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The condemnation in Amos of seized goods used at worship shares Hammurabi's concern with protecting a debtor's livelihood. Religious observance cannot excuse taking property that poor people need to earn their living and support themselves.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Code of Hammurabi 1:251
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
238 If a sailor wrecks someone's ship but salvages it, he shall pay half its value in silver. 239 If a man hires a sailor, he shall pay him six gur of grain per year. 240 If a cargo ship runs into a ferryboat and wrecks it, the master of the wrecked boat shall seek justice before the god; the master of the cargo ship that wrecked the ferryboat shall compensate its owner for the boat and everything he ruined. 241 If anyone seizes an ox for forced labor, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver. 242 If anyone hires oxen for a year, he shall pay four gur of grain as hire for plow oxen. 243 As hire for herd cattle he shall pay three gur of grain to the owner.
Amos 2:8
Hebrew Bible
7 They trample on the dirt-covered heads of the poor; they push the destitute away. A man and his father go to the same girl; in this way they show disrespect for my moral purity. 8 They stretch out on clothing seized as collateral; they do so right beside every altar! They drink wine bought with the fines they have levied; they do so right in the temple of their God! 9 For Israel’s sake I destroyed the Amorites. They were as tall as cedars and as strong as oaks, but I destroyed the fruit on their branches and their roots in the ground. 10 I brought you up from the land of Egypt; I led you through the wilderness for 40 years so you could take the Amorites’ land as your own.
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Notes and References
“... 2:8. nature of irony. The great irony in Amos’s charges against the rich is that they display their excesses before sacred altars in a shrine dedicated to God. It is possible that they were within their legal rights to seize a garment in default of debt or to purchase wine with funds that had been generated by fining the poor for some offense. However, Yahweh had said (Ex 22:25-26) that the outraged cries of the poor would be heard, “for I am compassionate.” As in the case of the worker in the Yavneh Yam inscription, the creditor is to not only obey the law but also take into consideration what seizure of property will do to prevent the debtor from earning a living (see Hammurabi’s Code, which forbids seizure of a debtor’s ox). ...”
Walton, John H.
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
(p. 766–767) InterVarsity Press, 2000
* 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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