Crime and punishment in the Bible
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The Hebrew Bible is the textual core of the Judeo-Christian tradition (the body of concepts and values which are thought to be held in common by Christianity and Judaism) and considered a fundamental basis for Western legal codes and moral values until the present time. An important principle that connects events, uniting action and reaction, is the notion known in Hebrew as mida keneged mida, meaning "measure for measure" in the sense that "the punishment fits the crime" from the Bible's perspective, as difficult and puzzling as that may be for secular, or atheist, or anti-Biblical thinkers to accept.
In order to illustrate its principals, the Biblical text records vivid events and laws narrated that are endorsed or prescribed by God himself, or carried out by certain people in the Bible. Judaism teaches that the Torah (i.e. the Pentateuch) contains 613 eternal commandments, many of which deal with law and punishment, on the personal, national and global scales. Christianity has also adapted and adopted many of these directives.
To illustrate the power of the God, the Bible openly records what befell nations or individuals as a moral lesson:
Contents |
In the Book of Genesis
Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden when they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (i would check your sources and discuss your theories with a pastor before you make statements like what was previosly on this page.)[1]
- God decides to destroy the world he created during the Great Flood because: "God saw that man's wickedness on earth was increasing. Every impulse of his innermost thought was only for evil, all day long.(evidently, even the babies, children and animals were also evil, since they all died too.) God regretted that He had made man on earth, and He was pained to His very core. God said, 'I will obliterate humanity that I have created from the face of the earth - man, livestock, land animals, and birds of the sky. I regret that I created them.' But Noah found favor in God's eyes." Genesis 6:2-7:3 [2] [3]. The text is explicit that everyone had become evil, except for Noah's family, and that therefore they were punished accordingly.
- Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed because they acted in a cruel manner to the strangers who had come to visit Lot, Abraham's nephew: "...They had not yet gone to bed when the townspeople, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house - young and old alike - all the people from every quarter. They called out to Lot and said, 'Where are the strangers who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know (i.e "rape") them!'...They pushed against Lot very much, and tried to break down the door." Genesis 18:20-19:20 (this forces God to kill, via a fiery, horrible death, all the children and babies of the city, who shared in the communal guilt)
In the Book of Exodus
- Moses negotiating the Exodus from Egypt with Pharaoh leading up to the Ten plagues: First Pharaoh enslaves the Children of Israel: "[The Egyptians] appointed conscription officers over [the Israelites] to crush their spirits with hard labor. [The Israelites] were to build up the cities of Pithom and Ra'amses as supply centers for Pharaoh...The Egyptians started to make the Israelites do labor designated to break their bodies. They made the lives of [the Israelites] miserable with harsh labor involving mortar and bricks, as well as all kinds of work in the field. All the work they made them do was intended to break them." (Exodus 1:11-14 [6], then he issues decress to kill all the Israelite males (Exodus 1:15-16) (Moses is saved by his mother putting him into an ark of bulrushes), and after first being the option of freely letting the Israelite slaves go, God hardens Pharaoh's heart, so that Pharaoh does not agree to let the Hebrews leave, then God sends various disasters onto the whole of Egypt, the cycle ends with the story of the killing of every firstborn child in Egypt as the final punishment for having afflicted the Israelites with deathly punishments. (Exodus 6-14)
In the Book of Numbers
- The nation of Midian together with Moab displays extreme cunning and cruelty to the wandering Israelites, trying a variety of strategies to get the Israelites to self-destruct. They try to seduce the Israelite men to worship their idol: "Israel was staying in Shittim when the people began to behave immorally with the Moabite girls. [The girls] invited the people to their religious sacrifices, and the people ate and worshipped the [Moabite] gods." Numbers 25:1-2 [7] In response Moses conducts war against the Midianites (Numbers 31:13-31:18)[8]. In retaliation for the immorality, Moses and his warriors kill all males and capture women and children. Then Moses orders killing of all women and male children, and the fate of female children was "But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves"
Other punishments
- Canaan was cursed to become a slave ("servant of a servant") by Noah. That was a punishment for Ham (Canaan's father) accidentally seeing Noah "naked" (Genesis 9.20-9.25) (which some believe is a Biblical euphemism meaning rape. Most scholars dispute this.)
- Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back when fleeing Sodom (Genesis 19:26) (They were all explicitly warned by God not to look at the destruction of the wicked people of Sodom.)
- Onan was killed by God for his refusal to marry his brother's widow and carry on his brother's family line. (Genesis 38:5)
Examples of the death penalty
The Bible prescribes the death penalty for the following activities
- Violating the Sabbath (by working, for example, see Exodus 31:14).
- Men having sex with men, animals, or someone else's wife (Leviticus 20)
- Rape (Deuteronomy 22)
- Worshipping other gods (Deuteronomy 13:6-13:10)
Challenge to modernity
It is true that in an environment of political correctness, those imbued with Western culture will see some stories as samples of mutilation, rape, various curses, slavery, capital punishment, animal cruelty, misogyny, child abuse, homophobia, and so forth.
These events are sometimes labelled "Bible atrocities and absurdities" by critics of Christianity (fundamentalist Christianity in particular), and presented as examples of ridiculousness, inconsistency and hypocrisy in those who subscribe to a literal interpretation of Scripture. One website summarises the argument: "Myth: The Bible is morally pure and free from atrocity. Fact: The Bible is filled with countless acts of barbarism and tyranny." [9] The argument dates back at least as far as 1795, voiced by Thomas Paine in The Age Of Reason.
"Bible difficulties" is an alternative term used by believers and apologists to describe these passages, although the phrase also covers alleged or apparent contradictions in the Bible.
Reference
- Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, 1795.