Texts in Conversation
Exodus changes the response to slave injuries found in Hammurabi's rules by granting the injured person freedom. The injury ends the master's control, making release a remedy for abuse rather than treating the harm only as a financial loss.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Code of Hammurabi 1:209
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
199 If he puts out the eye of a man's slave or breaks the bone of a man's slave, he shall pay half the slave's value. 200 If a man knocks out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out. A tooth for a tooth. 201 If he knocks out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a gold mina. 202 If anyone strikes the body of a man of higher rank, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public. 203 If a free-born man strikes the body of another free-born man of equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina. 204 If a freed man strikes the body of another freed man, he shall pay ten shekels of silver.
Exodus 21:26
Hebrew Bible
23 But if there is serious injury, then you will give a life for a life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. 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.
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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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