The Mysterious Episode of the Blasphemer

While this week’s Torah reading of Emor, like most of the book of Leviticus, is concerned primarily with law and ritual, it includes an odd narrative passage in which a man with an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father gets into a fight with an Israelite, and then “blasphemed the name of the Lord, and cursed.” He is immediately arrested, after which Moses inquires of God about the appropriate punishment. God responds by commanding that “all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.”