Mishpatim                                                Dovid and the RAFSOK family     

adopted from the commentaries of Nehama Lebovitz

This parsha begins immediately with the Jewish code of law to teach us that the commandments just received, as well as the whole torah, can only be kept when society as a whole abides by the rules of justice.

The first crime discussed is theft. Theft is an offense in all societies. Punishment for theft at the time of Moshe is known from the Baylonian and Hittite Codex. The punishment then, in some cultures now,  (a) only sought revenge  from the criminal and (b) the severity scaled with the importance of the victim.

The Jewish code of Law on the other hand, insists that justice be applied equally regardless of the station of either the victim or the offender.  Furthermore, except for capital crimes, the punishment is aimed to teach and reform the offender.  This is illustrated in the following;

“ If a man steals an ox or sheep and slaughters or sells it, Five oxen shall he pay for the ox and four sheep for the sheep”;

Two questions are asked by the sages  (a) Why is the penalty higher than that when the stolen object is found with the thief?   (Note: if the thief is caught with the stolen object, the payment is only twice the value) and (b) Why does the penalty for the ox exceed that for the sheep?

The answers are given both in terms of the victim and the thief. In the first case, when an object is stolen, and found with the thief, he pays double the value. First the value is easily determined, since the object is present, second, the owner was to lose the object and buy a replacement. Hence the owner would have lost twice the investment in the object. The thief is now made to feel the damage that he would have inflicted on the victim (Akedat Itzhak-15^th century commentary). In the case that the object is missing, then there is no way to assess its value, and the thief will naturally argue that the object or animal was of little value (Abravanel). Furthermore, the fact that the thief went through the trouble of disposing the object shows that his criminal behavior has become entrenched (R. Akiva).  The difference in penalties can be ascribed to the value that the Torah places on labor. The ox is a beast of labor, hence its value to the owner is greater than a sheep. The victim is not only deprived of the ox which was stolen, but his means of livelihood was also taken (R. Meir) . Finally she quotes R Yohanan Ben Zakai who interprets this as a sign of the premium that Hashem places in the respect of a human being. Stealing is a sheep is more difficult that rustling cattle, hence  the humiliation suffered by the thief is already a form of punishment.