Day 2: Blood Will Have Blood

I saw a live production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth last month and the visual effects made sure to communicate the gory-ness of the plotline. “Blood” is a common word throughout the text of the tragedy.

It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By maggotpies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret’st man of blood.

I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
from Macbeth 3.4

Macbeth says the above words to his wife shortly after the stabbing deaths of King Duncan and Banquo. He has just been haunted by Banquo’s bloody ghost at a dinner party, and now realizes that even the natural world does not rest until all secret murderers have been exposed and vindicated. Macbeth admits he is past the point of no return, however, and we audience members know as well as he that whether he chooses to sink or swim, it’ll be in blood.

In the first biblical story of bloodshed in Genesis 4, there is a similar realization that the natural world is a prosecuting witness to murder, insisting in its own way that “blood must have blood.” Cain’s field opened its mouth to drink Abel’s blood, and now Cain’s future efforts to farm the land will be futile. Listen, what is Abel’s blood saying? “Execute justice, spill the blood of the murderer, avenge this atrocity, or the land will be perpetually polluted!” How can that be ignored? It is the only way to get Nature back in tandem with Humanity. This reality was emphasized to the Israelites who were being taught how to live in community with each other and the Lord who had freed them from slavery: 'Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.’ Numbers 35:33 It’s not just a “bad” deed that violates an abstract moral sphere, it seems like murder literally pollutes and distresses the created world.

What will be done? Who will respond to the crying out of Abel’s blood and remediate the polluted land? Who will execute Cain? Who will make things right?