Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Goring Ox
Exodus 21:28-36
28 “If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull shall surely be stoned, and its meat shall not be eaten; but the owner of the bull shall not be held responsible. · WEB
Negligence is treated as a species of guilt, and a man is answerable for what he knew and did nothing about.
If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull shall surely be stoned, and its meat shall not be eaten; but the owner of the bull shall not be held responsible Exodus 21:28.
The first case is an accident. The animal is destroyed, its carcass may not be sold or eaten so that no one profits from the death, and the owner is clear. He could not have known.
But if the bull had a habit of goring in the past, and this has been testified to its owner, and he has not kept it in, but it has killed a man or a woman, the bull shall be stoned, and its owner shall also be put to death Exodus 21:29.
The same event, the same animal, and a capital sentence, because two things have changed: the bull had a record, and the owner had been told. Guilt attaches to what a man knew and declined to act on. This is one of the earliest statements in law of culpable negligence, and it is severe — a man who does nothing is treated as having done something.
The severity is then moderated in the next verse. If a ransom is imposed on him, then he shall give for the redemption of his life whatever is imposed Exodus 21:30. The death penalty here may be commuted for a payment set by the court, and the contrast with murder is deliberate: for deliberate killing no ransom is permitted anywhere in the law Numbers 35:31. Negligence and intent are both punished and they are not the same crime.
If the bull gores a male servant or a female servant, thirty shekels of silver shall be given to their master Exodus 21:32.
A fixed sum where the victim is a servant, and it is a figure that reappears once, in an account of a betrayal: thirty pieces of silver is what the chief priests weighed out Matthew 26:15, and the prophet who names it first calls it the handsome price that I was valued at by them Zechariah 11:13. The compensation due for a slave killed by someone's livestock was the price set on the Son of God.
If a man opens a pit, or if a man digs a pit and doesn't cover it, and a bull or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit shall make it good Exodus 21:33–34.
The principle extends from animals to property. A hazard a man creates and leaves uncovered is his, whoever falls into it. Nothing in the case requires him to have intended harm or even to have been present.
The closing pair of rulings shows how carefully the code balances loss. If two bulls fight and one dies, the live animal is sold and both the price and the carcass are divided Exodus 21:35 — neither owner is ruined by an accident neither could prevent. But if the surviving bull was a known gorer, its owner pays in full and keeps the dead animal Exodus 21:36. The same distinction runs through the whole chapter: what could not be foreseen is shared, and what was foreseen and ignored is charged.
settled What this mark means