Read Deuteronomy 19, Jeremiah 11, and 1 Corinthians 15.
This devotional is about Deuteronomy 19.
In our society, investigating and punishing crimes has been delegated to professionals. Police are professionals who investigate crimes and recommend prosecution. Prosecutors are professionals who try to convict people accused of crimes. Judges are professionals who manage criminal trials and sentence those who are convicted. The punishments handed down by judges are administered by professionals who work in the prison and parole systems.
Because we pay professionals to deal with crime, criminal action has been abstracted away from the community where you and I live to a separate organization of people employed to handle these kinds of legal problems. An ordinary citizen in your community gets involved in the criminal punishment system only when accused of a crime or when he or she is selected to serve on a jury.
God’s law set up a very different system than ours. God’s law dealt with crime and punishment at the lowest possible level of society. In other words, when a crime was committed in a community, the community itself handled the matter.
We see that here in Deuteronomy 19. Moses taught Israel to set up “cities of refuge” when they reach the Promised Land (vv. 1-10). These cities of refuge were places where someone who accidentally killed another person could go and be protected from retribution. Notice in this section that prosecuting killers was the responsibility of “the avenger of blood” (vv. 6, 12). The avenger of blood was a family member of the person who died, often a son or brother of the victim. It was the avenger’s job to kill the killer. While God’s law doesn’t command a family member to avenge the blood of someone who was killed, God’s law does require capital punishment for murder and the avenger of blood was the means by which that happened in ancient Israel (vv. 12-13). So, an ordinary citizen was often–not always, but often–the person who enacted capital punishment, not someone employed by the state or the nation.
These cities of refuge were a community project, too. They were created by God to protect someone who accidentally killed someone else. Because an ordinary citizen would be the avenger of blood, here the community was charged with protecting someone from misplaced retributive justice.
But these cities of refuge were NOT to protect anyone who was guilty of murder and, again, it was the community that decided a killer’s fate. Verses 11-13 say, “But if out of hate someone lies in wait, assaults and kills a neighbor, and then flees to one of these cities, 12 the killer shall be sent for by the town elders, be brought back from the city, and be handed over to the avenger of blood to die. 13 Show no pity. You must purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood, so that it may go well with you.”
So, what we have here so far is a principle that a family handles justice when a family member is killed, but the community steps in to protect someone who has killed accidentally. If there is a question about whether a killing was intentional or accidental, community leaders were charged with deciding the fate of the killer, according to verses 11-13 and verses 16-19.
Toward the end of this chapter, Moses taught that there needs to be strong evidence of guilt to convict a person of any crime (v. 15). And, if someone falsely accuses another person of a crime, the false accuser should get the penalty he was trying to get for the person he accused.
I have a lot of thoughts about how the principles in this chapter apply to us. But, I’ll restrict myself to just three:
- First, in our age, one argument for capital punishment is that it will deter people from committing murder. But, critics of capital punishment say that it doesn’t deter criminals from doing criminal things. Verses 20-21 are on the side of deterrence. They say, “The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. 21 Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” If capital punishment today does not deter capital crime, it is because the community is not involved in capital punishment in our day. Instead, we have delegated the dirty work to professionals. I might add that the appeals process drags on for years, so people don’t see a quick punishment when someone is found guilty of murder. The answer to this is to make the community–maybe the same jury who convicted–carry out the death sentence. I think that responsibility will cause juries to assess the evidence more carefully and deliberate more meaningfully.
- Second, as Christians we live and operate in society, so you should not try to avoid jury service. If you are called on to serve on a jury, do it; but do it with biblical principles of justice guiding your deliberations and decision. Remember that the standard of evidence needs to be high–two or more witnesses according to verse 15. In our age, high tech methods of evidence–like video footage or DNA evidence–can be used to meet the high standards of evidence that “two or three witnesses” would have provided in the times of Moses.
God is a just God and he commands us to be just if and when we serve any role in the judicial system. Remember this if you witness a crime or are called to serve on a jury. Do what is right and just before the Lord.