Genesis 9:6
Genesis 9:66Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind.
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 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.
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 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.