Eye for an Aye -- aAnother One They Mangle

Jesus said that was the old law and He was giving His followers a new commandment: not to retaliate at all. But I get very tired of hearing the old law made into something it isn't, people saying how if that were followed we'd be up to your eyeballs in violence.

Do they think at all? Any of them? Isn't it obvious on the fac e of it that to require an eye for an eye is nothing but perfect justice? Yes Christians are now not to retaliate at all but that doens't change the fact that as law that earlier law was perfect justice.

Many of the Old Testament laws were aimed at toning down the vigilante justice that people so often exacted in retaliation for wrongs against them. Cities of Refuge were established for instance because even someon who had accidentally killed someone would have been murdered by the family of the person killed. Same with eye for an eye. If someone's eye was put out in a fight, he was likely to retaliate by killing the person who wronged him. The law of eye for an eye restricted him to retaliating only to the level of thje offense. You lost an eye you may only take an eye in retaliation. You lost a tooth, you may only take a tooth in retaliation. ,br>
An example of the kind of overkill such laws were designed to mitigate would be the incident when a young man from a neighboring tribe raped Dinah, Jacob's daughter and the sister of his twelve sons. The youhjng man was in love with Dianah and wanted to marry her so it wasnt even your standard violent rape, though of course Dinah had no say in any of it in the culture of that day. Anyway her brothers murdered the young man and his family for the violation of their sister. Jacob was worried about what that would do to his family's standing in the neighborhood, but the point is that there was a tendency in those days to exact far more in retaliation than the crime warranted. Hence, boiling it down to "eye for an eye."

In general the Old Testament is attacked by antireligionists for things it actually represents a liberal humanizing influence on the wild culture of the day. That is also true of its dealings with slavery which was a universal practice that nobody would have given up in that context, but better treatment of slaves and requirement that they be released after a certain term of service were humanizing effects of the OT laws. Yes including the call on Abraham to sacrrifice his son Isaac. Today's self-rightesou judges hae no sense of perspective whatever.