Noah leaves the ark and immediately builds an altar and offers a sacrifice that is pleasing to the Lord. However, there is no sacrifice that can reinstate mankind into a state of innocence or peace with God. The sacrifice is pleasing and the result is God’s promise that he will no longer curse the ground because of man but the cat is out of the bag and the horse is out of the barn so to speak. There is no retooling the heart of man and God recognizes the permanent inclination of every heart is evil from childhood. There will be no new creation. At least not for now. The best we can hope for is regulating our evil inclinations. No one will be inclined toward good. This does not change the fact that we are created in the image of God but it does mean that our hearts, our basic desires, our ambitions are all inclined toward those things that damage and even deny the image of God. Forever after, mankind desires to shape the world into his own image and man becomes the measure of all things. There are times when people attempt to live up to standards set by admirable examples and then there are times when they follow the measure of a different kind of example and degrade themselves.

There is another change. Until now, all other living things and mankind have lived in harmony together but now all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, every creature that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea will live in fear and dread of us. That’s quite a change from being rescued from destruction to now living in fear and dread, isn’t it? They are not only given into the hands of mankind but they will live in fear and dread of us. We are no longer confined to eating plants and vegetables as it was before the Flood but we are now allowed to capture and eat every living clean thing. But we are still stewards of the earth – not owners. Some would say we have more than justified their fear and dread. Extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the “background” rate, with dozens going extinct every day. As many as 30 to 50 percent of all species are possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century.

Every living thing should live in fear and dread of us.

Then there are these words, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.”

They have been used to justify everything from legitimate capital punishment to murdering abortion doctors. They have been used to punish hundreds of crimes other than murder. “In the American colonies, legal executions took place as early as 1630. As in England, the death penalty was imposed for many crimes, even minor ones such as picking pockets, being in the company of gypsies for one month, wearing a mask while committing a crime, shoplifting something valued over 12 cents or stealing a loaf of bread. During the 1800s in England, for example, 270 crimes were capital offenses, or crimes punishable by death.”

While many cultures have imposed capital punishment for murder based on reasons other than our Old Testament, our Western culture has used this verse as the foundation for capital punishment. It has become one of the functions of government but it was not originally. It was far more personal than that. While executions are no longer public when sometimes thousands of people showed up to watch the penalty carried out as entertainment, it is still not the same as the Old Testament system for punishment of murder.

Let’s look at Numbers 35:

“‘If anyone strikes someone a fatal blow with an iron object, that person is a murderer; the murderer is to be put to death. Or if anyone is holding a stone and strikes someone a fatal blow with it, that person is a murderer; the murderer is to be put to death.  Or if anyone is holding a wooden object and strikes someone a fatal blow with it, that person is a murderer; the murderer is to be put to death The avenger of blood shall put the murderer to death; when the avenger comes upon the murderer, the avenger shall put the murderer to death. If anyone with malice aforethought shoves another or throws something at them intentionally so that they die or if out of enmity one person hits another with their fist so that the other dies, that person is to be put to death; that person is a murderer. The avenger of blood shall put the murderer to death when they meet.

Who carries out the death penalty in the Old Testament? The avenger of blood.

The Avenger of blood. Who is that? It was not the government, was it?

Charles Spurgeon:  From the earliest ages, it was always the custom with the Orientals, when a man was murdered, or slain without malice aforethought, for the nearest relative, his heir, or any person related to him, to take revenge for him upon the person who, either intentionally or unintentionally, was the means of his death. This revenge was a very special thing to the Oriental mind. The avenger of blood would hunt his victim for forty years,—ay, until he died, if he was not able to reach him before,—and would be on his track all his life, that he might slay him. It was not necessary that the man-slayer should have any trial before a judge; his victim was dead, and if the one who killed him was not put to death, it was reckoned among some tribes to be legitimate to kill his father, or indeed any member of his tribe; and until someone in that tribe was put to death, as a revenge for the man who had been slain, by accident or otherwise, a deadly feud existed between the two clans, which never could be quenched except by blood.”

This was the law. It was not the government putting the murderer to death but one of the next of kin of the victims. Imagine that being the case today. Imagine that being the requirement. Yes, there was a sense in which it justified the family of one who had been murdered to kill the offender but it also made one person responsible to take the life of the offender. There was no passing that responsibility on to another or to the State. It was blood for blood.

Of course, God did make it possible for escape to one of the cities of refuge. When a situation arose where an individual unintentionally killed someone, the perpetrator was to flee to one of the six Cities of Refuge. Once arrived, they were to stand in front of the gate and plead their case to the elders of the city, who were required to admit the fugitive inside their gates and offer them asylum. If an individual was to approach the gates of the city and demand blood justice from an offender that was being protected inside, the elders were not allowed to surrender the person in question into the avenger’s hands. The fugitive was required to live within the walls of the city until they came to trial before the gathered assembly. After the high priest who had granted him amnesty died, the offender was free to return to his own home. If the offender left the protection of the city before the death of the High Priest, then the one who sought vengeance had the right to kill him without being guilty of murder

Spurgeon goes on to say that this law was something of an accommodation to the people whose every inclination of their hearts was toward evil. There was no thought for taking them back to innocence but only to deal with the reality of their corrupted condition. Without being told the intentional taking of life was wrong they would have considered it permissible. They had no natural law for themselves. God needed to put it in the strongest possible language if they were not to accept killing each other as normal. It’s quite a statement about the effect of sin in a culture when God has to tell them outright that something as destructive as murder is wrong. Everything had to be spelled out for them because their imaginations and their hearts had been so permanently corrupted. They could not govern themselves to do what was right. They needed everything – even the most basic – spelled out for them. We’ve looked before at Lord Moulton’s spectrum of the domain of absolute Law where every single permissible act is spelled out and any infraction is punished and the domain of Choice where people are totally free to choose whatever they desire. Somewhere in between is what he calls Obedience to the Unenforceable. We find the balance between rigid Law and lawless Liberty where every man does what is right in his own eyes. Both will lead to the destruction of a society. The people following the Flood and for thousands of years after needed the domain of Law because they had lost the ability to govern themselves.

So God made provision for both the sin of murder and the requirement of justice for both the offender and the injured party. The rules were strictly defined because they could not define their own rules. Their natural desire for revenge and retribution had to be balanced by the provision of refuge.

What then about now? Are we still under the law of Genesis 9? Are we still required to demand the blood of one who intentionally takes another life? Are we still required to avenge the murderer ourselves and take their life in return? Are we still given permission to kill the one leaving the city of refuge?

If we accept “blood for blood” then why do we not accept the idea of an avenger of blood as personal retribution? Why do we not require the next of kin to kill the murderer? Why do we pick and choose? Why do we not stone to death rebellious children, those who practice idolatry, violate the Sabbath, commit adultery or kidnap someone? All of these were punishable by death under the Law. They were all subsets of the Ten Commandments. You cannot adopt a few random practices of a system and expect it to work the way it was intended.

What does Paul say about the Law in Galatians?

“For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.”

We cannot cherry pick which Old Testament laws we obey and which we discard as outdated or obsolete. If we choose the way of the Law then we must live by the whole Law.

What, according to Paul, was the purpose of the Law?

“Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.  So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”

The Law was our tutor until the appearance of Christ and our being reconciled to God through faith. After all, that was God’s ultimate intent from the beginning. It was not simply the settling of a score between God and us. It was not just creating a system that would regulate our inclinations. It was what is called “propitiation” in Scripture. God does not desire simple expiation – the settlement of a suit against his creation. He does not desire to simply win. He does not desire to be the avenger of blood. He has always desired to go a step further…and that is propitiation.

Propitiation is the offended party wanting to be reconciled instead of bitter or resentful. God wants more than justice. He wants peace and, in a sense, peace at the highest possible price. For those of us who have accepted God’s propitiation we have what Paul calls “peace with God”. It is not just a truce or a cessation of hostilities which could erupt again at any time. It is a permanent peace that goes far beyond the satisfaction of the demands of justice. It is not just a settlement that can be reversed or appealed or amended. It is irreversible peace with no condemnation that comes through the blood of Christ – and only through the blood.

So, we have a new law, a new heart within us because we have a new Spirit. In fact, Paul says in 2 Corinthians that we are a new creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

God did not recreate the world in Genesis 8. Instead, he waited and through Christ has made each of us new creations. We are no longer blood avengers. We are no longer bound to the Law. In fact, we should no longer have the spirit of revenge and we should reject anyone who promotes revenge and retribution. That is what happened in the Old Testament. While God allowed and even required one person to avenge another it became instead a culture of retribution and “eye for an eye” where families and tribes kept grievances and the sense of being wronged for generations. Grievance – real and imagined – justified violence and revenge. It took advantage of the Law. As Paul says in Romans 7, “But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.”

The tutor murdered the child, in other words.

That leads me to think that if we as Christians use this verse to justify capital punishment then we are obligated to follow the rest of law – just as Paul says. We cannot pick and choose or say “blood for blood” and “eye for an eye” then eliminate the requirement that repayment be carried out personally by a member of the family. Capital punishment is not a government function in Scripture. It is a family responsibility. Do we want that? Do we want to follow the whole Law? I don’t think so.

This is not an argument for or against capital punishment but it is an argument against using a small snippet of Scripture to justify it without also using the rest of the Law as well. The State has every right to use capital punishment but it should not be based on a passage in Scripture that we use selectively and out of context. Yes, there are general principles found in every culture that are necessary for functioning of a society but the State cannot make laws based specifically on Old Testament Law unless we also give it the authority to carry out the whole Law of Old Testament Scripture. Do we want that?

In the same way, those who argue that we are a Christian nation would be more accurate to post the Sermon on the Mount in every school and public place rather than the Ten Commandments. One is the Old Testament Law and the other is our guide for Christian behavior. How well must we obey the marks of practicing Christians before calling ourselves a Christian nation? How closely would we as a nation follow the Sermon on the Mount?

All this is to say be careful when people – or nations – pick a verse for making a law or justifying a practice without considering all the consequences, requirements and context of the Scripture.

Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.