Animal-Caused Injuries

No law code can explicitly cover every single possible scenario that needs to be adjudicated. Too many variables exist in this world, so any legal system that would attempt to identify a specific penalty for every scenario would result in an infinite amount of regulations. New laws would be needed with every advance in technology and the new possible circumstances for adjudication created with it. Even divine revelation could not cover every situation, for it would require a book with no end.

Thus, in God’s law, we have principles and paradigms that establish maximum possible penalties, not punishments to be applied equivalently in every situation. Today’s passage assumes this. We read several laws related to what should be done when an ox kills or injures another person or animal. The ox is an example because oxen were the most costly and valuable animals in ancient Israel. Very few Israelites had oxen, but they had animals of lesser economic value such as sheep and goats. Judges were to reason from what is stated in the laws about oxen and apply the standards according to an animal’s value. These laws applied if a sheep or goat was causing harm, but the financial penalties could be adjusted accordingly.

The idea behind the laws in today’s passage is that the owner of an animal is liable for the damage his animal does and that he has greater liability if the animal was known to be dangerous before it caused injury or death. An owner has no liability except to kill the animal if it gores a person to death but has never done so before (Ex. 21:28). The owner is not guilty of negligence because he could not foresee the danger and thus could not be expected to put measures in place to protect others. If the animal had caused injury in the past, however, both the owner and the animal are to be killed if the owner did not try to prevent further injury (v. 29). Yet in some cases, the owner’s life could be ransomed. He would not be killed but would pay a financial penalty to the family of the victim (v. 30). This dealt with cases that had extenuating circumstances, such as if the owner had made a good-faith effort to protect others but the animal still escaped. If an animal killed a slave, the animal’s owner had to financially compensate the slave’s master for the loss of the slave’s labor, and the animal’s owner would be killed or ransomed according to the rules given in Exodus 21:28–31 (v. 32). If an animal was killed, only financial compensation was required (vv. 33–36).