Blood - Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old Testament Words
Usage Number: 1
Strong's Number: H1818
Original Word: dam
Usage Notes: "blood." This is a common Semitic word with cognates in all the Semitic languages. Biblical Hebrew attests it about 360 times and in all periods.
Dam is used to denote the "blood" of animals, birds, and men (never of fish). In Gen. 9:4, "blood" is synonymous with "life": "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." The high value of life as a gift of God led to the prohibition against eating "blood": "It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood" (Lev. 3:17). Only infrequently does this word mean "blood-red," a color: "And they rose up early in the morning, and the sun shone upon the water, and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood" (2 Kings 3:22). In two passages, dam represents "wine": "He washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes" (Gen. 49:11; cf. Deut. 32:14).
Dam bears several nuances. First, it can mean "blood shed by violence": "So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein …" (Num. 35:33). Thus it can mean "death": "So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee" (Ezek. 5:17).
Next, dam may connote an act by which a human life is taken, or blood is shed: "If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgement, between blood and blood [one kind of homicide or another] …" (Deut. 17:8). To "shed blood" is to commit murder: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed …" (Gen. 9:6). The second occurrence here means that the murderer shall suffer capital punishment. In other places, the phrase "to shed blood" refers to a non-ritualistic slaughter of an animal: "What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb … in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer an offering unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord; blood [guiltiness] shall be imputed unto that man" (Lev. 17:3-4).
In judicial language, "to stand against one's blood" means to stand before a court and against the accused as a plaintiff, witness, or judge: "Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood [i.e., act against the life] of thy neighbor …" (Lev. 19:16). The phrase, "his blood be on his head," signifies that the guilt and punishment for a violent act shall be on the perpetrator: "For everyone that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood [guiltiness] shall be upon him" (Lev. 20:9). This phrase bears the added overtone that those who execute the punishment by killing the guilty party are not guilty of murder. So here "blood" means responsibility for one's dead: "And it shall be, that whosoever shall go out of the doors of thy house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we will be guiltless: and whosoever shall be with thee in the house, his blood shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him" (Josh. 2:19).
Animal blood could take the place of a sinner's blood in atoning (covering) for sin: "For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Lev. 17:11). Adam's sin merited death and brought death on all his posterity (Rom. 5:12); so the offering of an animal in substitution not only typified the payment of that penalty, but it symbolized that the perfect offering would bring life for Adam and all others represented by the sacrifice (Heb. 10:4). The animal sacrifice prefigured and typologically represented the blood of Christ, who made the great and only effective substitutionary atonement, and whose offering was the only offering that gained life for those whom He represented. The shedding of His "blood" seals the covenant of life between God and man (Matt. 26:28).