Texts in Conversation
The injury law in Exodus follows Hammurabi's requirement that the person who caused the harm pay for recovery. Including lost working time makes repayment cover the interruption of the victim's livelihood as well as treatment of the wound.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Code of Hammurabi 1:216
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
204 If a freed man strikes the body of another freed man, he shall pay ten shekels of silver. 205 If the slave of a freed man strikes the body of a freed man, his ear shall be cut off. 206 If one man strikes another in a quarrel and wounds him, he shall swear, "I did not injure him deliberately," and pay the physicians. 207 If the man dies of his wound, he shall swear the same oath, and if the dead man was free-born, he shall pay half a mina of silver. 208 If he was a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a mina. 209 If a man strikes a free-born woman so that she loses her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss.
Exodus 21:19
Hebrew Bible
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. 21 However, if the injured servant survives one or two days, the owner will not be punished, for he has suffered the loss.
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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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