1 - 4 Personal Dignity and Welfare (continued)
If two people have a fight, then a judge should decide the punishment. Being flogged is okay as long as there are no more than 40 lashes (which would degrade the offender).
Don't muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain (?)
5 - 10 Levirate Marriage
If a brother dies and leaves a wife childless, then the brother should marry her and the firstborn should succeed to the name of the dead brother. If the man doesn't want to marry her, she should go to the gate and tell everyone. The elders should spit in face. (Brothers should take care of widows).
11 - 12 Immodest Assault
Yikes!
13 - 16 Honest Weights and Measures
Be honest when you trade. Don't steal.
17 - 19 Extirpation of Amalek
Don't forget the troubles of the past.
Question of the Day: How are the penalties mentioned in this chapter equal to the "crime"?
3 comments:
I KNOW we've read 11-16 before!
1-3 Apparently there were a certain number of lashes for various crimes, 40 max. I think we'd have less crime now if we had somehting public and immediate like that.
God was serious about the family name being continued. Notes indicate that the control/ownership of land was based on family names and central to the economy.
Answer: It seems, as I said before, that the situations would result in public shame in some way. The punishments would also shame the offender publicly.
My preacher said once that it was more important in this culture how others felt about what you did. (Instead of having a feeling of guilt (dealing with yourself over things you've done), there was shame - dealing with the public over things you've done).
I'm with you jp. I think a sentence should be carried out as soon as it's decided. And they should put it on the news. There would probably be a lot less crime. And our economy would be in a lot better shape if we didn't feed people on death row for 50 years. Seems like common sense to me. Of course, as we read earlier, if the offender was found not guilty, the "prosecuter" would have to go through the same punishment.
The punishments fit the offenses because they were set by God. The Israelites should have known that God was God because of miraculous things they had seen. He gave the the laws and the punishments for breaking them. So they knew what they were getting into if they broke a law. And that's as fair as it gets. That doesn't look so true with our judicial system.
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