How Prophecy Critiquing Socio-Economic Injustice Transformed into Law: The Cases of the Covenant Code and Early Prophetic Texts

Abstract

Abstract The present article investigates how prophetic critiques of socio-economic injustice turned into a legal discourse in the process of the theologization of laws in the Covenant Code. The article argues that the initial formation and development of the notion of divine law depended heavily on the prophetic traditions denouncing socio-economic injustice, on both thematic and terminological levels, and that this process reflects the social and economic situation of the late eighth through the seventh centuries BCE.