The Jewish Power Blog: Vengeance and Justice

When Rebecca leads Jacob to trick Isaac into granting him the blessing meant for his brother Esau, she counsels him to flee to Haran for a while until Esau’s anger subsides, “Let me not lose you both in one day.” (Gen. 27:45).  That is, she expects that Esau would kill Jacob and then Jacob’s family would avenge his death and kill Esau.

Vengeance has its place, but if that place is too big, the social order devolves into the chaos of eternal vendettas.  The Greek myth depicted in Aeschylus’s play “The Eumenides” suggests that vengeance be completely replaced by institutional justice:

Orestes murders his mother Clytemnestra and is therefore pursued relentlessly by the Furies, the goddesses of cruel revenge.  However, he manages to escape briefly and turns to Athena for help.  She organizes the first jury trial, in Athens, and Orestes is acquitted.  Now that there is a system for administering justice, goddesses of revenge are superfluous, and Athena convinces the Furies to transform themselves into gracious spirits of fertility, the Eumenides.

In the Torah, the law of the cities of refuge gives a place to the blood redeemer’s feeling of anger, but ultimately, it seems, coopts and attenuates it.  But what if the blood redeemer’s anger fades on its own; what if she forgives the killer and chooses to pass over or pass by the crime?  That is not an option.  “Life for life” is not a matter of feelings.  The blood calls out from the ground which it has polluted, and that cry cannot be silenced by negotiations, blood-money, or soft-heartedness.  If the killing was intentional, then capital punishment is obligatory; if it was accidental, internal exile is required until the death of the current high priest (Num. 35:28).

In pre-biblical Mesopotamian law codes, such as that of Hammurabi, personal vengeance does not come into play in cases of murder or manslaughter: the state and its local representatives adjudicate the matter and negotiate compensation of the victim’s kin by the perpetrator.  In Greece, Demosthenes reports that one who commits involuntary manslaughter goes into exile until reconciliation is negotiated with the victim’s family; then he may return and offer a purifying sacrifice.  The Bible, on the other hand, explicitly forbids any negotiation with a shedder of blood:  “You may not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of a capital crime; he must be put to death.  Nor may you accept ransom in lieu of flight to a city of refuge, enabling one to return to live on his land before the death of the priest.” (Num. 35:31-2)  Thus, vengeance, while it may in its early stage be driven by anger, is in fact an abstract, sacred obligation that may not be mitigated by the victim’s representative’s ability and willingness to forget, excuse, or forgive.  The crime is not an interpersonal matter – nor is it a matter of vandalizing “state property.”  It is a crime against the land and against the God in whose image the victim was created.

However, at the same time, the Bible, like the ancient Greeks, understood that leaving the basic principle “whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” as a blank check for personal acts of settling the score is not sustainable.  Blood vengeance must be brought into some kind of rational social framework that insulates it from feelings.  The alternative actually exists as an option, even in our time, but hardly seems ideal.  For example, in Albania, a land where the central government has been weak for centuries, it is common for villagers to live according to the Kanun, a medieval law code that features the obligation of direct, personal blood revenge.  Today, blood feuds claim thousands of victims every year, and can continue with reciprocal killings over generations.  Forgetting, excusing, or forgiving – breaking the chain of vengeance – is seen as a violation of a sacred obligation; this feels like a perverse application of the biblical concept of life for life that the Bible itself – and certainly subsequent Jewish law – saw as demanding some kind of social control.  If we allow the Furies to rule our lives, what kind of lives can we live?

Thus, it is possible to see legal punishment as a form of sacred vengeance that has been depersonalized and separated from feelings of anger.  Retribution is essential for maintaining a social – or perhaps cosmic – equilibrium; the blood cries out from the ground; however, if that retribution is governed only by feelings, it will spiral out of control and drench that ground with blood.

Here in the middle east, Palestinian village tradition has a mechanism for avoiding endless vendettas, the sulcha, whereby village elders lead the families of the victim and the perpetrator through a formal and binding process of fact-finding, restitution, and reconciliation.  Alas, the violent crime families that have filled the vacuum of state power in many villages and towns today are not interested in this institution, and brutal murders are an almost daily occurrence.

And of course, on the national level, it is hard to avoid the feeling that we are living through an endless vendetta, with no ability or willingness on either side to step outside of it and envision a different future.  We scorn institutional solutions, the language of diplomacy, preferring the language of raw power.  We seem to be governed by Furies.  The Eumenides are keeping a low profile, even quietly decamping for Berlin and Oporto.