The following code of laws was inscribed by order of Hammurapi, of the first dynasty of Babylon (2104-2061 B. C.), on a block of black diorite nearly eight feet in height and set up in Esagila, the temple of Marduk, in Babylon, so that the people might have the laws in the mother-tongue. As this last statement implies, the laws are written in Semitic Babylonian; before the time of Hammurapi the laws had been written in Sumerian. At some later time an Elamite conqueror, who was overrunning Babylonia, took this pillar away to Susa as a trophy. In course of time the pillar was broken into three parts, which were found by the French expedition under de Morgan in December, 1901, and January, 1902, while excavating at Susa. As the code is the oldest known code of laws in the world, being a thousand years older than Moses, and as it affords some interesting peculiarities as well as some striking parallels to the laws in Exodus 21-23 and in Deuteronomy, a translation of it, with some comparison of Exodus and Deuteronomy, is here given:
Against Witches
§ 1. If a man brings an accusation against a man, that he has laid a death-spell upon him, and has not proved it, the accuser shall be put to death.[459]
§ 2. If a man accuses another of practising sorcery upon him, but has not proved it, he against whom the charge of sorcery is made shall go to the sacred river; into the sacred river he shall plunge, and if the sacred river overpowers him, his accuser shall take possession of his house. If the sacred river shows that man to be innocent, and he is unharmed, he who charged him with sorcery shall be killed. He who plunged into the sacred river shall take the house of his accuser.
With these laws we should compare Exod. 22:18, which imposes the death penalty upon witches, and Deut. 18:10, ff., which declares that there shall be no sorcerer, diviner, magician, or charmer in Israel and promises a line of prophets to render these unnecessary. Magic is banished from Israel; its presence in Babylonia is taken for granted, and only some of its exercises, which were supposed to be especially deadly, were forbidden. In § 2 the man accused of sorcery is to be tried by ordeal. He is to plunge into the river and if he can swim in its current, he is innocent. Trial by ordeal is found but once in the Hebrew laws (Num. 5:11-28). There both the crime and the ordeal are very different from this.
Note that in these sections the false accuser suffers in just the way he has tried to bring suffering to the other. This is the law of retaliation, which appears in Deut. 19:16-21, where it is applied to false witnesses in the same way as here. It will be found underlying many of the penalties of this code.
Laws Concerning False Witness
§ 3. If in a case a man has borne false witness, or accused a man without proving it, if that case is a capital case, that man shall be put to death.
§ 4. If he has borne witness in a case of grain or money, the penalty of that case he shall himself bear.
Hebrew law was similar; a false witness was to be visited with the penalty which he had purposed to bring upon his brother (Deut. 19:18, 19).