Q&A: An Eye for an Eye Means Monetary Compensation
An Eye for an Eye Means Monetary Compensation
Question
The plain meaning of the text tries in every possible way to tell us to take a limb for a limb. In addition, we are told that when a woman grabs someone by the genitals while trying to help her husband in a fight, her hand should be cut off (of course except in cases involving harm to the organs of sub-persons such as slaves, where the law is different). As is well known, it did not bother the Sages to interpret this across the board as monetary compensation. Even when a baraita is brought in the name of Rabbi Eliezer that “an eye for an eye” means literally, the amoraim twist it around and explain that he meant the value of the damager, not the injured party.
My question is: how do you explain this to yourself? Did the amoraim really believe that this had been the law from time immemorial? After all, in Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period there were sects that strictly upheld “an eye for an eye” literally (and they were right). Could God not have written it more clearly? In the laws of Hammurabi too there are similarly worded laws of “an eye for an eye,” which suggests this was a standard law in the Mesopotamian region at that time. If the Sages understood that they were distorting the text, how did they do it? What was the justification? Especially when there are mechanisms like an explicit scriptural decree, and we do not derive the reason for the verse (all the arguments in the Talmud that it cannot mean an actual limb, because it is impossible always to match it precisely to the injured party, sound like they come from Kahneman and Tversky’s System 2).
Answer
My assessment is that they knew that in the past this had been learned literally, and their discussions were meant to reinforce their current position. The medieval authorities (Rishonim) already wrote several times that the term “a law given to Moses at Sinai” is sometimes used merely to reinforce a rabbinic law or a law that is not actually from Sinai, and should not necessarily be taken literally.
As for how they did it, after all the rule of monetary compensation for an eye is derived from a verbal analogy. It is written how they did it.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t understand the question. They expounded a verbal analogy, and that is what came out. If it doesn’t fit what existed in the past, then it doesn’t. Of course, within the framework of the verbal analogy there are also logical considerations.
And from the giving of the Torah until their time no one derived this verbal analogy? And after all the pilpul, God wrote fairly clearly that He wants an eye. I assume they understood that too, no? How do you explain the text itself to yourself?
You are making incorrect assumptions about the relationship between the plain meaning and the midrashic reading. What the Torah wants is both the plain meaning and the midrashic reading together. I have written quite a bit about this. Hanska, in his article in Hama’ayan 5737, deals with this and also addresses “an eye for an eye.”
Can you give me a good reason to think that the Torah (God) also intended that we should interpret the verse “an eye for an eye” as money?
That is, why are my assumptions incorrect?
Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, in the third essay of the Kuzari, writes that the Sanhedrin was given the authority to interpret the verses of the Torah as they wished, even against the plain meaning. He writes that if the Sanhedrin had decided to understand “the morrow after the Sabbath” literally, that would have been the Jewish law.
There are even three reasons: 1. The fit between religious values and morality, certainly when it is such a sharp deviation from morality. 2. The existence of the verbal analogy “under-under.” 3. The tradition that tells us that all verses are learned both in their plain meaning and in their midrashic meaning, and there is no necessity to harmonize them.
As for what the Kuzari writes, you’d have to ask him.
1. If we understand that there is a separation between religion and morality and they cannot always go together, how can we be so sure—to the point of forcing the verses—that God does not mean for us to take out an eye?
2. Who said at all that a verbal analogy has to be made? Do you believe that all the textual hermeneutic rules were given to Moses at Sinai? I’m not asking what the tradition says; I’m asking how you yourself arrived at what seems most correct to you. There were traditions among the Jewish people that the hermeneutic rules are an invention (Sadducees, Boethusians, Karaites, Essenes). Does it seem reasonable to you that God did not simply write to pay money for an eye? Where is the common sense here? Don’t you see that this is crooked?
Not Karaites—I meant Essenes.
1. You are begging the question. It is not forcing the verses if they are read midrashically alongside their plain meaning.
2. Regarding the tradition of midrashic interpretation, I have written about this a lot. See, for example, my series of columns on dynamic tradition.
3. Those “traditions” were positions, not traditions. In philology it is known that if you have a book with a corrupted text and that same book with a corrected text, the original is the corrupted one, not the corrected one. The reason is that people correct corruptions; they do not corrupt a proper text (though of course one can debate when this is so). Here too, those “traditions” arose because of questions like yours, and therefore these are not traditions but positions.
3. You assume that the corruption is the Pharisaic tradition, but it can be seen the other way around: the original text and original tradition are morally corrupted, and therefore there is a strong interest in forcing the verses so that we won’t gouge out eyes, won’t kill the stubborn and rebellious son, won’t slaughter all kinds of transgressors right and left (instead requiring stringent conditions of testimony and warning), and so on.
You are discussing this “from the inside.” What truth-value would you arrive at if you had to judge a revelation book of another people that explicitly says to do X (which was accepted in the ancient world despite being less moral), and today they force it into Y in a way not mentioned at all in the plain meaning, but much more moral and reasonable (of course by the morality of 2,000 years ago; we have advanced even from there)? Would you really say that it seems to you that the original author’s intention is an invention called midrash without good grounding?
I’d be glad if you could point me to your column that tries to persuade why the tradition claiming methods of interpretation opposite to the plain meaning is more plausible.
This requires broad clarification, and this is not the place for it. In general, it is incorrect to characterize the derashot as a tool used by the Sages to find moral solutions. That is not what characterizes them, unlike the interpretation of “an eye for an eye” (and perhaps the maneuvers around the stubborn and rebellious son and the idolatrous city). Therefore, in my view, even in these cases the motivation was not moral; rather, it was clear to them that the Torah did not mean that (religiously as well. The fit thesis). There is no interpretation that legitimizes mamzerim, or allows a priest’s wife to remain with her husband, abolishes the execution of those liable to capital punishment, and so on. Even the reservations in the law of the beautiful captive woman are based on the halakhic prohibition of relations with a gentile woman, not on a moral prohibition of raping a captive. The moral flashes that you find in the Sages’ interpretations are, in my view, evidence to the contrary. It shows that this was not their motivation, and the fit is almost accidental.
There is no column of mine saying that the tradition of interpretive methods opposite to the plain meaning is more plausible. What I wrote was a reference to columns showing that tradition is not a fixed thing. Tradition is dynamic and still remains tradition. I showed this regarding the hermeneutic rules. Sects that existed for a few years and held other positions whose source is completely clear (clinging to the plain meaning) really do look like positions and not traditions. This is opposition to tradition based on claims like yours. To my mind, it is simple.
I didn’t mean how they did it in the formal sense. What was their understanding of the mechanism of halakhic change? God originally meant an actual eye, right? So how are we acting against the intention of the original author? Does He want us literally to uproot His intention whenever it doesn’t seem right to us? And by what authority did they change it? Did it seem immoral to them? What about the original halakhic value of literally “an eye for an eye”?