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Punishment: Its Method and Purpose 49
Imprisonment was used only for holding a suspect until trial, for political reasons, or to enforce a judicial decision. It was not generally used as a method of punishment.> Confiscation was mentioned only at the end of the biblical period.
The laws sought to protect the weak and demanded a fair judicial system which treated all persons regardless of status alike. This included the non-Israelite stranger and the slave.’
There are, of course, instances when no human punishment is possible as the commandment deals with a matter of conscience alone, such as the tenth commandment. Who knows when“You shall not covet”.... has been violated? We must leave this to God and the human conscience.
The Bible was not the product of systematic thinkers. We, therefore, have no theoretical statements about the function of punishment whether carried out by divine mandate or through human agency. We must deduce what we can from isolated statements and various hints.
The human court carried out a divine mandate, so the punishment was seen as ultimately coming from God to help to produce a“holy nation.” Punishment played a social role as it generally was public; the people participated or were required to participate, so that the communal nature of this final stage of a trial was likely to have an impressive religious effect and may have been planned as a deterrent as well. The court's intervention took punishment out of the realm of personal vengeance and replaced it with communal action. It was also a display of royal, Priestly, or communal power and protected that power and its System of courts. For the individual, the prospect of public humiliation before the entire community played a significant role.
The Mishnah and the two Talmuds vastly expanded the range of law. Many of the areas covered must have existed earlier because a society could hardly have functioned with the skeletal system of the Torah , but we possess no record of that coverage. The Mishnah and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds present detailed discussions, actual cases, and academic analyses of Problems. Often it is difficult to distinguish among them. Matters which were no longer actual, as those connected with the Temple