PUNISHMENTS This subject is properly restricted to the penalty imposed for the commission of some crime or offense against law.
It is thus distinguished from private retaliation or revenge, cruelty, torture, popular violence, cer tain customs of waf, etc. Human punishments are such as are inflicted immediately on the per son of the offender, or indirectly upon his goods, etc.
1. Early Capital Punishment, Capital pun ishment is usually supposed to have been insti tuted at the deluge (Gen. ix :5, 6) : 'At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man : whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed ; for in the image of God made he man.' Arnheirn, however, contends that the words, must be rendered by his kinsman or near relative (comp. Gen. xiii :8, or margin), and thus explains the precept : if one stranger slay another, the kinsmen of the murdered man are the avengers of blood; but if he be slain by one of his own kin dred, the other kinsmen must not spare the mur derer, for if they do, then divine providence will require the blood—that is, will avenge it.
Certainly capital punishment for murder was not inflicted upon Cain, who was purposely pre served from death by divine interposition (Gen. iv :14, 151, and was simply doomed to banish ment from the scene of his crime to a distant country, to a total disappointment in agricultural labor, and to the life of a fugitive and a vaga bond, far from the manifested presence of the Lord (Gen. iv :it, 14) ; although the same reason existed in equal force in his case, namely, the creation of man in the image of God. We are inclined to regard the whole of the 'blessing' pronounced upon the Noachid•, including this precept, as in tended to encourage them to re-people the earth, by promises, etc., corresponding to the misgivings which were naturally created by the catastrophe they had just escaped; such as a continuation of the dread of man in the inferior creatures, a rein statement of man in dominion over them (comp. i :28), an assurance of God's high regard for hu man life. notwithstanding his late destruction of all but themselves, and the institution of the most natural and efficient mode of preserving it, by assigning the punishment of homicide to the near est of kin, no doubt, however, under the superin tendence of the head of every family, who ap pears to have been the legislator till the recon stitution of things, spiritual and civil, at Sinai, when this among other ancient laws was retained, perhaps unavoidably, but at the same time regu lated (Num. xxxv :9-34). This interpretation
would account for the custom of blood-revenge among all of the ancient and Asiatic nations. Certainly those who generalize this precept into an authority for capital punishment by courts of law in Christian nations, ought, by parity of rea son, to regard the prohibition of blood (Gen. ix: 4) of equal obligation. The punishment of death appears among the legal powers of Judah, as the head of his family, and he ordered his daughter in-law, Tamar, to be burnt (xxxviii :24). It is denounced by the king of the Philistines, Abime lech, against those of his people who should in jure or insult Isaac or his wife (xxvi 29). Similar power seems to have been possessed by the reigning Pharaoh in the time of Joseph (xli: 13).
2. The Mosaic Law. In proceeding to con sider the punishments enacted by Moses, reference will be made to the Scriptures only, because, as Michaelis observes, the explanation of the laws of Moses is not to be sought in the Jewish commenta tors. Nor will it be necessary to specify the pun ishments ordered by him for different offenses, which will be found under their respective names (ADULTERY, IDOLATRY, etc., which see). The ex tensive prescription of capital punishment by the Mosaic law, which we cannot consider as a dead letter, may be accounted for by the peculiar cir cumstances of the people. They were a nation of newly-emancipated slaves, and were by nature perhaps more than commonly intractable; and if we may judge by the laws enjoined on them, which Mr. Hume well remarks are a safe index to the manners and disposition of any people, we must infer that they had imbibed all the degenerating influences of slavery among heathens. Neverthe less, the Mosaic law mentions only seventeen crimes as being worthy of capital punishment, while the English code in the time of Sir William Blackstone was much more severe, one hundred and sixty offenses being declared by Acts of Par liament to be worthy of instant death. (See Blackstone's Commentaries, iv, 4, 15, 18).