Moses cited five cases in this section, as was true in the preceding one (vv. 12-17).
21:18-19 The Torah made no distinction in the penalty an aggressor paid because of his intent (vv. 18-28). The inferior Hammurabi Code did by permitting the assailant to pay less damage if he claimed no intent to cause injury.370
21:20-21 As other people, slaves also enjoyed protection from murderers (v. 20; cf. v. 12). However the slave owner likewise experienced protection from execution if his punishment of a slave was not the direct cause of the slave's death. In this case the law regarded the loss of the slave as sufficient punishment of the master (v. 21).
21:22 Manslaughter of an unborn child carried a fine (v. 22). The reason seems to have rested on two assumptions. First, accidental killing is not as serious a crime as deliberate killing. Second, a fetus, though a human life, does not have the same status as a self-sufficient human being.371
Pro-abortion advocates frequently appeal to Exodus 21:22 to support their claim that a fetus is not a person and, therefore, abortion is not murder.
"In other words, if you cause the death of the fetus, you merely pay a fine; if you cause the death of the woman, you lose your own life. Thus the Bible clearly shows that a fetus is notconsidered a person. If the fetus were considered to be a person, then the penalty for killing it would be the same as for killing the woman--death. Abortion, then, is notmurder."372
However other Scriptures present the fetus as a person, a real human being (Job 10:8-12; 15:14; Ps. 51:5; 58:3; 139:13-16; Eccles. 11:5; Jer. 1:5; Gal. 1:15). This was the prevailing opinion in the ancient Near East as well.373
In contrast to other ancient Near Eastern law codes, the Torah made no differentiation on the basis of the woman's social class. It treated all equally. Also only the man who caused the injury was liable, not other members of his family who could suffer punishment for his offense and often did in other ancient Near Eastern societies. Principles explained elsewhere in the Torah determined the penalty the guilty party had to pay.374
21:23-25 God intended the "eye for eye"provision to limit punishment rather than giving free reign to it. The law of retaliation (lex talionis) became common in the ancient Near East. It sought to control the tendency of someone who had only suffered a minor injury to take major revenge. For example, a man might kill the person who beat up his brother (cf. Gen. 4:23). God forbade such excessive vengeance among His people, however, and limited them so that they should only exact equal payment for offenses committed against them and no more.
"This law of the talion, for a long time thought to be a more primitive kind of penalty, the reflection of a barbaric law form, has been shown by more recent comparative studies to be a later development, designed to remedy the inevitable abuses made possible by monetary payment for physical injury."375
"According to Num. xxxv 31 it is only from a willful murderer that it is forbidden to accept ransom [payment in place of punishment]; this implies that in all other instances the taking of a ransom is permitted. . . .
"This being so, the meaning here in our paragraph of the expression life for life[ v. 23] is that the one who hurts the woman accidentally shall be obliged to pay her husband the value of her life if she dies, and of her children if they die."376
21:26-27 In contrast to verse 27, the Code of Hammurabi prescribed that in such a case the offender had to pay the slave's master half the price of the slave.377If a master blinded his own slave, this code required no penalty. The Torah shows greater concern for the slave. This law would have discouraged masters from physically abusing their slaves.
21:28-32 The Hammurabi Code specified the death of the son of the owner of the ox if the ox killed the son of another man (v. 31).378The Torah required the owner's life or a ransom (v. 30). Note, too, that verses 31 and 32 value the lives of male and female slaves the same. The value of an adult slave under the Torah was 30 shekels of silver (cf. Matt. 26:15). Under the Code of Hammurabi it was 1/3 of a mina of silver (about 17 shekels).379The ox also died by stoning. In this way God taught His people that they should view even slaves as created in His image (cf. Gen. 9:5). The goring ox (vv. 28-32) is the typical example of death caused by cattle or domestic animals.
"The fate of the ox gives clear evidence of the theological principle of the subordination of the animal world to human sovereignty. That the fatal goring of one ox by another required only compensation shows the relative insignificance of the animal-to-animal relationship (vv. 35-36)."380
