One of the studies I’ve enjoyed through the years is comparing leaders, nations, and world events to the Bible. It’s important that we don’t get “tunnel vision” as we study the Bible. God created the universe, which includes the world. God is very aware of what’s going on in the lives of people who believe in Him and in the lives of people who don’t believe in Him.
We find many nations mentioned in the Bible – mostly because of how they interacted with or impacted God’s chosen people. Israel dealt with people from the Chaldees, Mesopotamia, Canaan, Egypt, Amalek, Edom, Media, Moab, Philistia, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Phoenicia, Ammon, Assyria, Babylonia, Media, Persia, Greece, Cypress, Ethiopia, Asia, Macedonia, Crete, Rome, etc. But how about India, China, Japan, Australia, the Americas, etc? People were living their lives there, too. They aren’t mentioned in the Bible because the people living there had no direct impact on Israel, but God knew them and saw what they did.
My point is that leaders and people all across the world were interested in “social justice” throughout history – whether they knew about Israel or not. So, it’s helpful to our study to know what’s been going on in the world for the last several thousand years.
Historical Justice
I addressed some issues about justice, legal and social, in my book A History of Man’s Quest for Immortality. You may find it helpful to read that in conjunction with our current study. Even as people have searched for the secret to immortality, they’ve also searched for the secret to justice – real justice. People don’t just want to live longer. They want to live a longer life that’s filled with justice. Longevity without justice is not something most people desire.
I write that after spending decades studying the histories of ancient civilizations. What we know about them comes mostly from what was written about them at the time or soon after. The Book of Genesis in the Bible takes us back to a time when everyone spoke one language. However, languages were confused at Babel and families scattered according to those new languages. Some went north, some south, some east, and some west. They all descended from Noah, but more specifically from one of his three sons: Japheth, Ham, and Shem. You can read Genesis 10 for more detail about the names of the families and nations that came from them.
It probably wasn’t too long after the scattering of the families (Genesis 11) that writing began. What came before that is often called “pre-historic.” What came after writing is called “historic” or just “history.” Writing was evidential because others could see it long after the original writers had died. While there are some ancient cave drawings that are interesting to see, they aren’t usually viewed as historical writing. We know from those cave drawings that people lived, had thoughts, and expressed their thoughts and interests in a permanent method. I’ve written about the history of cave drawings before and found them fascinating. However, those drawings were only available to people who visited the caves until drawings and photographs were published in other writings. Film and videos also brought cave drawings to public attention. Some of them could possibly be a glimpse into the pre-Flood world.
Writing a language on material that could be carried from place to place for others to read and respond, opened up many new opportunities for families and nations. Civilizations grew partly because of their written language. Writing may have started as a way of passing information within a family, and eventually as a communication tool with other families. Sumerian is believed by many historians and archaeologists to be the first written language. They believe it began toward the end of the 4th millennium (3100 BC). Much of the written material that has been discovered that dates during the 3rd millennium (3000-2000 BC) deals with business and government records. Kings and other leaders (local, regional, national) also recorded historical information about wars, treatment of people they conquered, communication with other nations, and legal codes.
The Justice Challenge
People across the world were writing information about themselves and their cultures long before Moses wrote the Book of Genesis during the middle of the 2nd millennium (1450-1400 BC). Moses was able to write about events that happened centuries before he was born because God revealed details about those events. God is eternal and created time and space. He told Moses about creation, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, the temptation of the devil, and how their sin impacted every family after that. The fact that Adam and Eve’s first son killed their second son tells us a lot about the “justice challenge” that would haunt humans through the millennia.
We find in the early chapters of Genesis that the idea of “justice” developed through two families: the family of Cain and the family of Seth. Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, built a city and perpetuated his idea of jealousy and hate. One of Cain’s descendants, Lamech, bragged to his wives about killing a young man because the man had wounded him. Seth, on the other hand, led his family to worship God. One of his descendants, Enoch, did not die because he walked with God and pleased God. The Lord took Enoch to be with Him without having to experience death.
Moses wrote that God is “just” in everything He does. “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.” (Deuteronomy 32:4) Even though God considered destroying the earth because of the great wickedness of humans and their violence against each other (the “justice” challenge), the Lord was gracious and saved one man and his family from destruction. Justice had another chance through Noah, who was Enoch’s great-grandson.
How God dispenses “justice” will always be perfect because God is perfect. All His ways are just. There is no injustice with God. God would have been just if He had destroyed the earth and everything in it. However, God is also loving, gracious, and merciful. He met out justice and mercy during the Flood. All of the families on earth were destroyed (divine justice), except for the family of Noah (divine mercy).
As we’ve seen in previous parts of this study, God gave Noah and his family a second chance at doing what was just even though He knew that “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). God made a covenant with Noah and all the people who would descend from him that included “justice.” You can read the details in Genesis 8 and 9. However, it didn’t take long before the nature of “injustice” that flows through the veins of every human rebelled against God’s covenant. You can read the details of that in Genesis 10 and 11.
Justice and the Nations
Families grew into nations (הַגּוֹיִם֙, peoples, nations) and spread across the world. Since the Bible is laser focused on the Seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3:15, we know more about the lineage of the Seed (Jesus Christ) than other lineages. Jesus came from Noah through his son Shem. You can see the lineage listed in Genesis 11 and Luke 3 that goes from Shem to Abram. The lineage of Abram is included the Old Testament beginning in Genesis 11 and in Matthew 1.
Abram was born in Ur of the Chaldeans (southern Mesopotamia, today’s southern Iraq) several generations after Noah and his family departed the Ark. That means centuries of justice (and injustice) were being meted out by leaders of families and nations. Nimrod was building city-states in Mesopotamia, while other strong leaders were building early empires in other parts of the world. Many documents about legal codes and societal norms had been written by the time Abram was born – probably toward the end of the 3rd millennium.
Abram would have been raised under the criminal and civil legal Code of Ur-Nammu, which was most likely developed by either King Ur-Nammu or his son Shulgi of Ur in the latter part of the 3rd millennium. It dealt with various ideas of “justice,” including monetary compensation for physical injuries and property loss. Murder, rape, robbery, and adultery were punishable by death.
A code that preceded the Code of U-Nammu is known as the Code of Urukagina. It dealt with issues of corruption in government and governmental reform. That included limiting the power of large property owners and the priesthood. Widows and orphans also found better treatment under the code. It also included the ancient term ama-gi, which translates as “freedom” or “exemption from debts.”
What we know about these early codes, Sumerian society was divided into two basic classes: free people and slaves. Free people were known as lu, while slaves were arad (male slave) and gene (female slave). That division would continue for centuries and gave rise to expansions to the early legal codes. One of the early legal codes of the 2nd millennium was the Code of Lipit–Ishtar and dealt with property loss, theft, physical damage, marriage and family, slave ownership, etc.
Another early 2nd millennium legal code is known as the Laws of Eshnunna. They were unearthed north of Ur near ancient Babylon. The codes deal with theft of property, personal injury, and sexual offenses. The famous Babylonian Code of Hammurabi followed a couple of centuries later and focused on the importance of societal regulations over individual rights, though some of the laws did address the rights of free people (e.g. property owners, builders, merchants, slave owners, etc). A person’s “class” position (upper, middle, lower) also played a big part in how people were judged. People who were part of the lower class experienced more severe punishments than those of the higher class. Keeping order and peace among the population was very important to these early leaders, so social order often trumped individual rights.
Other nations of the ancient world also had laws that developed from their customs and religions, though we don’t have the same type of archaeological evidence as in ancient Mesopotamia. What we do know about ancient laws of nations in other areas of the world come from legal codes that were written centuries later. They focused on the absolute control of monarchs (e.g. kings, queens, emperors, pharaohs, etc).
Abram and Ancient History
As we focus on the justice God revealed to Abram (Abraham), it’s good to remember that other nations had laws and customs that regulated societal order and personal behavior. Abram probably lived in Ur toward the end of the 3rd millennium (approx. 2200 or 2100 BC). Abram and his family were members of a higher class (wealthy, many servants, etc), so they would have been obedient to the legal code of Ur and the religious obligations of idol worship. We know from Joshua 24:2 that Abram, along with his father Terah and other family members, “served other gods” when they lived in Ur. Abram and his family moved north to Haran in ancient Assyria (now in southeastern Turkey). Some of Abram’s family members remained in Haran when he followed God’s leading to Canaan. We know from Genesis 31 that members of Abram’s family who still lived in Haran continued to worship “household gods.” They may have also continued to follow the legal code of Ur or something similar. Reading the interactions of Abram’s family with those of his brother’s family who still lived in Mesopotamia (e.g. Genesis 24 and 28 – 31) give us some insight into how they all viewed issues of justice.
Even as Abram was learning about justice from God’s perspective, people in other families and nations were living out their ideas of “justice.” Nations were smaller in size than we think of nations today. They were more like “city-states” that were the centers of power, culture, and economy in ancient times. These city-states were usually fortified to some extent with either volunteer, drafted, or paid soldiers who protected the city-state from attack, and also attacked other cities to expand their territory. That’s similar to what the first king did (King Nimrod) – “And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city).” (Genesis 10:10-12) Nimrod’s kingdom would have been vast at the time, since it covered much of what we now know as Iraq and Turkey. It may have been the earliest empires because of its size and scope.
While King Nimrod was building his empire across Mesopotamia, other kings were building their empires in other parts of the world. Egypt is one example. It began when one or more families moved south from the Tower of Babel after the confusion of languages. It eventually led to a series of city-states that developed into various dynastic periods. A “dynasty” was (and still is) a line or lineage of hereditary rulers in a country. Egyptian dynasties began in the early to middle part of the 3rd millennium BC and continued until the latter part of the 1st millennium BC.
Abram probably visited Egypt during the early part of the First Intermediate Period (2130-1980 BC). Abram had already moved to a southern part of Canaan when a severe famine made finding food difficult. Abram took his wife to Egypt so they could find food. The way Abram viewed the Egyptian moral character and how the Egyptians reacted to Abram tell us something about the idea of social, property, and sexual “justice” at the time.
The pharaoh (king) of Egypt saw that Abram’s wife was “very beautiful” and wanted to take her for himself. Abram knew that would probably happen, so he had already told his wife to say that she was Abram’s sister so the Egyptians wouldn’t kill Abram. Pharaoh took Sarai, Abram’s wife, and treated Abram well for her sake. Abram received many sheep, oxen, male and female donkeys, camels, and male and female servants. However, God sent plagues on the pharaoh and his house so that pharaoh was not able to have sex with Sarai. Pharaoh sent Abram and Sarai away from Egypt with all they had received to end the plagues on the king and his house. The pharaoh (king) is not named in Genesis 12, so it’s difficult to know his identity with any certainty.
The pharaoh would have continued to live his life and continue to build his dynasty even as Abram and Sarai returned to Canaan. That’s the way it was with history in the Bible. As we see events unfold in the Bible, know that other events were unfolding across the world.
Next Time
Abram’s idea of divine justice deepened greatly in the years following his visit to Egypt. They sometimes folded in with other people’s idea of justice, but they often came into direct conflict with them. We’ll learn more about that in the next part of our series.
God’s Justice eBooks
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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