Abū al-'Abbās Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—said:

Concerning the words of the Exalted,

“Retribution is prescribed for you in cases of murder,”

and the remainder of the verse, there are two interpretations.

The first is that retribution means retaliatory execution, and it is accepting blood money instead of execution. As reported from Ibn 'Abbās, retribution existed among the Children of Israel, but blood money did not. Allah therefore allowed blood money for this community, saying:

“But whoever is pardoned by his brother in any way…”

Pardoning means accepting blood money in a case of intentional killing.

“That is a concession from your Lord and a mercy,”

compared with what had been imposed upon the Children of Israel. According to this interpretation, the meaning is that a free person is to be executed for a free person, a slave for a slave, and a female for a female.

Qatādah said: “The people of the pre-Islamic era were given to oppression. When a tribe possessed strength in numbers and arms, and their slave killed another people's slave, they would say, ‘None but a free man shall be executed for him,’ asserting their superiority over others. If one of their women killed a woman from another people, they would say, ‘None but a man shall be executed for her.’ Then this verse was revealed.”

This is the view of most jurists, and al-Shāfi'ī and others have mentioned it.