Exodus 21 - "Eye for Eye"

Exodus 20, in the form of the Ten Commandments, covers "the sum of all the natural law" (Haydock). And the Ten Commandments can be even further summarized by the words of Christ: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew 22:37,39). Now, moving on to Exodus 21, we see God shifting His focus to "laws directing the civil conduct of the Israelites" (from Haydock's notes). What order the Lord uses to instruct us! He moves so gracefully from laws applicable to all men of all times to laws more narrowly directed toward the people of Moses's time.

The long list of civil laws listed in Exodus 21 may seem quite harsh to the modern reader, but like many other things found in the Bible, a contextual analysis is needed to avoid confusion. There is a lot of mention of crimes punishable by death, which, again, may seem harsh. But we must remember that all ancient societies used capital punishment rather freely. What's more interesting actually is in the rather respectable treatment of slaves. I found it interesting that slave-owners were quite restricted in how they could deal with their slaves, especially considering the fact that most ancient societies allowed harsh treatment (even murder) of slaves by their masters. Moses makes it clear that God's Law does not allow such a thing. Instead, even a slave must be treated equal under the Law (Job 31 gives a great example of the virtuous man's mindset of this time concerning equality). The famous saying, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Exodus 21:24), may as well seem like a severe way of handling transgression, but viewed in the context of history, it was a practical way to lessen lawlessness -- life was often tumultuous and rife with peril, and the laws therefore had to deal harshly with anarchic tendencies among certain people in an attempt to bring order to society. Thankfully, as we begin to move closer to a fuller understanding of God and His Laws, we are able to move away from such brutally rigid rules. We will never see God's Perfect Order here on earth, but we can get closer to it as we get closer to Him.