If a man strikes and blinds the eye of his manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free as compensation for the eye.
26. And if a man smite the eye. Since, in the sight of God, there is neither slave nor free-man, it is clear that he sins as greatly who smites a slave, as if he had struck a free-man. Still, a distinction is made as regards the civil law and human justice, especially if any one have inflicted a wound on his own slave.
The law shields pregnant women with tender care, the tree and fruit must not be destroyed together. God's providence protects those who fear Him in child-bearing. Yet mark this: the lex talionis belongs to magistrates and God's hand in providence, never to private revenge, which would make men like fishes of the sea, devouring one another.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 21:22-36
If a man smite the eye of his servant,.... Give him a blow on the eye in a passion, as a correction for some fault he has committed: or the eye of his maid, that it perish; strike her on that part in like manner, so that the eye is beaten or drops out, or however loses its sight, and "is blinded", as the Septuagint...