What Does Exodus 20:10 Mean?

"You shall not steal." The eighth commandment's three Hebrew words (lo tignov, do not steal) protect property as the material extension of personal agency and dignity. Theft violates not only the property but the person: to steal from someone is to take what they worked for, what represents their labor and life-investment, what they depend on for sustenance.

The commandment extends from taking physical property (theft of goods, livestock, land) to taking persons (kidnapping, which is also lo-tignov in the law codes: "whoever steals a man," Exodus 21:16). The full scope of lo-tignov is the prohibition of taking what belongs to another by force, deception, or unauthorized means.

The eighth commandment protects the economic dignity that the tenth commandment (not coveting) protects psychologically: the eighth prohibits taking what you covet; the tenth prohibits even the coveting itself. The two commandments bracket the property-dignity sphere: do not take your neighbor's property (eighth), do not even want to take it with disordered desire (tenth). The inner and the outer together define the commandment's full scope: behavior and desire are both subject to covenant law, not only outward actions.

The prophets apply the eighth commandment to systemic economic theft: Amos 8:5 ("making the ephah small and the shekel great and dealing deceitfully with false balances") and Micah 6:10-11 (unjust measures) are eighth-commandment violations through market manipulation rather than direct theft.

The principle extends to: false weights and measures (deceptive pricing), charging interest to the poor (Exodus 22:25), withholding workers' wages (Deuteronomy 24:14-15), and land-boundary manipulation (Deuteronomy 19:14). The eighth commandment's scope is the economic dimension of covenant social ethics, protecting all members of the covenant community from economic predation.