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P3-World History
Compare Contrast- Laws
Listed below are two contemporary sets of laws: The Code of Hammurabi and The Ten Commandments.
Read each selection below, and using a Y-Diagram or Venn Diagram, compare and contrast the two
documents. How are they similar? How are they different? You may draw your diagram on the reverse
side. Each section must have at least 5 facts.
The Code of Hammurabi (selections):
6. If a man has stolen goods from a temple, or house, he shall be put to death; and he that has received
the stolen property from him shall be put to death.
129. If a man's wife be caught lying with another, they shall be strangled and cast into the water. If the
wife's husband would save his wife, the king can save his servant.
141. If a man's wife, living in her husband's house, has persisted in going out, has acted the fool, has
wasted her house, has belittled her husband, he shall prosecute her. If her husband has said, "I divorce
her," she shall go her way; he shall give her nothing as her price of divorce. If her husband has said, "I will
not divorce her," he may take another woman to wife; the wife shall live as a slave in her husband's
house.
235. If a boatman has built a boat for a man, and has not made his work sound, and in that same year
that boat is sent on a voyage and suffers damage, the boatman shall rebuild that boat, and, at his own
expense, shall make it strong, or shall give a strong boat to the owner.
282. If a slave has said to his master, "You are not my master," he shall be brought to account as his slave,
and his master shall cut off his ear.
The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)
And God spoke all these words, saying: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow
down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing
mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless
who takes His name in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the
seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor
your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger
who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all
that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and
hallowed it.
5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord
your God is giving you.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his
manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s