Johns renders the first clause: "If a man weave a spell;" Harper renders the second clause, "and charge him with a [capital] crime." There can be, however, little doubt but that this law was directed against withcraft or magic.

The Hebrews legislated as follows:

Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live. (Ex. 22:18).

system of law is not a mere fiat. It is a part of the legal life and consciousness of a people. Hence it represents a stage of their legal growth. Each people or nation has had its own growth and represents some type. Just as a buffalo or a dinosaur or a pterodactyl or a whale has a set of bones and organs forming a genus or species, and just as the study of a complete animal of any species enables us to determine its type, and thus to compare the growth and relations of specific organs in other genera or species, so, in the study of comparative law, the typical legal ideas are found to have a different or similar growth and relation in different peoples. And the discovery of a fairly complete legal system in Babylon, at so ancient a period, enables us to extend our knowledge of the growth and relations of the chief legal ideas recurrent among all peoples.

A glance at some of the provisions of the Code of Hammurabi will illustrate this and will prevent us from looking upon it merely as an antiquarian curiosity or a collection of odd-sounding rules.

Some of its provisions point to a still very primitive legal system e.g., it preserves the retaliatory penalties an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It also preserves liability for accidental harm, which marks all primitive systems.

Others of its provisions show a semi-advanced condition, condition, e.g., personal revenge, the family feud, has disappeared, and all justice is administered by the State. For many wrongs fixed sums are payable as damages. The liability of the family or children for the parents' offenses is inherited in only two or three instances. The debtor's liability is still personal; his property is not yet liable separately.

Finally, some of the provisions show the Babylonians in a stage the most advanced of all civilizations prior to that of Rome under the emperors; e.g., aliens are not subjected to discrimination in commercial or other rights. Land is held by individual ownership, not in common. Trade and commerce are complex; there are rules for warehousing, for agency and partnership, for various kinds of contracts; and all contracts must be reduced to writing. In one notable respect there is here a backwardness; for the protection given to an innocent purchaser (market overt, purchase for value without notice) is incomplete.

In family and succession law we note that at Babylon marriage is a developed type of marriage by purchase, with a dowry from the wife's father; that there is no primogeniture (only a double share to the eldest son); that daughters do not inherit if there are sons; and that there is no marked trace of either endogamy or exogamy (i.e., marriage limited to women within or without the clan).

All of these features, found in this particular combination, are of the highest interest. No other legal system, it may be said, possesses just this combination at a given time. Thus the study of the Babylonian system will throw new light on the stages and forms of growth of each of these separate legal principles, as well as on the possibilities of their combination with each other in the law of a given people.

In the science of comparative legal history (which is as yet in its infancy), Babylon and Egypt appear as the two great peoples of the preChristian era. They far surpass the others in the fertility of their legal ideas and in their utility for our edification. Thus far, and until the possible discovery of some corresponding code in Egypt, the Code of King Hammurabi places Babylon in the forefront of modern scientific interest.

And also:

A man or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones. (Lev. 20:27. See also Lev. 19:26-31.)

The fact that the code opens with laws against magic or sorcery seems to prove the prevalence of such practices among the early Babylonians, and the severity of the penalty is a clear proof that the people were superstitiously afraid of those who practiced magic.

2

If a man charge a man of being a sorcerer, and is unable to sustain such a charge, the one who is accused shall go to the river, he shall plunge himself into the river, and if he sink into the river, his accuser shall take his house. If, however, the river show forth the innocence of this man, and he escape unhurt, then he who accused him of sorcery, shall be put to death, while he who plunged into the river shall appropriate the house of his accuser.

It will be noticed that the Babylonians employed ordeals to test the guilt or innocence of persons suspected of, or charged with, sorcery, and also in connection with women charged with marital infidelity. Such tests or ordeals in some form or another have been common to most nations, even down to comparatively recent times. They are still employed in Bible lands. We have all heard of the ordeal by fire, and also by water, which were practiced in England in the Dark Ages. It is not recorded that the Hebrews did at any time in their history plunge suspected parties into the water, but the same principle is illustrated in the so-called "waters of jealousy," so fully described in Num. 5:11-31, where we read that any woman suspected of infidelity to her husband had to drink a large quantity of water prepared in a certain manner. It is possible that the Hebrews employed other forms of ordeal. The name EnMishpat, "well of judgment," may have originated from such a practice. See also Psa. 109:18; Proν. 6:27-29.

It is remarkable that the victim, and not the sorcerer, was to plunge into the water. The principle, of course, is the same, for the sacred water will save and protect the innocent.

3

If a man (in a case pending judgment) threaten the witnesses, or do not establish that which he has testified, if that case be a case involving life, that man shall be put to death.

The corresponding law in the Mosaic Code is:

If an unrighteous witness rise up against any man to testify against him of wrong doing; then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who shall be in those days; and the judges shall make diligent inquisition; and, behold, if the witness be a false witness and hath testified falsely against his brother; then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to do unto his brother. (Deut. 19:16-19.)

4

If a man offer as a bribe grain or money to witnesses, he himself shall bear the sentence of the court in that case.

We read in Ex. 23:8:

And thou shalt take no gift; for a gift blindeth them that have sight, and perverteth the word of the righteous.

5

If a judge pass judgment, render a decision, deliver a verdict, signed and sealed, and afterwards alter his judgment which he has rendered, he shall be called to account for the alteration of the judgment, and he shall pay twelve-fold the penalty which was in the said judgment; and, in the assembly, they shall expel him from his judgment seat, and he shall not return, and he shall no more take his seat with the judges in a case.

This particular law finds no exact parallel in Hebrew legislation, though bribery and unfairness in legal proceedings are constantly condemned throughout the historical and prophetical books. Indeed, the frequency with which bribery and perversions of justice are mentioned prove very clearly that rulers and those in power were much addicted to corrupt practices. (See Ex. 23:6-8; 1 Sam. 8:3; 12:3; Isa. 1:23; Ezek. 22: 12; Amos 5: 12.)

6

If a man steal the property of a temple, or [royal] palace, that man shall be put to death, and so, too, he who may receive from his hand stolen goods shall be put to death.

We have no record in the Old Testament that the death penalty was inflicted for mere theft, unless in such cases as that of Achan (Josh. 7:25), where the theft was really from God; for the things taken by Achan were "devoted" to God. Passages like Gen. 31:32, and 44:9, leave us to infer that in patriarchal times those guilty of stealing sacred things were subjected to the death penalty. The purloining of Laban's gods might be regarded in the same light as the robbing of a temple; and as Joseph acted in the capacity of vice-general, the stealing of his cup was a crime against the palace or Egyptian court, therefore worthy of the severest penalty. See Ex. 22:2, where a thief is killed at night while breaking into a house.

7

If a man buy silver, gold, slave, male or female, ox, sheep, ass, or anything whatsoever from the son or slave of any person, without witness or contract, or receive the same on deposit, he is regarded as a thief, and shall be put to death.

The object of this law is evident, namely, to prevent underhanded buying and selling by or from irresponsible children and faithless slaves or those unaccustomed to business. Attention may be called to the business-like proceedings in the case of Boaz and Ruth. (See Ruth 4:2 ff.) Boaz appears at the gate, the usual place for transacting legal business, where he meets the other kinsman of Ruth; then, before the elders of the city of Bethlehem, a contract is drawn up before witnesses.

It seems clear, from the above section, that slaves were competent to act as agents for their masters, but only in the presence of witnesses and when a contract was duly drawn up.

8

If a man steal an ox, or sheep, or ass, or pig, or boat, from a temple or palace, he shall pay thirty-fold; if it be from a freeman, he shall pay tenfold. If the thief has nothing with which to pay, he shall be put to death.

Notice the grades of punishment. Objects contributed for the support of a temple were held as very sacred, and as the king was God's immediate representative here on earth, his property, too, was regarded as sacred. There was a wide range in the Babylonian laws of restitution in cases of theft, anywhere from thirty to two. (See 124 and 126.) Асcording to Hebrew laws and customs it ranged from seven (Prov. 6:1) to two (Ex. 22:1). The Hebrew law reads thus:

...

If a man shall steal an ox or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it, he shall pay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. If the theft be found in his hand alive, whether it be ox, or ass, or sheep, he shall pay double. (Ex. 22:1 and 4.)

(2

In the time of David, a stolen lamb was to be restored fourfold. Sam. 12:6.) This fourfold restoration was in vogue in the time of our Savior (Luke 19:8), and prevails to this day among the Bedouin of the desert.

9

If a man who has lost any article find it in the hands of another; and the man with whom the lost article is found say, "A merchant sold it to me in the presence of witnesses," and the owner of the article say, "I can produce witnesses who know my lost property," then shall the buyer bring the merchant who sold it to him, and the witness before whom it was purchased, and the owner shall bring witnesses who know the lost property. The judge shall examine their evidence before God [i.e., in open court], and both of the witnesses before whom the price was paid, and of the witnesses who identify the lost article. [If] the merchant is then proven to be a thief, he shall be put to death. The owner of the lost article receives his property, the buyer shall recover the money he paid for the same from the estate of the seller.

10

If the buyer can not produce the one who sold it and the witnesses before whom he bought the article, but its owner bring witnesses who identify it, then the buyer is put to death as the thief, and the owner of the lost article shall take back his property.

11

If the owner [claimant, H.] of the lost article do not produce witnesses to identify said article, he is malevolent and guilty of fraud; he shall be put to death.

See remarks under Section 3.

12

If the seller have died, the buyer shall recover from the estate of the seller fivefold damages.

The Hebrews, too, had their laws concerning lost property and articles found. They are fully stated in both Exodus and Leviticus. This is from the Book of the Covenant:

For every matter of trespass [violation of property rights, especially theft], whether it be for ox, for ass, for sheep, for raiment, or for any manner of lost thing, whereof one saith, This is it; the cause of both parties shall come before God [to open trial], he whom God [the judges] condemns shall pay double unto his neighbor. (Ex. 22: 9.)

We further read in Lev. 6:2-5:

If any one sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, and deal falsely with his neighbor in a matter of deposit, or of bargain [pledge], or of robbery, or have oppressed his neighbor; or have found that which was lost, and deal falsely therein, and swear to a lie; in any of all these that a man doeth, sinning therein: then it shall be, if he hath sinned, and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took by robbery, or the thing which he hath gotten by oppression, or the deposit which was committed to him, or the lost thing which he hath found, or anything about which he hath sworn falsely; he shall even restore it in full, and shall add the fifth part more thereto: unto