PUNISHMENTS. This subject is properly re stricted fb the penalty imposed on the commission of some crime or offence against law. It is thus distinguished from private retaliation or revenge, cruelty, torture, popular violence, certain customs of war, etc. Human punishments are such as are inflicted immediately on the person of the offender, or indirectly upon his goods, etc. For the leading points in the literature of the question concerning future and divine punishment, see HELL. Capital punishment 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.' Arnheim, however, contends that the words rriN erir. must be rendered his kinsman, or near relative (compare xiii. 8, ?elN, or margin), and thus explains the precept : if nun, one stranger slay another, the kinsmen of the murdered man are the avengers of blood ; but if he be slain by rnt., viN, one of his own kindred, the other kinsmen must not spare the murderer, for if they do, then divine providence will require the blood—that is, will avenge it. Certainly capital punishment for murder was not inflicted on Cain, who was purposely preserved from death by divine interposition (iv. 14, 15), and was simply doomed to banishment from the scene of his crime to a distant country, to a total disappointment in agricultural labour, and to the life of a fugitive and a vagabond, far from the manifested presence of the Lord (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 in clined to regard the whole of the blessing' pro nounced upon the Noachida, including this precept, as intended to encourage them to re-people the earth, by promises, etc., corresponding to the mis givings which were naturally created by the catas trophe they had just escaped ; such as a continua tion of the dread of man in the inferior creatures, a reinstatement of man in dominion over them (comp. i. 28), an assurance of God's high regard for human 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 nearest of kin—no doubt, however, under the superintendence of the head of every family, who appears to have been the legislator till the reconsti tution of things, spiritual and civil, at Sinai, when this among other ancient laws was retained, per haps unavoidably, but at the same time regulated (Num. xxxv. 9-34). This interpretation would
account for the custom of blood-revenge among all the ancient and Asiatic nations. Certainly those who generalise this precept into an authority for capital punishment by courts of law in Christian nations, ought, by parity of reason, to regard the prohibition of blood (Gen. ix. 4) of equal obliga tion. 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, Abimelech, against those of his people who should injure or insult Isaac or his wife (xxvi. 1I, 29). Similar power seems to have been possessed by the reigning Pharaoh in the time of Joseph (xli. 13).
In proceeding to consider 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 commentators. Nor will it be necessary to specify the punishments ordered by him for different offences, which will be found under their respective names. [ADULTERY; IDOLA TRY, etc.] The extensive prescription of capital punishment by the Mosaic law, which we cannot consider as a dead letter, may be accounted for by the peculiar circumstances 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 en joined 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. Their wanderings and isolation did not admit of penal settlements or remedial punish ments. They were placed under immediate divine government and surveillance. Hence, wilful of fences evinced an incorrigibleness which rendered , death the only means of ridding the community of such transgressors ; and which was ultimately re , sorted to in regard to all individuals above a ccr tain age, in order that a better class might enter Canaan (Num. xiv. 29, 32, 35). If capital punish ment in Christian nations be defended from the Mosaic law, it ought in fairness to be extended to all the cases sanctioned by that law, and among the rest, as Paley argues, to the doing of any work on the Sabbath day (Mor. Phil., b. v. ch. 7). We have the highest authority for saying, that the Mosaic law of divorce was a condescension to cir cumstances (Matt. xix. 8)—a condescension which may have extended somewhat further.