Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-03-24
DEATH PENALTY AND THE BIBLE


To the Editor of the TeiegrGph:
At the hearing before the Judiciary
General Committee of the House and
Senate in joint session in the Hall of
the House of Representatives on
March 20 on the Wells-Hess bill,
capital punishment, Rabbi Joseph
krauskotf, of Keneseth Israel Syna-
gague, Philadelphia, closed his earnest
and eloquent plea in favor of the bill
with a quotation of the Sixth Com
mandment, Thou shalt not kill" The
learned Rabbi knows, of course, that
this commandment forbids murder,
and that it does no violence to the ori-
ginal words in the text to render it,
Thou shalt not murder" And he
also knows, the writer is convinced,
that the legal killing of q murderer
under the Old Testament law, as now
under the civil law, is not murder.
Were this not true, the Scriptures of
the Old Testament would fatty con-
tradict themselves. For they direct
and command that ''the murderer" or,
whose killeth any person, the muir
derer shall be put to death" This
law for the punishment of the MUIR
derer was so we'll defined in the
Pentateuch that it applied only to
what We now know as murder in the
first degree. The Decalogue, which in
cludes the Sixth Commandment, is
supposed to have been delivered to
Israel IA. l B. c., and at that time
and throughout the whole period of
Israel 1491 B. c., and at that time
era the penalty for the violation of
this Sixth Commandment was death.
But the principle involved in this pre-
scrlbed penalty is much older than the
lOGcAlORnR I no
Noah, 234S b. c., in this form: Who
so sheddeth mans blood, by man shall
his blood be shed" The Rabbi also
was emphatic in his affirmation that
only the Giver of life has the right to
take that life. This statement need
not be called in question in view of the
acknowledged fact that the Creator
under the Old Testament dispensation
delegated that power to the civil mag
iStrateS, for he commended them to
punish with death the murderer. With
these facts in evidence it also seems
in every way proper to resent the
thought that the death penalty is a
all-wise, and it was in the conscious
ness of the first murderer when he ex-
claimed, EVERY one that findeth me
shall slay me-"
That death was to be the perpetual
penalty for first degree murder is a
WHICH rests on q very SOllQ
foundation. The law is universal as
stated in Gen. 9:6-'Whoso she'd
deth mans blood, by man shall his
blood be she'd" The reason for this
law is universal and perpetual, as
valid to-day in America as it was over
four thousand years ago when Noah's
ark rested on Ararat.
This reason God gave to Noah in
these words: For in the image of
God made he man" (Gen. TX, 60. This
Is an inalienable and fundamental
characteristic of man. There were capt.
tai penalties in those ancient times for
various other crimes, but in no other
easel is the reason for the death PEN
atty the same as in the case of murder
Until, therefore, man ceases to bear
the image of God, the divinely pre-
scribed penalty for first degree murder
is death at the hands OF the civil au-
thorities, unless the penalty is abro-
gated by the same authority which
originally presented it. But not only
was the penalty of death made obiga-
tory, just as it is to-day in the statutes
of Pennsylvania, but the sentence was
absolutely irrevocable. The power to
pardon, or to commute the sentence OF
murderer, was denied to this State
under the Mosaic, or rather the divine,
law In following the law as given in
Numbers XXXV, 80, it is command
faction for the life of a murderer which
is guilty of death (Num. XXXV, 3). d.
Satisfaction" is a redemption price,
a ransom, an atonement, anything in
place of the infiction of the penalty.
AS the foregoing facts are unassail-
able, another statement made by
Rabbi Krauskoff deserves special con-
sideration. The learned Rabbi might
be presumed not to be very familiar
with the teachings of the New Testa-
ment. However. his liberal views are
we'll known, and he is admired and
loved by many eminent men in the
Christian church. He insisted in his
| impassioned plea for the abolition of
the death penalty that in the New
Testament the jus talionis, of which
he claimed the death penalty was a
part, has been abolished. On the con-
trary, not only is the proof of this
proposition lacking. so far as the
death penalty is concerned, but there
are clear recognitions in the Scriptures
of the New Testament of the continu-
ed and permanent obligations of the
divine law that murder should be pun
ished with death. The Sword" still
is in the hands of the constituted