§ 123. If without witnesses and contracts he has placed anything on deposit and at the place of deposit they dispute it, that case has no penalty.
§ 124. If a man gives to another on deposit silver or gold or anything whatever in the presence of witnesses and he disputes it, he shall prosecute that man and he shall double whatever he disputed and shall repay it.
§ 125. If a man places anything on deposit and at the place of deposit either through burglary or pillage anything of his is lost, together with anything belonging to the owner of the building, the owner of the building who was negligent and lost what was given him on deposit shall make it good and restore it to the owner of the goods. The owner of the house shall institute a search for whatever was lost and take it from the thief.
§ 126. If a man has not lost anything, but says he has lost something, or files a claim as though he had lost something, he shall give account of his claim on oath, and whatever he brought suit for he shall double and shall give for his claim.
There is no mention in the laws of the Old Testament of this kind of deposit, though, as already noted, it probably was sometimes practised.
Against Slandering Women
§ 127. If a man causes the finger to be pointed at the woman of a god or the wife of a man and cannot prove it, they shall bring him before the judges and they shall brand his forehead.
The nearest parallel to this in the Old Testament is in Deut. 22:13-21, which is really quite a different law, for it applies only to cases where men, when just married, slander their wives by charging them with previous impurity. The Hebrew law provides a method of trial, a punishment for the man, if guilty, and a much severer one for the woman, if the charge is true. The two codes belong to quite a different legal development, as is shown by the fact that the Babylonian law refers to “a woman of a god,” i. e., one of the temple-women who, under certain religious rules, represented in a concrete way the procreative power of the god.
This code recognizes several classes of these, as will appear later, but Hebrew law forbade the existence of such women in Israel (Deut. 23:17).
Chastity, Marriage, and Divorce