“And he that kills any man shall surely be put to death. And he that kills a beast shall make it good; beast for beast. And if a man maim his neighbor; as he has done, so shall it be done to him; breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he has maimed a man, so shall it be done to him. And he that kills a beast, he shall restore it: and he that kills a man, he shall be put to death.” (Leviticus 24:17–21)
These verses draw a clear distinction between injuring an animal and injuring a person. For an animal, the punishment is monetary compensation; for a person, the text could not be clearer: “as he has done, so shall it be done to him.” If you killed, you are killed; if you wounded, you are wounded. It’s a hard pill to swallow, yet the Torah commands it explicitly: “breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”
Eye for eye, but not literally
And then, with breathtaking audacity, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai reinterprets these verses and rules: “Eye for eye is referring to monetary restitution” (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 84a). Someone who blinds another’s eye must pay the monetary value – compensate for the damage. The Talmud immediately recoils: isn’t that simply not what the text says? It then launches into a lengthy interpretive exercise attempting to justify this reading.
This is one of the clearest examples of the Sages using hermeneutical tools to transform scripture’s plain meaning and establish law that better aligns with their own moral worldview. How is it possible to alter the meaning of a text regarded as sacred and authoritative?
External and internal considerations
In hermeneutics, a distinction exists between external and internal considerations. An external consideration allows something important outside the text to override it – essentially a revolt against the sacred text’s supremacy. An internal consideration argues that based on moral norms identified elsewhere within the same text, reading this law literally would be wrong. From the Torah’s spirit, its established values, and other comparable cases, one concludes that physically mutilating a wrongdoer likely contradicts the Torah's own moral core. The interpreter is merely making peace between different passages within the same sacred corpus.
In practice, however, the line between internal and external is rarely clear. Even what appears to be an internal reading is ultimately a product of our own subjective understanding.
Charitable interpretation
Another way to account for the interpreter’s authority is what philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine called the “principle of charitable interpretation.” According to this principle, precisely because the text is authoritative – even sacred – we are obligated to interpret it in the most favorable light possible. When our moral intuitions revolt against something, or when truth as we know it seems to contradict the text, we assume we must have misunderstood its intent, and we interpret accordingly. We extend charity to the text, because the only alternative is to concede that it is wrong. This is Maimonides’ central approach in “The Guide for the Perplexed”: when scientific or philosophical truth appeared to contradict scripture, he assumed he was misreading the Torah and set about reinterpreting it.
Many conservatives today reject charitable interpretation, holding that when contradiction arises between truth and sacred text, one’s understanding of truth must yield. Yet in the overwhelming majority of cases, the Sages did not embrace this approach.
Creative interpretation
To truly grasp certain rabbinic thinkers’ outlook, we need to go one step further. Interpretation seemingly presupposes the text has a correct meaning we are searching for. But what if the author deliberately embedded multiple, even contradictory meanings – precisely so each generation could adapt the text to its own era and needs? According to this model, the interpreter does not discover the law’s meaning; they create it. Interpretation is a creative act of determination, not excavation.
This is what allowed Rabbi Yehoshua to stand before an explicit divine proclamation and declare: “It is not in the heavens” (Deuteronomy 30:12). It led Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah to rule that even when some declare impure and others pure, all were given by the same shepherd. It is the foundation of “these and these are the words of the living God.” The contradictions are embedded intentionally. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Such an understanding makes it possible to declare: “Eye for eye is referring to monetary restitution.”
In preparing this essay, I drew inspiration from Moshe Halbertal’s book “Commentary Revolutions in the Making,” and I extend my sincere gratitude to him.
Lior Tal Sadeh is an educator, writer, and author of “What Is Above, What Is Below” (Carmel, 2022). He hosts the daily “Source of Inspiration” podcast, produced by Beit Avi Chai.
For more insights into Parashat Emor, listen to “Source of Inspiration”.
Translation of most Hebrew texts sourced from Sefaria.org
Main Photo: The Blasphemer Stoned \ Wikipedia
