Vol. 35 No. 02 (October 2025) pp. 17-19BIBLICAL JUDGMENTS: NEW LEGAL READINGS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE, by Daphne Barak-Erez. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024. Hardback. ISBN 978-0-472-07658-1. Paperback. 978-0-472-05658-3; E-book, ISBN 978-472-22131-8. $34.95.
Reviewed by Malcolm Feeley. Claire Sanders Clements Professor Emeritus, School of Law, University of California at Berkeley.
The author, a former professor and dean at the Tel Aviv University Law School and since 2012, a Justice on the Israeli Supreme Court, has written a valuable book on law and the Hebrew Bible (i.e. the Old Testament, consisting of the Five Books of Moses, Psalms, Prophets, and the Kings). Contrary to other studies that compare Jewish law as elaborated and debated in the Talmud with contemporary legal issues (Dorff and Rosett, 2012), Justice Barak-Erez draws on the familiar disputes and controversies recorded in the Bible, and connects them to modern constitutional, governmental, legal, and regulatory issues. (And I should note, in her English language edition, her comparisons are drawn from familiar controversies in contemporary common law countries.) Her purpose is decidedly not to argue, “nothing changes.” Indeed, she points out vast differences between then and now. But she does emphasize that the controversies that are reported in the Bible have their counterparts today, and the ways issues were framed long ago also frames similar contemporary issues. Much is new, but the principles invoked are enduring—they respond to universal concerns about good government, judging, governing, evidence law and procedure, the legal process, and principles underlying substantive laws.
The book is divided into six parts, Law and Government; Judges and Judging; Human Rights and Social Justice; Criminal Law; Private Law; Family and Inheritance. Each Part has from fourteen to thirty-four vignettes or case studies that recount a biblical controversy, highlight the legal issue underlying it, and reflect on similar issues in contemporary law. Each discussion is no more than two or three pages long. The author sets the scene, presents the account, explains the controversy, identifies underlying principles that frame the matter, reports on its resolution, and then turns to reflect on similar contemporary issues.
Part I, Law and Government, covers constructing a constitution, separation of powers, limits of majority rule, leadership and opposition, donning the veil of ignorance, forms of interpretation, regulation, and criminal law. It is difficult to choose my favorite chapter, but in discussing Haman’s response to King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, she invokes the idea of the “veil of ignorance,” which is at the heart of John Rawls’ classic, Justice as Fairness (1971).
Part II contains a great many biblical accounts dealing with judges and judging, ranging from the wisdom in King Solomon in deciding which of the two women was the baby’s mother, to who and how judges should be appointed, and on to the principles of judicial administration, due process, investigation, evidence, and testimony. My favorite account—I wrote a book inspired in part by it (Feeley, 1983) — deals with how and why judges are appointed.
Part III, Human Rights and Social Justice, abounds in accounts of biblical judgments protecting human dignity, equal treatment, free speech, rights and duties, privacy, and employee’s rights. In a chapter entitled, “Debt Collection, Debt Relief, and Bankruptcy,” the author discusses the principles underlying laws dealing with the inability to repay debts. They balance the protection of a lender’s property rights against a debtor’s right to live in human dignity. The law limits the rights of the lender to enter the home of a debtor to seize certain essential property used as collateral, places limits on the imprisonment of debtors for nonpayment, and provides a means of voiding the debt altogether. She then shows how the principles underlying these laws anticipate the modern law of personal bankruptcy, which was not developed in the United States until the mid-nineteenth century.
A long Part IV, my favorite, deals with criminal law. It covers the field: why do people obey the law, natural and positive law, the law of attempts, culpability, aiding and abetting, the duty to obey, honor, the Kantian problem of lying, retribution and proportionality, shame and reintegration, pardons, mercy, victims’ rights, defenses of necessity and self-defense, the overlap between torts and crimes, and still more.
Part V deals with private law, torts and damages, good faith bargains and contracts, rights and private property, private property and community interests. And Part VI covers issues in family law. Both parts involve principles that despite the histories of the substantive law in both areas, ring true today.
I hope I have conveyed the book’s genius, and the wide range of issues with which it deals. I now want to comment on its straightforward method. It examines familiar biblical accounts that can be framed as legal disputes or issues of law and justice. It then draws out the principles that inform the biblical narrative, and connects them with principles underlying similar issues in the contemporary legal process. The objective is not to draw a simple causal connection between the old and new legal orders. Nor does it draw on the Talmud, Roman law, canon law, and common law to trace the twisting paths from there to here. The author is something of an originalist, returning to the source, the Hebrew Bible. In doing this she reveals the underlying principles that provide frameworks for considering a wide variety of legal issues, shows that these principles are invoked, and points out how they must be subject to interpretation. For instance, the principles underlying the protections and rights of slaves (radically different from the American laws of slavery) are echoed in modern labor law. While answers change dramatically over time and across place, principles informing and framing problems endure.
Who might read this book? Anyone who is interested in law and religion, and especially those who take the Bible seriously, either as a divine text, historical account, or inspired literature. One could have this book sitting on a side table like a box of chocolates, pick it up from time to time, and nibble on one or two pieces, and then return to it at another time.
The book is also tailor-made for students. If one teaches courses on religion and politics, or law and religion, this is an excellent book to assign. However, selected sections of it would be useful in a host of other courses, American political history, American political thought, constitutional law, and various courses on the judicial process or deal with the legal process, criminal law and procedure, torts, contract law, regulation and policies, public health, public law, law and the poor. Assigning some of its many chapters would have immense value. Her short vignettes are perfect for igniting discussion of basic principles of law and morality, at work in both ancient times and today.
Contemporary publishing and library services make such arrangements easier than ever. Biblical Judgments: New Legal Readings in the Hebrew Bible is available as an e-book (see above). Instructors can ask their libraries to purchase a single copy, put it on reserve and make it accessible to students in their classes, and then assign portions of it, just as they do with journal articles and chapters available from other electronic sources. Certainly every college library should have a copy.
REFERENCES:
Dorff, Elliot N., and Arthur Rosett. 2012. A Living Tree: The Roots and Growth of Jewish Law. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Feeley, Malcolm M. 1983. Court Reform on Trial: How Simple Solutions Fail. New York: Basic Books.
John Rawls. 1971. Justice as Fairness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
© Copyright 2025 by author, Malcolm Feeley.
