Genesis 9:5 - Exposition

And surely . Again the conjunction אַךְ introduces a restriction. The blood of beasts might without fear be shed for necessary uses, but the blood of man was holy and inviolable. Following the LXX . ( και Ì γα Ì ρ ), Jerome, Pererius, Mercerus, Calvin, Poole, Willet give a causal sense to the conjunction, as if it supplied the reason of' the foregoing restriction—a sense which, according to Furst ('Hebrews Lex.,' sub nom .) it sometimes, though rarely, has; as in 2 Kings 24:3 ; Psalms 39:12 ; Psalms 68:22 ; but in each case אַךְ is better rendered "surely." Your blood of your lives.

(a) the individual man himself, and

(b) his brother,

i.e. the suicide and the murderer (Maimonides, Wordsworth, Murphy), or the murderer and his brother man, i.e. kinsman, or goel (Michaelis, Bohlen, Baumgarten, Kalisch, Bush), or the ordinary civil authorities (Kalisch, Candlish, Jamieson)—or