Prohibition on vicarious punishment/es

Esta ley es en realidad un repudio de una práctica común en el antiguo Cercano Oriente. El punto aquí es que la pena recae sobre el propietario, no sobre el hijo o la hija del propietario. En otros códigos legales de la época, como el Código de Hammurabi , los hijos e hijas fueron asesinados por los delitos de sus padres:

Hay varios ejemplos en el Código de Hammurabi (§§116, 209–10, 230 [COS, 2: 343, 348–49]) y las Leyes de Asiria Media (§§50, 55 [COS, 2: 359]) de niños ejecutados o severamente multados por el crimen de sus padres.

Aquí hay algunos ejemplos del Código de Hammurabi:

(209) If a man has struck the daughter of a man and has made her lose her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for the foetus.

(210) If that woman has died, they shall kill his daughter.
(211) If he has made a commoner's daughter lose her unborn child by the violence, he shall pay five shekels of silver.
(212) If that woman has died, he shall pay half a mana of silver.

(213) If he has struck a man's slave-girl and made her lose her unborn child, he shall pay two shekels of silver.

(229) If a builder has built a house for a man and has not made his work strong enough and the house he has made has collapsed and caused the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be killed. (230) If it has caused the death of the son of the owner of the house, they shall kill that builder's son.
(231) If it has caused the death of a slave of the owner of the house, he shall give a slave for the slave to the owner of the house.

In Biblical law, no one could be killed for the crime of his parent:

16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin. Deuteronomy 24:16WEB

Moshe Greenberg writes:

What appears as a general principle in Deuteronomy is applied to a case in the Covenant Code law of the goring ox: after detailing the law of an ox who has slain a man or a woman the last clause of the law goes on to say that if the victims are a son or a daughter the same law applies (Exodus 21:31). This clause, a long-standing puzzle for exegetes, has only recently been understood for what it is: a specific repudiation of vicarious punishment in the manner familiar from cuneiform law. There a builder who, through negligence, caused the death of a householder’s son must deliver up his own son; here the negligent owner of a vicious ox who has caused the death of another’s son or daughter must be dealt with in the same way as when he caused the death of a man or woman, to wit: the owner is to be punished, not his son or daughter.38 This principle of individual culpability in fact governs all of biblical law. Nowhere does the criminal law of the Bible, in contrast to that of the rest of the Near East, punish secular offenses collectively or vicariously.

See also:

Doesn't_the_Code_of_Hammurabi_"eye_for_an_eye"_concept_predate_Biblical_law%3F

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