The twenty-one or so laws of Exodus are far briefer than the Babylonian laws.31 They deal with only a handful of basic issues, and there are nothing like the fine distinctions and exceptions found in the Babylonian code. It is fair to assume that most disputes were mediated locally, both during and after the time of the kings, when elders in Jerusalem and other towns decided cases ‘in the gate’, that is, in the marketplace just inside the town’s gate.
