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Social justice in the Ancient World:

Excerpts from The Torah and The Code of Hammurabi

PASSAGE 1

Exodus 21:12-27:Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Deuteronomy 19:21: Whoever strikes a man a mortal blow must be put to death.

Exodus 21:12: When men have a fight and hurt a pregnant women, so that she suffers a miscarriage and no further injury, the guilty one shall be fined as much as the woman's husband demands of him. But if injury ensues, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand ...

Exodus 21:22-23: When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, not mortally but enough to put him top bed, the one who struck the blow shall be acquitted, provided the other can get up and walk around with the help of his staff. Still, he must provide compensation for his enforced idleness and provide for his complete care. When a man strikes his male or female slave in the eye and destroys the use of the eye, he shall let the slave go free in compensation for the tooth.

Passage 2

from The Code of Hammurabi

If a man strikes another man superior to him in status, he shall receive sixty blows.

If he strikes an inferior, he shall pay a fine.

IF a man has destroyed the eye of a freeman, his own eye shall be destroyed.

If he has broken the bone of a free man, his bone shall be broken.

If a man has knocked out the teeth of another freeman, his teeth shall be knocked out.

If he has destroyed the eye of a man's slave or broken his bones, he shall pay half his value.

If a man strikes the daughter of a freeman and causes her fetus to abort, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for her fetus.

If that woman dies, his daughter shall be slain.

If he has caused the daughter of a peasant to let her fetus abort through blows, he shall pay five shekels of silver.

If that woman dies, he shall pay half a mina of silver.