The Hebrew land laws are found in Exod. 22:5, 6; 23:10, 11; Lev. 19:9, and Deut. 24:19-22; 23:24, 25. An examination of these passages reveals a wide difference between Babylonia and Israel. In Babylonia it seems to have often been the rule that a landlord let out the fields to tenants to work; among the Hebrews the law presupposes that each man shall work his own land. Many of the Babylonian laws are designed to secure the respective rights of landlord and tenant. Naturally, there is nothing in the Old Testament to correspond to these. Hebrew law (Exod. 22:5), like the Babylonian, provides that one who causes a neighbor’s crop to be eaten shall make restitution, but the regulations are of the most general character. In Babylonia a larger social experience had made much more specific regulations necessary. The characters of the respective countries are reflected in the dangers from which crops might be threatened. In waterless Palestine a fire started by a careless man might burn his neighbor’s crop (Exod. 22:6); in Babylonia, where irrigation from canals was conducted to fields lower than the surface of the water, one might flood his neighbor’s field and destroy his crop by carelessly leaving his sluice open. The Hebrew legislation presupposes a poorer community. It provides that the land shall lie fallow, and whatever it produces shall belong to the poor (Exod. 23:10, 11). At harvest-time, too, one must not reap the corners of his field; that was left to the poor (Lev. 19:9). If one forgot a sheaf in his field, he must not return to take it; that should be left to the poor (Deut. 24:19). Rich Babylonia made no such provision for the poor; it felt no such social sympathy. Again, even these agricultural laws show that commerce was highly developed in Babylonia, with its necessary concomitant, the right to charge interest for money. The uncommercial Hebrews regarded interest as unlawful (Exod. 22:25), and it was Hillel, the contemporary of Herod the Great, who invented an interpretation known as the Prosbūl, which practically did away with this law and permitted Jews to take interest. Horticultural Laws § 59. If a man shall cut down a tree in a man’s orchard without the consent of the owner, he shall pay ½ mana of silver. § 60. If a man gives a field to a gardener to plant as an orchard, the gardener shall plant the orchard and cultivate it for 4 years. In the fifth year the owner of the orchard and the gardener shall share it together. The owner of the orchard shall mark off his share and take it. § 61. If the gardener in planting does not complete it, but leaves a part of it waste, unto his portion they shall count it.