Accidents and lack of care happen, but what if, Exodus 21:23, they cause “serious injury”? Yahweh’s answer in verses 24 and 25 was, “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, and bruise for bruise.”
A “bruise” doesn’t sound like a “serious injury,” but all the other injuries mentioned involve debilitating or permanent damage, so the bruise must be serious enough that the person injured is left with a major loss or handicap, perhaps for the rest of his life.
Fair justice would naturally demand that the one causing the injury pay up, but money or court awarded damages don’t bring the injured person’s lost eye, tooth, hand or foot back. So what would satisfy the injured person’s need for justice instead?
Yahweh’s answer was a law requiring “punishment in kind.” It was a law too. The injured person, therefore, had the right to expect the person who injured him to be inflicted with the same injury. What could be fairer than that? And what better deterrent to causing such injuries in the first place, than knowing you pay up by having your own eye, tooth, hand or foot removed too?
Put in today’s terms, what if the penalty for driving around like a maniac risking life and limb of innocent people, guarantees the court sentencing you to receiving the same injuries you cause? Or what if a company is lax in its safety measures and someone is badly injured, the people responsible for the lack of safety are given the same injuries?
It’s totally fair to the victims, is it not, so is this what Yahweh was aiming at in such a law? Because he certainly knows how victims feel when they haven’t been fairly dealt with. They have a deep yearning for justice that must be satisfied. If it isn’t, a feeling of hopelessness can easily turn into bitterness, suicide, or an insatiable desire for revenge leading to vicious feuds lasting for generations.
An injured victim, therefore, would need to know for absolutely certain that the law of punishment in kind would be rigorously enforced, with no fight for justice on his part needed. But what if there’s a situation where punishment in kind cannot be done? Yahweh provided for that too, in “Fitting the punishment to the crime”….(next blog)
