This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, which contains a great many laws, includes one of the most famous phrases in the Torah, or beyond:
But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:23-25)
This isn’t the only place this phrasing shows up in the Torah. However, in most cases, the surface reading of the text is relatively clear: when harm is done, turn around and do that harm to the perpetrator. If I poke out your eye, you poke out mine, and so on.
However, the rabbis reject this way of thinking.
So much so, it is taken for granted, sort of. An interesting conversation appears in Bava Kamma. (Remember, the bold is the translation, the not-bold is the commentary.)
The Gemara asks: Why does the mishna take for granted the fact that one who caused injury is liable to pay compensation to the injured party? The Merciful One states in the Torah: “An eye for an eye” (Exodus 21:24). You might say that this means that the one who caused injury shall lose an actual eye rather than pay money.
Here the Talmud asks the reasonable question: why don’t we read this literally?
The Gemara responds: That interpretation should not enter your mind.
The response begins with the Talmudic technical term: לא סלקא דעתך, la salka d'atach, meaning this shouldn’t even occur to you. While this phrase is very common in the Talmud, its placement here seems intentional to me.
Don’t even consider the possibility that we should exact physical harm from each other.
The text continues:
The principle is derived from a verbal analogy in the Torah, as it is taught in a baraita: Based on the verse: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot” (Exodus 21:24), one might have thought that if one blinded the eye of another, the court blinds their eye as punishment; or if one severed the hand of another, the court severs their hand; or if one broke the leg of another, the court breaks their leg.
Therefore, the verse states: “One who strikes a person,” and the verse also states: “And one who strikes an animal,” to teach that just as one who strikes an animal is liable to pay monetary compensation, so too, one who strikes a person is liable to pay monetary compensation.
This construction is fairly common in the Talmud.
You might have thought [a reasonable conclusion] from [verse] in the Torah.
Therefore, we have another verse: [quote], to teach us that isn’t the case.
We might have thought that this concept about exacting physical punishment for harm done to another is about doing that, but it isn’t. We have a verse that provides a framework for monetary compensation instead.
The Talmud continues with a back-and-forth on this at great length. You can read that here.
However, the argument itself isn’t what is so interesting to me so much as the broader implications.
First, the rabbis are committed to the conclusion regardless of the text of the Torah.
Yes, yes, they are very much using the text of the Torah to inform their answer. But the truth is that regardless of the arguments presented, they are unwilling to accept the conclusion that the system should physically harm someone if it can be avoided.
Let’s be clear: the rabbis do retain some harmful systems, the divorce-agunah system, for example, but the broader compulsion to avoid harm is here too.
Second, there is a danger that nothing means anything.
Is this a good way of resolving this issue?
What happens if I don’t like something else?
Can I decide words and phrases don’t mean what they say?
To be clear, I agree with the conclusion, but what about other circumstances? It isn’t clear to me where the boundaries are on this approach. As a result, the rabbis open the door for us to understand Torah in radically new ways.
At the same time, that is also clearly the point.
Third, this is an invitation.
For all of the challenges and limitations the rabbis had, they were brilliant. They understood that times changed, that contexts changed, that worldviews changed.
They knew their frameworks would need to be flexible for a world they could not conceive yet.
In the era of the Torah, perhaps an eye for an eye was a solid approach to solving problems. The rabbis were no longer comfortable accepting that system, so they decided to change it.
On some level, we are invited to do the same with intention, understanding, and forward-thinking. The implications of our actions reverberate outwards, and we must be cognizant of that.
Imagine if the rabbis had not decided to limit recompense to financial resources. What kind of society would we have inherited? I shudder to think.