DAY 66
CHALLENGE
“The Old Testament laws stating that people should be punished in an ‘eye for an eye’ fashion are cruel.”
DEFENSE
Properly understood, these passages expressed a principle of justice and sought to promote the common good.
Three passages mention the “eye for an eye” principle: Exodus 21:22– 25, Leviticus 24:17–21, and Deuteronomy 19:16–21. The first deals with the case of men who are fighting and accidentally injure a preg- nant woman, causing miscarriage. The second deals with a man who attacks and maims another. The third deals with a witness who lies in court to harm an innocent person. In each passage a similar formula occurs: “you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exod. 21:23–25).
Note that these passages are intended to be used by a court when a crime has been committed. They aren’t instructions telling people to take personal revenge. The point of having a court system is to prevent people from doing that by seeing that justice is done when an innocent party is harmed.
If people take their own revenge, they often do so excessively. A person who has been wounded or has seen a loved one wounded may kill the perpetrator. Courts exist to keep this from happening. To do their job properly, courts need to be seen as administering justice fairly. If they are seen as being too lenient, people may take matters into their own hands. Thus the “eye for an eye” passages. They direct courts to let the punishment fit the crime, which is a fundamental principle of justice. This promoted the common good and order of society by dis- couraging people from taking their own revenge.
In a world without an extensive prison system, this may have liter- ally meant “an eye for an eye,” though not always. Numbers 35:31 specifies that no ransom can be accepted in a case of murder, suggest- ing that in lesser cases the guilty party could pay compensation. A person thus might avoid “an eye for an eye” if he provided appropriate compensation to the injured party.
Justice can also be tempered by mercy in other ways. Thus Jesus counseled individuals to “turn the other cheek” rather than pressing for “eye for an eye” justice (Matt. 5:38–39).