Context
The Testimony of Two or Three Witnesses
…Then the rest of the people will hear and be afraid, and they will never again do anything so evil among you. You must show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, and foot for foot.
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary
19:15-21 Sentence should never be passed upon the testimony of one witness alone. A false witness should suffer the same punishment which he sought to have inflicted upon the person he accused. Nor could any law be more just. Let all Christians not only be cautious in bearing witness in public, but be careful not to join in private slanders; and let all whose consciences accuse them of crime, without delay flee for refuge to the hope set before them in Jesus Christ.
Punishment of a False Witness.
But if convicted of perjury, it will be sufficient for his own condemnation, and his punishment shall be exactly the same as would have overtaken the object of his malignant prosecution.
What punishment he intended or the law allotted to the accused, if he had been convicted, the same shall the false accuser bear.
Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
And thine eye shall not pity,…. The false witness when convicted; this is directed to the judges, who should not spare such an one through favour or affection, but pronounce a righteous sentence on him, and see it executed, in proportion to the crime, and that according to the law of retaliation:
but life shall go for life; in such a case where the life of a person must have gone, if the falsehood of the testimony had not been discovered, the false witness must suffer death; in other cases, where a member would have been lost, or the price of it paid for, the same penalty was to be inflicted:
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot; that is, the price of an eye an eye, &c. see Exodus 21:23.
Milo 