Genesis 9:5

Summary

Genesis 9:5 states that God will hold accountable ("require") the blood/life of humans, addressed to survivors of the flood, using the verb 'edrosh ("I will seek/require", H1875) three times — once regarding animals as agents, and once regarding humans (specifically "a man, his brother") as agents who take the life of another human.

Key words

• 'Akh ("nevertheless/surely", H0389) — an adverb opening the verse, marking emphasis or contrast with what precedes.
• nafshoteikhem ("your lives", H5315) — feminine plural noun in construct with the suffix -khem ("your", H9026); the plural form refers to multiple individual lives, distinct from the singular nefesh at the verse's end.
• 'edrosh ("I will seek/require", H1875) — qal imperfect, first person, repeated three times across the verse, structuring it into three parallel demands.
• yad ("hand of", H3027) — masculine/common singular construct, appearing three times to mark the agent from whom the accounting is required (animal, humankind, a man's brother).
• 'ish 'achiv ("a man, his brother", H0376 + H0251) — construct chain meaning literally "a man of his brother," an idiomatic way of denoting an individual person in relation to another individual.

What the text says

The verse is built on a triple repetition of the verb 'edrosh (H1875), each instance governing a different clause: (1) 'et-dimkhem le-nafshoteikhem 'edrosh — "your blood, for your lives, I will require"; (2) mi-yad kol-chayyah 'edreshennu — "from the hand of every chayyah ('animal', H2416) I will require it"; (3) u-mi-yad ha-'adam mi-yad 'ish 'achiv 'edrosh 'et-nefesh ha-'adam — "and from the hand of humankind, from the hand of a man, his brother, I will require the life of humankind." The repeated construct noun yad ("hand of") functions as a marker of agency, naming who is held to account in each case — first animals, then humans acting against other humans.

A grammatical nuance is the shift from plural nafshoteikhem ("your lives," H5315) in the first clause to singular nefesh ha-'adam ("the life of humankind," H5315 + H0120) in the final clause. The plural addresses the audience collectively as individuals, while the singular at the end treats "humankind" as a unified category whose life is at stake when one man's hand is raised against his brother.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the phrase mi-yad 'ish 'achiv ("from the hand of a man, his brother") as three separate phrases — "de manu hominis, de manu viri, et fratris ejus" — adding an extra "de manu" ("from the hand") not present in the Hebrew's two-part construct chain. The LXX condenses the same phrase to "ἐκ χειρὸς ἀδελφοῦ" ("from the hand of a brother"), omitting the term corresponding to 'ish ("man", H0376) that the Hebrew includes alongside "brother." The LXX also renders 'Akh (H0389, "nevertheless/surely") as "καὶ γὰρ" ("for indeed"), shifting the connective sense from contrast/emphasis to explanatory continuation.