Catholic Commentary
Laws on Bulls Injuring Other Animals: Shared and Full Liability
35“If one man’s bull injures another’s, so that it dies, then they shall sell the live bull, and divide its price; and they shall also divide the dead animal.36Or if it is known that the bull was in the habit of goring in the past, and its owner has not kept it in, he shall surely pay bull for bull, and the dead animal shall be his own.
Exodus 21:35–36 addresses liability when one person's bull injures another's animal. If the injury occurs without prior knowledge of the bull's dangerous nature, both owners share the financial loss equally; however, if the bull is known to be habitually aggressive and the owner failed to restrain it, the owner must pay full compensation and retains the dead animal's worthless carcass.
When you know danger and do nothing, the full debt becomes yours—culpability rises with knowledge.
Exodus 21:35 — The Unforeseeable Goring: Shared Liability
Verse 35 addresses an accidental scenario: one bull attacks and kills another without any prior pattern of aggression known to the owner. The Torah's solution is strikingly equitable — neither party absorbs the full loss. The surviving bull is sold, and both its price and the carcass of the dead animal are divided equally between the two owners. The carcass itself retains economic value (its hide, sinew, and bones), so the division is a genuine financial sharing, not merely symbolic.
The operative legal principle is that in the absence of known negligence, loss is distributed communally. The owner of the aggressive bull did not fail in any discernible duty; the event was genuinely unforeseeable. The law resists the temptation to assign full blame simply because one party's property caused the harm. This reflects a deep moral realism: not every destructive event is the product of moral failure. The community absorbs shared misfortune together.
The word used for "injures" (Hebrew nāgaph) implies a sudden striking, reinforcing the accidental character of the event. The structure — sell, divide the price, divide the carcass — ensures procedural fairness with no ambiguity about how the settlement is to be executed.
Exodus 21:36 — The Habitual Gorer: Full Liability
Verse 36 pivots sharply on a single moral pivot: prior knowledge. The conditional clause "if it is known that the bull was in the habit of goring" (Hebrew mu'ād, literally "forewarned" or "designated as dangerous") introduces a legal category that transforms the entire moral calculus. The term mu'ād in later rabbinic usage became a formal legal status requiring three prior incidents witnessed before the owner, but even in its original Sinaitic context the principle is clear: the owner who knew and did not act bears full responsibility.
The penalty is total: he must replace the dead animal bull for bull — a full, living equivalent — and the dead carcass remains his property, yielding him nothing. This asymmetry is intentional and instructive. He receives the worthless and must give what is whole. His negligence has converted the dead animal from a shared loss into his own burden.
This verse operates on the moral grammar of scientia et voluntas — knowledge and will — which Catholic moral theology identifies as the conditions necessary for full culpability. The owner's failure is not accidental but volitional: he knew, and he chose not to act. The law does not punish him for what the bull did; it punishes him for what he failed to do.
The Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Church Fathers, particularly in the Alexandrian tradition, read legal codes such as this as figures pointing toward moral and spiritual realities. St. Augustine, commenting on the responsibility of Christian teachers, draws on similar legal patterns: those entrusted with souls who know the dangers of sin and fail to warn their flock bear a graver accounting before God (cf. Enchiridion and his letters on pastoral negligence). The "habitual gorer" whose owner takes no corrective action images the soul that harbors a known, dangerous vice without seeking remedy through penance.
More broadly, these two verses together trace a movement from innocence to culpability that mirrors the moral arc of salvation history: Adam and Eve in ignorance (v. 35), Israel after Sinai with the Law given and known (v. 36). Once revelation is received, the standard of accountability rises. "To whom much is given, much will be required" (Luke 12:48) is not a New Testament innovation — it is inscribed in the very structure of Sinaitic jurisprudence.
Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to these verses.
Moral Theology and Degrees of Culpability: The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the morality of human acts depends on the object chosen, the end in view or the intention, and the circumstances of the action" (CCC §1757) and that "imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or nullified by ignorance" (CCC §1735). Verse 35 embodies precisely this principle: without knowledge of danger, the owner's moral culpability is reduced and loss is shared. Verse 36 applies the converse: full knowledge restores full responsibility. This is not primitive law that Christianity transcends — it is a divinely given grammar of moral reasoning that the Church's own tradition systematizes.
Social Justice and the Duty of Care: Catholic Social Teaching, rooted in Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum and developed through Gaudium et Spes, consistently emphasizes that property ownership carries social obligations. These verses are a biblical warrant: ownership of a dangerous animal creates a duty of care toward the neighbor. Neglecting that duty is an offense not merely against property law, but against the neighbor's dignity.
Pastoral Accountability: St. Gregory the Great in his Liber Regulae Pastoralis draws on the image of the negligent shepherd who knows the wolf is present. The bishop or priest who is aware of spiritual dangers threatening his people and fails to warn them — who does not "keep in" the dangerous forces — will answer for the souls lost. This typological reading deepens the passage beyond civil law into a theology of pastoral responsibility.
Natural Law: St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 95, a. 2) identifies such Mosaic civil precepts as applications of natural law to a particular people. These verses reflect a universal moral intuition — codified by divine wisdom — that foreknowledge transforms accident into negligence and demands proportionate reparation.
These verses confront the contemporary Catholic with a searching question: What do I already know, and what have I failed to do with that knowledge?
In an age of information saturation, the excuse of ignorance is increasingly difficult to sustain. A Catholic who knows that a relationship, a habit, an environment, or a pattern of behavior is spiritually "in the habit of goring" — and yet takes no corrective action — stands in the position of the negligent owner in verse 36, not the innocent party of verse 35. The "bull for bull" reckoning is inescapable.
Concretely: a parent who knows their child is being exposed to spiritually corrosive content and does nothing; a business owner who knows an employee is being treated unjustly and looks away; a parishioner who knows a neighbor is in material need and remains comfortable — each holds prior knowledge and bears the heavier liability.
The passage also counsels genuine equity in shared misfortune (v. 35). When loss is truly unforeseeable, the Christian response is not to seek someone to blame at all costs, but to share the burden charitably and justly. Not every wound demands a culprit. The division of loss between neighbors is itself a form of communal solidarity that prefigures the Church's call to bear one another's burdens (Gal 6:2).