Texts in Conversation
The ban on cursing parents in Exodus parallels Hammurabi's punishment of an adopted child's rejection of his parents. Exodus applies respect beyond the formal adoption bond, extending the protection of parental authority to the wider family.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Code of Hammurabi 1:202
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
192 If the son of a palace official or of a woman secluded in the palace says to his adoptive father or mother, "You are not my father" or "You are not my mother," his tongue shall be cut off. 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.
Exodus 21:17
Hebrew Bible
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. 18 “If men fight, and one strikes his neighbor with a stone or with his fist and he does not die, but must remain in bed, 19 and then if he gets up and walks about outside on his staff, then the one who struck him is innocent, except he must pay for the injured person’s loss of time and see to it that he is fully healed. 20 “If a man strikes his male servant or his female servant with a staff so that he or she dies as a result of the blow, he will surely be punished.
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Notes and References
“... 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). ...”
Wright, David P.
Inventing God's Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi
(p. 50) 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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