But Samuel said, “As your
sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.”
And Samuel hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.
- I Samuel 15:33 (NKJV)
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://colonialart.org/artworks/571A]
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Capital
Crimes and Punishment
“You shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death” (v. 31).
Since the Mosaic law orders the death penalty for
crimes such as cursing one’s parents (Ex. 21:17),
Sabbath-breaking (31:14), and homosexuality (Lev. 20:13),
we might think that judges in ancient Israel executed everyone who worked on
the Sabbath, dishonored their parents, or committed sexual sin. In turn, this
makes us prone to believe the new covenant use of God’s law is incongruous with
the old covenant. After all, we do not execute people for many of the crimes
that merited death before Christ came.
Knowing that premeditated murder was the only
crime for which capital punishment was always required helps us better
understand the Mosaic law. Aside from capital murder, it seems death was the
maximum sentence when it was prescribed in the law, not necessarily the
required one. Judges were to weigh the circumstances of each offense and
consider the offender’s hard-heartedness before wisely applying the standards
of the Mosaic law. The law’s structure confirms this. For example, Numbers
15:32–36 records the case of a man who gathered wood on the Sabbath. God
had earlier revealed death as the penalty for Sabbath-breaking (Ex. 31:14),
but the people still asked the Lord what to do. If judges had to execute all
Sabbath-breakers, the inquiry would have been unnecessary. From the hesitation
to apply the death penalty without further revelation, we may infer that
Israelite judges could sometimes impose a penalty besides death for
Sabbath-breaking. Since God ordered execution in this specific instance, the
man gathering wood must have been especially bold and impenitent in
his lawbreaking.
Case laws in the Mosaic code also support our
thesis. Life is complex, with no two moral or legal dilemmas being exactly the
same. To help His people apply His statutes properly, God gave examples of
particular situations that illustrated how His law was to be used (see, for
example, Ex. 21:28–32). The Lord did not directly address every
possible life situation, for then His law code would have been infinite in
length and impossible for human beings to master. Yet principles can be drawn
from the case law for every situation, and judges were to apply these
principles wisely whenever they heard a case.
Although first-degree murder is not the
unforgivable sin, those who commit it forfeit their right to physical life in
every instance. The careful application of the death penalty indicates that we
consider life to be as precious as God does.
Coram Deo
Many
people accuse Christians of being inconsistent in our stance against
homosexuality because we believe it immoral, like the Old Testament, but,
unlike the Old Testament, we do not call for the death of those who commit
sexual sin. This charge falls flat, for it assumes what must be proven, namely,
that God’s law requires
the death penalty for every crime that it connects to capital punishment. If we
know how God’s law works, we can answer those who try to trip us up.
Passages for Further Study
Deuteronomy 19:1–13Joshua 20:1–9
Matthew 22:1–14
Revelation 9:13–21
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