Leviticus 24:23 - Exposition

The penalty is inflicted on the offender solemnly as an act of the Law, not of mob fury. So it was by a judicial or semi-judicial proceeding that St. Stephen was stoned: "They brought him to the council, and set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place, and the Law" ( Acts 6:12 , Acts 6:13 ). And in spite of the violence exhibited, there was still some form of law, according to Jewish practice, observed in his stoning ( Acts 7:58 ). In the case of our Lord, on the other hand. when they regarded him as guilty of blasphemy on his saying, "Before Abraham was, I am" ( John 8:58 ), and "I and my Father are one" ( John 10:30 ), the Jews "took up stones to cast at him," not waiting for a judicial condemnation, but, as they supposed, taking the law into their own hands. Had his death been by Jewish hands, it would at the last have been by stoning under this law. But the power of life and death had been taken away from the Jews by the Romans, "that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die" ( John 18:32 ).