And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.
Ver. 5. Your blood of your lives will I require,] i.e., I will punish it either by the magistrate, or if he fail to do his office, by mine own immediate hand; as he did in David, Charles the Ninth of France, Richard the Third of England, Felix Count of Waterburg, and others, that either were above law, or escaped the lash of it. See for this, "The Thunderbolt of God's Judgments," lib. ii. cap. iv. 5,16. Richard the Third used the instruments of his bloody plots, as men do their candles; burn the first out to a snuff, and then having lighted another, tread that under foot. a
a Daniel's Chron. continued by Trussel.