D25-1: If You Did This One Thing To Your Wife On Her Wedding Night, You Would be Publicly Flogged!

Today we begin Deuteronomy Chapter 25.

For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.

For the King James version, click here.

“If people have a dispute, seek its resolution in court, and the judges render a decision in favor of the righteous one and condemning the wicked one; then, if the wicked one deserves to be flogged, the judge is to have him lie down and be flogged in his presence. The number of strokes is to be proportionate to his offense.”-Deuteronomy 25:1-2

The contents of Deuteronomy 25 can be broken down into two simple parts as follows:

PART ONE:
Verses that contain 5 laws dealing with humanitarian and social concerns.

PART TWO:
Verses telling the Israelites to NEVER FORGET what the Amalekites did to them and to eventually destroy this evil gentile group.

In a nutshell, that’s it!

So let’s move on to the first law.

The first instruction deals with the administration of corporal punishment via a flogging (quite a brutal punishment I would say).

The situation being expressed is of two men who have a legal disagreement too difficult to resolve between themselves.

So they take the matter to the Hebrew law system for the matter to be judged.

When I say they take the matter to the Hebrew law system, I’m talking about a formal court setting whereby a presiding judge hears the case and renders a final decision.

By definition, the judge’s decision will be FOR one of the men and AGAINST the other…

…and the man who is on the negative receiving end of the judges’s decision will be sentenced to be flogged.

Now notice we’re given very general instructions here.

In other words, the type of crime that would earn a flogging as a punishment is NOT specified.

In fact, there are, a ton of laws for which the exact penalty for breaking them is not clearly spelled out.

It was up to the court to decide on a case-by-case basis which punishment should be administered and the Lord seemed to be satisfied with this arrangement.

This makes good sense.

Why?

Because it’s practically impossible to predict and lay down in writing beforehand every possible individual sin that could be committed in every individual situation.

Having said that though, there is ONE SPECIFIC CASE where the transgressor was to be flogged no questions asked.

What case am I talking about?

I’m talking about a situation whereby a man marries a woman and then FALSELY accuses her of not being a virgin.

In those days, such an accusation was a humiliation to the man’s wife and an assault on his father-in-law’s family honor.

In this case, the husband was to be hauled off to the city gates and whipped publicly.

In other words, he was publicly humiliated for the humiliation he caused his wife and her family.