"Let him who is without sin..."

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When Jesus used the words, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," he was referring to a barbarian form of utterly painful and agonizing murder called "stoning." In this nightmare form of murder, approved, even recommended, by the ancient "law of Jehovah," a person had sharp, heavy rocks thrown at her, breaking bones, blood-vessels, muscular, and other tissues while dying the most agonizing and ghastly, slow death. Rocks were thrown into her eyes, breaking her teeth, and hurled with force at the most tender and sensitive parts of her body.

It was a ghastly and primitive way to kill a human being-- probably one of the most utterly primitive ways ever created to murder another person. But it was practiced by the utterly primitive, semi-literate desert-dwellers in the ancient tribal group.

Even a young child could be murdered in this horrific way-- for disobeying her parents. In fact, the "law of Jehovah" recommended this nazi-like torture.

Jesus' intention was to prove that the stoners, the murderers, were, in their own way, just as guilty of many imperfections ("sins") as the woman whom they lusted to murder in this bloody and painful way. He could see in the hearts of the people that they felt guilty carrying out this horrible "law of Jehovah." They were essentially good people caught in a nightmarish system-- the system of "execution" (murder) enjoined by the Mosaic and other backwards, unmerciful laws. So, Jesus gave them an "out," so, sharing his own mercy, they would not "have" to be "forced" by customary law to kill her.

He used this hideous form of merciless "execution" as a form of mirror. He reminded them that, someday, they would be the one facing the crowd ready to throw the rocks, to bash their bodies into bloody pulps without mercy, kindness, or goodness. Indeed, karma would make sure of it.

He wanted people to see that a horrible and disgusting murder, even if it is "prettied" up with the name "execution," was cold, barbaric, and evil, for it was murder. And fetid swampwater still stinks even if you call it "oil of rose." So, their "execution" was nothing more than ghastly murder, and Jesus stripped the gory activity of its "mask" of "righteousness," exposing the evil blood-lust beneath.

This could be expanded to a condemnation of all executions in principle, but it certainly rejected forcefully the application of the horrors of stoning. It was also a great opportunity to remind the "righteous" and "respectable religious" people that, just a millimeter below the surface, they were savages, and Jesus never missed the opportunity to point this out.
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