
During the first Babylonian Empire, c1900-1600 BC, the greatest king by far was Hammurabi who ruled approximately 1792 to 1750 BC. His fame derived from his law code, which was the first known complete law code, dealing with every aspect of life. It contained a criminal code, civil laws, laws governing commerce, and so forth. Sumerians had law codes; at least parts of three of them are extant, but Hammurabi’s code is both complete in its parts and complete in its content scope.
There are some interesting things about this law code. First, it antedates the law of Moses. Depending on which date we assign for the exodus, it was from to 100 to 500 years earlier.
Second, both Hammurabi’s law code and the law of Moses reflect the lex talionis concept which we call “eye for eye and tooth for tooth;” that is, the punishment for a crime should be commensurate with the crime. The fact that they are similar in this construct does not mean that one is copied from the other, particularly that the likely later Mosaic code was copied from the Babylonian one. Rather, it suggests that the idea of lex talioniswas prevalent in the world of that day, the Mesopotamian-Egyptian civilized world.

Third, perhaps a related point from the second, is the fact that by comparison the Babylonian law code of Hammurabi and the Mosaic law code are both far stricter in terms of required punishments than the three examples of Sumerian law codes. There are two possible reasons for the difference.
First, it may reflect a greater prevalence of crime and even of more violent crimes in the Babylonian and Israel codes. In such a case, we can see that evil was spreading further. Scripture indicates a growth in evil to the point that God determined that the thoughts of every man was only evil continually and resolved to destroy the earth by a flood. The Sumerian law codes may even be antediluvian, and as indicated in Genesis 9, the thoughts of men’s hearts only continued to be evil continually.

A second possible reason was suggested by a student of mine. Perhaps there was greater consciousness and greater attention to crime and punishment in the later period. Although this theory is plausible, I think the first explanation is more in keeping with the Biblical account.
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