1/28/2024 0 Comments An eye for an eye bible![]() The punishment was to fit the crime…an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. So, God set up a system to protect the Israelites from too severe or too minor of consequences. In an act of a vengeance, you may request a penalty too severe for the crime. Imagine a culture with no police or judges…and a neighbor knocks your kid’s tooth out. You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.” Whoever kills an animal shall make it good, and whoever kills a person shall be put to death. If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. Whoever takes an animal’s life shall make it good, life for life. “Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death. Let’s look at this phrase in its context. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” What do you think? Are you going through a situation where you want to take revenge? What is your experience? Share in the comments.Ī hug, God bless you.As we near the end of our study in Leviticus we find a familiar phrase… ![]() He is saying that this idea was not a justification for revenge, but a social norm for mediating between complex lawsuits.įorgiveness is the way to peace and freedom. What Jesus is saying here is that revenge is not the way. You heard it said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.īut I say unto you, Do not resist with evil before anyone who hurts you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well. In fact, Jesus himself clarifies this point when he says: It is about not allowing someone to be killed or violent actions being committed without there being a just reason, and about the retaliation being measured. God takes an element from the laws of the time, which is familiar to them, and reuses it by giving it a better purpose. The text is about restricting and controlling vengeful actions in a primitive society that was just forming as an autonomous community.Ī society that had spent four hundred years living with a pagan people where human rights were not yet fully practiced. It is worth repeating that this text is not about promoting revenge, it even talks about a judge mediating between the parties. He does so in order that there is no excessive retaliation for offenses. ![]() To prevent such acts, God limits the sanctions that could be imposed on people. The husband, in his anger at the grievance and harm, could easily seek revenge by killing the aggressor, regardless of what the harm would have been and the circumstances of the event. This was a grave offense to the honor of the lady’s husband. In a primitive honor-shame tribal society, such an event was not viewed lightly. The original idea of this text is to put limits on revenge. This text was presented in a specific scenario: a married man whose pregnant wife was beaten in some quarrel between men, and she lost her baby or died. In each case will be charged hand by hand, foot by foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, blow for blow.” That is, if he kills the woman, he will be sentenced to death if he takes out an eye, he too will have an eye removed if you break a tooth, it will break yours. If several men quarrel with each other, and in their struggle beat a pregnant woman, the following shall be done: If nothing happens to the woman, but the child she was carrying in her womb dies, the one found guilty must pay the woman’s husband what he asks for, provided that the judges consider that what he is asking for is just.īut if something happens to her, the culprit will be punished by doing the same harm he did to the woman. I invite you to read the full text with me in context from the Current Language Translation: ![]() What the Bible expresses here is something very different. Indeed, despite the fact that the phrase is often used to instigate or justify revenge. Was God saying that it was a persons’ right to take revenge equivalent to the harm received? Here is one of the Bible texts in question:īut if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. However, it is worth asking what did God mean when he said: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. These days, in my study of the book of Exodus, I found again one of the famous verses that says: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”īy quickly reading those verses with the mindset of a twenty-first-century Westerner, one cannot help but to question that philosophy.
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