Texts in Conversation
The crop-damage rule in Exodus shares Hammurabi's requirement to repay losses caused by wandering animals. Requiring the best produce keeps repayment from shifting a further loss onto the injured farmer through an inferior replacement.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Code of Hammurabi 1:80
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
57 If a shepherd, without the permission of the owner of a field and without the knowledge of the owner of the sheep, lets the sheep graze in the field, the owner of the field shall harvest his crop, and the shepherd who pastured his flock there without permission shall pay the owner twenty gur of grain for every ten gan. 58 If a shepherd lets his flock into a field to graze after the flocks have left the pasture and been shut in the common fold at the city gate, the shepherd shall take charge of the field he allowed to be grazed, and at the harvest he shall pay sixty gur of grain for every ten gan.
Exodus 22:5
Hebrew Bible
2 “If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guilt for him. 3 If the sun has risen on him, then there is blood guilt for him. A thief must surely make full restitution; if he has nothing, then he will be sold for his theft. 4 If the stolen item should in fact be found alive in his possession, whether it be an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he must pay back double. 5 “If a man grazes his livestock in a field or a vineyard and he lets the livestock loose and they graze in the field of another man, he must make restitution from the best of his own field and the best of his own vineyard.
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Notes and References
“... Crop damage (22:4–5; texts on pp. 237, 240–241) After the end of the animal theft law in Exodus 22:3, CC presents two related laws (vv. 4–5), the first of which parallels laws in LH outside the sequential template and the second of which does not have a parallel in LH but in another cuneiform collection. Exodus 22:4 deals with a case of letting animals graze in another person’s field, corresponding to LH 57–58. These describe two cases: (a) letting one’s flock graze (šūkulum) in another person’s field without an agreement and (b) releasing (nadûm) a flock into a field after the time for pasturing has passed. ...”
Wright, David P.
Inventing God's Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi
(p. 48) 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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