Page 56 - Pentateuch - Student Textbook

7.5 Let’s Personalize this Lesson…

A variety of law codes used by other nations about the same time as the Exodus laws
have been discovered. The Code of Ur-nammu is the first law code known in history. It
contained twenty-nine laws and was from Ur. Others include the Code of Eshnunna with
sixty-one laws (Baghdad around 2000 B.C.), the Code of Hammurabi with 282 laws
(Babylon around 1750 B.C.), and the Hittite Law Code with one hundred laws (around 1500
B.C.). Few of these codes were used in courts to administer justice, but the concepts were
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valuable for tradition, public opinion, and common sense.

A comparison of law codes finds close parallels in many areas, even the wording of specific
laws. Scholars identify a number of significant differences, however, between any of these
codes and the Mosaic laws. The Exodus laws placed a high value on human life and well-being.
Physical mutilation was never an acceptable form of punishment. Justice was equal for every
person regardless of status in society. Thus, even slaves had rights and privileges that had to be
acknowledged. We might be critical of some aspects of the treatment of women, yet in
comparison to the degrading role of women in other ancient countries, the laws were more of a
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protection and a statement about the honor and dignity of women as human beings.

The Law Code of Hammurabi, about 1792-1750 B.C.

6. If a citizen has stolen property of the temple or of the crown, that man shall die, and
whoever receives the stolen goods from him shall die.
7. If a citizen has purchased or has accepted for safe custody silver,
or gold, or serf, or bondmaid, or ox, or sheep, or whatsoever it may
be, from the hand of the son of a citizen, or from the serf of a
citizen, without witnesses or contracts, that man is a thief, and he
shall die.
148. If a citizen has taken a wife and intermittent fever attacks her,
and if he plans to take another wife, he may do so. He may not
forsake his wife, who is attacked by the intermittent fever, but she
shall dwell in a house which he has prepared, and he shall support
her for life.
195. If a son struck his father, they shall cut off his hand. Fig. 32: Hammurabi laws
202. If a citizen struck the cheek of his superior, he shall receive sixty
strokes with a thong.
214. If a bondmaid [struck by a citizen] dies as a result, he shall pay a third of a mina of silver.
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The Laws of Ur-Nammu, about 2100 B.C.

57 Hamilton, Handbook, 201f.
58 Ibid., 205-207.
59 W. J. Martin, “The Law Code of Hammurabi, Documents from Old Testament Times, ed. D. W. Winton
(New York: Harper, 1961), 29-35.

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