NOTES for Lev 24:1-23
Leviticus offers a fairly severe law on blasphemy, prescribing the death penalty as punishment for this crime. A natural question arises: in that case, can we speak of any choice for a particular person? If blasphemy is punished by death, does faith in God cease to be a choice and become an obligation? Then, consequently, every atheist will have to become a martyr for an idea?
If atheism, at least conscious atheism that involves openly expressing the corresponding views, is understood as blasphemy, then obviously yes. Among religious people in every Abrahamic tradition there will surely be some who would like to see not only atheism but even agnosticism precisely as blasphemy. For a religious person, such a desire is quite understandable: religiosity constantly needs defense and protection, like every structure made by human beings.
Yahwism, however, if we speak of it not as a religion but as a tradition of Revelation, needs no such defense, just as no authentic spiritual tradition needs it. Why, then, does Leviticus judge blasphemy so severely? First of all because by blasphemy here it means by no means what many religious people mean by it today. The word translated into Russian as "reviled" literally means "abused," and with words that are not used in decent society.
In the context of modern Russian speech etiquette, one should speak here of vulgar public abuse, quite probably obscene. Such a thing is possible only if a person is beside himself with rage. Here, of course, there is no question of any proper debates on matters connected with the existence of God. Moreover, the punishment is obviously applied only if something like this happens publicly and the person cannot be calmed down or brought to his senses.
The point is clearly not an accidental nervous breakdown; this is a position involving absolute lack of restraint, which makes a person truly dangerous to every believer, and mortally dangerous at that, since in such a state even murder is possible. Only for such cases does Leviticus provide punishment for the blasphemer: for extreme cases, when no admonitions work any longer.