Help with a quotation please: 'an eye for an eye ...'

Mon 30 Oct 2023, 09:41

Many thanks, John.   It would be good to find a place from which to shout it.  

Mon 30 Oct 2023, 03:03 (last edited on Mon 30 Oct 2023, 03:04)

You're right, Valerie: it was a law (the 'lex talionis') limiting retaliation. In the Bible it's found in Exodus 21, verses 23 - 25, mirroring other near-Eastern texts such as the Code of Hammurabi.

As for commentaries, almost any (Jewish or Christian) will make your point for you. I'm about half a century out of date on that, but the most thorough treatment that I'm aware of is an article by J.J. Finkelstein in the 1968 Jewish Encyclopædia Biblica.

I'm sure that Google, or Wikipedia, will give plenty of more recent material on this.

Mon 30 Oct 2023, 00:25

I remember reading somewhere that the prescription 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' was in fact a Biblical injunction to mercy, ie in a dispute over a injury, if you'd lost your eye to an enemy then the maximum revenge you could extract was your adversary's eye and no more.  For obvious reasons I'd like to be able to refer to this commentary at the present moment but I cannot remember where I read it or if it was a respectable source.  (It might have been Alan Paton, but I'm floundering).   Can anyone enlighten me please?