Genesis 9:4 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Genesis 9:4

Comments

Although the limit on what man may eat is extended, a further limit is put in place. Mankind must not behave like savage wild beasts, and drink raw blood. There has got to be refinement and a civilised approach to man. He is of much higher status than the animals. There must be a respect for life, even the life of an animal, a creature so far below man, because all life comes from God and is something that must be respected. This certainly meant that no animal was to be eaten alive for that would be a cruelty, and an outrage in any generation. The beasts eat each other alive, but they do this by instinct and without understanding. By this God certainly does not mean us to understand that life is a physical liquid entity that can be seen or handled, but he makes one part of the body stand for life because in the physical realm that part is an essential to life and there can be no life where blood has been removed. Blood is therefore a fitting symbol of life.This meant that animals that were to be prepared for food were to have the blood drained from them. But we should not understand this in a superstitious way, for it is not possible to drain every particle of blood from a carcass. No one who eats meat can avoid also consuming some of the blood from that animal and yet God allowed man to eat meat. What is being taught is respect for life and a rejection of all cruelty. While God allowed man to eat the flesh of animals, he did not wish by doing so to turn man into a ravenous beast. The animals eat the flesh of each other with the blood still in it, but man was to drain the blood to show his appreciation of the sanctity of life. His respect for the life of even an animal was necessary to preserve his respect for his fellow man.

Application

Questions

Does this prohibition still apply to us today? Calvin says ‘yet we must remember that the restriction was part of the old law.’ In line with this, he assumes that the prohibition on eating blood in Acts 15 was temporary only – a requirement on the Gentiles to avoid offending the Jewish conscience. But if Noah was forbidden to eat the blood not for this reason, but to guard against cruelty and callousness, why would man be allowed to eat blood today? Cruelty and callousness are still to be avoided. When the eating of blood was forbidden later by the Law, it was forbidden for a different reason - the blood makes atonement for the soul (Leviticus 17:11). The same verse however echoes Genesis 9:4 – ‘for the life of the flesh is in the blood.’ Leupold sums up, ‘Keil no doubt is correct when he claims these restrictions are given in view of the ordinances that are later to govern the use of blood sacrifices. This provision, then, of Noah’s time prepares for the sacrificial use of blood, and that which is … the heart and essence of the sacrifice, should hardly be employed that a man may glut his appetite with it.’ Now that that practice of offering up blood sacrifices has ended, this rule is no longer binding. The New Testament is very clear that not only has the system of animal sacrifices ended, but so too have the food laws. Christ declared all foods clean when he said, ‘Whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats’ (Mark 7:18-19), and Paul repeats the same doctrine when he says, ‘I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself’ (Romans 14:14). Cruelty and callousness are not longer warned against in this way.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Genesis 9:4 Commentary and Bible Study