340 Paul Heger authority to the injured party, or declared that no offence has been committed. Adultery is punished by death (LH 12), but it is the husband’s prerogative to forgive both parties, or impose a lesser penalty. A socially motivated regulation allows a wife to live with another man, have children with him and be maintained by him if her husband did not provide for her sustenance during his extended absence; at his homecoming she returns to him (LH 134 and 135). The Hittite codex has a long list of non-permitted sexual intercourse between relatives and between man and animal, but there are no fixed sanctions provided for their transgression. It seems that the betrayed husband may kill his adulterous wife and the involved man on the spot, but if he brings them to court, the king decides their fate. Similarly, the king can forgive and spare the life of both. c) Use of Divine Punishment Israelite social decrees for the protection and support of the poor and vulnerable members of society are, due to their nature, directed at the individual, not to the public authority. Their implementation is not precisely specified, and therefore remains primarily dependent on the goodwill of the persons directly involved. On the other hand, since God is the lawgiver and also involved in the implementation of His decrees (as argued above), He is expected to punish those who disregard those commands that cannot be established and punished by human courts. Precepts whose quantities or details are not specified, such as the laws of gleaning in Lev 19,9.10, conclude with the utterance “I am the Lord your God”, or an abbreviated form, “I am the Lord”. From the legal point of view, if the owner leaves just a minimal edge of the field or a scant quantity of fallen grain or overlooked grapes, he has fulfilled the command. Therefore, God warns such a man that He is aware of the extent of his performance, and will punish him for circumventing the essence of the command. This same utterance appears many times in this chapter, which abounds with ethical commands. These commands all share the particular feature that their performance, or lack thereof, cannot be established by other humans, and is only known to the offender and to God. This is probably the motive for the extraordinary reiteration of the utterance “I am the Lord your God”. Certain illicit sexual relations, if undetected or witnessed by only one person, are considered to be punished by God, not humans. Slander is a further example. In Israelite law it is, reasonably enough, punished by God, not by humans (Lev 19,16). In Assyrian law