Genesis Deeper ㉞ Do Not Eat the Blood · God Allowed Meat, So Why Did He Hold Back the Blood? (Genesis 9:1~7)
This series takes one Bible passage at a time and looks at it a little more closely. The images are free to use in worship, in class, and on social media.
God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. The 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. Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As I gave you the green herb, I have given everything to you. But flesh with its life, that is, its blood, you shall not eat. I will surely require 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. Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image. Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.”
Genesis 9:1~7 (World English Bible)
1. The Blessing Again, but Some Things Have Changed
In the passage just before this one, God decided in his heart that he would never again strike every living thing (8:21~22). In today’s passage, that same God speaks directly to Noah and his sons. His first words are a blessing: “…Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth” (9:1). In Hebrew, these words are exactly the same as the words God first spoke to people at creation (1:28). The World English Bible says ‘fill the earth’ there and ‘replenish the earth’ here, but both mean to fill the earth, and the Hebrew is the same.
But the words that follow are different from creation. In 1:28, God told people to “Have dominion” over the fish, the birds, and every living thing. In chapter 9, instead of ‘have dominion,’ we read, “The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth…” (9:2). And God adds, “…are delivered into your hand” (9:2). He is handing every animal over into human hands. Food changes too. In 1:29, the food God gave people was plants that yield seed and fruit from trees. In 9:3 he says, “Every moving thing that lives will be food for you…” For the first time, meat is allowed.
But right in the next verse, one line is added: “But flesh with its life, that is, its blood, you shall not eat” (9:4). Verses 5 and 6 then go on to speak about blood and life. That raises a question. God allowed people to eat meat. Why did he hold back the blood?
2. If We Read It Only as a Food Rule
When people first read ‘you shall not eat’ the blood, most of them think of a food rule. It sounds like an old story about one people’s eating habits, about what may be eaten and what may not. Read that way, the verse seems to have little to do with us today.
Verse 6 is easy to read in a similar way. “Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man…” can sound at first like a harsh law of ‘pay back what was done to you.’ Read like this, verses 4 to 6 become one food rule and one punishment set side by side.
But in verse 4 the text does not call the blood simply ‘blood.’ It calls it ‘its life, that is, its blood.’ Blood appears in verses 4, 5, and 6, and verses 4 and 5 tie that blood to ‘life.’ What the three verses are talking about is not food but life.
3. Going Deeper · The Life God ‘Requires’
Here is the answer first. After the flood, God put the animals into human hands and even gave meat as food. He entrusted people with more than before. But he did not hand over life itself. Blood stands for life, and life belongs to God. That is why God says he will surely call to account anyone who takes a person’s life. And the reason he gives is not that people are good, but that God made people in his own image.
In verse 4, ‘flesh with its life, that is, its blood’ follows the Hebrew closely. The blood is set side by side with life, as if they were the same thing. Holding back the blood is a sign that, although God gave people the meat, he did not give them the life inside it. There is much more that people may eat now, but life itself still belongs to God.
In verse 5, one verb is repeated three times: “I will surely require 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” (9:5). The World English Bible keeps all three, so you can count the word ‘require’ three times in this one verse. To require something means to demand an account for it. If a human life is taken, whether by an animal or by a person, God will not let it pass. He will call it to account.
These words bring an earlier scene to mind. In the Bible, the word ‘blood’ first appears in Genesis 4, in the story where Cain killed his brother Abel. Let’s read a little of that first story.
“…What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground. Now you are cursed because of the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand” (4:10~11).
Abel’s blood cried out to God from the ground, and God did not turn away from it. After that, the word ‘blood’ does not appear again in Genesis until right here, in 9:4. And 9:5 says God will require a person’s life ‘at the hand of every man’s brother.’ In chapter 4, too, the one who shed blood was a brother: Cain, Abel’s own brother. (In Hebrew, ‘brother’ in 4:9~11 and in 9:5 is the same word, ach.) In chapter 4, God asked after it had happened. In chapter 9, God says ahead of time that he will surely require a person’s life.
Then verse 6 gives the reason: “…for God made man in his own image” (9:6). In the passage just before this one, God said, “…the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth…” (8:21). Here ‘imagination’ means what the heart plans and leans toward. Even so, the reason he gives for protecting human life is not human goodness. It is something from creation: God made people in his own image. The flood changed many things, but it did not change the fact that people were made in God’s image.
Verse 6’s ‘his blood will be shed by man’ also needs to be read together with this reason. The text says that the one who sheds a person’s blood will have his own blood shed. And right after that, it gives the reason: God made people in his own image. Taking a human life is treated this seriously because the person who was harmed is the image of God.
4. Word Study · Nefesh · Darash · Tselem
The Old Testament was first written in Hebrew. Here are three Hebrew words from today’s passage.
① life · nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ). This is the word ‘life’ in ‘flesh with its life’ in verse 4. In the text it appears as benafsho (בְּנַפְשׁוֹ), meaning ‘with its life.’ Nefesh means a living, breathing being, a life. In 2:7, when “man became a living soul,” the word ‘soul’ is this same nefesh. In 9:5 it appears again in ‘your life’s blood’ and ‘the life of man.’ Verses 4 and 5 are tied together by this one word. God told people not to eat the blood because blood stands for life.
② require · darash (דָּרַשׁ). It appears three times in verse 5. The first and the last are edrosh (אֶדְרֹשׁ), ‘I will require.’ The middle one is edreshennu (אֶדְרְשֶׁנּוּ), ‘I will require it.’ This is the first time this verb appears in the Bible. Its basic meaning is ‘to seek, to ask, to demand an account.’ In Genesis it appears in two more places besides 9:5. One is the scene where Rebekah “went to inquire of Yahweh” (25:22). (The World English Bible writes God’s own name in the Hebrew Bible as ‘Yahweh.’) The other is the scene where Joseph’s brothers talk with each other about what they did to their younger brother Joseph long before. Reuben, the oldest, thinking Joseph is dead, says, “…behold, his blood is required” (42:22). The World English Bible uses the same English word, ‘required,’ here too. Someone is now calling them to account for what was done to their brother. The verb God used in 9:5 when he said he would require a life ‘at the hand of every man’s brother’ is used again for this thing that happened between brothers. Chapter 9 says that harming a life is not simply buried, even when it happens between brothers, and Reuben’s words echo that.
③ image · tselem (צֶלֶם). This is the word ‘image’ in ‘in his own image’ in verse 6. The World English Bible says ‘in his own image,’ but the Hebrew text says betselem Elohim (בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים), ‘in the image of God.’ In Genesis this word appears five times: 1:26, 1:27 (twice), 5:3, and 9:6. In chapter 1 it appears when God makes people. In 5:3 it appears when Adam has a son in his own likeness, after his image, and names him Seth. 9:6 is the last place this word appears in Genesis. In that last place, it is used as the reason for protecting human life.
5. One More Thing · Words That Begin and End with a Blessing
Let’s set the beginning and the end of today’s passage side by side. Verse 1 says, “…Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth.” Verse 7 says, “Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.” The same blessing comes once at the beginning and once at the end.
So the words about blood and life (verses 4~6) sit between these two blessings. The command not to treat life lightly is surrounded by the blessing that life should fill the earth.
Seen this way, verses 4 to 6 do not take anything away from the blessing. For the earth to be filled with life, life has to be protected. In a world where shedding blood means nothing, life cannot flourish. We can read God drawing a line at blood as his way of protecting life and letting it flourish in the world that had begun again.
6. For Us Today
This passage leaves us with one message. Every human life is a life God will surely call to account. He will not let harm done to it pass, because every person is the image of God.
The text does not say it is only the life of a good person. Just before this, God said that the human heart is evil from youth. Even so, God said he would surely require a human life, that is, he would not let harm done to it pass, but would call it to account. What God values in a person comes before that person’s usefulness or goodness: that person was made in God’s image.
In our lives there are more moments than we think when a human life is treated lightly. When we hear about an accident on the news, we sometimes hear only how many people were hurt and move on. At work, people sometimes look at someone as if ‘anyone could replace them.’ In some neighborhoods, no one asks how an elderly neighbor is doing after weeks of silence. And sometimes we think about ourselves, ‘If I disappeared, no one would even notice.’
Abel died in a field (4:8). When God asked where Abel was, Cain answered, “I don’t know” (4:9). Among people, it was the kind of thing that could have been buried and forgotten. But the text says the voice of that blood was heard by God (4:10). And in chapter 9, God said ahead of time that he would surely require a human life.
So even a life that seems to have no one asking about it is not one God simply passes by. The same is true of a person who shows up only as a number, of a person who is told that someone else could easily replace them, and of ourselves on days when we feel small. Of course, knowing this does not change their situation or ours right away. But it can change the way we see them, and the way we see ourselves. If God will not let harm done to any life pass, then there is no life we can pass by lightly either.
Today, you might think of one person, call them by name, and ask how they are doing. It could be a family member or friend you have not heard from lately, or a neighbor you always just walk past. May you spend today remembering that this person, too, is a life God made in his own image, a life he will not let anyone harm without calling it to account.
“God, you made people in your own image, and you do not let harm done to any human life simply pass. Help us see again the lives of neighbors we have passed by as mere numbers. On days when we feel small, help us remember that you value our lives and do not simply pass them by. Help us treat each person we meet today as someone made in your image. Amen.”
🕊 How to Use This in Ministry
Opening question
Ask, “If a friend got pushed and fell and got hurt, and nobody asked ‘Are you okay?’ or ‘Who did that?’ but everyone just walked past, how would that friend feel?” and listen to the children’s answers. Then say, “Today the Bible tells us that if someone harms a person’s life, God does not just let it go. He will surely ask about it, because people are that precious to him,” and move into the passage.
Activity
Read 9:5 together, and have the children count on their fingers how many times the word ‘require’ appears (three times). Next, read verse 6 and ask, “God made people in whose image?” When the children find ‘his own image,’ explain that ‘his’ means God. Then write the children’s names on the board one by one, draw a small heart next to each name, and say, “Each person written here is the image of God.” Finally, show the image captioned ‘At the hand of every man’s brother’ from today’s images and ask, “Are the people in this picture the image of God too? How should we treat each other?”
Application
Give each child a small card and have them write the name of one person they want to check on this week. Underneath, write together, “____ is the image of God too. God treasures this person.” When they finish, have each child put the card in their bag to take home.
🖼️ Today’s Four Images · Press and hold or right-click to save
God blessed Noah and his sons |
The fear of you and the dread of you |
At the hand of every man’s brother |
Increase abundantly in the earth |
📄 Image license CC0 (public domain) · Free to use, modify, and redistribute without attribution.
🤖 These images were created with AI (Grok).
📖 Genesis Deeper ㉜ Multiply on the Earth · when God repeated his words from creation on the day they came out of the ship
Origin Bible · Mission Zedero
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✍️ This article was written with the help of AI and reviewed by a person.
The text is CC BY-NC 4.0. You are free to use it for noncommercial purposes with attribution.
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