The Beginning of Law:
the Rise of Executive Man
Genesis 9:1-7
by Ed Nelson
Before we may understand the meaning of human leadership and what caused its rise in the first place, first we must consider the origin of law, and under what circumstances it began. Since law is associated with human restraint for the better good of the community or society, several questions arise.
What criteria should be used to determine the greater good as legal? Is law based on arbitrary ideas, collective or majority opinions and interests, conditions based on response offense to others, or self-interests? Or is a deeper, critical, pristine essence for the existence of law to be found? The answer lies in probing the questions about who gave us the first laws, who received them, and on what basis were they determined? For this answer we turn to the Bible and, in particular, the book of Genesis [Bereishit].
God’s intent for mankind. In the greater story of the creation of the universe in Genesis 1-2:3 is the central story of the beginning of man. In this passage of five verses found in 1:26-30 are seven major revelations that depict the nature of mankind, the bounds of human responsibility and the conditions for survival:
1. The nature of man, though of the earth, was made by God in his image and likeness (26a)
2. The legal assignment of man was to rule [radah: dominate, subjugate] all animals for their restraint and well-being (but not to govern people or the heavens) (26b)
3. God celebrates the creation of man with a poetic summary of his achievement (27)
4. God’s blessing of man was to reproduce, fill the earth and subdue [kabash: “bring into control,” “bring under subjection,” “bring into possession”] it (28a)
5. God’s legal commission of man was to rule [radah: dominate, subjugate] and, therefore, restrain the wild in all living creatures for their well-being (28b)
6. The natural limit of man’s diet was to eat only seed-bearing plants and fruits (29)
7. The natural limit of animals’ diet was to eat only green plants (30)
The moral and legal imperative of humanity. The implications of these seven statements are important for us to understand because God shows his intent for his living creation—from man to animals to vegetation:
1. By being made by God for God in his image and likeness, man is exclusively heaven’s possession and is subject to God’s rule, i.e., his kingdom.
2. Man, both male and female, have the ability to make multiple choices, but always with a deep-level, internalized awareness of (1) God’s holiness and (2) expectation for holy living by virtue of being made in his image and likeness. These two facts were intended to restrain man and guard his mind against making choices unlike God’s likeness. Man is to be holy as God is holy, moral as God is moral, just as God is just, but by choice. Man was not created independent of God, but because he can choose to disobey, he must be internally restrained by an embedded awareness of God’s likeness within his mind where multiple choices exist to act either in harmony with God or apart from God.
3. Though man is innocent at creation, he is unqualified to rule over other people. In his limitations of “likeness,” he is incapable to rule as God rules. In his stature to rule over animals and to subdue the earth, man is merely an image and likeness of God. He is not God. He does not have the right or capacity to rule in place of God what is exclusively reserved and set in place for God’s rule, i.e., his kingdom. God is responsible for man and man is accountable to Him.
4. Man does not rule the realm of the heavens, but is under its dominion. He is not transcendent. Man’s historic preoccupation with space and time, and his quest of the heavens, curiously, has been motivated by his desire to control human destiny apart from God, whether it be attempted through astrology or modern science.
5. Man does rule animals which, by nature, are wild and instinctive, i.e., they are lawless in regards to morality and justice. Animals do not possess God-likeness and the precious sense of holiness that comes with it. Because animals are made of the earth as is man, animals possess some earthly features of man-likeness. Conversely, man possesses in his God-likeness some features of animal-likeness that helps him to relate to and rule animals. With the absence of internal restraints set in animals by God, their being by nature instinctive creatures, they require external human restraint and husbandry for their well-being and purpose.
6. Man is to reproduce children, i.e., produce the image and likeness of God throughout the earth through natural means of child-bearing.
7. With all living beings diets being vegetarian in the First World Era, animal life and human life are preserved from being taken as food. This did not stop the taking of animal life by Adam’s second son, Abel, for an offering to God, or the murder of Abel by his brother Cain.
8. Man is accountable to God, animals accountable to man, and plants subject to both.
9. God celebrates the life of man.
In this picture of creation a vague state of “pre-law” seems to exist for man, at least from the perspective of the way we consider law today as something external and codified. But mankind is not without the implications and ramifications of moral law to do live justly. On what basis do we find a moral and legal imperative for man? The answer lies in the truth found in Genesis 1:26-27 that man was made in the image and likeness of God. God is holy. He is moral. He is just. These truths about Him are the basis for man, made in God’s image and likeness, to act in a holy, moral and just way as God is.
God’s silence about Adam’s nature. Yet neither Adam nor his descendants in the First World Era were told expressly by God that when Adam was made, he was made in God’s image and likeness. Of this critical truth about human nature, God kept silent, at least in openly stating it to them. Of course, the narrative in Genesis 1:26-27 informs us as readers of the Torah that this is the case. But nowhere in the First World Era throughout the first eight chapters of Genesis [Bereishit] does God say this to anyone. The fact of the matter is that not until after the Flood when Noah and his family left the ark does God tell humans about their God-likeness. Noah was the first to hear these words. The record of this occurrence is in Genesis 9:6 in a legally-binding poem spoken by God:
Whoever sheds man's blood,
by man his blood shall be shed,
for in the image of God He made man.
What do we make of God’s silence about his divine impression upon the nature of man? Why is it after the Flood and not before that God decides to inform humanity of this truth? In the beginning of the First World Era the narrative states as human commentary that God made man in his image and likeness. In the beginning of the Second World Era speaks this truth directly to man as his own commentary. Why the difference in these two beginnings?
Loss of virtue and character. In the First World Era the very act of God creating man in his image and likeness caused man to acquire and esteem moral virtue and legal character. Virtue and character are signs of God’s impression on the consciousness and conscience of man. They establish the fact that man is a moral and legal being.
In our Second World Era, virtue and character gradually diminish, as they did in the increase of corruption in the First World Era. Such are the conditions for an increase in lawlessness. We only have to think of the towering figure named Lamech who lived in the last days of the First World Era. He boasted in his triumph over virtue and character—that innate sense of being made in God’s image and likeness—through his self-determined values and sense of personality (cf. Genesis 4:23-24):
And Lamech said to his wives:
“Adah and Zillah, listen to my voice.
You wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech,
for I have killed a man for wounding me;
and a boy for striking me;
if Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times.”
Lamech demonstrates the age in which he lived. Virtue was supplanted by emphasis on personal values, often a reflection of personal desires. Character was discounted for the glow of personality. The diminishing of virtue and character dims and dulls the image of God in man. Their replacement by personal values and personality is a sign of the increase in lawlessness.
Man is intuitively a moral and legal being. God, by the supreme essence of his being Elohim means that He is True and Just. Man, therefore, as a moral and legal being, reflexively should demonstrate this Elohistic impression indelibly written on his heart that God is True and Just. The animals see it in him. His family sees it in each other.
Without God having to inform man of his status, human consciousness informed him that he was a moral and legal being. In this respect, man acquired the capacity from God to express an internalized ideal that was moral and just for man and his world as a direct result of his being made in God’s image and likeness. This is what is meant by the pre-law state of Adam and his descendants in the First World Era. Pre-law doesn’t depend on a code of law or ethics. It is a matter of the inclination of the heart.
Man, intuitively informed of his nature as being in God’s image and likeness, is responsible to make true and just choices based on God’s rule, i.e., by submitting to his kingdom as an obedient subject. He is not to violate his holy design as a human, but may if he chooses. If he remains kingdom-focused and obedient to God’s rule, he will fulfill his purpose. Otherwise, he rises to a new identity and consciousness apart from God whereby he lays claim to self-rule and human rule of others, and accepts the illusion of self-determination and human determination. Such was the sin in the Garden when man, male and female, ate the banned fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (cf. Genesis 3:6-7, 22-24).
Man is intuitive, animals instinctive. Animals, contrariwise, are instinctive creatures which are designed by God to act according to prescribed behavior patterns where choice is not a main factor. Debates, warnings and persuasive measures are not needed to make Canadian geese migrate south in the winter. They obey their instincts. Such is not the state of man who chooses his way through the course of life. He may have intuition, a human attribute, but not instinct, an animal attribute. Man, therefore, must be warned of the consequences of his bad decisions or suffer their imposed consequences.
In the beginning of creation, man does not need God to inform him of his status and nature as being made with God-likeness. He is conscious of it deep within his soul. Intuitively, he has a guiding sense of morality and justice even as the Canadian geese instinctively know to fly south in the winter. God neither has to inform man nor the Canadian geese what to do and when. This overarching intuitive sense of morality and justice, therefore, is not taught but acquired at creation. While geese don’t have a choice in their instinctive condition, humans do. Morality and justice without choice is neither morality nor justice. Justice becomes applicable only when moral or immoral choices are made.
God’s ultimate disappointment in man. The fact of the matter is that the LORD would not have destroyed the world by a Flood as an act of justice if man was intuitively uninformed in the differences between moral and immoral choices, between good and evil. It would be unjust. Genesis 6:5-8 implies that God had high expectations of man to choose virtue and character over evil, but, instead, was greatly grieved for his moral failure:
And the LORD saw
that great evil of man was on the land,
and that every inclination of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil all day.
The LORD mourned [nachem] that He
had made man on the land,
and He was pained in his heart.
The LORD said,
“I will blot out man whom I have created
from the face of the land,
from man to animals to creeping things
and to birds of the sky;
for I mourn [nichamti] that I have made them.”
But Noah [Noach] found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
Fundamental to keeping God’s image and likeness properly is to reflect his virtue and character. Man, of course, failed then as he fails today. Inferred is the fact that whatever discounts or diminishes God’s image and likeness in man, it mars God’s image and likeness in us. In the First World Era before the Flood, the weight of correction falls solely upon God. In fact, He never put man into the responsible, legal roles of police, judges or wardens. Such would require a codification of law which did not exist then. The heart of man was to be one’s own police, judge and warden. God is, therefore, the Police, Judge and Jury, and the Warden. Man will be held accountable to only God by God for the trust God placed in humankind. He mourned over man’s bad choices.
Because an innate, intuitive sense of law did exist, the LORD reserved the right, even the imperative, to judge man for being more animal-like than God-like than he was intended to be.
God’s comfort in Noah. Interestingly, the same word in this narrative that means “to mourn” or “to grieve,” may also mean “to console” or “to comfort.” The difference is found in how the verb is used in its context. The name of Noah, from Noach, means “Comforter,” “Consoler.” It is from the same root word that describes God mourning [nacham]. When the LORD saw Noah, his mourning [nacham] over all humanity found comfort [nacham]. And Noah [Noach] found favor in the eyes of the LORD. The play on words is unavoidable.
God informs Noah of man’s God-likeness: the beginning of codified law. So why does God choose to inform Noah about the human family being made in his image and likeness as recorded in Genesis 9:6? If it was intuitive truth to Adam and his descendants in the First World Era, would not it be the same for Noah in the new beginning of the world after the Flood? Why must Noah be told expressly by God about this otherwise intuitive truth? After all, he was the only person found righteous and blameless in the last events of the First World Era. Didn’t he know?
Noah was no different from Adam after man’s sin and expulsion from the Garden. Like Adam and his offspring, Noah and his offspring were also quite corruptible. Noah was not the Second Adam in the Second World Era like Adam was before he sinned. Only a righteous born, sinless Person could bear this title as Second Adam. No, Noah was not the Second Adam who would renew humanity. He was the second Adam only in the sense that he was like Adam after he sinned and became corrupted and corruptible.
Noah’s self-defining first act: violence. The differences between the beginning of the First World Era and the Second World Era are not subtle. The first begins in innocence. The second begins in violence.
Compare Adam, father of the First World Era, to Noah, father of the Second World Era. Adam was created without a sinful nature. He acquired his sinful nature through his bad choice in the Garden of Eden. Though Noah, the father of the Second World Era, was found to be righteous and blameless in his generation before the Flood (6:9), he was not unfamiliar with his own evil inclination, particularly after the Flood. Readers of the life of Noah usually are startled the first time they read the story about his inebriated state of mind after consuming too much wine. This happened after the Flood. Yet another indicator of his evil inclination precedes this curious event of drunkenness. It was the first self-defining act of Noah after the Flood. What was it? We delicately approach it with a question. What idea, desire or concern was it that drove Noah to offer animal sacrifices as soon as the ark landed safely?
We may be conditioned to answer this without serious reflection, glossing over it because of God’s later instruction to the Israelites to offer a sacrificial lamb at the first Passover in Egypt. Or because of the teachings of the Torah about animal sacrifice in the Book of Leviticus [Vayikra]. But remember, from the Bible we only have one indication of animal sacrifice in the First World Era—that of Abel’s after his parents had grievously sinned. Were there more sacrifices than Abel’s? Possibly, but for some reason they were never mentioned in the biblical narrative. Do you ever wonder why?
Noah, meanwhile, built the ark in obedience to God’s command and careful instructions. He then entered the ark under God’s command and not before. Genesis 6:22 summarizes Noah’s attitude before the Flood: “Noah did everything just as God [Elohim] commanded him.” Again, in Genesis 7:5, almost the same summary statement reappears: “And Noah did everything that the LORD [YHVH] commanded him.”
Now concerning these animals Noah sacrificed, did God ask him to do so? Was this a required act to satisfy a command given by God as he so willingly did before? As far as biblical evidence, we find no divine instruction to Noah on this matter of killing animals for sacrifice. Is it an assumed obligation to perform? Or may we surmise that it was Noah acting on his own without divine instruction.
The first act of Noah after removing his family and the animals from the ark was to build an altar for animal sacrifice. Without divine instruction, as an utterly free act, Noah built the altar unto the LORD. Upon it he made roasted offerings of clean [tahor] animals, animals who were his former roommates on the ark.
Killing in the First World Era. The Second World Era begins violently with the shedding of animal’s blood. Do you remember the occasions when blood was shed in the First World Era? No blood was shed prior to the act of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden against God. Not until they knew what was evil, and how to do evil, and then did it, did the concept of sacrifice occur. After their sin they were exposed as naked—a spiritual, psychological and physical revelation of themselves. God shed the blood of animals and made clothing from animal hides to clothe Adam and Eve to hide their nakedness (3:21). The clothing had a double purpose, one utilitarian for covering the physical and the other redemptive for covering the spiritual nakedness of man. What was shedding the blood about? In this event we see an antecedent to the Messianic prophecies of the Prophets, none more depictive of the redemptive work of the Messiah Yeshua than Isaiah 52-53.
The second time animals were killed in the First World Era was for an offering to God by Adam’s second son, Abel (4:4). In simplicity, the Bible narrative simply registers, “The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering.” Such a statement, intriguingly, does not follow Noah’s offering. The narrative only tells us that the roasted meat had a pleasant aroma to God.
The third time blood was recorded as being shed in the First World Era was entirely different from these two preceding times. This time it was human. Abel’s lifeblood was shed by his murderous brother, Cain (4:8). With Abel’s death, the abuse and killing of humans was established as a means of retribution and vengeance. Neither mercy nor justice was in the heart of the killer—only a desire to kill the divine-like status in Abel. Killing humans began slowly, gradually worsening until it increased frighteningly in the last days of the First World Era (cf. 4:23-24). Violence by man against man pushed the First World Era to the precipice of God’s judgment. It would come drastically and suddenly.
Freedom to kill again: the absence of innocence. The First World Era was innocent in its beginning. It began free from all violence and bloodshed that would later develop after man’s expulsion from the Garden.
The Second World Era begins with freedom, but without innocence. Violence and bloodshed initiates its beginning with an altar sacrifice of clean animals. With this new age in which we now live being a violent age from the start, the idea of peace is more an illusion than a prospect of reality. Codified law, which God introduces quickly after Noah’s bloody sacrifice, does not promise peace.
Law, as we know empirically, does not bring peace, but order. It primary function is to restrain the outflow of evil that manages the nature of human hearts. Man is tethered to “outside law” because, otherwise, he is an “outlaw,” free to rob, kill and destroy in the absence of his former innocence, virtue and character. When man sinned in the Garden he truly died. But he didn’t know it properly. He called his death, rather, Enlightenment. The three attributes of innocence, virtue and character depend on man’s internal orientation to the good in life which he no longer possesses. Because man died to righteousness, he is born a natural sinner (cf. Romans 6:1-7 for the reversal of this state through faith in the Messiah). The righteousness of sinful man that we call “good” is merely acts based on primordial remembrance of intuitive law dancing as light on the dark stage of his present unrighteousness.
In the aftermath of the Flood, a new world era dawns upon a single family of eight persons—Noah’s family. The father and new world leader leaves the ark in a newfound freedom from a vile and violent old world. But he is not free from himself, from his own heart. Though he has a sense of right and wrong, he also exhibits a thirst for blood. The first thing he does is kill some innocent animals as an offering to God. Before, in the old world, he was already deemed righteous and blameless by God in his generation. He already was given God’s favor. What more did he need? But this is not his own report. It is what others say about him. In his own heart he does not understand himself as being innocent. He was not a righteous innocent, but a righteous sinner. He understood less his righteousness in God’s sight and more of his sinful nature in his own sight.
Why did Noah exercise his newfound freedom to kill some clean [tahor] animals as an offering to God? Under his extreme circumstances, he surely wanted to express his gratitude to God for safely carrying his family through the Flood. Was this the basis for taking the animal’s lives? Was this an appropriate response to salvation. Perhaps, in spite of its immediate recall of violence and bloodshed that characterized the preceding age. True, it was animals being offered by Noah and not human lives being killed. But it wasn’t innocence. And it wouldn’t be long before humans were killed, too. The pleasing aroma of the sacrifice to God is a stark reminder that Noah is not a second and improved Adam. He is not pure in heart. He has a taste for blood.
Leon R. Kass, in his tome, The Beginning of Wisdom (New York: Free Press, 2003, p. 171) writes of this incident:
Noah’s self-defining first act in the new world is
an act of violence against the living world. A
simply harmonious world order, led by a human
being, seems to be impossible.
The innocent Second Adam was not Noah. Noah was not the holy, sinless Second Adam that was prophesied in Genesis 3:15-16. This Son of Man—the authentic Second Adam—would appear later, much later. He would not come to judge humanity according to the transgressions all humans have committed in breaking the intuitive laws within us, or of the codified laws outside us. The authentic Second Adam was of another time to come. When He appears, He will save humanity from its sins and sinful nature. He will understand in his innocence the penalty of death rightly deserved by our transgressing the intuitive and codified laws of God. He will step into man’s penalty box and take his place, though innocent as a lamb. He will save us from ourselves with our deceitful hearts inclined always towards evil. When He comes, and He did in Jesus [Yeshua] of Nazareth, He will be the true and only Messiah. But we digress to a later time in history.
God’s response to Noah’s sacrifice. As the smoke of the roasted flesh still spiraled above the altar with its pleasing aroma, the narrative records that the LORD said in his heart: “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.” Was this the response Noah expected from God for his animal sacrifice? The centrality of God’s statement is that the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.
Because man’s heart is evil, God knows that man will continue in the Second World Era to be violent, to shed both animal and human blood as he did in the First World Era. Noah’s sacrifice proves it is already to begin again.
A closer look at God’s appraisal of mankind. The statement God spoke to Noah regarding the inclination of the human heart in Genesis 8:21 was written in the form of reverse concentric symmetry. Simply put, the main emphasis of God’s statement is placed on the middle line that stands solitary as the pivotal verse for interpretation:
A I will not add [l’o-‘oseph] cursing [le-qallel] again
[‘od] to the ground on account of the man [ha-’adam],
B for the inclination [yetzer] of the man's heart
is evil from his youth;
A’ and I will not add [l’o-‘oseph] smiting [le-hakkoth] again
[‘od] to every living thing as I have done
[i.e., on my account].
The LORD’s statement gives clarity about Noah’s offering. Though its smoke may be a pleasing aroma to God offered from the heart of a grateful man, yet man’s heart is evil from his youth and deserves judgment. The offering of slain animals does not absolve the judgment deserved for man’s loss of innocence, something that permanently affected human nature in the Garden when Adam sinned. The human heart, even for Noah, remains bent towards destructive behavior and killing.
The death of an animal is offered by Noah in place of the death sentence man deserves for his sinful nature. If the offering did not atone for his sins, at least it caused Noah to reflect on them. Whatever the offering did, or for whatever reason it was intended, it failed to replace Noah’s old sinful humanity with a new sinless humanity. Animal sacrifice falls short of life transformation Noah and his family needs. At best it pleases God only as an offering showing man’s gratitude. But God sees past the temporary gratitude to the dark human condition of man’s heart. It remains inclined toward evil. The prophet Jeremiah said of the human heart: “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately weak. Who can understand it?” (17:9).
What can we learn from God’s response? Simply, it is impossible for man to live in harmony with others, or even in personal wholeness, or in a place of constant well-being. In this new era of mankind after Noah, greetings between people are typically concerned about man’s wellness, or his well-being. The ancient greeting of “shalom [peace] to you” is intended as such. The English ask instead, “How are you?” Such a greeting is absolutely irrelevant if it weren’t the case that man is not known to be well or at peace with himself, with others or with God.
External, codified law is spoken precisely by God after Noah’s violent sacrifice because Noah demonstrated that the former blood-spilling heart of man of the First World Era was now living in the Second World Era.
Codified law was missing in the First World Era. The law of God was simply an acknowledgement in the depths of man’s heart that he, male and female, was made in God’s image and likeness. Man and woman were to act accordingly to this internalized reality. No legal code was needed, at least at first.
While this violent, corrupt heart of mankind brought about God’s judgment in the First World Era, the way for man to escape a catastrophic end for the Second World Era was for man to accept responsibility for his thoughts and behavior, but not only his own, but for humans wherever they reside. If the Second World Era was to be sustained beyond just ten generations that characterized the First World Era, man’s evil inclinations must be restrained. What is the solution? If there is one, it comes only from God.
God breaks his silence about man’s original nature: Noah may have forgotten. Should we be surprised then that when God blessed Noah to be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1), words similarly spoken to Adam, that He no longer remains silent about the imprint of his image and likeness in man?
He didn’t need to tell Adam that man was a moral and legal being. It was intuitive in Adam’s innocence. He understood. But God does need to tell Noah, and must tell Noah, to remind him of what should be intuitive in his deceitful heart. Noah may have forgotten. If not him, then his wife and children. If not them, for sure his children’s children.
Because of sin, law is no longer so clearly written on man’s heart that he acts in God’s image and likeness. Its divine power is muted by the self-centered drives within a deceitful heart. Therefore, God reminds Noah of Who he was intended to be like—and all people, for that matter. Then, with clear instructions, God restrains him with spoken law that became codified to keep man, male and female, from acting according to his heart.
Codified, external law was introduced for the first time immediately after the Flood to support the frailty of human conscience. Listening to one’s heart is not a dependable guide for reasoning or acting, not since the innocence of Adam in the Garden. In Genesis 9:1-7, God tells man directly who he is and what he was intended to be. He is made in God’s image and likeness to act accordingly in the world.
After the Flood, a paradigm shift occurs. Like an animal, man is restrained as one who is wild by nature. Unlike an animal, he is not restrained by instinctive powers of his nature, but by codified laws of God that men must enforce and execute to sustain society and civilization. The evidence of man’s sinful nature is that he is not trustworthy to be left alone to his weak and wild heart. He is dangerous to himself and other living things. His behavior must be policed by legal authorities, his misconduct judged by supreme authorities, and his penalties for his crimes executed for the purposes of restraining others from doing the same.
God gave external, codified laws for man to restrain man. In this light, God gave external laws to Noah that trumped the heart of man. Mainly these laws were introduced to ban the shedding of human blood. If human lifeblood was taken by animal or man, that creature must be executed, not by God as done with the Flood, but at the hands of man. This is the blunt beginning of codified law. Human lifeblood must be protected, for human blood belongs to God. It cries out to God when it is spilled. Murderers must be dealt with by the shedding of their blood. What’s new is that God stands back and lets man do it—a life for a life by the hands of men.
In Genesis 9:6 we find a Hebraic literary form known as reverse symmetry. It confirms the new role of man to police, judge and execute justice in the world. It is found in a short, single sentence of codified law written in the form of a chiasm. The order of the chiasm is written as ABCC’B’A’ with the emphasis on the edges (AA’).
A Shophek (Whoever sheds)
B dam (blood)
C ha’adam (of the man)
C’ be’adam (by man)
B’ damo (his blood)
A’ yishaphek (will be shed)
Just by reading only the extreme edges of the chiasm we get the main point of emphasis: Shophek yishaphek – “Whoever sheds … will be shed.”
In this tightly phrased Hebrew poem is the core of man’s responsibility. Not only is he merely his brother’s keeper, an intuitive law from the beginning, he is also by codified law his brother’s police, judge, warden and executioner. Thus, the saying in Genesis 9:6, “From the hand of the brother of man I will require it...” Here is the primeval condition for the rise of human leadership where man rules over man, something we have to get used to for the sake of the survival of humankind and civilization.
God’ deferral to man to do justice on the basis of codified law formed the grounds for civilization and human leadership. What, then, may we learn from this primitive codified law?
Man is without excuse. First, law in codified form is now an ominous warning to do right or have justice served against him. Man is without excuse, for now it is written. He shall give an account.
Law is not enough. Second, law for law’s sake is not enough. Writing a law in itself is inadequate to restrain the evil bent of the human heart. It doesn’t tame the heart, just binds it. In the First World Era, the intuitive law written upon man’s heart by virtue of being made in God-likeness was muted and twisted by sin. It was inner law, true enough, but without authoritative power invested in man to enforce it. The lawbreaker was his own police, judge and jury, hardly enough to restrain him from violence and other acts of evil.
In the First World Era, justice for breaking God’s intuitive law written on the heart was God’s business. For ten generations He gave mercy until He mourned over the justice that must be performed. Since all had broken God’s intuitive law, and all stood in rebellion to God’s purpose for them, He finally did justice by sending the Flood. Mankind was wiped out, except for Noah’s small family which still experienced God’s favor. Intuitive law, after sin entered the human equation, failed to restrain man’s evil bent. He was a law to himself and no other, a brute ruled by instinct, like an animal, rather than by virtue and character. He was an outlaw to his original nature of God-likeness and to the truth embedded in his heart from the beginning.
Executive enforcement required. For law to be effective, whether intuitive or codified, it must be enforced through legal authorities and powers. A third component of law, then, is to bequeath legal restraining authority to man necessary and sufficient to enforce law. Law requires executive power to enforce it. By God’s bequeathing executive authority to man, law has not only purpose to restrain a person from murdering another person, it has the power to execute justice upon a murderer. In American society, the legal system refers to capital punishment’s purpose as being justice for the murderer and a deterrent for would-be murderers. Such legal enforcement is in keeping with God’s purpose in codifying law.
While capital punishment for murder became the first law, we should understand that this decision by God was based upon his great mourning over the violence perpetrated by man and his necessity to judge it in order to restrain it. Capital punishment is the last resort for imposing executive restraint. Now that God has invested in man legal authority and rights to enforce law and order, a just judge and governor will mourn deeply over the plight of the murderer in spite of his evil acts and the demand for justice in his case. Society should mourn as well, ensuring due process through legal means that the murderer is not falsely accused, or was not acting in self-defense.
The chiasm’s double center (ha’adam be’adam) places the entire responsibility for doing justice about a murder of man by man. In the Second World Era, God has deferred to man for justice to be done. He is to perform law and order. To do so, he must rise to the new challenge to be an executive leader with authority and power to rule over men. A sharp divide, therefore, exists between the First World Era and the Second World Era that is more than a Flood. Whereas before, man only ruled over animals, now he is empowered to rule over man, precisely because man has chosen to be more animal-like than God-like.
Man has community obligations to promote and exact justice. Man’s rise to self-consciousness in the Garden experience of sin in the First World Era is now matched by man’s rise to community obligation in the Second World Era. This rise to community obligation and duty did not occur at a level in the First World Era as it does in the Second World Era. Cain’s question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9) shows the frailty of a sinful heart to understand its intuitive law that we are responsible for each other. Sin does this. It numbs our sensitivities to responsibility and accountability.
With our new knowledge instructed by legal code in the Second World Era, Cain’s question seems absurd. Of course we are our brother’s keeper. But we know it now not so much from the heart as from the written law reminding the heart.
Legal code makes community life possible. Now we may better understand the double statements that God said in reply to Noah’s sacrifice. He told Noah (1) that He will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, (2) nor destroy every living thing again for his own sake in spite of the fact that the inclination of man’s heart was always evil. Therefore, to allow man to exist in this new, fragile world, God declares his “hands off” policy for global genocide by a divine act because He has made man responsible for and accountable to restrain humanity by the means of legal code. Legal code makes community life possible.
External, codified law restrains man in the Second World Era unlike the First World Era when law was only determined by the dictates of the heart. In the First World Era we learned that when the heart turned evil, the intuitive law in an evil heart was perverted, twisted and out of character of our being made in God’s image and likeness. With law codified in the Second World Era, a standard must be kept that is higher than one’s heart. Law became etched in stone and not only in flesh.
Second World Era justice. Before the Flood, man was judged only by God. After the Flood, man judges man on behalf of God basing his judgment on God’s laws. No longer will God judge and execute judgment on mankind as a global civilization, leaving only one small family of eight persons to begin a new world in a fragile environment. Man will set up himself in executive relationship to others, will police himself and others, judge himself and others, and execute penalties commensurate with human crimes.
He will act morally and justly as one made in the image and likeness of God, but not because of his consciousness of God or out of the goodness of his human nature. He is too bent morally to do justice. Being made in God’s image and likeness, therefore, is not his governing force as intended for humanity in the First World Era. Instead, God reminds him of his God-likeness in the Second World Era by drawing it to his attention as to why justice must be done. But man will characteristically act morally and justly in the Second World Era through the regulations and enforcement of God’s law by external, human, executive government provided as his environment to restrain his heart. When he fails the laws of society, justice will be executed directly by man and, therefore, indirectly by God. When justice is done by human government, the crime will be judged on the basis of man being in man’s own image.
The basis for human law. The fact that man is made in the image and likeness of God is the basis for law, both in the First and Second World Eras. But man usually carries it out on another basis—that every man is in the image of humanity. For this reason, a judge without a belief in God, may sentence a man justly based on the fact that man is in man’s image and likeness. But this is secondary, of course. Primary, whether the judge understands or not, the essence of man is that he was made in God’s image and likeness.
With this in mind, take a closer look at Genesis 9:1-7. You will find that it is written in the common Hebraic literary style known as reverse symmetry. Reverse symmetry has two classical forms, (1) that of reverse concentric symmetry with a single center and (2) that known as chiasm where a double center exists in the narrative that pushes the emphasis of the narrative to its extreme edges, or its bracket statements. In the overall scheme of Genesis 9:1-7, a chiasm is found with the emphasis on the bracket sentences, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” What comes between these two passages is a movement towards a double center statement that changes the flow of direction back to the first and last statements, or bracket statements.
The passage begins with the introductory statement, “God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them…” What follows in the pericopé forms the chiasm as ABCDEE’D’C’B’A’, with emphasis one the bold bracket statements of Ab and A’.
Genesis 9:1-7: A Chiasm on the Shedding of Blood
A Great commission to populate the earth
“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
B Animals made to fear humans who possess power to kill
The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every
beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with
everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish
of the sea.
C Humanity, male and female, is responsible for animals
Into your hand they are given.
D Animals may be killed for food
Every moving thing that is alive shall be food
for you; I give all to you, as I gave the
green plant.
E The LORD bans eating live animal flesh
Only you shall not eat flesh with its life,
that is, its blood.
E’ The LORD judges murderers
And surely your lifeblood [dimkem
linaphshotekem] I will require [‘edrosh],
D’ Murderers are to be executed
From the hand [miyyad] of every
living being He will require [‘edreshennu] it.
C’ Murderers forfeit their humanity
And from the hand [miyyad] of “the man”
[ha’adam – human race].
B’ Humans with power to kill fear lawful men empowered
to execute
From the hand [miyyad] of the brother of “man”
[‘ish: masculine, social “man”] I will require [‘edrosh] it.
Poetic restatement of family man’s new role to
execute murderers
A Shophek (Whoever sheds)
B dam (blood)
C ha’adam (the man)
C’ be’adam (by man)
B’ damo (his blood)
A’ yishaphek (will be shed)
A’ Great commission to populate the earth
As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth
abundantly and multiply in it.”
The first half of the reverse symmetry concerns the taking of the life of animals for food, and justification of it for nourishment purposes. The second half deals with persons who murder people, and justifies their execution for moral and legal purposes.
Do you find it curious that animals are compared to murderers in this reverse symmetry of the narrative? How are animals and murderers alike? Simply, animals live by instinct. Murderers are humans who choose to think and act on a sub-human level of animal-likeness. They choose to become instinctive brutes, thus, forfeit their humanity. They “follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority … They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish” (2 Peter 2:10-12).
Here are the first laws, or commandments of God in the Second World Era. First, man shall not eat animal flesh with its lifeblood in it. Second, man shall not shed the lifeblood of any person except for the execution of murderers. These two laws are the linchpins for the development of all future laws that respect and honor man as being made in the image and likeness of God, including the complete list of seven Noachide Laws and the Ten Commandments.
This is the beginning of law. Laws bring us together to live in community in a civil way that would be impossible otherwise. They teach us to love God and to love one another when the heart is turned inward towards self.
The beginning of rulers of men and management systems. In the First World Era, man was not to rule over man. Though it seems clear that this became the case (cf. Genesis 6:1-4), it was not by divine decree, but acts of disobedience to intuitive law about man’s relationship to man. He was only to rule the animals according to God’s commission, but as man favored his animal-likeness over his God-likeness he began to rule man as if men and women were animals.
In the Second World Era, man is given a divine decree to police and judge man. For the first time he is put in an executive role by God. Kings, not something the First World Era was to have, would be natural to the Second World Era because of the need to carry out law. Executive decisions moved to a level never before, not only how to rule over the animals but how to control the wildness, the lawless spirit of man. Rulers arose to introduce management concepts based on royalty concepts. Bureaucracy was birthed in the necessity of king’s to spread out their influence and control over man. The management system was born. Every management system the world has accepted is a direct result of man’s failure to obey intuitive law. He must now have kings and other rulers over him, not as God desired at the beginning, but as God imposed for the safety and security of the human race. This is the beginning of leadership.
God’s way is to honor Him as King alone. His secondary plan for man’s survival was to be the King of kings and Lord of lords—the Ruler of rulers.
Lawful man, lawless man and legal man. The fact that lawful man, made in the beauty and holiness of God’s image and likeness, chose instead the image of brute and beast as lawless man, he shall be governed by legal man.
Legal man holds lawless man accountable. God gives humankind codified law, and executive authority to enforce order so humanity may exist without his imposing global judgment, at least for now.
The autonomous man. So it is the humanity governs itself by means of law and order, but for how long? Is their a terminal period? Can this scenario be thwarted by anti-God man when he understands that the whole legal system of the world is predicated on God’s law? Would he not wish to dismantle it for something else?
Consider this. Suppose that legal man is subdued or removed through any means so that law and order intended to preserve God-likeness in man is no longer in effect, i.e., the restraining legal authority and forces are removed from the world. How this may happen we do not venture to say at this point without digressing, but for sake of argument, legal man has been eclipsed in the world. What’s next?
With legal restraint of the animal-likeness in man gone, man prefers lawlessness again as in the days preceding the Flood. Calling it freedom and peace, mankind appears to enter a brave, new world of antiauthoritarian self-rule and self-determined humanity. The legal paradigms which gave longevity to civilizations since the Flood would suddenly collapse. In fact, this would not be the beginning of a new era as its advocates purport. Instead, it would begin the climactic and catastrophic end of the Second World Era. Corruption would accelerate at the speed of thought in similar fashion as in the days of Noah before the Flood.
Lawless man, now free and brave, vainly will seek to stabilize the frailty of the new orderlessness now rapidly arising out of the legal vacuum. Stability-seekers who do not wish to return to the old status of being legal man, yet will be unhappy with the outcome of the newly freed lawless man. They will seek to turn the lawless man into the autonomous man.
Advent of the Autonomous Man. Though destined for failure, yet in their false hope of self-autonomy, they will invoke the epitome of brute instinct in human nature to arise as the sophisticate autonomous man. In their eyes, he will be understood as the shining beacon of the “anointed” perfect human. He will become a god made in the image of man to rule mankind.
Indeed, he will arise and rule, being granted permission by the one true God to arise as executive authority over the world. Almighty God is not shut out by man’s ruthlessness. God permits the Beast-man to rule the earth. Further, He will allow man’s bestial instincts to multiply and be manifest on a global scale. Man, thereby, condemns himself and executes judgment on himself. God will let the blood run deep as man carries out his self-sentence of death. Genocidal instincts will not be restrained by law and order.
Really, he is the Beast-man. Many of the world’s populace, in their self-autonomy, will become bestial men, both male and female. It is what happens to man who not only denies or rejects God, but denies or rejects his God-likeness.
Yet only one person will become the crowning pinnacle of this reckless, sub-human ambition. To his enemies he will be known as the Beast-man. He will be the human antithesis of the Messiah, the God-man who came in the first century. He will set himself up as a god, fully human and self-determined.
Messiah Jesus [Yeshua], being God in flesh, offered in his first coming in the first century A.D. his kingdom’s rule, and the means to live within it. Again, for those who received Him and submitted to the message of his rule, He gave them his Spirit to write God’s law on their human hearts. They became the new, spiritual humanity as sons and daughters of God.
The Beast-man will oppose God and his rule with all of his bestial, brute instincts. Overall, the world will praise him for the freeing humanity from its Creator and giving them peace, or wholeness, in their own rights and terms apart from God.
Meanwhile, the Beast-man, in his wrath against lingering remnants of the law and order, will introduce new rules and order befitting a beast. In fact, these so-called rules are merely self-serving. Those who oppose him will be persecuted and killed by his vast legions of supporters, their bestial nature revealing its thirst for blood.
In this sorry state of humanity with the God’s likeness in man utterly trampled upon and refuted, the blood of God’s people will be shed freely without justice done. After all, law is perverted on the premise that man may kill people in his interest of self-autonomy from God. The Almighty Creator of man who placed the rule of law in man’s hands after the Flood, mourns the blood of his people being shed. Autonomous man forfeits his right to rule any longer. In a moment unexpected, Messiah will return and take back all rule, for it is rightly his to give and to take away. Then his kingdom will be revealed on earth.
The writer of the book of Revelation quotes angels at this future time singing Moses’ song. They declare: “Just and true are your ways, King of the ages” (15:3). Another angel who, like Moses, turned waters into blood (cf. 16:5-7), said:
Righteous are you who are and who were,
O Holy One,
because you judged these things.
For they poured out the blood of saints and prophets,
and you have given them blood to drink.
They deserve it.
A future time of lawlessness for the Second World Era. How do we know this with certainty? The Bible teaches us so. A day is coming, the Bible teaches, that the restraint of law will be diminished and removed from man. “For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work,” the apostle Paul wrote, “but the one who now restrains it will continue to do so until he is taken out of the way.” The apostle adds the startling news: “Then the lawless one will be revealed” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8), the Antichrist.
In that day, mankind will be left to its deceitful heart, even as it was in the days of Noah (cf. Matthew 24:37). Codified law will turn on its ear. What is good shall be called evil, and what is evil shall be called good. God’s invisible qualities impressed on man, though clearly seen, will be ignored or rejected (cf. Romans 1:18-32). Community built on legal code that respects God-likeness in man will collapse to the wild, lawless side of human nature.
Further, a charismatic, lawless leader called the Beast (cf. Revelation 13:1-10) will seize the day who will rule, not by virtue and character, but by values and personality. Lawlessness will again prevail in a new society of permissiveness. Man’s likeness to animals will attempt to overthrow man’s likeness to God (cf. Romans 1:20). Both intuitive knowledge of law, already muted and twisted by sin, and external codified law, now replaced by the Lawless One, will cease. Lawlessness will restrain the lawful.
That day is not yet. Though lawlessness is expressed in many ways in the world today, though it secretly spreads its darkness in many circles, though it tempts man to think of himself as a law to himself, that day is not yet. Meanwhile, we obey the laws of God and the laws of man that favor God’s image and likeness in man. Meanwhile, we endure to the end of our days, perhaps even to the end of this age knowing that man’s depravity will not overcome God’s righteousness in us. For it was God’s righteousness found in Noah that granted him God’s favor to escape the Flood. With this hope we await the return of our Lord Jesus [Yeshua]. May we find favor in his eyes even as Noah did.
|
