§ 51. If there is not money to return, he shall give to the merchant [the grain or] sesame for the money and its interest which he had received from the merchant, according to the scale of prices fixed by the king.
§ 52. If the farmer does not produce grain or sesame in his field, he shall not alter his contract.
§ 53. If a man the side of his strong dyke has neglected and has not strengthened it, and in his dyke a break occurs, and the water destroys the farm-land, the man in whose dyke the break occurred shall restore the grain which was destroyed.
§ 54. If he is not able to restore the grain, they shall sell him and his possessions for money, and the owners of the fields whose grain was destroyed shall share it.
§ 55. If a man has opened his sluice for watering and has left it open and the water destroys the field of his neighbor, he shall measure out grain to him on the basis of that produced by neighboring fields.
§ 56. If a man opens the water and the water destroys the work[462] of a neighboring field, he shall measure out 10 Gur of grain for each Bur of land.
§ 57. If a shepherd causes his sheep to eat vegetation and has not made an agreement with the owner of the field, and without the consent of the owner of the field has pastured his sheep, the owner of the field shall harvest that field, and the shepherd who without the consent of the owner of the field caused his sheep to eat the field, shall pay the owner of the field in addition 20 Gur of grain for each Bur of land.
§ 58. If, after the sheep have come up out of the fields and are turned loose on the public common by the city gate, a shepherd turns his sheep into a field and causes the sheep to eat the field, the shepherd shall oversee the field which he caused to be eaten, and at harvest-time he shall measure to the owner of the field 60 Gur of grain for each Bur of land.
The Hebrew land laws are found in Exod. 22:5, 6; 23:10, 11; Lev. 19:9, and Deut. 24:19-22; 23:24, 25. An examination of these passages reveals a wide difference between Babylonia and Israel. In Babylonia it seems to have often been the rule that a landlord let out the fields to tenants to work; among the Hebrews the law presupposes that each man shall work his own land. Many of the Babylonian laws are designed to secure the respective rights of landlord and tenant. Naturally, there is nothing in the Old Testament to correspond to these. Hebrew law (Exod. 22:5), like the Babylonian, provides that one who causes a neighbor’s crop to be eaten shall make restitution, but the regulations are of the most general character. In Babylonia a larger social experience had made much more specific regulations necessary.
The characters of the respective countries are reflected in the dangers from which crops might be threatened. In waterless Palestine a fire started by a careless man might burn his neighbor’s crop (Exod. 22:6); in Babylonia, where irrigation from canals was conducted to fields lower than the surface of the water, one might flood his neighbor’s field and destroy his crop by carelessly leaving his sluice open.