Here’s a controversial topic if ever there was one. But God is up front in His dealing with it.
There are certain big ideas we must grapple with first if we are going to think rightly about Leviticus 20, the chapter on capital punishment. First, all life is borrowed from God. The wise man, Solomon, in talking about the moment of death, wrote, “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Eccl 12:7). God creates life, sustains life, and decides when our earthly life is over. Second, God does have the right to establish the rules of the universe and to judge His creatures according to His standards, not ours. Third, God wanted people to get on with life, not be burdened by the wrongs of others. Today we call it giving closure. There were no prisons in Israel; the only thing akin to that was the city of refuge where a person who inadvertently killed another could seek asylum. But either people paid restitution for harm they had done, or, if the offense was serious enough, the criminal was executed, and life carried on. Fourth, in a capital case, there must be corroborating eyewitness evidence: “Whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Deut 17:6). Fifth, the law concerning capital punishment was a package of legislation that included the following: if a person gave false testimony in a capital case, that itself was punishable by death. And, sixth, there was always the possibility of leniency shown to those truly repentant, as in the case of David, though the king still paid a severe price for his sin. We will think of particulars in the next lesson, but this principle stands even today: “You shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine” (Lev 20:26).