It may well seem to be horribly full of retribution and vengeance, when the Law prescribes an eye for an eye (Leviticus 24:19-20). Here’s how it works: if you cause an injury to your neighbor, blinding him in one eye – whether by some accidental clumsiness or by deliberately punching him in the face – the same will be done to you. On the appointed day we will bring you into the public square, and there in front of everyone we will put out your eye. Wow.

Is this just barbaric? Maybe not. There is an important logic to this, as it deals with the human heart’s insistence on “getting even.” In the event, we never seem to achieve that; we always seem to aim for “getting more than even” instead. Lamech was the poster child for this, boasting how he had gotten even seventy-seven times over by killing the young man who had injured him (Genesis 4:23-24). The story of feuding peoples – the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Montagues and the Capulets – tells how each side keeps trying to get even, and the cycle of retribution never ends because each side believes that their enemy has caused more harm than has been avenged.

How do we stop the ongoing cycle of vengeance from spiraling along its destructive way? By making things even, in a clear and public way. “An eye for an eye” limits the amount of recompense that can be assessed. You don’t get to kill the person who put out your eye. If someone kills your brother, you don’t get to kill his whole family in revenge. Life for life; eye for eye; tooth for tooth; broken arm for broken arm. Equal punishment has been served: you no longer have a basis for getting a little more even, because everyone can see that the crime and its punishment are scrupulously even with perfect exactitude.

We should recall that where it is possible, the levitical law has aimed for restorative justice “for any sin which a person may commit” (Leviticus 5:22 / 6:3): the goal is to set things right by restoring what has been lost. That’s what we would all want: when your eye has been blinded, we’d like a way to fix that, to unblind that eye. But while we can find a way to restore lost money, we probably can’t find a way to unblind the eye: restorative justice isn’t always possible. And so to prevent the unending cycle of vengeance, the text establishes a precise level of retributive justice. You can demand that your enemy’s eye be put out, in payment for the loss of your eye. But that’s the limit, right there. Once we’ve fulfilled that, it’s over. Everyone can see that it’s even. There is no further “getting even” to be done.

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Save us from our vindictiveness, O God! We are so ready to feel aggrieved by the sins of others, so confident in our self-righteous assumption of how much pain we ought to inflict in order to get just a little more than even. Change our hearts, O Lord. Limit our retribution. And teach us to find restorative justice, in every place that we can.