The Babylonians also possessed an extensive collection of the laws and edicts they had inherited from the famed king Hammurabi, known as the Code of Hammurabi. The law offered protection to all classes of Babylonian society. It sought to protect the weak and the poor, including women, children, and slaves, against injustice at the hands of the rich and powerful.
It is to the credit of the Jewish people that most of them remained loyal to the Torah in the presence of such a dominant culture. It would not be this way a few centuries later, when Hellenistic culture would sweep through the Holy Land, taking with it much of our nation’s youth and upper classes. The difference? Babylonia, for all its military, economic, and scientific might, lacked the intellectual and spiritual grandeur possessed by the later Greek culture. Thus, they failed to appeal in the same way to the Jewish people.
The Jews saw themselves as bearers of true light in a world of darkness and were not enticed by coarser nature of Babylonian life. Only later, with the arrival of the Greeks, with their balance of physicality and aesthetics on the one side and intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual pursuits on the other, would the Jews face a formidable challenge for the soul of their nation.
