As a matter of fact the Book of the Covenant is here not consistent with itself. A man might beat his servant to death, provided he did not ‘die under his hand’, and go unpunished, but he might not knock out his eye without having to free him. Obviously, then, if he did knock out his eye, his wisest plan was to so injure him further that he should die. In any case he lost his slave. One can hardly help suspecting that these two clauses belong to different periods. What the Babylonian master could do to his slave without incurring punishment we do not now know. If a slave ran away and was brought back his master could put him in fetters. If the slave repudiated his master’s authority he was punished by mutilation. But Hammurabi does not otherwise interfere between master and slave. Probably he, too, counted on the master’s regard for his own property. The case of a slave who married a free wife comes up both in the Code (§ 176) and in Exodus xxi. 3. Hammurabi makes the woman and her children exempt from the master’s power. So does Moses, if the man had married before he became a slave. Of course, if his master gave him a wife, the master retained power over her and the children. We cannot, however, suppose that if the enslaved Hebrew married a free woman while in servitude that the master claimed to treat her as a slave. Probably, however, the master had power to forbid such a marriage. Thus there really was no case likely to arise in Israel to compare with that legislated for in Babylonia, which law regulated all cases except this in Canaan also. The only new regulation which had come into use is the restriction on the man’s term of service. To meet the case of a man who preferred perpetual servitude in domestic comfort to destitute freedom he was allowed to be ear-marked for the purpose (Exodus xxi. 6).