Choose a Kind Death From Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

It was taught: "He shall surely be avenged" (Exodus 21:20). I do not yet know what this vengeance is. When Scripture says, "And I will bring upon you a sword that avenges the vengeance of the covenant" (Leviticus 26:25), and so forth, you learn that vengeance means by the sword. But say it means he should be split apart? Scripture writes, "by the edge of the sword" (Deuteronomy 13:16). But say he should be cut into pieces? Rav Nachman said in the name of Rabbah bar Avuha: the verse states, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18) [choose for him a kind death]. We have found that a free man who killed a slave is put to death by the sword; from where do we learn the case of a slave who killed a free man? Is it not an inference from the lesser to the greater: if one is executed by the sword for killing a slave, surely so for a free man, by strangulation. This works for the one who holds strangulation is the lighter death; but for the one who holds strangulation is the more severe death, what can be said? It is derived from what we learned: "And you shall purge the innocent blood" (Deuteronomy 21:9) [from your midst]. Those who shed blood were compared to the heifer whose neck is broken: just as there it is by the neck, so too here at the neck. If so, just as there it is with a cleaver and from the back of the neck, so too here with a cleaver from the back of the neck? Rav Nachman said in the name of Rabbah bar Avuha: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" [therefore] choose for him a kind death.