But it is a poor compliment to a lawgiver of any age to suppose that sacred numbers influenced the nature of his laws. Doubtless the Jubilee release was economically an advance on sporadic amnesty, but to make a debtor’s lot twice as hard and a money-lender’s security double, especially as there is no reason to suppose that in Israel the temple was the poor man’s bank, all for sake of seven is not a fair charge against Moses or any lawgiver unless it is absolutely certain. The change from three to six is not easy to account for on scientific sociological grounds.
But one of the Hebrew Scriptures does attempt to account for the change, and evidently regards it as a change to be accounted for. The Deuteronomic writer argues that the creditor ought not to deem it hard that he should release his debtor at the end of six years because he had so served a double term. We may note that as it now stands the text says ‘double the hire of a hireling’. That is purely irrelevant. A slave’s value was surely less to the holder, not more than that of a hireling, for his keep had to be subtracted, and his work was hardly likely to be so valuable as that of a freeman. The profit of a hireling is the excess of the value of his work above what is paid for it. The hire of a hireling was surely not just half the value of his own work or of a slave’s work. Indeed, it is not easy to see what the double of a hireling’s hire has to do with the question. The writer was right in saying the term of six years was double something, and there can be no question that it was double three years, and therefore double the term fixed by Hammurabi five hundred or more years before. The creditor seems to have resented letting the debtor go at all, at any rate till he had worked off all his debt. The writer clearly knew that the creditor had already obtained twice what he had to expect under other circumstances, and believed he would admit the fact. It was double the Babylonian allowance.
Can this undesigned coincidence be accidental? Is either Semitic custom or human experience competent to explain the significance of the doubleness being pointed out in this way?
If Canaanite custom before the Exodus had a term of three years’ service in such cases, the same as the Hammurabi Code, surely that was due to Babylonian law, unless, as some would maintain, the Amorite dynasty to which Hammurabi belonged really came from Canaan, in which case Hammurabi imposed Canaanite law on Babylonia. It was a non-essential, anyway; it could nowhere have been the outcome of special circumstances likely to occur again. It was not a creditor’s law, for he obviously wanted liberty to keep the debtor’s hostage till he had satisfied his own desires; it was not a debtor’s law, for he would have surely preferred the three years’ limit. It was a concession to the creditor to meet that hard-hearted person’s wishes.
It is not the large stock of common matter in the two legislations about a hostage for debt but the disguised yet undeniable adaptation which seems so significant.
Let us now consider another somewhat different case. Death by burning is a horrible punishment, and was so recognized by the later Jewish lawyers, who contrived a legal fiction to do away with its literal infliction even on the scandalous criminals for whom it was intended. Hammurabi orders it twice. It would be very difficult to account by common Semitic custom or evolutionary methods for its being inflicted, if at all, only twice. Yet the laws of Moses inflict it twice also. If these arose independently, what is there from any intelligible point of view to demand its infliction at all—but, if at all, why twice and only twice? And that too in laws so similar?
Well now, in both laws the incest of mother and son is one case. The heinousness of that crime may suffice to justify the hideous penalty. Hammurabi (§§ 157-8) clearly distinguishes incest with a man’s own mother and with a step-mother. Leviticus (xx. 14; xxi. 9) makes a curious specification of the case; whether to include other cases or not is not very clear. But evidently this great crime met the same unique punishment.
Hammurabi’s second case is that of a votary, or vestal virgin, who left her cloister to open a wine shop or frequent it for strong drink. At first sight we might regard this as a protest against a vestal’s intemperance solely. But women did keep wine shops, and their conduct of them is regulated by the Code. We may recall the case of Rahab in Joshua ii. 1. The second case in Hebrew law is Lev. xxi. 9: the priest’s daughter who is unchaste is to be burned with fire. Now why are other women of the priest’s family not included? Is priest’s daughter to be taken, like the mârat amêlim in the Code, to mean a woman of the priestly family? Or is it simply a priestess? Surely it is just a periphrasis, perhaps once a gloss on a word become obsolete, for a vowed woman like Jephthah’s daughter. There is at first sight not much likeness between the two second cases. But this one evidently puzzled the Jewish commentators, who probably had a traditional knowledge of the real meaning. First Josephus explains the crime not as mere unchastity but as ‘opening a tavern’. Was he thinking of Rahab the tavern-keeper who was also a harlot? Or had he an inkling that the crime was the same as Hammurabi had in view? The association of the tavern with immorality was close in Old Testament ideas. Perhaps Hammurabi also had it in mind, for unchastity would be specially revolting in a vestal virgin. Surely the priest’s daughter also was a votary. The Rabbis of the Talmud evidently suspected something disguised in the text, for they make a comment upon it which is truly surprising if the text be taken literally. They ask, Shall not a priestess or priest’s daughter be treated better than a tavern-keeper? They too knew that in some cases a tavern-keeper had to be burned. We ask, Why and where, if she were not also a vowed woman and in the Hammurabi Code? We need not assume that either Josephus or they had read or heard of Hammurabi’s Code, or would have regarded it with anything but detestation if they had. All the more suggestive is it that these learned men should regard the verse as meaning just what that Code did mean.
These points are like the meaningless but obviously Egyptian symbols, often used for decorative purposes on seals, found in Syrian or Hittite seals, which show the influence of the Nile and are never disputed as due to copying, though no longer understood and used for decorative purposes solely.
Some scholars are inclined to attach even more importance to the singular likenesses in literary form, and above all to the disposition of both the Code and the Book of the Covenant in groups of five or ten.