Ladies, you know that thing when your husband gets in a fight with other dudes and you want to help, so you run up to them while they’re tussling and just grab the other dude by the downstairs business and yank real hard so that he stops fighting and your husband wins? Look, we’ve all been there. Anyway, it turns out that’s a sin. And not just like an everyday, “whoops, go to confession” kind of sin. Deuteronomy 25:11-12 says that if a woman does this normal, everyday kind of thing, you should cut her hand off. And worse, you’re not even allowed to feel bad for her while you’re doing it. “Show no pity,” says God.
Apart from the famous “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”-style retaliatory punishments elsewhere in the law, this de-handing is the only mutilation prescribed as a penalty in the books of Moses. Why such a serious penalty for defending your husband? It seems that a woman crushing a strange man’s junk was a pretty serious taboo, because this was not only an injury done by a woman to a man (a subversion of social hierarchy), but also potentially to his ability to produce children, thereby being an offense against future generations. Similarly, the severity of the punishment serves to remind women of the need to remain restrained in their public behavior.
