Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 22:1, 4

1 If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.

4 If the theft be certainly found in his hand alive, whether it be ox, or ass, or sheep; he shall restore double.

In the previous chapter we heard all the laws related to killing. These laws covered both the killing of people and of livestock, and both the intentional and the unintentional variances of each. Today’s verses now shift from killing to stealing, and there are some interesting moral lessons to be gleaned here.

The first that stands out to me is that the penalty for the deliberate theft of an animal is substantially greater than the penalty we already read for the accidental killing of an animal. It is a key moral principle that the penalty is not based only on what the outcome was (the loss of the animal), but what the underlying motivation behind that outcome were. The penalty is according to the man’s guilt more than the deprivation that was suffered.

Also, note how in the second verse it says that a thief found with the animal still alive is required to return the creature, and then one also of his own. We already heard the principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and this is consistent with that. Since this man had sought to reduce his neighbor’s livestock by one, now he shall experience what it is to have one of his herd reduced by one instead.

And finally, note how the penalty is even worse if the thief has already sold the creature away, or killed it, before he is caught. Now, instead of returning the creature and being out one of his own, he must now give up four or five of his animals. I assume the significantly more severe punishment is because the thief stole with the intention to destroy. He didn’t just take from the rightful owner, he took it out to where it could not ever be given back to the owner. That is a darker sin than to have taken, but to have left the door open for remorse and restoration.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:15

15 Thou shalt not steal.

The eighth commandment tells us that we must not take the things that belong to another. Perhaps more than any other, this commandment shows us the transcendental nature of morality. It is something that goes beyond our physical nature, into a realm that can only be called spiritual.

For certainly the idea that we “own” anything is only an illusion, at least from a natural point of view. What makes something belong to us? We might say that we own something and have that claim recognized by society, but nature does not respect that claim at all. Nature isn’t convinced that an item belongs to me just because my toil and labor brought it into being, or because some made-up standard says I “earned” it, or because I made some marks on it that match the initials of my name, or because I found it and touched it first. None of those things fundamentally bind that item to me in the eyes of nature. Nature does not see the item as an unextractable part of my person, nor will it make the item perish when I do, nor will it prevent the item from being given to another, nor will it stop the item from being lost or destroyed at any moment.

And yet, even a toddler knows that something is his. Even a toddler knows when something is stolen from him. We may not be able to explain ownership and theft materialistically, but we know they are real. God, evidently, knows they are real also, and He forbids it directly.