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[279]
If men strive together, and there be no instrument of iron, let
him that is smitten be avenged immediately, by inflicting the same punishment
on him that smote him: but if when he is carried home he lie sick many
days, and then die, let him that smote him not escape punishment; but if
he that is smitten escape death, and yet be at great expense for his cure,
the smiter shall pay for all that has been expended during the time of
his sickness, and for all that he has paid the physician. He that kicks
a woman with child, so that the woman miscarry, 1
let him pay a fine in money, as the judges shall determine, as having diminished
the multitude by the destruction of what was in her womb; and let money
also be given the woman's husband by him that kicked her; but if she die
of the stroke, let him also be put to death, the law judging it equitable
that life should go for life.
1 Philo and others appear to have understood this law, Exodus 21:22, 23, better than Josephus, who seems to allow, that though the infant in the mother's womb, even after the mother were quick, and so the infant had a rational soul, were killed by the stroke upon the mother, yet if the mother escaped, the offender should only be fined, and not put to death; while the law seems rather to mean, that if the infant in that case be killed, though the mother escape, the offender must be put to death, and not only when the mother is killed, as Josehus understood it. It seems this was the exposition of the Pharisees in the days of Josephus.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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