1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

2 If a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, and lie unto his neighbour in that which was delivered him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken away by violence, or hath deceived his neighbour;

3 Or have found that which was lost, and lieth concerning it, and sweareth falsely; in any of all these that a man doeth, sinning therein:

4 Then it shall be, because he hath sinned, and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing which he found,

5 Or all that about which he hath sworn falsely; he shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of his trespass offering.

6 And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, a ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass offering, unto the priest:

7 And the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord: and it shall be forgiven him for any thing of all that he hath done in trespassing therein.

A few days ago we started examining what I have called the “higher trespass offering,” and the offenses described for it seemed ambiguous. I mentioned in that initial post that the descriptions become much clearer in this chapter. Here we see that if an Israelite cheated something away from his neighbor, in any way, that would make him guilty of having “deceitfully gotten,” and he would remain guilty until this higher trespass offering was made.

There are many ways in which a man might be guilty of this, and the verses go at some length to describe them, but what is most important is that principle of “deceitfully gotten.” In whatever way you managed to acquire your neighbor’s possession, if it was “deceitfully gotten,” you are in the wrong.

It is interesting to note that a cost was applied to the sin itself in how the perpetrator must “add the fifth part” of the item’s value to its restoration. This is different from the laws of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” where the restitution was meant to be exactly equal to the offense. The key difference between those laws and these is that “an eye for an eye” applied to the destruction and replacement of another person’s property. In today’s case, no permanent destruction took place, so the original item could be returned without replacement. If that was the end of it, then there would be no consideration for the inconvenience to the victim or the ill-gotten benefit of the perpetrator. By telling the perpetrator to “add the fifth part,” you essentially turned the theft into a pricey loan, and the victim gets a rich return.

I have included these first seven verses with my analysis of Chapter 5 because they clearly belong with the second half of that chapter. Verse 8 begins an entirely new subject, and so ought to be considered the true beginning of the next chapter. Thus, I will take my usual intra-chapter interlude here and resume my scriptural analysis next week.