Avenger of blood

“ He will be put to death. The avenger of blood will kill the murderer when he comes upon him. 22 But if he pushed him suddenly, without enmity, or threw any object at him without ambushing him, 23 or threw a stone at him large enough to kill, without seeing him, and he died, but he was not his enemy, and he did not try to harm him, 24 then the assembly will judge between the killer and the avenger of blood in terms of these principles. 25 And the assembly will protect the manslayer from the avenger of blood, and the assembly will return him to the city of refuge that he fled to. ”

“ Like the Israelites of old, the blood avenger pursues the murderer of his friend or clansman until he finds him, and if he should fail to do so during his lifetime, his children are bound to act on his behalf. ”

“ Thou art wounded—and with a poisoned weapon, I warrant me, for by force of stab so weak an animal as that could scarce hope to do more than raze the lion's hide.—Suck the poison from his wound one of you—the venom is harmless on the lips, though fatal when it mingles with the blood. ”

“ Under the Mosaic ritual, the forms and the symbolisms of sacrifice were various. But through them all, where blood was an element,—in the sin-offering, in the trespass-offering, in the burnt-offering, in the peace-offering,—blood always represented life, never death. Death was essential to its securing; but, when secured, blood was life. Death, as the inevitable wages of sin, had already passed unto all men ”

“ They came with banner, spear, and shield;
And it was proved in Bosworth-field.
Not long the Avenger was withstood,
Earth help'd him with the cry of blood:
St. ”

“ Yet more convincing than all, in the line of such proofs that it is restitution, and not vengeance, that is sought by the pursuit of blood in the mission of the goel, is the fact that in various countries, when a man has died a natural death, it is the custom to seek blood, or life, from those immediately about him ”

“ I kill, and I make alive. I wound, and I heal. There is no one who can deliver out of my hand. 32:40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, And say, As I live forever, 32:41 if I whet my glittering sword, My hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to my adversaries, and will recompense those who hate me. 32:42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood. My sword shall devour flesh with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the head of the leaders of the enemy. 32:43 Rejoice, you nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. ”

“ Never shall ye eat in blood your shameful feasts through sin defiled with blood. For most he injureth himself and his soul's honour whoso shall slay another with the sword. Verily! in no wise shall his heart have joy in his reward! For many times more heavily will I avenge man's life upon his murderer, because his sword hath prospered in violence and blood, and his hands in death. ”

“ The [158] blood of one human victim, it is said, “gives her a gleam of pleasure that endures a thousand years; and the sacrifice of three men together, would prolong her ecstacy for a thousand centuries.” ”

“ The ground is alive with serpents, even the spirits of our valiant dead, and they speak. They speak but one word and that is ‘Blood! Blood—blood—blood!’” repeated the frightful monster. “Blood must flow! blood! blood!” And uttering a series of deafening howls she fell prone to the earth in frightful convulsions.
Not one of the spectators moved. ”

“ Bleeding as a mutilation has an origin akin to the origins of other mutilations. Did we not find that some uncivilized tribes, as the Samoyeds, drink the warm blood of animals—did we not find among existing cannibals, such as the Feejeeans, proofs that savages drink the blood of still-living human victims—it would seem incredible that from taking the blood of a vanquished enemy was derived the ceremony of offering blood to a ghost, and to a god. ”

“ The wide-spread popular superstition of the vampire and of the ghoul, seems to be an outgrowth of this universal belief, that transfused blood is re-vivification. The bloodless shades, leaving their graves at night, seek renewed life, by drawing out the blood of [115] those who sleep; taking of the life of the living, to supply temporary life to the dead. This idea was prevalent in ancient Babylon and Assyria. ”

“ Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. ”

“ The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors that surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God created for nobler purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. ”

“ The body lay at full length upon its back; the hair was clotted with blood and standing out in every direction; the teeth were clenched in agony; the eyes glassy and open, as if glaring upon the moon that shone in mid-heaven above. One arm had been cut off at the elbow, while a large incision in the left breast showed where the heart had been torn out, to satisfy the vengeance of an inhuman enemy. There were shot wounds and sword cuts all over the body, and other mutilations made by the zopilotes and wolves. ”

“ But by the eternal thunderer above, She shall not triumph thus------------ Mine aged arm, inur'd to war and blood, Is not so worn by time, nor yet so weak, But it can send her murmuring soul to hell; Nay, harder still, has strength to grasp the hilt, And plunge this vet'ran sword in thy base breast, To let out that false blood that taints thy soul And poisons all my peace. ”

“ Having caused us to sit fronting each other on a straw-carpet, he made an incision in each of our right legs, from which he extracted blood, and inter-changing it, he exclaimed aloud: ‘If either of you break this brotherhood now established between you, may the lion devour him, the serpent poison him, bitterness be in his food, his friends desert him, his gun burst in his hands and wound him, and everything that is bad do wrong to him until death.’” [29] The same blood now flowed in the veins of both Stanley and Mirambo. They were friends and brothers in a sacred covenant; life for life. ”

“ As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy’s head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. ”

“ The sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a man and the weapon which has wounded him is probably founded on the notion that the blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood in his body. For a like reason the Papuans of Tumleo, an island off New Guinea, are careful to throw into the sea the bloody bandages with which their wounds have been dressed, for they fear that if these rags fell into the hands of an enemy he might injure them magically thereby. ”

“ Water is sprinkled on the head, and as the creature shakes itself to throw off the drops, an attendant swings round a heavy sword and decapitates it with one blow. The bleeding head is caught up and presented to the pujari, who seizes it eagerly. Placing his lips to the artery he presents all the appearance of drinking the blood. ”

“ That blood is the blood of our brave, who would not obey the law—this knife is the weapon of [Pg 171] death. Fear not—for the arrows and the knife are not for the pale man—fear not—beloved of her in whom we have put our hope. ”

“ To which we reply, that the issuing of fresh and crimson blood from the wound or the nostrils of the persons body that hath been murthered, is always a certain sign that the 307Corps that doth so bleed was murthered, because those that die naturally or violently by chance, man-slaughter or in the war, do not bleed, as hath been proved before. ”

“ Although the vampire's capacity is limited, this little light-hating bat makes a circular incision in its slumbering victim's flesh with such precision and stealthy finesse that the sleeper rarely awakens. After the vampire laps up its fill of blood and flies away, blood usually continues to flow from the wound. It is this continuing flow of blood which ordinarily awakens the victim. By the time the victim becomes fully alert, however, he may have lost much more blood than the bat itself has actually absorbed. ”

“ When they consult on some great and weighty matter, they observe a most strange and incredible custom; for they sacrifice a man, striking him with a sword near the diaphragm, cross over his breast, who being thus slain, and falling down, they judge of the event from the manner of his fall, the convulsions of his members, and the flux of blood ”

“ Blood must flow, for blood alone can cleanse. Blood alone can cleanse.”
A young soldier was caught as he climbed the stairs of a small house. He was brought into the street and told to kneel. “I have heard of your Jesus and his forgiveness,” he said; “now I know.” He knelt with a sort of dignity, the dignity that death brings to the brave, and his head fell.
His words struck through the blood fever to the heart of the man in black. For a second he closed his eyes and when he opened them again he saw with his old clearness. He knew that blood is blood and shame came over him. ”

“ AND after this I saw, beholding, the body plenteously bleeding in seeming of [1] the Scourging, as thus:—The fair skin was broken full deep into the tender flesh with sharp smiting all about the sweet body. So plenteously the hot blood ran out that there was neither seen skin nor wound, but as it were all blood. And when it came where it should have fallen down, then it vanished. Notwithstanding, the bleeding continued awhile: till it might be seen and considered. ”

“ And credit me, as has been indeed proved by numerous instances, that, if the murderer shall endeavour to shroud himself by making such an appeal, the antipathy which subsists between the dead body and the hand which dealt the fatal blow that divorced it from the soul will awaken some imperfect life, under the influence of which the veins of the dead man will pour forth at the fatal wounds the blood which has been so long stagnant in the veins. ”

“ It would seem to be because of such cramping, that no one of the modern students of myth and folk-lore, of primitive ideas and customs, and of man’s origin and history, has brought into their true prominence, if indeed he has even noticed them in passing, the universally dominating primitive convictions: that the blood is the life; that the heart, as the blood-fountain, is the very soul of every personality; that blood-transfer is soul-transfer; that blood-sharing, human, or divine-human, secures an inter-union of natures ”

“ But when blood is shed, elemental spirits pour in to the spot, drawn there by the emanations arising from it, and they become important factors in this supposed “calling out of the blood from the ground.” Being strengthened by the human exhalations, they are a new force composed not only of the thoughts of the murdered, but also of the despair, hate and revenge of the slain. Science of course of this knows nothing, and cares less. She cannot tell how long this new force, thus compounded of215 elementals, blood, and the thought of slayer and his victim, will last. ”

“ When the heart is wounded, the weapon appears at the left breast, and feels not as if in a cavity, but as fixed in another body, and sometimes there is a throbbing motion; there is a discharge of black blood if it can find vent, with coldness, sweats, and deliquium animi, and death follows in a short time. When the lungs are wounded, if the opening be sufficiently large, a frothy blood passes out at it ”

“ And you must make the dead partly or entirely covered with dust, which is changed into crimson mire where it has mingled with the flowing blood whose colour shows it issuing in a sinuous stream from the corpse. Others must be represented in the agonies of death grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes, with their fists clenched against their bodies and their legs contorted. Some might be shown disarmed and beaten down by the enemy, turning upon the foe, with teeth and nails, to take an inhuman and bitter revenge. ”

“ We must make one exception as respects bleeding: these enemies of violent measures bled with a vengeance; they shed torrents of blood. They bled old men of eighty, and babies two months, nay, even two days old ”

“ Whatever has been man’s view of sin and its punishment, and of his separation from God because of [148] unforgiven sin (I speak now of man as he is found, without the specific teachings of the Bible on this subject) , he has counted blood—his own blood, in actuality or by substitute—a means of inter-union with God, or with the gods. Blood is not death, but life. The shedding of blood, Godward, is not the taking of life, but the giving of life. The outflowing of blood toward God is an act of gratitude or of affection, a proof of loving confidence, a means of inter-union. ”

“ And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it: and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. ”

“ There is no delay; while he rages, while he is wheeling his body round, and pouring forth foam, hissing with the fresh blood, the giver of the wound comes up, and provokes his adversary to fury, and buries his shining hunting spear in his opposite shoulder. His companions attest their delight in an encouraging shout, and in their right hands endeavour to grasp the conquering right hand; and with wonder they behold the huge beast as he lies upon a large space of ground, and they do not deem it safe as yet to touch him; but yet they, each of them, stain their weapons with his blood. ”