Commentaria in Exodum
15. HE THAT STRIKETH HIS FATHER OR MOTHER (even not lethally, on account of the atrocious impiety toward a parent), SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH.
After this law, some Codices and Interpreters immediately subjoin the law concerning him who curses his parents. But the Hebrew places the law of man-stealing first; so also the Chaldee, and the Complutensian and Roman Latin. Nor is it strange that in these laws the order is not so closely kept; for we see this done in many places, as is plain in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus; for these laws are written as miscellaneous matter, and as it were in a camp style.
16. HE THAT SHALL STEAL A MAN AND SELL HIM, BEING CONVICTED OF THE GUILT, SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH. This is the penalty of plagium, that is, of man-stealing, whether the man be free or a slave, especially if he be a Hebrew; for the slaughter of slaves, as of free men, was avenged by death; therefore plagium also, chiefly because the Hebrews were slaves only for a time; for either in the seventh year or at the jubilee they became free.
18. WITH A STONE OR WITH HIS FIST—that is, with any missile, or in any manner; for commonly men who quarrel strike with whatever stone is at hand, or with the fist.
19. IF HE RISE AGAIN AND WALK ABROAD UPON HIS STAFF, HE THAT STRUCK HIM SHALL BE QUIT.
“Quit,” that is, free and clear of retaliation and of the penalty of death, because by this sign, that the man struck walked abroad after receiving the blow, it is presumed that his death came not from the blow but from some other cause.
YET SO THAT HE MAKE RESTITUTION FOR HIS LOSS OF TIME, AND FOR THE EXPENSES OF THE PHYSICIANS. The Hebrew is shibto, that is, his sitting, that is, his idleness and lost labours, namely the gain from work which the injured man has lost; and he shall pay for him and see that he is healed. For the Hebrew shibto is an infinitive with a suffix, from the root shabath, that is, he sat. Pagninus, however, renders shibto as “cessation,” from the root shabath, that is, he ceased; but the sense comes to the same, for to sit is to cease.
20. HE THAT STRIKETH HIS BONDMAN, etc., SHALL BE GUILTY OF THE CRIME (of homicide, and consequently of the penalty of death).
21. BUT IF THE PARTY SURVIVE A DAY OR TWO, HE SHALL NOT BE SUBJECT TO THE PUNISHMENT, BECAUSE IT IS HIS MONEY—as if to say, because he is owned by the master who struck him, as a slave bought with money. Wretched was the condition of slaves, male and female, especially under hard masters; whence the law here moderates the penalty of the blow, so that if the master has not struck the slave so grievously that certain death follows at once, he is not subject to the penalty, because he has killed his own chattel, which he owns as he owns an ox or a horse. Hence even now the civil laws say that the body of a slave, just as the body of an animal, is appraisable at a price; but a free body admits of no appraisal, as appears from the last law, De his qui effuderint vel dejecerint.
22. IF MEN QUARREL, AND ONE STRIKE A WOMAN WITH CHILD, who came between the quarrelling men, or wished to help her husband: 23. BUT IF HER DEATH FOLLOW (the death of the woman with child), HE SHALL RENDER LIFE FOR LIFE (his own life for the life of the woman whom he killed), EYE FOR EYE, TOOTH FOR TOOTH, etc. The judgment was the same if the striker had not killed the woman with child, but had caused her to miscarry a child already animated, and so had killed it. For he, as a killer of an infant, was as guilty of death as a matricide. This the Septuagint plainly signify, who, for the Hebrew ason, which our Vulgate renders death, seem to have read ischon, that is, a little man (as in Flemish we call a boy manneken); for they translate, if it be formed, that is, if the child be shaped or fashioned, as if they said: If the offspring have its limbs perfect, so that it is fully shaped, and as it were a little man, then he who by his blow causes it to be cast out from the mother with child shall give life for life, that is, his own life, of which the soul is the cause, for the life of the offspring, that, as he cast it out and killed it, so he may himself be killed. From these words of the Septuagint it is plain that the foetus, as soon as it is formed, is animated; for this reason he who has cast it out is judged and punished here as a homicide; the physicians teach the same.
For the tropology, concerning quarrelsome teachers who by their questions and disputes hurt and scandalize the Church and the faithful, see Origen and Ambrose on Luke chapter 22.
From this law, by parity, God next lays down for all cases the general law of retaliation, saying: “Eye for eye,” etc., as if to say: If a man have put out another’s eye, let him too be deprived of his eye; he who has knocked out a tooth, let him lose a tooth; he who a hand, etc. This law, says St. Augustine, Against Faustus, book 22, chapter 25, “is not a fuel of vengeance and fury, but a just limit;” for, as Tertullian says, Against Marcion, book 2, chapter 18, “the licence of retribution was a prohibition of provocation;” for Rhadamanthus is said by Aristotle, Ethics, book 5, to pronounce it just: “If a man has done injustice, let him suffer the same,” that is, if the persons are of the same lot and of equal condition; for otherwise, if a king strike a peasant, he cannot justly be struck back by him. Whence in this law, in verse 26 next following, the man who strikes a slave is excepted. Thus among the laws of the Twelve Tables there was also this: “If he has broken a limb, and does not agree with him, let there be retaliation.” See Gellius, book 20.
26. AND MAKE THEM BLIND OF ONE EYE—that is, if one eye be put out, he has made them one-eyed or with a single eye. Whence the Septuagint translate it, he has blinded; the Hebrew signifies the same. Wherefore “one-eyed” is taken here otherwise than it is commonly taken, and in this popular verse:
The one-eyed squints sidelong, the squint-eyed sees upward; the blind lack their orbs, the sightless are deprived of light.
28. IF AN OX GORE A MAN OR A WOMAN, AND THEY DIE, HE SHALL BE STONED—not for any fault of the ox (for that cannot be in a brute), but for a terror and example to men, that men may thereby be the more deterred from homicide. Hence even to this day swine and other beasts, if they kill children or men, are hanged or put to death. God made a like law in Genesis 9:5. For the same reason God forbade in this verse that the flesh of the homicidal ox be eaten, lest it either be defiled by the animal’s having shed the blood of a man, or men take on its fierceness by eating it. Moreover, what is said and decreed here and in the following verses about the ox, understand also of a butting ram, a kicking horse, and every beast that has killed a man; for here the argument from parity and proportion holds.
…time; it is a synecdoche. So St. Augustine, Question 95.
AND THEY HAVE TESTIFIED—that the ox is given to butting, as if to say: They have declared the ox to be a butter, and so warned the master of the danger, that he should shut up this ox and it strike no one. The Romans, according to Plutarch in his Roman Questions, tied hay to the horns of butting oxen, that those who met them might be warned to keep clear of them; and this because oxen and horses wax wanton and petulant with fullness; whence the proverb: “He has hay on his horn: beware, he strikes with the horn,” which is said of a man ready to take vengeance and hard to assail, such as was Marcus Crassus before Caesar set himself against him.
AND HAVE NOT SHUT HIM UP. In the Hebrew, nor kept him.
…by a judge, who, the cause having been examined, on account of his slight negligence or fault, lays upon him not a capital penalty but a fine, chiefly because the parents and kinsmen desire such a fine, then the master of the homicidal ox shall give and pay this fine imposed on him by the judge.
33. IF A MAN OPEN A PIT AND DIG IT—that is, or dig it; for he is equally guilty who uncovers and opens a covered pit as he who has newly dug it, if he do not cover it again. These laws, like the other laws of this chapter and the following, have been transcribed into the Canon law, as is plain in the Decretals, book 5, title 36, De injuriis et damno dato; for they are agreeable to law and natural equity.
35. IF ONE MAN’S OX GORE ANOTHER’S, AND IT DIE, THEY SHALL SELL THE LIVE OX, AND DIVIDE THE PRICE; AND THE CARCASS OF THE DEAD THEY SHALL PARTITION BETWEEN THEM. Note: This law speaks only of the case in which an ox has killed an ox, not of that in which an ox has killed a sheep or a calf; for then it was not fair that an ox be divided for a sheep or a calf, which is of less price than an ox; hence in that case the judges decreed a fine in proportion to the damage done. What is said here of the ox understand likewise, by parity, of a ram, a horse, and any animal.
For the tropology see Rabanus, who interprets all these things of a bad disciple and his master, either negligent or innocent.