Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned (Ex 21:15ff, capital punishment)

Okay, I've been slacking on this, so let's kill off the year with a post on the subject of capital punishment. As I think I mentioned in my other blog (Hmm, it seems I mentioned it in a post that's in progress and has not yet been posted, oh well.) this is actually one of a handful of difficult subjects for me as my personal views are not fully lined up with the position the Bible seems to be taking. As a good Christian, one generally must defer to the Bible on difficult matters however, especially in a context such as discussing the Bible itself.

The first question that must be answered is the matter of possible contradiction. As the SAB puts it, "Does God approve of capital punishment?" The page given goes on to show verses supporting both the "Yes" and "No" positions. At the moment, I wish to focus on the "No" column, and dispute what has been put there. In the case of Cain, as I commented when I covered that passage, one issue is that God has already doled out the punishment for Cain, and He doesn't want anybody adding to it. Also, while I disputed that there were only four people on the earth at the time of that incident, I would like to say that I don't think the population of the earth at the time of this murder was very large anyway; it may have suited God's purposes to allow Cain to live and raise his own family despite the heinousness of his crime.

Now, as for the famous passage from John 8, it might be an easy way out for me to note that most modern scholars have some question as to whether this story really belongs in John's Gospel, but that's a whole can of worms I'm not planning to open until I get to direct commentary on the Gospels. I think it suffices (it certainly does for me personally) to say that the behavior we see exhibited by Jesus in this passage is consistent with his behavior on the whole, and while it may have been edited in later than the original, it's reasonable enough to believe it to be a true story. But what does Jesus actually say? He says, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." (John 8:7) There's an important thing to notice about this single line that Jesus says to the accusers that most people don't notice. It's not what he says, but what he does not say. He never says, "You know, capital punishment is an outdated concept, and I really don't like Leviticus 20." No, he's pointing out the hypocrisy of the accusers, and it's an important lesson that we all need to take to heart if and when we do apply capital punishment to our own society.

Probably one of the most popular verses in the Bible is Matthew 7:1, but how many people notice that that particular verse is only part of a longer sentence/thought? Jesus doesn't just say "Judge not, that ye be not judged..." but explains what he means in the next verse: "For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." In other words, Matthew 7:1 is not Jesus' way of saying, "Live and let live," but rather his way of saying, "Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," a much more apt metaphor for the John 8 passage. The men in that story brought a woman to Jesus and accused her of adultery, but did she somehow commit adultery all by herself? It's possible if not highly likely that the man that the woman had slept with was in the crowd, and that the others had been involved in a plot to entrap her and make Jesus look bad. After all, Jesus was known for associating with "sinners", but how many of those people would hang out with Jesus once the word spread that Jesus had ordered a woman stoned to death for adultery? On the other hand, if Jesus told them not to stone her, he really would be going against the Law. As so often happened in Jesus' interaction with people trying to bring him down, he circumvented the question by getting to the heart of the matter.

So, in the "Yes" column, the SAB does a pretty good job of cataloguing the various reasons a person could be put to death according to the Law. For the most part, other than murder, these sins break down into two main categories: people who practiced some banned form of religion, and people who practiced some banned form of sexuality. It's always been very interesting to me what extent religion and sexuality are interconnected--in this case being two areas that are considered serious enough to be put to death for--I might consider a piece on it for my other blog. In any case, these are two areas of life that God considers to be vitally sacred and intimate. One might wonder whether it's overkill to put the punishment that high for some of these, especially working on the Sabbath. I think God wants to show that He's serious about these issues, and certainly you can't deny that capital punishment at the very least gets the message across.

Darn it, I'm rambling here, because I don't have so much to say. As I said, I personally am not too keen on the concept of capital punishment. I think one of the reasons that capital punishment was used in those days, and why many punishments seem very harsh to our modern sensibilities is that it really was a product of the times. Not to say that the ancient Israelites were culturally backwards and barbaric, although there is some truth to that no doubt. Rather, as a society without a centralized governmental infrastructure, and being a nomadic people in their early days, they didn't have a prison system. If someone is a menace to society and you can't lock him away, your choices are limited. Exile him, put him in bondage, or execute him; there's not much else, unfortunately. As I may or may not have said previously, but I will be saying a lot as I cover the Mosaic Law, these were laws designed for keeping order in ancient Israel, and I think that numerous misguided individuals who want to call for applying these laws to 21st-century America are missing that living thousands of years later on the other side of the globe really is a significant consideration. As we have the option of punishing without killing, I think it would be preferable to exercise that option. As we live in a society that is pluralistic and not a theocracy, I don't think we have the right to enforce rules telling people how to practice religion, nor would I want to, myself. When we look at the Law, we need to question what the underlying moral principle is, and decide how it applies to us today. The Torah is neither inferior nor superior to any modern law, it's simply different.

Okay, we'll see you next time when I get to discuss the oh-so-pleasant topic of abortion. Happy New Year, everybody.

The way of Cain (Gen 4:8-26)

Sure enough, as God warned Cain, his jealousy and selfishness eventually led to further sin. Cain murders his brother.

I think in order to stay consistent with its objections in verse 3:9 and elsewhere, the SAB really ought to mark every passage in which God asks a question. If God knows everything, why is he asking questions? Of course, if anyone did indeed have a problem with this, it should be especially clear in this passage that God is not asking questions that He doesn't know the answer to, as He proceeds to essentially immediately answer His own question in verse 10. God's looking for a confession from Cain, but all He gets is a smartass retort, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (It's an interesting parallel in the KJV that Abel was a "keeper" of sheep, and Cain's final word on his rivalry is to point out that he's not a "keeper". However, I looked, and this parallelism is not in the original Hebrew, so it's just an oddity of this particular translation.)

Anyway, for committing the second murder, Cain gets a curse. It's not clear at all to me what portion of this curse is punitive and what is just the natural consequence of his transgression. Being "a fugitive and a vagabond" seems like the sort of thing that just plain happens when you're a murderer, since you will eventually have to flee the scene of the crime, and it seems somewhat reasonable to assume that all of the people in the world at this point, however many they are (could be several, although probably not many) all live in the same general area, and are near relatives of his brother and him. So, he has to run away. As for the ground somehow being even more cursed for him than it was for his father in the previous chapter, I don't know what that's about. Perhaps since they are likely living near the garden of Eden, the ground in that area is nicer than in outlying regions. That's pretty speculative, though.

So Cain proceeds to complain about his punishment, and claims that people will try to kill him. I don't really understand why he is so certain this would be so, nor why God seems to agree that there is a risk and protects him. Actually, the whole "mark" thing is rather odd, and I wonder what sort of mark a person might have that would say to any person he met, "Hey, don't kill this guy!" but apparently, such a mark existed. (I don't buy that this has anything to do with dark-skinned people, especially since it's likely no descendants of Cain were on the ark.) Most likely, God is interested in preventing vigilante justice; Cain has already received a punishment from God, nothing more is needed.

Cain also says to God, "From thy face shall I be hid." This is not to say that God shall be unaware of the doings of Cain from this point onward, but rather that Cain is turning away from God, so to speak. God has an eye on everyone in the world, but not everyone has an eye on God. Sometimes my children, when they get angry, will turn their backs to me, effectively hiding themselves from [seeing] my face, but not becoming invisible. This is the same sense that is meant by "out from the presence of the LORD" in verse 16.

Starting in verse 17, we get a sort of life story and genealogy of Cain. Yes, Cain had a wife. No, the Bible doesn't say where she came from. Most likely, she was a sister, but as some others have pointed out, she could have been a niece (although such a niece probably would have been the offspring of two of Cain's siblings, so it hardly makes her less of a close relative genetically). They settle down somewhere far away from the rest of civilization and start a family.

They also start a city, which the SAB is right to be confused about in light of Cain's curse to be a "fugitive and a vagabond". Such people don't make cities. Some possibilities come to mind, though. Cain did remain a fugitive from the other part of society for all of his life, I think we can pretty safely assume. The curse may have simply been that he had to leave all that he had previously held dear and relatively become an outcast. Another couple of possibilities both have to do with that part of his curse being temporary. God said he'd have a hard time with planting "henceforth", but doesn't really give a timeframe for being a vagabond. Either eventually it just ran out and was no longer effective (not all natural results of sin last forever), or if it was a punitive sentence set on him by the Lord, then he simply refused to comply. In the latter case, building a city was yet another act of defiance, which may well fit with his character as we know it.

I guess I'll wrap up this post with a few comments on Lamech, Cain's great-great-great-grandson, of whom for some unknown reason quite a bit is said. Perhaps the reason is that he seems to be exceptionally evil, although he does seem to have okay kids. Lamech is the first noted polygamist in the Bible. I already mentioned my view on the Biblical subject of polygamy at the end of this post, and I think all that needs to be added is that it's hard to see (at least for me) that the Bible is setting this guy up as an example of righteousness and right living. Lamech makes a claim at the end of his story that although he is a murderer, in the manner that Cain was promised to be avenged "sevenfold", he would be avenged "seventy and sevenfold". The SAB calls this absurd and unfair, and I totally agree, but I also point out that this is Lamech talking about himself, not God saying anything about anyone at all.

Aw, heck, I'm going to consider that the end of the chapter for me. There's really nothing to say about the last two verses that hasn't already been said about the first two in yesterday's post. Have a great weekend, everyone!

But if ye had known what this meaneth (Gen 4:1-7)

Genesis 4:1 marks the first instance of the SAB's use of the sex icon. I'd like to say to the SAB's credit that having such a category is actually a good idea, and would like to point the casual reader of the SAB to the FAQ page where its usage is explained, since it can be confusing as to why the category exists. After all, is there something wrong with sex per se? Even most Christians don't think so, although as is pointed out, we often believe there is an excess of it in our culture, and we ought to not forget that the Bible has some rather disturbing sexual content in several of its books.

That being said, I'm not 100% sure I agree that the usage of the icon is warranted here. If the point of the icon is to show that there is nasty sexual content going on in the Bible, this is not one of those places. A man simply having sex with his wife is not only acceptable, it's a positive thing, even if you are among those people who believe sex is for procreation only, as Adam and Eve end up having a child.

Now it's important to note something about what the text does not say, and make some inferred guesses regarding it in order to make sense of a lot of what comes. The Bible does not say that Cain is the first offspring of Adam and Eve, nor that Abel is the second and Seth is the third. Chalk it partly up to sexism, and partly up to a method of fairly condensed storytelling, but daughters and less significant sons are pretty much left unmentioned through much of the Old Testament. (An interesting thing to note is that while these genealogies almost always give the ages of the men, there is only one woman in the entire O.T. whose age is ever mentioned.) There may have been many other children before the story of Abel's murder unfolds, but for the purpose of telling the story, only these two men are important enough to mention. Since the people in the pre-flood days lived so long and seemed to have children well into their old age, some have assumed that Adam and Eve may have had several hundred children and probably lived to see millions of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. (Assuming most people are living hundreds of years, start having children at age 30 and produce offspring at a rate of one every other year, by the time Adam is 250 years old, the world population is already over 2 million, and the world's present population could have easily been reached by the time Adam was 400! Of course, this sort of growth would eventually have to top out, or the population would be in the sextillions by the time of the flood, a stretch of any imagination.). In fact, if we take the numbers in Genesis 5 at face value, Adam nearly lived to see the birth of Noah, his great⁷-grandson.

All of that said, the names of Cain and Abel do suggest that they may be the first two offspring for thematic reasons. She gives this first child the name "Cain", which is similar in sound to the Hebrew words for "gotten" or "made". Regarding the prophecy in Genesis 3:15, Eve may have thought literally that her very first offspring would be the one to defeat the serpent, seeing as she's so excited about him. Whether or not, she seems exceedingly excited to have made a baby, and as such I think it is fairly safe to assume Cain was the first child. She seems far less impressed with the birth of Abel, whose name means something like "meaningless" or "temporary". Most Bibles note that this may be a foreshadowing of the fact that his life isn't destined to be very long.

Now comes the point of tension: Cain and Abel each offer up sacrifices to the Lord, but He doesn't like Cain's offering of vegetables, and has higher respect for Abel's offering of animals. Cain gets jealous. The SAB brings up two good points about this lead-in, both of which come under the categories of "injustice" and "contradiction". I'll discuss each one, but my response to both is similar.

First of all, the point that is being made in this passage is apparently that animal sacrifices are necessary in worshipping God. This is true. Aside from the point I already made about Adam and Eve's fur coats, we see animal sacrifices in this story, in the story of Noah, in the story of Abraham, in the Exodus, and so on, up until the final ultimate sacrifice of Jesus. The theme persists that sin must be covered by blood, discussed in Hebrews 9 and beyond. Yet the SAB gives numerous verses in which God says He doesn't want animal sacrifices. Actually, there are many more than are listed on that page, but the theme of those verses, if taken in context, are usually quite clear. When a person sins, there is a necessity of offering up a sacrifice to cover the sin. The idea, however, is that offering up all these sacrifices is going to make you aware of the evil of sin, and stop sinning. Using my parent-child metaphor, imagine a home that has one of those little "swear jars"; I've never had one, but perhaps some of you have, and for those not familiar, the idea is that every time someone says a bad word, they have to put money in the jar to pay a sort of fine. (The concept was used rather humorously in the sci-fi movie "Demolition Man".) Anyway, imagine a child who is required to put a nickel in the jar for each swear word. One day, the child goes up to the jar in front of their parent, puts in a dollar and says, "Just covering myself for the rest of the day. I'm feeling @*$&# feisty today!" It's not going to float. The parent (if they're smart and serious about the issue) is going to stop the child and explain to them that they don't need the money nearly so much as they need their child to understand that swearing is unacceptable. The best, most succinct statement of this concept is in 1Samuel 15:22, where the prophet says to King Saul;

Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

In any case, the issue here is that Cain is doing his sacrifices wrong. This parallels modern do-it-yourself religion, in which a person may claim to be a follower of a particular religion, but don't really follow its tenets. For a period of time before I consider myself to have truly become a Christian, I used to claim to be a "Christian", but I lived my life no different from any atheist. I never even went to church, even once! And it's not just Christianity where this happens; I had a girlfriend for a while who claimed to be a Buddhist, but she ate meat. It is my understanding that vegetarianism is an important part of "The Noble Eightfold Path". (Buddhism is one of the non-Christian religions I hold in high regard; there's a lot of wisdom in it.)

The second issue is concerning whether God "respects" anyone. Well, yes and no. I think the real point of the verses in question that say, "God is no respecter of persons," is to say that God is not prejudiced. Most people in the world (in fact, I suspect just about everyone) will accept a person they have just met for the first time based on preconceived notions about their race, gender, and physical appearance. It's not necessarily a wrong thing, it's just the way our brains work: we tend to guess on the details that we don't know about, and base it on past experiences or things we have been taught by our schooling and culture. God is in a special position, however, in that He knows what a person is really like deep in their heart and mind, and doesn't have to depend on surface impressions. Once again, there is a particular verse that best shows this concept, and in fact, it's on the page I linked to on the SAB at the top of this paragraph. 1Peter 1:17

And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:

Taking this apart, Peter is saying that He doesn't judge people for who they are, but for what they do, and the choices they make in life, so choose carefully. In the case of our passage here, Cain is making some poor choices, and we'll see throughout this chapter that He continues to make bad choices, as God warns him is likely to happen.