Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: The eye for the eye and the tooth for the tooth passage is something that is so incredibly misunderstood. When people read this, what they think the Lord is saying here is that if somebody pokes out your eye, you are required to poke their eye out as well.

So, it's not if somebody knocks a tooth out of you that your job is to go and knock their tooth out. It's not a statement or a requirement for vengeful activity. It is a guideline being given to a judge about how to make something whole.

Guest (Male): Anger is a poison that kills everything it touches. There are some very big lessons to be learned from that and even bigger warnings. Today on Light on the Hill, we'll be in Exodus chapter 21 where we run across a statement, an eye for an eye. As you'll hear momentarily, this isn't direction to engage in vengeful activity. It has more to do with reconciliation and restitution. Here's Pastor James Kaddis to explain.

James Kaddis: Okay, so what we're doing is we're in the midst of, we've shifted from some of the commands that were given to the judge regarding how to judge the people. We're still in that section of Exodus, but we've shifted from some of the things related to slavery to actions of violence.

It's interesting because as these adjudications are being given to the judges regarding how to deal with issues that result from violent actions, it's also beginning to cover a mindset and a character that sort of drives so much of the philosophy of why God is doing this. It creates sort of a regulatory buzz, for lack of a better term, that conditions mankind to think completely differently about how they interact with one another. It also teaches us to place some serious value, real value on human life in a way that we don't really have today, which is unfortunate.

And I also want to just reiterate something because when we talk about the fact that the Old Testament law is something that is from a different era and doesn't apply to us, that is a desperately wrong way to look at things. As a matter of fact, it's terrible theology to say that the Old Testament law doesn't apply to you. If you were to carry the assertion that the Old Testament law does not apply to you, you would also be saying that Jesus Christ no longer has authority to forgive you of your sins.

Because if you really think about it, it was the fulfillment, the perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament law that granted authority to Jesus to forgive us of our sins. If he did not fulfill the Old Testament law perfectly, well then we could not be forgiven of our sins. So if you invalidate the law as it sits right now, you also invalidate the very authority that Jesus had to be able to forgive you of the wrongdoings that you've done.

These are very important principles to keep in mind and that makes it even more critical for us to be able to understand the very heart of the law when we look at passages like Exodus. Remember, when we examine the law, the Old Testament law helps to reveal to us not only who Jesus Christ is, but it also helps to reveal to us another aspect of Christ that we oftentimes don't consider, and that is the living, breathing, dynamic life that he lived in a way that gave us an example of how we should be living. So there's a mindset issue that we have to develop, a mindset issue we have to be aware of and that we have to understand.

Let's look at the next verse that we left off on and that is verse 22. It says this: "If men strive and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow, he shall be surely punished according as the woman's husband will lay upon him, and he shall pay as the judges determine." This is a very interesting picture, but basically what this is doing is this is placing a very serious level of adjudication upon somebody who actually injures a baby that is in the womb of a mother.

Again, it goes back to understanding and recognizing the value that we should be placing on human life. No matter how you cut it, no matter how you recognize it, there is a little human life inside the womb of that mother and God places a premium on that life. Of course it's interesting, we tend by our laws to place a premium on that life as well, but we seem to have ignored it with the increase of abortions that have been happening in this country.

But to this day, if you were to assault a pregnant woman and that woman lost her baby, you would be charged with murder and it is a capital crime. It's interesting how we see that same iteration of it here as we examine what the Bible says regarding something like that. In this case, it wasn't even an act of malice aforethought that we're seeing here. We're talking about the fact that if two men in essence fight and they start striving, and within the process of that fight, they end up injuring a woman who's pregnant and that baby is taken, then there is a pretty significant consequence that would be tied to them.

Based on whatever the husband of that woman determines and whatever the judgment is, it could be death. We find that out later by the way in the book of Deuteronomy. So there's a lot to dig into here to understand this, but the moral of that law, the moral of the message is: we value human life. We value human life from inception until they go to the grave. That's something that we have to continue to remember, that God places a premium on all human life, not just human life that has been born. We're talking about all human life here and that's a very important thing to be paying attention to.

Look at verse 23: "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." This is such an interesting passage because it is also very much misunderstood. When people quote the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, we have to stop for a second and we have to discuss the nature of vengeance. We have to discuss the nature of anger. We have to discuss what that means to us as people who God created for a very specific purpose.

I want to just explain something right off the bat. I've talked about this before, I'm going to talk about it again right now, but I want to make this clear: anger is dangerous. It's a super, super dangerous emotion because what anger will do is anger will cause you to lose the clarity that you need to maneuver through whatever it is that caused you to be angry. It's something that acts counterintuitively to be able to manage the crisis that whatever circumstance is that caused you to become angry in the first place.

It's an emotion that was a natural part of your makeup that was designed to allow you to be preserved in combat if necessary, but the reality of it is the sinful nature of man that was given to us by Adam choosing to rebel against God completely changed what that emotion does for us in our imperfect state. If you want to see the expression of righteous anger in a person who still had not been removed from that place of perfection, you would have to go to the last Adam, which of course that's what the Apostle Paul calls Jesus.

Jesus was the last Adam and the reality of it is the only real, genuine model that we have of somebody handling anger in a biblical way as it was intended to be handled is Jesus. So when you see him going into the temple and cleansing the temple, when you see some of the reactions that he has that would be deemed as a righteous anger, you have a perfect and dare I say exemplary picture of how to allow anger to motivate and move your very actions.

The one thing that I would tell you because I think this is critically important, and that is human anger as we see it right now being touched by the fall of man is never something that's going to produce an effect that's healthy. I think that anger can result in something healthy happening if you condition the anger by not reacting or allowing it to move you or motivate you to action. Anger moving you and motivating you to action is something that puts blinders on you. It allows you to stop seeing things that are in front of you and the blinding effect of that anger will absolutely destroy you.

There's a reason why in military training and in police training they do things in drills that are designed to beat you up. There's a reason why they do the things that they do. I remember when I was doing reserve academy work, and I don't call it real academy because we don't get beat up like the guys who go through these longer academies, especially when they know that this reserve class is a chaplain class. It's a little bit different.

But the drill instructors back then, when I even started as a chaplain, were very aggressive. They would say things to get a rise out of you, they would insult you, they would say absolutely crazy things to you, they would put you down. They would do things to condition the mindset of your body as a result of fatigue that you're going through. They do that because they train you to be able to not be regulated or controlled by your condition of anger because the condition of anger will put a blind spot in front of you.

Do me this favor if you don't believe me: sit down and talk to anybody with extensive military training, especially if you can find somebody who is part of the special forces community. They'll tell you the same thing every single time. When they went through their training, whether it be through their academy, they'll all tell you the same thing. They are put through a level of exhaustion that they've never experienced before.

They're denied standard caloric intake in terms of food, they're being asked to stay up all extreme hours of the night, they're being conditioned to do some of the most vigorous and difficult work possible under the most extreme conditions. The reason why they do that with these people is because they need to get them acclimated to not being conditioned by their emotions as a result of the discomfort that they're experiencing in the moment. In other words, it's a tool that teaches them how not to be affected by the emotion of frustration and anger.

Bitterness is a component of this and it's actually a proponent to anger as well, but it is a function or an extension of human nature that is very destructive. When you get bitter as a result of your anger, the one thing you have to understand is it's akin to drinking poison and expecting the poison to destroy the life of the person you're angry with. It doesn't work, does it? It takes away from your sobriety. It takes away from your ability to be able to see clearly and this is a very important point to bring up.

It causes you to go to certain extremes. When we talk about the eye for the eye, tooth for the tooth passage, this is something that is so incredibly misunderstood. When people read this, what they think Jesus is saying here is that if somebody pokes out your eye, you are required to poke their eye out as well. Or according to the law, if somebody pulls out your tooth, you are required to pull their tooth out.

The reason why they believe this is because they're conditioned to believe this traditionally based on the teaching that Jesus brings concerning anger when he quotes this passage: "You've heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but I have told you that if this happens, turn the other cheek." It's so completely misunderstood because it is not saying if someone pokes your eye out, you're supposed to poke their eye out. What it's saying is if somebody pokes your eye out, then the obligation that you have is not to extend yourself beyond that which they did to you. In other words, the idea here is being made whole. The idea here is reconciliation.

So it's not if somebody knocks a tooth out of you that your job is to go and knock their tooth out. It's not a statement or a requirement for vengeful activity. It is a guideline being given to a judge about how to make something whole. Think about it like this: if a person goes and removes another person's limb, it's not a guideline to tell the judge that now that person's limb is required to be removed as a function of punitive action. It's a restorative command.

The idea here is if that person loses a limb at the hand of that other man who took their limb, the objective is to be restorative in how you respond with respect to the adjudication that's offered. In other words, the idea here is to make whole the person who has been deprived. It does two things. Number one, it keeps the person who has become the victim of the action from going to an extreme that would cause them, as a result of their experience, to then be judged as well and end up in jail.

So in other words, if a person gets his arm lopped off, then technically if he cuts the other person's arm off, he's not going to get any judgment or anything like that. But the goal isn't to do that for the person. The goal is to give the judges direction on how they're to solve the problem when the problem arises. The goal here is to understand that the obligation is set forth to make whole the person who has experienced the suffering.

In other words, if a man takes the tooth of another man, then the man who took the other man's tooth is supposed to do whatever it takes to make them whole after they've done that. By the way, that man getting his tooth taken out doesn't make the situation whole. All it does is it creates two people without a tooth. So the idea here is if the person reacts, they can't react beyond this point.

But number two, the more critical message being given here is that when such a crime has taken place, it's the responsibility of the person who executed the crime to make the victim whole as a result of the action that they had committed. It actually is a series of sentencing guidelines. I spoke to an attorney years ago, and it was such an interesting perspective to see the attitudes of both attorneys. Both were incredibly gifted litigators, both very smart, and I spoke to them concerning what was the same case.

One litigator basically said, "We're going after the other side with everything we got and we're going to try to take everything out of their pockets. We're going to go for the maximum." And then there's another litigator who I talked to who basically says, "We are going to seek out whatever we can seek out legally to do, but you just need to understand the reason why we're taking this action is to make that person whole who was victimized by what they did. We're not here to completely ruin a person's life because of the fact that they did something that may or may not have been a mistake. We are here to make the person who actually was victimized whole."

When we ask for damages, what we're asking for is whatever's necessary to help them with what may be affected in their future job responses and what may be affected in the current condition that they're in. You are just talking about something that is straight out of Exodus and you don't even realize it. It's such a biblical principle. So the idea here is this: have you been hurt? Has somebody done something that's worthy of your anger? Has somebody done something that's so deeply painful that now you want vengeance?

If you are, the answer to all of this is to simply say, "God, I have been hurt in this situation. It's been tragically difficult and I'm asking you as my God to make the situation whole." If you spend time seeking God to make the situation in which you've been victimized whole, thus meaning you drop the victim mentality and you say, "God, I'm going to rest in you to use this to make me better as God promises he will, and I'm not going to focus on what the person did to me, rather I'm going to focus on what you're going to do in using this situation in my life."

You now open the door for a couple of things. You open the door for God to execute his perfect judgment on the person who did the injustice to you, and number two, you open up the door for God to do something extraordinary in your life in that you chose to mitigate and attenuate the emotion of anger that was driving you to bitterness. You gave God an opportunity to do something extraordinary in the situation. It's a big deal. When your attitude changes about what happens to you, much easier said than done, but that's exactly what's going on.

He is going to get more specific into this. He's going to describe to us what this actually looks like. Again, you'll see the theme. The theme is not "have vengeance." The theme is "let God be vengeful in what God is going to do." But the theme is demand reconciliation. Demand being made whole. Demand restitution. That's the model that's being given here and demanding restitution is a significantly different picture than vengeance.

Look what it says in verse 26, and he's going to give us practical pictures of what that looks like. He says, "If a man smite the eye of his servant or the eye of his maid, that it perish, he shall let him go free for his eye's sake." Did you get that? It doesn't say that if a man destroy the eye of his servant, then that man is supposed to get his eye destroyed. This is just after you hear an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

What he's now saying is make the servant whole by allowing the servant to no longer be obligated to whatever debt obligation that was created in order for him to become a servant. He's no longer a servant. By the way, this is really interesting. When he says set him free, then he would be obligated to set him free according to how they are supposed to be set free in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy required them to be set free by being given a whole bunch of property and enough sustenance to carry themselves through a new life.

So it wasn't just like, "I plucked your eye out, now get out of here." No, the person who plucked that servant's eye out had to think twice about whether or not they were going to do so. Plucking that servant's eye out meant they lost their servant, which was property that was of value to them.