Comparing Hammurabi's Law Codes to the Laws of Moses: A Deep Dive into Ancient Legal Systems
Perhaps the greatest known lawgiver, outside of Moses, is the king Hammurabi. After the death of the politically strong leader of Larsa, Rim-Sin, who had gained and held power during the Isin-Larsa feud (van de Mieroop 2015: 164), Hammurabi united the cities under his own strong hand and under the power of Babylon. One aspect of Hammurabi’s strength in leadership included his now famous code of laws, a code that some scholars have pointed to as the origin of the Mosaic Law (Wright 2009: 96).
ANE Laws Before Moses
Hammurabi’s code was something of an updated code that attained a canonical status and replaced Ur-Nammu’s laws which had, up to that point, continued to be copied (Beaulieu 2018: 87). Before Ur-Nammu’s laws existed the laws of Uru-ka-gina of Lagash who had reformed the bureaucracy of his day and cut taxes, attempting to standardize the legal system as early as 2350 B.C. (Arnold and Beyer 2002: 104). Between Uru-ka-gina and Moses, several law codes existed, including the laws of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1930 B.C.), the laws of Dadusha of Eshnunna (ca. late 1900s), those of Hammurabi, a collection of Hittite Laws (ca. 1600 B.C.), and more (Westbrook 2003: 8-9). Contrary to what some may think, the ancient Near East was not lawless.
Hammurabi, the King
As noted above, the Laws of Hammurabi are seen by some scholars as the origin of the Mosaic Law. Hammurabi himself, who is sometimes referred to as Hammurapi (Sasson 1995: 902) depending upon the phonetics, was destined for rulership since before time, according to the man himself (Sasson 1995: 901).
Although the true purpose of Hammurabi’s code is not understood (Nagarajan 2011: 109), the epilogue to the code does mention the protecting of widows, orphans, and destitute or wronged people (Mahadevaswamy 2018: 310). The concept of the strong protecting the weak from the strong (Slanski 2013: 107) no doubt protected Hammurabi’s position among the people, and his continued promise of bringing safety and prosperity to the people (van de Mieroop 2005: 95) no doubt furthered his hold even more, particularly as the king continued the well-ordered bureaucratic system first established by Rim-Sin, even to the point of relying on men at Larsa, Rim-Sin’s capital, to supervise the southern regions (van de Mieroop 2015: 164). Thus, Hammurabi became the father of the first true imperial age of Babylon, beginning his reign with the forgiveness of debts, a common practice at the time (van de Mieroop 2005: 23) that solidified him as a man of the people.
The Laws
Hammurabi’s law code does not address any types of international law (Charpin 2010: 4), and it is really more of a jurisprudence or philosophy of law than an actual code of laws (Bahrani 2007: 158). The stele containing the code originally contained between 275-300 separate paragraphs (van de Mieroop 2015: 211) and at least 282 separate articles (Beaulieu 2018: 86). This code dates to the thirty-eighth year of Hammurabi’s reign, and therefore was quite late (van de Mieroop 2005: 90), determining a culmination of a rather long tradition (Beaulieu 2018: 87), and possibly a collection of case law (Charpin 2012: 73), rather than a created code.
Broadly speaking, the code consists of five sections of “laws,” including those related to false testimony (§1-5), theft (§6-25), labor on public lands (§26-41), family (§127-194), and assault and battery (§195-214), written in the formula “if a man does _____, then _____ shall be done to him” (Slanski 2013: 104), which is to say a casuistic fashion (van de Mieroop 2015: 211).
As with many laws, much within the Laws of Hammurabi (LH) are based on equal compensation, or what has been referred to in the Biblical text as “an eye for an eye,” including examples from the §Assault and Battery Section, such as LH ¶ 196, which includes the purposeful blinding of a freeman who blinded another freeman or LH ¶ 195 where a child’s hand is cut off when that hand struck its father. This second instance does not seem as equal or fair, but the culture of the Old Babylonian period believed it to be, and it is doubtful that a father took his child to the court for such a punishment except in extreme situations. Perhaps a better example of equal compensation comes from LH ¶ 199, which records the punishment for blinding the eye or breaking the bones of a slave as weighing the slave and delivering half of his body weight in silver to the owner of the slave. To our modern ears, this may sound despicable, as slavery is despicable, but imagine delivering 75-100 lbs of silver to your neighbor after you have maimed his slave. It is doubtful that the common freeman even had this much silver, and therefore the determent appears as if it would have been successful. Other laws, such as those relating to the striking of a commoner by another commoner (LH ¶ 204) includes only the weighing and delivering of ten shekels of silver, a shekel being a measurement of about 8.4 grams (Hafford 2018: 58) and not a coin.
Concerning false accusations, LH ¶ 1 describes the equal punishment for a man who accuses another of murder but can not prove it. As the punishment for murder is the equal taking of one’s life (see LH ¶ 153), the false accusation of murder (LH ¶¶ 1 and 3) is punished with taking the life of the accuser. Interestingly, even leniency is seen in this ancient code, for example, LH ¶ 48 describes events out of the control of an individual that make it impossible to repay a loan, specifically natural disasters that make harvest nonviable; in this instance, the debtor need not repay the loan until the following year when a good crop is harvested.
Hebraic Laws
The Laws of Moses, or Hebraic Law, date to ca. four hundred years after Hammurabi’s code, Moses dating to ca. 1420 B.C. The time period and the similarities (to be discussed below) have caused some to question whether Moses borrowed from or adapted Hammurabi’s code to his own (Wright 2009: 96). A brief overview of the history and content of the Hebraic Code is given here.
The Hebraic Code is often referred to in Judaism as the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. These include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Within these books of Moses can be counted 613 mitzvot or commandments, a number enumerated in the aggadah, or rabbinic homily, found in the Babylonian Talmud and Midrash Tanhuma (Friedberg 2013: 13).
Moses, the Person
Many Evangelical scholars believe that the Torah, or Pentateuch as the first five biblical books are often referred to within Christianity, are essentially Mosaic in origin (Walton and Hill 2013: 47), meaning that Moses, the person, substantially wrote the books but did not write everything, particularly the final chapter of Deuteronomy which discusses the death and burial of Moses. Having Moses as an author, these books, therefore, date some time before his death, which occurred at the end of the Wilderness Wanderings about forty years after the Exodus. Thus, the writing of these books must date to between 1446 B.C. and 1406 B.C, as per a previous chapter.
Of note, there is evidence of the importation of princes from the Southern Levant for education in Egypt during the reign of Thutmose III, ca. 1450 B.C. (Chavalas 2002B: 573), events that somewhat mirror the education of Moses some time before. Having been educated in the palace of Egypt, Moses no doubt read both hieroglyphic and cuneiform writing, along with Proto-Sinaitic, an alphabet based on a Semitic vocabulary that originates sometime between 1900-1800 B.C. (Satzinger 2002: 26) and found in the Sinai. The education of Moses, and the already existent alphabet, means that Moses was well qualified to have been the author of the Torah.
As the author of the Torah, Moses had a rather difficult job. Inspired through the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16-17), Moses wrote not only a polemic against the surrounding gods and an origin story of his people, but also a code of religious laws designed to keep his people safe, healthy, and in a right relationship with their deity.
The Laws of Moses
As noted above, the Babylonian Talmud makes mention of 613 commandments within the Torah. Unfortunately, the Talmud does not provide a list of these commandments (Mizrahi 2015: 1), but several rabbis have collected these into one compilation, most notably the Medieval scholar Moses ben Maimon [mī-mōn], commonly known as Maimonides [mī-mon-a-dēz] (Friedberg 2013: 13) but also referred to by the acronym Rambam [רמב״ם; Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon]. It should be noted that according to some scholars, Maimonides does not do that great of a job (Friedberg 2013: 32).
Maimonides collected these commandments into two groups, 248 positive mitzvot and 365 negative, and these are rearranged topically (Friedberg 2013: 23). When referring to specific laws from the Rambam, the commandments will be listed with an initial letter, P for positive or N for negative, followed by the number that Maimonides has affixed, e.g., P76. The study is done this way for the sake of ease.
Although the Torah is made up of Genesis through Deuteronomy, the actual content of the Law comes from Exodus through Deuteronomy, beginning with Exodus 20 where Moses lists the Ten Commandments (Skeel and Longman 2011: 5) as a summary of the law (Kaiser 1991: 81). The remainder of the book of Exodus is devoted to legal regulation, including civil, criminal, and finally differing ceremonial aspects involving the ark of the covenant, tabernacle, etc. (Skeel and Longman 2011: 5). Leviticus begins with the newly constructed tabernacle and outlines the sacrificial system (Skeel and Longman 2011: 6), continuing on to discuss priestly duties, tabernacle worship, cleanness, the Day of Atonement, personal holiness, festivals, and laws concerning strangers (Harris 1990: 534-35). The book of Numbers recounts the Israelites wanderings in the wilderness and includes scattered additions to the law, while Deuteronomy frames Moses’ final sermon, devoting attention to the mechanics of administering justice (Skeel and Longman 2011: 8).
Within Christianity, the Laws of Moses are typically divided into three sections, those including civil, ceremonial, and moral aspects (Rothenberg 2018: 807). While this division is an acceptable partitioning of the Law, it is sometimes done as a way of dismissing certain aspects of the law, particularly what is defined as ceremonial and civil, being argued that these apply only to the Old Testament economy (Bayes 2000: 3). On the contrary, others believe that in the New Covenant, God does not dismiss the law but empowers believers, by his spirit, to live in harmony with the law (Brown 2006: 14). Ultimately, the entirety of the Mosaic Code is summarized by Jesus in Mark 12: 28-31, when he describes the twofold division of the law as 1) loving God and 2) loving one’s neighbor.
A Comparison of Both Law Codes
When placing both the Laws of Hammurabi and the Laws of Moses side by side, several similarities and several differences emerge. These differences, once identified, can be compared in order to ascertain what borrowing or adaptation, if any, has taken place.
Similarities
For those who believe that the Laws of Moses are borrowed or copied from Hammurabi, similarities in the texts are believed to be due to the inheriting of oral traditions that had been circulating in Syria and Canaan long before Israel was introduced (Wright 2009: vii), and in fact, there are many similarities, particularly between Hammurabi’s code and those contained in Exodus 20-23.
Compare Hammurabi with Moses, where Hammurabi notes, in LH ¶ 1, that the one who accuses another of murder but cannot prove it should be put to death. Similarly, N285 and P180 within Maimonides six hundred and thirteen mitzvot, taken from Exodus 20:16 and Exodus 23:1, also condemn falsely testifying and falsely reporting. In addition, LH ¶ 117 describes the selling of one’s self or one’s family into indentured servitude in order to repay a debt. P232, taken in part from Exodus 21:2, also describes the purchasing of a slave, though in this instance a Hebrew slave. Both laws include the amount of time that the indentured servant may work before the debt is considered to be repaid, six years in the Biblical text and three years in Hammurabi. At the end of this period, the servant must be freed as their obligation has been fulfilled, and by not freeing the servant the master would be in direct conflict with these respective laws.
Perhaps the best comparison comes from the regulations involving the goring of a man by an ox (Wright 2009: 7). LH ¶¶ 251-252 describe two separate instances, ¶ 251, where the ox is known to be dangerous but the owner neglects to make the ox safe and that ox in turn kills a freeman, and ¶ 252, where the ox kills a slave. In the first instance, the owner must pay half of a mina in silver, and in the second, the owner must pay a third. Likewise, in the Mosaic Law, P237 lists the law concerning injuries caused by an ox, reflecting Exodus 21:28–32. Here, if the owner has neglected to render his ox safe, when the ox was known to have been dangerous, then the ox shall be put to death along with the owner, unless the owner redeems his life by paying whatever is demanded of him. If the ox kills a slave, then the ox should be killed and the owner required to pay thirty shekels of silver, which is about half of a mina. Additionally, LH ¶ 250 and Exodus 21:28, which falls under P237, both describe the accidental goring of a man, which results in no culpability on the part of the owner in both instances, though in the Mosaic passage, the animal is to be put to death.
In addition to somewhat similar content, it should be noted that the similarities between these two also include formulation and sequence (Wright 2009: 8). For instance, the Mosaic Law found specifically within Exodus 20:23-23:19 follow the formula of Apodictic, or clearly established, Laws, Casuistic Laws, followed by more Apodictic Laws, which have close associations with the Laws of Hammurabi, where the outer sections of Hammurabi are thematically similar to the outer sections of Moses, and the central, casuistic laws can be closely associated with LH ¶¶ 1-282, especially in that the Mosaic Law within this passage displays nearly the same topical order as the last half of Hammurabi’s code (Wright 2009: 8). By way of example, the sequence of casuistic laws between the two can be ordered as follows:
Exodus 21:2-22:14 | Laws of Hammurabi | |||
1 | 21:2-6 | Debt-slavery of males, including children of slave, master relations | 117, 175, 282 | Debt-slavery of males, children of slave, master relations |
2 | 21:7-11 | Debt-slavery of daughter, displeasure, taking second wife, three means of support | 117, 148-149, 154-156, 178 | Debt-slavery of daughter, displeasure and taking second wife, three means of support |
3 | 21:12-14 | Death from striking | ||
4 | 21:15, 17 | Child rebellion | 192-195, 196-201 | Child rebellion, Talion laws, injury to slave |
5 | 21:18-19 | Men fighting | 206, 207 | Men fighting, Death from striking |
6 | 21:20-21 | Killing lower class | 208 | Killing lower class |
7 | 21:22-23 | Causing miscarriage | 209-14 | Causing miscarriage |
8 | 21:23-27 | Talion laws, injury to slave | 229-30 | Negligence |
9 | 21:28-32 | Goring ox | 250-52 | Goring ox |
10 | 21:33-34 21:35-36 | Negligence Goring ox | ||
11 | 21:37; 22:2b-3 | Animal theft | 253-65 | Animal theft |
12 | 22:6-8 | Deposit | 265-66 | Deposit of animals |
13 | 22:9-12 | Injury/death of animals | 266-67 | Injury/death of animals |
14 | 22:13-14 | Animal rental | 268-71 | Animal rental |
Additionally, the tripartite structure of Hammurabi’s code can be seen in Deuteronomy, where Moses recounts (Chs. 1-11) what the Hebrew deity had done for the Israelites, calling upon them to obey and giving them a lengthy list of laws in which to follow (Chs. 12-26). Deuteronomy 27-34, much like the epilogue of Hammurabi’s code, then reminds the Hebrews of the positive and negative consequences for obeying and disobeying (Boaheng 2020: 83-84).
Differences
One key difference between the legal systems of Hammurabi and Moses includes the differences between civil and religious regulations, where Hammurabi deals only with the secular, Moses quite specifically mixes the two concepts, regulating worship and criminal, family, and tort law (Skeel and Longman 2011: 9). Thus, the heavily religious aspect of the Mosaic Law necessarily equates violation of the law, including civil and criminal violations, with displeasing the national deity and therefore “sin” (Boaheng 2020: 85).
There are also differences in organization. The apodictic laws found in Exodus 22:20-23:19, what some describe as the apodictic epilogue in Exodus that parallels Hammurabi’s epilogue (Wright 2009: 8), does not actually parallel. This section of the passage appears to be arranged in two equal strings bridged by a set of instructions, but the epilogue to Hammurabi follows a sequence where §F mirrors §E and §G mirrors both §§E and F (Boaheng 2020: 315), creating a separate pattern altogether.
Even in content, while the laws may discuss kindred subject matter, the contextual differences are glaring, including differences in punishment and retribution such as the killing of the ox which gored a man in Moses versus allowing the animal to live in Hammurabi or the restitution of a half mina in Hammurabi versus the death of the ox’s owner or redemption of that owner by paying whatever he must in Moses. It would appear that Hammurabi places a much greater emphasis on monetary compensation than does Moses (Boaheng 2020: 86).
The idea that similar subject matter necessarily demands adaptation from one source to another does not hold to scrutiny. In fact, it could be stated simply that the subject matter of criminal, family, and civil law are universal concepts found within natural law. As for the obvious stylistic and organizational similarities, the same is seen throughout Scripture where, within the Evangelical view, the authors write according to their individual styles as the Holy Spirit moves them. Following similar patterns found elsewhere is non-problematic.
Claims of Origin
Perhaps the greatest difference, the secular of Hammurabi versus the religo-secular mixture of Moses, is best understood within the claims of origin concerning the two codes. As depicted upon the stele that houses the Laws of Hammurabi, where Hammurabi is seen worshipping the deity Šamaš (Beaulieu, 2018: 86), Hammurabi receives a rod and ring from the god, most probably related to the rod-measure and rope-measure utilized in temple-building (Roth 1995: 22). These symbols have been used on seals, tablets, and stelae across Mesopotamia for millennia (Abram 2011: 15), and the giving of these to Hammurabi by the deity Šamaš, the great sun deity and the one who brings light, fights evil, and upholds justice and the law (Frayne and Stuckey 2021: 321-22), likely symbolizes Šamaš giving Hammurabi the divine authority (Abram 2011: 19) to create laws in his name, rather than the deity handing the laws down from the heavens as has been suggested by others (Boaheng 2020: 85). Thus, Hammurabi was given divine approval to establish law in the land, and Hammurabi claims to had been chosen by the gods to destroy the wicked and ensure that the strong do not oppress the weak (van de Mieroop 2005: 96), to bring righteousness to the land (Claassens 2010: 465).
Whereas Hammurabi was given divine authority to create laws based on heavenly standards of justice, Moses received the Hebraic Laws directly from the deity, as seen in several passages, including Exodus 12:4 where Moses is said to have written all of the words of his deity. This claim of origin differentiates itself from Hammurabi and explains why the Mosaic Law includes such religious connotations such as the establishment of a covenant between Israel and their God, particularly as that covenant contains conditional blessings for those who keep the law and curses for those who do not keep it (Deuteronomy 28-29). Thus, the Mosaic Law establishes itself as something quite different than the Laws of Hammurabi.
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[This is a lecture written for the course 'HIST 262: History of the Ancient Near East,' taught Fall 2023 at God's Bible School and College, a regionally accredited College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bibliographical material will be posted under Research on this site.]
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