Day 3: Avenger of Blood

Sing praises to the Lord, who dwells in Zion. Declare his deeds among the peoples. For he who avenges blood is mindful of them; he does not forget the cry of the afflicted. Psalm 9:11-12

I had a phase in 8th and 9th grade? early high school? when I enjoyed listening to “heavy metal” music. At least that is what it was called then. Now if I hear one of those big-hair band ballads by White Lion or Whitesnake or Def Leppard or AC/DC, the songs seem to have lost weight—“light metal?” At least compared to the musical genre of thrash metal. I know next to nothing about thrash metal, but I just sampled a few audio clips from a band called Avenger of Blood on their My Space page, now that is heavy. Listen to one of the clips for a minute and note how it presses down upon the brain.

Until this week, I was not familiar with the term blood-avenger or its synonym Avenger of Blood. But it is a common phrase in some sections of the Old Testament, it seems. In ancient cultures, we’d be unlikely to run across the type of people that act out a typical Law and Order plotline. No undercover detective pairs, badge-flashing police, swat teams, prosecuting attorneys, plea-bargaining defense lawyers, judges, bailiffs. In those less centralized social systems, justice and order was upheld by clan members. Every person had a close relative who was obligated to be their blood-avenger in case they were killed. Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 19 describe a bit more of how it all worked, for the Hebrew people at least. Unless the death was proven to be unintentional manslaughter, the avenger of blood had the right, the privilege, the duty, the obligation, the burden, the pleasure?—of turning the community right-side up again by putting the murderer to death. No amount of ransom money could fix the problem, only the spilled blood of the murderer. Here's the Avenger of Blood entry from the Jewish Encyclopedia.

So members of the twelve tribes of Israel who were telling or hearing the old, old story of Cain and Abel must have recognized the tragic irony of fratricide. Cain as Abel’s closest blood relative, twin brother!, is also Abel’s blood avenger. What happens if the blood-avenger and the murderer are the same person? That creates a problem in a system of justice that assumes family members would protect the lives of their own kin. I wonder if people in a blood-avenger system thought it strange that Cain and Abel’s God didn’t avenge the murder and kill Cain himself. Or stranger still, that Cain’s God went so far as to put a mark on Cain to deter anyone else from taking on the work of Abel’s blood-avenger. It all seems quite mysterious. Why isn’t God answering the cries of Abel’s spilled blood? Has he forgotten Abel now that Cain has left town and a replacement son, Seth, has arrived on the scene?