Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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Note, He that does wrong must expect one way or other to receive according to the wrong he has done, Col 3:25. God sometimes brings men's violent dealings upon their own heads (Ps 7:16); and magistrates are in this the ministers of the justice, that they are avengers (Ro 13:4), and they shall not bear the sword in vain.
23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Laws concerning Responsibility of Owners
26 And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid,
that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake.
27 And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s
tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake.
28 If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall
be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.
29 But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it
hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.
In case of hurt done by oxen, or any other brute-creature; for the law, doubtless, was designed to extend to all parallel cases.
(1.) As an instance of God's care of the life of man (though forfeited a thousand times into the hands of divine justice), and in token of his detestation of the sin of murder. If an ox killed any man, woman, or child, the ox was to be stoned (Ex 21:28); and, because the greatest honour of the inferior creatures is to be serviceable to man, the criminal is denied that honour: his flesh shall not be eaten. Thus God would keep up in the minds of his people a rooted abhorrence of the sin of murder and every thing that was barbarous.