Blasphemy and Stoning

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.