are God's, and we must only give them up when he pleases. If we in any way hasten our own death, we are accountable to God for it. When God requires the life of a man from him that took it away unjustly, the murderer cannot render that, and therefore must render his own instead. One time or other, in this world or in the next, God will discover murders, and punish those murders which are beyond man's power to punish. But there are those who are ministers of God to protect the innocent, by being a terror to evil-doers, and they must not bear the sword in vain, Ro 13:4. Wilful murder ought always to be punished with death. To this law there is a reason added. Such remains of God's image are still upon fallen man, that he who unjustly kills a man, defaces the image of God, and does dishonour to him.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown

5. surely your blood of your lives will I require—The fourth part establishes a new power for protecting life—the institution of the civil magistrate (Ro 13:4), armed with public and official authority to repress the commission of violence and crime. Such a power had not previously existed in patriarchal society.