78 A History of Judaism
found in the priestly regulations scattered through Leviticus and Num-
bers. Without parallel in the other law codes of antiquity are the biblical
regulations to forbid the taking of interest on loans ‘if any of your kin
fall into difficulty and become dependent on you’ – the need to distin-
guish such social lending from loans made to foreigners for profit is
explicit in Deuteronomy – and legislation for the restoration of ances-
tral property rights to each family at a jubilee, when ‘you shall have the
trumpet sounded throughout all your land and you shall hallow the
fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its
inhabitants’.^11
Pentateuchal law betrays traces of earlier assumptions of social struc-
tures based on tribal groups and extended families, so that, for instance,
the brother of a man who dies without children is required to marry the
widow in order that the ‘ first- born will succeed in the name of the dead
brother, and his name will not be blotted out of Israel’, although the
biblical law also contains provision for a brother to refuse the duty,
albeit with social disgrace: ‘if he persists, saying, “I have no desire to
marry her”, then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of
the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and declare, “This
is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” ’
But much family law relates to the nuclear family, covering such issues
as betrothal, marriage and divorce (which is permitted for a man if he
has found something ‘objectionable’ about his wife, in which case all he
is required to do to send her out of the house is to write and give her a
certificate of divorce). If ‘a spirit of jealousy’ comes on a man and he
suspects his wife of unfaithfulness, ‘then the man shall bring his wife
to the priest’ with ‘a grain- offering of jealousy’, and the wife shall
drink the ‘water of bitterness’. If she has been unfaithful, ‘the water that
brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain, and her womb
shall discharge, her uterus drop, and the woman shall become an exe-
cration among her people. But if the woman has not defiled herself and
is clean, then she shall be immune ... The man shall be free from ini-
quity, but the woman shall bear her iniquity.’ Procreation, seen as a
blessing, was also considered a divine commandment since the first
humans were instructed to ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth
and subdue it’. But the family unit could also rely on the work of outsid-
ers, including not only hired workers but slaves. As in the rest of the
ancient world, slaves could be treated simply as moveable property for
disposal by their masters at whim, although biblical law introduced
restrictions which reflected awareness of the slave’s humanity. Striking