Saints Peter And Paul Sermons

Blood (Heb. dām). The essential fluid of human, animal, and even plant life (cf. Gen. 49:11–12; Deut. 32:14). In addition to its literal meaning, blood can be interpreted figuratively as the equivalent of life itself. Thus, the “voice” of Abel’s shed blood cries from the ground for vengeance (Gen. 4:10). At Gen. 9:4–6 Noah is forbidden to eat flesh with “its life, that is, its blood,” either of animals or of human beings. The prohibition against eating animal flesh from which the blood had not been drained may have been to oppose a cruel, barbaric custom of eating live animals or those whose blood was still warm. Perhaps it implies the future importance of blood for sacrificial purposes. Human bloodshed was forbidden because human beings are created in the image of God (v. 6). When God demanded a reckoning for the blood of a human being, he took human life into his protection and established an intimate connection between blood and life. In this way God hoped to arrest the prevalence of murder spawned when