Eye for eye, tooth for tooth

“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth” is a rule of proportionate redress in the Torah, stated as part of a wider legal framework that assigns remedies according to the harm and the circumstances. Its repeated use links bodily injury to measured compensation and judgment, while the surrounding ordinances also protect vulnerable people, regulate property claims, and place limits on liability and punishment.

Injury and Proportionate Redress

In the ordinances delivered through Moses, the principle appears in a case where men struggle and a pregnant woman is injured. If no further harm follows, the responsible party pays a fine determined by the woman's husband and the judges. If harm does follow, the law sets out a graduated correspondence: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, and injury for injury. The sequence makes the consequence depend on the harm established, rather than treating every case as identical.

The same legal passage addresses injury to a servant. If a master destroys a servant's eye or knocks out a tooth, the servant is to go free on account of that injury. The remedy is not framed as a bodily retaliation against the master; it changes the injured person's status by requiring release.

Responsibility, Compensation, and Judgment

The surrounding rules distinguish deliberate violence from accidental death. A person who kills another is liable to death, but where the killing was not planned, a place of refuge is appointed. A person who strikes someone without causing death must pay for lost time and ensure that the injured person is thoroughly healed. These cases show the broader legal concern with circumstance, consequence, and the form of redress.

The code also assigns liability for dangerous property and animals. An owner whose ox has previously gored and who failed to restrain it may face death if it kills someone, though a ransom may be set; if the victim is a servant, the owner pays thirty shekels of silver and the ox is stoned. Owners must also compensate for an uncovered pit that kills another person's animal, while rules for damage between oxen divide the losses or require replacement according to whether prior danger was known.

Property offenses receive specified forms of restitution rather than one uniform penalty. Theft of a slaughtered or sold ox requires repayment of five oxen, and theft of a sheep requires four; an animal found alive in the thief's possession is repaid double. Damage caused by grazing animals or fire also requires restitution. The law thus places the proportionality principle within a larger scheme that differentiates remedies by the kind of loss and the offender's responsibility.

A Principle Repeated Across the Law

The rule recurs in Leviticus in a general statement about maiming: as one has done, so it is to be done, followed by breach for breach, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. The passage places this beside rules distinguishing the killing of a person from the killing of an animal, and declares one manner of law for the stranger and the home-born. The formula therefore belongs both to injury law and to a broader assertion that legal judgment applies across these groups.

Deuteronomy echoes proportionality in its treatment of false accusation and punishment. A husband who falsely accuses his wife is chastised, fined one hundred shekels of silver payable to her father, and forbidden to divorce her. A judge may order a guilty person beaten according to the measure of the offense, but the sentence may not exceed forty stripes, lest the person be dishonored. These provisions show measured sanctions at work alongside the more compressed formula of bodily correspondence.

Justice Within a Wider Covenant Framework

The legal collections pair judgment with obligations toward people exposed to economic or social vulnerability. Loans to the poor must not bear interest, and a garment taken as security must be returned by sunset when it is the borrower's only covering. The laws also protect resident strangers, widows, and fatherless children, and require that gleanings and forgotten produce remain available to them. Justice is presented not only as a response to injury but also as restraint in the exercise of power and property.

In Deuteronomy's covenant ceremony, the Levites pronounce curses against secret idolatry, dishonoring parents, moving a neighbor's boundary, misleading the blind, and perverting justice for the stranger, fatherless, or widow; the people answer each declaration with “Amen.” The law's judgments are thus joined to public acknowledgment and collective obligation. Against this setting, “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth” expresses measured accountability within a system that also demands impartial judgment, care for the vulnerable, and fidelity to the covenant.