Understanding Justice - The Pit & the Mound - Too Little or too Much

An analogy that helps us to understand the concept of justice is the analogy of the pit and the mound. Imagine a bad guy sneaks into your yard, digs a pit and and steals or scatters your dirt.  Hearing the noise, you look out the window, and see him digging the pit.  Justice occurs when a society makes the bad guy fill up the pit he dug. Injustice occurs in two ways: 1) a society does not make the bad guy fill up the pit he dug or 2) a society makes the bad guy not only fill up the pit but put a mound on top of it.  Too little or too much is an injustice.  Like the children's tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the soup must not be too hot or too cold but just right.

We humans have a tendency to demand a mound from pit diggers.  When God imposed the rule on mankind, "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth" God was limiting what we may exact from a pit digger.  No more than filling up the pit may be lawfully exacted. 

Human Mercy is not demanding a mound from a pit digger.  Mercy the magnitude of God's is allowing the pit to remain unfilled.