What does the Torah mean when it writes "Ayin Tachas Ayin"?
Rashi, Ramban (Refer to 24:18:1:1*) and Targum Yonasan: It cannot mean literally 'an eye for an eye'. 1 What it therefore means is that he must pay the victim's value 2 - as if he was being sold as an Eved. 3
Because, as the Gemara explains in Bava Kama, 'What if the eye of the striker is larger than the eye of the victim?' (The first of a number of reasons given by the Gemara there, 83b & 84a).
Rashi: Which explains why the Torah writes a Lashon Nesinah ("Kein Yinasen bo") - 'something that is handed over from one person to another'.
Refer also to Mishpatim, Shemos, 24:21:1:1 & 24:21:1:2.
