Exodus 21:25

Studied by claude-opus-5-5 October 8, 2026

כְּוִיָּה֙ תַּ֣חַת כְּוִיָּ֔ה פֶּ֖צַע תַּ֣חַת פָּ֑צַע חַבּוּרָ֕ה תַּ֖חַת חַבּוּרָֽה׃ ס

kəwiyyāh taḥat kəwiyyāh, peṣaʿ taḥat pāṣaʿ, ḥabbûrāh taḥat ḥabbûrāh.

A burn in place of a burn, a wound in place of a wound, a welt in place of a welt.

What it meant

"A burn in exchange for a burn, a wound in exchange for a wound, a welt in exchange for a welt."

This verse finishes the legal formula that began in 21:23 ("life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot"). Verse 24 named parts of the body that can be lost for good. Verse 25 names injuries that heal but leave a mark: the scorch of fire, the bruised or split flesh of a blow, and the raised streak a fist, stick or lash leaves on the skin. Each pair uses the same word twice, joined by taḥat, "in the place of". The effect is a strict balance. Whatever the response to an injury is, it must be the same size and kind as the injury, never more.

The first hearers would have caught a deliberate echo. "Wound" and "welt" are the exact pair Lamech used when he boasted of killing a man for a wound and a youth for a welt, and of avenging himself seventy-seven times (Genesis 4:23–24). Here that pair is matched one to one. In context the formula is a court's measure, part of laws given to be applied by judges (21:22). It is not a private licence to hit back. Elsewhere in the same chapter, ordinary injuries are settled by paying for lost work and healing (21:18–19), and the same word taḥat means compensation (21:26–27, 36). So it is genuinely debated whether "burn for burn" was ever carried out on the body or always meant "the equivalent of a burn". On either reading the verse says that every harm, down to a bruise, is answerable, and that justice is capped at the value of the harm done.

Where the English drifted

burn for burn, wound for wound (the 'eye for an eye' formula) taḥat

What we hear

A licence for personal revenge, or a byword for harsh, primitive justice: 'you hurt me, so I hurt you'.

What they heard

A rule of exact equivalence applied through judges, which limits the response to the size of the harm. In the same chapter taḥat also means compensation of equal value (21:26, 36). Its main thrust was to stop escalation such as Lamech's, not to require cruelty.

Where the later meaning came from: English proverbial use of 'an eye for an eye' to mean revenge, together with popular readings of Matthew 5:38–39 that contrast it with mercy without noting that it was already a limit and a court rule.
stripe (KJV, YLT, ESV, BSB) ḥabbûrāh

What we hear

A band or line of colour, as on a flag or a shirt.

What they heard

The raised, discoloured welt left on skin by a blow or a lash.

Where the later meaning came from: Older English, in which 'stripe' meant a stroke of the whip or its mark (KJV Deuteronomy 25:3, 'forty stripes'). That sense has largely faded.

What the first hearers heard

To Israelites living as clans and villages, where wronged families were expected to defend their honour, this verse said several things at once.

Every injury counts. Even a burn or a welt is a real wrong against a person and has to be answered. A stronger man cannot shrug off the smaller harms he does to others.
No injury may be answered with more than it is. The repeated "X in place of X" sets a ceiling. A welt cannot justify a beating, and a wound cannot justify a killing. Lamech's seventy-sevenfold vengeance is ruled out using his own words.
Equality before the law. Unlike Hammurabi's sliding scale by social rank, among free Israelites the measure is the injury, not the status of the people involved.
Justice belongs to the community. The setting involves judges (21:22), and the formula appears in Deuteronomy 19:18–21 as a ruling of the court. Israel would have heard it as the way the covenant community sets a fair penalty, not as permission for private retaliation.

Whether a judge would actually have ordered a burn to be inflicted, or whether "burn for burn" set the value of what the offender owed, the hearer took away the same principle: the penalty fits the harm, exactly.

Every word

כְּוִיָּה֙
kəwiyyāh · H3555

burn, scorch-mark

The burn injury a person has caused, the mark left on skin by fire or a hot object. It comes first in the verse and opens the list of injuries that heal but leave a mark.
תַּ֣חַת
taḥat · H8478

under; in place of, instead of

The hinge of the formula: one thing put in the place of another as its exact match. The same word means 'as compensation for' in the next verse (21:26) and 'ox for ox' in 21:36, where the meaning is clearly replacement.
כְּוִיָּ֔ה
kəwiyyāh · H3555

burn

The same word repeated. Saying it twice is the point: the answer to the injury must be the same size and kind as the injury, and no larger.
פֶּ֖צַע
peṣaʿ · H6482

wound, bruise

An injury from a blow, a bruise or split in the flesh. It is the same word Lamech uses when he boasts of killing a man 'for my wound' (Genesis 4:23).
תַּ֣חַת
taḥat · H8478

in place of

Again strict one-for-one equivalence: the wound is matched, not repaid with something worse.
פָּ֑צַע
pāṣaʿ · H6482

wound

The same noun in its pause form (the vowel lengthens at a major break in the chanted verse). It means exactly what the first one means.
חַבּוּרָ֕ה
ḥabbûrāh · H2250

welt, weal, stripe, bruise

The swollen, discoloured streak raised by a blow or a lash. It is the lightest of the three injuries, the kind of mark a fist or stick fight leaves.
תַּ֖חַת
taḥat · H8478

in place of

The third use in this verse and the eleventh in the formula that began in 21:23. Hearers would hear it as a steady drumbeat of equivalence.
חַבּוּרָֽה׃ ס
ḥabbûrāh · H2250

welt

This ends the list of matched pairs. The ס (samekh) after the verse is a scribal mark for a paragraph break, so the talion formula closes here before the laws about injured slaves (21:26–27).

Key words, in depth

תַּחַת taḥat H8478

Range of meaning: Originally a noun for 'the place beneath'. It became the ordinary preposition 'under, below', and from there 'in the place of, instead of, in exchange for, as compensation for'. It is used of one king reigning in place of another (Genesis 36:33), of the ram offered in place of Isaac (Genesis 22:13), and of payment in kind or in value.
Against the English: English 'for' (as in 'burn for burn') is accurate but thin. It can sound like 'in return for' in the sense of getting even. Taḥat says 'in the place of': one thing stands as the exact counterpart of another.
How it drifted: The phrase 'an eye for an eye' became an English proverb for revenge, so the 'for' picked up a retaliatory feel that the Hebrew preposition does not carry in itself.
Used elsewhere in the period: In the same chapter taḥat clearly means compensation: the master must free a slave 'taḥat his eye' (21:26) and 'taḥat his tooth' (21:27), and the owner of a negligent ox must pay 'ox taḥat ox' (21:36). Leviticus 24:18 says 'life taḥat life' about replacing a killed animal. The Greek translators (LXX) used antí ('in place of'), and the Latin Vulgate used pro.
What it does in this verse: Inside the chapter itself the word moves easily between bodily equivalence and payment of equal value. That is why the verse can be read either as literal retaliation or as the measure for setting compensation (see debates). What the word always insists on is equality: the response must match the harm.

כְּוִיָּה kəwiyyāh H3555

Range of meaning: A burn or scorch-mark on the body. It comes from the verb kāwāh, 'to burn, scorch, brand' (Proverbs 6:28: 'can a man walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?'; Isaiah 43:2: 'you will not be scorched').
Against the English: 'Burn' (BSB, ESV, NIV) and 'burning' (KJV, WEB, YLT) are both fine. 'Burning' can sound like the act. The Hebrew noun names the injury, the burn mark.
Used elsewhere in the period: This noun appears only in this verse, twice. A related noun, mikwah, describes a burn on the skin in the skin-disease laws (Leviticus 13:24–28). Later Jewish law used a burn as its standard example of pure pain without lasting damage: 'if he burned him with a spit or a nail, even on his fingernail where no wound is made' (Mishnah Bava Qamma 8:1).
What it does in this verse: A burn hardly fits the case of a brawl that injures a pregnant woman (21:22). This suggests that verses 23–25 are a standard legal formula listing injuries in general, quoted here as a whole. It also shows the practical problem the rabbis later pressed: an exactly equal burn is almost impossible to measure out, which pushes the formula toward valuation.

פֶּ֫צַע peṣaʿ H6482

Range of meaning: A wound or bruise from a blow, injured or split flesh. The related verb pāṣaʿ means 'to bruise, wound', used of crushed genitals in Deuteronomy 23:1 (Hebrew 23:2).
Against the English: 'Wound' (all major versions) is right, but a modern reader may picture a cut or stab wound. The word covers blunt-force injury as much as cuts.
Used elsewhere in the period: It occurs about eight times. The striking one is Genesis 4:23, where Lamech sings: 'I have killed a man for my peṣaʿ, a youth for my ḥabbûrāh.' The others: Job 9:17 ('he multiplies my wounds without cause'), Proverbs 20:30, 23:29, 27:6 ('faithful are the wounds of a friend'), and Isaiah 1:6 ('bruises and welts and raw sores'). LXX: traûma.
What it does in this verse: Peṣaʿ and ḥabbûrāh appear as a pair in only one other place in the Torah: Lamech's boast of killing a man in exchange for a wound and a welt, with vengeance 'seventy-seven times'. Here the same pair is matched strictly one to one. The formula reverses Lamech's escalation. A wound answers a wound, not a death.

חַבּוּרָה ḥabbûrāh H2250

Range of meaning: A welt or weal, the raised streak left on skin by a blow or lash; a bruise. The root is uncertain. BDB connects it to ḥābar, 'to join' (perhaps a swelling that joins or bands together), and HALOT gives 'weal, bruise'.
Against the English: KJV, YLT, ESV and BSB have 'stripe'; NIV, NASB, WEB and NLT have 'bruise'. 'Stripe' is the older English word for a lash mark, which fits the picture of a raised streak, but today 'stripe' sounds like a band of colour. 'Bruise' is clear but loses the streak shape.
How it drifted: In 1611 'stripe' commonly meant a stroke of a whip or the mark it left ('forty stripes', Deuteronomy 25:3 KJV). That sense is now rare.
Used elsewhere in the period: It occurs about seven times: Genesis 4:23 (Lamech), here twice, Psalm 38:5 (Hebrew 38:6, 'my wounds stink and fester'), Proverbs 20:30, Isaiah 1:6, and Isaiah 53:5, 'by his ḥabbûrāh we are healed' (KJV 'stripes'). LXX renders it mōlōps, the same word used in Isaiah 53:5 LXX and quoted in 1 Peter 2:24.
What it does in this verse: This is the lightest of the injuries named. Listing even a welt shows that the principle of equal response reaches down to the smallest harm. No injury is too slight to be answered, and none may be answered with more than it deserves.

The world behind it

Where the verse sits. Exodus 21–23 is often called the "Book of the Covenant". It is a collection of case laws ("if a man does X, then…"). Verses 22–25 take up a specific case: men are fighting, one of them strikes a pregnant woman, and her child comes out. If no serious harm (ʾāsôn) follows, the striker pays a fine set by the husband and confirmed by judges. If harm follows, "you shall give life for life… burn for burn, wound for wound, welt for welt." Burns and most of the listed injuries do not fit a woman hurt in a brawl. This strongly suggests that 23–25 is a set legal formula that already existed and is quoted in full, as it is again in Leviticus 24:19–20 and Deuteronomy 19:21.

The world of blood vengeance. In a tribal, kin-based society, injury to one person was injury to the family, and the family was expected to respond. The danger was escalation: a bruise answered with a beating, a beating with a killing, a killing with a feud. Lamech's song (Genesis 4:23–24) is the Bible's own picture of that spiral, and it uses the very words "wound" and "welt" that appear here.

Other ancient Near Eastern law. Older Mesopotamian collections (the Laws of Ur-Nammu and Eshnunna) mostly settle bodily injuries with fixed silver payments. The Code of Hammurabi (about 1750 BC) introduces bodily retaliation: "If a man has destroyed the eye of a man of the upper class, they shall destroy his eye" (§196; also §§197, 200). But it applies this only between free men of the upper class. A commoner's eye is paid for in silver and a slave's at half its value (§§198–199). The biblical formula drops the class scale between free persons. It does treat slaves differently: the next verses (21:26–27) free a slave whose master knocks out an eye or a tooth, instead of maiming the master.

Money in the same chapter. Just before this, 21:18–19 deals with a fight in which one man lays another up in bed. The striker pays for "his lost time" and "his full healing", with no talion mentioned. In 21:30 a ransom (kōper) may replace the death penalty for the owner of a goring ox. Numbers 35:31–32 forbids taking a ransom only for a murderer, which later interpreters took to imply that ransom was acceptable for lesser harms.

How the translations handle it

BSB burn for burn, wound for wound, and stripe for stripe.
KJV Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
WEB burning for burning, wound for wound, and bruise for bruise.
YLT burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

KJV“Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

Gets right: It keeps the exact three-part rhythm with no added words. 'Stripe' was a precise word in 1611 for the mark of a blow or lash.
Loses: 'Burning' can sound like the act rather than the injury, and 'stripe' now sounds like a coloured band to most readers.

BSB“burn for burn, wound for wound, and stripe for stripe.”

Gets right: 'Burn' correctly names the injury, the scorch-mark.
Loses: It adds 'and', which the Hebrew lacks; the Hebrew list is abrupt and unconnected. It keeps the old-fashioned 'stripe'.

WEB“burning for burning, wound for wound, and bruise for bruise.”

Gets right: 'Bruise' is immediately clear to modern readers.
Loses: Like the KJV it has 'burning'. 'Bruise' loses the raised-streak picture of ḥabbûrāh and its link to the 'stripes' of Isaiah 53:5. It also adds 'and'.

YLT“burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

Gets right: Literal and faithful to the bare Hebrew structure.
Loses: Same archaic 'stripe' and act-like 'burning' as the KJV.

ESV“burn for burn … stripe for stripe”

Gets right: Literal. It keeps 'stripe', which preserves the word link with Isaiah 53:5 ('with his stripes').
Loses: 'Stripe' needs explaining for modern readers.

NIV“burn for burn … bruise for bruise”

Gets right: Plain modern English that is easy to grasp.
Loses: 'Bruise' is a fair sense but hides the fact that this is the word rendered 'wounds' or 'stripes' in Isaiah 53:5.

NASB“bruise for bruise”

Gets right: It keeps the strict one-for-one wording of the Hebrew.
Loses: The same loss of the welt image and of the Isaiah 53 link as the NIV.

NLT“a burn for a burn … a bruise for a bruise”

Gets right: Natural English that reads easily aloud.
Loses: The added articles soften the clipped, formula-like sound of the original, which reads like a legal maxim.

Text and manuscripts

Hebrew text: No significant variants. The Samaritan Pentateuch agrees in substance. The samekh (ס) after the verse marks a minor paragraph break in the Masoretic tradition, closing the talion formula before the laws about injured slaves.
Septuagint (Greek, 3rd century BC): katakauma anti katakaumatos, trauma anti traumatos, mōlōpa anti mōlōpos. The nouns are in the object form because they depend on "he shall give" in v. 23. The Greek mōlōps (welt, weal) is the word used in Isaiah 53:5 LXX ("by his mōlōps we were healed"), which 1 Peter 2:24 quotes. So Greek-reading Jews and early Christians would have heard the same word in both places.
Vulgate (Latin, about AD 400): adustionem pro adustione, vulnus pro vulnere, livorem pro livore. Livor (bruise, discolouration) is also Jerome's word in Isaiah 53:5 (livore eius sanati sumus).
Supplied data: The lemma and gloss data are correct. The second peṣaʿ is the pause form pāṣaʿ of the same noun, not a different word.
Later echoes: Jesus quotes the formula's opening ("eye for eye, tooth for tooth") in Matthew 5:38. The later rabbinic system of compensation for injury (Mishnah Bava Qamma 8:1: payment for damage, pain, healing, lost time and shame) is built partly on this verse. The Mishnah uses a burn as its standard example of "pain".

Where scholars differ

Did 'burn for burn, wound for wound' mean physically inflicting the same injury, or setting equal compensation?

Originally literal, bodily retaliation, limited to exact equality.

Leviticus 24:19–20: 'as he has done, so shall it be done to him… as he has injured a man, so shall he be injured.' Deuteronomy 19:21: 'your eye shall not pity'. The Code of Hammurabi §§196–200 clearly orders literal maiming. Philo of Alexandria (1st century AD) defends equal retaliation. Judges 1:6–7 shows the idea of mirror punishment being understood, though in war, not in court.
A principle of equivalence that normally fixed monetary or in-kind compensation.

In the same passage taḥat means compensation (21:26–27, 36), and nearby injury cases are settled with money (21:18–19, 22, 30). Numbers 35:31–32 forbids ransom only for murder, implying it was allowed for injuries. The Hebrew Bible records no court-ordered maiming. Burns and welts can hardly be reproduced to an exact measure, a point pressed in the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Qamma 83b–84a). The Mekhilta and Mishnah (Bava Qamma 8:1) read the formula as monetary.
Bodily retaliation was the injured party's legal right and ceiling, but in practice it was usually bought off with payment.

Josephus (Antiquities 4.280) says the one who maims suffers the same 'unless the maimed man is willing to accept money'. Scholars of ancient Near Eastern law (e.g. Raymond Westbrook) argue that talion defined the maximum claim, while settlement by ransom was the normal outcome across the region.

Does the list in 21:23–25 apply to the injured pregnant woman, or is it a general formula quoted in full?

It is a standard, pre-existing legal formula quoted in full. Some items (burn, welt) do not fit the case.

The same formula appears in Leviticus 24 and Deuteronomy 19 in different settings. A burn has no obvious place in a brawl that injures a pregnant woman. The verbs switch to 'you shall give' (second person), which suggests the formula was inserted.
It applies to whatever harm follows in the case: to the woman, and on some readings to the child, item by item as relevant.

The formula is introduced by 'if there is harm' (21:23) and tied grammatically to the case. The list may be meant to cover all kinds of injury that might result, with irrelevant items simply not applying.

Sources

BDB s.v. כְּוִיָּה, פֶּצַע, חַבּוּרָה, תַּחַת
HALOT s.v. כְּוִיָּה, פֶּצַע, חַבּוּרָה, תַּחַת
Septuagint, Exodus 21:25; Isaiah 53:5
Vulgate, Exodus 21:25
Code of Hammurabi §§196–201
Laws of Eshnunna §§42–47 (monetary compensation for injuries)
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 4.280
Philo, On the Special Laws, book 3
Mishnah Bava Qamma 8:1
Babylonian Talmud Bava Qamma 83b–84a
Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Nezikin 8
Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus
William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19–40 (Anchor Bible)
Brevard Childs, The Book of Exodus (OTL)
Raymond Westbrook, Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Law

Original-language data: STEPBible TAHOT/TAGNT (CC BY 4.0).

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