It is at least curious that the excuse given for demanding release for a hostage for debt at the end of six years is that this is after all double something—when it actually is double the term Hammurabi fixed. In whatever way the Deuteronomist meant his reader to understand his explanation it is difficult to imagine what else was in his mind. The something which he appears to allege may be a gloss on his words. The text may once have said ‘for the double he hath served thee’, and a dull glossator may have sought within his own consciousness for the rather pointless example suggested by the other reference to a hired servant’s service. Anyway, the term is explained as a double one, and it was double of the term in the Hammurabi Code. The second point of difference has a suggestion of greater ruthlessness in Babylonia in treatment of a hostage. ‘Blows and starvation’ point to efforts to get more out of the hostage. This, too, is the underlying thought of the later legislation in Israel which forbids his treatment as a bondservant. The third point, too, suggests that in Babylonia it rarely occurred to a man to prefer comfort with servitude to freedom and destitution. The lot of the free destitute may have been more hopeless in Israel, the lot of the slave less tolerable in Babylonia. Or the love of freedom may have been greater in Babylonia. In any case, such a difference in law is the sort of addition which might be expected to grow up in five hundred years of advance, in a different state of society and a far-off land. In the last resource the ground principle remains the same. A debtor may name himself, or one of his family, or his slave, as hostage for debt, but whatever the amount of debt, the hostage shall not be held beyond a fixed term. This in both laws only applies to a free individual and never affected a real ‘slave’. We have hitherto assumed that the law contemplates only the Hebrew male ‘slave’. But are we to suppose that when an Israelite got into debt or was sold to pay an obligation that he alone was responsible? Could not he also assign his wife or child or slave to work off his debt? And if he did, are we to understand that they could be kept for ever in bondage? The words of the Book of the Covenant do not expressly answer any of these questions, but only a very pedantic interpretation of the letter of the law could confine its operation to the male head of the family.