7
whose benevolence is for the purpose that "the mighty not wrong the weak, to provide just ways
for the waif and the widow" (Epilogue xlvii 9-78).
16
Thus one purpose of the Laws of
Hammurabi is to show the reader what a good and righteous king Hammurabi is.
In Exodus 20-23, God is characterizes by the narrator through the law-speeches of the
Decalogue and the book of the covenant. God introduces his laws by first reminding Israel that
he is their redeemer from Egypt and has offered them a personal, covenant relationship with
them as "your God" (Exod 20:2). He is a God who can dramatically communicate from heaven
to his people (Exod 20:22), and who seeks to meet with them and bless them in sacrificial
worship (Exod 20:24), though he is opposed to all sexual impropriety in worship (exposure of
genitals on steps to an altar; Exod 20:26), as he is opposed to sexual impropriety otherwise
(adultery, seduction of virgins, bestiality; Exod 20:14; 22:16-17, 19). God declares himself a
jealous God who tolerates no other gods as rivals (Exod 20:2, 23; 22:20), nor does he even
tolerate quasi-religious practices such as sorcery (Exod 22:18).
God claims in the Sabbath law to be the unimaginably powerful and intelligent force that
made the universe, and on that basis he claims authority to order the lives of his creatures
religiously by decreeing the Sabbath rest after his own creative pattern (Exod 20:11), as well as
by decreeing elsewhere the other festivals: Sabbath Year, Unleavened Bread [Passover], Feast of
the Harvest [Weeks], and the Feast of Ingathering [Tabernacles] (Exod 22:29-30; 23:10-19).
The law-speeches show God to be a moral, law-giving king
17
who structures not only the
religious aspects of his peoples lives, but all aspects of their lives. God is so righteous that he
punishes iniquity to the third and fourth generations with those who hate him and is offended
when his name is taken in vain, but to an even greater degree he is a loving God who shows
faithful love to the thousandth generation to those who love and obey him (Exod 20:3-6
16
Translations by Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor
(SBLWAW 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 80-81, 133.
17
Watts, Reading Law, 101. As Watts notes, the laws never explicitly call God king, but the
character of the laws as decrees clearly implies the kingship of Yahweh.