“How Much Is She Worth?” A Comparison of Six Ancient Near East Laws Relating to Bride-Price, Dowry, Inheritance, and Divorce

Throughout the Ancient Near East there were plain and simple rules which defined, among other things, permissible and forbidden alliances; marriage; remarriage; divorce; inheritance; and the penalties involved for violation of these laws. In some cases the laws differed depending upon the woman’s status (i.e., wealthy, poor, “free,” indentured, servant, slave, virgin, widow, minor, elderly, etc.). In all cases, however, they were detailed. These laws were not abstract, philosophical, or theological. This article focuses on Ancient Near Eastern bride-price, dowry, inheritance, and divorce laws found in the laws of Ur-Nammu (c. twenty-first century BCE),¹ Lipit-Ishtar (c. 1950 BCE),² Eshnunna (c. 1800 BCE),³ Hammurabi (c. 1792–1750 BCE),⁴ Middle Assyrian (c. 1400–1100 BCE),⁵ Hittite (c. 1400–1300 BCE),⁶ and the Bible (c. 900 BCE).⁷ The relatively few laws pertaining to marriage, inheritance, and divorce in the Bible are scattered in narrative sections, and distributed throughout the entire text. Most of the biblical references address issues such as forbidden relationships, how to determine virginity, the dissolution of marriage, remarriage, what is to become of a childless widow, etc. This is unlike the rest of the Ancient Near Eastern laws which deal with matters of legal interest that were arranged sequentially (e.g., the laws of Hammurabi are Numbers 128–84; or the Assyrian Laws are Numbers A25–39).

Most of the Ancient Near Eastern artifacts come from Mesopotamia, inhabited by Assyria in the north and Babylonia in the south, and are clay tablets (e.g., laws of Eshnunna), cones (e.g., Lipit-Ishtar), or stelae (e.g., Hammurabi). Unfortunately, no similar Israelite artifacts have been recovered, and the oldest manuscripts discovered yet, including those of the Dead Sea Scrolls, date to about the second century BCE. As a result, the Bible remains the single most important source for the study of biblical period Israel’s society and culture.

Marriage: Bride Price and Dowry Laws

Bride Price

Ancient Near Eastern marriage laws were contractual and included several core elements that established an alliance between families. The usual arrangement was that the father or the eldest brother of the groom approached the bride’s parents or guardians and negotiated the details: the groom’s family provided a bride-price and the bride’s parents or guardians provided a dowry. Among the various factors considered in the negotiations were economic advantages and the expansion of the kinship network. Social parity was always a consideration — typically, no family wanted to marry “down,” at least when arranging the contract for the first wife. Thus the participants had to be at least of the same socio-economic class and have approximately the same community standing. In this way marriages served not only to produce children and a new generation to inherit property, but they also established social ties, economic connections, and networks of association that benefited both parties. Additional marriage laws included betrothal period obligations, polygamous marriage stipulations, legal ramifications for debts, inheritance rights of children, as well as arrangements regarding divorce initiated by either party. Both the bride price and the dowry functioned in overlapping ways to maintain the viability of a family. The bride price would provide some compensation to a woman’s family (who would lose the labor of a daughter upon her marriage), and the dowry might be a woman’s chief means of support in the event of widowhood or divorce, especially if she had no sons or if her father was deceased.

Most of what we know about marriage and wedding customs in the Ancient Near East is based on accounts of marriages involving people of power and influence in society — kings, pharaohs, potentates, nobility, even the gods themselves, or some epic hero whose legendary accomplishments raised him into the area of the divine. This is to be expected. The literature of antiquity highlights royalty more than it does commoners. But to read about the marriage of a pharaoh to his queen does not provide information on the marriage customs of the pharaoh’s thousands of pyramid laborers, any more than the wedding of an Assyrian king served as a model for the wedding of one of his canal excavators.

According to two Canaanite texts from Ugarit, marriage is illustrated at three levels (one of which is applicable to this paper):⁸ first is marriage among royal mortals. In five of six cases the king was followed on the throne by his son. One king, Niqmad II, was succeeded by his son Arḫalba (c. 1345–1336 BCE). Arḫalba was childless, and so he willed that his wife, Kubaba, should, after his death, be wed his brother Niqmepa. Furthermore he added a solemn warning that no other man outside the family should seek the hand of Kubaba in marriage.⁹ This text is of interest because it illustrates the existence of Israel’s levirate marriage laws (discussed below) and Ugaritic laws. Arḫalba’s curse on anyone marrying his widow, excluding his brother, may reflect the desire to avoid loss of family property to outsiders; and it illustrates that Ugarit shared with Israel the concept that marriage to a former king’s wife, or even his concubines, bestowed legitimacy on an aspirant who otherwise had no claim to the throne (II Sam. 3:7; 12:8; 16:21; I Kgs. 2:13–25).

Beginning with “bride-price,” the Ancient Near Eastern laws are rather uniform. Bride price throughout the Ancient Near East was based in great part on the wealth and social position of both the husband and wife, including slaves and the poor. For example, under Hittite Law “if an overseer or a shepherd elopes with a free woman and does not bring the bride-price for her, she becomes a slave for three years” (Hittite Laws 35); according to the Laws of Ur-Nammu “the orphan is not delivered up to the rich man; the widow is not delivered up to the mighty man; the woman of one shekel is not delivered up to the man of one mina” (Laws of Ur-Nammu 162–168). In Israel, a poor father might sell his daughter into a well-to-do family in order to ensure her future security as well as protect the daughter from abuse by the purchasing family:

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not be freed as male slaves are. If she proves to be displeasing to her master, who designated her for himself, he must let her be redeemed; he shall not have the right to sell her to outsiders, since he broke faith with her. And if he designated her for his son, he shall deal with her as is the practice with free maidens. If he marries another, he must not withhold from this one her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. If he fails her in these three ways, she shall go free, without payment (Ex. 21:7-11).

A significant number of Ancient Near Eastern bride-price laws deal with forfeiting or refunding the bride-price. The Laws of Hammurabi provide for a refund in the case of infertility (Laws of Hammurabi 139). Another situation was when the bride’s father gave his daughter to another man. The laws of Ur-Nammu (Lines 291–301), the laws of Eshnunna, the Hittite laws (Hittite Law 29), and the Laws of Hammurabi (160-61) all specify that if the bride’s father reneges on the marriage contract the rejected son-in-law receives two-fold the negotiated amount as recompense.

Although it is not a law, an interesting biblical narrative describes “stealing back” a bride price:

Then Rachel and Leah answered him, saying, “Have we still a share in the inheritance of our father’s house? Surely, he regards us as outsiders, now that he has sold us and has used up our bride price. Truly, all the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children.” . . . Thereupon Jacob put his children and wives on camels; and he drove off all his livestock and all the wealth that he had amassed, the livestock in his possession that he had acquired in Paddan-aram, to go to his father Isaac in the land of Canaan. Meanwhile . . . Rachel stole her father’s household idols (Gen. 31:14-19).

Literally, the Hebrew text reads “and has eaten up our money,” as in Akkadian texts, in the sense of pocketing the bride price.¹⁰ Normally the groom deposited with the bride’s father or guardian a sum of money to be settled on the bride. In the Genesis narrative, Jacob gave fourteen years of service instead. The wives accused their father of the improvident disposition of the monetary equivalent of this service, or of outright larceny.

Laws regarding brides who were seized and/or raped also affected bride price legislation: under the Laws of Eshnunna, the rapist was put to death (Laws of Eshnunna 26); under biblical law the assailant had to pay the bride price in silver (Ex. 22:15-16); and under the Assyrian Laws, the assailant was fined one-third more than the standard bride-price in silver (Assyrian Laws 55). If the groom changed his mind, he forfeited the bride-price under the laws of Hammurabi (159) and under Hittite law (Hittite Laws 30). If either the bride or groom died, the bride price reverted back to the father under the Laws of Eshnunna (17) and the Laws of Hammurabi (164).

Dowry

While bride-price was a constant (and included all classes of society), there were far fewer Ancient Near Eastern laws relating to dowry. One constant, however, was that wives’ families provided the dowry, which was a form of “indirect” inheritance for the woman regardless of her husband’s status, financial or otherwise. The father of the bride gave his daughter properties (land, etc.) which were hers by law and whose profit her husband enjoyed during the duration of the marriage, within certain boundaries. In most cases, these assets fell under the husband’s control, but they could not be taken from the wife without her permission. If the wife died, her dowry disposal differed depending on whether or not she had children. Generally speaking, if a woman died childless the dowry reverted back to her father; but if she had children the dowry was dispersed to her children (Laws of Hammurabi 162-163;167; Hittite Laws 27).

Under the Laws of Hammurabi, if the husband died the woman owned this property outright and it was passed along to her children after her death (Laws of Hammurabi 167;171).

An interesting case is if the couple decided to separate: regardless of whether the man or the woman wanted to terminate the marriage the dowry was returned to the wife (Laws of Hammurabi 138-139;143;149).

The exception was in the case of adultery, when the woman forfeited her property and her children’s rights to it. Further, under most of the Ancient Near Eastern laws she (but not the male) was put to death (Laws of Eshnunna 28; Laws of Ur-Nammu 222–231; Laws of Hammurabi 130; Assyrian Law 13-18).

Under biblical law, the penalties for the woman are not as specific, leaving it to a priestly process to judge and impose divine retribution:

If any man’s wife has gone astray and broken faith with him in that a man has had carnal relations with her unbeknown to her husband, and she keeps secret the fact that she has defiled herself without being forced, and there is no witness against her — but a fit of jealousy comes over him and he is wrought up about the wife who has defiled herself; or if a fit of jealousy comes over one and he is wrought up about his wife although she has not defiled herself — the man shall bring his wife to the priest . . . (Num. 5:12-28).

The penalties provided in the Bible regarding a man who committed adultery are:

If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both of them die. In the case of a virgin whose bride-price has been paid, if a man comes upon her in town and lies with her, you shall take the two of them out to the gate of that town and stone them to death . . . But if the man comes upon the engaged girl in the open country, and the man lies with her by force, only the man who lay with her shall die, but you shall do nothing to the girl . . . If a man comes upon a virgin who is not engaged and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, the man who lay with her shall pay the girl’s father fifty [shekels of] silver, and she shall be his wife. Because he has violated her, he can never have the right to divorce her (Deut. 22:22-29).

The Laws of Ur-Nammu have a variation on the biblical law: if a man is accused of infidelity, he had to undergo the river ordeal, and if proven innocent the accuser was fined three shekels; if a man accused the wife of another man and the river ordeal proved her innocent, the accuser was fined one-third of a mina of silver (Laws of Ur-Nammu lines 280-281).

Although there are several “dowry” passages in other Ancient Near Eastern laws, none of the biblical laws discusses the legal aspects of dowries. That said, there are a few examples of dowry customs in biblical narratives: Rebekah was given her maidservants, who were considered her private property after her marriage (Gen. 24:61); Laban had given his maidservant Zilpah to his daughter Leah as her maid (Gen. 29:24), and his maidservant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maid (Gen. 29:29); Pharaoh king of Egypt captured Gezer, destroyed it by fire, killed its Canaanite inhabitants, and gave it as dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife (I Kgs. 9:16); and Caleb gave his daughter Achsah to his nephew Othniel as a wife as a reward for capturing the city of Kiriath-sepher, whereupon she persuaded her father to add springs of water to the dowry of land (Josh. 15:16-19; Judg. 1:12-13).

While it is possible that these biblical narratives indicate that among the Israelites a dowry was provided by the family of the bride, in all except the last example the givers are gentiles, and it is likely that this kind of dowry was not customary in Israel.

Although the Elephantine archive¹¹ does not necessarily contribute to the understanding of biblical texts, it does provide a close look at Jewish bride price and dowry laws. One of the documents (the “Mibtahiah archive”) concerns a wealthy, prominent fifth-century BCE Elephantine woman, Mibtahiah. She owned property and slaves and was the aunt of Jedaniah, the leader of the community. According to the texts, she was married twice — once to a Jewish man and once to an Egyptian. Mibtahiah had two brothers, and in order to bypass the biblical ruling that daughters could not inherit if there were sons, her father, Mahseiah, provided the property to her as her dowry at the time of her marriages. Mibtahiah’s first husband, Jezaniah, died shortly after the marriage without children. Her second husband, Eshor, whom she married in 449 BCE, entered into a “document of wifehood” under which either party could initiate divorce — a right documented in several Ancient Near Eastern laws but not in the Bible.

Inheritance

The only inheritance rights given to women in the Bible are when there are no sons. But these rights were anticipated in Mesopotamia by a millennium.¹² Since Mesopotamian women could own property, both real and movable, there was no bar to a woman inheriting. Various legal passages in the Laws of Hammurabi (e.g., 150; 170-74; 177-84) imply that daughters at times shared in the paternal estate along with sons, and unmarried daughters could inherit for the purpose of transferring the estate to his grandsons.¹³

The differences in the laws seem to reflect a difference in the makeup of the respective societies. The Bible, in its earliest stages, presumes a tightly knit clan structure; the foremost goal of its legal system was the preservation of the clan. Biblical law rests upon a strict patrilineal principle of inheritance that prevents the transfer of land via the daughter to the clan of her husband. By contrast, Israel’s neighbors were already centralized urban societies even when their earliest laws were promulgated. The clan structure, if it had once existed at all, seems to have disappeared.

There are some biblical narrative exceptions to patrilineal inheritance: Micah inherited from his widowed mother (Judg. 17:1-4); Naomi was permitted to sell the property of her deceased husband (Ruth 4:3); and Job’s daughters inherited with his sons (Job 42:15), though strictly this is a case of gifts given during Job’s lifetime rather than inheritance proper. There are other biblical examples of a father’s right to give parts of his estate as gifts to family members while he is alive (Gen. 25:6; II Chron. 21:3). The fact that Deuteronomy has to mandate against violations of the law of primogeniture (Deut. 21:15-17) suggests that it was not infrequent for a father to assume he had the right to dispose of his properties as he pleased, including willing them to his wives and daughters.

As discussed previously, some Ancient Near East laws provide for the possibility that the children of a concubine could come to inherit from their father. Two main situations were stipulated: first, the children of a concubine could inherit as long as their father adopted them and explicitly acknowledged them as heirs, even if the main wife had also borne children (Laws of Hammurabi 170); and second, the primary condition was that the main wife had not provided descendants (Laws of Lipit Ishtar 25 and Assyrian Laws A41).

The oldest legislation referring to inheritance by a concubine’s descendants is that of Lipit Ishtar 25 and 27.¹⁴ The law foresees that a concubine’s children could inherit, but only when the lawful wife did not bear offspring, perhaps because the child was considered to be legally of the barren wife. The Laws of Hammurabi (170-71) provide that a man could have children with a female slave, but they could only become rightful heirs if he adopted them,¹⁵ and they were second to the children conceived by the lawful wife when it came to choosing assets. Similarly, the Assyrian Laws provide that the children of a concubine could only inherit if the main wife had not conceived, or if the concubine was eventually taken as a lawful wife (Assyrian Law 41).

Divorce

Unfortunately, marriages did not always last, and divorce was accepted as an established custom in the Ancient Near East. In keeping with the other cultures of the region, a man in Israel could divorce his wife at will and send her from his home (see, e.g., Lev. 21:7, 14; 22:13; Num. 30:10; Deut. 22:19, 29). For the most part, Ancient Near East laws did not set down the provisions of divorce in all of its details. In most cases, the husband was required to write her “a bill of divorce” and the marriage ended.

To judge from various ancient Near Eastern documents referring to divorce, the certificate was probably a statement by the husband that the couple is no longer husband and wife (as in Hosea 2:4) and that she is free to marry whomever she wishes. The latter provision is what the Mishnah terms “the essential clause” of the divorce certificate, its purpose being to provide the wife with proof of her freedom to remarry.¹⁶

The lengthiest and most detailed verse regarding divorce in the Bible focuses primarily on remarriage, with only an indirect, presupposed commentary on divorce (Deut. 24:1-4). This paragraph assumes two reasons for divorce: if she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her; and the second husband hates her or dies. The functional application of these is difficult, however, as the concepts are theoretically ambiguous and indirect due to the interpretation of the word ervat.

In Mishnah Gittin 9:10, interpreting the Hebrew phrase ’ervat davar, Shammai takes a rigorous position on divorce which focuses only on sexual misbehavior. Many scholars disagree with this, given that crime’s own extreme and violent punishment of death (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22). On the other side of the spectrum, Hillel suggests that a husband could divorce his wife for “anything,” concentrating on the Hebrew word davar, “thing” — anything from liking another woman more to letting one’s hair down in public, and even contending that divorce could be granted for “the spoiling of a dish either by burning or careless seasoning.”¹⁷ Rabbi Akiba suggests the husband need not have any particular complaint, other than that he has tired of her. Most other contemporaneous Jewish writers agree with Hillel and Rabbi Akiba. Josephus suggests divorce is possible for any reason,¹⁸ and that he himself “divorced my wife, becoming displeased at her behavior.”¹⁹ Philo writes that a man cannot marry his first wife again, but divorce was otherwise available “for any cause whatsoever.”²⁰

It has been suggested that a woman was entitled to some kind of financial settlement in the event of an arbitrary divorce action, although this is not clearly stipulated in the biblical texts. Still, the existence of such a requirement appears likely from its prominence in other Near Eastern codes, for example the Laws of Hammurabi (138-141) and Assyrian Laws (37-38).

The biblical counterpart might explain a husband’s willingness to defame his wife despite the scandal to his household and the possible punishment to himself, because presumably he could thus rid himself of her without any penalty (Deut. 22:13-19). According to this paragraph, a man who, following his wedding, spreads the charge that he found his wife not to have been a virgin, and is proven wrong, is flogged, fined a hundred shekels of silver payable to the girl’s father, and forfeits forever the right to divorce her.

The Bible records only two types of situations in which the husband was stripped of his right of divorce: the false accusation of prenuptial intercourse just described, and the case of a man who raped a virgin who had never been engaged to another man, who must marry her and may never divorce her (Deut. 22:28-29). These instances and the requirements mentioned above were the only biblical limitations set on a man’s authority to dissolve his marriage.

Conclusion

Throughout the Ancient Near East there were laws which defined, among other things, permissible and forbidden alliances; marriage; remarriage; divorce; inheritance; and the penalties involved for violation of these laws. In some cases the laws differ depending upon the woman’s status. The relatively few laws pertaining to marriage, inheritance, and divorce in the Bible are scattered in narrative sections and distributed throughout the entire text, addressing issues such as forbidden relationships, the determination of virginity, the dissolution of marriage, remarriage, and the fate of a childless widow. This is unlike the rest of the Ancient Near Eastern laws, which were arranged sequentially and dealt systematically with matters of legal interest.