A Cruel Punishment for Protection?
Consider the following verse and then consider:
1. Why would a human woman be concerned about her husband's secrets at a time when he might die?
2. Why is she to be made to have her hand cut off for trying to protect her husband?
"When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her" (Deuteronomy 25:11-12).
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1. Why would a human woman be concerned about her husband's secrets at a time when he might die? |
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2. Why is she to be made to have her hand cut off for trying to protect her husband? |
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This article argues that the most likely translation for Deut. 25:12a is "you shall shave [the hair of] her groin". This reading is philologically and lexically superior to the standard translations, and it resolves the anomaly of one and only one law in the entire Israelite corpus that imposes physical mutilation as a punishment. It also addresses problems that divide commentators into two camps: those who see the punishment as talionic and those who see it as based on the shamefulness of the woman's deed. By reducing the severity of the punishment from the permanency of amputation to the temporary humiliation of depilation, it allows the punishment to be seen as both. She has humiliated a man publicly by an assault on his genitalia (presumably without serious injury to them); her punishment is public genital humiliation, similarly without permanent injury. |
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1. Why would a human woman be concerned about her husband's secrets at a time when he might die? |
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When two men are fighting and the wife of one intervenes to save her husband from the blows of his opponent, if she stretches out her hand and seizes the latter by his private parts, you shall chop off her hand without pity. |
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2. Why is she to be made to have her hand cut off for trying to protect her husband? |