How is "blood" symbolized in the Bible?
Genesis 4:10 The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Hebrews 12:24 to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Revelation 12:11 They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Leviticus 17:11 For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life. John 6:53-56 53Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
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Asked March 10 2019
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Jack Gutknecht
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Tim Maas
I would say that, rather than blood being symbolized in the Bible, blood instead was itself used as a symbol of life throughout the Bible. It was this symbolism that lay behind such divinely-instituted laws or practices as: -- the restriction against consuming the blood of animals (Genesis 9:4); -- the requirement that a person who shed another person's blood by intentionally killing him had to have his own life taken (that is, his own blood shed) as retribution (Genesis 9:5-6); and -- (most significantly) the requirement that blood sacrifices be offered for the forgiveness of sin (as noted in Hebrews 9:22), culminating in Christ shedding His own blood (despite the fact that He was completely sinless) so that humanity's cumulative sin could be forgiven. Christ's sacrifice was so significant that He commanded His followers to forever commemorate it through the Eucharist (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). (As Jesus said in John 6:53-56, whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life, and will be raised at the close of the age.) (However, as also noted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29, whoever partakes of the Eucharist in an unworthy or undiscerning manner, is guilty of profaning the body and blood of Christ, and brings judgment upon himself.)
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