With a man not the bridegroom, and whether
The man shall be wed,
The people shall stone them with stones
Until they be dead.
Now mark you, how equal the law
Of weight and of span:
One law for the woman in sin,
The same for the man.
If Moses be still the law-giver,
By nothing dethroned,
And this be the law, then this Sarah
Was fit to be stoned.
And if it be true, as he says,
That he came to fulfill
The law, nor destroy it, why then
We thought he would will
The death of this woman we took
In adultery, yes in the act,
So we argued together beforehand
The law and the fact.
Now the case was this way: this Josiah
Late journeyed from Tyre,
Three wives to his household already,
Yet alive with desire,
And free by our custom and law
To add to his hearth
A fourth for the heirs to his house,
And for comfort and mirth,
Came back in the cause of a field
He had bought; as it chanced
Met up with this Sarah, a wife,
They feasted and danced,
Her spouse being absent, what’s more
In Egypt for good.
So Josiah and Sarah were found
In the act in the wood.
We brought her before him, accused,
And told him the case.
He stooped, as it seemed, to conceal
A blush on his face,
And wrote in the sand, as we stood
And pressed him he wrote:
“Anise” and “cummin” and “gnat”
And “Moses” and “mote.”
We cried all the more, he uplifted
Himself, said: “Begin
Your throwing of stones, let the first
Be him without sin.”