Laws of Retaliation - 'eye for eye'

Lex talionis - Literal or Metaphor?
Wikipedia - on lex talionis
interesting link...

So was it meant to be a literal law or interpreted metaphorically?

The arguments are interesting and it is brought up in several places in Torah:
Ex 21 - describes the payment of compensation for loss of time as well as literal loss - poses the concept of equivalent justice.
Lev 24:17-23 - implies one standard of justice for all. differentiates between killing a person or a beast.

Talmud discussions lean toward metaphoric interpretations and that compensation should be financial in all cases other than murder.

Mishna defines 5 aspects of injury to be considered for reparation: damage, pain & suffering, cost for healing, loss of employment and humiliation.

Gemarah - poses a debate including looking at the structure of the phrases in how the laws are stated... if the format is the same it should be interpreted the same way and thus the meaning is similar.

Another argument points out that literal translation has many impractical aspects such as lack of equality - in 'eye for eye' what if one of the people involved is blind? And there is the probability that the punishment may go beyond the same limit as in the case where taking an eye would be fatal to the person.

So the most popular belief is that the laws of retaliation in the Bible are meant to be metaphoric and punishments should be financial compensation and restoration for damage in all cases that result in equivalent justice. However we still struggle with this today in how to compensate for grievous loss.


This was posed in a Sept 14 article on the negotiations for the US to compensate an Afghan father who lost his son:

Price for son killed in Afghan