Everyone today knows the principle "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." For many people, the whole Old Testament, the whole Law, is reduced to it...
Everyone today knows the principle "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." For many people, the whole Old Testament, the whole Law, is reduced to it. The Torah was never limited to legislation alone, or even to a moral code alone; here the spiritual path connected with the relationship between a person and God always came to the foreground. This also applies to the principle "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
Jesus, as we know, rejects it, saying so directly in the Sermon on the Mount. Yet He accepts the Torah, and as the inner Torah, equating intention with action: hatred, for example, with murder, or lust with adultery. Such equating of intention with action was fairly widespread in those days, and in this sense people often spoke of the inner Torah, written not on paper but in the human heart.
The heart is defined by the intentions born in it and by the values toward which a person is oriented ("where the treasure is, there the heart is also"). It is quite clear that in rejecting the principle "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," the Savior rejects revenge as such. At first glance, the Torah appears to justify it, since the corresponding norm is present in the legislation of the Book of Exodus. If it were the only one there, that would be so.
In reality, the Book of Exodus also offers a completely different principle for resolving the same problem: if, for example, a person injures someone, he must pay for the injured person's treatment and compensate, as we would say today, the lost benefit from his work. This principle is what the Torah prescribes: here there is compensation, but reasonable compensation, aimed at eliminating the harm that was done. The principle "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" has its roots in pre-Yahwistic and pre-biblical antiquity, in the norms of customary law.
Here it is not so much a prescription as a concession to customs that had not yet entirely passed away: a demand that, if things reached the point of revenge, disproportionate harm not be inflicted on the offender. Revenge is bad, but in this case the Torah makes a concession to human hardheartedness. Jesus excludes such concessions, because from the time of Moses to the Gospel age, the people had already traveled an enormous path, both historical and spiritual. What was still permissible in Moses' time ceased to be permissible in the age when the Kingdom was already entering the world. The Torah always reflects the stage the people have reached on their path. It forms the people of God spiritually, changing them and, in turn, changing together with them.
21 The laws recorded in this chapter relate to the fifth and sixth commandments; and though not accommodated to our constitution, especially in point of servitude yet are of great use for the explanation of the moral law, and the rules of natural justice.
and maid - servants, Exo 21:7-11.
or curse them, Exo 21:17.
21:1 The first verse is the general title of the laws contained in this and the two following chapters. Their government being purely a theocracy; that which in other states is to be settled by human prudence, was directed among them by a divine appointment. These laws are called judgments; because their magistrates were to give judgment according to them. In the doubtful cases that had hitherto occurred, Moses had particularly enquired of God, but now God gave him statutes in general, by which to determine particular cases. He begins with the laws concerning servants, commanding mercy and moderation towards them. The Israelites had lately been servants themselves, and now they were become not only their own matters, but masters of servants too; lest they should abuse their servants as they themselves had been abused, provision was made for the mild and gentle usage of servants.
21:2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant - Either sold by him or his parents through poverty, or by the judges for his crimes, yet even such a one was to continue in slavery but seven years at the most.
21:6 For ever - As long as he lives, or till the year of Jubilee.
21:8 Who hath betrothed her to himself - For a concubine, or secondary Wife. Not that Masters always took Maid - servants on these terms.
21:9 After the manner of daughters - He shall give her a portion, as to a daughter.
21:20 Direction is given what should be done, if a servant died by his master's correction. This servant must not be an Israelite, but a Gentile slave, as the Negroes to our planters; and it is supposed that he smite him with a rod, and not with any thing that was likely to give a mortal wound, yet if he died under his hand, he should be punished for his cruelty, at the discretion of the judges, upon consideration of circumstances.
21:24 Eye for eye - The execution of this law is not put into the hands of private persons, as if every man might avenge himself, which would introduce universal confusion. The tradition of the elders seems to have put this corrupt gloss upon it. But magistrates had an eye to this rule in punishing offenders, and doing right to those that are injured.