Bibbia Ebraica
Bibbia Ebraica

Musar su Esodo 21:30

אִם־כֹּ֖פֶר יוּשַׁ֣ת עָלָ֑יו וְנָתַן֙ פִּדְיֹ֣ן נַפְשׁ֔וֹ כְּכֹ֥ל אֲשֶׁר־יוּשַׁ֖ת עָלָֽיו׃

Se però gli verrà imposto un riscatto, pagherà il riscatto della propria vita, secondo che gli verrà imposto.

Shenei Luchot HaBerit

In other words: דינים and משפטים, contribute to the respective perfection of the נשמה-גוף-ממון elements in our lives. משפטים are the mainstay of it all. Our sages say (Shemot Rabbah 30,3) that Torah (i.e. the Ten Commandments) is surrounded by דינים. The Torah begins with דינים, as we read in Exodus 15,25: שם שם לו חוק ומשפט, and it ends with דינים in Exodus chapter 21,1, (The letter ו in the words ואלההמשפטים, is regarded as a continuation of the Ten Commandments). You should know that there are two categories of דין. One category reflects only the attribute of Justice. The other category is a combination of the attribute of Justice and the attribute of Mercy. Our Rabbis have already said that originally G–d had planned to create a universe based on justice. However, G–d saw that such a universe would not endure, hence He co-opted the attribute of Mercy (Bereshit Rabbah 12,15). Just as the attribute of Mercy was invoked when creating man, so Torah itself reflects on occasion strict justice, and on other occasions justice tempered with mercy. As an example, consider the four possible ways of administering the death penalty to people guilty thereof, as opposed to the owner of an ox that has fatally gored a free human being repeatedly, so that the owner's negligence was the cause of what is described by the Torah as deserving the death penalty (Exodus 21,29), וגם בעליו יומת. Rashi explains that this death penalty is administered by Heaven, not by a human tribunal, i.e. the attribute of Mercy is invoked. A similar instance is the statement in the Torah: "An eye for an eye" (Exodus 21,24). This is understood by the Rabbis as referring to financial compensation to be paid to the person who has lost his eye (Baba Kama 84). The reason the Torah employs such severe sounding language, i.e. עין תחת עין, is to tell us that spoiling someone's eye deserves to be paid for by loss of one's own eye. Only because the attribute of Mercy has been co-opted, is restitution made in money, i.e. in terms of the monetary value of the eye one has destroyed.
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