Thou shalt not steal

"Thou shalt not steal" is one of the Ten Commandments of the Torah (and by extension the Old Testament), which are widely understood as moral imperatives by legal scholars, Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, and Post-Reformation scholars.

"Steal" in this commandment has traditionally been interpreted by Jewish commentaries to refer to the stealing of an actual human being, that is, to kidnapping. With this understanding, a contextual translation of the commandment in Jewish tradition would more accurately be reflected as "Thou shalt not kidnap", with kidnapping being a capital offence and thus included among the Ten Commandments.

Nevertheless, and especially in non-Jewish traditions, the commandment has come to commonly and colloquially be understood or interpreted to prohibit the unauthorized taking of private property, or theft, which is a wrongful action that does not ordinarily incur the death penalty and is prohibited elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

Significant voices of academic theologians (such as German Old Testament scholar A. Alt: Das Verbot des Diebstahls im Dekalog (1953)) suggest that commandment "you shall not steal" was originally intended against stealing people—against abductions and slavery, in agreement with the Talmudic interpretation of the statement as "you shall not kidnap" (Sanhedrin 86a).

The Hebrew word translated “steal” is “gneva” The Hebrew Bible contains a number prohibitions of stealing and descriptions of negative consequences for this sin. The Genesis narrative describes Rachel as having stolen household goods from her father Laban when she fled from Laban’s household with her husband Jacob and their children. Laban hotly pursued Jacob to recover his goods, and intended to do him harm, but Rachel hid the stolen items and avoided detection. Exodus 21:16 and Deuteronomy 24:7 apply the same Hebrew word to kidnapping (stealing a man) and demands the death penalty for such a sin.

The Hebrew word translated “steal” is more commonly applied to material possessions. Restitution may be demanded, but there is no judicial penalty of death. However, a thief may be killed if caught in the act of breaking in at night under circumstances where the occupants may reasonably be in fear of greater harm. The ancient Hebrew understanding honored private property rights and demanded restitution even in cases that might have been accidental, such as livestock grazing in another man’s field or vineyard.

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