Instruction of Amenemope
Wisdom of Amenemope
Ancient Near East
As for the scribe who falsifies his writing, his son will not be entered in the scribal annals; But if you spend your days with these things in your heart, your children shall see them happen. Do not displace the balance-beam, nor falsify the weights, nor alter the proportions of the measure. Do not be greedy for the produce of the fields nor misuse goods belonging to the treasury. The Baboon sits beside the balance and his heart is hidden— O, what god is like great Thoth, the Creator who devised these things for us! Do not make weights to cheat by, they are certain to bring down God's wrath; If you see another cheating, make a wide path around him.
Date: 1300 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Leviticus 19:36
Hebrew Bible
34 The resident foreigner who lives with you must be to you as a native citizen among you; so you must love the foreigner as yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. 35 You must not do injustice in the regulation of measures, whether of length, weight, or volume. 36 You must have honest balances, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt. 37 You must be sure to obey all my statutes and regulations. I am the Lord.’”
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Notes and References
"... Just as Amos criticizes dishonest merchants who make the ephah “small” and the shekel “great” (Amos 8:5), Micah 6:10-11 also cautions them against cheating their customers with a false measure of grain ... A just society was one in which the government standardized and guaranteed honest weights and measures. The prologue to the law code of the Ur III king Ur-Nammu includes a list of the measures he had taken to insure justice and truth throughout his realm. This included the standardization of all the copper and stone weights used in commerce. The Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope warns against tampering with scales or the weights used for buying and selling. In a Babylonian Hymn to Shamash, Shamash as the god of justice will punish the merchant who uses deceptive practices with regard to the scales or the weights. The fact that Micah complains of false weights indicates a lawless period without strong government or a concern for covenant obligation (see Proverbs 11:1; 20:23) ..."
Walton, John H.
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
(p. 786) 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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