Among other Bible indications that the custom of balancing, or
canceling, a blood account by a payment in money, was well known in
ancient Palestine, appears the record of David’s conference with the
Gibeonites, concerning their claim for blood against the house of Saul,
in 2 Samuel 21 : 1-9. When it was found that the famine in Israel
was because of Saul’s having taken blood--or life--unjustly from the
Gibeonites, David essayed to balance that unsettled account. “And the
Gibeonites said unto him, It is no matter of silver or gold between us
and Saul, or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death
in Israel;” which was equivalent to saying: “Money for blood we will
not take. Blood for blood we have no power to obtain.” Then said David,
“What ye shall say, that will I do for you.” At this, the Gibeonites
demanded, and obtained, the lives of the seven sons of Saul. The blood
account must be balanced. In this case, as by the Mosaic law, it could
only be by life for life.
In some parts of Arabia, if a Muhammadan slays a person of another
religion, the relatives of the latter are not allowed to insist on
blood for blood, but must accept an equivalent in money. The claim
for the spilled blood is recognized, but a Muhammadan’s blood is too
precious for its payment. (See Wellsted’s _Travels in Arabia_, I., 19.)
It is much the same in the far West as in the far East, as to this
canceling of a blood-debt by blood or by other gifts. Parkman (_Jesuits
in No. Am._, pp. lxi.-lxiii.; 354-360) says of the custom among the
Hurons and the Iroquois, that in case of bloodshed the chief effort of
all concerned was to effect a settlement by contributions to the amount
of the regular tariff rates of a human life.
Another indication that the mission of the goel was to cancel the loss
of a life rather than to avenge it, is found in the primitive customs
of the New World. “Even in so rude a tribe as the Brazilian Topanazes,”
the Farrer (citing Eschwege, in _Prim. Man. and Cust._, p. 164), “a
murderer of a fellow tribesman would be conducted by his relations to
those of the deceased, to be by them forthwith strangled and buried
[with his forfeited blood in him], in satisfaction of their rights; the
two families eating together for several days after the event as though
for the purpose of [or, as in evidence of] reconciliation,”--not of
satisfied revenge.
Yet more convincing than all, in the line of such proofs that it is
restitution, and not vengeance, that is sought by the pursuit of blood
in the mission of the goel, is the fact that in various countries,
when a man has died a natural death, it is the custom to seek blood,
or life, from those immediately about him; as if to restore, or to
equalize, the family loss. Thus, in New South Wales, “when any one of
the tribe dies a natural death, it is usual to avenge [not to avenge,
but to meet] the loss of the deceased by taking blood from one or other
of his friends,” and it is said that death sometimes results from this
endeavor (Angas’s _Sav. Life_, II., 227). In this fact, there is added
light on the almost universal custom of blood-giving to, or over, the
dead. (See, _e. g._ Ellis’s _Land of Fetish_, pp. 59, 64; Stanley’s
_The Congo_, II., 180-182; Angas’s _Sav. Life_, I., 98, 331; II., 84,
89 f.; Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, I., 527-529; Dodge’s _Our Wild Indians_,
p. 172 f.; _First An. Rep. of Bureau of Ethn._, pp. 109, 112, 159 f.,
164, 183, 190.)