Yes, You Can Believee In The Old Testament God
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
In the Old Testament, God commanded the death penalty in twenty-some cases. This was not because God was barbaric, but because God was civil. The Israeli twelve tribes had no law enforcement agencies. Further, they were surrounded by barbarisms of strange magnitudes exhibited by neighboring pagan nations.
Consequently, for God to establish an Israeli civil community, He set forth stringent punishments–some being the death penalty. He Himself became, in other words, the Law Enforcement Agency for the new nation of Israel. That chosen community thereby was to model morality / civility to the surrounding nations.
Extremely severe penalties then were commanded by God in order to bring in line an Israeli community which tended to be unruly like its neighbors. If God had been lax in penalties, human nature, being what it is, would have tested gladly the boundaries. But when penalties were severe, human nature thought twice before testing the boundaries, hence the death penalty prescribed by God in some instances.
However, once Israel lost its nationhood by “going a-whoring after other loves”, Israel’s civil structure disappeared. Israel as a nation lost its temple, its government–that is, its two primary components of culture–religion and politics. Pagan nations then ruled over the heretofore nation of God. In this loss was the disappearance of death penalties previously prescribed by God. The death penalty period as dictated by divine revelation, in other words, ended near the close of the Old Testament era.
That is why when Jesus appeared as flesh-and-bones divine revelation, He pronounced, “You used to say, ‘An eye for