The case of the goring ox is treated by both legislations. Both make no amends to the victim of the attack made by an animal suddenly become savage. Here the Hebrew Code orders the death of the ox, a piece of useless barbaric revenge that has only recently died out amongst us. The poor beast got no trial and could not plead, but was held responsible. This may be very human, but it is to the credit of Hammurabi that he is at least silent on the point. On the other hand, if the ox was known by his owner to be vicious and death resulted, the Code inflicted stated fines on the owner according to the estimated value of the life destroyed. The Book of the Covenant does the same, fixing a ransom for the death of a slave to be paid to the owner, but death of the ox’s owner if the man killed be a freeman. And again, the ox is killed. The difference between the two fines for the death of a slave is noteworthy as probably marking average value in each case. This illustrates the reason why other fixed money payments do not correspond. Money values differed. Otherwise the treatments could scarcely be more closely alike. In the case of specific and particular bodily injuries both laws exact a retaliation. The Book of the Covenant is here the more explicit: ‘life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe’ is more detailed at any rate than the Code, which only enumerated ‘eye for eye, limb for limb, tooth for tooth’. The difference, such as it is, can hardly be pressed as really giving a different complexion to the legislation. On the whole, despite its extra detail, the Hebrew law is less clear, and the arrangement certainly looks like a hasty compilation. For as it stands these words occur attached to the case of a woman with child hurt by blows. At any rate Exodus xxi. 24-5 introduces them with the words ‘and if any mischief follow’. It may be, as some suggest, that they have slipped in here from some other context, or be merely an expansion of the ordinary ‘eye for eye’ to give a fuller formulation of the _lex talionis_. But it is difficult to see how the loss of a limb, or an eye, or a burning could be the mischief done by a blow to a pregnant woman. Miscarriage or death, or both, are the mischiefs likely to happen. The Code of Hammurabi deals with the case more reasonably. In fact, as it stands, the Exodus passage, xxi. 18-25, looks very like a loose summary of Hammurabi (§§ 196-200) without its logical connexion. At any rate, it is hardly credible that this collection of words was ever put forward at any time in the world’s history to enunciate a new law for a community of any type that ever existed. The most intelligible way of regarding this clause is as an attempt fully to enunciate the law of retaliation, and that its presence in its present place is due to the desire to explain some phrase which less effectively quoted that law; but in the