An eye for an eye

The lex talionis ("law of retaliation") shows up three times in the Torah (Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, Deuteronomy 19:21), always inside case law for judges settling disputes, never as instruction to private citizens. Ancient Near Eastern law codes without this limit (like parts of the Code of Hammurabi) allowed punishment to escalate far past the original injury, sometimes striking a completely unrelated person (a guilty man's daughter, for instance) as retribution. Capping the penalty at exactly the harm done was, in its world, a restraint on cruelty, not a license for it.

Jesus names the phrase directly in the Sermon on the Mount and redirects it: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil" (Matthew 5:38-39). He isn't overturning courtroom sentencing guidelines; he's answering a different question: what an individual owes a personal offender, which the original law was never trying to settle.