“If a man hire a slave, and he dies, is lost, runs away, gets locked up, or falls ill, he shall pay as his hire every day half a measure of grain.”
Thus did the ancient Babylonians punish those who offended against their laws, and protect property (for the slave-hirer was undoubtedly saddled with a heavy responsibility). Was it that the death of a hired slave was regarded as testifying to the severity of his temporary hirer? In all probability it was so, and in that case, one cannot help regarding the law as a wise one. To all appearance, also, illness was attributed to his employer's cruelty. As to his running away, or falling into the hands of the police, these things would prove that his employer was not watchful enough with regard to him. A modern European lawyer would most likely not regard this particular law as being very exactly worded (there is no limit of time during which the slave's wages were payable, and one can only guess that the term of his service with his hirer was understood), but there seems to be no doubt as to its intention—to safeguard the slave, and his owner at the same time, by making his hirer responsible for every mishap and accident which might happen to him whilst he was with his temporary master.
Chapter VI. Abraham.
A short account of this period, with the story of Chedorlaomer, Amraphel, Arioch, and Tidal.
Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees, and afterwards Terah took Abram his son, Lot, his grandson, and Sarai, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth from Ur of the Chaldees to go to Canaan. Arriving at Haran, they dwelt there until Terah died at an exceedingly advanced age.
There have been many discussions as to the position of Ur of the Chaldees. Some, on account of the distance from Canaan, apparently, have contended that Ur of the Chaldees is the same as the site known for many hundreds of years as Urfa, in Mesopotamia—the district in which the proto-martyr, St. Stephen (Acts vii. 2, 41), places it. Mesopotamia, however, is an appellation of wide extent, and altogether insufficiently precise to enable the exact locality to be determined. To all appearance, though, Urfa or Orfa, called by the Greeks Edessa, was known as Orrha at the time of Isidore of Charax (date about 150 b.c.). Pocock, in his Description of the East, states that it is the universal opinion of the Jews that Orfa or Edessa was the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, and this is supported by local tradition, the chief place of worship there being called “the Mosque of Abraham,” and the pond in which the sacred fish are [pg 193] kept being called Bahr Ibrahím el-Halíl, “the Lake of Abraham the Beloved.” The tradition in the Talmud and in certain early Arabian writers, that Ur of the Chaldees is Warka, the Ὀρχόη of the Greeks, and Ὀρέχ of the Septuagint, need not detain us, as this site is certainly the Erech of Gen. x. 10, and is excluded by that circumstance.
Two other possibilities remain, the one generally accepted by Assyriologists, the other tentatively put forward by myself some years ago. The former has a series of most interesting traditions to support it, the latter simply a slightly greater probability. The reader may adopt that which seems to him best to suit the circumstances of the case.