Eye For Eye, Tooth For Tooth -- Exodus 21:22-25

“And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide.  But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”
 

Here is that famous passage, the words of which we have often heard quoted when we talk about “getting revenge” – wanting equal value compensation for what was taken from us.  From this stems the idea of a ‘victim’ being made ‘whole’ at the expense of the ‘offender’ or ‘criminal’.

Again what we notice is that God knew men would be fighting each other and that often such a fight would involve a woman, one way or another.  Thus we have these verses dealing with just that, and in particular, what is to happen when the woman is pregnant and she loses the child as a result of being injured during the fight between the men.

If the woman miscarries a fetus after being involved in a physical struggle but she herself does not suffer other injury, then only a fine is to be levied.  The ‘life for life, eye for eye’ principle does not go into effect unless the woman herself is further injured.  But we may well ask “What about the baby? Was that not a life? Should not the principle of life for life have applied in this case?”  Good questions.

I do not believe God was ignoring the fetus at all.  Elsewhere in scripture God shows His true feelings about the miracle He creates in a woman’s womb.  Here are some of them:

·      Did not He who made me in the womb make him, And the same one fashion us in the womb? (Job 31:15)

·      Yet Thou art He who didst bring me forth from the womb; Thou didst make me trust when upon my mother's breasts. Upon Thee I was cast from birth; Thou hast been my God from my mother's womb. (Psalm 22:9-10)

·      For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Thy book they were all written, The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. (Psalm 139:13-16)

·      Thus says the LORD who made you And formed you from the womb, who will help you, `Do not fear, O Jacob My servant; And you Jeshurun whom I have chosen. (Isaiah 44:2)

·      Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, "I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, And spreading out the earth all alone, (Isaiah 44:24)

And if that is not enough to convince you He does not ignore the fetus, the Scriptures also speak of at least five key figures of history who were called from the womb:
Samson:

Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, "A man of God came to me and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome. And I did not ask him where he came from, nor did he tell me his name. "But he said to me, `Behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and now you shall not drink wine or strong drink nor eat any unclean thing, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.'" (Judges 13:6-7, see also Judges 16:17)

Jesus (prophecy):

• Listen to Me, O islands, And pay attention, you peoples from afar. The LORD called Me from the womb; From the body of My mother He named Me. (Isaiah 49:1)
• And now says the LORD, who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, To bring Jacob back to Him, in order that Israel might be gathered to Him (For I am honored in the sight of the LORD, And My God is My strength), (Isaiah 49:5)
• Yet Thou art He who didst bring me forth from the womb; Thou didst make me trust when upon my mother's breasts. Upon Thee I was cast from birth; Thou hast been my God from my mother's womb. (Psalm 22:9-10)

Jeremiah:

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)

John the Baptist:

"For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine or liquor; and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, while yet in his mother's womb." (Luke 1:15)

Paul:

But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased (Galatians 1:15)

Scripture answers scripture.  Where there appears to be a conflicting idea or thought, we look to the whole of the Bible and see what the overwhelming position on the issue is.  So, in our current passage, the focus is not the fetus but on punishing those who do harm to others.  It is not that there is no punishment for causing a miscarriage, but it is left up to the husband of the woman and the courts to determine what it is.

However, damage caused in the case of men struggling with each other and a woman is injured further, then the punishment reverts to the ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth’ principle.

I was wondering about the point, or points, of the passage.  They didn’t seem to come out as clearly as they do in some of the other passages.  However, on some further reflection and study, I did come up with three:

1.     God again indicates how He comes to the defense of the weak and vulnerable.

2.     God does not support punishment that exceeds the crime.

3.     The victim and the victim’s family matter, but they also have to be reasonable as determined by the courts.

We would do well to examine our current justice systems to see how we are doing in these areas.  A comparative study between countries or cultures would yield some interesting results.

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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God Knew We Would Be Fighting Physically -- Exodus 21:18-19

“And if men have a quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and he does not die but remains in bed; if he gets up and walks around outside on his staff, then he who struck him shall go unpunished; he shall only pay for his loss of time, and shall take care of him until he is completely healed.”
 

I find it interesting that God knew His creation so well.  He knew we would fight physically as well as in many other ways.  It is a result of our sinful natures.  We could be filled with His Holy Spirit or we could allow our sinful nature to rule us through the influence of Satan, God’s enemy.  When my own nature and the Devil are in control, my natural inclination is to fight, or to fight back.  Fortunately, in my own life, it has only escalated to physical combat just a handful of times, and thankfully almost every one of them while I was still becoming an adult.  I have, however, witnessed, the physical fighting of other adults and it is not a pretty picture.  We do not have to watch too much of the evening news or read too many pages of our newspapers to see that men (and women) are fighting physically and hard enough that people get seriously hurt, or even die.

Our text refers to “men” but as we have indicated previously, often the message is intended for both genders.  And while verse 18 refers to striking someone with a stone or a fist, we would be foolish not to apply it to any form of undesirable physical contact or impact.  Two modern-day areas of law to consider in relation with this text come to my mind.  One is the area of automobile accidents.  The other is the area of non-consensual sexual activity.  But hold those thoughts for the moment.

The next thing we notice here is that the text seems to suggest a distinction between punishment and payment for one’s violation of the laws under consideration. We read that if the victim survives, the attacker shall go “unpunished” but shall still have to pay for certain things.  Clearly, God’s preference is that we do not fight one another.  Laws are put in place to deal with those individuals that contravene what is that preferred or desired behavior of He Who created us.  Neither God nor man creates laws for things that we do for actions or behavior preferred or desired by the maker of the law.  For example, we do not have a law that says, “Be it decreed that a person who loves his/her wife or parents or children, must . . .” and then describe the remedy for such action.

So clearly laws almost always are put in place for doing something that is in contravention of the desired or preferred action in the eyes and mind of the lawmaker.  And in this case, God is saying, “Do not strike another person.  But if you do, here is how you must be dealt with.”  Then He explains that if the victim dies, the striker is to be put to death (see references earlier in Exodus chapter 21).  But here God is saying, “If the victim survives, you will not be punished (assumedly by death) but you will have to compensate the victim for a number of things.”  Thus the difference between what you may otherwise have deserved (since striking may well lead to death) and what you are allowed to get away with since God did not allow the one you struck to die.

And what is the nature of the compensation that one is to pay if the victim survives?  Well, for starters, God says the aggressor will pay for the “victim’s loss of time”.  This is the idea we have today in our legal system of damages for loss of alternative opportunities.  If you lame me to the point where I cannot work, then the courts help us come to a settlement of what opportunity for me to earn wages you deprived me off and then assign you the responsibility to pay me for the equivalent amount.

God also says here that the aggressor is to pay for the victim’s costs of living until he is completely healed.  Here we get the idea of rehabilitation costs, or damages, which in our justice system have been broaden to include the legal costs the victims incurred in going after the aggressor in the courts.

And before we return to our two areas mentioned above – that of automobile accidents and non-consensual sex – allow me to comment on one other area of broadening of this whole principle that God outlines in these verses.  Our society has taken “striking” and given it many more meanings today.  While God spoke of physical striking here, our society has taken this much further, and perhaps rightly so.  We now include defamation of character, slander, mental anguish, wrongful dismissal in employment, and so much more.

Finally, we can see now how what God outlined to be the course of action for one who strikes another person (keeping in mind all the modern day equivalents of that) if he were to survive, formed the foundational principles for what our justice system often requires today.  That is, compensation of the aggressors in terms of making the victim as “whole” as possible.  Understanding that while one can never get back what they lost – a leg, their reputation, the mental health, etc. – the aggressor is required to compensate them in a way that allows them to have as much of a life as possible.

As we study this book of Exodus, we cannot but marvel at how much our entire legal system and society depend on God’s original thoughts on both punishment and compensation.

I can also see threads of similarity here between how God wants violators of His laws dealt with and how God Himself applies these same ideas to our sin against Him.  We have sinned and deserve to die.  But He wants us to live.  The penalty or compensation for our sin, however, still needs to be paid and He arranges for that payment to be made by His own Son dying on the cross in our place.  The wholeness of God’s Holy nature as far as His willingness to call us sons and daughters because of His love for us has been kept in tact, and we can have a relationship with Him for eternity.

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[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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________________________________________________________________________

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Do Americans Know U.S. Planes Being Used in Battle between Kenya & Somalian rebels?

Here are the details right from Nairobi, Kenya, today. Not sure if this has hit the American press yet.

US planes join Kenyan battle�- News�|nation.co.ke

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

Thanks for dropping by. Sign up to receive free updates. We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources. Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar. And please share this blog with your friends. Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting. 

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.