Truth you can trace
Law and covenant
How the covenants and the law work, and how the traditions read them.
The Code of Hammurabi
Hammurabi was the most famous king of Babylon's first dynasty, and the law code that bears his name is the oldest near-complete collection of laws known.
Exodus 21:28 · Exodus 21:24 · Exodus 22:1
Read"Eye for an eye": the talion
The line modern readers find hardest, "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" (Exodus 21:23–25; compare Leviticus 24:19–20; Deuteronomy 19:16–19), is, in the ISBE's reading, not a licence for revenge but a limit on it.
Exodus 21:24 · Leviticus 24:20 · Deuteronomy 19:21
ReadA law that protected the weak
Here the ISBE draws its sharpest contrast, and it is the ISBE's own interpretive reading, offered as such.
Deuteronomy 23:15 · Exodus 21:2 · Leviticus 25:39
ReadCovenant: an ancient treaty
The Hebrew word for covenant, berith, the ISBE links to the Assyrian biritu, which means a "fetter" and also a "covenant"…
Exodus 19:5 · Exodus 24:7 · Joshua 24:25
ReadTo "cut" a covenant
The Hebrew idiom for making a covenant is karath berith, literally to "cut a covenant." The verb karath "meant originally 'to cut,'" and…
Genesis 15:10 · Exodus 24:8 · Jeremiah 34:18
ReadThe Ten Commandments: the covenant's terms
If a covenant has terms (the first of the four elements), the Ten Commandments are the terms of the covenant at Sinai.
Exodus 34:28 · Exodus 20:1 · Deuteronomy 5:6
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On contested questions we show every major view, attributed and cited, and pick no winner. Answers are synthesized from primary sources, truth you can trace, not opinion.