Exodus 22:2-4

22:2 “If a thief is caught ¹  breaking in ²  and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guilt for him. ³  22:3 If the sun has risen on him, then there is blood guilt for him. A thief ⁴  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 ⁵  alive in his possession, ⁶  whether it be an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he must pay back double. ⁷ 

[22:2]  ¹ tn Heb “found” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV).

[22:2]  ² 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).

[22:2]  ³ 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.

[22:3]  ⁴ 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.

[22:4]  ⁷ 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).

[22:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “in his hand.”

[22:4]  ⁹ 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.