The ancient mantra of an “eye for an eye,” retribution for a crime, an insult, a mistake, is age-old. Ancient literature documents the punishment women suffered for adultery or rape—real or imagined—was public stoning.
The smug satisfaction of a jealous neighbor who accused the young woman, the self-righteous elders who fancied themselves “guardians of the law,” and the zealous athletes whose accurate aim with the handy stones was a source of pride, all gathered to put the accused “in her place” for her transgression.
Habibi would end her seventeen years shivering with fear, crouching on the ground to protect the soft tissue of her breast, her belly, her private parts. Soon that would not matter. There was no protection from the unrelenting pummeling of palm-sized stones.
Her nude, crouched body made a small knot, an easy target for the well-aimed stones that would knock out her teeth, puncture her eyes, end her hearing, break her knees, and mercifully crush her skull sending her into welcome unconsciousness and slow death while her perpetrator stood silently at the edge of the crowd—watching. When the stoning was over, the crowd dispersed, and the woman’s frail, battered body, oozing with blood and body fluids, was exposed to the jackals and raptors. Soon—like Jezebel, who died in 843 BCE—there would be nothing left of this innocent young woman but the bones of her defenseless hands.
The Law was fulfilled. The elders were satisfied. And the people were warned. From a thousand years before the time of Christ to the present, “the blood red fabric of tribal life” still clothes women whose people have not advanced up the ladder of civilization to see a woman as human.
© P.D. Sargent, Power Women: Lessons From the Ancient World. March 17, 2016.
Dan Guenther says
October 29, 2018 at 6:58 amVery moving and powerful story.