kills himself, as good as he is, and as inadvertent as his deeds with father and mother were, then no man in the city could be said to be free of self-condemnation. Of course, this conclusion would include the debatable assumption that all human beings are capable of murder if provoked enough at the wrong time and in the wrong place.
When Creon returns from consulting with the Oracle at Delphi, he informs Oedipus that God has prescribed a cleansing of the city. The "rite of purification" will be accomplished "by banishing a man, or expiation of blood by blood, since it is murder guilt which holds our city in this destroying storm" (Sophocles 14-15).
The gods themselves, then, or the God, seems to clearly be offering a choice of punishments--banishment, meaning exile, or some form of bloodletting, which may or may not be death. In any case, Oedipus fulfills both of those punishments when he goes into exile and blinds himself. Even more significantly, Oedipus fulfills upon himself the judgment he himself calls for when he declares the punishment due the killer should he come for not:
I command him to tell everything . . . for bitter punishment he shall have none, but leave this land unharmed. . . . But if you shall keep silence, . . . I forbid that man my land . . . and I forbid any to welcome him. . . . I command all to drive him from their homes, since he is our pollution. . . . Upon the murderer I invoke this curse-- . . . may he wear out his life in misery to miserable doom! If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth I pray that I myself may feel my curse (Sophocles 20).
Until he discovers the truth, Oedipus is unaware of the role he has played in bringing about the curse. Therefore, it is difficult to say that he had "knowledge" of himself living at his own hearth as the killer of Laius. In any case, he fulfills his pledge to
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