The Death Penalty Upholds the Value of Human Life

Protests over these proposed executions have either ignored Pike and Hasan’s victims or offered immoral cliches posturing as moral such as, “taking a life doesn’t bring back the dead.”

“The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” Pope Leo argued. The Bible however has a very different position on the link between human dignity and the death penalty. In (Genesis 9:6) after Noah leaves the ark, G-d warns that there will be an accounting if blood is spilled and that. “Whoever sheds the blood of man through man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of G-d He made man.”

Not only is the death penalty not an attack on the dignity of the person, it upholds that dignity.

It is precisely because a human being has dignity, because he is made in the image of G-d, that his killer must be punished. To truly believe in the dignity of man requires that we take murder seriously. When we fail to punish murder, the value of life is degraded and murder proliferates.

In Canada, a convicted child killer serving a life sentence for raping and killing a 10-year-old girl has been allowed to leave prison unescorted to attend cooking classes. In Australia, a serial killer responsible for at least 4 murders was granted parole. In America, murder rates soared after tens of thousands of criminals were freed during COVID and the BLM riots.

This is not a new story, but a very old one.

When Cain commits murder, G-d warns him that “the voice of your brother’s blood calls out from the earth.” One murder is followed by another and one crime by another with no law and no justice system to remedy the situation. The world becomes a place too evil to go on existing.

In Genesis 6:11, we are told that, “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with violence.” The word for “violence” is חָמָס or Hamas. Its connotations include lawlessness and various Jewish commentaries link it to robbery, oppression, theft and rape. In Psalms 7:16-17, the same word Hamas, is used to describe the divine undoing of a wicked man’s violent plot. “He dug a pit and hollowed it out, and fell into the pit he made. his mischief will return upon his own head, and his violence will descend upon the crown of his head.”

After the complete collapse of the lawless word before the flood, G-d introduces the death penalty as the answer. Human beings will be tasked with punishing the murder of innocents. By executing the murderer, man upholds the dignity of man and the image of G-d. The body of the murderer must be buried (Deuteronomy 21:23) rather than left hanging because he too was made in the image of G-d, but letting a murderer go free will defile the land (Numbers 35:34.)

The Bible forbids wealthy murderers paying a ‘blood price’ (a common practice then and still a common practice in the Muslim world where the price for killing a Muslim man is highest while the price for killing a non-Muslim woman is lowest) for that would pollute the land with blood and “no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it” (Numbers 35:33) leaving the death penalty as the only answer for murder.

Such blunt language is shocking to modern sensibilities. A proposal to livestream the execution of a terrorist had some clutching their pearls. What kind of people would do something like that? Certainly not the kinds of people who kill over 1 million babies a year, who extend euthanasia to mentally ill teenagers and elderly patients who barely know where they are, and who weep over a woman who strangled her children to death: rather than over the children whom she killed.

Western societies are awash in murder, both legal and illegal, and we seem to manage to kill everyone except those who deserve it most. We also manage to pity everyone except the victims. Our society is so compassionate that we only kill the innocent and spare the guilty.

Jewish teachings warn that, “anyone who is merciful to the cruel will eventually become cruel to those on whom he should have mercy.” Modern societies confuse mercy and cruelty all the time.

Executing murderers isn’t cruel. It helps prevent a society from descending into a lawless state in which murder is commonplace. The number of murders has grown in the United States even as we eliminated and then tightly restricted the death penalty. Very few murderers are executed now. The process takes decades and prosecutors only seek the death penalty against the very worst of the worst. The murder victim’s family looks forward to at least a generation of being dragged to appeals in which pro bono lawyers argue that the murderer was insane, retarded, a victim of racial prejudice, incompetent representation, outdated laws and lead paint.

Once the execution is scheduled, the lawyers argue that any form of execution, even lethal injection, will be much too cruel. Appeals are directed to the Supreme Court. The UN and international human rights figures sign letters urging some southern court to spare monsters who brutally killed their victims, tortured, raped and violated every part of their bodies and souls.

Most murderers never reach this part of the process. Many no longer spend their lives in prison and are set loose to kill again. At least we don’t let child killers out to take cooking class.

Yet.

The Bible warned us thousands of years ago that the failure to put down killers would lead to the normalization of murder. Going easy on a killer isn’t compassion: it diminishes the value of human life. When we don’t take human life seriously, then murderers get a pass and euthanasia, abortion and other forms of killing for convenience become commonplace.

The dignity of man does not come from enabling murder, but from eliminating murderers. If we truly believe in the value of human life, we will not allow those who take it to go unpunished.