For this [is] an heinous crime; yea, it [is] an iniquity [to be punished by] the judges.
Ver. 11. For this is an heinous crime] Hoc enim grande flagitium est, so the Tigurines translate; for this is a wickedness with a witness, though counted by some a light offence, a peccadillo. The Popish priests, deeply guilty of it themselves, seldom cried out against it in their sermons; this the great ones, and others, observed; and, therefore, ran into it, as if it had been a venial sin, if any sin at all. But we have not so learned Christ; and there was once found an English bishop (Adelm, elect bishop of Sherborn, A.D. 705) who boldly and sharply reproved Pope Sergius to his face for this foul sin (Godwin. Catal. p. 333). Joseph calleth it a great wickedness, Genesis 39:9, because a breach of the bond of loyalty, which cannot but be treachery; as also because it destroys society and the purity of posterity, stealing sometimes an heir into the estate.
Yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges] Since it is a theft of that which is most precious and most peculiar to the owner; as Joseph told his mistress, Genesis 39:9; the suspicion or jealousy of it raiseth the rage of a man to such a height that it will not be allayed without revenge, Proverbs 6:34,35. Some render it, iniquitas iudicata, an iniquity already adjudged capital. The Hebrew hath it, an iniquity of the judges; that is, that which judges should severely punish. Before the law Tamar was to have been burnt for it, Genesis 38:24, as under the law the high priest's daughter, Leviticus 21:9. Ahab and Zedekiah were roasted in the fire for this offence by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Jeremiah 29:22,23. Some think that these two were the elders that assaulted Susanna. The Egyptians cut off the harlot's nose, and the adulterer's members. Ezekiel, Ezekiel 23:25, alludeth to this custom. The Locrians pulled out their eyes. The Julian law, among the Romans, adjudged them to die; and Jerome saith this law was yet in force in his time; but the poet complaineth that, for want of due execution, it lay dormant, Lex Iulia dormit; as many other good laws do by the baseness and partiality of the judges, such as were those Athenian judges, who, having before them Phryne, that notable strumpet, were about to pass sentence of death upon her; but when her advocate, Hyperides, had opened her bosom, and showed them her beautiful breasts to move them to mercy, they acquitted her, and let her go (Plutarch, Vit. 10; Rhetor. in Hyper.). In like sort also they dealt with the dame of Smyrna, whom they appointed to appear some hundred years after. How much better the old Saxons, who, while they were yet heathens, made a law, and saw it well executed, that the adulteress should be first strangled, and then burnt in a bonfire, over which the adulterer was to be hanged in chains, and burnt to death by degrees? And of another heathen people we read, that they put the adulterers' and adulteresses' heads into the paunch of a beast, where all the filth lieth, and so stifled them to death.