(iv) The case where the man chooses to stay is instructive from many points: for a Hebrew could thus become a slave for ever. There were no degradations if no grades were recognized, and there were no religious disabilities. It did not even preclude wealth. The boring of his ear by the awl was a significant way of nailing his obedience, of which the ear was the organ and symbol, to a particular house. So far in our comparison of the Code and the Book of the Covenant we have been content to show likenesses and contrasts. But there are not lacking cases in which some have not failed to see deliberate conscious change. One of the most surprising things in the Book of the Covenant, if it belongs there at all, is the prohibition to ‘favour the poor man’, Exod. xxiii. 3. The direction must be addressed to persons in the position of judges. It is sometimes maintained that the Book of the Covenant shows no trace of judges. However that may be, the directions must be addressed to those who decided causes, judges under some other name. Now why was the poor man not to be favoured? We should not be at all surprised at judges being told not to favour the rich man. It can never have been superfluous in the East. But the Code does favour the _mushkênu_. We have seen that he was called ‘a poor man’ by several translators after the rendering ‘noble’ had been given up. That was partly because the Hebrew _meskîn_ has always been taken to mean a poor man. Perhaps the original text of Exod. xxiii. 3 had _meskîn_. Then the later redactor, who seems to have known the Code, may have wished to obliterate a tell-tale word. The Code did favour the _mushkênu_ in the sense that he could do wrong at less expense than his superiors. Also his offerings in the Temple were allowed to be smaller. Now this is exactly how Leviticus does favour a poor man, and that again suggests that by ‘poor man’ the Hebrew legislator did mean the same as the Babylonian _mushkênu_. Now if this otherwise very odd remark in Exod. xxiii. 3 was really old, one wonders that the Leviticus law does so favour ‘the poor’. But Exod. xxiii. 3 might well be passed later to abrogate this Babylonian tendency. Exod. xxx. 15 expressly forbids the rich to pay more or the poor less. The same word for ‘poor’ occurs in all cases. Did then the early Hebrew law aim at reversing the Code’s rule that ‘poor men’, or rather ‘plebeians’, should pay less? We may suppose that the Canaanites were the _mushkênu_ in Israel. The ‘sojourners’ obviously were. But Hammurabi had neither riches nor poverty in view when he favoured the _mushkênu_. By the Tell-el-Amarna period the name had lost its exact value and become even in Babylonia more contemptuous. Later in Israel it became a name for a beggar. Did the Hebrew legislator catch the word when it only conveyed the meaning ‘poor’, and use his own term to avoid ambiguity?