DEUT943 (Continued from [[NUM392]] Numbers 33:52 destroy BLOCH 63-4). The same admonitory phrase was also used in the second area of concern, the protection of human life (Deuteronomy 19:13, 21). The sanction of the death penalty as a deterrent against murder and other crimes did not violate biblical standards of morality. Indeed, no nation prior to the twentieth century expressed any misgivings about the propriety of capital punishment. Yet as far back as the sixth century B.C.E. the prophet Ezekiel alleged that God is averse to the death penalty. "Have I any pleasure at all the wicked should die?, says the Lord God, and not rather that he should return from his ways and live?" (18:23).