page_title: Mishpatim
section_title: Exodus chapter 21
hierarchical_section_title: Mishpatim / In modern interpretation / Exodus chapter 21
caption_attribution_description: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., circa 1930. Edited photograph from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
context_page_description: Mishpatim is the eighteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the sixth in the Book of Exodus. The parashah sets out a series of laws, which some scholars call the Covenant Code. It reports the people's acceptance of the covenant with God. The parashah constitutes Exodus 21:1–24:18. The parashah is made up of 5,313 Hebrew letters, 1,462 Hebrew words, 118 verses, and 185 lines in a Torah scroll.
  Jews read it the eighteenth Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in February or, rarely, in late January. As the parashah sets out some of the laws of Passover, Jews also read part of the parashah, Exodus 22:24–23:19, as the initial Torah reading for the second intermediate day of Passover. Jews also read the first part of parashah Ki Tisa, Exodus 30:11–16, regarding the half-shekel head tax, as the maftir Torah reading on the special Sabbath Shabbat Shekalim, which often falls on the same Sabbath as Parashat Mishpatim.
context_section_description: Professor Jacob Milgrom, formerly of the University of California, Berkeley, identified Exodus 21–23 as the Torah's oldest law code.
  Professor David P. Wright of Brandeis University argued that the Covenant Code of Exodus 20:23–23:19 was directly, primarily, and throughout dependent upon the Laws of Hammurabi.
  Explaining the origins of the law that one can see in the Cities of Refuge, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote that early forms of legal procedure were grounded in vengeance. Roman law and German law started from the blood feud, which led to the composition, at first optional, then compulsory, by which the feud was bought off. Holmes reported that in Anglo-Saxon practice, the feud was pretty well broken up by the time of William the Conqueror. The killings and house-burnings of an earlier day became the appeals of mayhem and arson, and then the legal actions now familiar to lawyers.
  Writing for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of Conservative Judaism, Rabbis Elliot N. Dorff and Aaron L. Mackler relied on Exodus 21:19–20, among other verses, to find a duty to help see that our society provides health care to those who need it.  Dorff and Mackler noted that the Rabbis found the authorization and requirement to heal in several verses, including Exodus 21:19–20, according to which an assailant must insure that his victim is "thoroughly healed," and Deuteronomy 22:2, "And you shall restore the lost property to him." Dorff and Mackler reported that the Talmud read Exodus 21:19–20 as giving permission physicians to cure.
  Exodus 21:32 reports a penalty of 30 shekels of silver. This table translates units of weight used in the Bible into their modern equivalents:
caption: Holmes
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