The Great Physician VIII: The Exception of Capital Punishment

 

Well, in a way, taking a person’s life amounts to a termination of said life and can technically be considered medical in nature. Because it is death prescribed by Biblical law as punishment it should not be viewed as murder or even killing but willful termination (by the state/priesthood) of a life through prescribed means as recompense of a divine legal infraction. Why capital punishment if it is not looking to preserve or improve a life? Because usually someone knowledgeable about body and life would need to ascertain whether or not that body or life ceased. That usually required a physician or priest. Even today it is usually a physician that declares time of death in executions.

 

There appear to be generally (5) five types of offences codified by Levitical Law and punishable by death. These are further broken down into explicit sins and infractions of the law.

 

1.Offences against persons.

2.Offences involving property

3.Defiance of authority

4.Religious offences

5.Procedural requirements

 

Category 1 (and to a lesser extent category 4) concerns imposition of the capital punishment or כרת kareth (which is Hebrew for cutting-off [one’s life]) for infractions of the purity laws.  There is biblical justification for the death penalty in murder (Exodus 21:12; Leviticus 24:17); manslaughter (Numbers 35;16-18); kidnapping (Deuteronomy 24:7); causing death by negligence or neglect (Exodus 21:29–31); sorcery (Exodus 22:17);77 rape, (Deuteronomy 22:23–27); Adultery79 — both parties to be executed, (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22); harlotry, in the singular case where the offender is the daughter of a priest (Leviticus 21:9); incest (Leviticus 18:6, generally, and with one’s father’s wife 20:11,80); homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13)  and bestiality (Leviticus 20:15–16). The last two being abominations to God.

 

It is particularly difficult to draw generalizations from all of this other than to say that the death penalty is reserved by God in the Law for exceptionally heinous sins in terms of either infractions towards God or infractions to other people.