The Death Penalty for Intentional Homicide is Right

Last updated on: April 27, 2015 at 11:44 am by Kermit Zarley

The Death Penalty for Intentional Homicide is Right 2015-04-27T11:44:50-07:00 Kermit Zarley

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Pope Francis is being hailed widely as a breath of fresh air for the Roman Catholic Church. There are a lot of things I like about him. But his view of capital punishment for intentional homicide is not one of them. He calls for the end of it. Many Christians agree. The European Union has outlawed it. European lawmakers want to inflict harm on the U.S. and many of its state governments for their laws about first degree murder that require the death penalty.

I think anyone who professes to be a Christian and denies the state’s divinely established duty, and thus obligation, to protect its citizens by the use of the death penalty for intentional homocide is irresponsible if at the same time they ignore interacting with those biblical texts that clearly endorse it for the nation God set up on the earth–Israel. There are principles in the Bible that transcend God’s theocracy on earth, and this is one of them. So, the laws against this crime in the Torah are applicable to all nations.

However, in saying this, I think Israel’s jurisprudence was superior to ours. Moses says concerning the allegation of intentional homicide that there must be at least two eyewitnesses, there must be judges who examine them, and if these eyewitnesses are found to have borne false testimony, they must suffer the punishment for which they were calling for the accused (Deut 19.15–19). And Moses says in other places that the eyewitnesses must be involved in beginning the excution of the death penalty and that it not only be a public affair but that the community must participate in the execution process as well. And Moses adds here, “the rest shall hear and be afraid, and a crime such as this shall never again be committed among you. Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (vv. 20–21). This law against first degree murder is not just Moses’ but was given to him by God Almighty. Thus, Moses clearly concludes that this procedure is a strong deterrent to such crimes.

And for those biblical nitwits who cite “You shall not murder” in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20.13), and use it to allege that Moses was a hypocrite because he “killed the Egyptian” taskmaster (Exodus 2.12), Moses was trying to prevent “the Egyptian beating a Hebrew” slave (v. 11), and he likely did not commit intentional homicide in doing so. The Hebrew word here is hikka, which means “hit.” So, Moses seems to have hit the man with his hand or closed fist and therefore without a deadly weapon. This in itself would indicate it was unintentional homicide. And later, the Law of Moses (=Torah) provided for cities of refuge for such people to flee to (Deut. 19.2–4).

William H.C. Propp (Exodus 19–40, p. 179) says in his commentary on Exodus concerning that Ten Commandment verse, “You shall not murder” in Exodus 20.13, “The verb rasah means illegally to kill a human being (Rashbam; Bekhor Shor)…. Misleading but seemiongly ineradicable in the English-speaking world is the AV [=KJV] rending, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ which is far too broad.”

But alas, the Apostle Paul wrote that even in his time “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thes. 2.7). How much greater it will get as we approach the endtimes when “the lawless one is revealed” (v. 3), referring to the final Antichrist. And Jesus compared the endtimes to “the days of Noah” (Matt. 24.37). In Noah’s time, God brought the great flood because there was so much lawlessness, especially first degree murder. For Genesis says twice about that period of time, “for the earth is filled with violence” (Genesis 6.11, 13). And the scriptures do not say that intentional homocide was punished by execution. Is that a harbinger of things to come in our world as we approach the end of days?

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