Is “Eye For An Eye” Christian? Jesus, Justice, and The Limits of Vengeance (Dru Johnson) Ep. #218

Mike Tolliver (00:03)
Dru you and I have talked on the topic of biblical justice previously. A cornerstone of biblical justice is this, what is referred to as the principle of Talian. Eye for an eye, tooth for a that,

gets discussed in Christian circles. It can often even be a question of is this a principle by which Christians are held to? So I’m curious as you hear this, as you teach on it, ⁓ what is the biggest hurdle or one of the biggest hurdles ⁓ that you think people have when they approach this principle?

Dru Johnson (00:42)
Yeah, for me, ⁓ is that they think it’s a cornerstone to biblical justice. Because I don’t think it’s a cornerstone. I mean, I think it’s an integral part of biblical justice in the thinking of how Israel is to be in the world. ⁓ But if when you hear the phrase biblical justice, the first thing that comes to your mind is Lex Talionis. Well, A, you went to seminary too long. But ⁓ this law of retaliation. ⁓

Mike Tolliver (00:46)
Okay, okay.

Dru Johnson (01:10)
then you probably have the wrong thumbnail sketch of biblical justice in mind, both from Jesus’ perspective and the Torah’s perspective. What would it be for you?

Mike Tolliver (01:20)
well, yeah, so I think that there are different kinds of justice. And so as I talk to people on this subject, it’s that they frequently talk past each other, ⁓ like favoring or prioritizing one kind over another. So like you mentioned, ⁓ what is often referred to as retributive or, ⁓ I prefer the term restorative, ⁓ justice, then Lex Talionis is.

Dru Johnson (01:32)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Tolliver (01:49)
a cornerstone of that kind, but to your point, that kind is entirely unnecessary in a world without sin.

Dru Johnson (01:58)
Right.

Mike Tolliver (01:59)
So it is only because of a fallen world that that principle even exists. And so if that’s your starting point for any other kind of justice, then you’ve probably misunderstood things.

Dru Johnson (02:13)
⁓ So what you’re not saying, but it seems to be present in what you’re saying is justice is actually, there in the garden, right? Before anything goes wrong. And if you don’t have a kind of an imagination for biblical justice that can understand what that means and what that might entail, then maybe you’re off in the wrong starting blocks facing the wrong direction, right? You might be on the track running and see some similarities and you’re in lanes and you’re passing people.

Mike Tolliver (02:23)
Yes.

Absolutely.

Hahaha.

Dru Johnson (02:42)
The only reason you’re passing them is because you’re going the wrong way. ⁓ Okay, so maybe we should just talk first of all about the places where eye for an eye, which is the where the principle is most strongly rooted, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. Where did it show up? And it’s easy. There’s only three of them in the Torah. But they are they are key in what’s going on in those spots of the Torah.

Mike Tolliver (03:03)
But.

And so yeah, kind of starting with Leviticus 24, 17 through 22, I think could be, you know, in people’s minds, kind of the classic formulation. And so that reads, whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death. Whoever takes an animal’s life shall make it good life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor as he has done, it shall be done to him. Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

Whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. Whoever kills an animal shall make it good and whoever kills a person shall be put to death. You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native for I am the Lord your God. So talk about that.

Dru Johnson (03:52)
Okay,

well I’m glad you started with the Leviticus one and not the Exodus one so that we can make the point that Exodus might take priority in the thinking here ⁓ because when we get to Exodus we’ll see a very different wax on this issue. I think first of all, I’ve been focused on law the last couple of years and so my thinking has tightened quite a bit in a good way I think, which is, hey, is this a law?

Mike Tolliver (03:57)
Yeah.

Dru Johnson (04:20)
right? Lex talionis, which means law of retaliation. But is it even a law? I don’t think it is a law. I don’t. And again, I don’t think it’s a law in the sense of you can’t do it or not do it, right? There’s no way to actually practice what it says. And what’s really interesting is in none of these instances, does it actually advocate practicing what it says? ⁓ So

the even here, right? It’s animal, like it’s talking about restoring animals and restoring human life with this principle of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth at the same in parallel, right? You would expect it to say something like, oh, well, you could just pay off an animal, an animal death or something like this. No, you have to like, whatever’s going on with the humans, you do it with animals as well in some way. So there’s some parallel spanning. I think the best way to think about this is in the way I divided up as principles versus instances and the, and the principles.

Like do not murder. Well, that’s not a law. It’s not a command. I mean, there’s no way you can keep that command. there’s so many, you cause then you start saying, well, what does murder mean? You know, it’s like, it’s killing somebody. Well, there’s all kinds of sanction killing in the old testament. There’s all kinds of sanction killing today, right? If, if a police officer sees someone charging at me with a knife and stabbing me, they can shoot them and we would consider them a hero for doing that. Right? So it’s not just killing somebody, but it’s killing somebody in very specific circumstances. And even, you know, do not murder. You, you should not murder. You shall not murder.

Mike Tolliver (05:19)
you

Dru Johnson (05:45)
coming on the 10 commandments, it comes down the mountain from the hand of a God who just killed thousands of people, according to story, in the hands of a guy who killed a man in Egypt. And that’s why he had to go on the run. He was on the lam because he murdered a guy. And then when he gets to the base of the mountain and sees the orgy, he murdered, him and the Levites murdered thousands of people. So what does do not murder ⁓ mean? And I think you just step back and go, this is a principle.

Mike Tolliver (06:04)
Ha ha ha!

Dru Johnson (06:12)
which means I need to start looking for the concrete instances that fill out what is murder and what is not murder. In the same way, for an eye, tooth for a tooth, what is the eye for an eye? Where is it aimed? The concrete instances retrain and restrain how we understand the principle because you shall not murder and eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth could be taken a hundred different ways. Maybe a dozen different ways. You could interpret it different ways, but the instances kind of lock down the parameters of how you might understand it.

Mike Tolliver (06:34)
you

Dru Johnson (06:41)
⁓ that makes sense.

Mike Tolliver (06:43)
So I think

that’s helpful to frame it that way, because then if we do go to Exodus 21, we start to get some of that how far reaching is this principle and where does it apply. So let me actually read that.

Dru Johnson (06:53)
Right. And it goes in a very surprising direction

in Exodus 21. Before we get there, ⁓ I think it’s also, you know, it’s worth saying, at least for all three instances, they occur at different times in Israel’s, you know, journey, as it were. ⁓ And so when we go back to Exodus, they’re really, everything we’re getting ready to say is, well, if you think every word of scripture is equal to every other word, then…

Mike Tolliver (06:59)
Sure.

Hmm.

Dru Johnson (07:23)
then we have one task in front of us. If you think there’s actually priority, ⁓ as Joshua Berman suggested, maybe Exodus is kind of on the run, what you need to know, law and instruction, and then it gets ratified through amendment and ⁓ which, know, like the Constitution, where you don’t change the Constitution, you just show how better to interpret it as you ratify it with amendments. ⁓ So depending on which one of those views you take depends on what you think is going on with I for an I as well.

Mike Tolliver (07:33)
Hahaha.

Dru Johnson (07:53)
I’m going to show why think Jesus takes that Constitution and Amendment view ⁓ rather than the kind of all these laws are equal and you just have to figure out the concept behind

Mike Tolliver (08:17)
right, so Exodus 21, 22 through 25. ⁓ You could actually take the larger section because it gets applied over and over, but this is where the exact phrasing pops up. And so it says, when men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband shall impose on him.

Dru Johnson (08:26)
Right.

Mike Tolliver (08:43)
and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Dru Johnson (08:57)
So many wonderful things going on in this passage. Like, interpretively, there’s so many interesting things going on. ⁓ First is, if you strike a woman so that her ⁓ child comes out, a pregnant woman, but there is no harm. You’re like, time out. In what world do you force an early delivery and there’s no harm, right? ⁓

Mike Tolliver (09:00)
You

Hahaha.

Dru Johnson (09:22)
So there seems to be already something present in their thinking. And I think I love that about this section of Exodus where the, you know, this is technically tort law where there’s harm done, where the constraints are so narrow. It’s like laser focused. ⁓ And ⁓ you can say the same thing with, ⁓ you know, someone strikes their slave and kills them. ⁓ You know, goes on to say, it doesn’t even deal with the death of the slave. It just assumes.

that the death of the slave is going to be avenged by the family of the slave, right? That the family has the right to come and murder that person as a ⁓ recompense. ⁓ But it goes on to talk about, but in this instance, the harm is that man has paid for the labor of that person, and that’s still floating out there as a problem, So something that we would not, I mean, we hear that and we’re like, well, what about the slave and his life and how could, you know, treated with equal dignity and all that.

Mike Tolliver (09:56)
Hmm.

Hmm. Yeah.

Dru Johnson (10:21)
They just seem to be assuming certain things so that they can laser-like focus on the particular issue of ⁓ the economics of the situation. ⁓ So here too, this kind of eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, for life, wound for wound, burn for born. There’s a reason we say eye for an eye, tooth for tooth is a shorthand for all of that is because when you look across the three instances in the Torah, they all only contain eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. And then it gives lots of other things in the list, but it’s

Mike Tolliver (10:28)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (10:50)
Those are the only three things that are stable across ⁓ the other reason is the code of Hammurabi. And you get instances that are similar to it, but not identical and other ancient Near Eastern laws ⁓ where they haven’t, you if you strike somebody in the eye, well, it depends on, and this is important for Exodus 21. It depends on who you are. Now you don’t need this in order to make sense of Exodus 21, but it certainly, certainly illuminates the situation. If you are,

Mike Tolliver (10:54)
Okay.

Dru Johnson (11:20)
you know, if a nobleman strikes a nobleman in the eye, then it’s eye for an eye. And he breaks his eye, it’s eye for an eye. If a nobleman strikes a slave, ⁓ he just pays a little bit of money. If a slave strikes a fellow slave, eye for an eye. If a slave punches up to a citizen or a noble person, then their arm is cut off, right? And so the class system is reinforced in the ⁓ law of retaliation. So what happens here is,

Mike Tolliver (11:35)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Dru Johnson (11:49)
you you’d say it’s one of the unique features of the Hebrew law in the ancient Near East is the next two sentences that follow this, right? So if you say, okay, eye for an is a principle, then we’re looking for the concrete instances that will help us understand the principle.

you know, the next two sentences that follow eye for an eye, for tooth in this very first iteration where Israel is kind of on the run and this is the instruction they need as they go. It’s concerning striking somebody in the eye and then the next sentence is striking somebody in the tooth. So here we have a pretty good candidate for concrete instances that are meant to help us understand the principle of I for an I, tooth for tooth. By the way, you know, the…

rabbis struggled with this because they were trying to treat it kind of under the Roman concept of law and legalism. Not exclusively, but ⁓ certainly you can feel a little bit of that floating around the background of their discussions. And you know, they’re puzzled by, okay, well, what do do if a one-eyed guy strikes a two-eyed guy and breaks one of his eyes? ⁓

Mike Tolliver (12:36)
Mm.

Dru Johnson (12:52)
You know, so if you break the eye of the one-eyed guy, the cyclops, then ⁓ you end up making him completely blind, which seems to defeat the very purpose of the law in the first place as parity And one rabbi comments that a one-eyed man could basically do no wrong in that kind of a world, right? ⁓ If you say then we can’t punish him because of it. So they’re worried about licentiousness if you took this.

Mike Tolliver (13:09)
Hmm.

Dru Johnson (13:17)
quite literalistically as a kind of a Roman legal statute legislated and meant to be broken or kept. And so they’re struggling with the idea that it’s difficult to take a principle and work it into a statute. So what’s amazing to me is the author of Exodus, which maybe is Moses or Moses influenced, says, okay, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Next sentence.

If you break the eye of your slave, male or female, you must let them go. You must release them. Next sentence. If you break the tooth of your slave, male or female, you must let them go. And you’re like, well, that, that took a sudden turn, right? Because it’s no longer, if somebody does something wrong to me, then I get mine. I get to strike back. I get to do something back. It’s now I’m the one who’s doing wrong. And I’m particularly one who has power over somebody.

Mike Tolliver (14:00)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (14:12)
and I’m using it to exploit, right, in some way, or I’m abusing them. And also you see all kinds of things packed in here too, like the law, the idea of paradigm extension, because you could imagine someone saying, like, okay, well, don’t hit your slaves in the, you know, avoid the face, avoid the cheeks, right? Because this is the point that Jesus is going to later make, like avoid the cheeks, punch them in the ribs, because it doesn’t say anything about that, right? Kind like when your mom told you don’t touch your brother and they’re like,

Mike Tolliver (14:15)
Sure.

Hahaha

Dru Johnson (14:41)
I’m not touching you. Yeah. Yeah. So I think what you see here is like, you can’t, you if you just start thinking, OK, well, where else can’t you touch them? And you start extending that logic out. Well, you can’t touch your servant at all. So that rule about somebody beating their slave and and to the point they die or recover is already way out of bounds. And a crime, right. And they’re going to be avenged by the family. And we won’t talk about.

Mike Tolliver (14:41)
How about here? How about here? Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (15:09)
we could talk about avenging by the family separately here. And so the warning is actually eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. If you’re to give it a shorthand, it means don’t abuse your power against, you know, when you’re in a situation where you have power over somebody, you can’t do what you want. You need to restrain that power, which is then really interesting how Jesus seemingly focusing on Exodus 21 and not the other iterations of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

Mike Tolliver (15:12)
You

Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (15:37)
again makes his whole teaching turn on somebody has power over somebody else and how should the powerless person respond? He actually puts you in the role of the slave who’s getting hit. So that’s, you know, I think that’s, again, so if you say, well, maybe it is the cornerstone of biblical justice, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, not Lex Talionis, but this Exodus 21, it’s essentially you better mind how you think about fellow humans and animals, because you’re going to see it later.

Mike Tolliver (15:42)
Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Right.

Dru Johnson (16:06)
hit animals and beat them and withhold and that kind of thing.

Mike Tolliver (16:10)
Yeah, and that’s definitely where I’m coming at it from. And it comes from the sort of the verse that I think underwrites that rule, which we’ll talk about in a second. But I did want to go to that third passage, because as you said, it extends that logic beyond merely physical violence. ⁓ And so in Deuteronomy 19, 15 through 21,

Dru Johnson (16:25)
Yeah.

Right.

Mike Tolliver (16:36)
It says, a single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently

And if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So shall you purge the evil from your midst and the rest shall hear in fear and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eyes shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Dru Johnson (17:30)
Right. So perfect example of what I was saying is it doesn’t actually ask you to take life for life ⁓ or it’s not life for life. And like you didn’t actually kill the person. You just used your words and complicity with somebody else. And it’s actually, you know, the Hebrew, it’s a violent witness or whatever. ⁓ That’s the problem here. So. ⁓

Mike Tolliver (17:37)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (17:53)
What’s interesting to me is this, A, if you want to talk about biblical justice, and this is when people say, well, the American system of justice is based on the Bible. I’m like, kind of. There would be some radical modifications that in some ways would seemingly be better, right? We just have perjury. We’re like, oh, you may have time in jail if you got this person on the death row because you and a person conspired and lied about it. It’s also a world where you don’t.

Mike Tolliver (18:02)
Hahaha

Dru Johnson (18:22)
You don’t have DNA, you don’t have any other evidence. As they say in the old country, your word is your life, and you’re given word as a life, and you have all of these worries about giving oaths and rash oaths and what you swear to. ⁓ So I think here you have an example that this really is talking about, if somebody dies, capital punishment seems like the appropriate response.

Mike Tolliver (18:29)
Thank you.

Dru Johnson (18:51)
And that’s where you then talk about the avenging family ⁓ versus the state becomes a problem here as well. And so one of the things that I think is interesting is it is the avenging families, they’re primarily responsible ⁓ for a murder, right? It’s not deflected to a disinterested state who’s trying to accomplish justice, which as Americans, we’re like, yes, we’re breathing that air going, that’s what we want. They do not want that. ⁓

And you can think of lots of different reasons why that would be. I cite in my book a poem from the Bedouins that, you know, of a man who hunted down his son’s killer. And after he finished killing him in recompense, he said, my side heavy saddlebags have now been balanced or something like that. And I think ⁓ when you think about justice in this region of…

Mike Tolliver (19:39)
Hmm.

Dru Johnson (19:44)
If somebody kills somebody, there’s all kinds of things that are problematic. Killing somebody is especially problematic. ⁓ But maybe the only thing that would make you not do that is the actual fear that this person, or even sexual assault, right? Why is a woman safe away from her fathers and brothers? ⁓ Well, it’s because they know the fathers and brothers will hunt you down until they find you and kill you. ⁓

Mike Tolliver (20:08)
Yeah.

Dru Johnson (20:13)
That actually has more, I mean, there’s research on this, that actually has a lot more pull in deterring behavior than a disinterested government, executing justice on behalf of the victim actually has almost no deterrent effect in almost any capital case whatsoever. Unless you happen to be in a place where they regularly and publicly execute people, and so you kind of connect to the dots and go, this could actually happen to me, but that doesn’t happen anymore.

I mean like public paintings in the square kind of a thing, right?

Mike Tolliver (20:45)
Sure.

Now, I do, when I read this Deuteronomy 19 passage, I have in the back of my mind, Haman from the Book of Esther, or any Disney villain, always seems to hang from their own gallows, right? But there, it’s actually the hand of God behind the scenes that is providing the justice and the deliverance, as opposed to, like you said, a disinterested governmental party.

Dru Johnson (20:55)
Right.

Right, right.

Mike Tolliver (21:14)
⁓ I guess you could argue that that is the vehicle through which God chooses to administer this justice, but ⁓ it’s just an interesting connection that they’re making there. ⁓

Dru Johnson (21:28)
Yeah,

I think that point you’re making too is that, you know, it may seem cliche, that God, wait, there’s a song called God is Watching. ⁓ You know, if we just pretend for one second ⁓ that God was like Santa Claus, maybe I can speak in a way that we Westerners could understand. Imagine God who’s like Santa Claus, who is omniscient and is keeping a detailed list of wrongs, right? ⁓ This is, you don’t have that in the Bible, but you certainly do have this,

Mike Tolliver (21:45)
Okay.

Dru Johnson (21:57)
If the one being oppressed or victimized or the one being harmed cries out to God, he has a special ear for those people. Exodus 22, just after eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, it’s, hey, if you oppress anybody, like you were just oppressed in Egypt and they cry out to me, you’re toast. I’m going to kill all y’all and make your wives widows and your children orphans. So there’s this kind of idea that…

You know that God saw Exodus 2 where he says he heard their cries, he saw and he knew. And it just ends there. He knew. He knew what? It’s like he is paying attention is what you get here in these matters of justice. And it’s why God can also become the witness when there is no other witness. So if you think about the test for adulterous woman or the, I call it the test for the jealous husband’s, the spirit of jealousy and the husband, the unfounded spirit of jealousy.

Mike Tolliver (22:49)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (22:51)
God is the witness there, right? So the woman can go confidently into that test in Numbers 5 ⁓ because God’s going to be the one that vindicates her if she is indeed innocent of the charge.

Mike Tolliver (23:04)
Right, so I wanna switch gears slightly. You know, I mentioned before, I find that there is a verse in Genesis that I would argue underwrites this principle. Do you wanna guess where that is? We haven’t talked about this beforehand. Yeah, yeah, Genesis 9, 6. And it says, whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image. And so it connects the principle of Talion

Dru Johnson (23:17)
The Noahide law. Yeah.

Mike Tolliver (23:34)
had Lex Talionis to the Imago Dei. And so, you know, there’s, ⁓ this is partly why I’m so pro-Lex Talionis is the image of God is pre-fall that never goes away. And so it seems like if there is ever an impairment of the image of God in someone else, the Lex Talionis carries the day, so to speak, in some way, or form.

Now, as you’ve alluded, when we get to Jesus, we’ll have to deal with what that looks like. But interact with that for me. I’m curious, what do you do with that?

Dru Johnson (24:07)
Right.

Yeah, it’s funny and ⁓ common Jewish thing, I think it’s common. The common idea is that Noahide law is basically representing universal law. Everybody on earth should know not to do. And it’s a pretty low hurdle too, right? If you talk about life, it’s like, okay, only in cases of murder, ⁓ which then, you know, provides a conceptual basis that’s not completely out of sorts with what most humans think. It’s not how most humans think about things. ⁓

Mike Tolliver (24:28)
You

Dru Johnson (24:42)
that we know of. I think all you get is if you kill, ⁓ and it’s if an animal kills a human as well, right? So I think this is the part that people are not always dealing with. It’s like, why are animals held morally culpable for killing you? Only in certain instances. And you get that in Exodus, the law in Exodus there. Actually, immediately after eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, you get, OK, what do do when animals kill people? And what do you do to the people who are responsible for the animals that end up killing people? ⁓

Mike Tolliver (24:50)
Yeah.

Dru Johnson (25:12)
So I think in all of these, you think, and I think you get this with Leviticus and Deuteronomy as well, where they just say like, look, there’s some level of parity that has to happen here. It’s not, so it’s beyond Noahide laws, right? So it’s not just if you kill somebody, it’s, there’s gotta be some level of parity and justice. But if, and here’s where your view of the Torah and the view of Hebrew law really matters. If you think these are rules that are meant to be kept or broken,

⁓ then you will have lots of problems all the way down. this is more like wisdom and instruction for village elders first, then Levites, ⁓ then judges, and then ultimately the king. When kings come along, you can appeal to the king for justice. ⁓ If this is the wisdom, including the stories in Genesis, you know, are kind of anti-wisdom often. Here’s what the foolish person does, and here’s what it looks like, here’s how it goes sideways in 15 different ways.

You have a robust picture plus instruction of what you should be doing in these situations, which are going to guide you to decide. What’s interesting in chapter nine is you’ve already got a capital crime that was not punished by God, right? You have Cain, who he refuses, God refuses to do eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and actually protects him from eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. When people find me, they will kill me.

right? And God’s not so with Cain, right? ⁓ He’ll be avenged sevenfold. That’s a band, right? Or something like that. And ⁓ yeah, and then you get to Moses too. Moses ⁓ is committed a capital crime, and yet he’s not susceptible to the law he is getting ready to give. And Jonathan Burnside has made an argument that actually

Mike Tolliver (26:45)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Dru Johnson (27:03)
In the totality of things, what Moses does would be fall under the rash murder, which could cut him some slack, you know. ⁓ But big picture, by Noahide law, Moses should be dead. It would have been a right and good and mete, as they say, for the Egyptians to bear the sword in that case.

Mike Tolliver (27:20)
Sore.

So I think that’s helpful to draw out because when I think of the principle of Talion, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, as you’ve said is less a command when the eye is taken, you must take the other eye or the eye of the assailant. But rather it provides a ceiling of punishment. So the example I always give is if I steal some food to feed my family and you cut my arm off,

There’s some poetry in the punishment, right? Can’t use that hand to steal again, but the punishment far exceeds the seriousness of the crime. And so Talionis provides that ceiling. And where I think Jesus goes is he says, just because there’s a ceiling does not prevent you from showing mercy. And it seems like that’s what God is really good at doing is showing that mercy ⁓ to these various folks.

Dru Johnson (28:22)
Very Protestant,

very Protestant take of yours there. Yeah, I think the ceiling is a problematic view only for this one reason is because what, A, it’s usually the only view people have. They’re like, no, this is meant to restrain people from overreacting. Certainly that is true. I agree with that. ⁓ But then it doesn’t give you any explanatory power at all about Exodus 21’s Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth, right?

Mike Tolliver (28:25)
Go figure, right?

Okay.

Dru Johnson (28:51)
Well, no, it’s not trying to restrain. It’s saying don’t be in the position in the first place where this even happens. ⁓ Don’t be the kind of person, I mean, you like take it to its logical extension is even if you are the kind of person who would be tempted to hit somebody, don’t do it, right? It warns you ahead of time, which this is why I say, I think Jesus is showing his chops in the Torah by he’s doing the exact same move with the Torah. You have heard it said and you thought it was this simple tit for tat or whatever.

Mike Tolliver (28:57)
shore.

Dru Johnson (29:19)
But I’m saying don’t even do this, right? You’ve heard don’t murder. I’m saying don’t even hate your brother in your heart. And what he’s doing is showing what Exodus 21 was always doing, which is eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. But you’re the one who’s doing the breaking and you need to like check yourself before you wreck yourself kind of a thing, which is a very unique, mean, you I don’t want to make too big of a deal about what’s unique about the Hebrew Bible. There’s many ways in which the Torah echoes and resembles and alludes to even other ancient Near Eastern codes.

Mike Tolliver (29:36)
So

Dru Johnson (29:49)
⁓ But there are some facets of it that are absolutely unique in the ancient and modern world and that would be one of them.

Mike Tolliver (29:55)
And if I could, I think the hinge that gets us from Exodus 21, ⁓ Leviticus 24 and Deuteronomy 19 to Jesus is actually Leviticus 19, 17 and 18. I think the same logic is working in this and I’m gonna read it here just so we can kind of make that jump.

Dru Johnson (30:15)
Yeah. Do you need

to read this? think actually we should play a game called Leviticus 19, 18 says, love your neighbor as yourself, Famously. That’s the end of the sentence. What’s at the beginning? Like just let’s do a little, we can put a little music in here, a little Jeopardy music. What is the beginning of that sentence in which love your neighbor as yourself is the rather instead you should love your neighbor as yourself. Yeah. Okay. So now go for it read that.

Mike Tolliver (30:24)
Yes.

Right.

Da na na na

Right.

⁓

Dru Johnson (30:45)
Pause here.

Mike Tolliver (30:46)
Yes, indeed. Dramatic pause. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

Dru Johnson (31:07)
Right. And start there with like principle or law, right? Principle or instance. ⁓ Certainly confusing if you say, well, this is a rule, a statute. Like, wait, you can’t bear vengeance. But you just got done telling me how to bear vengeance in this case and that case, right? So.

Mike Tolliver (31:11)
Great.

Ha ha.

and would go on to do so again. Yeah, yeah.

Dru Johnson (31:28)
Right. ⁓

So this section of Leviticus 19 is a lot of principled teaching. And you see the principle and instance in Leviticus 18 as well. You cannot uncover the nakedness of a close family member. you’re like, well, what’s a close family Let’s get a definition here. And then you get lots of instances of definitions ⁓ that fill up. That, again, don’t exhaustively explore. Because, again, it doesn’t say whether you can have sex with your grandma or not.

Mike Tolliver (31:43)
Hahaha!

Dru Johnson (31:56)
it assumes that you’re going to logically extend that thinking there. So I think even in this case, it’s causing you to rethink what you think vengeance is and what is, know, and this actually comes up in the gospel. What does it mean to love my neighbor? Right? Who is the neighbor? And then Jesus twists this one again, twists this one again to the end of Leviticus 19, where, the end says, you shall love the foreigners yourself, for you aren’t foreigners in the land of Egypt and I am Yahweh your God.

which is the exact direction that Jesus takes it. He starts out with, what does it mean to love your neighbors yourself? And he tells a parable that ends with the Samaritan, who we call the Good Samaritan, doing the very thing that Leviticus nine progresses towards. Leviticus nine, sorry.

Mike Tolliver (32:36)
Okay.

Yeah,

right. I was tracking with you. ⁓ I do want to introduce an additional point. I think I’m taking this from Gordon Wenham, but that there is a floor and a ceiling of the law. And so, you know, we’re just taking a step back from Talion specifically and looking at the entirety of ⁓ the wisdom for the elders and for the people and however it plays out that there’s a floor and a ceiling.

and that the floor might be an application of talionis in an eye for an eye, but that the ceiling is this holiness that you are always oriented after as an Israelite ⁓ that is to not take vengeance at all. ⁓ And so I think that’s where, that’s what kind of why I call this that hinge verse is it takes the same logic, ⁓ but then it applies it towards mercy.

⁓ And then I think Jesus picks that line of thinking up.

Dru Johnson (33:45)
Yeah, I think there’s a lot going on in Leviticus 19. It’s a complicated run of thoughts. Actually, it’s a complicated run of principles and instances, kind of back to back, short up. But I think if you were to say, walk away, well, what is eye for an eye, for tooth? Basically, what is that getting at in all of these instances? And I think right before this in Leviticus 19, I never remember the verses, but just a few sentences before 17.

⁓ It talks about you don’t defer to the great or to the poor. You’re to maintain righteousness and judgments. Like this kind of sense of like we’re not playing favorites, you the blind naked woman holding the scales kind of stuff that we as we depict it today or half naked, I should say. ⁓ And ⁓ so there’s all these principles that are meant to be kind of constraining variables, you that you realize whenever there is no simple, well, you should just do this with them.

and that you actually, you need to hear the merits of what’s going on. And then you’re in a thick, sticky matrix of principles with various ⁓ concrete instances outlining them in which you have to operate. And all of it, what’s interesting to me, just procedurally, because this book I wrote, some historical fiction trying to think how this might’ve worked out in an actual Iron Age village in Judah. And what I realized was I think the best way to think through it,

from my perspective here in the 21st century, is that it slows everything down. And when you start taking on a lot of these principles and instances in mass that would speak to any given event, it causes you to slow the whole thing down, deliberate, bring in the best wisdom, people stopping and checking going, well, wait, that’s not exactly, well, what do we do with this? And we know this story of this person. ⁓ And it gives you essentially what we would call due process today, ⁓ deliberate.

effort, a jury of peers gets hinted at here as well. So it’s not like the American or British system upon which it’s based is completely unguided by the Hebrew Bible, ⁓ but we’re just not a theocracy and God isn’t ⁓ directly overseeing the justice system in the way that he was with Israel. ⁓ And there’s accommodations for that, some of which I think could come back, you know, like if you’re going to be the sole witness to

basically get somebody put in the electric chair, as we used to say. I think there should be more than perjury on the line. ⁓ But maybe that’s too extreme, and a lawyer could tell me why that’s silly or whatever.

Mike Tolliver (36:24)
Alright, cool. Well, I want to end with us taking this to Jesus, actually looking at his words, and he does interact with the principle of Talion in Matthew 5, 38 through 42. He says, you’ve heard it said that it was said, pardon me, you’ve heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. We’ve already talked about this a lot. ⁓

Dru Johnson (37:05)
Yeah. Yeah, I think,

you know, the context of what’s going on here is really important as it always is. But I portrayed this in class recently with some freshmen. talked about, you got to remember, this is like, you know, the 3D magic eyes, ⁓ like it looks like a static screen. But if you cross your eyes the right way and squint, you can kind of see a three dimensional, not just a two dimensional image, but a three dimensional image in them. And I feel like Jesus is

Mike Tolliver (37:27)
You

Yeah.

Dru Johnson (37:34)
is trying like he can see the shark that’s beneath all the static on the screen and he’s trying to get people to see this really complex three-dimensional five-dimensional reality called the kingdom of heaven and this is him using their present cognition their present thinking about ⁓ the law and the instruction of god how they’re supposed to live it out and twisting it you know everywhere he can to help them you know tighten the screws to help narrow their focus wait that’s a really bad analogy but

Mike Tolliver (38:04)
Ha

Dru Johnson (38:04)
like almost an Iron Maiden, but to really narrow their focus here. So what’s fascinating to me is that he takes Exodus 21’s telling of the eye for an eye, tooth for a not the other ones. He puts it in the context of power and vulnerability in a relationship. And then he puts you in the seat of vulnerability and he says, yeah, it’s fine. ⁓ Almost like you become Isaac to Abraham walking up to Mount Moriah. it’s like, yeah, God’s gonna provide, don’t worry.

This is this is gonna get taken care of you can be weak you can give up things you can you know Take no tunics with you as happens later in that gospel ⁓ And and that’s part of that is like you’re not going to like be able to recognize discern the pattern of the kingdom of God if You’re hung up in this other interpretation of I for an eye tooth for tooth so in some ways He is directly speaking to us today who think if you think biblical justice is like retaliation He’s talking to you

Mike Tolliver (38:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So I look at what he’s doing in chapter five, kind of as a program, is he begins by saying, you know, I’ve not come to abolish the law at all. Yeah, not one bit. And then he goes on to hit the high notes of some of the Ten Commandments. And what he does in every instance is if you have a floor and a ceiling,

Dru Johnson (39:14)
Right, Not a single bit of it. Yeah.

Mike Tolliver (39:29)
it seems like in every instance he’s raising the floor. So life in the kingdom is, know, it is here, yeah, sure, but I really do want you up as close to holiness as you can get, because that was always the program. Yeah.

Dru Johnson (39:32)
Right.

Right. And it’s a really weird floor where like, it’s the kind of

floor like where people can just smack you around and it’s fine. Like, you don’t even have to be offended by

Mike Tolliver (39:53)
Right, right, right. And I would go so far as to say that I think the reason that he goes here is, you know, kind of underwritten in Matthew seven, verse 12. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them for this is the law and the prophets. And so for me, Jesus is saying, okay, you’ve been offended. So do unto others what you would, how many times do people

give mercy to themselves but give no mercy to anybody else. And Jesus is saying like, if you want that mercy and you’ve been offended, you gotta give it. ⁓

Dru Johnson (40:24)
Right.

Yeah, it’s

a psychology they call it attribution bias where everything somebody does wrong when they do it, it’s because of their personality. Like they’re just a bad, you know, they’re just, you know, a bad person with time or whatever, because that’s why they show up late. But when I show up late, it’s because of the traffic. It’s because of, you know, you know, it’s all these other things. Yeah, I think that’s that’s a very helpful way to tie it together. He he’s raising the floor. And again, I

Mike Tolliver (40:48)
Hahaha

Dru Johnson (40:59)
I think what’s remarkable about what he’s doing, just with how he’s rhetorically using the Torah, is he’s actually not changing anything about it. ⁓ And if you take the view that Jesus is giving a new gospel ethic that has never existed in the world before, I think you’re just reading the Torah through that kind of Roman legalized, these are just a bunch of rules that we break or keep.

⁓ Which there’s a whole tradition of that and which means, you know, you’re buying into the whole Luther’s gospel versus law dichotomy which breaks immediately once you realize the mercy and the principles and the instances going on in the law that it’s instruction for wisdom, etc. ⁓ So yeah, it’s it’s in some ways we say this is a different view than a lot of Christians might currently hold But it’s a very old view that I would like to suggest that Jesus himself held

and really wanted us to hold as well.

Mike Tolliver (41:55)
Yeah.

And if I could kind of reformulate the principle of Talian for our ears, I might do so by saying, you may impair your neighbor up to the level that you have been impaired. But the conditional, you you may does not require you to. And it’s because harm has been done that the image of God, you know, it’s all at work in there.

Dru Johnson (42:19)
Right. Right.

Mike Tolliver (42:27)
I think that might make it a little bit more palatable to our ears, even though it’s doing the exact same thing. ⁓

Do you have any?

Dru Johnson (42:35)
Yeah, well I think that and I think the other side which is going to be the stretch for people is the principle of retaliation means you can’t exploit people who are vulnerable with reference to you. But you, and Jesus is following the logic of the text, but you can be exploited and it’s okay.

Mike Tolliver (42:53)
That’s good.

Dru Johnson (42:54)
Which is the package that is

shocking. mean, that’s not where most people, which is why people, again, if you see it in Exodus, ⁓ then it’s not shocking when Jesus just reiterates that and kind of flips it also and says, yeah, and you can trust God in these things. ⁓ But if you never noticed this in Exodus, like I didn’t for a long time, ⁓ then you would think that Jesus is doing some entirely new thing for this New Testament ethic called the kingdom of God, et cetera. All right.

Will you kick this dead horse?

Mike Tolliver (43:23)
So I

have one final question. How would you apply this for Christians today in a meaningful way when it comes to social media or ⁓ social interaction, political views? What would you do?

Dru Johnson (43:27)
Okay.

Yeah.

think, well, for Americans, let’s just, cause that’s the culture I’m most familiar with. I think there’s all kinds of ways. You know, when my wife’s aunt died of medical malpractice, like genuine, was a, you know, they nicked her artery and closed her up and it was, and she bled to death with an inside of herself. It was a bad situation at 43 years old.

Mike Tolliver (44:03)
Cheers.

⁓

Dru Johnson (44:06)
The kind of the feeling of even myself, I was in seminary at the time, was kind of like, well, we’re gonna get millions for like, the family is gonna get money from this, right? And the idea is, I mean, there’s kind of a sweet idea that her life was invaluable, but that’s actually not how the tort works in courts. They actually calculate, okay, she was 43 years old, so she had 30 years of work left, she made this much money a year, that’s how much money you can recoup, and then you can do harms and damages and that kind of stuff. But there really is this general, I would say even in the way we think of

This is kind of a stretch. But wages is like, we think that wages should always go up. So we should always get raises. Which is entirely out of step with reality, right? If you think about this for a second, it only benefits the worker and has no benefit towards the organization. So even the way we relate to things, we just expect this kind of asymmetrical relationship with things. Things should just not only go well, but they should go better than what we put in.

almost like an investment mentality. I should be getting 10 to 15 % back on this this investment. ⁓ And I feel like this is just latent in American culture. ⁓ In all kinds of ways, social media, I don’t know, I can’t, can’t, I mean, I can think of some really nasty behavior on social media, where it’s like, we’re, we’re gonna cancel this person and take them down because they said this thing, you know, rather than having any kind of reasonable discussion or whatever. But that’s, that’s the only place my mind goes. And with that,

Mike Tolliver (45:25)
store.

Dru Johnson (45:31)
I should probably shut up.

Mike Tolliver (45:33)
All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate the conversation. I hope it will be helpful to many.

Dru Johnson (45:39)
Yep, thanks Mike. You always have profound insights that help me think more clearly as well.

Mike Tolliver (45:45)
Awesome. Have a good one.

Dru Johnson (45:46)
All right, see you.