Graduating High School, I didn’t have a clear idea or path towards what or who I was to become as an adult. The year I graduated my High School offered three one-year tuition waivers to our local community college. One was for an athletic candidate. That was not me. While I was average in skill at most sports, I came in at just under 100 pounds and so I wasn’t necessarily competitive; especially in my favorite sport, football. Another was for academics. Again, this was not me. I had potential and even capability, but I would come to discover I had to be interested and challenged. In High School I was mostly bored. The final tuition waiver was selected by the faculty and for what ever reason they decided to award this waiver to me. I had to select a program. After careful consideration I chose to pursue an associate degree in criminal justice. After all, it was the only program at our local institution with an indoor firing range. The choice was clear.
Greg Pierce was my advisor and professor for many of my classes. He introduced me to many of the great enlightenment thinkers. Especially the criminological thoughts of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jeremy Bentham. But I will never forget our discussion on the Code of Hammurabi. We were studying the history of criminal codes and their necessity for civil and ordered society. The Code of Hammurabi is one of our earliest examples of such a code.
Hammurabi was a king of Babylon, in the second millennium before Christ, and his code contained 282 various laws (Faithlife n.d.). This code made social distinctions along the social classes such as free men, middle class, and slave and provides an interesting look into their daily lives in those days (Faithlife n.d.). Not only did it cover crime but also included things such as the price of hiring a boat for a day, the cost of a jug of beer at harvest, and many other legal situations of their times (Faithlife n.d.).
There are some who have even supposed that the Law of Moses was built on or evolved from the Code of Hammurabi. Either indirectly or directly the claim is that the Law of Moses drew on the Code of Hammurabi or served as a model upon which to draw (Hamme, Babcock and Strong 2016). But I think this rests on naturalistic assumptions that what comes later comes from what came before. But there are two reasonable arguments against the necessity of the Code’s influence on the Law of Moses.
First, that the Code came before the Law assumes first that the Law wasn’t around until it was given to Moses. In the strange story of Tamar (Gen 38), we find the law of Levirate Marriage (Gen 38:8) long before the duty was dictated to Moses (Deu 25:5-10). This would make the Law of Moses at least close to contemporaneous with the Code of Hammurabi and the plus or minus in error could put it contemporaneously on either side; before or after.
Additionally, the idea of clean and unclean predated Hammurabi’s code all the way back to the flood. Noah was commanded to take one pair of every unclean animal and seven pairs of every clean animal onto the ark (Gen 7:2-3). The increased number of clean animals was presumably to meet the need for ritual sacrifice. If we allow that everyone died in the flood it would appear that at least elements of the Law of Moses existed before the Code of Hammurabi. The possibility that the acceptance of Abel’s offering over Cain’s (Gen 4:3-5) as a statement of obedience to a known requirement could also suggest that the Law was known before the flood. “From the beginning God’s law lay at the center of his dealings with humankind (Elwell 2001, 679).”
Second, is an idea that Paul introduced in Romans. “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus (Rom 2:12-16).” The moral law is written on the hearts of both the Jew and the Gentile. They are written on the hearts of every person. Whenever someone does by instinct that which is required by the law, even though they don’t know the law, they are demonstrating, “the existence of a guiding principle within themselves (Mounce 1995, 94).” This “guiding principle”, while not perfect, could have produced not only the Code of Hammurabi but two separate legal codes on the opposite ends of the planet, absence of any communication between the two cultures, that had many, if not most, parts resembling the other.
Back to Greg Pierce’s class. What stood out on that day was my own inner question, “Apart from the obvious, that the Law of Moses was given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai, what would make the Law of Moses superior to any other code of conduct such as Hammurabi’s Code?” The answer is that the Law of Moses is so much more than just a code of conduct.
J.A. Motyer writes that “the law that God gave through Moses had many aspects—e.g., civil, dealing with the legal system of the people of God considered as a state, with courts and penalties; moral, the law of holy living; and religious, the law of the ceremonies and sacrifices (Elwell 2001, 675).” But, of those many aspects the aspect that most distinguishes the Law of Moses from any other code of conduct is perhaps its purpose. Reflecting the narrative of Genesis 2-3 in which man’s obedience would place him in the garden nourished by the tree of life and conversely through disobedience would grow death so too obedience to the Law promised life and disobedience death (Elwell 2001, 675). But the ultimate purpose of the Law was to point to life.
The Law, given to Moses by God, teaches the difference between righteousness and unrighteousness through its concepts of clean and unclean. It teaches man’s unrighteousness before a righteous God and the serious consequences and judgment of that unrighteousness. But most amazingly it also hints at a restoration of righteousness. The idea that something that is unclean can be made to be clean again; that unrighteous can become righteous. The hope that peace between man and God is even and still possible. The hope of this peace, proclaimed by angels (Luk 2:14), is not found in the Code of Hammurabi or any other code. Only God’s Law, the Law of Moses, offers and expects the realization of that hope. This is the hope that was fulfilled in Jesus (Rom 5:1)! He came not to abolish it, but to fulfill it (Mat 5:17)! He came to make the unclean clean and the unrighteous righteous by becoming the one judged on behalf of the unclean and unrighteous!
Socrates once quipped, “it may be that God can forgive sins but I do not see how.” The Law of Moses told God’s people that He would forgive sin and even hinted at how.
Thank you for reading my blog today. I hope I have encouraged you to spend some time in the Old Testament. It is the historical record of Israel’s relationship to God through the Law, Their failures in regard to the Law and God, and their hope of ultimate redemption to God. A redemption that would ultimately be fulfilled in Jesus. If you are struggling to understand the Old Testament, keep going. Ask questions, find good commentaries, and trust in God’s spirit to guide you. His love for you is His vested interest in your continued growth. God is complex and His plans are complex. But as your understanding of that complexity grows your understanding and your appreciation of what He has done on your behalf will also grow.
Elwell, Walter A., ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Second Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001.
Faithlife, LLC. Code of Hammurabi. Prod. Logos Bible Software Factbook. Bellingham, WA, n.d.
Hamme, Joel, Bryan C. Babcock, and Justin David Strong. “Code of Hammurabi.” In The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by John D. Barry. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.
Mounce, Robert H. “Romans.” In The New American Commentary. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995.