Some Elements of Justice

(Deuteronomy 19:14 - 19:21)
"When settled in the land Jehovah your god has given to you as your inheritance do not move your neighbors’ boundary markers set up by your ancestors.

"One witness is insufficient to establish the guilt of a person accused of committing any crime or offense.  Two or more witnesses are required to prove a case.

"If a malicious witness comes forward to accuse someone of a crime, then he, the accuser, and the accused must appear before the altar of Jehovah and present the case to the priests and judges serving in office at that time.  The judges must conduct a thorough investigation, and if they find that the witness has accused his fellow Israelite falsely, then they must impose upon the false accuser the very sentence he sought for the man he accused.  In this way you will purge such evil from your midst.  The rest of the people will come to know of it and thus be so afraid that such an evil thing will never be done among you again.  Show no pity: a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot."

Notes
1. The prohibition against the moving and manipulation of boundary markers addresses what would probably be an important area of contention among the Israelites, land claims.  For the first few centuries of American history, the colonization of early New England, the settlement of the frontier, the conquest of the Old West, property disputes were always a major point of conflict.  Surveying the land and setting up boundary markers and fences established claims to personal property.  Apparently the Israelites, even if they held some property communally, knew the concept of personal property, if not individual, at least family ownership of land.  (More primitive societies often do not understand such a concept.  Native Americans, for instance, did not hold the same ideas about property that Europeans did.  Land ownership did not really exist; the claim to land use was permitted only to the tribe, not the individual)  It is unlikely, though, that the early settlers of the Promised Land, the descendants of Egyptian slaves, who had been a part of a nomadic society, would have shifted so quickly into the mindset of the agricultural society with fixed abodes and boundary markers, cities and towns, and settled land already divided among the tribes and clans and families. But it cannot be lost upon the reader that what is presented in the Books of Moses, the customs and traditions, laws and statutes, are unlikely to be relevant to a people just emerging from a nomadic existence.

2. Emphasized again are two concepts that are cornerstones of Jehovan justice.  One is draconian punishments that make examples of wrongdoers in order to discourage and deter further wrong doing.  Complimentary to this, although, one who think, often at odds with it, is the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" guideline that allows for no clemency, no forgiveness, little consideration of extenuating circumstances, and no Christian mercy.