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Lex talionis

A reference page linking a name, group, or concept to the materials that discuss it.

A formula linking a penalty to a harm, such as “eye for eye”; its setting and application vary across texts.

Contemporary IL Archive conceptual illustration: an eye-shaped stone and a silver weight evoke matching penalty and compensation. Generated for this study; not an identified stele, artifact, or reconstruction of a particular historical judgment. IL Archive, CC0
Contemporary IL Archive conceptual illustration: an eye-shaped stone and a silver weight evoke matching penalty and compensation. Generated for this study; not an identified stele, artifact, or reconstruction of a particular historical judgment. IL Archive, CC0Conceptual illustration: IL Archive / CC0 · CC0

Text

“Eye for eye” is called lex talionis or the principle of matching response. It occurs in Hammurabi’s lawsLaws of HammurabiAn eighteenth-century BCE Babylonian legal text in Akkadian, presenting property, family, labor and injury provisions within Hammurabi’s account of justice.Glossary · Click to read the explanation with distinctions by injured persons’ status, and in three different TorahTorah / PentateuchGenesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy: Mosaic corpus with a compositional history. Torah can also mean teaching or law beyond these five books.Glossary · Click to read the explanation contexts: pregnancy-related injury in Exodus 21, impairment in Leviticus 24, and false testimony in Deuteronomy 19. The formula alone establishes neither how frequently bodily punishment was imposed nor a direct copy from one text to another. [1][2][3][4]

References and notes

  1. Only §§196–214 read. The English translation is old; class terms were checked against Horowitz. The full collection was not read. Hammurabi §§196–214, Robert Francis Harper translation Return to the text ↑
  2. Specified verses read in Hebrew/JPS within the chapter, checking wages, healing, pregnancy, manumission and the goring ox. Exodus 21:18–27, 29–32, Hebrew/JPS 1917 Return to the text ↑
  3. The whole short chapter read, especially vv. 17–22 and the blasphemy setting. Leviticus 24:17–22, Hebrew/JPS 1917 Return to the text ↑
  4. The whole short chapter read; equivalence checked in the false-witness trial, not a direct bodily-injury case. Deuteronomy 19:15–21, Hebrew/JPS 1917 Return to the text ↑

Research history

Substantive changes are retained here. Minor copy edits remain in the internal operational log.

  1. Edition 2 · 12 October 2026 · editor:aladmin

    Substantive record update

    Read this revision in its original language (Arabic)

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Cite this record

IL Archive, «Lex talionis», Edition 2, https://ilarchive.com/en/entities/lex-talionis