The story which culminates in the activities of Moses in Egypt and the Wilderness takes its rise in Mesopotamia, when in the twenty-first century before Christ, Hammurabi reigned in Babylon, For centuries in this land, anciently known as Sumer and Akkad, various city states had contended for mastery, among them Eridu, Erech, Ur, Isin, Larsa, and Lagash. The immediate predecessors of Hammurabi, who first gave Babylon prominence, were South Syrian Arabs or Palestinians from the west, and such was their progress that, when he came to the throne, he found himself lord of Akkad, the northern part of Mesopotamia. He attempted to extend his sway over the southern land of Sumer, and in the seventh year of his reign he took Erech and Isin. His activities were held up, however, by Rim-Sin, the Elamite chieftain of Larsa, who remained a thorn in his side all his life and was not overcome until the days of Hammurabi’s successor. While Hammurabi was pushing his conquests northward and westward, Babylon had constantly to be guarded from Rim-Sin, but notwithstanding this he continued his efforts and did not rest until his empire stretched from Armenia to Palestine.
About this period, the wanderings of Abraham the father of the Hebrew race, brought him from Ur to Palestine. Here he found himself under laws similar to those of Hammurabi, as a comparison of his legal transactions with the terms of the Babylonian code shows. By reason of the discovery at Susa (A.D. 1900) of the stele of his laws, Hammurabi has gained a reputation as a lawgiver, but there is nothing strikingly original in his code and it was mainly a revision of earlier laws of Sumer.
The combat of four kings against five described in Genesis, chapter 14, is an illustration of the far reaching nature of Hammurabi’s campaigns, his name being given in the chapter as Amraphel, king of Shinar.
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Author: F. E. Mitchell
Keywords: Ur of Chaldees, Promise to Abraham, Promise to Abram, Moses, Exodus, Life of Abraham, Hammurabi, Mesopotamia, Amorites, Egyptians, Hyksos, Jebusites, Hittites, Pharaoh
Bible reference(s): Genesis 12:1-4, Genesis 12:15, Genesis 12:20, Genesis 15:16, Genesis 15:18-21, Genesis 39:1, Exodus 1:1
Source: “Contemporary Civilisations,” The Testimony, Vol. 8, No. 87, March 1938, pp. 86-9.
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