Umar

“ He asks, suppose the offending person should have but one eye, or one hand, ought be to be deprived of the one, because he had struck out an eye or cut off another man’s hand that had two? Again, how would it be possible for a judge to inflict a punishment, which should be exactly the same with the injury, since that stroke might prove mortal to one man, which was not so to another; and so a man might pay for a wound which was not mortal, with the loss of his life? ”

“ I commanded Jabalah to be brought before me, and asked him what moved him to beat his brother Mussulman after this fashion, and knock his teeth out, and break his nose. He told me that the man had trodden upon his vest, and uncovered his back; adding, that if it had not been for the reverence he bore to the holy temple, he would have killed him. I told him he had made a fair confession against himself; and if the injured person would not forgive him, I must proceed with him by way of retaliation. [2] He answered, that he was a king, and the other a peasant. ”

“ The modern Rabbins interpret this command of the Mosaical law as inflicting nothing more than a pecuniary mulct. Don Isaac Abarbanel has a great many arguments to prove that it ought not to be understood in a literal sense. ”