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An Old Babylonian Herding Contract and Genesis 31:38 f

Author(s): J. J. FinkelsteinSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1968), pp. 30-3Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/597892

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DE VAUX: Le Pays de CanaanE VAUX: Le Pays de Canaanles points extremes du pays sous Salomon, 1 Rois8: 65, et sous Jeroboam II, 2 Rois 14: 5.Ces conclusions vont contre une opinion assezcommune,64 d'apres laquelle le nom de Canaanaurait ete d'abord applique a la seule Phenicie,puis aurait ete etendu dans la Bible a la regioncotiere en general, a la vallee du Jourdain, a laCisjordanie du Nord et du centre, enfin a toutela region situee a l'Ouest du Jourdain. Nousavons vu que les textes extrabibliques n'autori-saient certainement pas une telle conclusion; quantaux textes bibliques, il est beaucoup plus vrai-semblable que les Israelites ont d'abord regu leterme avec le sens qu'il avait a la veille de leuretablissement. L'etendue du terme se restreignitquand on identifia Canaan avec le pays conquis

64 B. Maisler, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte undEthnographieSyriens und Paldstinas, Giessen, 1930, pp.52-74; S. Moscati, I predecessori d'Israele, p. 67; M.Noth, Die Welt des Alten Testaments*, Berlin, 1964,pp. 45-48.

les points extremes du pays sous Salomon, 1 Rois8: 65, et sous Jeroboam II, 2 Rois 14: 5.Ces conclusions vont contre une opinion assezcommune,64 d'apres laquelle le nom de Canaanaurait ete d'abord applique a la seule Phenicie,puis aurait ete etendu dans la Bible a la regioncotiere en general, a la vallee du Jourdain, a laCisjordanie du Nord et du centre, enfin a toutela region situee a l'Ouest du Jourdain. Nousavons vu que les textes extrabibliques n'autori-saient certainement pas une telle conclusion; quantaux textes bibliques, il est beaucoup plus vrai-semblable que les Israelites ont d'abord regu leterme avec le sens qu'il avait a la veille de leuretablissement. L'etendue du terme se restreignitquand on identifia Canaan avec le pays conquis64 B. Maisler, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte undEthnographieSyriens und Paldstinas, Giessen, 1930, pp.52-74; S. Moscati, I predecessori d'Israele, p. 67; M.Noth, Die Welt des Alten Testaments*, Berlin, 1964,

pp. 45-48.

et non pas avec le pays "promis," ainsi Gen10:19, ou, au contraire, quand on limita lesCananeens aux regions du grand Canaan quin'avaient pas ete soumises, ainsi Jos 17:11-13;Juges 1:27-33, ou enfin quand l'habitat propredes Cananeens se fut reduit a la Phenicie: lesmarchands furent appeles "Cananeens" parcequ'ils venaient de Phenicie; Tyr et Sidon sontles "forteresses de Canaan," Is 23:1-14; Sidonest le premier-ne de Canaan, Gen 10:15; 1 Chr1: 13; " Sidonien" equivaut a " Cananeen," Deut3:9; Juges 18: 7; 1 Rois 11: 5, 33; 2 Rois 23: 13,de meme que " Sidoniens " et " Pheniciens" alter-nent chez Homere. Au iie siecle av. J. C., lorsqueBeyrouth s'appelait Laodicee-en-Phenicie, la leg-ende semitique de ses monnaies l'appelle "metro-pole en Canaan" (c'est le seul exemple du nomdans les inscriptions de Phenicie). A la memeepoque, la Septante traduit quelquefois Canaanpar Phenicie et, dans le Nouveau Testament, laCananeenne de Mat 15: 22 correspond a la Syro-Phenicienne de Marc 7: 26.

et non pas avec le pays "promis," ainsi Gen10:19, ou, au contraire, quand on limita lesCananeens aux regions du grand Canaan quin'avaient pas ete soumises, ainsi Jos 17:11-13;Juges 1:27-33, ou enfin quand l'habitat propredes Cananeens se fut reduit a la Phenicie: lesmarchands furent appeles "Cananeens" parcequ'ils venaient de Phenicie; Tyr et Sidon sontles "forteresses de Canaan," Is 23:1-14; Sidonest le premier-ne de Canaan, Gen 10:15; 1 Chr1: 13; " Sidonien" equivaut a " Cananeen," Deut3:9; Juges 18: 7; 1 Rois 11: 5, 33; 2 Rois 23: 13,de meme que " Sidoniens " et " Pheniciens" alter-nent chez Homere. Au iie siecle av. J. C., lorsqueBeyrouth s'appelait Laodicee-en-Phenicie, la leg-ende semitique de ses monnaies l'appelle "metro-pole en Canaan" (c'est le seul exemple du nomdans les inscriptions de Phenicie). A la memeepoque, la Septante traduit quelquefois Canaanpar Phenicie et, dans le Nouveau Testament, laCananeenne de Mat 15: 22 correspond a la Syro-Phenicienne de Marc 7: 26.

AN OLD BABYLONIAN HERDING CONTRACT AND GENESIS 31:38 f.J. J. FIN:KELSTIN

YALE UNIVERSITY

AN OLD BABYLONIAN HERDING CONTRACT AND GENESIS 31:38 f.J. J. FIN:KELSTIN

YALE UNIVERSITY

IN THE FINAL CONFRONTATION BETWEEN JACOBAND LABAN, after the latter had caught up withhis fleeing son-in-law, Jacob gives vent to hisfeelings at his mistreatment by Laban, especiallywith regard to his long term of service as Laban'sshepherd, in the following words (v. 38 f.): 'Itis now twenty years that I have been with you-your ewes and your she-goats never miscarried,nor did I myself consume the rams from yourflock. The ones fallen prey to wild beasts I didnot charge to you (lit.: bring to you)--I myselfmade good the loss, whether it was snatched byday or by night.'The italicized phrase does not in this instanceimply a guess at the meaning of the Heb. verb'hattennah, for the translation is clearlydemandedby the context. The problem is rather that of theuse of the verb HT', here in the pi'el, in a waywhich is not documented anywhere else in theBible. It is of course well understood that the

IN THE FINAL CONFRONTATION BETWEEN JACOBAND LABAN, after the latter had caught up withhis fleeing son-in-law, Jacob gives vent to hisfeelings at his mistreatment by Laban, especiallywith regard to his long term of service as Laban'sshepherd, in the following words (v. 38 f.): 'Itis now twenty years that I have been with you-your ewes and your she-goats never miscarried,nor did I myself consume the rams from yourflock. The ones fallen prey to wild beasts I didnot charge to you (lit.: bring to you)--I myselfmade good the loss, whether it was snatched byday or by night.'The italicized phrase does not in this instanceimply a guess at the meaning of the Heb. verb'hattennah, for the translation is clearlydemandedby the context. The problem is rather that of theuse of the verb HT', here in the pi'el, in a waywhich is not documented anywhere else in theBible. It is of course well understood that the

root sense of the verb is " to err, to miss "-hencehet' usually as "sin (of omission)"-with thefactitive pi'el denoting "purification, cleansing,lustrating, etc." and the hithpa'el denoting thereflexive of the same actions, i.e. "to purge,purify oneself, etc." But these usages all fallwithin the sacral or cultic sphere; none is analog-ous to the profane usage in the passage underreview.It happens, however, that this is one of thoseinstances where the Mesopotamian-or commonancient Near Eastern-cultural backgroundof theepisode can be pinpointed with precision. It wascharacteristic of E. A. Speiser that he was able tosense that this was the case-witness his referenceto the herding provision of the Laws of Ham-murapi Par. 266-in his commentary on the pas-sage.' He could not have known that the anomal-ous use of the verb HT' to denote Jacob's assump-1Genesis (The Anchor Bible, 1964), 247.

root sense of the verb is " to err, to miss "-hencehet' usually as "sin (of omission)"-with thefactitive pi'el denoting "purification, cleansing,lustrating, etc." and the hithpa'el denoting thereflexive of the same actions, i.e. "to purge,purify oneself, etc." But these usages all fallwithin the sacral or cultic sphere; none is analog-ous to the profane usage in the passage underreview.It happens, however, that this is one of thoseinstances where the Mesopotamian-or commonancient Near Eastern-cultural backgroundof theepisode can be pinpointed with precision. It wascharacteristic of E. A. Speiser that he was able tosense that this was the case-witness his referenceto the herding provision of the Laws of Ham-murapi Par. 266-in his commentary on the pas-sage.' He could not have known that the anomal-ous use of the verb HT' to denote Jacob's assump-1Genesis (The Anchor Bible, 1964), 247.

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FINKELSTEIN: An Old Babylonian Herding Contract and Genesis 31:38f.tion of liability for the loss provides the tell-talelink to the story's background, since it occurs inan unpublished Old Babylonian tablet of the timeof Samsuiluna, YBC 5944 of the Yale BabylonianCollection,2the text of which follows:

92 lahrdtu (U. HI. A)a20 immeru (NITA.HII.A)b22 lillidFu SILA4.D[U.HI.A])24 hurap(?) (SILA4 [. NIM?])5 33 enzdtu (UDx[= tZ] HI.A)4 urisuF UDx.MAR.G[AL])c27 lali'i (UDx.TUR)?U. NIGIN 1 me'at+ 50 + 8 U. HI.A dSU.NIGIN 64 enzdtuUI'A10 sa IdEN.ZU-sa-mu-uha-na Da-da-a SIPADip-qi-dua-na pi-ha-t[im]i-za-a[z]15 iu ha-li-iq-[tam]i-ri-a-abINi-id-na-tum ka-pa-ra-suu-da-pa-ar-mae a-na hi-tz i-za-[az]f5 RE.GUR IDa-da-[a]20 1-AG-EIGI dEN.ZU-e-ri-ba-amIGI Ha-bi-yaIGI Na-ra-am-i-li-suITU Su-nigin-na u4 -18- kam/muSa-am-su-i-lu-na 1 u g a l-[e]

'92 ewes, 20 rams, 22 breeding lambs, 24[spring(?)] lambs, 33 she-goats, 4 male goats, 27kids-total: 158 sheep; total: 64 goats, whichSinsamuh has entrusted to Dada the shepherd.He (i. e. Dada) assumes liability (therefore) andwill replace any lost (animals). Should Nidnatum,his (i. e. Dada's) shepherd boy, absent himself,-he (i.e., Nidnatum)3 will bear responsibility forany (consequent) loss, (and) Dada will measureout 5 kcr of barley.'2 The tablet will appear as No. 7 in YBT 12, a forth-coming volume of Old Babylonian texts from the reignof Samsuiluna copied by the late S. I. Feigin.s The wording does not preclude the possibility thatDada is the one who would be responsible for any lossresulting from Nidnatum's absence, but this interpreta-tion would not account for the interruption of the state-ment of Dada's responsibilities at line 17, and its re-sumption in line 19 with the repetition of the nameof Dada.

Three witnesses; date: Samsuiluna year 1(?),fourth month,g 16th day.NOTES TO THE TEXT

a. For the readings, Akkadian equivalents, and trans-lations of the logograms denoting the different categoriesof sheep and goats in lines 1-7, cf. Oppenheim and Hart-man, "The Domestic Animals of Ancient Mesopotamia "in JNES IV (1945), 152 ff., and Landsberger, MSLVIII/1 under the respective Sumerian entries togetherwith his extended notes and Excursus I, pp. 55 ff.b. Written thus, without UDU.c. May also be read masgallu (m), ibid. p. 30 line 216and p. 58.d. To be read immerdtu here rather than lahrdtu,since the term includes the rams as well, and is thusparallel to the term used to denote all the goats, in-cluding the males, UD. = enzu " she-goat."e. Cf. sub duppuru in the dictionaries; it is paral-lelled by nada "to neglect (one's contracted duties)."f. In citing this passage, CAD 3 187 omits i-za-[az]which is clear on the tablet and on Feigin's copy, thusfundamentally misconstruing the legal point of thestipulation.g. The month name is a curious writing for whatmust be SU.NUMUN.A = Du'uzu (Tammuz); noteeme. sal nimen for NIGIN, which may have led to thiswriting.

Some difficultieswithin the text itself will haveto be clarified before we turn to the light it shedson the biblical episode. It emerges, in the firstplace, that the shepherd Dada does not himself,or all by himself, engage in the actual herdingof the flocks. In his capacity of shepherd (re'um)he seems to function more like a shepherd con-tractor, the one who contracts with the ownersof flocks, but who " sub-contracts" with or other-wise employs "shepherd boys" (kaparrum) whodo the actual herding.5 This was known fromOld Babylonian sources,especially letters, in whichit is clear that the re'un was more than a shepherdin thl strict sense, since he often held the "fran-chise "-so to speak-over large districts or evencities. This is now confirmedby a new text of theEdict of Ammisaduqa in which the shepherds(SIPAD.MES) are on a par with the issakku(ENS) -farmers-who were not themselves the

4Cf. below, note 13.Cf. E. Grant, The Haverford Symposium on Archae-ology and the Bible, p. 234 no. 5, which is anotherherding contract between the same owner and Dadi,dated in Samsuiluna 11. Read ip-qi-ldu after the nameIDa-da-a in line 13. The kaparru's in that contract areKabta-bani and Ili-turam (lines 14 ff.); no liabilityclauses of any kind are stated in that document.

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FINKELSTEIN: An Old Babylonian Herding Contract and Genesis 31:38 f.agricultural laborers-and the susikcku'swho stoodin some financial relationship to the palace.6The present contract involves three rather thantwo parties. Dada the shepherd assumes overallliability (pihatum) for the flock which is legallyunder his charge or custody (paqddum), and istherefore responsiblefor the replacement (ri'abum)of any lost animals. Such loss (haliqtum) mustbe understoodas due to circumstancesconstitutingneglect on the shepherd's part, thus excluding lossdue to the action of wild carnivores (exceptunder circumstances where the loss might havebeen preventable) or to death by disease or evennatural causes-as provided for in the L(aws of)H(ammurapi), Par. 266. While these formsof liability are assumed by Dada with respectto the owner of the flock, Nidnatum the shepherd"boy" is made explicitly liable for any loss(Mitum) occasioned by his wilful neglect of hisduties, i. e., by being absent from his job. On thebasis of LHI267, where the loss (hititum) due topissatum "(mange )"7 is assessable against the

6 This new text of the Edict of Ammisaduqa will bepublished shortly by the present writer. It duplicatesin part the fragmentary edict text of Samsuiluna pub-lished by Kraus in the Landsberger Festschrift, AS 16225 ff., as amended by him in his important new studyStaatliche Viehhaltung im altbabylonischen Lande Larsa(MKNAW, Afd. Letterkunde, N.R. 29/5) p. 13 note 3.The official status of the susikkum was already knownfrom Par. 10 of the Edict of Ammisaduqa (Kraus, SDV 24 f., 118 f.). While these texts, and particularlythose discussed by Kraus in Viehhaltung, are concernedwith state-owned herds and flocks, it is neverthelessapparent that even a shepherd (n a. g a d a or sip ad)who contracted with private flock owners was notusually the one who did the actual herding. WhileKraus (ibid. 13) appears to accept Landsberger's under-standing of susikkum as "plucker" (MSL VIII/1 37,cf. CAD B sub baqdmu and (bit) buqumi) or "shearing-master," I intend to show elsewhere, on the basis ofunpublished evidence, that the Akkadian for SU.SI.IGis susikkum and that the person so designated is con-cerned not with shearing live animals, but with thedisposition of the carcasses of dead animals, of largecattle as well as of sheep and goats.7For discussion and earlier literature, see Lautner,Personenmiete (SD I) 97 n. 319, also, Driver and MilesBL I 459 f. Szlechter, in Tablettes juridiques . . .Geneve, 104, would ascribe the term to PSS " destroy,wipe out" and therefore as a general term for "loss"(occurring within the sheepfold, as contrasted to Maliq-tum, which would then denote losses from outside thefold). This seems to me unlikely, as it would renderhitit pissatim a genitive construct in which both con-stituents are synonymous. The phrase must mean "dam-age, loss" due to a particular cause, represented by p.

negligent (egii) shepherd, it may be posited inthis case as well that Dada will have to make goodsuch loss to Sinsamuh, the owner, but the contractspecifies explicitly that Nidnatum, whose behaviorwas directly responsiblefor the loss resulting fromhis negligence, will be obliged to make it up toDada. The latter must nevertheless pay Sinsamuh5 kc5r f barley. This ought not to be interpretedas an additional penalty-presumably for havingretained such an irresponsible lcaparrum-butrather as a refund of the larger part of the wagewhich must have been part of the agreement eventhough not stipulated in writing, which, accordingto LH par. 261, would have amounted to 8 korof barley per year.Hitum in the sense of "loss, damage" is notlimited in usage to flocks and herds, but occursalso in connection with the produce of fields andorchards. When the word is thus used, the impli-cation is usually present that the loss, damage,deficiency" was caused through neglect by theperson in whose legal custody the property hadbeen at the time such damage or loss was sus-tained. It cannot denote such loss or injury asresulted through circumstanceswhichthe shepherdcould not reasonably have been expected to pre-vent, such as those illustrated by LHI 266. Apartfrom pissatum, however, neither the "codes" northe contracts ever specify the kind of damage forwhich the shepherd would be liable.

We may now return to the Jacob-Laban story.It is apparentthat in Chs. 30-31 we have the mostdetailed record of the law and lore of shepherdingto be found in the Bible. There is nothing specifi-cally "Israelite" in the story, and it would bereasonable even a priori to assume that its back-ground would be common to all of the ancientNear East. It is nevertheless particularly strikingto find imbedded within the Hebrew narrativeelements of the precise terminology current inOld Babylonian herding contracts. Furthermore,the point of Jacob's particular agreement andstipulations in his relation to Laban stands outonly when the normally prevailing arrangementsThat lititum in this usage means strictly "loss, dam-age," note the phrase ana hititirm ?a ibasis PN LUGAL-EBA-NI-IB-GI4-GI4 "PN (the shepherd) will compensatethe owner (or king) for any loss that may occur," Riftin,Staro-vavilonskie . . . dokumenty etc. No. 59: 8ff.;YBT VIII 60: 8ff.; 92: 8ff.; 106: 8ff., all Larsadocuments.

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FINKELSTEIN: An Old Babylonian Herding Contract and Genesis 31:38f.in such contracts are kept in mind. These con-ditions may now be reviewed in detail.1. Jacob offers to accept as his wages dark-colored (hiam "brown"?) sheep and variegatedgoats (30: 32). What was Jacob's purpose inproposing such unusual terms for his employ-ment? Did he expect to get a greater share ofthe flocks under such an arrangementas comparedwith the prevailing division between owner andshepherd or was it an offer to work for less thanthe prevailing share? Circumstances point un-mistakably to the second view. In the Near East,the sheep are usually white and the goats black.Among the modern day shepherds the "white"'and the "black" are synonymous with "sheepand goats" or " Kleinvieh."8 In the Nippurherding contracts of the Achaemenid period thesame phrase is used: pisdti u salmdti (var.salindu)9 "white and black" to denote all thesmall cattle together composed of sheep and goatsof either sex and various age designations, whichin the earlier periods are usually summarized asU8. UDU. HI.A = enu. The percentage of dark-colored sheep and variegated goats would there-fore have been very small. But Jacob's offer canbest be evaluated against the background of theprevailing terms known from the cuneiform herd-ing contracts. Our information in this respect,however, is surprisingly scanty and ambiguous.It is surprising because it is certain from LH 264that the contracts between owner and shepherdprovided for fixed proportionsfor each on the basisof an expected percentage of new births, and thedivision of other products,10presumably consistingof wool, milk products, and skins (of dead ani-mals). Yet the extant contracts of the periodalmost never go into such details, specifying onlythe liability of the shepherd for loss and/orpissatum(-loss). There does exist one Diyalacontract from Ashjaly, UCPSP X p. 131, No. 58,where this proportion is stipulated, and on thebasis of the copy, Landsberger and others haveconcluded1 that the proportion is 60: 40, i.e.,out of every hundred new births, 60 head will go

8 Dalman, Arbeit u. Sitte in Palistina VI 180.9Landsberger, AfO X 158.10 The negligent herdsman must make up to the ownerthe appropriate proportion of new births (talittum) andproducts (biltum, i. e., wool and dairy products) " inaccordance with his contract" (ana pi riksdtisu).11Apud Lautner, Personenmiete 91 n. 305; Driver andMiles BL I 457.

to the owner of the flock, 40 to the shepherd. Ifthis reading of the pertinent lines is correct, andthe instance taken as typical, then there wouldbe no question about Jacob's having agreed to acompensation substantially lower than the com-mon rate. But the lines were difficult to interpretto begin with, and a collation, made by the presentwriter a few years ago, reveals that lines 9 ff.,read as follows: i-na UDU.HI.A sa i-sa-ba i-na1 me-at 60 12 + 20 su-si-i i-na-ad-in iu a-naha-li-iq-tim i-za-az 3 "of the sheep which (con-stitute the) increase,l4he (the shepherd) will give(to the owner) 80 out of 100,15 and he (i. e., theshepherd) will be responsible for any loss." Theproportion, in other words, is not 60: 40 but80: 20, which in fact approachesmore closely tothe proportion of 9: 1 which prevails for the mostpart among the sheep-herding Arabs of the modernNear East as reported by recent investigators.13The Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid herd-

1"The horizontal wedge copied by Lutz is an erasure,and is to be ignored.18 Other corrections resulting from collation are: line3, name: I-si-da-na; line 5, end: a-na UDU. I.Are-im; line 13: i-na-ad-di-nm (nadi, the usual verb todenote delinquency in such documents, for which thetext discussed in the present article substitutes duppuru).14The reading of the word is certain, but the problemis that the expected form should have been asabd.Landsberger, however, called my attention some time agoto the form ya-,a-ab (Sum. d ab. e.dam) in a.-i.II i 45, i. e., a West Semitic form, which may well liebehind the form iqabd.

16 The proportion must be expressed here in some idio-matic way, since su-si-i would otherwise appear to beredundant. Prof. Sachs suggests to me the possibility" that the scribe read 1, 20 su-Si-i as the Akkadian wordsfor 'one (and) one-third sosses' (= 80)."16T. Ashkenazi in Tribus Semi-nomades de la Palestinedu Nord (Paris 1938) reports (p. 164): 'Pour sesservices, un berger recoit 8 A 10 agneaus par 100 tetesde menu b4tail. ... II est responsable du bon etat dutroupeau, de sa croissance ou de sa mortalit6" (cf. LH264). If the average increase is calculated at 80 lambsper 100 ewes per annum (see note 18) the share ofthe shepherd on this basis would amount to 15-18 lambsout of 80, or roughly 20 percent. H. Charles in TribusMoutonnieres du Moyen-Euphrate (Documents d'EtudesOrientales de l'Institute Francais de Damas Vol. VIII)p. 117, reports the wage of the shepherd as one-tenthof the increase, but that he receives certain expenses inaddition. Dalman, op. cit., 215, records an instancewhere the shepherd receives 25 percent of the new-bornlambs, but is then not entitled to compensation for anyother expense. Such expenses, for clothing and otherequipment, are assumed by the owner(s) of the flockin the cases reported by Ashkenazi and Charles.

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FINKELSTEIN: An Old Babylonian Herding Contract and Genesis 31:38 f.ing contracts operate on a different principle. Inthese documents a guaranteed return is stipulated,based on the number of bearing ewes and she-goats in the flock, by which the shepherd-con-tractor is obliged to deliver to the owner of theflock 66s lambs per 100 ewes per annum and onekid per she-goat according to some contracts but662 per 100 accordingto other contracts. In addi-tion, the shepherd must deliver a stipulated quotaof wool, goat-hair, cheese, butter, skins and sinews-the latter two items based on the stipulatedexpectation of ten animal deaths per hundredhead.17The stipulation of 662 lambs per 100 ewes isparticularly interesting, as it almost certainly isbased on the theoretical or premissed birth rate-and perhaps even survival rate for the newbirths-of 100 percent, as is clearly indicated inthose instances where the shepherd is obliged todeliver one kid per she-goat. One would naturallydeduce from this that, at least as far as lambs areconcerned, the shepherd gets as his share 331percent. Yet in fact this is an unrealistic calcula-tion, for a birth-rate-not to mention survival rate-of one to one of young to adults would haveamounted to extraordinary good fortune, sincethe prevailing expectation was an increase in newbirths of only 80 percent or, in some instances,even less.18 Jacob says as much to Laban in thequotation cited above; it was due to his presenceand his dedication that Laban's ewes and she-goats never miscarried, i. e., that they had 100percent successful births. That this was the case,and that Laban himself acknowledged that thisrate of increase was extraordinaryand the result ofspecial grace, is proved by 30:27, when Laban isprompted to make a generousgesture upon Jacob's

1 These texts, largely from the Murashu archive,were treated by Augapfel, Babylonische Rechtsurkundenetc. 82-86; S. v. Bolla, Untersuchungen zur Tiermieteund Tierpacht im Altertum (Miinchener Beitrage zurPapyrusforschung etc., Vol. 30 [1940]) 120ff.; Car-dascia, Les Archives de Murasui 155 f.18Kraus, Viehhaltung 24 ff., has established that forofficial purposes the standard calculation was 80 lambsper 100 ewes. Cf. also ibid. 50 f., and Neugebauer andSachs MCT 130 f., with note 2951 (VAT 8522), althoughcalculations of 70 and 75 per 100 are also known. Asit must be assumed that the percentage of surviving newbirths in the Neo-Babylonian period was not differentfrom the OB period, this would leave the NB shepherdabout 17 percent of the new births computed on thebasis of 80 per 100 ewes, and proportionately less if thebasis was 70 or 75 per 100.

notifying him that he is ready to return to hishomeland: "Laban replied to him: 'Please-I have grown rich;19 for Yahweh has blessed me'1 I assume that N.lS here is cognate with Akk. nahdsu"to flourish, prosper," which may be denominative ofnuhsu "abundance, prosperity" (cf. Sum. h .g a 1),which is the only way in which Laban's reply makessense. This suggestion was made long ago by J.Sperber, OLZ 16 (1913) 389, and was cited by Ges.-Buhl(16th ed.) s.v., but has since been ignored by mosttranslations and commentaries which continue to derivethe verb in this occurrence from nahes "to performdivination" etc. (as in Gen. 44: 5, 15), which is outof place in the present context. The translations basedon the divination notion must assume that Laban's replyamounts to a confession that at some earlier time

Laban, presumably puzzled by his extraordinary goodfortune, performed divination only to ascertain thesource of this benevolence and that it was through thisprocess that he learned of the true reason for his pros-perity: Jacob's presence in his household. To myknowledge, divinational procedures are invoked onlywhen the future is to be determined, i. e., whether somecontemplated action will meet with success or failure,or when the recent experience of the client/" patient"(either private person, or the king, or the temple) hasbeen so unfavorable as to suggest divine displeasure,the aim of the procedure then being to pinpoint thesource of that displeasure. When a person is enjoyinggood fortune he is not inclined to inquire after thereason for it; he will invariably assume, if he is movedto reflect on it at all, that it is the just reward for hisproper conduct, his own abilities, or that he is the objectof divine grace. The ancients would no more be in-clined to look a gift horse in the mouth than themoderns. Further, N.HS denotes only manipulativedivinatory procedures, the result of which would havebeen couched in a reply that amounted to little morethan "yes " or "no," or "favorable/unfavorable." Itwould have been extremely laborious if not impossiblewith such procedures to pinpoint Jacob as the source ofLaban's good fortune (in a manner analagous to theprocedure described in I Sam. 14 36 ff., where, charac-teristically, it was invoked because of the manifestationof divine displeasure). The only way in which Labancould have been made aware through some externalagency that it was Jacob who was the cause of his goodfortune would have been through a message type oforacle, i. e., by a dream or by prophecy; neither of theseoracular media could be covered by the action NHg.From the narrator's point of view it was rather thecase that Laban intuitively sensed that his good fortunewas due to Jacob's presence, and in a moment of grati-tude, prompted by Jacob's announcement that he wouldlike to return home, candidly acknowledged the latter'srole in the increase of his wealth. That this occurrenceof NHI would be, on the present argument, the only onein the Bible to be ascribed to *NHS = nabdsu remainsa difficulty (whether the name Nahs6n may be explainedby the same root is a matter of dispute) but in view ofthe unmistakably Mesopotamian elements otherwise

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FINKELSTEIN: An Old Babylonian Herding Contract and Genesis 81: 38f.on your account.'" Laban, in other words, hadhardly expected that his flocks would increase atthe rate they did, which was presumably at 100percent or better.20In other words, the 66] stipulation of theNeo-Babylonian contracts, while obviously arrivedat on the basis of an ideal of 100 percent increase,in realistic terms resulted in a proportion for theshepherd of considerablyless, on the average,thaneven the 20 percent which was his normal duein the Old Babylonian period. For if the increaseamounted, on the average, to 80 lambs per 100ewes, the shepherd would, on this basis, havetaken only about 13 lambs for himself, or 16 per-cent of the increase. This discrepancy betweenthe Old and Neo-Babylonian practices cannoteasily be accounted for. One might surmise thatthe difference would have been made up by the pro-portion of by-products o which the Neo-Babylonianshepherd was entitled, and about which we hearpresent in the story, and the perfect sense it suppliesto the passage and to the episode as a whole, the ren-dering proposed here appears to me the most plausi-ble one.20If the possibility of multiple births is allowed for,which was probably extremely rare in the ancient NearEast (see Kraus, Viehhaltung 50 f.). In this connection,it should be noted that the sense of ma_t'imt in Songof Songs 4: 2 is not that each ewe is accompanied bya pair of twin lambs, none being bereft (sakuldih), butrather that each ewe is "matched" with its lambbeneath it. The image is one of symmetry, not ofprolificness, as is clear from the subject of the image,the teeth of the beloved, which are white and perfectlyaligned; each of the upper teeth is exactly aligned withand matched by its lower counterpart, without anyunsightly gap. This usage of the denominative of theword for "twin" is well understood by A. Robert andR. Tournay in their translation and commentary LeCantique des Cantiques (Paris, 1963) 161, who cite thesimilar sense of the Qal denom. t6'amim in Ex. XXVI 24,XXXVI 29. The passage discloses, at all events, thata lamb for each ewe, or 100 percent increase, was thecherished ideal and implies also absence of losses dueto death.There is, to be sure, the passage at the beginning ofTablet VI i of the Gilgamesh epic where Ishtar blan-dishes the hero with a series prospective blessings,promising among other things that "your she-goats willcast triplets (takse), your sheep twins (tu'dmi, line18). But in this context it is clearly implied that, farfrom being a frequent occurrence, it was so rare as tobe interpreted as a manifestation of special divinebenevolence. On the mundane level, such occurrenceswould have been so infrequent as to have no significanteffect on the statistics of new births in proportion tothe number of bearing females.

nothing in the Old Babylonian contracts. Onthe other hand, the Old Babylonian shepherdwas entitled to an annual wage of 8 ko6r f barley(LH 261) while the Neo-Babylonian shepherd isentitled to no direct wage-at least none is stipu-lated in the contracts. Furthermore, LH and theOld Babylonian herding contracts which are pre-served, all concern private enterprise, i. e., theherds and flocks are the property of private indi-viduals, and the shepherds with whom they con-tract are also "free agents" in contrast with theNeo-Babylonian contracts in which the flocks andherds are temple-owned, and the shepherds arethus more or less in the position of "state em-ployees." There are no means by which suchfactors can be safely counterbalanced,but it wouldnot be too risky a surmise if it is supposed thaton total balance the remuneration to the shep-herds of the Old and Neo-Babylonian periods,including all forms of benefits in addition to theirpercentage of the new-born lambs, would havebeen roughly the same, or that in value suchremuneration equalled a total of about 20 percentof the increase. It is a fair conclusion, that theabnormally colored or marked animals that wouldhave constituted Jacob's share under his agree-ment would not have amounted to 20 percent ofthe flocks even if Laban had not resorted to deceitto deprive Jacob of his share.2. Natural loss. Here we may include lossesresulting from attacks by wild beasts, and deathsdue to disease. Jacob is silent about the lattercategory, which must certainly have constituteda significant factor in the calculations, and itshould therefore be assumed that such loss wasoutside Jacob's liability. The Old Babyloniantexts dealt with by Kraus make an explicit allow-ance of a 15 percent annual attrition rate forthe older animals (ewes and rams),21the carcassesof which must nevertheless be accounted for, andthe Neo-Babylonian contracts, which calculate aten percent attrition rate (based apparently onthe entire flock) also require that the carcassesbe accountedfor. Jacob is very eloquent, however,in delineating his liability for animals lost as theprey of wild beasts. That he makes such a point21 See Kraus, Viehhaltung 14, 59 ff. The term for thiscategory is (KUA) RI. RI. ga = miqittum "fallen," i.e.," cadavers." As Kraus notes, it is not clear why onlyolder animals are allowed under this category, sincethe mortality rate among the lambs might have beenexpected to be just as high.

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FINKELSTEIN: An Old Babylonian Herding Contract and Genesis 31: 38 f.of it must be understood as implying a certainreproof to Laban since this kind of liability wentagainst the prevailing custom-as Speiser alreadyobserved-or, more precisely, the " statutory" pre-scriptions found in the cuneiform corpora, e. g.,LH 266, which frees the shepherd from liabilityfor animals lost as a result of an epidemic (lipitilim) or as prey to lions, upon his declaration ofthese circumstances on oath, to the owner of theherd.22

It may well be assumed that such extraordinaryconditions of work were not accepted by Jacobvoluntarily, but were imposed upon him by Labanat the beginning of his service, when he had littlebargaining power. These harsh conditions areunderscored by Jacob's further reproach that hebore the liability for such losses whether theyoccurredby day or by night. This cannot be emptyrhetoric. It implies that some compromise arrange-ment for equalizing the liability would have beenmore equitable: losses to wild animals in the day-time might legitimately have been borne by the

" At this point one must note the possibility thatYBT I 28 rev. 26 ff. may represent a hypothetical casesimilar to LH 266, as Clay was himself aware (ibid.p. 27), even though his reading and interpretation ofthe relevant lines are in need of revision. It is ques-tionable whether g us - n i g i n - n a (lines 27, 33) means"ox of the fold" (or "herd), the more likely meaningbeing " straying, wandering" (Civil, AS 16 p. 8; DeimelSL 483: 50, also Civil, by private communication).Lines 29-31, however they are to be understood, mustnevertheless be read: gaba-ri nam-lugal-la-n i - b - r i - r i ( ! ). In view of the difficulties other-wise posed by this entire text (see JAOS 86 p. 357), itwill probably prove impossible to unravel the mysteriesin this section, but the following are some tentativesuggestions: a) g a b a- r i is possibly not to be under-stood here in the sense of "equivalent" (Clay, Civil),since in the next section the scribe uses the less am-biguous g u, - g u4 - g i m "ox like ox" in the requiredsense of "equivalent." b) The final verb would berelated to RI.RI-g a: miqittu "fallen, loss," and recallsLH 266 lines 80-81: mi-qi-it-ti tarba$im be-el tarba.simi-ma-ah-har-ma (!) (cf. variant from WU of stela inSm. 26). c) I suggest that gaba-ri here may standfor mahdru "accept." The general sense of the casewould be that the owner of the ox would be requiredto accept the loss himself, although, admittedly, I can-not derive this sense directly from the syntax. Notealso that the case leaves unstated who had been incharge of the ox, a herdsman (thus parallel to LH266) or someone who hired it (thus parallel to LH244). For a related lawsuit from Nuzi, cf. Hallo,JAOS 87 (1967) 64 fn. 1.

shepherd, on the ground that greater vigilancecould have prevented it,23 whereas attacks on thefold at night by lions or wolves would have beenalmost impossible to defend against. Laban'srapacity-and the point of Jacob's specificationof it-lay in his burdening of Jacob with liabilityfor losses to wild beasts under any and allcircumstances.3. In the light of the above, one may wonderwhether Jacob's final complaint about the condi-tions of his work-exposure to the blazing sunduring the day and to the icy blasts of the steppeat night-might not have been something morethan the mere rhetoric of the "Faithful Shep-herd." From the analogues among the modernbedouin sheepherding practices cited above, it ap-pears that it is customary for the owner of theflocks to supply the shepherd with appropriateclothing for winter and summer, unless the pro-portion of new births to which the latter was en-titled was sufficient for him to acquirethese neces-sities from his own resources. The latter conditionwas certainly not fulfilled by the terms of Laban'scontract with him, so that Jacob's final reminderof the physical conditions under which he servedhis father-in-law for twenty years may have beenas pointed as the rest of his statement.It is, at all events, clear from all the foregoingthat only a thorough appreciation of the herdingagreements of the Ancient Near East, and theirdistinctive phraseology, together with their mod-ern analogues, can bring home the full force ofthe Jacob-Laban relationship, as described bythe former's eloquent account of it, when thetwo came to the parting of their ways.

28 In the Mesopotamian private records and adminis-trative texts losses to wild animals do not form anyspecific category; they are presumably subsumed underthe rubric of haliqtum "lost," i.e., unaccounted for,and therefore the responsibility of the shepherd, orunder the category of LAL.Dr = ribbatum ("arrears,"i. e., shortages, to be made good by the shepherd) inthe administrative records, when the shepherd may bepresumed to be responsible for the loss, or, if the shep-herd was to be absolved from responsibility-e. g., lossto wild animals occurring at night-this category, whichwould not have been large, would have been subsumedwithin the 10 percent or 15 percent natural loss of theolder animals that was routinely credited to the shep-herd. In either case, it must be presumed that theprevailing practice differed to some degree from thatprescribed by the laws of Hammurapi, and that thisdifference worked to the disadvantage of the shepherd.

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