One more declaration, which the Creator made to Noah as he stood beside the altar, must conclude our study of the Flood. It concerned the sanctity of life.
God had just destroyed life, wholesale. He made a drastic cleansing of a world which people had defiled by bloodshed and violence. In the fresh start He was making with Noah, God insisted that it would continue to be His prerogative, as Creator and Judge, to take away life. Anyone who murdered another human being must forfeit his own life, because he had trespassed upon God’s rights.
Even the flesh of animals, which He now permitted Noah and his descendants to eat for food, must be drained of blood first, because God counted the blood as a symbol for the life of the creature, and the life does not belong to us, but to God.
Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood… “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:3–6).
The capital punishment of a murderer was later incorporated in the Law of Moses. So, too, was the bleeding of animals at slaughter. It was a forceful reminder that we have no right to Iife—our lives are God’s, and He determines our destiny.
It is unfortunate that some interpret these words as forbidding blood transfusions. God’s words are in a context which has to do with killing. Blood transfusion has the object of preserving life. If the patient was guilty of killing the donor of the blood transfusion so as to extract their blood, there would clearly be an objection. But where the blood is freely given by a living donor, there is no more ground for condemnation than there is for a child in the womb receiving its vital nutrients from the bloodstream of its mother.
And once again, underlying this commandment was a pointer to Jesus Christ, who was to pour out his life blood to save the lives of men. In his own cryptic words: ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink’ (John 6:53–55).
David Pearce
(to be continued)