If the stolen property is found in his hand alive, whether it is ox, donkey, or sheep, he shall pay double.
To judge cases of damage caused by trespass of livestock into another's field
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כִּי יַבְעֶר־אִישׁ שָׂדֶה אוֹ־כֶרֶם וְשִׁלַּח אֶת־בְּעִירֹה וּבִעֵר בִּשְׂדֵה אַחֵר מֵיטַב שָׂדֵהוּ וּמֵיטַב כַּרְמוֹ יְשַׁלֵּם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לדון בדיני הבור. והוא אמרו יתברך וכי יפתח איש בור. וכבר התבארו דקדוקי דין מצוה זו בפרק שלישי וחמישי מקמא. (ואלה המשפטים, הלכות נזקי ממון פי"ב):
That is that He commanded us to administer the laws of the pit [that causes damage]. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "And when a man opens a pit" (Exodus 21:33). And the analyses of the law of this commandment have already been explained in the third and fifth [chapters] of [Bava] Kamma. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, Damages to Property 12.)
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 Binding, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4 (property-offense section; precise locus uncertain) The catalog describes this reception as: expanded
Josephus
- Ant. 4.275-291 (tort/damage-compensation section; precise locus uncertain) affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 21:78-79 The catalog describes this reception as: narrative parallel (thematic; David/Solomon adjudicating sheep that strayed into a field, not literary dependence)
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 shepherd grazing flock on another's field without consent; compensation in grain at harvest Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§57-58 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws liability for straying animals causing damage to another's field/vineyard, with adjacent provisions on fire damage to fields/vineyards Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§105-107 Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites (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.