---
title: Genesis 9:6
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/genesis-9-6/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/genesis-9-6.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Genesis 9:6
testament: OT
section: Law
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Genesis 9:6

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind.

## JW Usage

Genesis 9:6 is cited in the Watchtower's blood doctrine as a universal moral law about the sanctity of blood — "the life is in the blood" — that grounds the New Testament prohibition at Acts 15:29 and, by extension, the modern transfusion ban. It also surfaces in the firearms-and-careers literature, where the verse is invoked against police, armed-security, and military employment on the principle that shedding blood — even lawfully — incurs guilt.

## Protestant Usage

The verse reads in full: "Anyone shedding man's blood, by man will his own blood be shed; for in God's image he made man." The construction is not a prohibition but an institution — God is establishing post-flood human government with the magistrate's sword as the appointed response to murder. "By man" authorises judicial execution; the verse founds the office of the sword-bearer that Romans 13:4 then describes in the New Covenant. Read on its own terms, the verse rules out vigilante violence and grounds lawful civil authority in the same breath — it does not extend to a categorical prohibition on armed service or medical transfusion. The "image of God" rationale is what makes murder grave; that same rationale is what gives the magistrate authority to act against it.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Career Extension of Blood-Guilt](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/blood-guilt-firearms-careers.md) — Romans 13:4 — God Appoints the Sword-Bearer [Practice]