Blood covenant

“ And the yielding of one’s life by the yielding of one’s blood has often been represented by the yielding of the blood of a chosen and a suitable substitute. Similarly the blood, or the nature, of divinities, has been represented, vicariously, in divine covenanting, by the blood of a devoted and an accepted substitute. Inter-communion between the parties in a blood-covenant, has been a recognized privilege, in conjunction with any and every observance of the rite of blood-covenanting. ”

“ In all the forms of blood-covenant, whether a sacrifice is offered or the veins of the parties opened and their own blood used, the idea is the same: the bond created is a bond of kindred, because one blood is now in the veins of all who have shared the ceremony. ”

“ The whole burnt-offering, of the Mosaic ritual, symbolised the entire surrender to God, of the individual or of the congregation, in covenant faithfulness; the giving of one’s self in unreserved trust to Him [249] with whom the offerer desired to be in loving oneness. It was an indication of a readiness to enter fully into that inter-union, which the blood-covenant brought about between two who had been separated, but who were henceforth to be as one. This offering also must be made with blood; for it is blood—which is the life—that gives the possibility of inter-union. ”

“ A covenant of blood, a covenant made by the inter-commingling of blood, has been recognized as the closest, the holiest, and the most indissoluble, compact conceivable. Such a covenant clearly involves an absolute surrender of one’s separate self, and an irrevocable merging of one’s individual nature into the dual, or the multiplied, personality included in the compact. Man’s highest and noblest outreachings of soul have, therefore, been for such a union with the divine nature, as is typified in this human covenant of blood. ”

“ The blood-covenant is a rite by which two persons absorb each the other's blood, either by drinking or by transfusion to the vein?, whereby they become bound to one another in even a closer connection than that of brotherhood. ”

“ 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 ”

“ And a house will be deserted by its Dayak inhabitants, “if a drop of blood be seen sprinkled on the floor, unless they can prove whence it came.” [698]
An incidental connection of this recognition of the blood as the life, with the primitive rite of blood covenanting, is seen in one form of the marriage rite among the Dayaks. ”

“ If, indeed, the death-possessed man could enter into a blood-covenant with the Author of life,—could share the life of him who is Life,—then the dead might have new life in a new nature; and the far separated sinner might be brought into oneness with God; finding atonement in the cleansing flow of the new blood thus applied. So it pleased God to appoint substitute blood upon the altar of witness between the sinner and Himself, as a symbol of that atonement whereby the sinner might, through faith, become a partaker of the divine nature. “The wages of sin is death ”

“ 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. ”

“ Drawing their krises, they each bit the blade of the other [as if ‘drinking the covenant’] , [730] and so completed the affair.” So, again, “if two men who have been at deadly feud, meet in a house [where the obligations of hospitality restrain them] , they refuse to cast their eyes upon each other till a fowl has been killed, and the blood sprinkled over them.”
In every case, it is the blood that seals the mutual covenant, and the “cutting of the covenant” is that cutting which secures the covenanting, or the inter-uniting, blood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ BLOOD-DRINKING. Another item of evidence that the blood-covenant in its primitive form was a well-known rite in primitive Europe, is a citation by Athenæus from Poseidonios to this effect: “Concerning the Germans, Poseidonios says, that they, embracing each other in their banquets, open the veins upon their foreheads, [724] and mixing the flowing blood with their drink, they present it to each other; esteeming it the farthest attainment of friendship, to taste each other’s blood.” ”

“ Even those which are in themselves offered without blood, presuppose the individual’s share in the blood-covenant, by the rite of circumcision, and through the high priest’s sin-offering for the entire congregation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here is evidenced that same view of the absolute oneness of nature through a oneness of blood, which shows itself among the Semites of Syria, [96] among the Malays of Timor, [97] and among the Indians of America. [98]
And so this close and sacred covenant relation, this rite of blood-friendship, this inter-oneness of life by an inter-oneness of blood, shows itself in the primitive East, and in the wild and pre-historic West; in the frozen North, as in the torrid South. Its traces are everywhere. It is of old, and it is of to-day; as universal and as full of meaning as life itself. ”

“ Trumbull, in his work on The Blood Covenant, has given many instances of shedding blood in celebrating covenants and "blood brotherhood." The idea of substitution is widespread in all early religions. ”

“ Blood—even the blood of beasts—thus made sacred, as a holy symbol, must never be counted as a common thing; but it must be held, ever reverently, as a token of that life which is the sinner’s need; and which is God’s grandest gift and God’s highest prerogative. ”

“ Because of his God-ward purpose of bringing men into a loving covenant with God, Jesus gave of his blood in the covenant-rite of circumcision. Because of his man-ward sympathy with the needs and the trials of those whom he had come to save, and because of the crushing burden of their death-bringing sins, Jesus gave of his blood in an agony of intercessory suffering. ”

“ Although this is Western poetry, it had a basis of careful Oriental study in its preparation; and the blood-draught of the covenant is known to Persian story and tradition.
One of the indications of the world-wide belief in the custom of covenanting, and again of life seeking, by blood-drinking, is the fact that both Jews and Christians have often been falsely charged with drinking the blood of little children, at their religious feasts. ”

“ That a ring, or a circlet, worn around a thumb, or a finger, or an arm, in token of an endless covenant between its giver and receiver, has been looked upon, in all ages, as the symbol of an inter-union of the lives thereby brought together, is unmistakable; whether the covenanting life-blood be drawn for such inter-commingling, directly from the member so encircled, or not. The very covenant itself, or its binding force, has been sometimes thought to depend on the circlet representing it; as if the life which was pledged passed into the token of its pledging. ”

“ As the typical sacrifices under the law purified men from ceremonial defilement, so the real sacrifice of the Gospel saves the believer from moral pollution. Blood was the life of all the services of the tabernacle made with hands, and gave significance and utility to all the rites of the former dispensation. By blood the covenant between God and his people was sealed. By blood the officers and vessels of the sanctuary were consecrated. By blood the children of Israel were preserved in Egypt from the destroying angel. So the blood of Christ is our justification, sanctification, and redemption. ”

“ His blood, which is the meritorious cause of man’s redemption, even the blood of the everlasting covenant, he counteth an unholy thing, or that which has no more virtue in it to save a soul from sin than has the blood of a dog ”

“ 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.” ”