[If the maltreatment of prisoners and animals are perpetuated to this day such that international laws have been set up to prevent cruelty and ensure humane and kind treatment of humans and beasts, all the more similar laws were needed in days of antiquity when barbaric acts were the order of the day.
The Torah regulates human behavior —although in this chapter, there is the specific commandment about the Amalekites and Israel’s duty to annihilate them and all other nation groups that have no fear of God. Such orders from a God of Shalom is incomprehensible to agnostics and atheists as well as anti-Torah religionists who use these verses to explain why they cannot believe in such a God.
This chapter, as all the previous ones, is an eye-opener again, in terms of the Torah requirements in the treatment of all of God’s creatures. Commentary here is from the best of Jewish minds as collected in one resource book by Dr. J.H. Hertz, Pentateuch and Haftorahs; our translation of choice is EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses..—Admin1.]
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Deuteronomy/Davarim 25
1-3. AGAINST EXCESSIVE PUNISHMENT
In ancient societies, that had no system of imprisonment for lighter crimes, corporal punishment was of necessity much more frequent than in modern times. There was, therefore, great need for regulating it, if its possible barbarities were to be prevented.
1 When there is a legal-quarrel between men, they are to approach the court-of-justice, and they are to render- justice to them; they are to declare-innocent the innocent-one, and to declare-guilty the guilty-one.
controversy. Litigation.
justifying the righteous. Acquit the innocent.
2 And it shall be: if deserving of strokes is the guilty-one, the judge is to have him lie-fallen and is to have him struck, in his presence, according to his guilt, by number.to be beaten. No stripes were to be inflicted before or during the investigation; and the application of torture to extort confession from a criminal (or evidence from witnesses) was unknown in Israel. Only after he was found guilty was the punishment to take place.
judge . . . before his face. In his presence, as a precaution against indiscriminate or unlimited flogging.
by number. The literal meaning is; the number is to be proportionate to his wickedness (Ibn Ezra, Mendelssohn, and all moderns). The Traditional explanation combines the last Heb. word of v. 2 with the first word of v. 3, and deduces therefrom that the 39 stripes are to be carefully counted, and the number inflicted to be in accordance with the physical strength of the offender.
3 Forty (times) he is to be struck, not adding (any), lest you add, by striking him, (too) many strokes to these, and your brother be worthy-of-insult in your eyes.stripes. By means of a leathern belt, and not by rods or any instrument that might prove fatal.
he shall not succeed. The Rabbis fixed the maximum at 39, for fear of exceeding the legal number by miscount.
be dishonoured. Or, ‘seem vile.’ Become an object of contempt, by destroying his human dignity which must be respected even in a criminal. The Rabbis point out that ‘previous to receiving his punishment, the wrong-doer is termed the wicked man, but that after being punished he is designated thy brother. Once a man has expiated his offence, let his past be entirely forgotten; and let him be received once again into the brotherhood of Israel!’ That punishment must have a decidedly moral aim; viz. the improvement of the criminal. ‘It may in some cases be a man’s duty to punish, and in other cases to pardon, but it is in all cases a man’s duty to be merciful to a criminal’ (Seeley). The wonderful spirit of humanity of this Biblical law is quite absent from the codes of ancient and even relatively modern times. In nearly all those codes, the intention seems to be both to humiliate the offender and to inflict torment.
4. KINDNESS TO ANIMALS
The love of God regards not only the poor and the slave, but takes account also of the lower animals.
4 You are not to muzzle an ox while it is threshing (grain).not muzzle the ox. This prohibition applies to all animals employed in labour, and not to the ox alone. ‘A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast’ (Prov. XII,10)–he has consideration for its feelings and needs. It is a refinement of cruelty to excite the animal’s desire for food and to prevent its satisfaction. Prof. Cornill writes:—‘
What a truly humanitarian sentiment finds expression in the law, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. The brute should not perform hard labour, and at the same time have food before its eyes without the possibility of eating therefrom. I remember some time ago to have read that one of the richest Italian real-estate owners, at the grape-harvest fastened iron muzzles to his miserable, fever-stricken workmen, so that it might not occur to these poor peasants, working for starvation wages under the glowing sun of Southern Italy, to satiate their burning thirst and their gnawing hunger with a few of the millions of grapes of the owner.’ Jewish legislation extended the prohibition of muzzling the ox to workmen employed on production of articles of food; they must not be prevented from eating them.
The claims of the lower animals on human pity and consideration are characteristic of the Hebrew Scriptures. In Psalm XXXVI,7, there is an implication that, morally speaking, there is no complete break of continuity in the scale of sentient life; and (Gen. VIII,1; Jer. XXI,6) the domesticated animals that labour with and for man have their share of Sabbath rest, and the produce of the fields during the Sabbatical year (Exod. XXIII,11) is to be for them as for the poor’ (Harper).
The duties to our dumb friends have been strangely overlooked in most ethical systems, not excluding Christianity. Paul dismisses as an idle sentimentalism the notion of man’s duty to animals. ‘Is it for oxen that God careth?’ he asks mockingly. And this remained the attitude of the Church till recent times. ‘In the range and circle of duties,’ says the historian Lecky,’inculcated by the early Fathers, those to animals had no place.’ In the Talmud, however, kindness to animals becomes the basis of a whole code of laws. A great Rabbi is said to have been punished with long and continued physical pain because, when a calf which was about to be killed ran to him bleating for protection, he repulsed the animal, exclaiming ‘Go, that is thy destiny.’ In a beautiful legend which the poet Coleridge has paraphrased, the Rabbis tell how Moses, while he was still Jethro’s shepherd, seeks out a stray lamb and tenderly carries the tired creature in his arms back to the fold, and how a voice from Heaven cries, ‘Thou art worthy to be My people’s pastor.’ ‘This sympathy for the dumb animals is all the more remarkable because the terrible scenes in the Roman arena are only too clear an indication of the inhumanity which prevailed in the civilized world during the Talmudic period’ (M. Joseph).
It is only in our day that legislation at long last forbade cruelty to animals. Until the middle of the 19th century, it was nowhere illegal–except in Jewish law. It is, therefore, but another of the ‘conventional lies of our civilization’, if the duty of preventing cruelty to animals is invoked against one of the major requirements of Jewish life—Shechitah.
As is well known, the Rabbinical regulations concerning Shechitah, the Jewish mode of slaughtering animals intended for food, are in part due to a desire to prevent the slightest unnecessary suffering to the animal. ‘Since the need of procuring food necessitates the slaying of animals, the Law enjoins that the death of the animal should be easiest. It is not allowed to torment the animal by cutting the throat in a clumsy manner, by pole-axing, or by cutting of a limb while the animal is still alive’ (Maimonides). The Jewish method of slaughter is one continuous cut with the sharpest of knives, applied by a skilled operator. Such cut severs all the great blood-vessels of the neck, and produces instantaneous insensibility in the animal. A leading physiologist declares: ‘I should be happy to think that my own end were likely to be as swift and painless as the end of these cattle killed in this way undoubtedly is’ (Prof. C. Lovatt Evans). Similar opinions in regard to Shechitah have been given some years ago by no less than 446 non-Jewish Professors of physiology and veterinary surgeons in the principal European countries. If, nevertheless, Shechitah is prohibited in enlightened lands like Switzerland and Norway, this is due to the ignorance on the part of the electorate as to what the Jewish method of slaughter actually is. In Nazi Germany such prohibition was enacted not so much out of sympathy with the beast, as out of a desire to inflict pain on human beings: ‘they that sacrifice men kiss calves’ (Hosea XIII,2).
(h) 5-10. LEVIRATE MARRIAGE
Levirate marriage (in Latin, levir is a husband’s brother) is the technical name for the marriage with the widow of a childless brother. To avert the calamity of the family line becoming extinct, of a man’s name perishing and his property going to others, the surviving brother of such a childless man was required to marry the widow, so as to raise up an heir to that man’s name. This custom occurs in various forms among many ancient peoples. It existed in Israel in Patriarchal times (Gen. XXXVIII), but is here modified in important particulars.
5 When brothers dwell together and one of them dies, and a son he does not have, the wife of the dead-man is not to go outside (in marriage), to a strange man: her brother-in-law is to come to her and take her for himself as a wife, doing-the-brother-in-law’s-dwell together. Not necessarily in the same community, but at the same time (Talmud).
no child. Heb. ben, in the sense of child, whether male or female. The Rabbis extended its meaning in this instance to grandchild, from this or any other wife.
married abroad. One who is outside the family.
the place of the husband’s brother. He shall take the place of the dead brother; i.e. he shall ‘build up the house’ which the deceased had begun, and perpetuate his name.
6 Now it shall be that the firstborn that she bears will be established under the name of his dead brother, that his name not be blotted-out from Israel.7 But if the man does not wish to take his sister-in-law (in marriage), his sister-in-law is to go up to the gate, to the elders, and say: My brother-in-law refuses to establish for his brother a name in Israel, he will not consent to do-a-brother-in-law’s-duty by me!
8 Then the elders of his town are to call for him and are to speak to him; and if he stands (there) and says: I do not wish to take her,
speak unto him. ‘The elders counsel him as to what is the best course for him to follow’ (Sifri). There are cases in which the levirate marriage was inadvisable, and they counselled that the rite of Chalitzah take its place. The latter course has been almost universally followed in later centuries, especially after the formal excommunication of all polygamists by Rabbenu Gershom in the year 1000.
9 his sister-in-law is to approach him before the eyes of the elders, she is to draw off his sandal from his foot and is to spit in his face, then she is to speak up and say: Thus shall be done to the man that does not build up the house of his brother!lose his shoe. Or, ‘strip his sandal.’ The loosening of one’s shoe by another was emblematic of the transfer of property. It betokened the giving up to that other of some property or right’ Ruth IV,7.
spit before him. This is a departure from the rendering of AJ, as of RV, as their rendering is contrary to both fact and Heb. idiom. Spitting before him ‘on the ground’ (Talmud, Rashi) was to symbolize the contempt for the man who brings disgrace upon himself and his family by refusing the privilege to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel.
answer. Solemnly assert.
10 His name is to be called in Israel: The House of the (One with the) Drawn-off Sandal.had his shoe loosed. Or,’whose sandal was stripped off.’ After that, he could nevermore marry her, nor could any of his brothers. She was free to marry ‘a stranger’.
11-12. FLAGRANT IMMODESTY
Even in extenuating circumstances, flagrant immodesty is to be dealt with without pity.
11 When men scuffle together, a man and his brother, and the wife of one of them comes-near to rescue her husband from the hand of him that is striking him, and she stretches out her hand and seizes (him) by his genitals:strive together. lit. ‘are wrestling together.’
taketh. Seizes with violence.
12 you are to chop off her hand, your eye is not to have-pity!
cut off.
The Rabbis commuted this severe penalty into a money-fine, varying ‘in accordance with the status of the culprit and the victim’. There is no other case of mutilation in the Torah.
13-16. HONEST WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
13 You are not to have in your purse stone-weight and stone-weight, (both) large and small.diverse weights. A large one for buying, and a small one for selling.
14 You are not to have in your house efa and efa, (both) large and small.15 A stone-weight perfect and equal shall you have, an efa perfect and equal shall you have, in order that your days may be prolonged on the soil that YHVH your God is giving you.
thy days may be long. Fair dealing, integrity in trade, must necessarily promote social happiness and prolong the life of a nation. ‘It is a known fact that every kingdom based on justice will stand. Justice is like a building. Injustice is like the cracks in that building, which cause it to fall without a moment’s warning’ (Ibn Ezra). ‘A false balance is an abomination to the LORD: but a perfect weight is His delight’ (Prov. XI,1).
16 For an abomination to YHVH your God is everyone doing these, everyone committing corruption!all that do unrighteously. A comprehensive summing-up. ‘All that do unrighteously either by mouth or deed, in secret or in open’ (Ibn Ezra).
17-19. REMEMBERING AMALEK
Whilst Israel was to make justice and brotherly love its guiding rule, it was not to forget that Amalek had perpetrated a cowardly and unprovoked attack on the feeble and hindmost, when the Israelites were marching from Egypt; Exod. XVII,8-16.
17 Bear-in-mind what Amalek did to you on the way, at your going-out from Egypt,18 how he encountered you on the way and attacked-your-tail-all the beaten-down-ones at your rear- while you (were) weary and faint, and (thus) he did not stand-in-awe of God.
met thee. Better, fell on thee.
smote the hindmost. He attacked the rear of the Israelites, the faint and weary stragglers enfeebled by the march.
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he feared not God. He was devoid of pity and fundamental humanity. [Exod. I,17. feared God. The expression of fearing God in Scripture is used in connection with heathens to denote the feeling which humanizes man’s dealings with foreigners, even where national interests are supposed to be at stake. Thus when Amalek attacked Israel, not in open warfare but stealthily, from the rear, slaying the old and feeble, showing himself devoid of this natural piety and fundamental humanity, Scripture says of him, ‘and he feared not God’. The midwives (in Egypt) were required by their king to act barbarously towards ‘aliens’. But they preferred to obey the voice of human kindliness, the voice of conscience; ‘the midwives feared God’.]
blot out. A people so devoid of natural religion as to kill non-combatants had forfeited all claim to mercy.