somewhat puzzled scholars, and different explanations of the fact have arisen. At least one scholar holds that the exodus occurred in Merneptah's third year, and that he afterward attacked the Hebrews. Others have supposed that not all the Hebrews had been in Egypt, but only the Joseph tribes. Still others have thought that the Leah tribes had made their exodus during the eighteenth dynasty, and that it was these with whom Merneptah fought, while the Rachel tribes made their exodus under the nineteenth dynasty. Opinions vary according to the critical views of different writers. All scholars would welcome more information on these problems.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CODE OF HAMMURAPI AND THE PENTATEUCH

THE TEXT OF the Code; RESEMBLANCE TO AND CONTRAST WITH THE MOSAIC CODE. THE MOSAIC CODE NOT BORROWED FROM THE BABYLONIAN; Different UNDERLYING CONCEPTIONS.

1. The Text of the Code; Comparison with the Mosaic Code. The following code of laws was inscribed by order of Hammurapi, of the first dynasty of Babylon (2104-2061 B. C.), on a block of black diorite nearly eight feet in height and set up in Esagila, the temple of Marduk, in Babylon, so that the people might have the laws in the mother-tongue. As this last statement implies, the laws are written in Semitic Babylonian; before the time of Hammurapi the laws had been written in Sumerian. At some later time an Elamite conqueror, who was overrunning Babylonia, took this pillar away to Susa as a trophy. In course of time the pillar was broken into three parts, which were found by the French expedition under de Morgan in December, 1901, and January, 1902, while excavating at Susa. As the code is the oldest known code of laws in the world, being a thousand years older than Moses, and as it affords some interesting peculiarities as well as some striking parallels to the laws in Exodus 21-23 and in Deuteronomy, a translation of it, with some comparison of Exodus and Deuteronomy, is here given:

Against Witches

§ 1. If a man brings an accusation against a man, that he has laid a deathspell upon him, and has not proved it, the accuser shall be put to death.1

§ 2. If a man accuses another of practising sorcery upon him, but has not proved it, he against whom the charge of sorcery is made shall go to the sacred river; into the sacred river he shall plunge, and if the sacred river overpowers him, his accuser shall take possession of his house. If the sacred river shows that man to be innocent, and he is unharmed, he who charged him with sorcery shall be killed. He who plunged into the sacred river shall take the house of his

accuser.

1 Translated from the cuneiform text in Harper's Code of Hammurabi, and Ungnad's Keilschrifttexte der Gesetze Hammurabis.

With these laws we should compare Exod. 22: 18, which imposes the death penalty upon witches, and Deut. 18: 10, ff., which declares that there shall be no sorcerer, diviner, magician, or charmer in Israel and promises a line of prophets to render these unnecessary. Magic is banished from Israel; its presence in Babylonia is taken for granted, and only some of its exercises, which were supposed to be especially deadly, were forbidden. In § 2 the man accused of sorcery is to be tried by ordeal. He is to plunge into the river and if he can swim in its current, he is innocent. Trial by ordeal is found but once in the Hebrew laws (Num. 5:11-28). There both the crime and the ordeal are very different from this.

Note that in these sections the false accuser suffers in just the way he has tried to bring suffering to the other. This is the law of retaliation, which appears in Deut. 19: 16-21, where it is applied to false witnesses in the same way as here. It will be found underlying many of the penalties of this code.

Laws Concerning False Witness

§ 3. If in a case a man has borne false witness, or accused a man without proving it, if that case is a capital case, that man shall be put to death.

§ 4. If he has borne witness in a case of grain or money, the penalty of that case he shall himself bear.

Hebrew law was similar; a false witness was to be visited with the penalty which he had purposed to bring upon his brother (Deut. 19: 18, 19).

Against Reversing a Judicial Decision

§ 5. If a judge has pronounced a judgment, made a decision, caused it to be sealed, and afterward has altered his judgment, that judge they shall convict on account of the case which he decided and altered; the penalty which in that case he imposed he shall pay twelvefold, and in the assembly from the seat of his judgment they shall expel him; he shall not return; with the judges in a case he shall not sit.

Hebrew law presents no parallel to this.

Against Theft

§ 6. If a man steals the goods of a god (temple) or of a palace, that man shall be put to death, and he by whose hand the stolen goods were received shall be put to death.

§7. If a man purchases or receives on deposit either silver, gold, man-servant, maid-servant, ox, sheep, ass, or anything whatever from the hand of a minor or a slave without witnesses or contracts, that man is a thief; he shall be put to death.

§ 8. If a man has stolen ox, or sheep, or ass, or pig, or a boat, either from a god (temple) or a palace, he shall pay thirtyfold. If he is a poor man, he shall restore tenfold. If the thief has nothing to pay, he shall be put to death.

§ 9. If a man, who has lost anything, finds that which was lost in a man's hand, (and) the man in whose hand the lost thing was found says: "A seller sold it; I bought it before witnesses"; and the owner of the lost thing says: "I will bring witnesses who know that the lost thing is mine"; if the purchaser brings the seller who sold it to him and the witnesses in whose presence it was bought, and the owner of the lost thing brings the witnesses who know that the lost thing is his, the judges shall examine their testimony. The witnesses before whom the purchaser purchased it, and the witnesses who know the lost thing, shall give their testimony in the presence of a god. The seller is a thief; he shall be put to death. The owner of the lost thing shall take that which was lost. The purchaser shall take from the house of the seller the money which he had paid.

§ 10. If the purchaser does not produce the seller who sold it to him and the witnesses before whom he bought it, and the owner of the lost thing produces the witnesses who know that the lost thing is his, the purchaser is the thief; he shall be put to death. The owner of the lost thing shall take that which he lost.

§ 11. If the owner of the lost thing does not bring the witnesses who know that the lost thing is his, he is one who has attempted fraud; he shall be put to death.

§ 12. If the seller has died, the purchaser shall recover from the house of the seller the damages of that case fivefold.

§ 13. If that man has not his witnesses near, the judges shall set an appointed time within six months; and if, within, six months, his witnesses he does not produce, that man is a liar; the penalty of that case he shall himself bear.

The Hebrew laws comparable to these are found in Exod. 22: 1-4, 9, and Lev. 6 : 3–5. Exodus directs (v. 1) that, if a man steals an ox or a sheep and kills it or sells it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep. In case it is not sold he shall restore double (v. 9). No highly organized courts appear in the Biblical codes. The thief was brought before God and his guilt determined by some religious test. The law of Leviticus required a man guilty of theft to restore the lost property, adding to it a fifth more, and to offer a ram in sacrifice. (See Exod. 18: 13-26. Cf. 2 Chron. 19: 5-7 with 1 Chron. 23 : 4 and Deut. 16 : 18-20.)

The Babylonian laws presuppose a much more highly organized social community than the Hebrew.

Against Stealing Children and Slaves

$14. If a man steals the son of a man who is a minor, he shall be put to death. $15. If a man causes a male or female slave of a palace, or the male or female slave of a workingman to escape from the city gate, he shall be put to death. § 16. If a man harbors in his house either a male or a female slave who has escaped from a palace or from a workingman, and does not bring him out at the summons of the officer, the owner of that house shall be put to death.

§ 17. If a man finds in a field a male or a female slave who has escaped and restores him to his owner, the owner of the slave shall pay him 2 shekels of silver. § 18. If that slave will not name his owner, he shall bring him unto the palace and they shall investigate his record and restore him unto his owner.

§ 19. If he shall detain that slave in his house and afterward the slave is found, that man shall be put to death.

§ 20. If the slave escapes from the hand of his captor, that man shall declare it on oath to the owner of the slave and shall be innocent.

These laws are analogous to Exod. 21: 16 and Deut. 23: 15. The former inflicts the death penalty for stealing a man and selling him, and the latter prohibits one in whose house a fugitive slave has taken refuge from returning the slave to his master. Slavery was not in Israel such a firmly established institution as in Babylonia. (See Exod. 212-6; Deut. 15: 12-18; Lev. 25: 25-46.)

Housebreaking and Brigandage

§ 21. If a man breaks into a house, before that breach he shall be put to death and thrown into it.

§ 22. If a man practices brigandage and is caught, that man shall be put to death.

§ 23. If the robber is not caught, the man who is robbed shall declare his loss, whatever it is, in the presence of a god, and the city and governor in whose territory and jurisdiction the robbery was committed shall compensate him for whatever was lost.

§ 24. If it is a life, that city and governor shall pay to his relatives 1 mana of silver.1

Hebrew law presents an analogy to the last of these sections in Deut. 21 1-9, though in Israel no compensation was offered to the heirs of the man who was slain, but a sacrifice was performed by the elders of the nearest city, to purge it of innocent blood.

Stealing at a Fire

§ 25. If a fire breaks out in a man's house, and a man who has come to extinguish it shall cast his eye upon the furniture of the owner of the house, and the furniture of the owner of the house shall take, that man shall be thrown into that fire.

The Duties and Privileges of Soldiers, Constables, and Tax-collectors

§ 26. If a soldier or a constable who is ordered to go on a journey for the king does not go, but hires a substitute and dispatches him instead, that soldier or constable shall be put to death; his hired substitute shall appropriate his house.

§ 27. If a soldier or a constable is detained in a royal fortress and after him

1 The mana consisted of sixty shekels. In English it is corrupted to mina.

2 The nature of these officials is in doubt. Scheil and others think the first a recruiting-officer; Delitzsch and Ungnad, a soldier. The name of the second officer is literally fish-catcher, but it is certain that here he was some kind of a fisher of men.