This sugya is about the halakhic line be...

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This sugya is about the halakhic line between threat, self-defense, and retaliation.

The question is not whether halakhah recognizes self-defense. It does. The question is when the metziut has crossed from ordinary conflict into a halakhic need for force, and once that line is crossed, how much force the Torah permits.

The psak din is that force is permitted only as present hatzalah. It is not permitted as retaliation, punishment, emotional release, or an answer to humiliation. Therefore, words alone do not permit striking, an ordinary assault permits only the force needed to stop the assault, and a life-level danger enters the din of rodef only when the danger is credible, immediate, and not avoidable by a lesser effective means.

The whole sugya turns on one point: the heter follows the danger. When the danger has not yet begun, the heter has not begun. When the danger stops, the heter stops.

1. What is not being debated

We are not debating whether a person may defend himself. That is obvious in halakhah. We are not debating haba le-horgekha hashkem le-horgo, because if someone is coming to kill you, the Torah does not require you to wait until he succeeds. We are also not debating the duty to save another person from a rodef, because the Mishnah, the Gemara, Rambam, and Shulchan Aruch all establish that one who is pursuing another to kill him may be stopped even with the life of the rodef when that is the only way to save the nirdaf.

The real question is earlier and narrower. When someone is threatening, posturing, yelling, approaching, blocking, grabbing, or starting some ambiguous physical confrontation, when has the case crossed from words into danger, from danger into assault, and from assault into rodef?

That is the sugya. The question is not, can I attack him back. The question is, what exactly am I allowed to do now for hatzalah?

This distinction is not rhetoric. It is the whole din. If the act is hatzalah, the act may be mutar and sometimes required. If the act is retaliation, the act remains chavalah, and chavalah is assur.

2. The baseline din is chavalah

Before rodef, before self-defense, before any talk of striking back, the baseline din is that it is forbidden to hit another person.

Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat 420 opens the laws of chavalah by ruling that it is assur for a person to strike his fellow, and if he strikes him he violates a lav derived from lo yosif, the Torah's prohibition of adding extra lashes to a person who is already liable to be struck by Beit Din. If the Torah is careful with the body of a rasha who deserves malkot, all the more so with an ordinary person who does not deserve to be hit. The Shulchan Aruch then adds the language of Chazal that one who merely raises his hand against another to strike him, even before the strike lands, is called a rasha.

That is the opening category. Halakhah does not begin with personal violence as a neutral option. It begins with an issur.

Therefore, the first question in every ambiguous case is not whether the other person is obnoxious, threatening, humiliating, irrational, or wrong. The first question is whether there is now a defined halakhic heter that displaces the issur of chavalah. Without that heter, hitting remains hitting.

This matters because people naturally confuse moral blame with defensive permission. A person can be wrong without becoming a rodef. A person can be cruel without giving you a heter to hit him. A person can threaten in a way that requires serious protective action, and still not yet have created a license for violence. The halakhic system does not ask only whether he is bad; it asks whether force is presently needed for hatzalah.

3. Threatening words are not nothing, but they are not automatically force

Threatening words are not nothing. Halakhah treats danger-signals seriously, and Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat 426 rules that if someone hears people plotting harm against another person and he can warn him, appease the aggressor, or otherwise prevent the danger, and he does not act, he violates lo ta'amod al dam re'ekha.

That source is important because it means speech can create obligation. If someone hears a credible threat, he may have to warn the target, separate the parties, call for help, document the threat, involve responsible authorities, or take other protective steps. Speech can be evidence of danger. Speech can trigger shemirah. Speech can trigger lo ta'amod.

But that same source does not say that threatening speech automatically permits striking. The halakhic response to speech is measured by the danger that the speech creates. If the danger is still in the lane of warning, distancing, and protection, then the response remains warning, distancing, and protection. It becomes force only when force is presently needed to stop harm.

Therefore, words alone, even ugly words, even intimidating words, even words that sound like a threat, do not by themselves create a heter to hit. They may change the prudential calculation. They may require leaving. They may require witnesses.

They may require contacting police or communal authorities. They may require warning another person who is being targeted. But the words themselves do not erase the lav of chavalah.

The metziut changes when the words are joined to immediate capacity and action. If a person says, I am going to hurt you, while he has no present access, no weapon, no movement toward you, and no ability to carry it out now, the halakhic response is protection, not striking. If the same words are said while he is advancing with a weapon, blocking your exit, reaching to attack, or otherwise moving from speech into immediate physical danger, the words are no longer being judged alone. They have become part of the dangerous metziut.

So the rule is not that threats are ignored. The rule is that threats are processed through metziut. What is he doing? What can he do now? Is he able to carry out the threat?

Is the danger immediate? Is force necessary? Is lesser force enough? Those are the questions that move the case from speech into defense.

4. The clearest contemporary-style formulation is in Shulchan Aruch HaRav

Shulchan Aruch HaRav, in Choshen Mishpat, Hilchot Nizkei Guf VaNefesh, gives the cleanest formulation for the ordinary self-defense case, because he speaks directly about someone who started a fight, insulted, and even hit first.

He says that it is forbidden to hit another person even if the other person began the quarrel and insulted him with words, and even if the other person struck him first, provided that the first attacker has already stopped. But if the first attacker has not stopped, then the attacked person may hit him in order to save himself, if he cannot save himself in another way; and if he can save himself with a smaller blow, he may not hit him with a greater blow.

That is the entire sugya in miniature.

Even if he started, you do not get retaliation. Even if he insulted, you do not get retaliation. Even if he already hit you, you do not get retaliation once he has stopped. If he has not stopped, then you may act to save yourself, but only because the act is rescue, and only to the degree that rescue requires.

The words are precise. The heter is kedei lehatzil atzmo, to save himself. It is not kedei lehashiv, to answer back.

It is not kedei lehanekem, to take revenge. It is not kedei lehanish, to punish. It is hatzalah.

The boundary is also precise. If he can save himself in another way, he must use the other way. If a small blow is enough, a large blow is forbidden. If separation is enough, striking is forbidden. If warning is enough, escalation is forbidden. If escape is available without increasing danger, force is not automatically justified. The permission is tied to the necessity.

This is the central psak for ordinary ambiguous cases, because most real-life questions are not full rodef cases. They are cases of anger, threats, pushing, grabbing, blocking, intimidation, and uncertain escalation. In those cases, the Shulchan Aruch HaRav gives the working rule: if he stopped, no hitting; if he has not stopped, only the force needed to save yourself; if less is enough, more is assur.

5. The Gemara's rodef sugya

The full rodef lane begins in Sanhedrin 73a. The Mishnah says: these are the ones whom one saves with their lives, and the first case is a person pursuing his fellow to kill him. The Gemara asks for the source and brings lo ta'amod al dam re'ekha, do not stand by your fellow's blood. It also derives the law through the parashah of the na'arah me'orasah, where the Torah says that if there is someone to save her, he must save her with whatever means he can.

The Gemara is teaching two connected things. First, there is a chiyuv hatzalah: one may not stand by while another person is being killed. Second, in the rodef case, the hatzalah may reach even the life of the rodef, because if the only way to save the nirdaf is to kill the rodef, the Torah commands rescue before the murder is completed.

But the word “save” is doing the work. The rodef is not being executed as a punishment. He is being stopped as a danger. That is why the law applies even before the murder occurs, and that is also why it ends when the danger ends.

Rashi's comments on the sugya sharpen the point. On lo ta'amod, Rashi explains: do not stand yourself over his blood; save him. The issue is not private vengeance but the obligation not to leave another person's blood exposed. The rodef may be stopped because the nirdaf needs rescue.

The Yad Ramah similarly frames the sugya as saving the nirdaf from the rodef. The act is not a personal settling of accounts. It is the removal of the danger from the person being pursued.

That is the meqorist control. The source is rodef. The din is rescue. The geder is present pursuit. The boundary is necessity. The nafqa mina is that once the pursuit stops, the rodef-din stops.

6. Rambam turns the sugya into psak

Rambam, Hilchot Rotzeach uShemirat Nefesh chapter 1, codifies the sugya in a way that gives us the practical psak structure.

First, Rambam rules that if someone is pursuing another to kill him, even if the rodef is a minor, all Israel are commanded to save the nirdaf from the hand of the rodef, even with the life of the rodef.

The case of a minor matters. A minor is not punishable by Beit Din. Therefore, if a minor rodef can be killed to save the nirdaf, the killing cannot be punishment. It must be hatzalah. This point is later stated explicitly by the Noda BiYehudah, who argues that killing a rodef is not a penalty at all, but rescue.

Second, Rambam says that if the rodef was warned and he continues pursuing, he may be killed even if he did not accept formal hasra'ah, because he is still pursuing. This means rodef is not a normal courtroom punishment that depends on formal capital procedure. It is an emergency din of stopping danger. Still, warning matters when it may stop the danger, because warning is one of the lesser means of hatzalah.

Third, Rambam gives the major limitation. If the rescuers can save the nirdaf by injuring one limb of the rodef, such as by striking him in a way that disables him, they must do that. If they cannot aim or cannot save except by killing him, they kill him, even though he has not yet killed. Then Rambam says that if someone could have saved with one limb and did not bother to do so, but instead saved by killing the rodef, he is a shedder of blood, even though Beit Din does not execute him.

This is a severe formulation. It means even in a real rodef case, where the pursuer is actually coming to kill, the permission is still not open-ended. The rescuer is not licensed to use whatever force he feels like using. He is licensed to use what rescue requires.

Therefore, the rodef lane has two sides. On one side, it is very strong, because it permits stopping a murderer before the murder. On the other side, it is very narrow, because it permits only what is necessary to save. That is why rodef is the wrong category for ordinary anger, remote fear, social pressure, ideological panic, or revenge. Rodef is present danger.

7. Ba ba-machteret: the Torah's model for ambiguous danger

The classic ambiguous case is ba ba-machteret, the burglar who tunnels into a house. On the surface, he is coming for money. He is not yet attacking a person. Still, the Torah says there are circumstances where the homeowner who kills him is not liable, because the burglar is presumed to be prepared for lethal confrontation.

Sanhedrin 72a explains the logic. A person does not stand by while his money is taken. The burglar knows that the owner may resist, and he enters prepared for the possibility of killing the owner. From here comes the phrase: if someone comes to kill you, rise early to kill him first.

But the sugya also shows the limits. It does not say that every thief may always be killed. It creates a danger-presumption for a specific metziut: a secret home intrusion where confrontation is built into the situation.

Rambam in Hilchot Geneivah chapter 9 codifies that the burglar in the tunnel has no blood because he is presumed that if the owner stands against him, he will kill him, and therefore he is like a rodef. But Rambam immediately adds that if it is clear to the homeowner that this burglar would not kill him and came only for money, it is forbidden to kill him, and if he kills him he is a murderer. Rambam then adds that if the burglar already turned away, left, or was surrounded so that he is no longer pursuing, he has blood and may not be killed.

This is very important for ambiguous self-defense. Halakhah does not demand mathematical certainty before danger is treated as danger. The Torah recognizes chazakah, context, and a realistic danger-presumption. But once the presumption is defeated, or once the danger has passed, the heter disappears.

So ba ba-machteret does not prove that one may escalate whenever one feels threatened. It proves a more precise rule: when the metziut itself carries a credible presumption of lethal danger, the rodef lane can open before the first blow, but when the danger is absent, known to be absent, or already neutralized, the rodef lane closes.

8. Shulchan Aruch and Rema

Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat 425 follows Rambam. If someone is pursuing another to kill him, and he was warned and continues pursuing, all Israel are commanded to save the nirdaf through a limb of the rodef if possible. If they cannot aim and cannot save except by killing the rodef, they may kill him, even though he has not yet killed.

The Rema adds the ba ba-machteret case. A burglar entering secretly has the law of a rodef, but if it is known that he came only for money and that even if the owner stands against him he would not kill, it is forbidden to kill him.

Again, the structure is stable. Present danger creates the heter. Lesser effective means limit the heter. Knowledge that there is no mortal danger cancels the heter. Neutralization ends the heter.

That means the psak cannot be: if I feel threatened, I can strike. It also cannot be: I must wait until the attacker injures me. Both are wrong. The psak is that the force must match the halakhic metziut.

Threatening speech is one lane. Ongoing assault is another lane. Credible life-level danger is rodef. A neutralized attacker is no longer in the same din.

9. Contemporary psak and application

Contemporary poskim basically preserve the same structure, but they apply it to modern facts: weapons, terrorists, police, soldiers, civilians, and fast-moving danger.

Rav Eliezer Melamed, in Peninei Halakhah, writes in the context of a terrorist danger that wherever danger remains, even a slight doubt of danger, there is a mitzvah to save the people there by striking the attacker. Since the terrorist has the din of rodef, if he can be stopped by wounding or disabling him, that is preferable; but if there is concern that a limb-injury will not remove the danger, or that trying to aim precisely will delay the rescue and endanger people, then one must kill the rodef to save the nirdafim.

The practical principle is not limited to that exact case, because the underlying din is the same din as Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat 425. In mortal danger, lesser force is required when it will work; but when trying to use lesser force will likely fail, delay the rescue, or leave people in danger, the rescuer must stop the danger effectively. In a life-threatening moment, a person is not required to perform theoretical precision that would itself endanger life.

Rav Yaakov Ariel, in the discussion of a neutralized terrorist, states the other side of the same rule. When danger remains, killing may be permitted; when the danger has passed and the attacker is restrained, wounded, or no longer threatening, one must act with judgment and not out of spontaneous emotion. That is exactly the Rambam's structure: while the rodef is pursuing, the rodef may be stopped; after the pursuit has ended, the person is no longer killed as a private act of rescue.

So contemporary psak does not create a new emotional rule. It applies the old rule to modern facts. The heter is danger. The measure is necessity. The endpoint is neutralization.

10. Psak din: the operative line

The operative psak din is as follows.

A person may not strike another person because of insult, humiliation, angry speech, aggressive posture, or vague threat. These things may be serious, and they may require protective action, but they do not by themselves create a heter to hit. The correct lane is warning, distance, witnesses, documentation, calling for help, and involving the proper authorities where needed.

If the threat is specific, credible, and joined to present ability and movement toward harm, the case is no longer judged as words alone. At that point, one must assess whether there is immediate danger and what force is needed to stop it. The more the facts show capacity, proximity, weapon, physical advance, blocked escape, intoxicated loss of control, or repeated movement into attack, the more the metziut moves from speech toward assault or rodef.

If the person is presently attacking in a non-lethal way, the nirdaf may use force to stop the attack, but only the force necessary to stop it. If pushing away works, punching is not automatically mutar. If holding him off works, breaking him is not mutar. If leaving safely works, escalation is not mutar. If a small strike is enough, a greater strike is assur. This is the Shulchan Aruch HaRav rule: if he has not stopped, you may strike to save yourself when there is no other way; if a smaller blow is enough, you may not strike more.

If the person is creating credible immediate danger to life, or grave bodily danger that can realistically become life-threatening, the din enters rodef. In that lane, one may stop the rodef even before he succeeds, and if the only effective way to stop him is lethal force, lethal force is permitted and sometimes required. But even in that lane, if one can stop him by lesser effective force without increasing danger, one must use the lesser force.

If the person has stopped, retreated, been restrained, dropped the weapon, been surrounded, left the area, or otherwise no longer presents the danger, the heter ends. At that point, striking him is no longer hatzalah. It becomes retaliation or punishment, and private punishment is not the din.

If there is doubt whether the danger truly ended, the doubt is part of the metziut. In real life, a person who appears down may still have a weapon, may still be able to attack, or may still endanger others. Where danger remains, one may continue acting to neutralize the danger. But once the danger is actually neutralized, one may not continue attacking because of anger, fear, revenge, or moral disgust.

That is the line.

11. Words alone

Words alone are not a heter to hit.

A threat can be evidence. A threat can be a warning sign. A threat can obligate action. But words remain words until they are joined to a present dangerous metziut.

Therefore, if someone says something threatening in a conversation, the first halakhic moves are protective, not violent. Create distance. Stop the interaction. Leave the area.

Get witnesses. Warn him to stop. Call for help. Document the threat. Notify the target if someone else is being threatened. Involve police or other responsible authority when the situation calls for it.

The reason is that lo ta'amod al dam re'ekha does not only mean dramatic physical rescue. It also means not ignoring danger when it is forming. Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat 426 includes the case of hearing people plotting against someone and not telling him. The Torah does not want passivity in the face of danger. But active prevention must be fitted to the actual danger. If the danger is a threat in speech, the ordinary response is warning and prevention, not striking.

This is a major nafqa mina. A person cannot say: since he threatened me, I get to attack first. He can say: since he threatened me, I need to take protective steps and assess whether the threat is turning into immediate danger. The difference is the difference between halakhic shemirah and forbidden chavalah.

12. Ongoing assault

If someone is currently assaulting you, the din changes because the metziut changed. Now there is an ongoing harm, and the question becomes what is necessary to stop it.

In this lane, the heter is broader than words but narrower than rodef. An ordinary punch, grab, shove, hold, or bodily interference may allow defensive force, but it does not automatically allow lethal force. The act must be defensive and proportionate to the need.

The language of Shulchan Aruch HaRav controls again. If the aggressor has not stopped, the victim may strike him to save himself if he cannot be saved in another way. But if he can save himself through a lesser strike, he may not strike more.

This is not secular “proportionality” as a slogan. It is a halakhic necessity rule. The measure of the permitted force is the force needed to stop the harm. That measure can rise quickly if the assault escalates, because human violence is not always neat, and a punch can become a head injury, a grab can become choking, and a shove can become a fall. But the legal category still follows the present danger, not the victim's anger.

Therefore, an ongoing assault gives a heter to stop the assault. It does not give a heter to settle the score.

13. Life-level danger and rodef

The rodef lane opens when the danger is life-level, or when the facts create a credible immediate danger of killing or severe harm that can endanger life.

The classic case is someone pursuing another to kill him. But the category is not limited to a formal declaration. A weapon, a violent entry, a present attack likely to kill, choking, shooting, stabbing, trying to run someone over, or any equivalent immediate mortal danger can be rodef in function, because the din is about saving the nirdaf from death.

In that situation, one does not wait for the murder to be completed. The Torah's whole point is that the nirdaf is saved before he is killed. That is why the Mishnah speaks of stopping the pursuer and why Rambam says even though he has not yet killed.

But the rodef heter is still bounded. If warning will stop him and there is time to warn without increasing danger, one should warn. If disabling will stop him and does not create added danger, one should disable.

If restraint will stop him, one should restrain. If only lethal force will stop him, lethal force is permitted.

The psak is not: lethal danger allows any violence. The psak is: lethal danger allows whatever is necessary to remove lethal danger.

14. Ba ba-machteret and home-intrusion danger

The home-intrusion case teaches how halakhah handles a serious ambiguous danger.

The burglar may say he came only for money. But the Torah recognizes that a secret break-in can create a lethal confrontation because the owner will resist and the burglar may be prepared to kill. That is why the Gemara says haba le-horgekha hashkem le-horgo in the context of ba ba-machteret.

But Rambam's limits are just as important as the heter. If it is clear that the burglar will not kill, killing him is forbidden. If he has turned away or is surrounded and no longer pursuing, he has blood. If the intrusion is into a place where the owner is not normally present, the presumption of lethal confrontation may not apply in the same way.

Therefore, ba ba-machteret is not a general license for violence against thieves. It is a model of danger-presumption. Where the facts create a chazakah of mortal confrontation, the rodef lane can open before the first blow. Where the facts show only money and no life-danger, the rodef lane does not open. Where the danger ended, the lane closes.

That gives a precise rule for ambiguous cases: halakhah can use realistic presumptions of danger, but it does not use imagination or revenge. The presumption must come from the metziut.

15. Warning and de-escalation

In a formal capital case, hasra'ah is part of the court process. In rodef, the rescuer is not carrying out a court punishment, so the din does not depend on ordinary capital hasra'ah. Rambam says that if the rodef was warned and continues pursuing, he may be killed even though he did not accept the warning, because he is still pursuing.

That does not mean warning is irrelevant. It means warning is judged as part of hatzalah. If warning can stop the danger, warning is a lesser effective means and should be used. If warning would waste time and create danger, the rescuer does not wait for a formal procedure while the nirdaf is being killed.

The same applies to de-escalation. De-escalation is not a separate moral slogan added from outside the sugya. It is one of the ways to avoid unnecessary chavalah. If the threat can be ended by speech, distance, a locked door, witnesses, police, or leaving, then those methods are the halakhically preferred methods. But if those methods will not stop immediate danger, the need for hatzalah controls.

16. Third-party rescue

When a third party sees danger, the source is lo ta'amod al dam re'ekha. One may not stand by while another person is being killed, attacked, or placed in serious danger.

But the third-party rescuer also has limits. If he can stop the danger without serious force, he must do that. If he can call help in time, warn, separate, restrain, or block without escalating danger, that is the proper lane. If he faces a true rodef case and only force will save, then he must act to save.

The third party does not become a private judge. He becomes a rescuer. That distinction matters because a rescuer acts only while rescue is needed. Afterward, the matter belongs to Beit Din, lawful authority, communal responsibility, and the normal systems of din, not private vengeance.

17. After the fact

After the danger has ended, the halakhic system changes lanes.

If the attacker committed an aveirah, caused damage, injured someone, threatened someone, or created a dangerous public situation, that may require reporting, Beit Din, police, testimony, restitution, punishment, distancing, or communal protection. But those are after-the-fact systems. They are not the rodef heter.

Rambam says clearly that if a murderer already committed the act, private people do not execute him before judgment. The killer is brought to Beit Din. The reason is simple: rodef is not punishment after the crime. It is rescue before the crime. Once the need for rescue is gone, the private heter is gone.

So if someone hits you and then stops, Shulchan Aruch HaRav says you may not hit him back. If someone threatens you and then leaves, you may not chase and strike him. If someone attacked and is now restrained, you may not continue because your blood is boiling. The emotional truth may be real, but it is not a heter.

18. The assumption audit

The first mistaken assumption is that self-defense means permission to attack back. That is false. Self-defense in halakhah means present hatzalah.

The second mistaken assumption is that a threat is either meaningless or fully rodef. That is false. A threat is evidence of danger, and it can create obligations of warning and prevention, but it becomes force-permitting only when joined to immediate dangerous metziut.

The third mistaken assumption is that whoever started loses all protection. That is false. Even a real rodef may not be killed if he can be stopped with lesser force, and even someone who hit first may not be hit back after he stops.

The fourth mistaken assumption is that rodef is punishment. That is false. The rodef is stopped to save the nirdaf. That is why even a minor rodef can be stopped, and that is why a neutralized rodef may not be killed.

The fifth mistaken assumption is that lesser force is always required in a theoretical sense. That is also false. Lesser force is required only when it is actually effective without increasing danger. If trying to aim for lesser force will delay the rescue and risk lives, then effective force is the required force.

The sixth mistaken assumption is that once force becomes permitted, the person may continue until he feels safe emotionally. That is false. The heter follows objective danger as best as it can be judged in the moment. When the danger is neutralized, the heter stops.

19. Practical psak categories

Category 1: insult, humiliation, aggressive tone, or ordinary verbal hostility.

The psak is no striking. Use distance, warning, silence, witnesses, documentation, and authority. There is no heter of chavalah merely because speech was ugly.

Category 2: threatening words without immediate capacity.

The psak is still no striking, but the threat is not ignored. The response is protective action: leave, warn, document, notify the target, call help, and create barriers. If the threat is credible and directed at another person, failure to warn may implicate lo ta'amod al dam re'ekha.

Category 3: threatening words with immediate capacity and movement toward harm.

The case depends on the metziut. If the words are joined to a weapon, physical advance, blocked exit, repeated lunging, grabbing, or other present danger, the case may enter ordinary assault or rodef depending on severity. Force may be used only to the extent needed to stop the harm.

Category 4: ongoing non-lethal assault.

The psak is that one may use necessary defensive force to stop the assault. If there is a safe lesser option, use it. If a smaller force works, greater force is assur. The goal is to stop, not to repay.

Category 5: credible immediate life-danger.

The psak is rodef. The nirdaf or rescuer may stop the rodef, even with lethal force if no lesser effective force will save. If lesser force will save without increasing danger, lesser force must be used.

Category 6: attacker neutralized.

The psak is that the heter ends. If danger truly remains, continue neutralizing. If danger has passed, do not continue striking. The case moves to reporting, testimony, Beit Din, civil authority, restitution, and prevention of future harm.

Category 7: home intrusion or equivalent high-risk invasion.

The psak follows ba ba-machteret. If the metziut creates a credible presumption of lethal confrontation, the rodef lane may open even before the intruder strikes. If it is clear that he will not kill and came only for money, or if he has left, turned away, or been neutralized, killing is forbidden.

20. The final psak din

The final psak din is this.

Force is permitted only as present hatzalah.

Words alone do not permit striking.

Threats matter only insofar as they create real danger, and the response to threat begins with protection, warning, distance, and authority, not with violence.

If the aggressor is presently attacking and has not stopped, the victim may use the force necessary to save himself, when no lesser effective means is available.

If lesser force is enough, greater force is forbidden.

If the danger is credible, immediate, and life-level, the din is rodef, and the rodef may be stopped even before he kills, including with lethal force when that is the only effective way to save.

If the danger has ended, the heter has ended.

That is the line: not threat as emotion, but danger as metziut; not attack back, but hatzalah; not punishment, but stopping; not more than necessary, but whatever is necessary.