Lex Talionis: Eye for an Eye?

Lex Talionis is Latin, and it means “the law of retaliation.” It comes from various passages in the Old Testament (Ex. 21:23-25; Lev. 24:19-20; Deut. 19:21). For example, Exodus states,

In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, a Jewish moneylender named Shylock lent money to Antonio. When he couldn’t pay him back, Shylock demanded that Antonio pay him what their contract demanded: a pound of his flesh! For the rest of the play, Shylock tries to pin down Antonio to cut a hunk of meat out of his side. Is this what is going on here in the OT law? Were the Jews supposed to literally pluck out another person’s eye ball or tooth for retribution?

First, this passage was not meant to be literal. The law commanded that the Jews were not to “take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Clearly, turning the other cheek was not a NT invention; revenge was prohibited in ancient Israel.

There is no example in the OT of a judge exacting literally an eye for an eye. The usual penalties of Hebrew law were capital punishment for a limited number of serious offenses and fines and restitution for the remainder. There were no prisons in the early days, and none are mentioned in the Pentateuchal legislation. Apparently we have both here and in Hammurabi an emphatic legal idiom meaning that the punishment must be commensurate with the offense.^[1]

Second, the context speaks against a literal interpretation. In verse 26, a servant could go free, if they were injured, and in verse 30, a ransom was given for damage. Moreover, when we consider the greater context of Scripture, we cannot find one example of lex talionis being literally practiced in the entire OT. The only possible exceptions would be Deuteronomy 25:11-12 and Judges 1:6. Indeed, this text is surrounded by examples of non-literal applications (Ex. 21:22-25, 28-36).

Third, lex talionis was for the purpose of protection, rather than the purpose of revenge. If you were hurt by someone, you could bargain until you felt like your retribution was fair (Ex. 21:30). For example:

In this way, the “eye for an eye” principle encouraged fair bargaining for injuries. It encouraged fair payment for fair damage. Thus, Kaiser writes, “No one was to try to get rich quick off such situations. Notice also that this was to be a rule of thumb for the judges, not an authorization of personal vendetta or private retaliation.”^[2]

Fourth, the Code of Hammurabi practiced lex talionis much differently. The Code of Hammurabi had this legal principle (e.g. “bone for bone” “tooth for tooth”), but it didn’t count for aristocrats damaging slaves or servants. In addition, if a builder killed your kid, while working on your house, the Code of Hammurabi prescribed that the builder’s own kid should be killed as recompense (§§229-30). Compare with Deut. 24:16! If a physician whose patient died, would have his hand cut off (§218). Copan^[3] argues that this implies that these are hyperbolic laws.

§200: If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.

§202: If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public.

§203: If a free-born man strike the body of another free-born man or equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina.

§203: If the slave of a freed man strike the body of a freed man, his ear shall be cut off.

^[1] R. Laird Harris, “Leviticus,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 631-632.

^[2] Walter C. Kaiser Jr., “Exodus,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 434.

^[3] Paul Copan, Is God a Vindictive Bully? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 72.