What ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ really means
“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” The lex talionis, as this Old Testament law is called, is supposedly the oldest recorded or known principle in the world. While this may seem like a tit-for-tat law, bordering on the vengeful, it is important to go back to its roots—the context in which it was formulated and the value it wanted to uphold.