Scripture Daily

Context No. 1243 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 9:1-7: in context

1God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. 2The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the sky. Everything that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea, are delivered into your hand. 3Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As I gave you the green herb, I have given everything to you. 4But flesh with its life, that is, its blood, you shall not eat. 5I will surely require accounting for your life’s blood. At the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, I will require the life of man. 6Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image. 7Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly on the earth, and multiply in it.”

After the flood, God blesses Noah and his sons and renews the mandate to be fruitful and fill the earth. He gives them the animals for food, with one restriction about the blood. And then a solemn word about human life: I will require a reckoning for the lifeblood of every human; whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall his blood be shed. And the reason given is weighty: for God made man in his own image.

The heart of this passage is the reason attached to the prohibition of murder: because God made man in his own image. The seriousness of taking a human life is grounded not in social utility or sentiment but in a fact about every person, that they bear the image of God. To murder a human being is to attack the image of the Creator stamped on that person; it is, in a sense, an assault on God himself. This is one of the foundations of the whole biblical view of human dignity: every person, without exception, carries the image of God, and that is what makes human life sacred in a way nothing else in creation is. It is worth letting that reshape how we regard people. The image of God is not confined to the impressive, the useful, the people we like; it is on every human being, the unborn and the aged, the enemy and the stranger, the criminal and the saint. And it is the reason human life may not be treated casually. The passage grounds the sanctity of life not in what a person can do or contribute, but in what they are, an image-bearer of God. To take that seriously is to see every person as marked with the image of the God who made them.

Do I regard every human life as sacred because each person bears the image of God, or do I quietly value people by their usefulness or my liking, forgetting the image stamped on every one?

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