by
Damien F. Mackey
“The term "House of David" refers to the
royal dynasty established by King David, the second king of Israel, and extends
to his descendants. This lineage holds significant theological and historical
importance within the biblical narrative,
as it is central to the promises of God regarding
the Messiah and the enduring kingdom”.
Bible Hub
The reason why archaeologists, e.g. I. Finkelstein and N. Silberman, and
those who follow their views, must minimalise the biblical kings David and
Solomon down to almost nothing, is because they are applying a faulty
timeline to the archaeological data in which they are steeped. Finding
virtually nothing in strata that they would estimate to have belonged to the
C10th BC time of kings David and Solomon, they are then logically compelled to
conclude that the biblical narratives must have it wrong and must have
significantly exaggerated the greatness of the United Kingdom of Israel.
The Iron IIA period does, in conventional terms, date to the era of
David and Solomon. But, in real terms, the impoverished Iron IIA is far too
late for the United Kingdom of Israel, which was, in fact, a cosmopolitan
Bronze Age kingdom.
Consequently, I. Finkelstein and N. Silberman have no hope of
‘unearthing’ the Bible, which apparently means little to them anyway as a true
history.
What they are actually unearthing is evidence from late in the Divided
Kingdom era of Israel, then mis-matching this with the biblical accounts of David
and Solomon, earlier, and then proclaiming that the Bible is inaccurate.
That is really Dumb archaeology, see my:
Dumb and
Dumbfounded archaeology
(5) Dumb and Dumbfounded
archaeology
It never seems to occur to the Procrustean proponents of such a mis-fit operation
to question the timeline into which they have been indoctrinated.
Or, if it does, they are not truth-driven enough to make whatever
requisite adjustments might be necessary.
David and Solomon in the C10th BC.
Kings David and Solomon biblically do belong to the c. C10th BC.
But this was not the Iron IIA Age. It was the glorious Bronze Age.
David, too much ‘a man of blood’ to qualify for building the Temple of
Yahweh, had set up his son, Solomon, with a firm base, providing him with all
of the resources that he would need to undertake the Divine task (I Chronicles
28:11-19):
David gave his son Solomon the
plans for the portico of the Temple, its buildings, its storerooms, its
upper parts, its inner rooms and the place of atonement. He gave him the
plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind for the courts of the Temple
of the Lord and all the surrounding rooms, for the treasuries of the Temple
of God and for the treasuries for the dedicated things. He gave him
instructions for the divisions of the priests and Levites, and for all the
work of serving in the Temple of the Lord, as well as for all the articles
to be used in its service. He designated the weight of gold for all the
gold articles to be used in various kinds of service, and the weight of silver
for all the silver articles to be used in various kinds of service: the
weight of gold for the gold lampstands and their lamps, with the weight
for each lampstand and its lamps; and the weight of silver for each silver
lampstand and its lamps, according to the use of each lampstand; the
weight of gold for each table for consecrated bread; the weight of silver
for the silver tables; the weight of pure gold for the forks, sprinkling
bowls and pitchers; the weight of gold for each gold dish; the weight of
silver for each silver dish; and the weight of the refined gold for the
altar of incense. He also gave him the plan for the chariot, that is,
the cherubim of gold that spread their wings and overshadow the ark of the
covenant of the Lord.
‘All this’, David said, ‘I have
in writing as a result of the Lord’s hand on me, and he enabled me to
understand all the details of the plan’.
I
Chronicles 29:1-7:
Then King David said to the whole
assembly: ‘My son Solomon, the one whom God has chosen, is young and
inexperienced. The task is great, because this palatial structure is not
for man but for the Lord God. With all my resources I have
provided for the Temple of my God—gold for the gold work, silver for the
silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron and wood for the wood, as well
as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colors, and all
kinds of fine stone and marble—all of these in large quantities. Besides,
in my devotion to the Temple of my God I now give my personal treasures of gold
and silver for the Temple of my God, over and above everything I have
provided for this holy Temple: three thousand talents of gold
(gold of Ophir) and seven thousand talents of refined
silver, for the overlaying of the walls of the buildings, for the
gold work and the silver work, and for all the work to be done by the
craftsmen. Now, who is willing to consecrate themselves to
the Lord today?’
Then the leaders of families, the
officers of the tribes of Israel, the commanders of thousands and commanders of
hundreds, and the officials in charge of the king’s work gave
willingly. They gave toward the work on the Temple of God five
thousand talents and ten thousand darics of gold, ten thousand
talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of bronze and a hundred
thousand talents of iron.
The House of David is archaeologically attested in the celebrated Tel
Dan Stele:
“Few modern Biblical archaeology discoveries have caused as much
excitement as the Tel Dan inscription—writing on a ninth-century B.C. stone
slab (or stela) that furnished the first historical evidence of King David from the Bible.
The Tel Dan inscription, or “House of David” inscription, was discovered
in 1993 at the site of
Tel Dan in northern Israel in an excavation directed
by Israeli archaeologist Avraham Biran. The broken and fragmentary inscription
commemorates the victory of an Aramean king over his two southern neighbors:
the “king of Israel” and the “king of the House of David.”
In the carefully incised text written in neat Aramaic characters, the Aramean king boasts that he,
under the divine guidance of the god Hadad, vanquished several thousand
Israelite and Judahite horsemen and charioteers before personally dispatching
both of his royal opponents”.
The “House of David” is referred to again in the famous Mesha Stele,
While David himself is mentioned yet again in the Karnak inscription of
pharaoh Shoshenq I. So there are, we find, significant:
Archaeological
evidences for King David
(10) Archaeological evidences for
King David
Davidic influences north and south
And there is much more apart from this. But some of it cannot be grasped
within a conventional context, but only when a revised timeline is properly
applied.
Whereas the conventional dating would logically necessitate that
historical characters (e.g., Hammurabi of Babylon, pharaohs Hatshepsut and
Akhnaton), dated earlier than King David, had influenced the king of Israel in
his Psalmody and in his wisdom literature, etc., the truth is that the
influencing was all the way of David, who actually (in a revised history)
pre-dated all of these notables.
For instance, it is commonly thought that the Tel Dan Stele (as
discussed above) was a product of King Hazael of Syria (Aram), who was allied
to King Jehu of Israel.
These two kings are biblically dated to c. 85o BC.
However, shockingly, Hazael also emerges as Aziru of Amurru
(Syria) in the important El Amarna (EA) letters conventionally dated some 500
years earlier (c. C14th BC).
Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky came to the rescue with his classic, Ages in
Chaos I (1952), when he boldly collapsed the C14th BC EA era into the
biblical C9th BC, brilliantly identifying Hazael, and his predecessor,
Ben-Hadad, with the EA (Amurrite) succession of Abdi-ashirta (Ben-Hadad)
and Aziru (Hazael).
Even certain revisionist critics of Dr. Velikovsky’s radical overhaul
were forced to admit that he was on solid ground here. And, indeed, EA’s Abdi-ashirta
and Aziru, as the biblical Ben-Hadad and Hazael, became a foundation for
my 2007 post-graduate thesis.
Now, contemporaneous with Aziru (Hazael) in the EA letters was
pharaoh Akhnaton, whose wonderful Sun Hymn is universally recognised as
influencing (so it is thought) King David’s Psalm 104.
According to our revised scheme, however, this would have been quite impossible,
with King David preceding Akhnaton by about a century and a half. My article:
Akhnaton’s
Theophany
fully explains just what this most unusual of pharaohs was doing
reproducing Davidic psalmody and even Hebrew monotheism.
Psalm 104 is almost a duplicate of the Egyptian Hymn to Aten | Facts
about Religion
Psalm 104 is almost a duplicate of the Egyptian Hymn to Aten
A revised EA era immediately begins to produce fruit.
For, just as with the Tel Dan Stele, with its reference to the “House of
David”, so, too, do we encounter the “House of Solomon” (Bît Shulman) in
two letters (one by a later King of Jerusalem) of the El Amarna (EA) series (EA
#’s 74 and 290).
This vital phrase defies adequate explanation in a conventional context.
With Pharaoh Akhnaton now contemporaneous with King Jehu of Israel (c.
850 BC), then the earlier Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh, the female
Hatshepsut (d. c. 1450 BC), - conventionally dated a century before Akhnaton - can
take her place exactly where Dr. Velikovsky re-located her, as a contemporary
of David’s son, Solomon (c. 950 BC).
She was, as Dr. Velikovsky would intuitively discover, none other than
the biblical “Queen of Sheba” (“… of the South”) (cf. I Kings 10:1-13;
Matthew 12:42).
While David’s kingdom had been very much focussed upon Jerusalem, his
influence did radiate northwards to the Lebanese kingdom of his loyal friend,
Hiram, and he also fought against a powerful Syro-Mitannian king, Hadadezer,
right unto Assyria.
His son Solomon, on the other hand, would branch out in all geographical
directions (Ophir/Punt, Egypt, Arabia, Lebanon, Hatti, Cilicia, etc.)
attracting the attention of kings from all over the ancient world (I Kings
4:34).
Moreover, Solomon would go about accumulating wives from various pagan
countries (I Kings 11:1): “King Solomon, however, loved many foreign
women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites,
Sidonians and Hittites”.
This, as we read, included “Pharaoh’s daughter”, formerly the exotic
Queen of Sheba (I Kings 10:1-12):
When the queen of
Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to
the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard questions. Arriving at
Jerusalem with a very great caravan—with camels carrying spices, large
quantities of gold, and precious stones—she came to Solomon and talked with him
about all that she had on her mind. Solomon answered all her questions;
nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her.
When the queen of Sheba saw all
the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, the food on his
table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their
robes, his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings he made at the Temple of
the Lord, she was overwhelmed.
She said to the king, ‘The report
I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is
true. But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my
own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me; in wisdom and wealth you have
far exceeded the report I heard. How happy your people must be!
How happy your officials, who
continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! Praise be to
the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the
throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he
has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness’.
And she gave the king 120
talents of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones.
Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to
King Solomon.
(Hiram’s ships brought gold from
Ophir; and from there they brought great cargoes of almugwood and
precious stones. The king used the almugwood to make supports for the
Temple of the Lord and for the royal palace, and to make harps and
lyres for the musicians. So much almugwood has never been imported or seen
since that day.)
The Queen of Sheba would eventually come to rule Egypt as Pharaoh
Hatshepsut, the biblical “daughter of Pharaoh”, the pre-eminent one of
Solomon’s wives (I Kings 3:1).
But she, as a youth, had already been intimately associated with an
ageing King David.
See e.g. my article:
The
vicissitudinous life of Solomon’s pulchritudinous wife
(17) The vicissitudinous life of
Solomon's pulchritudinous wife’
No wonder, then, that she would later carry Davidic wisdom with her into
Egypt, and try to re-create in that land all that she had observed in Israel (I
Kings 10:4-13), a magnificent cosmopolitanism that cannot be contained in an
Iron Age IIA context.
Though King David would pass away before relations really picked up with
Egypt, his psalmic and wisdom writings would later echo through the monolithic inscriptions
of his ‘daughter’, Hatshepsut – no doubt with enormous impetus from Solomon in
Egypt, as Senenmut, often called ‘the power behind the throne’.
Hebrew (Davidic) wisdom and Solomonic love poetry began to flood the
land of Egypt, as I noted in my article:
Solomon
and Sheba
Scriptural Influence
(i)
An Image from
Genesis
After Hatshepsut had completed her Punt
expedition, she gathered her nobles and proclaimed the great things she had
done. Senenmut and Nehesi had places of honour. Hatshepsut reminded them of
Amon’s oracle commanding her to ‘... establish for him a Punt in his house, to
plant the trees of God’s Land beside his temple in his garden, according as he
commanded’. At the conclusion of her speech there is further scriptural image:
‘I have made for [Amon-Ra] a Punt in his
garden at Thebes ... it is big enough for him to walk about in’; Baikie … noted
that this is ‘a phrase which seems to take one back to the Book of Genesis and
its picture of God walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening’.
This inscription speaks of Amon-Ra's love for Hatshepsut in terms almost
identical to those used by the Queen of Sheba about the God of Israel’s love
for Solomon and his nation.
Compare the italicised parts of
Hatshepsut’s
‘... according to the command of ... Amon ... in order to bring for him the marvels of every country, because he so much loves the King of ... Egypt,
Maatkara [i.e. Hatshepsut], for his father Amen-Ra, Lord of Heaven,
Lord of Earth, more than the other kings who have been in this land for ever ...’.
with the
italicised words in a song of praise spoken to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba
‘Blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you
and set you on the throne as king for
the Lord your God! Because your God loved Israel and would establish
them for ever ...’ (II Chronicles
98).
(ii)
An Image from the Psalms
When Hatshepsut’s
commemorative obelisks were completed, she had the usual formal words
inscribed on them. However, Baikie states that …:
‘The base inscriptions ... are of more
importance, chiefly because they again strike that personal note which is so
seldom heard from these ancient records, and give us an actual glimpse into the
mind and the heart of a great woman. I do not think that it is fanciful to see
in these utterances the expression of something very like a genuine piety
struggling to find expression underneath all the customary verbiage of the Egyptian monumental
formulae’.
In language that ‘might have come
straight out of the Book Psalms’, the queen continues,
‘I did it under [Amon-Ra’s] command; it
was he who led me.
I conceived no works without his doing
....
I slept not because of his temple; I erred not from that which
he commanded. ... I entered into the affairs of his heart. I turned not my back
on the City of the All-Lord; but turned to it the face. I know that Karnak is
God’s dwelling upon earth; ... the Place of his Heart; Which wears his beauty
...’.
Baikie continues, unaware that it really
was the Psalms and the sapiential words of David and Solomon, that had
influenced Hatshepsut’s prayer:
‘The sleepless eagerness of the queen
for the glory of the temple of her god, and her assurance of the
unspeakable sanctity of Karnak as the divine dwelling-place, find expression in
almost the very words which the Psalmist used to express his ... duty towards
the habitation of the God of Israel, and his certainty of Zion's sanctity as
the abiding-place of Jehovah.
‘Surely I will not come into the
tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to mine
eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids. Until I find out a place for the Lord, an
habitation for the mighty God of Jacob.
- For the Lord hath chosen Zion; he hath
desired it for his habitation. This is my rest for ever; here will I dwell; for
I have desired it’.’
(iii)
An Image from Proverbs
In
another related verse of the Punt reliefs about Amon-Ra leading the expedition
to ‘the Myrrh-terraces ... a glorious region of God's Land’, the god speaks of
creating the fabled Land of Punt in playful terms reminiscent of Solomon’s
words about Wisdom’s playful rôle in the work of Creation (Proverbs 8:12,
30-31).
In
the Egyptian version there is also reference to Hathor, the personification of
wisdom: ‘... it is indeed a place of delight. I have made it for myself, in
order to divert my heart, together with ... Hathor ... mistress of Punt …’.
Interestingly, the
original rôles of Hathor and Isis in the Heliopolitan ‘theology’ were similar
to those of Moses’s sister and mother (the god Horus reminding of Moses).
Grimal … says ‘Isis hid Horus in the marshes of the Delta ... with the help of
the goddess Hathor, the wet-nurse in the form of a cow. The child grew up ...’.
In The Queen of Sheba - Hatshepsut,
I had compared this Egyptian account with the
action of Moses's mother and sister in Exodus 2:3-4, 7, 10.
(iv) Images from the Song of Songs
In the weighing
scene of the goods acquired from Punt (i.e. Lebanon), Hatshepsut boasts …:
‘[Her] Majesty [herself] is acting with
her two hands, the best of myrrh is upon all her limbs, her fragrance is divine
dew, her odour is mingled with that of Punt, her skin is gilded with electrum,
shining as do the stars in the midst of the festival-hall, before the whole
land’. Compare this with verses from King Solomon's love poem, Song of Songs
(also called the Song of Solomon), e.g. ‘My hands dripped with myrrh, my
fingers with liquid myrrh; Sweeter your love than wine, the scent of your
perfume than any spice; Your lips drip honey, and the scent of your robes is
like the scent of Lebanon’ (4:10-11; 55). (cf. 4:6, 14; 5:1, 5).
Hyam Maccoby … went
so far as to suggest that the Song of Songs was written by Solomon for
the Queen of Sheba/Hatshepsut.
Clearly, the poem is written in the
context of marriage (e.g. 3:11). We read, partly following Hyam Maccoby:
l. ‘To a mare among
Pharaoh's cavalry would 1 compare you, my darling’ (1:9). This reference to
Egypt is strange for an Israelite girl, but natural if the beloved was an
Egyptian.
2. ‘Black am I but
beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Qedar, like the curtains
of Solomon. Do not gaze at me because I am swarthy, because the sun has
blackened me’ (16). A darker complexion would not be surprising in an Egyptian
woman.
3. Perhaps the
sentence ‘Who is she that cometh out of the wilderness ... perfumed with myrrh
and frankincense, with all the fragrant powders of the merchant?’ (3:6), refers
to the visit by the Queen of Sheba, who brought a great store of perfumes. She
gave Solomon ‘a very great store of spices ... there came no more such
abundance of spices as these which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon’ (I
Kings 10:10).
4. ‘My mother's
sons were angry with me. They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own
vineyard I have not kept’ (1:6). It is a puzzle that the female here is
represented as a humble vineyard-watcher but elsewhere she appears as a great
lady. Maybe here she is speaking metaphorically about her country (and her
native religion?) as a ‘vineyard’? The anger of her ‘brothers’ would be
understandable, perhaps, if she were a princess of Egypt. Her involvement with
Solomon would have unwelcome political and religious implications.
5. ‘O that you were as my brother ... I would lead you and bring you to
my mother's house’ (8:1-2). She perhaps regrets that Solomon is not an
Egyptian, who could live permanently with her.
It might be expected, as well, that the influences of David and Solomon would
permeate the lands north of Israel, would be spread by the likes of David’s
faithful ally, King Hiram, just as Pharaoh Hatshepsut had done in the south.
And this is exactly what we do find.
However, it is complicated – even more so than with Egypt. What I wrote
at the top of this section certainly applies here: And there is much more apart
from this. But some of it cannot be grasped within a conventional context, but
only when a revised timeline is properly applied.
And now, too, we encounter some extraordinary geographical anomalies
(already dealt with in various other articles).
King Hammurabi of Babylon
This great King of Babylon, most famous for his Law Code, is generally
considered by ancient historians to have influenced Moses himself, and the
Torah – and, hence, David. As with pharaoh Akhnaton’s Sun Hymn to the Aton, but
to a far greater degree, Hammurabi’s Law Code bears favourable comparison with
the Laws of Moses.
Moses' Law Vs. Hammurabi's Code: Ancient Legal Parallels Explored |
LawShun
“The question of whether Moses's law, as recorded in the Torah, was
influenced by or copied from the Code of Hammurabi has long sparked debate
among scholars, historians, and theologians. The Code of Hammurabi, a
Babylonian legal text dating to around 1754 BCE, predates the traditional
timeline of Moses by centuries, yet both contain laws addressing similar issues
such as property, family, and justice … some similarities exist, such as the
principle of lex talionis (an eye for an eye) …”.
Any suggestion that Hammurabi’s Law could have influenced Moses, and, a
fortiori, David, comes crashing to the ground, however, in light of Dean
Hickman’s insightful re-locating of Hammurabi to the time of King Solomon. On
this, see e.g. my article:
Hammurabi
and Zimri-Lim as Contemporaries of Solomon
(17) Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as
Contemporaries of Solomon
Historians have not had a clue about Hammurabi, having originally dated
him to as far back as c. 2400 BC, but, now, placing him some 600 or more years
later than that. In the case of El Amarna, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky had come to
the rescue with his classic, Ages in Chaos I (1952), when he boldly
collapsed the C14th BC EA era into the biblical C9th BC. And, here, we needed
to be rescued by Dean Hickman, who dragged Hammurabi kicking and screaming down
the timeline by a further 800 years:
{Hickman, George Albert. 1986. “The Dating of Hammurabi.” In
Proceedings of The Third Seminar of Catastrophism and Ancient History}
Again, just as I wrote earlier about Dr. Velikovsky’s rescue work:
A revised EA era immediately begins to produce fruit.
For, just as with the Tel Dan Stele, with its reference to the “House of
David”, so, too, do we encounter the “House of Solomon” (Bît Shulman) in
two letters (one by a later King of Jerusalem) of the El Amarna (EA) series (EA
#’s 74 and 290) … so, something similar can be said about a revised King
Hammurabi of Babylon.
The first thing that can be said is that, as in the case of pharaohs
Hatshepsut and Akhnaton, David and Solomon were not the beneficiaries of pagan
wisdom, let alone was Moses.
No, again King David was the influencer.
And so we find the great kings of Hammurabi’s era, such as he and
Rim-Sin of Larsa, declaring themselves to be Shepherd Kings.
Now from where did they get that idea?
Shepherd
King contemporaries of King David
Shepherd
King contemporaries of King David
Dean Hickman had, according to his revised C10th BC context for King
Hammurabi, identified several king contemporaries of David.
For instance, the mighty Assyrian king Shamsi-Adad I (c. 1800 BC), Dean
Hickman identified as David’s Syrian foe, Hadadezer, whose father, Rekhob, he
identified with Shamsi-Adad’s father, Uru-kabkabu (Ilu-kabkabu).
I have since taken this further, adding several more names (I Kings
11:23-25):
Here is how God made Rezon son of Eliada an enemy of Solomon: Rezon had
run away from his master, King Hadadezer of Zobah. He formed his own small army
and became its leader after David had defeated Hadadezer’s troops. Then Rezon
and his army went to Damascus, where he became the ruler of Syria and an enemy of
Israel.
In these few scriptural verses, we now find several known historical
characters of the
Hammurabic era: Zimri-Lim (Rezon); Iahdulim (Eliada); Shamsi-Adad I
(Hadadezer).
And we have just read that Uru-kabkabu (Rekhob) was the father of
Shamsi-Adad I.
But where is the historical King David amongst all of these famous
names?, I had asked.
After the passing of Shamsi-Adad, the most powerful king in the region
was apparently Iarim-Lim of Yamkhad (Iamkhad). In a Mari Letter
we read: “There is no king who is mighty by himself. Ten or fifteen kings
follow Hammurabi the ruler of Babylon, a like number Rim-Sin of Larsa, a like
number Ibal-pi-el of Eshnunna, a like number Amud-pi-el of Qatanum, but twenty
follow Yarim-Lim of Yamhad”.
Iarim-Lim fits very
well, indeed, as Hiram, whose brilliant protégé, the highly-skilled artisan,
Huram-abi (Hiram-abi) (2 Chronicles 2:14), must now be favoured for Hammurabi
himself.
In one of those tectonic geographical shifts, as hinted above, the
Eshnunna mentioned in the Mari Letter, becomes Lachish, second in importance
only to Jerusalem:
As
Ashduddu (Ashdod) is to Lachish, so, likewise, is Eshnunna to Lagash
(3) As Ashduddu (Ashdod) is to
Lachish, so, likewise, is Eshnunna to Lagash
It seems that the northerners identified the Davidic kingdom with
reference to the strong fort of Lachish, though Jerusalem - known as Girsu (var.
Jirsu = Jerusalem) - was regarded as being the spiritual centre.
Ibal-pi-el of Eshnunna then becomes King Solomon himself, early in his
reign, when Hiram was yet dominant.
King David was the father of Ibal-pi-el, Dadusha – a most
David-like name.
David was also Dadusha’s supposed brother, Naram-Sin of Eshnunna,
another David-like name Naram is “Beloved of”), who, like David, fought against
Shamsi-Adad I, Hadadezer, and defeated him.
Most Interestingly, King Dadusha issued a (Mosaïc-like) Law Code that is
considered to have “anticipated” that of Hammurabi of Babylon:
The laws of Eshnunna (Deuteronomy 9) | larshaukeland
Eshnunna … a code of laws has been discovered from this civilization.
Judging from the fragments that remain of the laws’ superscription, it appears
that King Dadusha … issued this law code for his city. It is the earliest
example of an Akkadian [sic] law code discovered to date and anticipates in
form and context its successor, the much more famous Code of Hammurabi (who
conquered Eshnunna in 1766 B.C.)
The code of Eshnunna is fairly short but covers a wide range of topics,
including price controls for products like barley and wool and regulations
involving theft, the status of slaves, marital relations, crimes of violence,
and vicious animals. It includes, for example, laws concerning a dangerous ox
and the liability of its owner, which are closely paralleled in Exodus
21:28-32.
The Eshnunna law code is significant for Biblical studies. It reconfirms
that the Bible did not spring into existence in isolation from its larger
cultural and political milieu, as well as reinforces that a code of laws
similar to those we find in the Bible could have existed as early as the time
of Moses [sic] (some historians have argued that the bulk of Israel’s laws were
very late, coming to existence long after Moses’ day).
It is striking, however, that while the superscription to the Eshnunna
code celebrates the military prowess and worthiness of King Dadusha, Deuteronomy
9 focuses on the weakness and unworthiness of Israel, thereby
emphasizing God’s grace”.
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