Texts in Conversation

The ban on striking parents in Exodus parallels Hammurabi's protection of a father against his son. Including the mother protects parental authority beyond the male head of the household, giving her the same claim against a child's violence.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE

Code of Hammurabi 1:205

Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
193 If the son of a palace official or of a woman secluded in the palace longs for his father's house, deserts his adoptive father and mother, and goes back to his father's house, his eye shall be put out. 194 If a man gives his child to a wet nurse and the child dies in her care, and the nurse, without the father and mother knowing, nurses another child, they shall convict her of nursing another child without the parents' knowledge, and her breasts shall be cut off. 195 If a son strikes his father, his hands shall be cut off. 196 If a man puts out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out. An eye for an eye.
Date: 1750 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)

Exodus 21:15

Hebrew Bible
11 If he does not provide her with these three things, then she will go out free, without paying money. 12 “Whoever strikes someone so that he dies must surely be put to death. 13 But if he does not do it with premeditation, but it happens by accident, then I will appoint for you a place where he may flee. 14 But if a man willfully attacks his neighbor to kill him cunningly, you will take him even from my altar that he may die. 15 “Whoever strikes his father or his mother must surely be put to death. 16 “Whoever kidnaps someone and sells him, or is caught still holding him, must surely be put to death. 17 “Whoever treats his father or his mother disgracefully must surely be put to death.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References

#7046
“... In addition to the evidence about sequence, many of the individual laws in CC and LH, in or outside the common sequence, agree in their internal details. Note, for example, that the debt-slavery laws describe work for X years with release in year X + 1 (21:2 // LH 117); the laws on slave-master relations have a slave declaring his relationship to his master with subsequent marking or marring of his ear to reflect his submission or rebellion (21:5–6 // LH 282); the laws about marrying a second wife describe it as “taking another” and require one to provide for the support of the first in three ways (by implication if not explicitly; 21:10–11 // LH 148–149); the child rebellion laws describe both verbal and physical attacks (21:15, 17 // LH 192–193, 195); the laws about striking a person set the injury in the context of a fight and require the injurer to care for the victim’s recovery (21:18–19 // LH 206); the miscarriage laws treat two cases, causing a miscarriage alone and then death to the woman (21:22–23 // LH 209–210); talion laws mention eye, tooth, and bone injuries and deal with such injuries to slaves (21:24–27 // LH 196–201); the goring ox laws consider ad hoc goring first, then habitual goring, then the goring of a slave (21:28–32 // LH 250–251); animal theft laws mention finding a stolen object in the thief’s possession, an inability to pay the penalty, and twofold or more restoration (21:37 + 22:2b–3 // LH 253–265); grazing laws presumably deal with two cases, causing animals to graze and releasing animals in a field (22:4 // LH 57–58); deposit laws require double compensation and declarations before the deity (22:6–8 // LH 120; cf. 126); and the animal death and injury laws speak, in order, about how the animal died, a declaration of innocence, and the owner’s acceptance of the loss (22:9–10 // LH 266). ...”

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