The Biography of the Bible

through legislation for all. Particular aid was given to the poor and lowly who most needed it: every seventh year there was to be a general remission of debts and a freeing of all Hebrew slaves; fugitive slaves were not to be returned to their masters; after fields and vineyards had been once gleaned the residue must be left for the wayfarer; laborers must be paid their wages daily; the taking of interest among Jews was forbidden; the divorce laws were liberalized to the advantage of women. And all this humanitarian legislation was persuasively enforced by the reminder, "Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt."

During their period of favor at court the Deuteronomists were extraordinarily active. After the revision of the law, they turned to the production of revisionist history. They rewrote the Hexateuch (the Pentateuch plus the Book of Joshua) and threw the scattered narratives of the Book of Judges into connected form; drawing upon "The Court History of David" and other sources now lost—"The Book of the Acts of Solomon," "The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel," and "The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah"—they composed the Book of Samuel and the Book of the Kings (each

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