"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth"—we've heard this before. But listen closer. This isn't Eden. The animals will now fear and dread humanity. Meat is now permitted—every moving thing can be food. But not the blood, because blood carries life. And human blood is in a category of its own: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image." This is the foundation of human justice, rooted in the image of God. The post-flood world isn't paradise restored. It's grace for a fallen world—structures to restrain violence, consequences for murder, a framework for living east of Eden without collapsing into the chaos that drowned the last world.

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