Hammurabi and the Rise of Babylon

The event

When Hammurabi inherited the throne of Babylon around 1792 BC, it was simply one mid-sized city-state among several competing powers in Mesopotamia, overshadowed by rivals like Larsa, Mari, and Eshnunna. Over a reign of more than forty years, Hammurabi patiently built alliances, then broke them, conquering his neighbors one by one until Babylon controlled nearly all of Mesopotamia — the first time the city that would one day give its name to the whole region, and later humble the kingdom of Judah, ever ruled as an empire.

Hammurabi's Babylon belongs to roughly the same centuries as Abraham's descendants living in Canaan and Egypt, and Old Babylonian legal and social customs recovered from this era — contracts, marriage and adoption practices, inheritance rules — regularly illuminate patriarchal-era customs described in Genesis, even though the Bible never mentions Hammurabi by name.

Babylon's rise under Hammurabi was only the first of several times this city would surge to power in the biblical story. Roughly eleven centuries later, a much later Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Jerusalem itself and carry Judah into exile — a sobering full-circle reminder that the city God's people would eventually call "Babylon the great" (Revelation 18:2) had ancient roots stretching back to this Bronze Age king.

Dating

Hammurabi's reign is a key anchor point for all Old Babylonian chronology; scholars debate his exact dates by several decades depending on which of the 'high,' 'middle,' or 'low' Mesopotamian chronologies is used. The dates here follow the commonly used middle chronology.

Scripture references

• Revelation 18:2