Texts in Conversation
Exodus 21 describes the requirements for how to judge the damage caused by an ox that is known for goring, following established ancient Near Eastern legal traditions from the Code of Hammurabi.
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Code of Hammurabi
Babylonian Legal Text
Ancient Near East
248 If any one hire an ox, and break off a horn, or cut off its tail, or hurt its muzzle, he shall pay one-fourth of its value in money 249 If any one hire an ox, and God strike it that it die, the man who hired it shall swear by God and be considered guiltless 250 If while an ox is passing on the street (market) some one push it, and kill it, the owner can set up no claim in the suit (against the hirer) 251 If an ox be a goring ox, and it shown that he is a gorer, and he do not bind his horns, or fasten the ox up, and the ox gore a free-born man and kill him, the owner shall pay one-half a mina in money 252 If he kill a man's slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina 253 If any one agree with another to tend his field, give him seed, entrust a yoke of oxen to him, and bind him to cultivate the field, if he steal the corn or plants, and take them for himself, his hands shall be hewn off
Date: 1750 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Exodus 21:29
Hebrew Bible
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. 29 But if the ox had the habit of goring, and its owner was warned but he did not take the necessary precautions, and then it killed a man or a woman, the ox must be stoned and the man must be put to death. 30 If a ransom is set for him, then he must pay the redemption for his life according to whatever amount was set for him.
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Notes and References
"... Ever since the Laws of Hammurabi were discovered in excavations at Susa in 1901–1902 and quickly published by Scheil in 1902, scholars recognized their similarity to the laws of the Covenant Code. The past century of scholarship, however, has generally perceived correspondences with LH atomistically and only in the casuistic portion of the text (i.e., Exodus 21:2–22:19). The goring ox laws are the clearest and most famous example of the observed similarities ... Though CC here exhibits some notable differences, its laws are nonetheless remarkably similar to those in LH, having the same basic content, formulation, and sequence. On the basis of the similarities in these laws alone, Meir Malul, for example, concluded that there must be a literary connection between the two texts ..."
Wright, David P.
Inventing God's Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi
(pp. 7-8) 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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