The Ten Commandments

You Shall Not Steal

The eighth commandment protects what belongs to our neighbour: Thou shalt not steal. It honours the truth that people may rightly own the fruit of their labour, and that to take it wrongly is to wrong both them and God. But the command reaches beyond the thief in the night to every dishonest gain, and it calls us not only to keep our hands from taking but to open them in generosity toward those in need.

“Thou shalt not steal.”Exodus 20:15

What it meant to Israel

In Israel the commandment guarded a neighbour’s livelihood in a world without safety nets, where to lose one’s ox or one’s field could mean ruin. To steal was to strike at another’s very means of life. So the law surrounded the command with practical justice: honest weights and measures, fair wages paid promptly, restitution for what was taken, and protection for the poor from those who would exploit them.

The commandment also forbade the theft of persons. He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, was to be judged most severely, a word that condemns the kidnapping and enslaving of human beings. And the law wove generosity into the very fabric of ownership: farmers were to leave the edges of their fields unharvested so the poor and the stranger could glean. To honour property, in Israel’s vision, was never mere possessiveness; it was bound up with justice and open-handedness toward the needy.

In this way the eighth commandment was never merely about protecting the rich from the poor, but about weaving justice and mercy through the whole of Israel’s common life. The law that forbade stealing also commanded fair wages, honest scales, the return of a poor man’s cloak by nightfall, and open hands toward the needy. To honour a neighbour’s property and to care for a neighbour’s need were held together, so that the community might reflect the generosity of the God who had provided for them all.

What it forbids and what it requires

The commandment forbids every taking of what is not ours: outright theft, but also fraud, cheating, dishonest business, unpaid debts, unfair wages, exploitation, and all the subtler ways we enrich ourselves at another’s expense. To defraud a worker, to cheat a customer, to withhold what is owed, is to break this command as truly as the burglar does.

Positively, it requires honesty, diligence, and generosity. Let him that stole steal no more, the apostle wrote, but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. The command’s aim is not merely to stop us taking but to make us givers. It calls us to earn honestly, to deal justly, and to hold what we have with an open hand, ready to share with those in need.

How Jesus deepened it

Jesus struck at the greed that lies beneath all stealing. Take heed, and beware of covetousness, He warned, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. He taught that the desire to have more, at any cost, is the root from which theft and injustice grow, and He called His followers to a freedom from the love of money that the world cannot understand.

He also lifted the whole matter into a new light of grace. When Zacchaeus, a tax collector who had grown rich by cheating, met Jesus, he stood and said, if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. Jesus called it salvation come to that house. Grace does not merely forbid stealing; it turns thieves into givers, and He commended those who lay up treasure in heaven rather than clutching at treasure on earth.

How we fall short, and are met by grace

Few of us think of ourselves as thieves, yet the command searches wider than we like. We have taken what was not ours in small ways and large: cutting corners, padding accounts, taking credit we did not earn, keeping what we should have returned, spending on ourselves what could have relieved another’s need. Even our unwillingness to give is a kind of holding back what love would release.

The commandment humbles our supposed honesty and drives us to grace. For Christ, who was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich. He did not take; He gave, even to His own life, to make debtors like us rich beyond measure. The gospel meets our grasping with a generosity so great that it loosens our grip, and teaches the taker, at last, to give.

How to live it today

To keep the eighth commandment is to be scrupulously honest in a world of easy dishonesty: to pay what we owe, to give a fair day’s work, to deal truthfully in money, and to refuse gain that comes at another’s expense. It means integrity in the unseen places, where no one would catch us, because God sees.

But keeping it does not stop at not taking. The command comes to its fullness in generosity, in labouring not only to provide for ourselves but to have something to give. To live this word is to become the opposite of a thief, a person whose hands are open, who shares freely, who defends the poor from exploitation, and who treats every neighbour’s good as something to protect rather than to seize. Honest getting and glad giving are the two halves of this command kept whole.

It also asks us to examine the quieter forms of taking that a respectable life can hide: the debts left unpaid, the work done carelessly, the advantage pressed at another’s cost, the good we could give and withhold. Keeping this command is finally about becoming trustworthy with whatever passes through our hands, whether much or little. The person who can be trusted with money, and moved to generosity by need, has learned the heart of the eighth commandment, and has begun to resemble the God who gives.