Some years ago, we had a series in the all-school chapel on
Wednesdays on the attributes of God. David Smith, ordained in the Baptist
Church, was assigned the love of God. I, ordained in the Mennonite Church, was
assigned the wrath of God. It felt backwards to me, but it has happened again!
Instead of speaking on the Jubilee Law in Leviticus 25 (Dr. Dean drew that assignment
for next Tuesday), I get to speak on the response to blasphemy against God:
Stone the offender to death! What am I supposed to do with this?
Well, well. I know how some people respond: They just don’t
read the Old Testament. They suggest that people of that day had no regard for
human life; they were barbaric. Of course, if people from that context could
survey our society, they might ask how we can so easily abort fetuses and
consider MAID for older people. They might think we are the barbarians. Of
course, it’s a kind of chronological imperialism for either they or us to
appoint ourselves as judge of the other. Instead, the proper response is to set
our inhibitions and automatic reactions aside and ask what the text says. So,
what does the text say?
Verses 10 to 12 set the stage. Although Leviticus contains
many specific laws, they are set within a narrative, the ongoing story of God
delivering God’s people and leading them through the desert to the promised
land. While they were travelling, a sharp disagreement arose between two men –
the sort of thing that happens when people go camping together for an extended
period of time. During the resulting fight, one of them blasphemed the name of
God with a curse. The people around them recognized a major problem. They put
the man in custody and sought God’s response to blasphemy against God. God’s
response was clear: Kill the offender by stoning.
Then comes a set of laws that deal with appropriate
punishment – life for a life, injury for injury. I take it that the principle
of equitable and appropriate punishment is in view. The point is not to
replicate the injury caused by precisely same injury to the offender. We might
like such a punishment when an out-of-control hockey player injures our
favourite player, who then has to sit out half a season, but a precise
equivalency is impractical. The pound of flesh recorded in Shakespeare’s The
Merchant of Venice illustrates the impossibility of precise equivalency.
The point rather is that punishment is equitable and appropriate.
The action then returns to the case of the blasphemer, who
is taken outside the camp and stoned.
Some Thoughts
We struggle with the idea of the death penalty, and rightly so.
This leads to a question: Why are the laws of appropriate punishment are
inserted at just this point? Perhaps it is precisely as a reminder that taking
life is God’s prerogative, and that the stated penalty for blasphemy does not
change that.
[Compare Deuteronomy 25, where
the law of levirate marriage is followed by a strange law that forbids a woman
emasculating a man – which is sort of what happens in the way that levirate
marriage is stated. The follow-up law makes it clear that the actions of
Deuteronomy 20: 5-10 are exceptional, not normal. A second reason for inserting
the laws of appropriate punishment here is that killing a person – which these
laws deal with – is an offence against the image of God: A kind of blasphemy,
if you will.]
This struggle leads me to the point that I considered most
fully in my preliminary thinking. What is so terrible about blasphemy that it
should call forth the death penalty? Why does God say, “Stone the offender to
death”?
The text (verse 10) says that he “blasphemed the Name with a curse.” “Of the Lord” is assumed. The
reference to “the name” contains the whole of God. I remember flying from
London to New York a little over 30 years ago. I stood aside to let a father
and son come out of the row in front of me. From their dress, I assumed they
were Hasidic Jews and said to them as they passed, “Baruch ha Shem”: “Blessed
be the Name.” The smile that lit up the son’s face was a delight! The Name
means God.
In verse 15 and 16, the identity of the Name is made
explicit; so also is the offence: “Those who
curse their God will be punished for their sin. Anyone who blasphemes the Name
of the Lord must be stoned to
death by the whole community of Israel.” The problem is not that this man lost
his temper, or that he said a bad word. The problem is that he cursed God.
You
remember that Job’s wife tells him to “curse God and die.” [Note that Job 2
uses a different word for curse, “barach”, which usually means “bless”.] Job
refuses. To curse God is to cut oneself off from God. That is the problem here
in Leviticus 24.
The Children of Israel are learning to be God’s People. They
are discovering the meaning of redemption from slavery, of life in covenant
with their Redeemer God. They are on the way to the Promised Land, where they
will work out the law that they have received in Exodus and Leviticus. In this
context, a half Egyptian, half Israelite young man epitomizes the way that God
welded a disparate gathering of people into God’s People. Then he gets into a
fight and curses God. He speaks words of power against redemption, against
covenant, against creation. And God holds him to the words that he speaks.
Why does blasphemy lead to stoning? Stoning the offender to
death simply takes him at his word. The stoning works out the inner logic of
what the offender has said and done. He has spoken words of death, and he
receives the death he has spoken.
Seen this way, his identity as both Israelite and alien is a
reminder that all stand equal before God. The insertion of the laws of
appropriate justice reinforces the point that all stand equal before God. But
seen from where we are standing today, a basic and vital point remains to be
made.
Holy Week
This is Holy Week. Three days from now we observe the death
of Christ. The charge for which he was crucified was precisely the charge
against this young man. He was accused – falsely – of blasphemy. Although
completely innocent of the charge, he was accused and convicted and killed for
this young man’s offence. The cross of Jesus stands as a stark reminder that
God’s grace overwhelms God’s righteous judgment for all who turn to Jesus in
faith.
Evil in our world is great. Our leaders speak words of death
and threaten us all with destruction, whether through warfare or political
anarchy or a simple strangulation by a chaotic climate. Unchecked, their words
and deeds, our words and deeds lead to death.
So Jesus died. He died for us. He died in our place. He died
to give us life. The creed reminds us:
We believe in one God, the Father
almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And
in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before
all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not
made; of the same essence as the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; he became incarnate by
the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made human. He was crucified for
us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried. The third day he rose
again, according to the Scriptures. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the
right hand of the Father. He will come again with glory to judge the living and
the dead. His kingdom will never end.
For us, and for our salvation: Egyptian, Israelite, Chosen
People, Canadian, African, Asian, European, Indigenous, even our American
cousins. God’s gracious and wonderful justice wrapped up in glory on the cross.
Amen.
Providence Seminary Chapel
26 September 2024
Leviticus 24: 10-23
An Example of Just Punishment
10 One day a man who had an
Israelite mother and an Egyptian father came out of his tent and got into a
fight with one of the Israelite men. 11 During the fight, this
son of an Israelite woman blasphemed the Name of the Lord with a curse. So the man was brought to Moses for
judgment. His mother was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. 12 They
kept the man in custody until the Lord’s
will in the matter should become clear to them.
13 Then the Lord said to Moses, 14 “Take the blasphemer
outside the camp, and tell all those who heard the curse to lay their hands on
his head. Then let the entire community stone him to death. 15 Say
to the people of Israel: Those who curse their God will be punished for their
sin. 16 Anyone who blasphemes the Name of the Lord must be stoned to death by the
whole community of Israel. Any native-born Israelite or foreigner among you who
blasphemes the Name of the Lord
must be put to death.
17 “Anyone who takes another
person’s life must be put to death.
18 “Anyone who kills another
person’s animal must pay for it in full—a live animal for the animal that was
killed.
19 “Anyone who injures another
person must be dealt with according to the injury inflicted— 20 a
fracture for a fracture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Whatever
anyone does to injure another person must be paid back in kind.
21 “Whoever kills an animal must
pay for it in full, but whoever kills another person must be put to death.
22 “This same standard applies both
to native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord your God.”
23 After Moses gave all these
instructions to the Israelites, they took the blasphemer outside the camp and
stoned him to death. The Israelites did just as the Lord had commanded Moses.
