Exo 20:15 - "You shall not steal."
Deut 5:19 - "You shall not steal."
The Eighth Commandment—"You shall not steal"—is felt by many scholars to be too general. Although no penalty is specified in the Decalogue, most forms of the laws based on the Decalogue call for capital punishment. Stealing, however, is legislated by lesser punishment elsewhere in the Old Testament. Some scholars have, therefore, felt that this commandment is to be understood specifically as a prohibition against kidnapping, i.e., "man-stealing," which 24:7 treats with the death sentence. Such an understanding is not impossible, but looks rather like a solution searching for a problem to solve.
Where there is no right of possession, whether material or moral, there is no reason or encouragement to act with accountability. This sense of accountability is further heightened for Israel by the Pentateuch's (and especially Deuteronomy's) constant refrain that everything that Israel possesses, she holds because Yahweh has provided. Stealing, in essence, pitches one's selfish will to have what Yahweh has not given against the needless loss of what Yahweh has given to the victim. By the grief it inflicts it de-blesses whom Yahweh has blessed, and defies Yahweh's demand to live with accountability. It is the antithesis of the generosity to give to those in need that Deut 15 enjoins with such fervour.
One of the greatest challenges in obeying this commandment in today's climate of globalization is what often amounts to "legalized stealing" against which the individual seems so hamstrung to act. Few state may be as blatant as Mugabe's kleptocracy, but wherever stealing is approved by the governing administration, that society is headed towards meltdown.1 At the same time, many of the trade tariffs, agricultural subsidies and patent claims that are part and parcel of the global economy seem formulated to allow developed nations to defraud—"steal"—from the already impoverished under-developed world. And how many governments—or their agents using their high office but for their own personal gain—in Asia are not guilty of defrauding their natives of their ancestral land in the name of development simply because these illiterate aborigines possess no documentary proof of their ownership? This commandment, elaborated further by the Old Testament prophets, challenges us who fear God to speak up and to act against these and for the sake of those who are voiceless and powerless to fight.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2013