An Eye for an Eye in the Law of Moses

The first reading takes the words as they stand, so that the one who blinds an eye loses an eye. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (4.8.35), writes that the one who maims another must undergo the like, unless the injured man will accept money. The law, he says, lets the sufferer set the value of what he has suffered. John Gill, in his Exposition of the New Testament on Matthew 5:38, reports that the Sadducees also read the law in its literal sense. The Talmud (Bava Kamma 84a) reports Rabbi Eliezer saying that the verse means an actual eye, though it reads his words as a rule for valuing the injury. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (I-II, question 105, article 2), holds that for blows and maiming the Old Law authorized punishment by retaliation.

The second reading holds that the law never ordered the cutting off of a limb. The Mishnah (Bava Kamma 8:1) makes the one who injures another pay for the damage, the pain, the healing, the lost work and the humiliation. It values the damage as a court would value a slave sold in the market. The Talmud (Bava Kamma 83b to 84a) argues the point from many verses, and it asks how the law could be kept to the letter when a blind man blinds another. Rashi, in his commentary on Exodus 21:24, writes that the offender pays the value of the eye. Among Protestant commentators John Gill reads Leviticus 24:20 the same way, as the price of the eye paid in money.

The third reading holds that the law gave the judges a measure, so that no penalty would exceed the injury. Augustine, in his Reply to Faustus (19.25), writes that few men are content with a revenge equal to the injury, and that the law set the measure to keep the fire already kindled from spreading. Tertullian, in Against Marcion (2.18), calls the statute a provision for restraining violence that gives no permission to injure. John Calvin, in his commentary on the four last books of Moses, teaches that the penalty keeps a just proportion to the injury and that the injured man must still not seek vengeance. John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), writes that the law was never put into the hands of private persons and that magistrates kept to it in punishing offenders.

Leo Tolstoy, in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), reads the command not to resist an evil person as binding every disciple in every case. He calls this the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force. In its first chapter he quotes William Lloyd Garrison's Declaration of Sentiments of 1838, which holds that Christ abrogated the penal code of eye for eye and enjoined the forgiveness of enemies. Menno Simons, in A Humble and Christian Defense, asks how a Christian can retaliate or make war when all Christians are commanded to love their enemies and to turn the other cheek.