Our scripture will be coming from:Genesis 9:1-6 KJV [1] And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.[2] And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.[3] Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.[4] But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.[5] And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.[6] Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.Now it is time for our verse break down:Genesis 9:1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.God had made the man and the woman on the sixth day of creation, instructing them to, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, found in Genesis 1: 28. Now, after the judgment carried out through the great flood, God begins what we might call a “re-creation” with Noah and his sons.Eight people are to fulfill the mandate given to Adam and Eve, found in Genesis 7:13, and 1 Peter 3:20.The word replenish is meaningful here because we know that there was a civilization before the Flood, and now there is to be a civilization after the Flood.(When Adam was told to replenish the earth, we assume that there had been living creatures—I don’t know what to call them—before Adam. They apparently were living creatures of God’s creation; anything I could say beyond that would be pure speculation.)Notice that the first thing God tells Noah to do is to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” There is to be the propagation of the race. Remember that God gave this command under special circumstances. Today we are in a time of population explosion, and there is overpopulation that is quite dangerous.However, Noah stood in a unique position. He and his family were the only folk around.Can you imagine driving down the freeway, going to work in the morning, and there are cars in front of you, cars to the right of you, cars to the left of you, cars behind you, cars honking—you’re in a traffic snarl?Then about a year later you go out on the freeway and there is not another car there. Yours is the only one. You might as well take down all the traffic lights. You won’t need them because you are the only one driving through.This would be quite an unusual experience for us, would it not?Well, this was the experience of Noah in his day.Genesis 9:2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.And the fear of you and the dread of youThe second part re-establishes man‘s dominion over the inferior animals. It was now founded not as at first in love and kindness, but in terror; this dread of man prevails among all the stronger as well as the weaker members of the animal tribes and keeps away from his haunts all but those employed in his service.Another part of the covenant is man’s protection and rulership over the animal world. I take it that before this time the relationship was different. Apparently man had not been a meat eater before. All the animals were tame, and one is not inclined to eat an animal that is a pet.Remember that the animals came to Noah when the Flood was impending; they seemed to have no fear of him at all. Now the animals will fear and dread man. However, man is responsible for the animal world. Man’s treatment of the animal world is a brutal story. Man has attempted to exterminate many of the animals. Man would have slaughtered all the whales around the Hawaiian Islands for the money they could get if the government had not intervened.At one time the buffalo were in great herds in the West, but they were killed by man. Today we must have places of refuge to protect animals and bird life. It is well that we do that. The animals of Africa are being exterminated. Man is a mighty brutal creature. We need a government to protect the animals from man.Genesis 9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.Humanity’s diet now is expanded beyond the vegetation permitted in Genesis 1: 30, and meat becomes a new source of protein. We may wonder why God gives such permission at this particular time since creatures are not especially numerous.Unclean animals had been taken aboard the ark in twos, while clean animals had been taken by sevens, found in Genesis 7: 2, 3; and some of the latter have already been sacrificed in Genesis 8: 20.But capture of creatures for food will not be easy since they now fear humans found in Genesis 9: 2. It seems that just as man has to sweat to produce food from the ground found in Genesis 3:19, he now will be required to exercise a similar effort to obtain meat from earth’s creatures.Now God gives to man a new provision for food. Before the Flood God gave to man the green earth, the plant life, to eat. Now He tells Noah that he is able to eat animal life.Genesis 9:4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.God next imposes a limitation on the new allowance concerning humanity’s diet: people are forbidden to eat flesh, or meat, with its blood. The restriction and the reason for it will be restated in the Mosaic law in Leviticus 17:10–14, and Deuteronomy 12:16, 23–25.Taken together, the passages from Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy imply that blood either is or somehow represents a creature’s life force. One may suggest that the center of life is in the heart or the brain, but these organs function only if the supply of blood to them is maintained. To cut off the blood supply means certain death. The draining of the blood before eating the meat was a way of returning the life force of the animal to the God who gave it life. This offers recognition that individuals have taken the life with permission and are partaking of God’s bounty as His guests.Some suggest that this principle remains intact today, found in Acts 15:20, 29. Others point to Jesus’s purging of all meats found in Mark 7:18, 19 as a basis for saying that dietary regulations from the Old Testament are no longer binding. This may be one of those areas where differences of opinion can exist without passing judgment on those who hold them found in Romans 14:1– 4. The blood should be drained out. The blood speaks of life; draining it indicates that the animal should be killed in a merciful way rather than prolonging its suffering and that it must be really dead.Genesis 9:5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.God expands on the previous stipulation. So important is the principle that life is in the blood that He states and surely your blood of your lives will I require.God will, first of all, require a reckoning for human life that is taken by every beast that is responsible for so doing. God declares that He will keep a record of every person killed by a member of the animal kingdom, and He will hold the deadly animal accountable.Of course, animals do not understand the concept of guilt, even so, they are accountable to their Creator for their actions.How much more, then, is this the case with those created in God’s image, beings who are capable of understanding guilt!Both this verse and the next address our accountability to God in this regard. This is an interesting statement, but not so meaningful to those of us who do not live on a frontier. However, there are certain animals even we encounter—such as skunks and opossums which may be rabid or disease-carrying rodents—that pose a real danger to man.Now the fifth and the last statement in the new covenant is the most amazing—Genesis 9:6 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.God requires of humans that the life of a murderer, whoso sheddeth man’s blood, must be taken as punishment for the heinous act. This principle is later embedded within the Law of Moses, where a distinction is made between premeditated murder and what we would call involuntary manslaughter today, found in Exodus 21:12-14.The reason for the kind of punishment we see in our text is based on our uniqueness as creatures made in the image of God. So passionate is God about preserving and protecting this uniqueness that destroying a life must be disciplined to the ultimate degree: life for life, also see Leviticus 24:17 and Numbers 35:31.The Old Testament basis for capital punishment is thus quite clear. To take the life of a murderer is to be considered an act of the utmost respect for life-life as a creative gift of God.