Eye for an eye was meant to be fair justice but not excessive
http://www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org/Biblequestions/eyeforeye.htm
1. History of the legislation. The lex talionis is found in three passages in the
Old Testament (Ex. 21:23, 24; Lev. 24:19, 20; and Deut. 19:21). A similar law is found in
the ancient Mesopotamian code of Hammurabi. Earlier codes legislated financial
compensation for bodily injuries, but Hammurabi seems to have been the first to require
physical injury for physical injury. This has led some historians to conclude that there
was a time when monetary compensation redressed personal injuries because the state did
not consider them to be crimes against society.
The law of equivalency was a significant development in the history of
jurisprudence in the sense that what used to be a private matter between two families was
now taken over by the state and considered to be criminal behavior. This fits very well
with the Old Testament understanding of offenses against others as offenses against the
covenant community and against the God of the covenant.
2. The principle involved. The law of equivalency was an attempt to limit the
extent of a punishment and to discourage cruelty. The principle of this legislation is
one of equivalency; that is to say, the punishment should correspond to the crime and
should be limited to the one involved in the injury (Deut. 19:18-21).
This law was a rejection of family feuds and the spirit of revenge that led the
injured party to uncontrolled attacks against the culprit and the members of his or her
family (cf. Gen. 4:23). The punishment was required to fit the crime, a principle still
used in modern jurisprudence. I must add that in the Bible this law was applied equally
to all members of society (Lev. 24:22), while in Mesopotamia it was limited to crimes
against society's "important" people.
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