If a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him,
2. If a thief be found breaking up. This clause is to be taken separately, and is inserted by way of parenthesis; for, after having decreed the punishment, God adds in connection, “he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he should be sold for his theft;” and this exception as to the thief in the night is introduced parenthetically.
Fraud and injustice do not enrich a man but impoverish him; if you unjustly keep another's goods, they will not only waste themselves but consume what is your own. The thief who killed or sold what he stole showed his crime complete and hardened, so he pays fivefold or fourfold as his desert.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 22:1-6
If a thief be found breaking up,.... An house, in order to steal money, jewels, household goods, &c. or breaking through any fence, hedge, or wall of any enclosure, where oxen, or sheep, or any other creatures are, in order to take them away: the Targum of Jonathan is,"if in the hole of a wall (or window of it) a thief be found;''that is, in...