The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting that person to death, and then the hands of all the people. You must purge the evil from among you. – Deuteronomy 17:7

Today's Scripture Reading (January 18, 2022): Deuteronomy 17

Charles-Henri Sanson (1739-1806) was the Royal Executioner of France during the reign of Louis XVI. He then served as the High Executioner of the First French Republic under the rule of    Napoleon Bonaparte. During the forty years of his service to the nation, Sanson personally executed almost 3,000 people, a number which included his former boss, King Louis XVI, on January 21, 1793, and his wife, Marie Antoinette on October 16 of the same year, during the middle years of the French Revolution.

For Sanson, execution was a family business. He was the fourth Sanson to occupy the role of the nation's executioner. The family had gotten into the trade when Sanson's great grandfather was asked to take the role as the Executioner of Paris in 1688 by King Louis XIV. And the family tradition did not end with Charles-Henri Sanson. Both his son and his grandson would also fulfill the role of the Executioner for France, making six generations of executioners for France coming from the Sanson family between 1688 and 1847. Charles-Henri Sanson would be the first to use the guillotine as the method of execution and had personally tested the prototype himself on April 17, 1792.

The Sansons might be an exception among those who served their nations as executioners. For the most part, executioners were shunned by greater society. No one wanted to make their acquaintance because of the gruesome role they were asked to assume, and so their identities were often a carefully guarded secret. The modern image of the hooded executioner with an ax in his hand was as much for the protection of the executioner as it was for any other reason.

It is interesting that as Moses gives his final speeches to the people before entering the land, he hits upon the idea of capital punishment. There is a long list of crimes and sins worthy of the death penalty in ancient Israel, but there was no prescribed executioner. Instead, it was the witnesses themselves who were asked to take the lead role in the execution of the criminal. The idea was that only someone who had witnessed a grievous crime should have any right to take the life. It might be one thing to accuse someone of a capital crime. It would be even more difficult to bring testimony at the trial of the condemned, and then have to take the lead at the execution once the sentence had been passed, if the witness was unsure about the truth of his testimony. And, maybe, that the one who might want to bear false witness would be given pause by the knowledge that they would be the ones who would have to look into the eyes of the condemned and throw the first stone.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 18