The oldest great law code. 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. It was found in 1901–02 by a French expedition digging at Susa (in Elam, where a later conqueror had carried it off as plunder), carved on a black diorite stele about 2.25 metres high, and it now stands in the Louvre. The ISBE describes the code not as a fresh invention but as a gathering-up of laws already in use, "the judgments of righteousness which Hammurabi the mighty king confirmed" (ISBE, "Hammurabi, Code of," Arthur Ungnad).
The same form as Israel's "judgments." The ISBE's entry on the law (Ulric Z. Rule, "Law in the Old Testament") sets the biblical mishpatim, the case-laws of the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21–23), directly beside Hammurabi's, and finds the resemblance "very striking": "All alike have the same structure, beginning with a hypothetical clause, 'if so and so,' and then giving the rule applicable in the third person." This is casuistic (case-law) form, "if a man does X, the penalty is Y", and it is the shared style of the whole region. The ISBE lists concrete parallels of subject as well as form: the goring ox (Exodus 21:28–32 beside Hammurabi §§250–251), the six-year limit on servitude (Exodus 21:2 beside §117), the law of deposits (Exodus 22:7 ff beside §§124 ff), and the talion itself (Exodus 21:24 beside §§196–200). But, as stressed, the ISBE explicitly rules out direct borrowing: the laws "bear quite a definite impression due to the Israelite culture, and numerous marked divergences also exist." Both codes draw on the older custom of the land; each shaped it its own way. (Source: ISBE 1915, "Hammurabi, Code of" [Ungnad] and "Law in the Old Testament" [Rule].)
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