Genesis 9:6

6. Whoso sheddeth The command is here repeated and enforced more explicitly . The beast that endangered human life should be slain, (Genesis 9:5;) so it shall be man’s duty to take the life of the murderer, for murder is a crime against the divine majesty, which is imaged in man . These words are the divinely granted charter of civil government . The means by which this precept is to be carried out in the details of human government are left to human wisdom and experience, but man is here authorized and commanded to form institutions for the protection and welfare of society, and to defend them, if need be, at the sacrifice of life . Civil government is of God; “The powers that be are ordained of God . ” Romans 13:1. So the heathens regarded the magistrate as God’s vicegerent . ( Iliad, 1: 239 . ) Luther remarks: “If God here grants to man the power over life and death, much more does he also grant him power over inferior things, such as fortune, family, wife, children, servants, lands . God intends that all these should be placed under the authority of certain men, whose duty is to punish the guilty . ” The rulers, as God’s representatives, were designated Elohim among the Hebrews . Psalms 82:1. “He judgeth among the Elohim” magistrates . From these commands the Jewish synagogue drew what they styled the seven Noachic precepts, which were obligatory upon all proselytes . These are seven prohibitions forbidding, 1) idolatry, 2) blasphemy, 3) murder, 4) incest, 5) theft, 6) eating blood, 7) disobedience to magistrates . Civil government has its authority, not from expediency, not from any primeval social compact, but from the ordinance of God. It is not founded on the shifting sands of popular opinion, but on the eternal rock of the divine justice. Obedience to magistrates is enjoined, not because of its expediency, not because of a social covenant, but because “whosoever resisteth the power, (of the magistrate,) resisteth the ordinance of God.” Romans 13:2.

For in the image of God made he man This is the reason for the stern and stringent command. He who slays a man slays God’s image, and God demands blood for blood. The murderer’s life is forfeited, and it is not only the right, but the duty, of the magistrate, who “bears the sword,” to fulfil the ordinance of God. This was the universal sentiment, or rather instinct, of antiquity, as shown in heathen poetry and law. This, let it be noted, is not a Mosaic precept given to the Hebrew people, but one enjoined upon the race as it goes forth from its cradle upon the renewed earth. Hence in the infancy of society, before judicial processes became regular and methodical, those nearest the scene of a murder felt called upon to avenge it. This is the origin of the institution of Goelism, which, in the patriarchal times, provided for the punishment of the murderer. By the Goel ( גואל ) is to be understood the nearest relative of the murdered man, whose duty it was to avenge his death, and who is, therefore, called “the avenger,” or rather, the “redeemer, of blood;” that is, one who pays for blood with blood. Goel thus came to mean simply the nearest blood relative. Ruth 4:1; Ruth 4:6; Ruth 4:8, etc . Hence the word is transferred, with great tenderness and power, to the divine Redeemer, the Goel of the race . Christ is our nearest kinsman, our elder brother, who redeems us by giving blood for blood, and who will avenge our spiritual murder upon Satan, that archetypal murderer in the spiritual world . Hebrews 2:14.