An Eye For An Eye...

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Niagara Gazette issue of July 19, 2003.

Pat Bradley's otherwise fine column (July 10, 2003)¹ was marred by the line: "The dread is of biblical proportions: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."² This is a common misuse of Scripture.

The phrase "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is not a prescription for revenge (which is prohibited - Leviticus 19:18), nor is it a command for legal punishment in the form of dismemberment. Such an interpretation is entirely out of place in the document described by Proverbs 3:13-18 ("Happy is the one that finds wisdom .... Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, and happy is every one that holds her fast"), in which "wisdom" is taken by scholars to be a reference to Torah, the Five Books of Moses.

Biblical justice is concerned with compensating the victim and with making peace between victim and offender; the verse calls for fair compensation, according to the severity of the victim's injury - an eye's worth of compensation for the crime of maiming an eye, a tooth's worth of compensation for the crime of maiming a tooth. An injury to an eye would typically call for greater compensation, since an eye injury is more likely to prevent one from earning a living than a missing tooth.

One of the places "an eye for an eye ..." appears in the Bible is in Exodus 21:24. Note the clarifying follow-up verses 26-27: "And if a man smite the eye of his bondman, or of his bondwoman, and destroy it, he shall let him go free for his eye's sake. And if he smite out his bondman's tooth, or his bondwoman's tooth, he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake." Note the master is punished not by being maimed to match his maiming of the victim, but by compensating the bondman with freedom, and the generous material gifts that were to accompany a freed bondman (Deuteronomy 15:12-14). The larger point is that "an eye for an eye ..." calls for fair compensation, not for retaliatory mutilation.

Dr. Laurence Boxer

Notes

[1] The date was editorially replaced in the Gazette by a reference to a column that appeared earlier this month.

[2] The Biblical quote was used to describe community tension following fatal shootings. The author's fear was that instead of cooperating with police to apprehend the shooters, the victims' friends might seek private revenge.