By Matthew Lynch, Regent College Vancouver

The U.S. Justice Department announced [last] Monday that it will resume federal executions after a hiatus of nearly two decades. The timing of this announcement in the middle of a nation-wide cry for police reform raises questions about the motives for resuming this practice.

But for many Christians, the death penalty is a biblical mandate. Many Evangelicals appeal to the Bible’s supposedly clear teaching on the death penalty to defend its ongoing place in the American justice system. Genesis 9 is key here, since it seems to teach that God “requires” humans to take the life of a murderer in exchange for their deed (9:5-6).[2]

Before his death in 2012, Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, the nation’s largest Christian prison-focused non-profit, declared that he backed the death penalty on biblical grounds. Colson writes,

The Noahic covenant (Gen 9) antedates Israel and the Mosaic code; it transcends Old Testament law per se and mirrors ethical legislation binding for all cultures and eras. The sanctity of human life is rooted in the universal creation ethic and thus retains its force in society.[3]

For Colson, Genesis 9 mandates the practice of capital punishment. It is a “non-negotiable standard” of biblical justice, and a moral society depends on it.

But Christians have good reason to leave Colson in the cold on this one. The case rests on shaky biblical foundations.

But Christians have good reason to leave Colson in the cold on this one. The case rests on shaky biblical foundations. First, Genesis 9:5-6 does not grant humanity power to exercise life-for-life punishment. Instead, it retains that right for God alone. Unfortunately, our translations often lead us astray. Here’s the NIV’s:

And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

“Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.”

First, the thrice-repeated phrase “I will … demand an accounting” refers exclusively in the Old Testament to the action taken by the one dispensing justice, and not by some delegated party. It describes the action of an avenger—or justice enactor—against a perpetrator on behalf of a victim.[4] Here the avenger is God himself. It’s as if God is saying, “I myself will hold a murderer accountable.” God doesn’t outsource the dispensing of justice to other humans. This is consistent with God’s role in Genesis 4, where he acts as avenger for Cain. But in this case, his justice is proportionate, and not seven-fold (Gen 4:15).

Further, the NIV’s suggestion that some other human needs to uphold the death penalty is faulty. It suggests that the murderer will have their blood shed by some other human (Gen 9:6a): “by humans shall their blood be shed.” But if God himself holds the murderer accountable according to the previous verse, how can this be? Permit me a technical moment. The Hebrew preposition translated “for” is in this case a preposition of exchange, and should be rendered “in exchange for.”[5] The symmetric (i.e., “chiastic”) arrangement of v. 6a—most likely a proverb and not law [6]—helps us see the nature of this exchange:

A Whoever sheds (*shafak)

B the blood (dam)

>C of the human (ha’adam)

>C in exchange for the human (ba’adam)

B his blood (dam)

A will be shed (*shafak)

The clear antecedent for the second “human,” mentioned in C, is the human whose life was just taken. C isn’t referring to a police officer, a prison guard, or the State. Nothing in the verse suggests that God universally grants other humans the power to take the life of the perpetrator. That right lies solely in God’s hands. Genesis 9:6a is better translated: “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, in exchange for that human shall his blood be shed.”[7] By whom shall his blood be shed? By God. In short, Genesis 9 addresses God’s right to redress the wrongs of bloodshed in a post-flood world—a right he often refuses to exercise. It doesn’t hand humans or the State power over life and death.[8] While that power is later given, for a time, to Israel, nothing in Genesis 9 suggests that this is so.

If the pre-Mosaic context of this chapter carries universal wisdom, we would be better situating Genesis 9 within the broader biblical “vengeance-is-mine-not-yours” tradition, since God is the sole actor here. Power over life and death belongs in God’s hands (Lev 19:18; 1 Sam 26:9-11; Rom 12:19), and we’re not to take it. In fact, in the same breath that Lev 19:18 prohibits revenge, it commends love for neighbor, a point that Jesus clearly recognizes. This tradition seeks to limit the human propensity to take excess vengeance, to foster neighborliness and protection for the vulnerable,[9] and to leave the avenging of murder in God’s hands.

Any teaching on the death penalty that doesn’t factor in Jesus’ teachings (rooted in the Old Testament) should at least give us pause. In another symmetrically arranged proverb that seems to draw from Genesis 9:6a, Jesus challenges us to consider what would happen if humans did take the divine prerogatives of Genesis 9 for themselves:

A For all

B Who take a sword

B’ By a sword

A’ Will die

(Matt 26:52)

Second, the intimate ties between racial injustice and the death penalty are grounds for abandoning the practice. Recent events surrounding the death of George Floyd should force us to examine such practices. In the United States, convicted murderers are far more likely to receive the death penalty if black, and far more again if the victim is white.[10]

Location also matters. Of the nearly 1,400 individuals executed since 1976, about 1,000 occurred in southern states, where capital punishment picked up the baton of Jim Crow terror. Numerous studies have also demonstrated that the death penalty is an ineffective deterrent, is costly to the state, is arbitrarily applied, and that “racial animus is a strong predictor of support for the death penalty.”[11]

Whites disproportionately favor the death penalty by 34 percentage points compared to African Americans, and this number has stayed relatively similar for the past 30 years.[12] Furthermore, one in nine of those sentenced to death since 1976 have been wrongly convicted and exonerated.[13] And those are just the demonstrated cases.

Sadly, 54% of Americans still favor the death penalty (though the number has steadily declined since the 1990s). White Evangelical Protestants overwhelmingly support the death penalty, at 79%. Yet, as David Gushee notes, “[N]o political community appears capable of creating a system that can adjudicate murder cases with consistency and impartial justice. Entrusting states with the routine power to kill their own people repeatedly has proven disastrous, spilling far beyond our own 140 [now 165+] errors in thirty-five years to systemic regimes of state killing.”[14]

The injustice of capital punishment as a practice should be enough to abandon the practice, in addition to the deeply problematic reading of Genesis 9. While Genesis 9 is not the only plank in the biblical case for capital punishment, it’s a big one.[15] For Christians who affirm that Black Lives Matter, and that thinking biblically matters, that plank needs to come out.[16]

Thanks to Dru Johnson and Iain Provan for feedback on this article.

[2] See discussion in Norman L Geisler, Christian Ethics: Contemporary Issues and Options (Baker Academic, 2010), 202, 215.

[3] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-i-support-capital-punishment/. Accessed 06/10/2020.

[4] Whenever "blood" is "sought" (with Heb. *drsh or *bqsh), it describes the action of a deliverer who pursues the victim's blood by means of taking the perpetrator's life. In plain terms, it describes the action of an avenger toward a perpetrator on behalf of a victim. The phrase “from the hand of” (miyyad) expresses the source (from X) of the victim’s blood in the hand of the perpetrator. The last use of the Heb. Phrase miyyad + dam (by the hand of + blood) occurred in Gen 4:11, to describe the earth receiving blood from a murderer, namely, Cain’s hand. The ground opened its mouth to receive Abel’s blood from you (miyadeka), or from your hand. In Gen 9:5, God is requiring blood from (miyyad) any beast (not by means of any beast!) and from (miyyad) the human, from the man (for) his brother. In 2 Sam 4:11 David demands the blood of Ishbaal from the hands of Baanah and Recab (Shall I (David) not require his (Ishbaal’s) blood from your hand?). So in 9:5, it is the blood of the victim that is upon the hands (so to speak) of the perpetrator that God requires back to himself. Nothing in the verse suggests that God outsources responsibility for this to humans. This aligns perfectly with 9:4, where blood is prohibited. It belongs to God (cf. Lev 3:17).

[5] Just as Yhwh had promised to avenge Cain’s blood should any kill him (4:15), now God would require the life of anyone who murdered his brother (note the emphasis on brother in 9:5). The difference here is that vengeance is like-for-like, instead of seven-fold violence. Not surprisingly, the beth pretii (beth preposition of exchange) also appears Dt 19:21, when the human-mediated lex talionis law appears: Show no pity: life in exchange for life, eye in exchange for eye, tooth in exchange for tooth, hand in exchange for hand, foot in exchange for foot. In that case, human mediation is in view, a point of significant difference with Gen 9:5-6.

[6] See Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee, Kingdom ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (IVP, 2003), 222-223.

[7] Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB 3; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 705.

[8] There are other reasons to question the use of Gen 9 in support of capital punishment. See Michael L. Westmoreland-White and Glen H. Stassen, "Biblical Perpsectives on the Death Penalty" in David Novak ed., Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning (Eerdmans, 2004), 123-138.

[9] See Dru Johnson’s forthcoming Biblical Philosophy (Cambridge).

[10] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/aclu_dp_factsheet4.pdf. Accessed 06/07/2020.

[11] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.914.8227&rep=rep1&type=pdf, according to a 2000 National Election Survey. Accessed 06/08/2020.

[12] James D. Unnever, Shaun L. Gabbidon, A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime (Routledge, 20), 33.

[13] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence. Accessed 06/09/2020. Bryan Stevenson details these sad realities in his inspiring book Just Mercy. This book is recommended reading, and the film adaptation is free during June across many platforms.

[14] David P. Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision is Key to the World’s Future (Eerdmans, 2013), chap 10 section 4.

[15] Another key plank in the argument is the “eye for an eye” law in Exod 21:23-25 and Deut 19:21. I address this law elsewhere - http://theologicalmisc.net/2015/10/jesus-and-old-testament-vengeance/. Dale S. Recinella, addresses the use of retributive law in application to the death penalty in his, The Biblical True about America's Death Penalty (Northeastern University Press, 2015).

[16] For a more developed case against capital punishment, see Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life, chap 10 section 4.