Literatura ng Ikalawang Templo sa Levitico 17:11: That the Worse is wont to Attack the Better & Who is the Heir

Yet the seeming victory of the false view is really a defeat (47), as is evident when we consider well what is implied in the words, “the voice of thy brother’s blood.” Here is the great truth, which is plainly stated in Lev. 17:11, that “the Life is in the Blood.” The Life which is Life indeed emerges from seeming death no longer “speechless.” It has now a “voice,” which God hears (47 ff. and 92 f.). This theme is taken up again in 70 ff., where the question put to Cain, “What hast thou done?” is treated as equivalent to “Thou hast effected nothing,” and as signifying the futility of sophism, ‘clothing itself with’ Balaam or anyone else, in contrast with the undying life of virtue.

[55] We use “soul” in two senses, both for the whole soul and also for its dominant part, which properly speaking is the soul’s soul, “just as the eye can mean either the whole orb, or the most important part, by which we see. And therefore the lawgiver held that the substance of the soul is twofold, blood being that of the soul as a whole, and the divine breath or spirit that of its most dominant part. Thus he says plainly “the soul of every flesh is the blood” (Lev. 17:11).

[80] In many passages of the Law Moses pronounces the blood to be the essence of the life, saying in plain words, “for the life of all flesh is the blood” (Lev. 17:11 etc.). Yet, when first after the creation of heaven and earth and of what lies between them, the Framer of living beings fashioned man, we read, “He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7), showing hereby, on the contrary, that the essence of life is breath.