In my reading today of A Law Book for the Diaspora, John Van Seters states that, on the issue of slavery, the Covenant Code draws from Babylonian traditions in an attempt to address issues about which Deuteronomy is silent.
On the one hand, the Covenant Code (in some cases) adopts its Babylonian sources’ double standard, in which the injury or killing of a slave is punished less severely than the injury or killing of a free person. In Exodus 21:28-32, the issue is an ox who gores somebody to death. If the ox has gored people in the past, and the owner has done nothing to stop it, then the ox and the owner will be put to death, or there’s another option: the owner can pay a ransom-price for the victim’s life. If the ox gores a slave, however, then the owner merely pays thirty shekels of silver to the slave’s master, and the ox is stoned. The owner can be put to death if his bad ox has gored a free person to death, but he merely pays money if it gores a slave.
On the other hand, Van Seters maintains that the Covenant Code is more humanitarian than its Babylonian sources because it treats the slave as a human being, not only as a piece of property. Referring to Exodus 21:26-27, in which a master must set his slave free if he (the master) has damaged the slave’s eye or knocked out his tooth, Van Seters states on page 119:
The difference between the Hammurabi Code and the Covenant Code is based upon the fact that the former is concerned only with the slave as property and injury as damage to one’s property, whereas the Covenant Code refers to the treatment of the owner toward his own slaves and not damage to another person’s property. In this way, the biblical law actually fills a gap in slave laws by expressing some humanitarian concern for the treatment of slaves.
But there are ancient Near Eastern laws that concern the protection of slaves. In a presentation that I wrote a few years ago, comparing the Torah and the ancient Near East on social justice, I state the following:
The Middle Assyrian Palace Decrees (ca. 1076 B.C.E.) likewise requires a palace woman to be punished for beating her slave, and the Code of Hammurabi may say that one should not return a slave who was beaten and runs away.
I wish that I’d provided exact references. On the Middle Assyrian Palace Decrees, I was probably thinking of the laws of Ashur-dan I, which appear on pages 203-204 of Martha Noth’s Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (as MAPD 18). I overspoke when I said that a palace woman is punished for beating her slave, for a palace woman is allowed to do so to punish a slave’s offense. But, if the slave dies from the blows, then the palace woman is to suffer for her act. That reminds me of Exodus 21:20-21, which says that a master who kills his slave is to be punished, but not if the slave gets up a day or two later.
The Code of Hammurabi law is on page 97 of Roth’s book. I think that I underspoke when I said that the Code “may” say that one should not return a slave who was beaten and runs away, for, while the law has lacunae, it appears to contrast the treatment of a runaway slave who has a regular master, with that of a slave who has an abusive master, one who beats him. Deuteronomy 23:15-16 goes one better on this, saying that fugitive slaves can’t be returned to their masters, period.