ContradictionsReading order 107Bible context 2 min read
Should you punish people with an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth?
The retaliation rule demands equivalent bodily harm, while Jesus explicitly answers it with nonretaliation.
- Textual conflict
- Interpretive tension
- The passages pull in different directions, but the conflict depends on how their wording, scope, or narrative context is read.
- Importance
- Foundational
- A central claim about origins, salvation, divine justice, or religious authority.
Jesus expressly answers the retaliation formula with nonretaliation, but the injured person's response and judicial imposition of penalties need not have identical scope.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
An injury must be repaid with a matching injury
And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.
Leviticus 24:19-20
Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)
Read the full chapter:Leviticus 24
Jesus tells the struck person to offer the other cheek
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Matthew 5:38-39