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Hammurabi's Code emphasizes protecting vulnerable widows and orphans. Exodus follows this Mesopotamian tradition with similar commands about protecting widows and orphans, describing justice as both a divine and royal responsibility.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Code of Hammurabi
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
The great gods have called me. I am the shepherd who brings salvation, whose staff is straight, the good shadow spread over my city. I carry the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad on my breast; in my shelter I have let them rest in peace; in my deep wisdom I have enclosed them. So that the strong might not wrong the weak, and so that the widow and the orphan might be protected, I have set up these my precious words in Babylon, the city where Anu and Bel raise high their heads, in E-Sagil, the temple whose foundations stand firm like heaven and earth, to declare justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and to heal all injuries; I have written them on my memorial stone, before my image as king of righteousness.
Exodus 22:22
Hebrew Bible
21 “You must not wrong a resident foreigner nor oppress him, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. 22 “You must not afflict any widow or orphan. 23 If you afflict them in any way and they cry to me, I will surely hear their cry, 24 and my anger will burn and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives will be widows and your children will be fatherless.
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Notes and References
"... A strong case can be made that the Covenant Code in Exodus 20:23–23:19 draws more directly from the famous Code of Hammurabi, compiled about a century after that of Eshnunna. This section of Exodus consists of two sets of apodictic laws (Exodus 20:23-26; 22:17–23:19) surrounding a series of casuistic laws (Exod 21:2–22:16), just as Hammurabi’s Code consists of casuistic laws surrounded by a prologue and an epilogue. Not only that, but there are points of contact between Hammurabi’s prologue and epilogue and the Covenant Code’s apodictic laws, in terms of both content and sequence, the strongest being a common concern for the weak, orphaned, and widow in Hammurabi and the foreigner, widow, and orphaned in Exodus 22:20-23 ..."
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