rvailing passages that could produce a reason why such a mitzvah should be ignored. As a result, the grounds for execution were more and more circumscribed, and the death penalty was imposed only rarely, and then reluctantly.
This state of mind is evidenced by Sanhedrin 37a-b, which appears to record a speech made to witnesses in a trial that could lead to the death penalty:
[Man] was created alone, to teach thee that whoever destroys a single soul of Israel, scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had destroyed a complete world. . . . if a man strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the supreme King of Kings, blessed be He, fashioned every man in the stamp of the first man and yet not one of them resembles his fellow. Therefore every single person is obliged to say, ôThe world was created for my sake.ö . . . And if you should say, ôWhy should we bear guilt for the blood of this man?ö surely, however, it is said, ôWhen the wicked perish, there is joy!ö (Proverbs 21:10).
In the Gemara (Sanhedrin 39b) on this comes a wonderful passage, referring to Exodus 15. It asks, ôDoes the Holy One, blessed be He, rejoice over the downfall of the wicked?ö The passage responds in the negative, and then relates that, as the Israelites were singing and dancing on the farther shore of the Red Sea, celebrating their ôvictory,ö the angels wished to join them by singing a song of praise to God, but He rebuked them, saying, ôThe Egyptians, the work of my hands, are drowning in the sea, and you want to sing?ö This obviously fictive insight into the mind of the Most High does not even pretend to have a basis in scripture, and yet its power goes beyond that of Job in transcending the simple concept of theodicy that must have lain behind the earliest versions of or traditions about the Exodus story.
That is, the simple, primitive human joy over a victory in battle is here transcended to a higher m...