§ 39. A field, garden, or house which he has purchased and possesses he may deed to his wife or daughter, or may assign for debt. § 40. A priestess, merchant, or other creditor may purchase his field, garden, or house. The purchaser shall conduct the business of the field, garden, or house which he has purchased. § 41. If a man has bargained for the field, garden, or house of a soldier, constable, or tax-collector and has given sureties, the soldier, constable, or tax-collector shall return to the field, house, or garden, and the sureties which were given him he shall keep. No such officers as these are mentioned in the laws of the Old Testament, though some of them appear in earlier times in the records of Babylonia. The tax-collectors mentioned here remind us of Solomon’s tax-collectors mentioned in 1 Kings 4:7, ff. Laws of Agriculture § 42. If a man rents a field for cultivation and produces no grain in that field, they shall call him to account for doing no work in that field, and he shall give to the owner of the field grain similar to that of adjacent fields. § 43. If he does not cultivate that field and neglects it, he shall give the owner of the field grain similar to that of adjacent fields, and the field which he neglected he shall break up with mattocks, he shall harrow, and return it to the owner of the field. § 44. If a man rents an uncultivated field for three years for improvement and neglects its surface and does not develop the field, in the fourth year he shall break up the field with mattocks, he shall hoe and harrow it, and return it unto the owner of the field, and for every _Gan_ of land he shall measure out 10 _Gur_ of grain. § 45. If a man lets his field for pay on shares to a farmer and receives his rent, and afterward the storm-god inundates the field and carries off the produce, the loss is the farmer’s. § 46. If the rent of his field he has not received, and he has let the field for one-half or one-third (of the crop), the farmer and the owner of the field shall divide the grain which is in the field according to agreement. § 47. If the farmer, because he has not in a former year received a maintenance, entrusts the field to another farmer, the owner of the field shall not interfere. He would cultivate it, and his field has been cultivated. At the time of harvest he shall take grain according to his contracts. § 48. If a man has a debt against him and the storm-god inundates his field and carries away the produce, or if through lack of water grain has not grown in the field, in that year he shall not make a return of grain to his creditor; his contract he shall change, and the interest of that year he shall not pay.