Mostly Murder - Exodus 21:12-21

21:12-21 - This is the point now where we get into case law. The next bunch of rules are so circumstance specific that it makes sense that this is case law, or as far as I know, laws that were made based on incidents that arose and then how the judge dealt with them at the time. Kind of like a precedent that we have today. There are several key points brought up in these laws that are important in principle not just application.

The first law is very straight forward, “he that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.” Very straight forward approach to “thou shalt not murder,” and that the consequences are so serious that murder=death. But, interestingly, there are many more cases that follow that show that intention is important as well, because as we know, especially anciently, death was much more common place and accessible than it is today. In fact the next law says “if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand; then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee.” This is kind of what happened to Cain after he killed Abel, he was sent off to exile, which makes sense because as the first man to murder, he probably had no idea what it meant to kill his brother. The IM notes that the phrase “’God delivered him into his hand’ is an idiom which means that the individual did not actively seek the death of the individual.” This is probably our equivalent to “manslaughter.”

The IM also lists the crimes that were to be considered “capital offenses,” or that deserved the death penalty: “premeditated murder, attempted murder of one’s parents… kidnapping, cursing one’s parents… killing a servant… blatant neglect in the use of one’s property.” There is also guidelines for what to do when two men fight each other and one is severely injured, then the non-injured party is supposed to take care of the injured man until he gets better and take care of his family while he can’t support them. It’s one of those situations where two people who are fighting are put in a room together and can’t come out until they make up.

Interestingly, there is an incident where a man beat his servant and there are two outcomes: the servant dies immediately or the servant dies a few days later, with the first one demands the master’s death and the second one just requires him to be out the money that the servant cost him. I didn’t understand the difference, but TB notes that the difference is the intention saying, “The idea here is that if a salve dies immediately from the punishment the Master is inflicting, then there is no doubt that the master intended to kill; this is murder. But if the Master punishes a slave and the slave is gravely harmed as a result but does not immediately die (that’s the idea of his living a few days), but then the salve dies later, there is doubt as to the Master’s intent to kill, and there is doubt as to whether the punishment the Master inflicted is actually the cause of death. Therefore, the loss of the valuable slave is considered sufficient punishment in itself and no further consequences to the Master are ordered.” That made a lot of sense to me once I heard that, even though it’s a tough concept.