Bible On Torture (Part 2)

With the first part of this series done, I will continue onward to discuss the Lex Talionis concept and an additional law and describe the relevance to the topic of the Bible and torture.

The Bible does not permit mutilation outside of two cases.

Apart from limited and humane flogging, the only physical torture the Bible authorizes is the amputation of body parts in two very specific circumstances.  This post will present those two contexts and correct misapplications of the phrase "eye for eye", which pertains to one of the two allowances for mutilation.  "Eye for eye" is a phrase that appears in the three brief formulas of the Lex Talionis in the Bible, with Lex Talionis referring to the punishment of permanent injury identical to one that was inflicted on another.  Now, despite the way some theologians speak as if "eye for eye" represented the general totality of Biblical law, a mere cursory examination reveals that, actually, the phrase only appears three times amidst the four books dedicated to describing and clarifying Mosaic Law and always exclusively in the context of punishing permanent injuries.  In other words, it is just one of many context-bound principles and is certainly not the main judicial or ethical concept taught by the Old Testament.  In fact, as I will demonstrate in this post, any attempt to invoke Lex Talionis outside of punishment for crimes involving permanent physical injury is a doomed and misguided use of eisegesis instead of objective exegesis, as much of Old Testament Law actually condemns mirror punishment in most matters.

First of all, it becomes clear from reading Exodus 21 that simple assaults and non-permanent injuries were exclusively penalized with monetary damages:


Exodus 21:18-19--"If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed."

Exodus 21:22--"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows."

Exodus 21:18-19--"If men quarrel and one hits the other with a
stone or with his fist . . . he must pay the injured man for the loss
of his time and see that he is completely healed."  Non-permanent
injuries were never to be punished by the judges with mirror
assaults; this fact has been lost amid false extrapolations of
Lex Talionis.

These two verses are actually quite similar to many modern assault and battery laws.  If a battery didn't inflict permanent damage, there was no justification for appealing to Lex Talionis and the batterer would pay appropriate damages to the victim.  Ancient Jewish Rabbis interpreted "eye for eye" to mean proportionate monetary payment for destruction of an eye based upon the verses in Exodus 21 that affix financial punishments to assault and battery, but, while Exodus 21 clearly demands compensation instead of Lex Talionis in cases of minor injury, Leviticus 24:19-21 clearly teaches a literal application of Lex Talionis in cases of permanent injury.

Two passages in Deuteronomy describe when the penalty of mutilation is justified:


Deuteronomy 19:21--"Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

Deuteronomy 25:11-12--"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand.  Show her no pity."

The Bible's reluctance to assign mutilation as punishment only demonstrates the
immorality of a woman abusing a man's penis or merely seizing it to
overpower him in a fight.  If this type of sexual assault was prohibited and
punished with the loss of a hand when some might call her action justified
to save her own husband from a brawl, we should never tolerate greater sexual
assaults of any kind, regardless of the victim or circumstance.

Deuteronomy 25:11-12 may seem absurd to some readers, but it actually presents a far more serious hatred for sexual abuse than many modern people have.  If a woman had her hand removed for grabbing a man's penis in order to prevent him from assaulting her or her husband, then certainly forms of malevolent sexual abuse that are lesser than actual forced sex would have been punished at least as severely.  Rape itself was a capital crime, and even targeting someone's sex organs (I hesitate to call them "sex organs" because they are used for other functions as well) for the sake of delivering a spouse from a brawl was strongly condemned by God.  Contrary to the beliefs of some in the present day, the Bible actually expresses a far stronger revulsion for sexual abuse than many modern people do.

The revealed punishment for a physical mutilation in many cases happened to be the same mutilation, but that does not mean that it was just to punish any crime with a reciprocal act.  People often misapply the Lex Talionis principle located in Deuteronomy 19:21 by extrapolating it to contexts outside of where the Bible establishes it.  Slave traders were not enslaved but executed (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7 [1]).  Rapists were not raped but killed (Deuteronomy 22:25-27 [2]).  People who flogged others with more than forty lashes were not flogged with more than forty lashes in return (Deuteronomy 25:1-3 [3]).  A person who killed someone and hung the corpse on a tree for three days as a grisly act of dehumanization would not have been hung on a tree for three days after execution for murder (Deuteronomy 21:22-23 [4]).  Arsonists did not have their own property burned (Exodus 22:6 [5]).  Perjurers were not sentenced to receive perjury in court themselves (Deuteronomy 19:16-21 [6]).  Sorceresses who used spells to harm people were not punished with identical (or any) spells but executed (Exodus 22:18 [7]).  A woman who seized a man's penis in a fight did not have her labia grasped by a man but had her offending hand removed (Deuteronomy 25:11-12; see verse above).  Even people who inflicted non-permanent injuries on others payed monetary damages and were not given identical non-permanent injuries in return (Exodus 21:18-19, 21:22; see verses above).  With this information clearly embedded in the obvious Scriptural texts referenced in this paragraph, people who believe that Lex Talionis had anything to do with the punishment for crimes other than intentional infliction of permanent injuries are thoroughly mistaken.  In an earlier post I had addressed this point [8].

Regarding the punishment for non-permanent injuries, I wrote a footnote within the previous post in this series:


"Non-permanent injuries were strictly punished with financial damages (Exodus 21:18-19, 21:22).  Since the laws addressing minor batteries or non-permanent injuries clearly call for monetary compensation and yet other passages prescribe "eye for eye" or "hand for hand" (Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:19-21, Deuteronomy 19:21) punishment, people sometimes struggle to determine if all injuries were punished with a mandatory compensatory payment to the victim (the position of the ancient Jewish rabbis) or if there was only a specific class of injury that was punished by use of physical Lex Talionis ("eye for eye").  The clear but uncommon answer is that those who inflicted minor assaults and non-permanent injuries on others were legally required to pay sufficient damages to their victims but those who permanently injured others through mutilation were to be identically injured in a permanent way, hence why some verses prescribe the loss of a hand for the loss of a hand and others prescribe monetary damages.  The permanence of the injury determined which punishment would be inflicted, either financial loss or physical mutilation, with Exodus 21:23 dividing between these two categories [9]."


It should also be noted that many physical fights never escalate to the point where one or both parties suffers permanent damage, rendering Lex Talionis irrelevant to many assaults and brawls and making payments of money just instead.  Also, two exceptions to Lex Talionis existed.  Any forceful physical assault on a parent, ranging from a single severe blow to a permanent mutilation, was a capital crime (Exodus 21:15 [10]) and therefore entirely separate from Lex Talionis, and infliction of permanent injuries to a slave resulted in freedom for the abused servant (Exodus 21:26-27 [11]) instead of infliction of retaliatory mutilation by a civil agent.

Ultimately, Biblical Lex Talionis is still rather tame compared to many pagan penalties the Bible rejects.  Cutting off a hand as punishment for the crime of cutting off someone's hand is still not the same as inflicting prolonged torture on someone who tortured another for a lengthy duration of time.  The former was demanded by Mosaic Law, but the latter was explicitly forbidden, as flogging laws in the Covenant Code and Deuteronomic Code help prove.  Amputating a hand may have been painful but it was relatively quick and then the punishment ended, but one can find far more torturous penalties than that in the historical era of ancient Israel.  You can find information about objective boundaries for non-mutilation torture in the previous post in this series; a link to it is below in the footnotes.


[1].  See below:
  A.  Exodus 21:16--"Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death."
  B.  Deuteronomy 24:7--"If a man is caught kidnapping one of his brother Israelites and treats him as a slave or sells him, the kidnapper must die.  You must purge the evil from among you."

[2].  Deuteronomy 22:25-27--"But if out in the country a man happens to find a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die.  Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death.  This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her."

[3].  Deuteronomy 25:1-3--"When men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty.  If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime deserves, but he must not give him more than forty lashes.  If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes."

[4].  Deuteronomy 21:22-23--"If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight.  Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse.  You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance."

[5].  Exodus 22:6--"If a fire breaks out and spreads into thornbushes so that it burns shocks of grain or standing grain or the whole field, the one who started the fire must make restitution."

[6].  Deuteronomy 19:16-21--"If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse a man of a crime, the two men involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the Lord before the priests and the judges who are in office at that time.  The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against his brother, then do to him as he intended to do to his brother.  You must purge the evil from among you.  The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you.  Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

[7].  Exodus 22:18--"Do not allow a sorceress to live."

[8].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/eye-for-eye-part-1.html

[9].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/bible-on-torture-part-1.html

[10].  Exodus 21:15--"Anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death."

[11].  Exodus 21:26-27--"If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the eye.  And if he knocks out the tooth of the manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the tooth."