Crimes And Punishments
Crimes And Punishments
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS.The term crimes is here used loosely in the sense of punishable offences, including not merely crimes (crimina) in the sense of breaches of the criminal law in the modern sense, and torts (delicta) or breaches of the civil law, but also those offences in the sphere of religion and worship to which definite penalties were attached. Within the limits of this article it is possible to present only a summary of the more important and typical punishable offences recognized in the various Hebrew law-codes. The latter, indicated by the usual symbols, are: (1) BC, the oldest code, known as the Book of the Covenant, Exo 20:22 to Exo 23:33, with which for convenience sake is joined the Decalogue of Exo 20:2-17; (2) D [Note: Deuteronomist.] , the Deuteronomic Code, Deu 12:1-32; Deu 13:1-18; Deu 14:1-29; Deu 15:1-23; Deu 16:1-22; Deu 17:1-20; Deu 18:1-22; Deu 19:1-21; Deu 20:1-20; Deu 21:1-23; Deu 22:1-30; Deu 23:1-25; Deu 24:1-22; Deu 25:1-19; Deu 26:1-19; Deu 27:1-26; Deu 28:1-68; (3) H [Note: Law of Holiness.] , the Holiness Code, Lev 17:1-16; Lev 18:1-30; Lev 19:1-37; Lev 20:1-27; Lev 21:1-24; Lev 22:1-33; Lev 23:1-44; Lev 24:1-23; Lev 25:1-55; Lev 26:1-46; and (4) P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] , the great collection of laws known as the Priests Code, and comprising the rest of the legislative material of the Pentateuch. In the case of P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] alone will it be necessary to name the books (Ex., Lv., or Nu.) to which reference is made.
The penal offences of the Pentateuch may be conveniently grouped under the three heads of crimes against J [Note: Jahweh.] , against society (including property), and against the individual.
1. A. Crimes against J [Note: Jahweh.] , or offences in the sphere of religion and worship.Although it is true that misdemeanours of every kind were in the last resort offences against J [Note: Jahweh.] , who was regarded as the only fountain of law and justice, it will be convenient to group under this head those belonging to the special sphere of religious belief and its outward expression in worship. Among these the first place must be given to the worship of heathen deitiescondemned in the strongest terms in BC (from 20:3 onwards) and D [Note: Deuteronomist.] and of the heavenly bodies, D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 17:3 (cf. Deu 4:19). The penalty is death under the ban (BC Deu 22:20, D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 13:12 ff. [see Ban]), or by stoning (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 17:5). Inseparable from this form of apostasy is the crime of idolatry, entailing the curse of God (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 27:15). Blasphemy, or profanation of the Divine name, is forbidden in all the codes; the penalty is death by stoning (H [Note: Law of Holiness.] Deu 24:13 ff.). The practice of magic, wizardry, and similar black arts, exposes their adepts and those who resort to them to the same penalty (H [Note: Law of Holiness.] DEU 20:27).
2. The punishment for doing any work on the Sabbath day is death, but only in the later legislation (Exo 31:15 [probably H [Note: Law of Holiness.] ] Exo 35:2 [P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] ]; cf. the very late Haggadic section, Num 15:32 ff.). For neglect of ordinances, to use a familiar phrase, such as failing to observe the fast of the Day of Atonement (H [Note: Law of Holiness.] Num 23:29), or to keep the Passover (Num 9:13 [P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] ], an offender was liable to be cut off from his people; see below). This was also the punishment prescribed for a number of offences that may be grouped under the head of sacrilege, such as partaking of blood (Lev 7:27 [P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] ]), and the unauthorized manufacture and use of the holy anointing oil (Exo 30:32 f. [P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] ]).
3. B. Crimes against Society.As the family, according to Hebrew ideas, was the unit of society, the crimes that mar the sanctities of family life may be taken first. Such pre-eminently was adultery, severely condemned in all the codes, the punishment for both parties being death (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 22:22, H [Note: Law of Holiness.] Deu 20:10). In a case of seduction the man was required to marry her whom he had wronged, if her father gave consent (BC Deu 22:16 f.), paying the latter a dowry, i.e. the usual purchase price (see Marriage), estimated in D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 22:29 at 50 shekels of silver. On the other hand, the penalty for rape, if the victim was betrothed, was death (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 22:25 ff.), as it was for unnatural crimes like sodomy (H [Note: Law of Holiness.] Deu 18:22, Deu 20:13 thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind) and bestiality (BC Deu 22:19, H [Note: Law of Holiness.] Deu 20:15 f.). The marriage of near kin is forbidden in H [Note: Law of Holiness.] Deu 18:6-18 under seventeen heads (see Marriage). Incest with a step-mother or a daughter-in-law was punishable by the death of both parties (H [Note: Law of Holiness.] Deu 20:11 f.), while for a man to marry a wife and her mother was a crime that could be expiated only by the death of all three, and that, as many hold (see below), by being burnt alive (ib. Deu 20:14). Ordinary prostitution is condemned by H [Note: Law of Holiness.] 19:29 (cf. D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 22:21)for a priests daughter the punishment was even death by burning (Deu 21:9)while the wide-spread heathen practice of establishing religious prostitutes, male and female, at the local sanctuaries is specially reprobated in D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 23:17 f., where the male prostitute is to be recognized under the inexact term sodomite, and the contemptuous dog.
4. To carry disrespect for ones parents to the extent of smiting (BC 21:15), or cursing them (BC 21:17, H [Note: Law of Holiness.] 20:9), or even of showing persistent contumacy (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 21:18 ff.), entailed the extreme penalty of death at the hands of the local authorities.
5. Everything that would tend to impair the impartial and effective administration of justice is emphatically condemned in the Hebrew codes, the giving and receiving of bribes, in particular, being forbidden even in the oldest legislation (BC 23:8 for a gift blindeth them that have sight). Against those who would defeat the ends of justice by perjury and false witness, the law is rightly severe (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 19:15 ff.). Tale-bearing (H [Note: Law of Holiness.] 19:16), and the spreading of a report known to be false (BC 23:1), are condemned, while in the more heinous case of a man slandering his newly-wedded wife, the elders of the city are to amerce him in an hundred shekels (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 22:18-21).
6. Property had also to be protected against theft (BC 20:15) and burglary (22:2), with which may be classed the crime of removing the boundary-stones of a neighbours property to increase ones own (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] 19:14), and the use of false weights and measures (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 25:15 ff., H [Note: Law of Holiness.] 19:35ff.). The earliest code likewise deals with trespass (BC 22:5), and arson, or wilful fire-raising (ib. v. 6), for which the penalty in either case was restitution.
7. C. Crimes against the Individual.BC 21:1526 deals with various forms of assault, a crime to which the pre-Mosaic jus talionis (see below) was specially applicable. Kidnapping a freeman was a criminal offence involving the death penalty (BC 21:16, D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 24:17). Murder naturally has a place in the penal legislation of all the codes from BC 20:13 onwards. The legislators, as is well known, were careful to distinguish between murder deliberately planned and executed (BC 21:14, D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 19:11 ff.) and unpremeditated homicide or manslaughter (BC 21:13, D [Note: Deuteronomist.] 19:4ff., and esp. P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] , Num 35:9 ff.). The former, with certain exceptions (BC 21:20, 22:2), entailed capital punishment in accordance with the fundamental principle laid down in Gen 9:6; in the case of the manslayer special provision was made for the mitigation of the ancient right of blood revenge (see Refuge [Cities of]).
8. Punishments.From the earliest period of which we have any record two forms of punishment prevailed among the Hebrews and their Semitic kinsfolk, viz. retaliation and restitution. Retaliation, the jus talionis of Roman law, received its classical expression in the oldest Hebrew code: thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe (BC 21:23f.). The talio, as has already been mentioned, was specially applicable in cases of injury from assault. When life had been taken, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the right of enforcing the jus talionis lay with the dead mans next of kin (see Kin [Next of]).
In BC restitution varies from fivefold for an ox, and fourfold for a sheep that has been stolen and thereafter killed or sold, to twofold if the animal is still in the thiefs possession (BC 22:14), and finally to a simple equivalent in the case of wilful damage to a neighbours property (ib. v. 5f.). Compensation by a money payment was admitted for loss of time through bodily injury (BC 21:19), for loss of property (vv. 3335), but not, in Hebrew law, for loss of life, except in the cases mentioned BC 21:30. The payments of 100 shekels and 50 shekels respectively ordained in D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 22:19; Deu 22:29 appear to the modern eye as fines, but fall in reality under the head of compensation paid to the father of the women in question.
9. In the penal code of the Hebrews there is a comparative lack of what may be termed intermediate penalties. Imprisonment, for example, has no place in the Pentateuch codes as an authorized form of punishment, although frequent cases occur in later times and apparently with legal sanction (see Ezr 7:26). The use of the stocks also was known to the Jewish (Jer 20:2 f.) as well as to the Roman authorities (Act 16:24). Beating with rods and scourging with the lash were also practised. The former seems intended in D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 25:1 ff., but later Jewish practice substituted a lash of three thongs, thirteen strokes of which were administered (cf. 2Co 11:24). Many, however, would identify the punishment of this passage of D [Note: Deuteronomist.] with the favourite Egyptian punishment of the bastinado. Mutilation, apart from the talio, appears only as the penalty for indecent assault (D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 25:11 f.).
10. The regular form of capital punishment was death by stoning, which is prescribed in the Pentateuch as the penalty for eighteen different crimes, including Sabbath-breaking. For only one crimemurderis it the penalty in all the codes. The execution of the criminal took place outside the city (H [Note: Law of Holiness.] 24:14), and according to D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 17:7 the witnesses in the case cast the first stone (cf. Joh 8:7). In certain cases the dead body of the malefactor was impaled upon a stake; this, it can hardly be doubted, is the true rendering of D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 21:22 f. (AV [Note: Authorized Version.] hang him on a tree), and of the same expression elsewhere. Hanging or strangulation is mentioned only as a manner of suicide (2Sa 17:23, Mat 27:5). Crucifixion, it need hardly be said, was a Roman, not a Jewish, institution. Beheading appears in Mat 14:10||, Act 12:2, Rev 20:4.
11. The meaning of the expression frequently found in P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] , to be cut off from his people, from Israel, etc., is uncertain; most probably it denotes a form of excommunication, with the implication that the offender is handed over to the judgment of God, which also seems to be intended by the banishment of Ezr 7:26 (note margin). A similar division of opinion exists as to the penalty of burning, which is reserved for aggravated cases of prostitution (H [Note: Law of Holiness.] 21:9) and incest (20:19). Here the probability seems in favour of the guilty parties being burned alive (cf. Gen 38:24), although many scholars hold that they were first stoned to death. The most extreme form of punishment known to the codes, in that a whole community was involved, is that of total destruction under the ban of the first degree (see Ban) prescribed for the crime of apostasy (BC 22:20, more fully D [Note: Deuteronomist.] Deu 13:15-17).
A. R. S. Kennedy.