Seventh Seal Cont.

As we see in the movie, Bloch distracts Death from killing Jof and his wife by using the knocked over chess pieces as a distraction. Death is well aware of what he is doing. Block believes this is his good deed, allowing his friends to escape death, but rather, as made evident throughout the entire movie, his friends are only delaying their deaths. Not to disparage the heroism of Bloch, but he's only allowing them to live another day because death can strike randomly. We see this when the wagon is driving away and there is a skull or mask on the back as it drives away. Death always hovers over us, and we can only do so much to prevent it.