Do not put a stumbling block before the blind
Leviticus 19:9-18; Deuteronomy 27:11-19.
What leads up to it
Leviticus 19 is a chapter of commands about ordinary life, given to the whole assembly of Israel at Sinai. The verses around this one concern leaving gleanings for the poor, paying wages on time, honest courts and loving your neighbor. Deuteronomy 27 belongs to a ceremony Moses commanded for the day Israel crossed the Jordan: the tribes were to stand on two mountains while the Levites called out twelve curses and all the people answered Amen.
What it says
The first law pairs the deaf and the blind: you must not curse one or trip the other, and the reason given is "you shall fear your God." The second is a curse, spoken aloud by a whole nation, on anyone who lets a blind man wander off the road.
What it may tell us
Both wrongs are ones the victim cannot catch. A deaf man does not hear the curse; a blind man does not see who moved the stone or who watched him walk the wrong way. That is why the first law appeals to the fear of God rather than to any court: no witness would come forward, so only God sees. The second law is among curses on secret murder, moving a boundary stone and cheating the fatherless, which suggests that misleading a blind traveller was counted among the serious, hidden cruelties. Laws like these are not written against things nobody does.
From Brian
It doesn't look like Hammurabi's code has anything about the treatment of the blind. So is the Bible the first recorded anything that addresses the blind? And when was Hammurabi's code written compared with what Moses was doing in Leviticus and Deuteronomy?
Other voices
Open: other blind people and their families will be asked the same question, and their answers will appear here with their permission.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
Matthew Henry read the command as being about the blind person's safety: to trip a blind man is "to add affliction to the afflicted," and the law, he said, also implies a duty to clear stumbling blocks out of the way. On the words "fear your God" he gave the reason that still holds: the deaf and the blind cannot answer back or get even, so people who would never do this to someone able to retaliate are reminded that God sees and "will plead their cause."
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Leviticus 19.
Josephus, summarizing the Law for Roman readers in the first century, put it in everyday terms: it is a duty to show the road to people who do not know it, and not to treat sending them the wrong way as a joke; and "let no one revile a person blind or dumb." The joke is his detail, not Leviticus's, and it tells us what he thought the law was guarding against.
Source: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation), Book IV, chapter 8.
An honest counterweight to the idea that a law proves a practice: Henry reports that Jewish commentators thought it unthinkable that anyone would be "so barbarous as to put a stumbling-block in the way of the blind," and so read the verse as a figure for giving bad advice. On that reading the literal act was not common; it was the extreme case that made the principle clear. Both readings have been held for a long time.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Leviticus 19 and Deuteronomy 27.
The oldest law code we have, Hammurabi's from Babylon, claims in its prologue that the gods gave the king his rule "to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak," and names widows and orphans. The word "blind" does not occur anywhere in its laws. Israel's Law names the blind and the deaf by name, which is itself a difference.
Source: Wikipedia, "Code of Hammurabi," revision of 2 October 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); The Code of Hammurabi, translated by C. H. W. Johns (1903); International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Hammurabi."
The 1915 encyclopedia sums up the Law's two sides in a sentence: blindness barred a man from the priesthood, but care of the blind was specially commanded, and wrongs against them were counted as breaches of the Law. Smith's and Easton's say the same.
Source: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Blindness"; Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition) and Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), entries "Blindness" and "Blind."
Brian asked how Hammurabi dates against Moses. Hammurabi reigned about 1792 to 1750 BC. For the Exodus there are two main views: an early date around 1490 BC, which the shelf's older books give from 1 Kings 6:1, and a late date in the thirteenth century BC. Many scholars also hold that Deuteronomy was written down in the seventh century and most of Leviticus later still, against the tradition that Moses wrote both. On any of these figures Hammurabi comes first: by about three centuries on the early date, five on the late one, and more than a thousand years if Leviticus is dated late. The 1915 encyclopedia put Hammurabi three centuries earlier than today's figure, so older books on the shelf place him earlier still.
Source: Wikipedia, "Hammurabi," revision of 2 October 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), entry "Exodus"; Wikipedia, "The Exodus," revision of 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Wikipedia, "Documentary hypothesis," revision of 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Hammurabi."
Is the Bible the first text to address the blind? No. Earlier law codes deal with eyes, but as injuries to be priced or punished. Ur-Nammu, about 2100 BC and the oldest code known, sets half a mina of silver for knocking out a man's eye. Hammurabi prices an eye by the victim's rank, uses the tearing out of an eye as a punishment for an ungrateful adopted son, and sets surgeons' fees and penalties for eye operations. The Middle Assyrian laws, from the centuries around the Exodus, include blinding as a penalty. None of these names the blind as people to be protected.
Source: Wikipedia, "Code of Ur-Nammu," revision of 8 September 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); The Code of Hammurabi, translated by C. H. W. Johns (1903), sections 193, 196 to 199 and 215 to 220; Wikipedia, "Assyrian law," revision of 15 December 2025 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
One earlier text does show regard. The Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope, dated between about 1300 and 1075 BC, says in Budge's 1924 translation: "Make not a laughing-stock of the blind man," alongside "vex not the dwarf" and a warning not to frustrate the plans of a lame man. That is roughly contemporary with the late date of the Exodus, and older than any late dating of Leviticus. So the honest finding is this: Israel's Law was not the first text to protect the blind, but Leviticus 19:14 and Deuteronomy 27:18 are the only laws on the shelf that name the blind for protection rather than price their eyes. Amenemope is wisdom advice to a son; the Law is a command to a nation, with God as witness.
Source: E. A. Wallis Budge, The Teaching of Amen-em-apt, Son of Kanekht (1924), lines 478 to 480 and introduction; Wikipedia, "Instruction of Amenemope," revision of 20 May 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Leviticus 19.
Egypt also shows blind people at work. Tomb paintings from the Middle Kingdom, before 1640 BC, show blind harpists, and an eighteenth-dynasty mural of the fifteenth century BC shows another. Levy in 1872 described a painting of a blind harper attended by seven blind singers keeping time with their hands, "evidently professional musicians." These show a role blind people held, which is a different thing from a law protecting them, and the shelf has nothing on how Egypt or Babylon treated a blind beggar.
Source: Wikipedia, "Harper's Songs," revision of 1 June 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Wikipedia, "Blind musicians," revision of 28 June 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); W. H. Levy, Blindness and the Blind (1872).
The passage
Leviticus 19:9-18
9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
10 You must not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.
11 You must not steal. You must not lie or deceive one another.
12 You must not swear falsely by My name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.
13 You must not defraud your neighbor or rob him. You must not withhold until morning the wages due a hired hand.
14 You must not curse the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God. I am the LORD.
15 You must not pervert justice; you must not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the rich; you are to judge your neighbor fairly.
16 You must not go about spreading slander among your people. You must not endanger the life of your neighbor. I am the LORD.
17 You must not harbor hatred against your brother in your heart. Directly rebuke your neighbor, so that you will not incur guilt on account of him.
18 Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against any of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.
Deuteronomy 27:11-19
11 On that day Moses commanded the people:
12 “When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.
13 And these tribes shall stand on Mount Ebal to deliver the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.
14 Then the Levites shall proclaim in a loud voice to every Israelite:
15 ‘Cursed is the man who makes a carved idol or molten image—an abomination to the LORD, the work of the hands of a craftsman—and sets it up in secret.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
16 ‘Cursed is he who dishonors his father or mother.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
17 ‘Cursed is he who moves his neighbor’s boundary stone.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
18 ‘Cursed is he who lets a blind man wander in the road.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
19 ‘Cursed is he who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’