June 14: Deuteronomy 19
Them’s are the rules.
Our modern justice system - and before it the English system of “common law” - descends in many ways from the Old Testament law, and especially Deuteronomy 19. In verses 1-13, for instance, the great concern is that there be no “innocent blood” shed on Promised Land soil. If an accidental manslaughter occurs, the manslayer may flee to a designated city. If he makes it, an avenging relative of the deceased may not follow him in. But . . . If he does not make it, all bets are off. He expresses his innocence by his flight. Them’s are the rules.
In the same vein, verse 15 requires _two_ witnesses to convict a person of a crime. Just as criminologists will tell you today, so the ancients knew: eyewitness testimony can be faulty. It needs to be corroborated by other evidence.
Yet there are drastic differences between this chapter and our time. In recent years there has been a rash of false accusations - of sexual abuse, racism and even calling heroes who protected innocents from violence murderers. Each case involved a false and - verse 16 - “malicious” witness - that is, someone who lies not out of ignorance or mistaken identity but out of the intentional desire to see another person harmed via the courts.
In such a case, Deuteronomy 19 calls for the malicious witness to be punished with the exact punishment that their target would have received, had their malicious testimony been believed. In other words, the punishment should fit the crime. This is the principle behind the famous command, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” (verse 21 - see also Exodus 21:23-25 and Leviticus 24:19-20). Our forefathers called this in Latin the “lex talionis.”
This command is commonly misunderstood to ratchet up punishment, when in reality it does nothing of the sort. It simply calls for punishment to fit the crime, based on the level of the evil of the crime. The malicious witness may receive a greater punishment than the man who violently killed his friend with a loose axe head.
We don’t need a law degree to understand how that can be. Yet our generation, steeped in moral relativism, cannot bear to look to God and therefore cannot bear an unchanging moral yardstick. But wisdom is known by her children. We either bow to Christ or continue in our present chaos.