“The law of Mosiah departed most significantly from traditional law by providing that judges would be paid for their services (see Alma 11:1). This is not paralleled in other Near Eastern systems, although the fixing of wages for various other laborers was one of the main subjects of several ancient Near Eastern law codes.
“In order to set statutory wages of any kind, it was often necessary for ancient laws to recognize a system of legal exchange equivalents. Thus, the law of Mosiah gave exchange ratios for gold, silver, barley, and all kinds of grain (see Alma 11:7)” (Welch, “Law of Mosiah,” 159–60).