Prohibición del castigo vicario
This law is actually a repudiation of a common practice in the ancient Near East. The point here is that the penalty fall upon the owner, not upon the owner's son or daughter. In other law codes of the time, such as the Code of Hammurabi, sons and daughters were killed for the crimes of their parents:
There are various examples in the Code of Hammurabi (§§116, 209–10, 230 [COS, 2:343, 348–49]) and the Middle Assyrian Laws (§§50, 55 [COS, 2:359]) of children being executed or severely fined for the crime of their parent.[1]
Here are some examples from the Code of 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.[2]
(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.[3]
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.[4]
See also:
Doesn't_the_Code_of_Hammurabi_"eye_for_an_eye"_concept_predate_Biblical_law%3F
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