Eye for an Eye

LISTEN

Text

‘If a man takes the life of any human being, he shall surely be put to death. The one who takes the life of an animal shall make it good, life for life. If a man injures his neighbor, just as he has done, so it shall be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; just as he has injured a man, so it shall be inflicted on him.

Thus the one who kills an animal shall make it good, but the one who kills a man shall be put to death. There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the Lord your God.’” Then Moses spoke to the sons of Israel, and they brought the one who had cursed outside the camp and stoned him with stones. Thus the sons of Israel did, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Commentaries

This is the intent of the Old Testament law. Look at the statement—an eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Do you know what it means? The punishment must fit the crime; no less, and no more. It was a restraint on the innate vengeance that is in an evil heart.

An eye for an eye didn't mean when you get it, give it back. It meant that when justice functions, let it never go beyond its bounds. If it is only a tooth, then only a tooth should be taken, or in kind. Usually, it was money that compensated not an actual tooth. In other words, God was limiting the innate evil human heart which always seeks to go beyond how it's been offended.

Pharisees took a divine principle of judicature, a divine principle for the courts, and they made it a matter of daily vendettas. The statement is this an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I've heard people say, boy, that kind of stuff is merciless; that's the bloodthirsty, Old Testament stuff. Some of the old critics of the Bible used to say there was a different God who wrote the Old Testament.

They said the God of the Old Testament is not the God of the New Testament. They thought he, God of the Old Testament, wanted an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that He was saying, I'll get you. Whoever does anything to you, get them back, and if he pokes your eye, poke his eye. If he knocks your tooth out, get his. But is that what it is saying? Do you know why people interpret it that way?

Because that's the way the human heart is. But that's not the way God's heart is, and that's not what it means in the Old Testament when it says that. Starting in Exodus, you have the law of God basically codified, systematized. You have the moral law which is between a man and God or a woman and God. 

You have the civil law. The moral law is taken care of between a man and God; the civil law is taken care of within the framework of magistrates, judges, courts, and duly constituted authorities. God instituted judges, magistrates, and authorities to take care of civil matters. One element of the great American philosophy of life is that we all have certain inalienable rights.

We're big on rights; in fact, maybe we've never been bigger on rights than we are nowadays in our society. We are hyper conscious of our rights. We have had movements for civil rights, women's rights, children's rights, prisoners' rights; we have unions to demand rights for the employees.

We are very conscious of our rights. In fact, it is not uncommon in our society to hear someone say, you'll never get away with that. You can't do that to me. I'll get even. Deep down in the human heart is this retaliatory, get even kind of spirit. Frankly, in our society, we make heroes out of the kind of people who take nothing from nobody, who don't stand any guff.

They are the strong, the tough, the courageous, and the macho; and our society looks down on the meek and the non-retaliating, the gentle, the forgiving, the gracious, the merciful person who demands nothing from anyone, and we say he's a weakling and a coward. Basically, that's at the heart of the Jewish misunderstanding of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth give them what they're due.

That's the way it was being applied in Jesus' time. It had become a license for vengeance, a basis for a vendetta, sort of a biblical permission to have a grudge or to strike back. But Jesus said if someone hits you on the right cheek, give him your left. If someone sues and takes your coat, give him your cloak. If someone asks you to go a mile, go two. And if anyone needs what you've got, give it or loan it.

That's antithetical to everything in human society; that doesn't cut it with the human heart. I've noticed something interesting in our fight for rights—inevitably, when a fight for rights takes place in a society, the upshot of it is going to be lawlessness. This is because when people begin to live on the basis of their rights, then a dominant selfishness begins to take place. And when you have a whole lot of people being selfish, they will invariably tread on each other.

In a fight for rights, what is lawful just gets pushed into the background. If you really want to know why God gave all of us the law—look at the Book of Timothy. The law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for man slayers, for fornicators, for sodomites—or homosexuals. In a fight for homosexual rights, we are obviating the law that God has ordained to preserve a righteous standard. Always, in a fight for rights, the law gets scuttled.

Because if you let men have their way, the things they want are unlawful, because men are evil. A repetition of some other laws annexed to this new law. That murder should be punished with death according to an ancient law in Noah’s time and the very law of nature. That maimers should in like manner be punished by the law of retaliation.

Not that men might in these cases be their own avengers but they might appeal to the civil magistrate who should award suffering to the injurious and satisfaction to the injured as should be thought fit in proportion to the hurt done. This law we had before.

And it was more agreeable to that dispensation in which were revealed the rigor of the law and what sin deserved, than to the dispensation we are under in which are revealed the grace of the gospel and the remission of sins and therefore our Savior has set aside this law not to restrain magistrates from executing public justice but to restrain us all from returning personal injuries and to oblige us to forgive as we are and hope to be forgiven.

Thus the divine law took not only their lives, but their goods also under its protection. Those beasts which belonged to no particular person, but were, as our law speaks, ferae naturae—of a wild nature, it was lawful for them to kill; but not those which any man had a property in. Does God take care for oxen?

Yes for our sakes he does. That strangers, as well as native Israelites, should be both entitled to the benefit of this law, so as not to suffer wrong, and liable to the penalty of this law in case they did wrong. And, it should seem, this is it that brings in these laws here, to show how equitable it was that strangers as well as Israelites should be punished for blasphemy, because strangers as well as Israelites were punishable for other crimes.

And there may be this further reason for the recognition of these laws here. God would hereby show what provision he had made for man’s safety in punishing those that were injurious to him which should be an argument with magistrates to be jealous for his honor and to punish those that blasphemed his name. If God took care for their comfort they ought to take care for his glory. The execution of the blasphemer. 

Moses did as it were sign the warrant or it. This teaches that death is the wages of sin, and that blasphemy in particular is an iniquity to be punished by the judges. But if those who thus profane the name of God escape punishment from men yet the Lord our God will not suffer them to escape his righteous judgments. This blasphemer was the first that died by the law of Moses. Stephen, the first that died for the gospel, died by the abuse of this law; the martyr and the malefactor suffered the same death.

In close connection with the command to slay the blasphemer is repeated the prohibition of murder, and the injunction that the murderer shall surely be put to death. Thus a distinction is sharply drawn between the judicial sentence carried out by the congregation, and the unsanctioned smiting the life of a man by another, and a warning is given against any man fanatically taking the law into his own hands, even in the case of a blasphemer.

Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man. He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death. If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death at the evidence of witnesses, but no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness. Moreover, you shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death. Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor in secret. And all the people shall say, Amen.

The law about killing a human being is now followed by the law with regard to killing a beast. He who kills an animal has to make it good by giving another animal for it. The case is not the same as that legislated for in Exodus. The Pharisees had perverted this great truth into a personal vengeance principle. 

If someone gets your tooth, get his. Instead of taking it as a limit on vengeance, they took it as a mandate for vengeance. Their emphasis was wrong; they removed it from the courts, made it a personal revenge, and used it to justify hearts full of hate. Jesus is saying to them, You're not righteous. You're not righteous at all. If you were righteous, you wouldn't be vengeful. They cherished a spirit of retaliation.

If a person curses a god or gods he is guilty in relationship to that god. But if a person curses the name of Yahweh shall be under the death penalty. This is true for an Israelite and for a foreigner. Murder carries the death penalty. Other kinds of injuries and losses are to be decided on the principle of an eye for an eye and a life for a life. This principle is called lex talionis.

Scholars used to blush before this standard. But the study of Near Eastern law has reversed their concern. In some old law codes like Ur-nammu, personal injury carried the penalty of a fine. Injuries against the god or his king, however, had severer penalties. With the introduction of lex talionis in law codes such as Hammurabi's the worth of persons was elevated. Injury to a person became a criminal offense. 

Furthermore, it needs to be emphasized that lex talionis was a guide for establishing equivalences in deciding cases. It was not carried out literally. Adequate compensation for a loss was to be set by the court; on the other hand, the courts were not to require excessive compensation. In no case is one able to compensate for the talking of a human life.

Designed to curb exaggerated revenge this formula vividly expressed the principle that punishment should be proportionate to the offense. It seems not to have been enforced literally. Jesus’ opposition to the misuse of this phrase involved, not an abrogation of this principle of equivalence but a call to temper its application in light of the love commandment, in the interests of the kingdom, and in the knowledge of God’s coming wrath. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life. 

Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

Jesus said but I tell you not to resist evil. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.

As it had been a stranger who had on this occasion been the offender, the law, Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country, with the sanction, I am the Lord your God, is emphatically repeated.

The same law shall apply to the native as to the stranger who sojourns among you. If an alien sojourns among you and observes the Passover to the Lord, according to the statute of the Passover and according to its ordinance, so he shall do; you shall have one statute, both for the alien and for the native of the land. As for the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the alien who sojourns with you, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; as you are, so shall the alien be before the Lord.

There is to be one law and one ordinance for you and for the alien who sojourns with you. You shall have one law for him who does anything unintentionally, for him who is native among the sons of Israel and for the alien who sojourns among them.

The penalty is inflicted on the offender solemnly as an act of the Law, not of mob fury. So it was by a judicial or semi-judicial proceeding that Stephen was stoned: They brought him to the council, and set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceases not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place, and the Law. And in spite of the violence exhibited, there was still some form of law, according to Jewish practice, observed in his stoning.

In the case of our Lord, on the other hand. when they regarded him as guilty of blasphemy on his saying, Before Abraham was, I am, and I and my Father are one, the Jews took up stones to cast at him, not waiting for a judicial condemnation, but, as they supposed, taking the law into their own hands. Had his death been by Jewish hands, it would at the last have been by stoning under this law.

But the power of life and death had been taken away from the Jews by the Romans, that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spoke, signifying what death he should die. Remember, there are three times in the Old Testament where the phrase an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is mentioned. All three of those times relate to a civil situation.

They relate to something occurring within a duly constituted authority like a judge or a magistrate. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is not a statement that is in any way related to personal relationships. This law is repeated here, either to justify this sentence of putting blasphemers to death, from the same severity executed for a less crime; or to prevent the mischievous effects of men’s striving or contending together, which as here it caused blasphemy, so it might in others lead to murder.

Moser Ministries