Leviticus 17:11 → Genesis 9:4-6

The Noahic covenant first welds life to blood at the level of creation: "But you must not eat meat with its lifeblood still in it" (Gen 9:4), grounding the prohibition in the sanctity of human life made in God's image — "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind" (Gen 9:6). Leviticus 17:11 takes up that pre-Sinai creational principle and develops it into the interior rationale of the sacrificial cult: "the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for your souls upon the altar." The same axiom — blood = life (נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh) — that the Noahic covenant uses to forbid bloodshed and bloodeating, Leviticus uses to explain why God accepts poured-out blood at the altar in the worshipper's place. The development is redemptive-historical, not typological: Genesis establishes the creational premise (life belongs to God, so blood may not be consumed); Leviticus channels that premise into the cult (the God-given life-for-life mechanism of atonement). This is the foundational link in the canon-wide Sacrifice and Atonement trajectory whose telos is Christ: the blood that may not be eaten because it is life (Gen 9) becomes the blood given to atone because it is life (Lev 17:11), and at last the precious blood whose life God accepts once-for-all (Heb 9). The longing the sacrificial system carried — that a life truly accepted could finally cleanse — is satisfied not in more animal blood but in the desirable, sufficient blood of the Son.