Ed Walsh
Puritan Board Senior
Friends,
This passage in Deuteronomy, which is my favorite Old Testament book, has always interested (troubled) me. I wonder if any of you have an idea of what it is all about. Thanks in advance.
Deuteronomy 25:11-12
11 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 (genitals):
12 Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.
Rushdoony says:
This is a startling law because it is the only instance in biblical law where mutilation is mandatory. [See publisher’s note on p. 426.] Although common in pagan law, it is normally banned in God’s law, which means that this exception requires careful attention.
Rushdoony, R. J. (2008). Commentaries on the Pentateuch: Deuteronomy (p. 423). Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books.
Also in his commentary:
Publisher’s note:
Dr. Rushdoony commented that the words translator and traitor have a common root, and that a translation of the Hebrew or Greek can fail to do justice to a text’s original meaning. He was not averse to adjusting his work in terms of the best conservative scholarship available. Three years after his death, a strong case for correcting the translation of Deuteronomy 25:12a was finally put forward. It is possible that Dr. Rushdoony would have embraced the newer translation and adjusted his comments accordingly. While we do not have the benefit of his having done so, given the time frame involved, the nature of the translation change is important enough to warrant mention here.
The words “cut” and “hand” in the translation “cut off her hand” are somewhat unusual (“hand” in particular). The word normally used for “hand” is the Hebrew yad, used in verse 11 immediately before this verse, but in verse 12 we find the more rare word kaph. Kaph, derived from kaphaph (“curve”), denotes the bowl of a dish, or the leaves of a palm tree, or even the socket of the thigh (used twice in this sense in Genesis 32), as well as the palm of a hand. Recent scholarship points out that this word is a circumlocution for the groin. The word “cut” (kawtsats, from kawtsar) is used in Jeremiah 9 and 25 for cutting off the beard, being based on an Arabic root for cutting the nails or hair, in addition to other ranges of meaning (including the reaping of a field). In sum, a defensible translation for Deut. 25:12a, in lieu of “cut off her hand,” would be “shave [the hair of] her groin.” As Semitic scholar Jerome T. Walsh phrased it, “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.” This translation, as Walsh points out, reduces “the severity of the punishment from the permanency of amputation to the temporary humiliation of depilation.” Consequently, the punishment addresses both the principle of the lex talionis (proportionality of punishment) and “the shameful nature of the woman’s deed.” Had actual injury ensued, the assault would have been covered by the well-known biblical laws concerning compensation for injury rather than this passage.
If Walsh’s thesis is borne out, there would remain no scriptural support for the idea that the Bible teaches mutilation as punishment anywhere. If Walsh’s view (despite very strong support on lexical and philological grounds) is ultimately rejected by conservative scholarship, the position Dr. Rushdoony advanced in the relevant two chapters of this commentary would stand as is. In either case, Dr. Rushdoony’s thesis that pity must always be subordinate to God’s law remains perpetually true: false pity always promotes lawlessness.
Rushdoony, R. J. (2008). Commentaries on the Pentateuch: Deuteronomy (p. 426). Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books.
This passage in Deuteronomy, which is my favorite Old Testament book, has always interested (troubled) me. I wonder if any of you have an idea of what it is all about. Thanks in advance.
Deuteronomy 25:11-12
11 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 (genitals):
12 Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.
Rushdoony says:
This is a startling law because it is the only instance in biblical law where mutilation is mandatory. [See publisher’s note on p. 426.] Although common in pagan law, it is normally banned in God’s law, which means that this exception requires careful attention.
Rushdoony, R. J. (2008). Commentaries on the Pentateuch: Deuteronomy (p. 423). Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books.
Also in his commentary:
Publisher’s note:
Dr. Rushdoony commented that the words translator and traitor have a common root, and that a translation of the Hebrew or Greek can fail to do justice to a text’s original meaning. He was not averse to adjusting his work in terms of the best conservative scholarship available. Three years after his death, a strong case for correcting the translation of Deuteronomy 25:12a was finally put forward. It is possible that Dr. Rushdoony would have embraced the newer translation and adjusted his comments accordingly. While we do not have the benefit of his having done so, given the time frame involved, the nature of the translation change is important enough to warrant mention here.
The words “cut” and “hand” in the translation “cut off her hand” are somewhat unusual (“hand” in particular). The word normally used for “hand” is the Hebrew yad, used in verse 11 immediately before this verse, but in verse 12 we find the more rare word kaph. Kaph, derived from kaphaph (“curve”), denotes the bowl of a dish, or the leaves of a palm tree, or even the socket of the thigh (used twice in this sense in Genesis 32), as well as the palm of a hand. Recent scholarship points out that this word is a circumlocution for the groin. The word “cut” (kawtsats, from kawtsar) is used in Jeremiah 9 and 25 for cutting off the beard, being based on an Arabic root for cutting the nails or hair, in addition to other ranges of meaning (including the reaping of a field). In sum, a defensible translation for Deut. 25:12a, in lieu of “cut off her hand,” would be “shave [the hair of] her groin.” As Semitic scholar Jerome T. Walsh phrased it, “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.” This translation, as Walsh points out, reduces “the severity of the punishment from the permanency of amputation to the temporary humiliation of depilation.” Consequently, the punishment addresses both the principle of the lex talionis (proportionality of punishment) and “the shameful nature of the woman’s deed.” Had actual injury ensued, the assault would have been covered by the well-known biblical laws concerning compensation for injury rather than this passage.
If Walsh’s thesis is borne out, there would remain no scriptural support for the idea that the Bible teaches mutilation as punishment anywhere. If Walsh’s view (despite very strong support on lexical and philological grounds) is ultimately rejected by conservative scholarship, the position Dr. Rushdoony advanced in the relevant two chapters of this commentary would stand as is. In either case, Dr. Rushdoony’s thesis that pity must always be subordinate to God’s law remains perpetually true: false pity always promotes lawlessness.
Rushdoony, R. J. (2008). Commentaries on the Pentateuch: Deuteronomy (p. 426). Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books.
