The Pentateuch contains hundreds of laws, which today still govern the lives of Jews around the world. Nonetheless, explains Jeremiah Unterman, comparison to the legal codes of the ancient Near East—of which thousands have been uncovered by archaeologists—show various ways in which the Torah is entirely unlike these works. Above all, it is the only one where laws are embedded in narrative. The Torah is also unique in presenting law as something given by God rather than a human ruler; in telling of the law being delivered to the people and regularly read publicly, rather than being the sole domain of royal scribes and officials; and showing concern for the poor. (Interview by Dru Johnson. Audio, 34 minutes.)

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].