Well, he quotes an OT law regarding the punishment should equal the severity of the crime (eye for eye). Why was this OT principle in effect and what did it do? Well, it curbed crime. When someone realized taking a life would mean their own death: it prevented the crimes! The second purpose, and this is key... was to prevent excessive punishment because of PERSONAL VENGEANCE. If all that was done is someone stole $10 from you, he was to be punished by paying you $10 back. You could not give him a death sentence over stealing $10. So the eye for eye law was just (punishment matches the crime) AND merciful (no excessive punishment). What's this mean? IN NO WAY was the OT law that Jesus was quoting EVER used for people taking the law into their own hands. So you're assumption regarding this text is fatally flawed from the start. We must look at the context and understand the law Jesus was quoting: Pacifists don't make that effort. Now what happened to this law? The Pharisees perverted it from prevention of personal vengeance, INTO personal vengeance! Like Jesus spent tons of his time doing, he was correcting the perversion of his law. Remember, his law was not bad- the people were bad. His entire point with this message was about PERSONAL VENGEANCE. He was correcting the perversion and not saying his law was in error, he was saying the perversion of it was.