Contemplative Bible Reading

Leviticus 21:9  (New Living Translation)

If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she also defiles her father’s holiness, and she must be burned to death.

In the Old Testament with the Israelites, capital punishment was performed by stoning the guilty person. The community would encircle the person and throw rocks until the person was dead. The ritual was awful for the community and not much fun for the punished either.

In the above verse, however, is a different form of capital punishment. If a priest’s daughter became a prostitute, she would be burned to death instead of being stoned. Unusual. Burning was used as a cleansing technique in the Old Testament. If you found metal that might have traces of a disease on it, you cleansed the metal by putting it in a fire. The heat would kill any disease. We do the same today by washing dishes in hot water.

I suppose there is a connection to cleansing here by burning the offending daughter.

And, yes, this is another reason to thank God for the grace shown to use through Jesus the Messiah.