Eye for an Eye
Rise up, O Judge of the earth, bring down on the proud requital. Psalm 94:2 Robert Alter
Requital – The biblical idea of justice is summarized in the phrase “measure for measure.” In legal parlance, this is lex talionis, the principle of exact retaliation or reciprocal justice. For example, in biblical justice, if a man steals from you, his punishment is to take from him exactly what he took from you, plus an additional amount as retribution. Applied to physical injury, if he breaks your arm, his arm must be broken. If his action causes you to lose an eye, he must lose one of his. This is the basis of biblical capital punishment. If I take a life, I have stolen it from God since He is the author of life. Consequently, I owe God a life, and the only life I have which I can repay is my own. But remember that “measure for measure” is the maximum the law allows. It is not mandated. Forgiveness is always an option. Yeshua demonstrates this in the apocryphal story of the woman caught in adultery.
In this psalm, the Hebrew is the phrase ha-šeb gĕmûl. Alter renders it “bring down . . . requital.” Most English Bibles have something like “render recompense.” Alter’s use of the uncommon English word “requital” helps us see a nuance that isn’t so obvious with “recompense.” “Requital” means “an appropriate return,” whereas “recompense” means only “compensation” whether reward or punishment. Alter’s term captures the “measure for measure” requirement.
The verb is šûb (shuv), the familiar Hebrew verb for (re)turn, used over and over in conjunction with God’s plea to turn back to Him. In biblical thought, justice requires that the injuries and corruption perpetrated by the wicked should be turned back upon them. What they have done to others must be done to them, a sort of reverse Golden Rule. Only God knows exactly how to apply this requirement although He has given men instructions for its common application. Since the psalmist is aware of these instructions, he pleads God’s involvement so that the full weight of exact divine measure will be exercised. The same theme is elaborated in Psalm 28:4 with the Hebrew verb nātan (give). There the psalmist implores YHVH to “give back” to the wicked precisely what they deserve.
We rise in the gallery and applaud. We want the wicked to get what they deserve, and how appropriate that they should experience exactly what they have done to others. “No mercy” is our (unspoken) verdict. Yes, andralamousia lurks in the background, but we believe that God spares the righteous in the onslaught, and we pretend we are among them. Perhaps we need a serious personal inventory before we shout approval. We must cower under the indictment of the psalmist, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Psalm 53:1-3), reiterated by Paul in Romans 3:10-12. The prophets came to the same conclusion: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Perhaps the most important element of ha-šeb gĕmûl is not its exactness but rather the Judge’s forbearance. Perhaps we are in need of as much mercy as the wicked.
Topical Index: ha-šeb gĕmûl, requital, recompense, measure for measure, Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10-12, Psalm 53:1-3, Psalm 94:2
Here again, as is characteristic of Israel’s testimony of their relationship with God— as those people he has chosen to serve all nations through their witness of God’s faithfulness to his own word of promise, secured in the form of a covenantal guarantee— we have an inspired testimony that is nonetheless replete with that incursion of human perception of God’s self-revelation of his own nature and being by means of predominately materialistic means. This is the nature of all of God’s covenants until the “new covenant” of which Yeshua speaks and proclaims and seals (cuts) concerning the kingdom of God that he himself inaugurates by his presence in the material world of mankind. Yet this kingdom is not material, not of flesh and blood as it presently exists; rather, it is spiritual.
Yet, although it is spiritual, it is no less an ontic reality of man’s phenomenal world; rather it is supernal in that it comes to man from above, and not through the material form of this present world. Moreover that Kingdom which is to come derives from God’s own essence of eternal life and being manifest in his love to and for his people.
Additionally, it is even as the Apostle John says, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever he is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is. And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as that one is pure.“ (Cf. 1 John 2:2-3)
An additional very important understanding is necessary in the application of requital under any of the covenants of Israel’s testament of witness prior to Yeshua’s work as mediator of a “new covenant” “for the many” (sealed by his shed blood “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”) That is, God’s standard of righteousness is not conformity to the standard or norm of any of His covenants in the “Old Testament.” God’s righteousness is his faithfulness to his own nature as that nature was revealed in the Mosaic covenant and subsequent covenants of the Old Testament. Moreover, Israel’s righteousness is her own faithfulness to God’s nature as that nature was revealed in the Mosaic covenant (and subsequent covenants) and is not merely a status God confers upon his covenant people, but is declared of a person according to that person’s faith— because faith is a person’s affirming what that person knows of God’s nature in living by it.
Thus the true nature of the justice of requital is God’s own nature whereby “the injuries and corruption perpetrated by the wicked should be turned back on them” that they might know the true nature of them by experiencing the wickedness of them in contradistinction to the true nature of conformity to God’s nature (of which some aspects of the standard of his divine nature are shown through the laws given under the old covenant). These aspects of the standard of God’s divine nature are only finite expressions of the true power of God’s own nature that comes to its realized salvific purpose and fulness for God’s people in Christ’s sending of the indwelling divine spirit at Pentecost after his ascension.