The Eight Commandment No Stealing:
PEOPLE SHOULD PRACTICE GIVING RATHER THAN TAKING, IT BLESSES A SOCIETY
STEALING LEADS TO POVERTY
- If citizens of a particular town or neighborhood practice a lot of stealing they will be poorer. All God’s Commandments are for our benefit. A town that steals will soon find all the goods and services are too costly. Merchants will add in the cost of security and the cost of shoplifting and a service fee. Everyone pays when people shoplift or defraud insurance companies in higher cost of goods.
- A town that is known to be a high crime area will soon find fewer and fewer businesses in the area. Merchants will leave. Good employment opportunities will leave with them. High crime will make an area more poverty ridden than before. Even those few merchants still available will have higher prices making living there more costly. Some stealing and crime ridden neighborhoods have only overpriced decadent merchants like alcohol and cigarette stores available to the poor inhabitants. Breaking God’s Laws are costly. All should work so they have something to give rather than stealing or otherwise exploiting others. True Christians should not place too much importance on material possessions to point of stealing them, Matt 6:25-33. Our primary goal should be spiritual gains.
WHY ARE MATERIAL THINGS IMPORTANT
When we value other people we value their right to ownership of property. The things we own become part of US AND THE LOSS CAUSES pain. As we mature and grow up we must learn to respect another person’s life, relationships and we must also respect his personal property. Children must be taught to respect others and their possessions. God’s Laws leave no room for excuses to steal. Exodus 22:3 “If the theft be found in his possession …he shall pay double”. Steal a hundred dollars and you shall pay two hundred. The Bible compensates the victim and makes the perpetrator feel the pain he wanted to give others. If a person feels guilty for the theft and admits it, he only has to make restitution and pay a 20% fine. If he turns himself in and repents he gets a lighter sentence thereby. He has saved the community a legal battle and is remorseful. See Numbers 5:5-7.
If a thief steals a cow or some large animal he shall pay five times the value of the farm animal. Why? Livestock were part of the survival of the people. They got tougher treatment like the horse thieves in the old west. Further it takes more planning and evil premeditation to steal such an animal. See Exodus 21:37.
IN GODS COUNTRY CRIME DOES NOT PAY BUT THE CRIMINAL DOES
COMPENSATION IS NOT BASED ON THE ABILITY TO PAY
Not even the impoverished condition of the thief provided an excuse for stealing or not compensating the victim. Israel had a work to eat program for the poor. All fields’ corners were left unharvested for the needed to get food by doing that part of the harvesting themselves. If a thief could not pay for what he stole, he was sold into slavery to repay the victims. The thief could only be sold for the repayment of the property and not for the fine. His relatives could pay for the theft and redeem his freedom. Regardless of the magnitude of the theft he could not be required to work longer than six years to repay the victim. Maybe he learned responsibility during his term of forced labor and maybe it contributed toward his spiritual rejuvenation. Unlike our prisons which generally make criminals even more dangerous. They had no prisons in Israel and that is a wonderful thing. Violent criminals were executed.
STEALING A PERSON’S LIFE OR KIDNAPPING IS A VIOLATION OF GOD COMMANDS AS WELL
Exodus says one should not steal a man. “He who kidnaps a man –whether he has sold him or is still holding him –shall be put to death” see Exodus 21:16. The slavery of the New World pioneered by Portugal and Spain and fed by Islamic warfare on infidels was illegal under Biblical law and was not the kind of servitude given to thieves in Israel. All those in the country both Israelites and strangers lived under the same laws. See Lev 24:22 and 19:15, 34. Also see Num 9:14. Legal discrimination was forbidden, and it added to the unity of the nation. Israel had no balkanization of various nationalities.
