Blood and Flesh, Earth and Heaven

A Pyramid Text (see Faulkner, Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 64) includes a curse from a Pharaoh against enemies: “I am stronger than they . . . their hearts fall to my fingers, their entrails are for the denizens of the sky, their blood is for the denizens of the earth.”

It’s a common enough curse, heard most recently during the last days of Saddam Hussein. But the division of blood and entrails, and the correlation with earth and sky, may give a clue to something more than curses.

Blood and entrails are, after all, separated in sacrifice. In Israel’s sacrifices, the blood was thrown, sprinkled, or rubbed on the altar; the entrails, sometimes with flesh, were burned. Altars are made of earth and symbolize earth; entrails are turned to smoke and ascend to heaven. 

In support of this, we might note the regular linkage between blood and earth in Scripture. The ground opened its mouth to drink the blood of Abel, the first shed on the ground, then opened its mouth to cry for vengeance (Genesis 4:10-11). Blood could not be eaten but had to be poured out on the ground (Deuteronomy 12:16; 15:23) or spilled and covered with earth (Leviticus 17). David is anxious that his blood not fall to the ground (1 Samuel 26:20). Innocent blood pollutes the land, making the land sick and inducing it to vomit out inhabitants. 

In the curses of the Bible dogs lick the blood of the slain. If blood is associated with the ground, flesh exposed in open places is carried away as carrion by birds of the air. Blood goes down, flesh ascends. Perhaps we can go so far as to speak of the Spirit-cloud of God, sometimes described as an eagle, as the bird that carries the flesh to heaven (as Yahweh carried Israel out of Egypt on eagles’ wings).

Sacrifice resembles the curse of blood spilled and entrails carried away by birds. It is the enactment of this curse on an animal, which enables the worshiper to escape the curse. Because the animal’s blood goes to the ground and the animal’s entrails are carried away to heaven, the worshiper won’t suffer that fate. But it is also an enactment of an inverted curse, a positive enactment of the separation of blood and flesh, a positive enactment that joins the worshiper on earth with the God of heaven. The blood and flesh of an animal, separated by death and rejoined on the altar, reconcile heaven and earth.