“Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
This proverb encourages revenge or retaliation.
Today, it doesn’t literally mean that if someone takes your eye or your tooth, that you take his in return. But, it means that if someone were to harm you, you should harm him back.
There are many instances I can think of where this proverb is in action, but I will give one example I see often:
A man breaks a woman’s heart and so she “keys” his car (meaning: she used her car keys to scratch his car badly). Both were important things to the person: the heart to the woman, the car to the man.
Of course, I do not support this way of thinking.
(Naturally, as a normal human being, I would wish revenge on someone who wronged me badly. But, I am also a believer in karma, and so I know the world will right any wrong done to me if I just have patience.)
Another phrase used in place of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” is “Tit for Tat”. This means the same thing: “What you have done to me, I will now do to you.”
But, I like to think of what Mahatma Gandhi said in return: “an eye for an eye for an eye for an eye….ends in making everyone blind.”
Or…the response of Tevvye, a character in one of my favorite musicals, Fiddler on the Roof: “And then the whole world would be blind and toothless.”
To me, this says that there would be no end.
If you do something to someone, they will do it back to you. And then, in retaliation, you would attack them again. They would attack again. It would be ongoing. At the end, (if you use the proverb literally), both of you would be blind and toothless. If the whole world behaved this way……then yes, the whole world would be blind and toothless.
Anyway, that is what this proverb means to me. But, it is one that I do not support.^^;
