Keluaran 22:2-3

22:2 “If a thief is caught ¹  breaking in ²  and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guilt for him. ³  22:3 If the sun has risen on him, then there is blood guilt for him. A thief ⁴  must surely make full restitution; if he has nothing, then he will be sold for his theft.

Keluaran 22:25

22:25 “If you lend money to any of ⁵  my people who are needy among you, do not be like a moneylender ⁶  to him; do not charge ⁷  him interest. ⁸ 

[22:2]  ¹ tn Heb “found” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV).

[22:2]  ² tn The word בַּמַּחְתֶּרֶת (bammakhteret) means “digging through” the walls of a house (usually made of mud bricks). The verb is used only a few times and has the meaning of dig in (as into houses) or row hard (as in Jonah 1:13).

[22:2]  ³ tn The text has “there is not to him bloods.” When the word “blood” is put in the plural, it refers to bloodshed, or the price of blood that is shed, i.e., blood guiltiness.

[22:2]  sn This law focuses on what is reasonable defense against burglary. If someone killed a thief who was breaking in during the night, he was not charged because he would not have known it was just a thief, but if it happened during the day, he was guilty of a crime, on the assumption that in daylight the thief posed no threat to the homeowner’s life and could be stopped and made to pay restitution.

[22:3]  ⁴ tn The words “a thief” have been added for clarification. S. R. Driver (Exodus, 224) thinks that these lines are out of order, since some of them deal with killing the thief and then others with the thief making restitution, but rearranging the clauses is not a necessary way to bring clarity to the paragraph. The idea here would be that any thief caught alive would pay restitution.

[22:25]  ⁵ tn “any of” has been supplied.

[22:25]  ⁶ sn The moneylender will be demanding and exacting. In Ps 109:11 and 2 Kgs 4:1 the word is rendered as “extortioner.”

[22:25]  ⁷ tn Heb “set.”

[22:25]  ⁸ sn In ancient times money was lent primarily for poverty and not for commercial ventures (H. Gamoran, “The Biblical Law against Loans on Interest,” JNES 30 [1971]: 127-34). The lending to the poor was essentially a charity, and so not to be an opportunity to make money from another person’s misfortune. The word נֶשֶׁךְ (neshekh) may be derived from a verb that means “to bite,” and so the idea of usury or interest was that of putting out one’s money with a bite in it (See S. Stein, “The Laws on Interest in the Old Testament,” JTS 4 [1953]: 161-70; and E. Neufeld, “The Prohibition against Loans at Interest in the Old Testament,” HUCA 26 [1955]: 355-412).