Texts in Conversation
Exodus 21 describes the requirements for how to judge the damage caused by an ox that is known for goring, following eaerlier ancient Near Eastern legal traditions from the Code of Hammurabi.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Code of Hammurabi
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
248 If anyone hires an ox and breaks off a horn, cuts off its tail, or injures its muzzle, he shall pay one-fourth of its value in money. 249 If anyone hires an ox, and a god strikes it and it dies, the man who hired it shall swear an oath by the god and be held blameless. 250 If an ox is passing along the street and someone pushes it and kills it, the owner can bring no claim in the case. 251 If an ox is a known gorer, and it has been shown that it gores, and the owner does not blunt its horns or tie up the ox, and the ox gores a free-born man and kills him, the owner shall pay half a mina of silver. 252 If it kills a man's slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina. 253 If anyone agrees with another to tend his field, receives seed from him, is entrusted with a yoke of oxen, and is bound to cultivate the field: if he steals the grain or the plants and takes them for himself, his hands shall be cut off.
Exodus 21:29
Hebrew Bible
26 “If a man strikes the eye of his male servant or his female servant so that he destroys it, he will let the servant go free as compensation for the eye. 27 If he knocks out the tooth of his male servant or his female servant, he will let the servant go free as compensation for the tooth. 28 “If an ox gores a man or a woman so that either dies, then the ox must surely be stoned and its flesh must not be eaten, but the owner of the ox will be acquitted. 29 But if the ox had the habit of goring, and its owner was warned but he did not take the necessary precautions, and then it killed a man or a woman, the ox must be stoned and the man must be put to death. 30 If a ransom is set for him, then he must pay the redemption for his life according to whatever amount was set for him.
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Notes and References
"... Ever since the Laws of Hammurabi were discovered in excavations at Susa in 1901–1902 and quickly published by Scheil in 1902, scholars recognized their similarity to the laws of the Covenant Code. The past century of scholarship, however, has generally perceived correspondences with LH atomistically and only in the casuistic portion of the text (i.e., Exodus 21:2–22:19). The goring ox laws are the clearest and most famous example of the observed similarities ... Though CC here exhibits some notable differences, its laws are nonetheless remarkably similar to those in LH, having the same basic content, formulation, and sequence. On the basis of the similarities in these laws alone, Meir Malul, for example, concluded that there must be a literary connection between the two texts ..."
Wright, David P.
Inventing God's Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi
(pp. 7-8) Oxford University Press, 2009
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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