The special cases which come under this general head of sin and trespass offerings were——(1.) Unintentional transgressions of the Levitical law.——(2.) The rash oath, ill-considered and not conscientiously kept (Lev. 5: 4).——(3.) Perjury in a witness;—not however the case of false swearing to condemn the innocent, which was punished by retaliation; but the offense of not testifying what he knew when put under oath (Lev. 5: 1).——(4.) Debts due to the sanctuary—a failure to pay tithes; the penalty being, one-fifth added to the original amount and all paid, coupled with the trespass offering (Lev. 5: 14–16).——(5.) Denying any thing given in trust, or retaining another man’s lost property which he may have found, and similar offenses, coupled with false swearing (Lev. 6: 1–7); the penalty being, to restore with one-fifth added and to make his trespass offering.——(6.) Adultery with a slave. The penalty—a sin-offering and the punishment of death commuted to stripes.
3. Stripes were made the penalty of certain specified crimes (Lev. 19: 20 and Deut. 22: 18). The law was careful to limit the number of stripes to forty, giving as the reason—“Lest if thou shouldest exceed” [this number] “then thy brother should seem vile unto thee;” i. e. not merely lest the man might lose his self-respect, but lest he lose the respect of the community, and be hopelessly degraded. In usage the Hebrews limited the number to thirty-nine—said to have been administered by thirteen strokes of a triple cord.
4. Of retaliation [“lex talionis”] notice has been taken already.
5. Excommunication; excision; being cut off from his people. When executed by God himself, it meant destruction by some providential agency. Compare 1 Kings 14: 10 with 15: 29 and 2 Kings 9: 8–10.——When executed by human agency, it was capital punishment, usually by stoning (Ex. 31: 14, and Lev. 17: 4, and 20: 17, 18).
6. The customary modes of capital punishment were two: stoning and the sword. (Deut. 13: 9, 10, and 17: 5, and Josh. 7: 25.) The sword appears in later ages.
7. Disgrace after death in some cases heightened the penalty, e. g. by burning the dead body (Gen. 38: 24, and Lev. 20: 14, and 21: 9). That in these cases the death was by stoning and the burning was only that of the dead body, seems to be sufficiently proved from Josh. 7: 15, 25. “All Israel stoned him” [Achan and his family] “with stones and burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.” Their very bodies seem to have been thought of as polluted and polluting.——Another method of posthumous disgrace was by hanging on a tree (Num. 25: 4, 5 and Deut. 21: 22, 23). The body must not remain suspended over night “that thy land be not defiled; for he that is hanged is accursed of God.” See cases of the execution of this law in Josh. 8: 29 and 10: 26, 27.
Several forms of punishment were introduced from other nations in later ages which we may omit as foreign from our subject.
In closing this topic let it be noted that judicial procedure and punishment were summary—both the trial and the execution being carried through with apparently no delay. Compared on these points with the most highly civilized countries of our age, the Hebrews have greatly the advantage, and the efficiency of their law must have been for this very reason surpassingly great. Their methods afforded but the smallest possible hope of escape. Punishment followed close on the heels of detection, and usually, we must presume, of crime.——Furthermore, these punishments, compared with those of other nations in that age were by no means severe. Indeed the modes of capital punishment which come to view in the Scriptures as existing among other nations were terribly barbarous compared withthose of the Hebrew code; e. g. burning in a fiery furnace; being torn in pieces by lions; being sawn asunder; crucifixion.
The design of punishment is put in the plainest terms. In its severer forms it is not the discipline of the criminal but the good of the public—to deter the evil-minded from crime and so to make society safe from outrage. In the case of presumptuous sins we read—“That man shall die, and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel, and all the people shall hear and fear and do no more presumptuously” (Deut. 17: 12, 13 and 19: 20).