Translations:Prohibition on vicarious punishment/8/en

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.