In yesterday's passage we found the Lord passing judgment on a half Egyptian/half Israelite man who attacked and apparently tried to kill an Israelite man, all while horrifically blaspheming the name of God. The precise details of the incident were not provided to us. What the man actually said was not told to us. I think Moses found the man's blasphemous words too heinous to write down because to relate the story of what the man said would be to repeat the ugly things he said about the Lord. Shocking as it may have been to us to read that the man was sentenced to be stoned to death for his words, we attempted to understand it in the context of the time and place in which this thing happened.
Today's passage involves a type of case we can more easily understand. The Lord tells the people that the death penalty is to be imposed upon a person who commits murder. In our own nation, in some states, we still have the death penalty for murder. I am not advocating for or against the death penalty here in our study; I have mixed emotions about it myself. I'm just relating what the Lord said to the children of Israel here in Leviticus 24 regarding the intentional taking of another person's life.
"Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death." (Leviticus 24:17) The Hebrew word that's translated as "takes the life" indicates the deliberate taking of life or attacking a person so severely and cruelly that they end up dying from their injuries. It is the same word that was used in yesterday's passage when the blasphemer attacked and beat the Israelite. If no one had witnessed the incident and had not put a stop to it then I believe the Israelite would have perished from his injuries.
In the United States we don't automatically assign the death penalty when a person causes loss of life to another. Our courts consider all the evidence and tend to make a distinction between whether the murder occurred as a result of planning or whether it occurred during a heated dispute. In the Bible it appears as if the penalty for both these types of cases was the same. I think this was intended to foster a holy reverence for all human life so that no one would take up a weapon against another or beat someone up. But I'll give you an example of two different cases in my community to illustrate how our courts handle such things today.
My husband and my father-in-law worked for many years together in a local factory. One of their co-workers suffered the sad experience of his wife leaving him for another man. Some time after his wife moved in with the other man, he loaded his pistol, drove over to their house, and shot and killed the man. Had he not pleaded guilty and received some mercy from the court for not fighting the charges and going to trial, he very well could have received the death penalty here in the state of Tennessee because the facts of his case fit the requirements for handing down the death penalty. But he was given life without parole instead. I don't know how he's faring these days. He used to write regular letters to my father-in-law but my father-in-law died in 2009 and I've not heard anything about the man since then.
In another case, a man from my church served about ten years in prison many years ago (and I don't know how many years of probation) because when he was a young man in college he got into a drunken argument with another young man and beat him so severely and for so long that the other man died. I believe his case fits the criteria for the death penalty in Tennessee but he pleaded guilty before a judge and his lawyer managed to plead the charges down to voluntary manslaughter by arguing that it was a crime of passion/heat of the moment act performed while in an impaired condition. The man in my church repented when he went to prison, turned to Christ, and has been sharing the gospel with others as much as he can ever since he completed his sentence all those years ago. He will forever live with what he did and I am sure it is a heavy burden, but he has made it a mission in life to help keep others from making the same mistake he did.
The Lord is saying "a life for a life" when He talks about murder. He also cares about the deliberate taking of the life of someone else's animal. "Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution---life for life." (Leviticus 24:18) If someone goes into his neighbor's field and kills any of his neighbor's sheep, he must give back to his neighbor the same amount of sheep of the same age and physical condition as those he killed. He must restore his neighbor's flock to its original state.
If a person deliberately wounds another, he is supposed to be wounded in the same way for his punishment. "Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury." (Leviticus 24:19-20) We don't do this in modern times. If a person purposely knocks out his neighbor's front teeth we don't stand the offender against a wall and knock his front teeth out too. Perhaps our penal system would be more effective if we did; who knows? If my neighbor came over and blinded me in one eye, I doubt I'd feel like him going to jail for a while was as bad as me being permanently blind in one eye. Even though we don't follow the law of verses 19 and 20 anymore in most cultures, we can see why the Lord thought it was appropriate for an offender to receive the same kind of treatment that he dished out. When we see horrific stories in the news of child abuse, we often see comments underneath the stories saying of the offenders, "They should be locked in a box without food just like they locked their child in a box without food." That kind of justice makes more sense to us than if the abusers are sent to jail where they'll be provided with clothing and shelter and three meals a day. So even though we don't abide by verses 19 and 20 in our own times, we can understand why the Lord felt the laws of justice would be better satisfied by rendering to the offender the same type of treatment he inflicted upon someone else.
"Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God." (Leviticus 24:21-22) The Lord makes a distinction between animal life and human life. Many of us who have pets consider them full members of the family. If someone came to my house and killed my dog I would want a very harsh penalty imposed upon them, but the Lord says the penalty can't be death even though we might consider our pet our child. Besides that, He is speaking to an agricultural community here in Leviticus. I don't know whether the ancient Israelites kept any types of pets or not. Almost certainly they had no dogs or cats in the house because dogs and cats were not kosher animals and therefore contact with them would have made a person ceremonially unclean. I think the Lord is talking about cases in which someone deliberately causes death to someone else's farm animals because that's primarily the type of animals (or perhaps the only type of animals) the ancient Israelites kept. We might think of our dog or cat as our child but we can't have a person put to death for killing our pet because the Lord does not consider human life and animal life to be equal, even though we might grieve as terribly for the loss of an adored pet as we might for the loss of a relative or friend.
At the conclusion of the Lord's discussion with Moses, the penalty the Lord prescribed for the offender of yesterday's passage is carried out. "Then Moses spoke to the Israelites, and they took the blasphemer outside the camp and stoned him. The Israelites did as the Lord commanded Moses." (Leviticus 24:23) Distasteful as this work may have been to them, they obeyed the Lord.
It's distasteful to us to think about deliberate acts of injury and murder. It's distasteful to us to think about the prison system and the death penalty. It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where no one ever harmed his fellow man and where there was no use for courts or prisons or the electric chair or lethal injections. Someday we'll have that. The Lord provided a Messianic prophecy to Isaiah in which He promised a day was coming when the Messiah would be King and Lord over all the earth, and in that day no one will harm or destroy anyone else. In that day not only will man be at peace with his fellow man, but man will be at peace with the animal kingdom and all the members of the animal kingdom will be at peace with each other, for "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord". (See Chapter 11 of the book of Isaiah for the entirety of this passage.) The Lord Jesus Christ will reign in perfect righteousness over the whole earth from the throne of David, just as God promised in the Old Testament, and the whole world and everything in it will be at peace. The earth itself will be restored to a perfect, Eden-like state and the Lord's people will live in it in harmony forever. "No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever." (Revelation 22:3-5)
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