Story: Laws About Restitution
Passage: Exodus 21:33-22:15
Characters: God,
Israel
Summary: God gave
Moses a set of laws about restitution.
These will be outlined in the notes below.
Notes: The rules
continue with rules designed towards how to pay someone back for loss of
property. First, if an animal falls into
a pit, the owner of the pit pays for the animal and the dead animal is his
responsibility. If someone’s ox kills
another ox, the two parties sell the live ox and split both the profits, and
the dead ox. If the live ox was known to
be prone to violence and it’s owner did not keep it away from other animals, it’s
owner replaces the dead animal. If an ox
or a sheep is stolen and sold or killed, the thief owes the owner of the stolen
animal four sheep or five oxen depending on what was stolen. If a thief is caught breaking in and is
killed, there is no bloodguilt on the killer.
The passage then says if the sun has risen on the thief, then there is
bloodguilt. All I can figure from this
and from reading other translations is that if the thief is caught at night, he
can be killed. But if he is caught in
the daytime, there is no reason to kill him.
If nothing else, this probably discouraged nighttime theft and
discouraged theft in general. A thief
was to pay for what he stole and if he could not, he was to be sold. He was to pay double what was stolen. If a man lets his animals feed in another man’s
field, he is to pay back what was eaten from the best of his fields. If a fire inadvertently is started which
burns grain, the man who started the fire pays for everything burned. If money or goods are given to a neighbor to
keep safe and they are stolen and the thief is found, he is to pay back
double. If the thief is not caught, the
owner comes before God to find out if it was stolen because of his
negligence. If there is a breach of
trust resulting in a dispute of ownership of an item, the case was to be
brought before God and the person found to be wrong was to pay double to his neighbor. This would discourage any dishonesty because
if you were the one lying, you ended up losing more than you would gain by
lying. If an animal dies in a neighbor’s
care, God allowed an oath to be made in His name that the neighbor was
innocent. The owner was to accept that
oath. If the animal is stolen, the neighbor
was to pay for the stolen animal. If it
is killed by beasts, he has to make no restitution. If a borrowed animal dies in the neighbor’s
presence, there is to be no restitution.
I guess this is because it would be known that he was not responsible
and tried to save the animal. If the
animal was hired, its death is covered by the fee to hire the animal. This is the first recorded example of
insurance! These laws can be summed up
with one sentence. If you are
responsible for someone else’s loss of property, you are responsible to replace
either the property, or the value of the property. The only other law sandwiched in here which
is unusual is the law allowing thieves to be killed at night. I find it interesting that dishonesty and
thievery results in a greater payment than the value of what was lost. This really discourages stealing and
dishonesty by making it riskier to steal or lie.
Questions: Why were
thieves not to be killed in the daytime?
Were there easy ways to utilize loopholes in this system? Did the culture have enough accountability
that these loopholes would not be taken advantage of?
Lessons: We see the
importance of responsibility and fairness.
Even if the loss of property was an accident, it is to be repaid in
full. If you were responsible in any
way, you did not have to have had any ill intent to get the punishment. In the same way, we may not have
intentionally intended to rebel against God, but we did, and thus we deserve
the full punishment for sinners. Thanks
to His grace, He bore that punishment for us!
