Exodus 22:1-4

Laws about Property

22:1 ¹ (21:37) ²  “If a man steals an ox or a sheep and kills it or sells it, he must pay back ³  five head of cattle for the ox, and four sheep for the one sheep. ⁴ 

22:2 “If a thief is caught ⁵  breaking in ⁶  and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guilt for him. ⁷  22:3 If the sun has risen on him, then there is blood guilt for him. A thief ⁸  must surely make full restitution; if he has nothing, then he will be sold for his theft. 22:4 If the stolen item should in fact be found ⁹  alive in his possession, ¹⁰  whether it be an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he must pay back double. ¹¹ 

Leviticus 6:2-5

6:2 “When a person sins and commits a trespass ¹²  against the Lord by deceiving his fellow citizen ¹³  in regard to something held in trust, or a pledge, or something stolen, or by extorting something from his fellow citizen, ¹⁴  6:3 or has found something lost and denies it and swears falsely ¹⁵  concerning any one of the things that someone might do to sin ¹⁶  – 6:4 when it happens that he sins and he is found guilty, ¹⁷  then he must return whatever he had stolen, or whatever he had extorted, or the thing that he had held in trust, ¹⁸  or the lost thing that he had found, 6:5 or anything about which he swears falsely. ¹⁹  He must restore it in full ²⁰  and add one fifth to it; he must give it to its owner when he is found guilty. ²¹ 

Numbers 5:6-8

5:6 “Tell the Israelites, ‘When ²²  a man or a woman commits any sin that people commit, ²³  thereby breaking faith ²⁴  with the Lord, and that person is found guilty, ²⁵  5:7 then he must confess ²⁶  his sin that he has committed and must make full reparation, ²⁷  add one fifth to it, and give it to whomever he wronged. ²⁸  5:8 But if the individual has no close relative ²⁹  to whom reparation can be made for the wrong, the reparation for the wrong must be paid to the Lord ³⁰  for the priest, in addition to the ram of atonement by which atonement is made for him.

Luke 19:8

19:8 But Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, half of my possessions I now give ³¹  to the poor, and if ³²  I have cheated anyone of anything, I am paying back four times as much!”

¹ sn The next section of laws concerns property rights. These laws protected property from thieves and oppressors, but also set limits to retribution. The message could be: God’s laws demand that the guilty make restitution for their crimes against property and that the innocent be exonerated.

² sn Beginning with 22:1, the verse numbers through 22:31 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 22:1 ET = 21:37 HT, 22:2 ET = 22:1 HT, etc., through 22:31 ET = 22:30 HT. Thus in the English Bible ch. 22 has 31 verses, while in the Hebrew Bible it has 30 verses, with the one extra verse attached to ch. 21 in the Hebrew Bible.

³ tn The imperfect tense here has the nuance of obligatory imperfect – he must pay back.

⁴ tn בָּקַר (baqar) and צֹאן (tso’n) are the categories to which the ox and the sheep belonged, so that the criminal had some latitude in paying back animals.

⁵ tn Heb “found” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV).

⁶ tn The word בַּמַּחְתֶּרֶת (bammakhteret) means “digging through” the walls of a house (usually made of mud bricks). The verb is used only a few times and has the meaning of dig in (as into houses) or row hard (as in Jonah 1:13).

⁷ tn The text has “there is not to him bloods.” When the word “blood” is put in the plural, it refers to bloodshed, or the price of blood that is shed, i.e., blood guiltiness.

⁸ tn The words “a thief” have been added for clarification. S. R. Driver (Exodus, 224) thinks that these lines are out of order, since some of them deal with killing the thief and then others with the thief making restitution, but rearranging the clauses is not a necessary way to bring clarity to the paragraph. The idea here would be that any thief caught alive would pay restitution.

⁹ tn The construction uses a Niphal infinitive absolute and a Niphal imperfect: if it should indeed be found. Gesenius says that in such conditional clauses the infinitive absolute has less emphasis, but instead emphasizes the condition on which some consequence depends (see GKC 342-43 §113.o).

¹⁰ tn Heb “in his hand.”

¹¹ sn He must pay back one for what he took, and then one for the penalty – his loss as he was inflicting a loss on someone else.

¹² tn Heb “trespasses a trespass” (verb and direct object from the same Hebrew root מַעַל, ma’al). See the note on 5:15.

¹³ tn Or “neighbor” (ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); NASB “companion”; TEV “a fellow-Israelite.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “has extorted his neighbor”; ASV “oppressed”; NRSV “defrauded.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “and swears on falsehood”; cf. CEV “deny something while under oath.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “on one from all which the man shall do to sin in them.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “and it shall happen, when he sins and becomes guilty,” which is both resumptive of the previous (vv. 2-3) and the conclusion to the protasis (cf. “then” introducing the next clause as the apodosis). In this case, “becomes guilty” (cf. NASB, NIV) probably refers to his legal status as one who has been convicted of a crime in court; thus the translation “he is found guilty.” See R. E. Averbeck, NIDOTTE 1:559-61.

¹⁸ tn Heb “that had been held in trust with him.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “or from all which he swears on it to falsehood.”

²⁰ tn Heb “in its head.” This refers “the full amount” in terms of the “principal,” the original item or amount obtained illegally (J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:338; J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 84).

²¹ tn Heb “to whom it is to him he shall give it in the day of his being guilty.” The present translation is based on the view that he has been found guilty through the legal process (see the note on v. 4 above; cf., e.g., TEV and B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 33-34). Others translate the latter part as “in the day he offers his guilt [reparation] offering” (e.g., NIV and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 73, 84), or “in the day he realizes his guilt” (e.g., NRSV and J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:319, 338).

²² sn This type of law is known as casuistic. The law is introduced with “when/if” and then the procedure to be adopted follows it. The type of law was common in the Law Code of Hammurabi.

²³ tn The verse simply says “any sin of a man,” but the genitive could mean that it is any sin that a man would commit (subjective genitive), or one committed against a man (objective genitive). Because of the similarity with Lev 5:22, the subjective is better. The sin is essentially “missing the mark” which is the standard of the Law of the Lord. The sin is not in this case accidental or inadvertent. It means here simply failing to live up to the standard of the Lord. Since both men and women are mentioned in the preceding clause, the translation uses “people” here.

²⁴ tn The verb is מַעַל (ma’al), which means to “defraud, violate, trespass against,” or “to deal treacherously, do an act of treachery.” In doing any sin that people do, the guilty have been unfaithful to the Lord, and therefore must bring him a sacrifice.

²⁵ tn The word used here for this violation is אָשָׁם (’asham). It can be translated “guilt, to be guilty”; it can also be used for the reparation offering. The basic assumption here is that the individual is in a state of sin – is guilty. In that state he or she feels remorse for the sin and seeks forgiveness through repentance. See further P. P. Saydon, “Sin Offering and Trespass Offering,” CBQ 8 (1946): 393-98; H. C. Thompson, “The Significance of the Term ’Asham in the Old Testament,” TGUOS 14 (1953): 20-26.

²⁶ tn The verb is the Hitpael perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive from the verb יָדָה (yadah), which in this stem means “acknowledge, confess sin,” but in the Hiphil (primarily) it means “praise, give thanks.” In both cases one is acknowledging something, either the sin, or the person and work of the Lord. Here the verb comes in the apodosis: “when…then he must confess.”

²⁷ tn The verb is the Hiphil perfect of שׁוּב (shuv, “return”). Here it has the sense of “repay” with the word “reparation” (traditionally rendered “guilt offering,” but now is understood to refer to what was defrauded). The Levitical rulings called for the guilty to restore what was taken, if it could be made right, and pay a fifth more as a surcharge.

²⁸ tn This is now the third use of אָשָׁם (’asham); the first referred to “guilt,” the second to “reparation,” and now “wronged.” The idea of “guilt” lies behind the second two uses as well as the first. In the second “he must repay his guilt” (meaning what he is guilty of); and here it can also mean “the one against whom he is guilty of sinning.”

²⁹ sn For more information on the word, see A. R. Johnson, “The Primary Meaning of גאל,” VTSup 1 (1953): 67-77.

³⁰ tc The editors of BHS prefer to follow the Greek, Syriac, and Latin and not read “for the Lord” here, but read a form of the verb “to be” instead. But the text makes more sense as it stands: The payment is to be made to the Lord for the benefit of the priests.

³¹ sn Zacchaeus was a penitent man who resolved on the spot to act differently in the face of Jesus’ acceptance of him. In resolving to give half his possessions to the poor, Zacchaeus was not defending himself against the crowd’s charges and claiming to be righteous. Rather as a result of this meeting with Jesus, he was a changed individual. So Jesus could speak of salvation coming that day (v. 9) and of the lost being saved (v. 10).

³² tn This is a first class condition in the Greek text. It virtually confesses fraud.