Community Laws: Defining and Protecting the Community · These last chapters (23-25) of the central law code have a “flavor” of concern for a compassionate and caring community that takes seriously the claims of kinship and the needs of the weak and vulnerable. That community itself, however, needs clear definition and measures to protect its religious distinctiveness and purity. This need explains the presence, alongside laws that immediately appeal to us by their charitable nature, of other laws that appear much harsher and exclusive.

23:15–16 This is an astonishing law. It is diametrically opposite to the whole thrust of slave legislation in other ancient Near Eastern law codes, and indeed in the legislation governing slavery in more modern times. The normal, common rule in such legislati…