God's Economics vs. Man's Folly Text: Exodus 22:1
Introduction: Two Kinds of Justice
We live in an age that has forgotten what justice is for. Our modern, secular systems of justice are fundamentally about retribution, and that retribution is carried out by the impersonal, abstract, and ever-growing State. When a crime is committed, say a theft, the state declares that a law has been broken, a slight has been made against its own majesty. The victim is reduced to a witness for the prosecution, a piece of evidence. The criminal, if caught and convicted, is then warehoused at taxpayer expense in a concrete box, where he is to "pay his debt to society." But society is an abstraction, and the debt is never actually paid to the one who was wronged. The victim gets nothing back. He is simply out his property, plus the portion of his taxes that go to keeping the thief in a cage where he can learn to be a better criminal. This is what the world calls justice. It is punitive, it is impersonal, it is statist, and it is profoundly foolish.
The Bible, as is its custom, crashes into this mess with a clear-headed, practical, and righteous alternative. Biblical justice, particularly in matters of property, is not primarily punitive; it is restorative. It is not about placating an offended abstraction called "society." It is about making the victim whole. God is intensely interested in property rights. Why? Because property is the fruit of dominion. When God placed Adam in the Garden, He commanded him to work it and keep it, to exercise dominion over the creation. The eighth commandment, "You shall not steal," is therefore not some arbitrary rule. It is a defense of the dominion mandate. To steal from a man is to steal the fruit of his labor, the extension of his life and energy, the very stuff of his calling.
In the book of Exodus, after God gives the Ten Words from the top of the mountain, He does not then float off into abstract theological principles. He immediately descends into the nitty-gritty of life and provides what we call case law. These are not dusty, irrelevant regulations for a bygone era. They are inspired applications of God's unchanging moral law. They are divine wisdom applied to real-world situations. And in these case laws, we find the foundation of a sane and prosperous society. What we have in our text today is not just a law about stolen livestock; it is a lesson in economics, justice, and the character of God Himself. It shows us a world where justice restores, where sin has a real cost, and where responsibility is paramount. It is a direct challenge to the bankrupt philosophies of our modern world, and it is high time we listened.
The Text
"If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he shall pay five oxen for the ox and four sheep for the sheep."
(Exodus 22:1 LSB)
The Principle of Restitution
The first and most glaring principle in this verse is that of restitution. Notice what is absent. There is no mention of fines paid to the priests, no talk of community service, and certainly no command to build a prison. The entire focus is on the man who was wronged. The thief has a debt, not to the state, but to the victim. This is central. Sin creates a debt, and that debt must be paid back to the one who was defrauded.
"If a man steals an ox or a sheep..." (Exodus 22:1a)
Theft is the unjust taking of another's lawful property. The eighth commandment establishes the principle of private property. You cannot steal something if no one owns it. God, the ultimate owner of all things, delegates stewardship and ownership to men. When a man labors, the fruit of that labor is his. For another to take it without consent is to violate God's created order. It is an attack on the man, his family, and his calling. It is to declare that you have a greater right to the fruit of his work than he does, which is the foundational lie of all envy and socialism.
The law here deals with an ox and a sheep. This is not because God is only concerned with agrarian societies. These are representative examples. They were the primary forms of productive capital in that economy. An ox was a tractor, a source of power for plowing and producing wealth. A sheep was a source of food, milk, and wool, a walking investment. To steal these was to steal a man's livelihood, his ability to provide for his household and exercise dominion.
Aggravated Theft and Proportional Justice
The law then makes a crucial distinction. It is not just about the act of stealing, but what the thief does afterward. This reveals the heart and demonstrates a greater degree of defiance against God's law.
"...and slaughters it or sells it..." (Exodus 22:1b)
This is what we might call aggravated theft. The thief has not just taken the animal in a moment of weakness or desperation, where he might still be pricked by his conscience and return it. He has gone further. By slaughtering or selling the animal, he has "liquidated the asset." He has deliberately and permanently deprived the owner of his property and integrated his sin into the marketplace. He has treated the stolen property as his own, compounding the crime. This shows a hardened heart, a calculated contempt for his neighbor's rights and God's law.
Because the crime is more severe, the penalty is greater. This is the principle of proportional justice. God's law is not a blunt instrument; it is a finely tuned scale. It distinguishes between levels of culpability.
"...he shall pay five oxen for the ox and four sheep for the sheep." (Exodus 22:1c)
This is not a fine; it is restitution with punitive damages attached. The victim is not just made whole; he is made more than whole. Why? First, this serves as a powerful deterrent. Theft becomes a very poor business model when the risk of getting caught means a 400% or 500% loss. Second, it compensates the victim not just for the thing stolen, but for the disruption, the loss of productivity, the time, and the trouble caused by the theft. The man who lost his ox didn't just lose the value of the ox; he lost the plowing he would have done, the crop he would have planted. The multiplied restitution accounts for this.
But why five for an ox and four for a sheep? The rabbis have debated this for centuries, but the most straightforward explanation is that an ox was more valuable as a tool of production. Losing an ox was a greater economic blow than losing a sheep. It could bring a family's entire enterprise to a halt. The higher penalty reflects the greater damage done. This is divine wisdom. A just society recognizes that not all thefts are equal in their consequences.
Contrast this with what happens if the thief is caught with the animal alive. Verse 4 of this same chapter says that if the stolen animal is found alive in his possession, he shall restore double. The principle is the same, restitution, but the penalty is less severe because the crime was less aggravated. He was caught before he could dispose of the property. The possibility of repentance was, in a sense, still there. But once it is sold or slaughtered, the line has been crossed into a more defiant sin, and the payment goes up accordingly.
The Ultimate Theft, The Ultimate Restitution
As with all of God's law, this case law is not simply a piece of civic legislation. It is a tutor that points us to Christ. It reveals a standard of perfect justice that we have all failed to meet, and it points to the only one who could ever satisfy that justice.
The first and greatest theft was not of an ox or a sheep. It was committed in the Garden of Eden. Adam, our representative head, stole what was not his. He took the forbidden fruit, seeking to seize for himself the knowledge of good and evil, to become as God. But in doing so, he stole something far more valuable: he stole the glory due to God alone. All our subsequent sins are echoes of this grand larceny. Every time we disobey, we are robbing God of the honor, worship, and obedience that is rightfully His. We have taken His good gifts, His air, His food, His life, and we have sold them into the service of our own rebellion. We have slaughtered His glory on the altar of our pride.
And what is the just penalty for such a crime? What restitution could possibly be made for robbing the infinite God of His glory? We have nothing to offer. We are bankrupt thieves. If a man could not pay his debt under the Mosaic law, he was to be sold into servitude to work it off. This is our natural state: slaves to sin, utterly unable to pay the debt we owe to the holiness of God.
But this is where the gospel shines with blinding glory. God, the victim of our cosmic theft, did not demand payment from us, knowing we could never provide it. Instead, He provided the payment Himself. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, came to make full restitution. He lived the life of perfect obedience that we failed to live, rendering to God the glory we had stolen. And then, on the cross, He paid the multiplied penalty for our cosmic treason. He who knew no sin became sin for us.
Think of it this way. Our sin was an aggravated theft. We took what was God's and defiantly sold it into the service of sin and death. The penalty required was not just double, or fourfold, or fivefold. The penalty for robbing an infinite God is an infinite debt. And on the cross, Jesus paid that infinite debt. He made restitution. He restored what He did not steal away (Psalm 69:4). He satisfied the perfect justice of God on our behalf.
Therefore, when God calls us to live by His law, it is not so that we might earn our salvation. That has been accomplished fully and finally by Christ. Rather, we are called to live this way because this is what righteousness looks like. This is how a redeemed people, a people whose ultimate debt has been cancelled, are to conduct their affairs. We pursue restorative justice in our communities because our God is a God who restores. We insist that sin has consequences and that victims must be made whole because we worship a Savior who paid the ultimate consequence to make us whole. God's law on restitution is a signpost in the Old Testament pointing to the reality of the cross. It is a glorious picture of the gospel, where the debt is real, the payment is severe, and the grace that provides it is utterly astonishing.