But there is no trace of such class distinctions in the Book of the Covenant. It is not, therefore, a higher type of law. It would be lower if it were purely aristocratic in the sense of love of retaliation. Why, we may ask, were there no social grades in Israel? Possibly because in proportion to the conquered the conquerors were relatively more numerous than in Babylonia. Or possibly the conquered were more thoroughly subdued. Possibly also because the references to class distinctions have since been expurgated from our copies of the legislation. Now let us take the view that the higher law which accepts compensation for injury in place of strict retaliation emerged later in Israel. Are we to regard this as a natural evolution? Surely not. We are not convinced, surely, that it is a higher law or more inspired. It was probably, as in Babylonia, already the older law of the land before the Israelite invasion, the more civilized law of the more civilized inhabitants of Canaan. Later, according to the critical arrangement of the law codes as preserved to us in the Pentateuch, this more civilized custom is growing, and it has to be forbidden in the interests of conservatism (Leviticus xxiv. 22). At any rate, there, after repeating the law of retaliation, differences of treatment are forbidden. Why should this be done, unless they had been growing? Later still, in Deuteronomy xix. 21, deviations from strict retaliation are again forbidden with the words ‘thine eye shall not pity’. Once more, we may ask, if compensation had not been a growing custom among the Israelites, why should this effort be made to strengthen the observance of a lower law? Was it solely because of their reverence for Moses and his law, or was it not because it was all along the Canaanite law and so repugnant to the Jewish lawyers? If so, were not the Canaanites in the same position to the Israelites as the Babylonian _mushkênu_ to their Amorite conquerors in the old days of Hammurabi? The cases in the Book of the Covenant where an injury to a slave is treated are not to be compared to those in the Code of Hammurabi. If a slave is freed (Exodus xxi. 26) for a bad assault on him, it is an assault by his master, for which Hammurabi has no notice. Hammurabi’s cases of assault on a slave are by one who is not his master. There is nothing here to show that the law was not exactly the same for both legislations for the same cases. As far as our evidence goes one law treats one case and omits the other, the other law treats the last case and omits the first.