Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Exodus 21:20-27

Our text is in Exodus 21. We’ll be reading verses 20-27 of Exodus 21. It’s our fifth sermon on the law of the covenant. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Exodus 21:20-27. And if a man beats his male or female servant with a rod, so that he dies under his hand, he shall surely be punished. Notwithstanding, if he remains alive a day or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his property. If men fight and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him. And he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. If a man strikes the eye of his male or female servant and destroys it, he shall let him go free for the sake of his eye. And if he knocks out the tooth of his male or female servant, he shall let him go free for the sake of his tooth.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your most righteous word and we pray that your Spirit now would illuminate this text for understanding. We pray, Lord God, that as a result of understanding this text, we might worship you from the bottom of our hearts for the restitution made for our sins through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that we also might be invigorated to imply the principles or truths of this text in the context of our everyday life. In Christ’s name we ask this. Amen.

Please be seated. It was particularly good this morning in spite of the absence of all the river rafters. Pray for a safe return for them today and that they’d be nourished through the word of God at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Grants Pass. We have a series of laws here that we want to deal with today. We have a lot of material to work our way through. Be it noted that it’s only—I’m starting at three minutes till ten.

Okay. So, what I want to do first is just a brief review and the purpose of the review is for one thing to reinforce the truths we’ve learned, but it’s also to help us to understand that what we just read responsibly from Psalm 119 and then declared in our singing of another portion of the altar, that Jesus will reign in accordance with this law. That this law, if it is to be our delight, we have to understand it.

And as we progress in our understanding of the law, we see in what may seem to be some fairly obscure portions of God’s word here in Exodus 21 and in some unusual or arcane case laws, so-called, we find tremendous truths for our lives and they give us tremendous truth that we can apply in the immediate context of our lives.

For instance, when we began this series at the beginning of the case laws in Exodus 21:1-11, the law of the covenant, there was a section there on slavery and immediately in the context of the law of God he sets up this dynamic that the law is intended to move men to freedom—either the freedom of the homebred slave who will willingly serve the master’s house and is now adopted into that household and so free in that sense, or the six-year limitation on slavery for those men who because of debt or crime would find themselves unable to pay back what they stole and so would become indentured servants of another man. The law moves people to freedom. And the whole context of the giving of the law is God moving us from bondage to freedom.

Additionally, we found in those what are somewhat obscure laws. In the last portion of that first section, we found the dowry spoken of. We found marriage responsibilities of husbands, the need to clothe, feed, and give proper response to our wives. We see implied in that the conditions the absence of which would be legitimate for Christian divorce. And so we have very important texts here that unpack and give us lots of practical application in light of our general movement from slavery to freedom—the way that works in men’s lives who refuse to be free through indebtedness or through crime and the way that still is a movement toward freedom and in these practical applications to marriage.

In the next section, Exodus 21:12-14, we saw the tremendous importance of the image bearers of God. The primary image bearers being men. The death penalty is required for all murderers. And even manslaughter or accidental death to another brings a great disjuncture in your life in the Old Testament. And so God trains us to think very highly of the life of God’s image bearers and to take great pains to do things, to be careful that we don’t take the life of an image bearer even accidentally if we can help it.

We didn’t talk a lot about it, but at the young men’s study last Wednesday night, Michael L. brought the young men—they take turns taking verses from the sermon outline. The young men do at the study on Wednesday nights and they take turns preparing five or ten minute talks based on that particular text from the sermon—and Michael talked about the case law where you can shoot a person breaking in your house at night and kill them if need be. But you can’t do it if it’s daytime and the difference is apparently that in the daytime you can tell whether the guy is threatening your life or just stealing your property. And if he’s just stealing your property, it’s wrong to kill them. You want to have a high valuation upon human life because it’s a reflection of the image of God. And so that case law reflects that.

I know that in our churches we have talked about self-defense and that’s certainly a legitimate application of some of the things we’ll be talking about today actually. But it’s very important that in arming ourselves for self-defense, we arm ourselves with the kind of restraint and self-control that won’t take somebody else’s life even if they may be doing some degree of damage to us or our property if it can be avoided. God wants us to have a high sensitivity to human life and he stressed that in verses 12-14.

In verses 15 to 17 we really saw what I refer to on your outlines as the backbone of family and culture—the need to honor one’s parents, to not strike at them in a rebellious way and to not to curse them. Again knowing the qualifications that in Deuteronomy it’s an intensified long-term relationship or ongoing relationship. It’s not a little tiny five-year-old. It’s a mature child who could be a drunkard and who is in a state of real rebellion against his parents and uncourageable. They take him to the authorities and he must be executed. And what we saw there was the importance of training our children to honor their parents in obedience to the fifth commandment.

I hope I’ve made it a priority in my family this year for my young men growing up. And I think it’s a good thing for us to make priorities in our families, particularly our boys as they grow up to really train them well in honoring their mother and their sisters. You know, they tend to honor the strength of the father more than young men do, but to train them to honor their mothers. And I would challenge now—they’re not here today, most of them—but I am challenging them Wednesday evenings and when I talk to them individually, the young men to work real hard as they’re moving toward adulthood, as they get that final spin on who they are before they leave the home, to have proper relationship to God as demonstrator and their proper relationship of honor to their mother and respect for their sisters. Very important for young men as Christian young men as they’re about to enter the world. And we saw that as the backbone of the family and culture, this respect for parents and the authority structure there.

Exodus 21:16 is last week where we talked about vocation and life. And I don’t know if I made this point well enough or if you were listening or tired at the end of the sermon or whatnot, but I think it’s real important just to briefly review these few verses I have on your outline. In Deuteronomy 24:5-7, there’s some more laws. And verse 5 talks about when a guy first gets married, it’s what we call the year of exclusion. I do, at least. First year a guy’s married, he’s not supposed to take on extra work, not supposed to take on a bunch of obligations for the church or helping folks out that he’d normally be able to do in the context of community life. He’s supposed to work his forty-hour a week job if that’s what he’s got and then really focus the balance of his time on cheering up his wife. So the idea is joy in the marriage.

Now, immediately after that in Deuteronomy 24, the very next verse is you can’t take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge for the man, for he taketh a man’s life to pledge. When you loan somebody money, you can’t take his millstone as a pledge against that loan because the Bible says the millstone is his life. You see, he strongly correlates the life of who we are to our vocation. The millstone was the grinding implement by which holy bread was made. So it’s a picture of vocation. And as we said in the crushing of the skull by the woman with a millstone in the book of Judges, it’s a picture of dominion via vocation.

And so those verses that relate to kidnapping drive us back to this text because the next law in this sequence of laws in Deuteronomy 24 are the laws against kidnapping. You take a guy’s life away. But he’s just told us that his life really is essentially identified with his vocation. So one of the implications of the laws about kidnapping is when you kidnap somebody, you restrict their ability to use that millstone. It’s as if you took the millstone. You’ve taken their life. You’ve taken away their freedom—but not abstract freedom. Freedom to exercise godly vocation. That is what the scriptures seem to indicate to me.

This correlation of marriage, the joy of marriage, the joy of vocation are correlated again in the passage that I’ve listed here from Jeremiah where again in times of cursing, God takes away the voice of the joy and the gladness of marriage and the sound of the millstone. Vocation is to be joyous to us and it’s to be seen at the center of a man’s life, of who he is. Now, we should know that from God creating Adam for the purposes of vocation. But it’s important to stress in a culture that wants freedom from kidnapping or freedom—but it’s an irresponsible freedom not to exercise vocation. Men want freedom from vocation. You see how we flip this thing on its head?

Now it may be you want to work at a vocation and make enough money so you can retire and exercise a different vocation or calling before God that doesn’t give you pay. Volunteer work, work that is an avocation, a love of yours as well as a vocation. But still, the point is that the work that you’re called to do is what God identifies your life with. And I’ve got the reference to the Zechariah text. And remember, I’ve said that three times now. The Zechariah text talks about the craftsman coming to drive back by exercise of craft and vocation those who would oppress men by way of violence. So vocation roots out violence. Dominion via vocation roots out dominion via violence in a culture.

And all of that really is a result of unpacking that rather obscure law about kidnapping and vocation and the need to restore a man, pay him back for his work if you’ve damaged him so that he can’t work. It identifies him with his life. So all that’s wrapped together to give us some quite important truth from the scriptures.

Now, today’s laws are no different than some of these others we’re looking at. In fact, they’re a little more difficult, a little more obscure as to why they’re structured in this particular way. But I think hopefully by the end of this period of the sermon, we’ll see some big ticket items. They’re very applicable to our culture, and the absence of which means we’re in a real time of judgment in the context of our land.

Okay. So, now we move on to the text itself. And I’ve got this structured in a couple of ways. First, I want to talk about the lex talionis and then I want to on the basis of that move from that then to talk about the specific laws about servants. So really you have three specific cases here.

You kill a servant intentionally—you’re executed. Servant is okay, walks around for a couple of days then he dies. You’re not at fault. Okay. That’s one case law. The next case refers to two men fighting and an innocent bystander in the case here—given a woman who is pregnant—is struck unintentionally, probably by one of the men or both of them. And then what happens? Well, she might be okay. If everything’s okay, then her husband goes to the judges and determines a price that the men must pay for whatever damage has been done to her. But if everything isn’t okay and if she dies or if the baby now miscarries and the baby dies, then the man is guilty of murder or enough of a crime against the image of God to be executed—life for life.

Now, that case there, that middle case is where the lex talionis comes from. We’ll talk about that in a minute. So, we’re going to start with the middle case. The third case are servants who have either a tooth or an eye knocked out by their owner and the servant then goes free prematurely, as it were, before his six years is up. He gets freedom as a result of that crime by his owner. So, we’ll talk first about the middle case and the specific case will talk about a little bit and then we’ll talk about the general truth of what’s called the lex talionis.

Okay, first some observations on the particular case here. This text is one of the most argued over texts in our day in scholarly circles in the last 15 or 20 years and the reason is because of the abortion debate in the country. And I don’t want to get into a big discussion of that. But I think it’s clear from the text that the child is treated as a human being in the context of the womb.

This clarity of the text goes back—let me read you a little bit, for instance, from Calvin’s commentary on this. We’re now dealing with a few remarks on the context here, the protection of innocent bystanders. Calvin says this: “The passage at first sight is ambiguous, for if the word death only applies to the pregnant woman, it would not have been a capital crime to put an end to the fetus, which would be a great absurdity. For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is almost a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light. On these grounds, I am led to conclude without hesitation that the words if death should follow must be applied to the fetus as well as to the mother.”

So in the context of the verse itself it says that if this struggling goes on and then death follows it’ll be life for life. Now some overly wise scholars have attempted to deal with this text in an ambiguous fashion and have attempted to say that it only means the death of the mother and the child is not referred to. But as Calvin said, I think it’s clear enough from the text itself that the child is included. It doesn’t say if death occurs to the mother. It leaves it general. We’ve had two parties mentioned, the mother and the child, and so the death of either is being talked about.

This truth is not simply historic in terms of the Reformation. The Apostolic Constitutions in the first couple of centuries of the church also declared one of the things that was immoral and a heinous sin was abortion. And they did it with a direct reference to this particular case law. So they saw it as murder and they saw it as a crime which because it was murder must be the subject of execution.

So first of all this particular case gives us a clear foundation for our abhorrence of abortion and the commitment we have as a congregation to oppose it and to make it illegal in the context of our culture. Now remember though that this is a case—it’s a specific instance—but these cases are given so that they’re broad enough to apply to a wide variety of contexts. What it’s saying is that the principle of lex talionis, which means the law of retaliation, the crime fits the punishment, that principle applies not just when men are fighting with each other, but the principle also applies to innocent bystanders, innocent of the action that’s going on.

So, in general, it takes the case of a pregnant woman, but in general the truth of the text is that whenever you’re fighting and somebody gets hurt as a result of your fight who’s an innocent bystander, you have obligation now. The law of retaliation, there’s punishment that’s going to fit your crime of not being careful of what you’re doing and as a result hurting innocent bystanders. This is another incentive as the law relative to paying for a man’s health and labor costs if you hurt him and put him down.

This is another great incentive for men to not escalate their difficulties to physical violence, to move instead to arbitration. I mean, in this case, it’s as if you had deliberately killed the woman or deliberately killed the child because it’s life for life. You have to die as a result of that thing going on. Why? Because you’re engaged in an illegal action to begin with. The word of God says you cannot take vengeance into your own hands and fight with one another to resolve disputes.

I think we could also take the general truth of this though, that innocent bystanders are protected by God’s law and say that manslaughter for drunk driving is a biblical application of this text. You know, you’re doing something wrong or illegal. You’re driving while drunk. You shouldn’t be drunk. You hurt somebody, an innocent bystander, and now you’re required to be penalized for that crime. So, I think that crimes are based upon this particular text.

I also think it should be pointed out here—well, let’s go ahead and talk about the actual principle now of lex talionis or the law of retaliation. This is a fundamental concept to biblical justice and to the founding or formation of a biblical culture. And it’s one that has to be defended in our day and age. I mean, you read commentators that comment on this verse or others that talk about an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burn for burn, and they really treat it as a very distasteful element. And a lot of them will actually talk about it as an evolutionary stage.

Men move away from really bad ways of beating each other up seventy-fold and instead God calms it down to just an eye for an eye and then eventually Jesus overturns the whole thing. So no law of retaliation, no lex talionis is in play at all. You remember when I preached on Jacob, I had to sort of spend a couple of weeks rehabilitating his image because of what appears to me to be an erroneous perception of who he is in modern Christendom. Well, the same thing is true here. We won’t take a couple of weeks, but do want to talk about this by giving you a brief overview of lex talionis found in the scriptures, the law of retaliation.

Before I do that though, let’s look at the text itself specifically. And I want to point out something here. We don’t want to defend what doesn’t need to be defended. And by the providence of God, this verse can easily be misunderstood. He says that if harm follows—in verse 22, we’ll start there: “Men fight, hurt a woman with a child, she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him.” So in other words, there’s some fine that should be applied to these guys. Just because she had the baby early, the baby is not supposed to come yet. So a judge would determine that.

Very important that the whole concept of lex talionis or the law of retaliation—it’s a Latin term, the law of retaliation—that’s what this refers to—is in the context of a judge making the determination for the amount of the fine. Okay, so it takes it out of the hands of private parties, vengeance or retaliation and puts it into the hand of judges or the civil state.

Okay. Secondly, it says if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and the list goes on. Now, I know it’s kind of abstract a little bit, but it is important that there’s a particular word here used in the Hebrew. It says if any harm follows—in other words, if it wasn’t just an early birth, but now the child comes out dead or the mother dies or there’s some permanent injury to the mother, there’s some permanent injury to the child’s wound, something—then it says if harm follows, then you shall give life for life.

Now, there’s a couple of different Hebrew words that are used in these case laws and this particular word for “give” is not the word that would be used for exact restitution. There’s another word to “make whole” which means to have exact correspondence of one thing to the other. You steal something of one value and you give the exact correspondence by giving them twofold back. Okay? Or in the case of a sheep fourfold back. That is exact equivalence. But this word “give” is a word that means general or compensation equivalence. In other words, it tells us that what will follow are truths or principles that are not meant necessarily to be literally applied, but rather the justice of the truth is to be applied.

In other words, it doesn’t mean that if you knock somebody’s tooth out, he gets to knock your tooth out or he should knock your tooth out. The idea is the judges would make a determination of the value of that tooth to that hand and you then would be compensated—via money for that tooth. Or the man he would be fined rather and he would be compensated and made whole not by having your tooth absent but by having value of his tooth added back to him. So the specific Hebrew word used here tells us that exact equivalence—in other words tooth for tooth literally—is not what’s in mind but the value of tooth for the value of tooth is what is in mind here.

Now, we also pointed out several times now Numbers 35:31 that says that if a man is a murderer, you cannot take a ransom for his life. And the implication is that for many crimes, ransom can be taken. In other words, normally crimes are punished by fines, not by the cutting off of the other guy’s hand if he’s cut your hand off. Okay? So, it’s important to see that. So, what we’re defending is not the imposition of a mandatory criminal penalty for a man who cuts off another man’s hand of having his hand cut off.

Now, that may be what the judge has determined. It may be what the victim desires and it may be that this text gives—as it does a lot of significance to the victim and his rights. But what it usually will reflect is that the victim will want compensation. He’ll want to be made whole. He can’t have his hand back, but he’ll want the value of that hand to him and be made whole by way, not of exact equivalence hand for hand, but the value of hand for the value of hand.

Another example to kind of drive this point home: let’s say a pianist and a singer get in a bar fight and the singer takes something, a big heavy weight, and crushes the pianist’s hand and now the pianist can no longer play music. Well, is it fair for the singer’s hand to be crushed? Is that an equal application of the principle that the crime or the punishment fits the crime? No. Because his hand is not as significant to him as the pianist’s hand. A more appropriate penalty if you want to actually impose a physical penalty would be for his vocal cords to be damaged in some way. You see what I’m saying? But the scriptures envision—typically based on Numbers 35:31—that ransom is not allowed for murderers, that ransom is the way, payment of money is the way that compensation is to be made.

So the principle of “the crime, the penalty fits the crime equal justice” that we’re defending is one that really focuses upon making whole not by way of exact equivalence but by compensatory damages or other such phrases. Everybody understand that okay? That’s the idea.

Now this is a truth as I said that runs from the beginning of the Bible to the end and we want to now take an overview of the laws of retaliation referring to them briefly as we go through this particular study. Okay.

In Genesis 4, and you don’t need to—well, why don’t you turn to all of these? Let’s do this. Genesis 4:23 and 24. Do quick Bible drills here. Genesis 4. This should be familiar to you. We talked on this about Lamech. Remember the deterioration of the ungodly line, the two seeds. This is the ungodly seed. He’s a polygamist. This is where polygamy starts. And he also is a violent man. He says in verse 24: “If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.”

So immediately in the degradation of the ungodly line, the principle of equal punishment is removed and Lamech imposes his own fine upon anybody who will come against him. He says that he has slain a man to my wounding and a young man to my hurt. If you hurt me, I’m not going to give you hurt in return. The ungodly man says, I’m going to give you killing in return. Or if you wound me, I’m going to give you killing. So the example is an ungodly application. And the ungodly application is seen in the ungodly line.

The positive application is found in Genesis 9:6 and 7 where God says, turn there please. Genesis 9:6 and 7. Verse six: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God he made man.” There’s the basic truth of lex talionis, the law of retaliation, the law of correspondence of penalty to crime. If you shed man’s blood by man, his blood shall be shed. And then verse 7 says: “And as for you, be fruitful and multiply. Forth abundantly in the earth multiply on it.”

So the abundance and the blessing of God’s people is tied to their application of the basic truth of the lex talionis. Lex means law. Talionis comes from talion. I don’t understand the correlation but it’s the same word as in our retaliation. Talion: retaliation, vengeance. And that the law of retaliation is that the state does it and the state imposes a penalty to fit the crime. And this is found in Genesis 9:6 and 7 and tied to dominion.

Turn to Leviticus 24:15-22. “Then you shall speak to in verse 15, you shall speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘Whoever curses his God shall bear his sin. Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall certainly stone him, the stranger as well as him who was born in the land. When he blasphemes the name of the Lord, he shall be put to death. Whoever kills any man shall surely be put to death. Whoever kills an animal shall make it good animal for animal. And if a man causes disfigurement of his neighbor, as he has done, so shall it be done to him. Lex Talionis. As he has done, it shall be done to him. Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has caused disfigurement of a man, so it shall be done unto him. Whoever kills an animal shall restore it.’”

Now I read the larger context. This is a repetition of the lex talionis. But it tells us something about this verse. This is an immediate context of cursing God and of crimes for murder or penalty for murder and of penalty for those who kill an animal. This is the same basic flow of Exodus 21. We’re going to get to destruction of animals next week. So Leviticus is a parallel text to Exodus. And so this is important to see that by way of side note that the cursing of God and the death penalty for cursing God should be seen in correlation to the cursing of the mother or father in Exodus 21. They correlate together. It’s as serious to curse your father and mother as it is to curse God. They’re both death penalty offenses.

And we can assume by that cursing God doesn’t mean accidentally swearing, but it means having this rebellious, uncourageable attitude toward God the way the son did to his parents. But in any event, here’s a repetition of the same lex talionis verse.

Now, Deuteronomy 19:6-21. Turn to Deuteronomy 19. Now, the context here is a false witness. We’ll read verse 19, but the context is that you got a guy here who is testifying falsely in a court of law. You want somebody to die, you testify in a court of law that he’s guilty of murder so that he’ll be put to death. Okay, that’s the example. Verse 19: “Then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother. So you shall put away the evil from among you, and those who remain shall hear and fear, and hereafter they shall not again commit such evil among you. Your eyes shall not pity. Life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

Same repetition. We’ve had a threefold repetition now in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy of the lex talionis being based upon Genesis 9. It permeates the law of God. And notice here that the application is to someone who intends to do something to somebody else. Their intent is as if they did it in the context of a law court. Notice also that one of the purposes of the law of retaliation is deterrence. Verse 20 says that people will see this punishment being meted and they won’t do that—particularly, it won’t be a false witness in court. So deterrence is part of the system of lex talionis.

Now turn to Deuteronomy 25:11 and 12. And now here is a different case. It may at first—this is sort of like the other one and two men are fighting but in this case an innocent bystander isn’t involved. A woman who wants to help her husband in the fight gets involved. “When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the other draws near for deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smites him, and puts forth her hand, and takes him by the secrets, by his private parts, then thou shalt cut off her hand. Thine eye shall not pity her.”

Now here, the reason I bring this up is that there is—she, okay, the law of retaliation is applied by way of value again here. Yeah. And here’s what’s interesting about this text. Her hand is the source of her work, right? Housewife, a mother, her hand is essential to what she does. And the man’s private parts are essential in terms of his use by God in building his kingdom. She has done damage to him in a place that is associated with his dominion calling. And she now receives damage to her hand. It doesn’t say her hand should be cut off. What it actually says is her palm will be cut off, which indicates her hand would be cut. Okay? And in other words, her hand would be disfigured or maimed the way she had maimed the fellow that she had attacked.

So again, it’s a—because of the use of the term used, it shows the significance of the lex talionis, the exact correlation between what is committed by way of crime and then what the punishment is for that particular crime. So in this case, the valuation would be what work she can do with that hand and that would be the normal ransom paid in such a case. Okay.

In Deuteronomy 30, turn to ver—Deuteronomy 30:15-18. And here is the general summation of the law of God. Verse 15: “I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. In that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his judgments, that you may live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear and are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess.”

Now, in this particular text, the certain connection between obedience to the will of God and blessing in life is put in distinction. It’s juxtaposed to the curses and death that follow upon disobedience. God will repay his people in a manner exactly appropriate to their degree of faithfulness. So the general principle of lex talionis is stated now in a large case. To whatever degree we’re faithful, we have life and blessings. To whatever degree we’re unfaithful, we have curses from God.

Turn to Judges 1:5-7. And while you’re turning, I’ll put in a plug for Richard’s Tuesday night study going through the book of Judges. He dealt with this a couple of weeks ago. It’s an excellent study. I’d encourage any of you who want to use a night of your week to kind of correlate some Bible truth into your head and being to do that. You know, it’s so important. If all you’re getting out of the Bible is what you hear on Sunday morning, it’s going to mean so much less to you if you’re not reading your Bible and making some of the correlations that the scriptures draw amongst themselves. And even better if you’re actually involved in some kind of formal or informal study of the Bible.

Now, there’s really a multiplying synergistic sort of effect on your understanding of God’s word and your growth. So, I’d encourage you to make use of Richard’s study if you can on Tuesday nights. But in any event, here’s an example of just retribution. This is in the opening chapter of Judges. They go in and they attack Adoni-Bezek. He’s the Lord Bezek. Adoni means lord. And they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and big toes. And Adoni-Bezek said: “Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to gather scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me.”

Then they brought him to Jerusalem and there he died. I think Adoni-Bezek might have converted here. He understood that the justice and judgment that God’s people had brought to him was a lex talionis kind of a deal. It was a God deal that he was punished in the same way he had punished kings before, to turn them away from being human with the loss of their opposing thumbs, to cause them to be maimed in their feet and to not be able to move about normally. God repays him for that. And in that justice of God being meted out to Adoni-Bezek, he seems to come to his senses. I see this as a profession of faith in the God who has executed lex talionis judgment upon him.

I think there’s reason to think that because of the judgment that’s executed upon him, he comes to repent of what he’s done. You see, to the extent that the evangelical church has removed the justice of God, the judgment of God is mediated through his civil magistrates, but also taken directly by him against his sinning people, as we saw in Deuteronomy. To that extent, we’ve removed the means by which God brings people to repentance for their sins and awareness of them. And it’s hurt our evangelistic efforts. The preaching of God’s justice goes along with the preaching of his grace and his restitution made through Christ our Savior. Take the justice out of the equation and the grace falls to the ground as well.

And here we have a specific example of lex talionis judgment resulting, I believe, in the probable salvation of a pagan ruler.

1st Samuel 15:33. You might say well these guys in Judges weren’t really doing what’s right. But look at 1st Samuel 15:33. Here we’ve got Samuel, right? Prophet of God. And he’s going to kill Agag. Remember, Saul wouldn’t kill Agag. You know, kings like other kings—’cuz who knows, maybe they’ll kill me. If I go wicked, the king thinks to himself. Samuel says: “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.” And Samuel hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.

Lex talionis starts in Genesis. It permeates God’s law. It’s summarized in our obedience to God in Deuteronomy 30. It’s applied by God’s people as they bring God’s justice to bear upon the Canaanites in the promised land. And as some of them then seem to recognize that and convert. The lex talionis is central—all of that—and it’s central here to the work of Samuel in his correcting the failure of the king Saul to kill God’s enemies.

The Psalms are filled with these kind of judgments. Psalm 7, verse—look at Psalm 7:15-17. And this is quite typical in the Psalms, but verse 15: “He made a pit, dug it out, and has fallen into the ditch which he made.” You see, it’s the lex talionis, this judgment of God in play. “His trouble shall return upon his own head and his violent dealing shall come down on his own crown.” Now that’s the truth that the psalmist writes about here that permeates the scriptures.

This is the truth “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” that so much of evangelical Christendom today despises or at least is ashamed of. What is the psalmist’s reaction? Now remember when we read in the Psalms, I think it’s appropriate to see—we see here David, but we also see the other writers of the Psalms and we see ultimately the prayer life of the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ and his response to the justice of God. This should be our response. What’s his response to this lex talionis judgment falling upon the wicked? Verse 17: “I will praise the Lord according to his righteousness, according to his justice.” That’s what the word righteousness means. “I’ll sing praise to the name of the Lord most high.”

We shouldn’t be ashamed of lex talionis. We should praise God’s name. That’s what he calls civil magistrates to do because that’s what he does in the context of his judgments.

Again, in the Psalms verse chapter 35:7-10, verse 7, Psalm 35: “Without cause they have hidden their net for me in a pit, which they have dug without cause for my life. And now the psalmist doesn’t just say this is going to happen or this did happen. He prays for it. “Let destruction come upon him unexpectedly. Let his net that he has hidden catch himself. And to that very destruction, let him fall.” The righteous prayers of the psalmist. “My soul, again, what’s the response of God’s people when this happens? My soul shall be joyful in the Lord. It shall rejoice in his salvation. My bone shall say, ‘Lord, who is like you, delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him? Yes, the poor and the needy from him who plunders him.’”

We should pray for eye for eye, tooth for tooth. We should pray for God’s judgments in the world, and we should rejoice when they’re manifested.

Well, that’s Old Testament stuff. Let’s look at some New Testament verses now. And we’ll begin in the Gospels. Matthew 7, verse two. Our Savior says—again this is kind of a summary statement but if you understand the penetration of the Old Testament with this doctrine of lex talionis you see it in this verse. In verse two: “With what judgment you judge you will be judged and with the measure you use it’ll be measured back to you.” Now that’s simply putting in conceptual language the pictorial language of eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The judgments and measures, the standards which we apply will then be used to apply to us. If those are good measures, we’ll receive good. If they’re evil measures, we’ll receive the very thing that we are accusing others of having to receive.

Now, Matthew 26:52. These are statements that we read all the time, but maybe we don’t think about them much. This one’s quite familiar to most people. Matthew 26:52. Context here is as Peter’s cut off the ear of the high priest’s or not high priest but his—one of the servants. Jesus said to him put your—Matthew 26, verse 52: “Jesus said to him put your sword in its place for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Now “all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” You see, he’s restating “punishment fits the crime.” You live by the sword. If you take and live by the sword, then you’ll die by the sword. Lex talionis judgments.

Luke 6:38. We see a positive example of this, that this principle of reciprocity—I guess you could say is built—this truth rather is built in from the truth giver, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. Verse 38 of Luke 6: “Give and it will be given to you good measure, pressed down, shaken together in a running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it’ll be measured back to you.”

Now, here’s the same basic truth that Jesus used in Matthew to encourage people to righteous judgments, lex talionis judgments supposed that you’re unrighteous ones because the measure you judge will be measured back to you. But here it’s applied positively. It seems to me that if you want to get rid of the idea of the lex talionis in terms of civil punishments, then you also get rid of the flip side of it, which is the positive paying back to God by way of various blessings for their works done to the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, Nehemiah prayed: “Remember my work, Lord God.” And here the principle of lex talionis of equivalence is put in a positive light in terms of our positive actions.

Now turn to the epistles, Romans 11:9 and 10. And here Paul is positively quoting from the Old Testament, from the Psalter, in verse 9. David says: “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a recompense to them. Let their eyes be darkened that they do not see and bow down their back always.” With no critical comments made to it.

Now turn to 2 Corinthians 11:15. 2 Corinthians 11:15: “Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness. So he’s talking about satanic ministers. They transform themselves into images of light. But he says whose end will be according to their works.” So again here Paul restates the lex talionis principle that the judgment upon the false ministers of the gospel will be according to their works. Now you can look at that as just saying well that’s the way it’s going to be. But I think he’s positively affirming that to us. This is the way God works and we should, as the psalmist did, rejoice in it.

Colossians 3:23-25. Again, this kind of blends together as the final text in Deuteronomy does life and death in terms of the lex talionis principle. “Whatever you do, do heartily as unto the Lord, not to man, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. For you serve the Lord Christ, but he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality. He’ll be repaid for what he has done in like kind,” in other words.

Now turn to 2 Timothy 4:14. And here Paul is not simply making an observation but he’s actually praying that something happened. He says in verse 14…