The Hebrew legislation presupposes a poorer community. It provides that the land shall lie fallow, and whatever it produces shall belong to the poor (Exod. 23:10, 11). At harvest-time, too, one must not reap the corners of his field; that was left to the poor (Lev. 19:9). If one forgot a sheaf in his field, he must not return to take it; that should be left to the poor (Deut. 24:19). Rich Babylonia made no such provision for the poor; it felt no such social sympathy.
Again, even these agricultural laws show that commerce was highly developed in Babylonia, with its necessary concomitant, the right to charge interest for money. The uncommercial Hebrews regarded interest as unlawful (Exod. 22:25), and it was Hillel, the contemporary of Herod the Great, who invented an interpretation known as the Prosbūl, which practically did away with this law and permitted Jews to take interest.
Horticultural Laws
§ 59. If a man shall cut down a tree in a man’s orchard without the consent of the owner, he shall pay ½ mana of silver.
§ 60. If a man gives a field to a gardener to plant as an orchard, the gardener shall plant the orchard and cultivate it for 4 years. In the fifth year the owner of the orchard and the gardener shall share it together. The owner of the orchard shall mark off his share and take it.
§ 61. If the gardener in planting does not complete it, but leaves a part of it waste, unto his portion they shall count it.
§ 62. If the field which is given to a gardener he does not plant, if vegetation is the produce of the field for the years during which it is neglected, the gardener shall measure out to the owner of the field on the basis of the adjacent fields, and shall perform the work on the field and restore it to the owner of the field.
§ 63. If the field is [left] waste land, he shall perform the work on the field and shall restore it to its owner, and 10 Gur of grain for each Bur of land he shall measure out.
§ 64. If a man lets his orchard to a gardener to manage, as long as the gardener is in possession of the garden he shall give to the owner of the garden two-thirds of the produce; one-third he shall take himself.
§ 65. If the gardener does not manage the garden and diminishes its produce, the gardener shall measure out the produce of the orchard on the basis of adjacent orchards.[463]