Damage to crops by animals is explicitly treated both by the Code and by the Book of the Covenant. Hammurabi (§ 57) separates two types of damage—one where the crop may recover and even benefit by the growing corn being fed off and trodden by sheep, the other where the corn in the ear is irretrievably destroyed. It is not clearly the case, however, which is treated in Exodus xxii. 5. If not, then we can allege no contrast; but the LXX and the Samaritan Pentateuch add the case of complete consumption. This might be due to a later acquisition of knowledge concerning Babylonian or Canaanite usage, but is so distinct that we cannot fairly insist on conscious antiquarian interest. The case could hardly be left undecided. Damage by flooding a neighbour’s field, dealt with in the Code, §§ 53-6, is foreign to Israelite soil, irrigation being rare, but the same type of law is given for damage by fire in Exodus xxii. 6. This is not referred to in the Code. The Code of Hammurabi deals at length with the case of property claimed as lost from a holder who asserts ownership (§§ 9-13). The corresponding section of the Book of the Covenant, Exodus xxii. 9, may be said to condense the whole with extreme brevity thus: In any case of breach of trust, whether it concern ox or ass or sheep or clothing, or any kind of lost thing of which one saith ‘This is it, the case of both parties shall come before God; he whom God shall condemn shall make double restitution to his neighbour’. This seems to be the best that PROFESSOR KENT can make of the Hebrew. Now can any unprejudiced person suppose for a moment that this clause sets out a new law in an intelligible fashion. Is it not obviously drawn up in the manner of one who is summarizing a well-known series of enactments? To my mind it is very difficult to resist the impression that it is meant to reduce a rather wide and perhaps not a very uniform series of judgements to a single formula. That the law thus sought to be simplified was the Code of Hammurabi does not appear, for the simplification is of a type that destroys almost all likeness. Only this may be said: in both legislations, if any man is found holding property his right to which is challenged by another, the claims of both are to be rehearsed before the judges. So far the resemblance is exact, but while the Code takes each contingency separately, and whoever is proved to have made a false claim is judged to be a would-be thief and as such condemned to death, in the Book of the Covenant the culprit has merely to pay double to the man he has defrauded. This is indeed a marked change, if not improvement. But one would expect progress in five hundred or a thousand years of settled life in Canaan. That so primitive a folk as Israel is usually supposed to have been on entrance into Canaan, or even in the early days of the monarchy, should have a law so advanced would be remarkable enough. But we note that apparently the Book of the Covenant wishes to include