Texts in Conversation
Leviticus demands death for adultery, presenting it as a capital crime within Israel’s legal code. Sirach echoes this, condemning adultery in similar terms, but is not explicit about requiring execution, instead saying the act will be exposed and judged.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Leviticus 20:10
Hebrew Bible
8 You must be sure to obey my statutes. I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 9 “‘If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or mother; his blood guilt is on himself. 10 If a man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. 11 If a man goes to bed with his father’s wife, he has exposed his father’s nakedness. Both of them must be put to death; their blood guilt is on themselves. 12 If a man goes to bed with his daughter-in-law, both of them must be put to death. They have committed perversion; their blood guilt is on themselves.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Sirach 23:21
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
19 The eyes of men are his terror. He doesn’t know that the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, seeing all the ways of men, and looking into secret places. 20 All things were known to him before they were created, and also after they were completed. 21 This man will be punished in the streets of the city. He will be seized where he least expects it. 22 So also is a wife who leaves her husband, and produces an heir by another man. 23 For first, she was disobedient in the law of the Most High. Second, she trespassed against her own husband. Third, she played the adulteress in fornication, and had children by another man.
Date: 195–180 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In the numerical proverb of Sirach 23:16-17 the author sums up the persons or activities that are despicable and cause anger. The first comment on the burning passion is not further specified ("Burning passion is like blazing fire, it will never be quenched until it burns itself out/is consumed"). Nothing indicates whether the person is married, nor what is the object of his passion. In the second element of the proverb, as noted above, behind the Hebrew term is assumed to mean "blood relation" ("The person who commits sexual wrongdoing literally in the body of his flesh, will never cease until the fire burns out"). We find the expression in Leviticus 18:6 and 25:49. The former is part of the incest laws in Leviticus 18:6-18; similar instructions are found also in Leviticus 20:11-12, 14, 17, 19-21. In none of these instances does the LXX use the Greek term of Sirach 23:16. All these instructions deal with a punishable act of a sexual nature and assume that the transgressors are in kinship, whether they live in the same household or not ... it is likely that adultery was not always detected either in pre or in postexilic times, including the time of Ben Sira. It seems, however, that the author anticipates a divine intervention when he points out that even if the man is foolish enough to think that his actions will not be discovered, the Lord, who created everything and therefore knows everything, will see his actions (23:19-20). Therefore the adulterer should be afraid of his sins. Somehow or other the man is apprehended at the end. God's judgment is perhaps not immediate but operates according to its own timetable. 23:21 does not disclose anything about the penalty. The death penalty was probably not in force anymore ..."
Ibolya Balla, Ben Sira on Family, Gender, and Sexuality, DCLS 8 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 2011), 131–134.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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