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To judge cases of theft and impose the prescribed penalties
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כִּי יִגְנֹב־אִישׁ שׁוֹר אוֹ־שֶׂה וּטְבָחוֹ אוֹ מְכָרוֹ חֲמִשָּׁה בָקָר יְשַׁלֵּם תַּחַת הַשּׁוֹר וְאַרְבַּע־צֹאן תַּחַת הַשֶּׂה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להורות בדין הגנב שנקנוס אותו בדין תשלומי כפל או תשלומי ארבעה וחמשה או נהרגהו אם בא במחתרת או נמכרהו, ובכלל כל משפטי הגנב כמו שהתבאר בכתוב. וכבר התבארו דקדוקי דין זה כלם בפרק ז' מקמא ובח' מסנהדרין ובג' ממציעא ובמקומות מעטים מכתובות וקדושין ושבועות. (ואלה המשפטים, הלכות גנבה ואבדה פ"ג):
That is that He commanded us to administer the laws of the thief - that we fine him with the law of double-payment or four or five times, we kill him if he comes surreptitiously, we sell him and all of the regulations of the thief more generally, as explained in Scripture. And all of the analyses of this law have already been explained in Chapter 7 of [Bava] Kamma, 8 of Sanhedrin, 3 of [Bava] Metzia and in a few places in Ketubot, Kiddushin and Shevuot. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, Theft 3.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a case law — "if X, then Y"
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Kept as an ethical principle
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding, with modification
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Nezikin 12 (on Exod 21:37) expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.2-12 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.271-272 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Luke 19:8 affirmed it Zacchaeus offers fourfold restitution; most plausibly reflects the Roman quadruplum for theft and/or the general fourfold sheep-theft convention, with a possible echo of the Exodus penalty
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi multiple restitution for theft, with status-based differential (30x temple/palace, 10x commoner; death for the insolvent offender) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §8 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna apprehension of a trespasser in a cultivated field or on a threshing-floor, with penalties differentiated by day vs. night — a procedural trespass-apprehension parallel only, not a livestock-theft multiple-restitution rule Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§12-13 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws graded multiple restitution for livestock theft varying by animal Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§57-69 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.