Growing up where I have, one learns very early in life to tell the difference between an antique shop and a pawn shop. While the same skills at picking (skills a friend of mine is working on and blogging about [1]) apply to both, one tends to have a much better feeling about an antique shop than a pawn shop. Given that where I grew up pawn shops appear to be mainly places for people to fence stolen property, pawn shops have a low reputation, even if there are some excellent and legitimate economic skills that pawn shop owners can engage in. In the analysis that follows, I wish it to be remembered that it is the role of the pawn shop as the place where stolen property can be sold cheaply and (usually) without recourse, rather than the legitimate purposes of a pawn shop in finding buried and unrecognized treasure, that I am speaking about, and that my criticism of pawn shops does not in any way criticize those whose business is legitimate and above board, who have no connection or interest in stolen property of any kind. With that said at the outset, let us begin our discussion of a law that has striking and curious relevance to today in Leviticus 6:1-7.

First, let us look at Leviticus 6:1-7 and what it says, and then try to understand what its relevance would be if enforced today. It reads as follows: “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “If a person sins and commits a trespass against the Lord by lying to his neighbor about what was delivered to him for safekeeping, or about a pledge, or about a robbery, or if he has extorted from his neighbor, or if he has found what was lost and lies concerning it, and swears falsely–in any one of these things that a man may do in which he sins: then it shall be, because he has sinned and is guilty, that he shall restore what he has stolen, or the thing which he has extorted, or what was delivered to him for safekeeping, or the lost thing which he found, or all that about which he has sworn falsely. He shall restore its full value, add one-fifth more to it, and give it to whomever it belongs, on the day of his trespass offering. And he shall bring his trespass offering to the Lord, a ram without blemish from the flock, with your valuation, as a trespass offering, to the priest. So the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord, and he shall be forgiven for any one of these things that he may have done in which he trespasses.”

Now, this law has a lot of different areas in which it is relevant, but they boil down to two elements: does someone possess the property of another (whether they stole it, were given it for safekeeping, took it as a pledge without giving it back, or found it) and has covered up the fact that it was not their property to begin with. This covers a wide range of human activities, but if someone can prove that you have their property, however you obtained it, and you lied about it to keep the property that was not yours, you not only have to return the property (once it is proven that it belongs to the claimant) but also to pay a 20% penalty based on the replacement value of the item on top of the return of the item (or, presumably, its replacement if it has been ruined).

The implications of this for business are profound. If this law were enforced in the present age, finding lost property would give an obligation to the finder to return that property to the original owner. If one finds a wallet with identification in it, and one does not return it, one might be on the hook for a 20% penalty on top of all the money that is inside the wallet if it is found out. Likewise, a pawn shop that deals in stolen goods would not only have to return goods if they were shown to belong to others, but would have to pay a 20% penalty because they were found in possession of goods that did not belong to them. This would also presumably apply to anyone who bought stolen goods knowingly. Someone who bought stolen goods unknowingly would presumably not lie about where they got the goods, and part of the “restitution” owed might be to refund an unwitting buyer of stolen goods by the place where they were purchased as well as to return the item to its original owner, and for the pawn shop or seller who had the item for safekeeping to pay the 20% penalty.

This would, in effect, make it rather uneconomical to engage in the resale of stolen goods. Such pawn shops as presently exist would have to limit their items to purchasing from owners, because the purchase of any stolen item could lead to the payment of replacement value (which would often be higher than the price they could receive for an item) in addition to a 20% penalty on top of that (which would make it extremely unprofitable to sell or hold stolen items). Even the suspicion that an item may have been stolen might lead to a pawn shop or dealer refusing to purchase in light of the legal implications for them for having done so illicitly. Obviously, a burden of proof would have to be met, but the burden of proof would not be overwhelming. Animals have brands, and many items have some sort of identifiable tracking on them these days, making such a task easier than it was in the days of ancient Israel.

This sort of policy has other implications. For one, it would lead to fines for the downloading of pirated songs of software that could be expensive. The possession of an .mp3 that one did not purchase from iTunes or download from an artist’s website would cost 1.2 times the original cost. The possession of an pirated copy of software, if found, would cost 1.2 times the cost of the software itself, with all of the proceeds (including the 20% penalty) going to the party that was stolen from. The Bible takes the protection of property seriously. The fact that theft of intellectual property is rampant in our society (and, to be honest, this is something I myself have been guilty of often, so I am not only pointing fingers at others here) suggests that a law like this would have major effects on how we behave concerning a wide variety of property.

Additionally, let us note two more implications of this law. First, there is no “finders keepers losers weepers” principle in the Bible. If you find something and it belongs to someone else, even your enemy (see Deuteronomy 22:1-4, Exodus 23:4), you are commanded to return it to him. This is an important principle to remember because it trains people to, in general, respect the property of others and go out of their way to return people with lost possessions, with the expectation that such a society will look after and guard our own property as well. Property is insecure in a society of thieves, such as we are, but very secure in a society where people respect what belongs to others. In addition, this law deals explicitly with the problem of extortion. If we extort from our brother, engage in some kind of racketeering operation, or demand “protection” money or bribes from others, under God’s law we are commanded to pay back what we stole or coerced from others with a 20% penalty. This makes bribery by government officials under God’s law, as well as mafias, uneconomical. It restores what was stolen to the community with a penalty to make it unprofitable to engage in such business. Where God’s laws are fairly and consistently and thoroughly enforced mafias, dealers in stolen property, extortioners, and corrupt government officials are squeezed out. That sounds like a society I want to be a part of.

[1] http://pdxpicker.wordpress.com/