Latin talione Penalty consisting of causing the offender to suffer damage equal to what he caused, based on the Mosaic Law, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”, Ex 21, 24.
Digital Bible Dictionary, Grupo C Service & Design Ltda., Colombia, 2003
Source: Digital Bible Dictionary
From the Latin expression “talis”, as it is, which expressed the legal and usual habit of making the offender suffer the same penalty that he would have caused the victim of his crime: death, mutilation, deprivation of property, often increasing the penalty somewhat in order to provoke the punishment. Such law was presented in the Mosaic Code (Ex. 21.24; Lev. 24.20, Deut. 19. 21), where what was usual in the Babylonian (Hammurabi Code) and Assyrian culture was collected. The Gospel collects the teaching of Jesus that overcomes this vindictive attitude: “I tell you more: Do not do evil to him who does evil to you, but do good.” (Matt. 5. 38
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
DJN
A
The law of retaliation, known in the code of Hammurabi and accepted by Israel (Ex 21,23-25). The law of retaliation (Lev 24,19-20; Mt 5,38.48) was necessary in a primitive culture in which revenge had no limits. When it was passed, it was a truly “progressive” law. It should not be judged, therefore, from the perfection of the gospel. The Jews themselves felt embarrassed by the horrendous principle of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” and, instead of applying it to the letter, they had changed it to pecuniary sanctions.
Talion law was based on the principle of retribution: do what they do to you. Jesus denies that it is valid to apply this principle. He states that his disciples should never seek revenge. Rather, they must accept humiliation, be willing to suffer injustice done to them, and render necessary and required service. This must be so from the will of God.
These demands of Jesus do not go against the established order in society. Jesus himself becomes a paradigm: he asks for an explanation from those who have hurt him (Mk 14,48; Jn 18 23) and suffers humiliation; he even orders his disciples to buy a sword to defend themselves against his enemies (Lk 22,33) and Paul appeals, to defend himself from injustice, to his quality as a Roman citizen and even resorts to the supreme court, to Caesar .
The “hate your enemy” is not written anywhere in the Bible. The Jews had deduced it, by way of conclusion, from the first part of the commandment of love (Lev 19,18), which referred to the members of the people of God (those who did not belong to the people of God were idolaters and, therefore, therefore, enemies of God). Jesus raises the principle of love of neighbor to a universal category, without making any kind of distinction. This was required by God’s perfection, which consists in our life and activity constituting a unity. All for God. Without establishing distinctions or divisions in the field of human life.
Felipe F. Ramos
FERNANDEZ RAMOS, Felipe (Dir.), Dictionary of Jesus of Nazareth, Editorial Monte Carmelo, Burbos, 2001
Source: Dictionary of Jesus of Nazareth
(-> judgement, grace). The law of retaliation (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth), of very ancient origin (it is already attested in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC), expresses in a judicial way the anthropological dualism (there are good guys and bad guys) and understands the behavior in the form of “symmetric retribution” (love friends, hate enemies).
(1) Old Testament. Talion already appears in the “Noah’s code”: “if one sheds another man’s blood, another will shed his own” (Gn 9:6). Thus, violence is repressed with violence, murder with a new (already legal) murder. Men can live and have lived on the world without flood (without destruction), but they have done it only on the basis of fear, controlled, dominated by a God who reveals his power in the smell of blood, in the aroma of slaughtered meat. Talion is expressed in the form of a legal principle in the three major codes of the Old Testament. It appears in a basic way in the Code of the Alliance: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a blow for a blow” (Lv 21,24-25). It is reinforced in Deuteronomy: “Your eye will not pity it. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot!” (Dt 19,21). The Holiness Code maintains this law and converts it into a legal principle: “And whoever causes injury to his neighbor, as he did, so shall it be done to him: break for break, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. According to the injury he has done to another, so it will be done to him” (Lv 24,19-20). This law of talion rationalizes justice, introducing a principle of equivalence between the offense and the penalty, thus preventing irrational violence or infinite revenge. Suffice it to remember that current justice usually uses a type of retaliation, although the corporal nature of the penalty has changed (an eye for an eye), punishing the guilty in an equivalent manner with an economic fine, with the loss of liberty (prison) or even with the death penalty, which puts us in the middle of a talion.
(2) Sermon on the Mount. From his experience of gratuitousness* and forgiveness*, which are expressed in the form of creative love, Jesus has overcome the principle of retaliation, as highlighted by Matthew’s formulation: “You have heard that it was said to the ancients: by eye and tooth by tooth. But I tell you: do not resist evil. Rather, whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also to him. And whoever wants to take you to court and take off your tunic, let him also have your cloak…” (Mt 5,38-40). Above the retaliation, which keeps man on the plane of the justice of the law, within a system of equivalences between action and reaction, the Gospel has revealed the highest experience of creative gratuitousness, which can overcome the order world violence closed.
(3) Apocalypse. Starting from the slain Lamb and looking for the new Jerusalem, the prophet John has overcome the talion: God reveals himself in Jesus as the one who loved us, dying for us (1,5), so that his salvation is not measured by books of judgment, but open to all through the Lamb’s Book of Life. But at the intramundane level, on a plane of judgment, the group of men continue to be dominated by the law of retaliation and revenge, as indicated by some of the central texts of Ap: 6,10; 11.18; 14.9-11; 16.4-6; 18.5-6; 19.2. Only there where this law is taken seriously and the human being finds himself condemned to suffer the violence that he himself has unleashed, can he feel the need to overcome it, from the experience of grace of the Lamb. At the crossroads between the talion, which violently maintains the violent order of the world, and the grace that can recreate it in love, the message of Jesus is situated, as Paul has seen in Rom 12,8-13,10.
Cf. R. DE Vaux, Institutions of the Old Testament, Herder, Barcelona 1985, 205-226; WD Davies, The Sermon on the Mount, Cristiandad, Madrid 1975; J. Lambrecht, But I tell you… the programmatic Sermon of Jesils (Mt 5-7; Lk 6,20-49), Follow me, Salamanca 1994.
PIKAZA, Javier, Dictionary of the Bible. History and Word, Divine Word, Navarra 2007
Source: Dictionary of Bible History and Word