The Relations between the Laws of Babylonia and the Laws of the Hebrew Peoples by C. H. W. (Claude Hermann Walter) Johns

Author:C. H. W. (Claude Hermann Walter) Johns [Johns, C. H. W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781372234798
Google: W4gavgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 60080085
Publisher: BiblioBazaar
Published: 2016-08-28T18:32:43+00:00

On these we may remark, first that in Israel the term of six years imposed by the Book of the Covenant was evidently resented, and has to be explained as really a double term (Deuteronomy xv. 18). Surely that indicates a knowledge on the part of the later lawgiver of what was not generally known in Israel, to wit, that the term had once been three years. Where and when, we may well ask? Surely not in Israel, or the creditor would not have so resented a regulation which gave him twice as much for his money. Nor in his neighbour cities of Canaan, or he would still have recognized his improved position. It must have been somewhere at a time now forgotten in a state of things which he would be expected still to respect. Where else could it be than in Babylonia, the home of his father Abraham? Would any one have quoted him a law unless it was one he was likely to respect as eminently just? He may not have known that law by the name of the Code of Hammurabi, but simply as ‘ancient law’ so highly revered by Orientals in all ages. ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time’ was enough.

Here some one may be disposed to raise the objection that the creditor was not told that the six years was double the term allowed by ancient law, but simply that it was ‘the double of the hire of a hired servant’. Now if that does not mean the same thing it has no sense at all. For a term cannot be double the hire of anything. It is the value in work of the term of service which is double a hire. We must express both terms in the same denomination. In what sense could six years ever be double of anything but three years? How can we imagine three years to have any special connexion with the term of a hired servant? Is there any evidence that servants were usually hired for three years? The term in Israel, as in Babylon, must always have been matter of free contract. The writer has in his mind the other regulation that the hostage for debt must not be treated worse than a hired servant, and explains the six years’ term as double what the debtor would be likely to agree to if he was in the position of a hired servant and free to contract about the term. Why should he be thus expected to fix upon three years as a term? Probably because the custom, which had come down from the time when Canaan observed the same usages which Hammurabi codified, regarded three years as a proper term. If this view be thought not convincing, it may be rejected.

It is at least curious that the excuse given for demanding release for a hostage for debt at the end of six years is that this is after all double something—when it actually is double the term Hammurabi fixed.

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