Genesis 9:6

Summary

Genesis 9:6 states that whoever sheds human blood will have his own blood shed by a human agent, grounding this statement in the claim that God made humankind in his image. The verse uses parallel phrasing and a causal clause introduced by ki ("for", H3588A) to link the two statements.

Key words

• sho.feKh ("[the] one who sheds", H8210H) — qal participle, masculine singular construct, describing an ongoing or characteristic action ("the one doing the shedding") rather than a single completed act.
• dam ("blood of", H1818) — masculine singular construct, linked to ha'adam ("the human", H0120G) to form "blood of the human."
• ba'adam ("by/in the human", H0120G with preposition H9003) — the same noun 'adam reappears, now marked with the preposition be- ("in/by"), shifting from object (blood shed) to agent/location (by whom it is shed).
• yishaFekh ("it will be shed", H8210H) — niphal (passive) imperfect, contrasting with the active participle in the first clause; it denotes a future or ongoing passive action, "will be shed" or "is being shed."
• Tzelem ("image of", H6754) — masculine singular construct, joined to 'Elohim ("God", H0430G) to form "image of God," the stated basis for the preceding statement.

What the text says

The verse is built on a grammatical mirroring between its two halves. The first half opens with the active participle shofekh ("the one shedding") governing dam ha'adam ("blood of the human") as its object. The second half reverses the construction: ba'adam ("by/in the human") now stands where the object once was, followed by damo ("his blood", H1818 + suffix H9023) as the new grammatical subject, paired with the passive verb yishafekh ("will be shed"). This produces a chiastic structure (shedder—blood—human / human—blood—shed) that in Hebrew visually and grammatically inverts subject and object between the two clauses, a symmetry not fully reproducible in translation.

The causal particle ki ("for", H3588A) introduces the second sentence, tying the preceding statement to the following clause about Tzelem 'Elohim ("image of God"). The clause ends with 'asah ("he made", H6213H), a qal perfect third-person verb, with 'Elohim as its grammatical subject and ha'adam marked by the object marker 'et (H0853) as its object: "God made the human."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final verb as ἐποίησα ("I made"), first person singular, where the Hebrew 'asah is third person ("he made"). The Vulgate uses a passive construction, factus est ("was made"), differing from the Hebrew's active verb with 'Elohim as subject.