Laws of Moses and Hammurabi: A Comparative Analysis

Introduction: Codifying Law in the Ancient World

From earliest times, societies have struggled with questions of law and order. At first, decisions about the permissibility or illegality of a given act relied almost wholly on notions of custom or tradition. It was only with the dawn of civilization that rulers first attempted to codify what was right and what was wrong. Early law codes, such as those of the Babylonian king Hammurabi and the Biblical Moses, represent the values of their time and place. They lay down the penalties for the commission of specific crimes, and their legislation speaks to the structure and nature of their respective cultures. Indeed, the two codes share much in their approach to judicial procedure and punishment.

Both codes assert that they were inspired by the will of the gods, or of the one God, making right action a matter of sacred moral choice. Both concern themselves with a similar variety of offenses, ranging from assaults against persons to those against property, and on to the violation of general social norms. Their pronouncements are all-embracing and serve as virtual guidebooks to the ideal construction of their respective civilizations. Each also derives from the traditions of Mesopotamian civilization. The earliest known law codes were those of Ancient Sumer, the civilization from which Babylonia was derived and also the original home of Abraham, the Biblical patriarch. Thus, the laws of Hammurabi and Moses share a common origin and a similar set of precepts and concerns. Down to the present day, the principles behind these ancient law codes continue to inform much of Western legal and moral thinking.

The laws of Ancient Mesopotamia represent the oldest known collections of codified law — a tradition that predates by many centuries the earliest written laws of other ancient civilizations, such as those of India and China. This civilization was therefore unique in committing to writing an entire system of legal thinking. Enacted during the eighteenth century before Christ, Hammurabi's famous code was preceded by numerous other written compilations of the law, the earliest yet found being that of the Sumerian king Uruinimgina (also known as Urukagina), a ruler of the city of Lagash in the 24th century B.C. The "Reforms of Uruinimgina" already reveal a resort to tradition and to divine sanction as necessary underpinnings of the legal enactments of human beings.

Hammurabi's Code: Divine Authority and Social Order

Hammurabi likewise attributed his code to the gods. As recorded in the code's prologue, Anum and Enlil had named him, the pious ruler, to proclaim justice in the land — "to eliminate the evil and the wicked, so that the strong should not oppress the weak… to give justice to the orphan and the widow." He also stated that "the wronged man shall stand before the inscribed stela and read its precious ordinances." As with the later Mosaic Law, the code's purpose is conceived as a divine attempt to bring justice to the affairs of humankind. The king serves as the guarantor of the rights of the weak and the champion of the oppressed. Worldly order would reflect the righteousness of the divine plan.

Hammurabi's code contains an interesting mixture of civil and criminal matters, with laws relating to public administration, family relations, economic resources, and religious ritual. This holistic approach contrasts notably with much of the legal thought of our own time. Hammurabi's world was one in which all aspects of society were united into one. No real distinction existed between the public and the private spheres. Matters we today consider firmly under private control — or matters of conscience — were readily accepted as being under the governance of the state. Such an attitude reveals a fairly homogeneous society, or at least one that aspired to be so. Religion and the supernatural were seen as forces controlling virtually every facet of daily life, and ordinary men and women were understood to be subject to the dictates of the gods. What the gods had created and set into motion was what should and must be. The merely mundane concerns of commerce and property ownership were as much a part of the divine order as anything else.

The importance of perpetuating the family line is treated matter-of-factly in the code, as though it were a kind of business arrangement, the principles underlying it also sanctioned by the gods. As in the Bible, a woman might allow her slave to bear her husband's child if she is unable to have a child herself. The Code of Hammurabi not only permits such an arrangement but also foresees the inherent dangers it poses to the relationship between wife and husband. It takes note of the possibility of rivalry between the childless wife and the slave who has become the mother of the husband's child. Here, too, the law is the instrument of harmony, and the private life of the family serves as a mirror of the larger society. If husband, wife, and children can interact in an orderly manner — remaining productive and law-abiding — so too can the merchants, priests, soldiers, craftsmen, and officials who comprise the "family" of the city or state.

Better known to modern Western readers, the Laws of Moses comprise the Biblical answer to the Code of Hammurabi. Like the Babylonian ruler's decrees, they are attributed to divine authority. The Bible emphasizes the sacral quality of the commandments that Moses brings down from Mount Sinai. Moses himself is conceived as an especially blessed individual, specifically chosen by God to be the bearer of His message. As in the earlier Sumerian civilization, the Babylonian kingship of Hammurabi was conceived as representing the extension of the god's rule over the whole of civilization — "the dominion of the ruler reached beyond the land of Sumer proper and became coextensive with the cosmic lordship of the god."

The Laws of Moses: Sacred Legislation and Good Governance

In the same way, God's laws as given to Moses supersede those of Pharaoh and apply to the Israelites wherever they might live. Human peoples do not create their own versions of morality and right conduct; rather, they must submit to the Divine Will, acting in accordance with principles that are universal, or nearly universal, in their application. Divine sanction prevents the code from being contested. The most powerful man or woman remains less powerful than God, or the gods — less knowledgeable, less wise, and less virtuous. Society is a web of complex interactions on a great variety of levels, and these relationships transcend the personal, encompassing not only the greater community but even the cosmic order.

Because all of society is ultimately under God's control, the Laws of Moses likewise mix the civil and the criminal, the private and the public, and the religious with the administrative. The very first commandment is an injunction to worship no other gods but the one true God. This religious commandment is followed by others that speak to the relationships between husband and wife, parent and child, and between individuals within a community. The proscriptions cover interpersonal relations as well as the relationship of individuals to material property. The hundreds of commandments that make up the remainder of the Mosaic Code cover practically every imaginable aspect of ancient Israelite culture. Many apply to concerns still prominent today — issues of juridical procedure, the settlement of disputes, and the definition and punishment of criminal actions.

St. Thomas Aquinas described the Mosaic laws as concerning justice, "since they involve actions that are directed to the ordering of one man in relation to another, which ordering is subject to the direction of the sovereign as supreme judge." He stated explicitly that a contemporary sovereign could rightly enact laws modeled on those precepts: "if a sovereign were to order these judicial precepts to be observed in his kingdom, he would not sin." In other words, the Laws of Moses function as a divine blueprint for good government and as a model for the conduct of the righteous ruler. All future legislation should work toward the ideals embodied in these decrees. The identification of sin with criminality — or with the failure to observe proper procedure in civil and private matters — underscores the importance of taking the needs of others into consideration and sets out the real meaning of a civil society and the ideal state of human interactions.