Catholic Commentary
Liability for Damage to Another's Property
5“If a man causes a field or vineyard to be eaten by letting his animal loose, and it grazes in another man’s field, he shall make restitution from the best of his own field, and from the best of his own vineyard.6“If fire breaks out, and catches in thorns so that the shocks of grain, or the standing grain, or the field are consumed; he who kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.
Exodus 22:5–6 establishes restitution laws for agricultural damage: an owner whose animal eats another's crop must compensate from his best field and vineyard, while whoever starts a fire that spreads to a neighbor's grain bears absolute liability for the destruction. These laws emphasize personal accountability through substantial, not minimal, compensation for unintended harm.
Negligence that damages your neighbor's livelihood is not a feeling to regret but a wrong demanding costly repair—you must pay from your best, not your leftovers.
The Typological and Spiritual Senses
Read in the fuller Catholic tradition, these verses carry layers beyond their civil-legal surface. Origen, in his Homilies on Exodus, observed that the Law of Moses functions as a "shadow of good things to come," and these property laws illuminate the deeper logic of moral reparation embedded in the gospel. If even unintentional harm to a neighbor's field demands concrete restitution in kind, how much more does sin against the neighbor — and against God — call not merely for contrition but for repair?
The "fire" of verse 6 invites further reflection. The Fathers frequently associated fire with the passions and with sin's tendency to spread beyond what we intend. Saint John Chrysostom, commenting on related Pauline texts, warned that sinful acts — like fire set to dry thorns — rarely stay contained. They spread, consuming others we never meant to harm. The law's blunt insistence on restitution becomes, in this light, a figure of the full Christian call to metanoia: not sentiment alone, but active restoration of what was damaged.
Catholic moral theology draws deeply from exactly this kind of Mosaic legislation in articulating the doctrine of reparation, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church treats as an integral component of justice. CCC §2412 states explicitly: "In virtue of commutative justice, reparation for injustice committed requires the restitution of stolen goods to their owner." Crucially, the Catechism adds that "when restitution is impossible, justice requires returning the equivalent in kind or in money, according to the judgment of a prudent person." Exodus 22:5–6 is, in a real sense, the scriptural seedbed of this teaching — the Law of Moses already demanding the best of one's goods, not a token equivalent.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, Q. 62), builds a sophisticated theology of restitution directly on the natural law and Mosaic case law, arguing that restitution is not merely charitable but strictly required by justice — its omission constitutes a persistent moral disorder. The person who caused damage and does not repair it remains in a state of injustice regardless of their inner contrition.
The Church Fathers saw in these agricultural laws a pedagogy of divine charity. Saint Ambrose, in De Officiis, argued that the Mosaic laws of restitution reveal that God cares for the poor and the vulnerable — those most devastated when a harvest is destroyed — and that the Law incarnates the neighbor-love that Christ will later name as the second great commandment. Pope Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum (§22), appeals implicitly to this tradition when insisting that economic obligations toward one's neighbor are not discretionary acts of generosity but demands of justice rooted in the natural and divine law alike. These two Mosaic verses, in their stark simplicity, encode what the Church has consistently taught: love of neighbor has material, concrete, and sometimes costly consequences.
Contemporary Catholics can receive these verses as a corrective to a culture that reduces moral accountability to feelings of guilt while neglecting repair. A Catholic who causes financial harm to another — through shoddy work, a broken contract, careless advice, or even an unkind word that damages a reputation — cannot regard Confession alone as the end of the moral story. The Catechism is clear: where restitution is possible, it is required. These verses press the question concretely: Is there someone whose "field" I have damaged — whose livelihood, reputation, or property has suffered through my carelessness or sin? Have I paid from "the best of my own field," or have I offered only minimal acknowledgment?
For business owners, employers, and professionals, the standard of "best of his own field" is particularly challenging: restitution is calibrated to the victim's loss, not the offender's convenience. For families, verse 6's image of uncontrolled fire warns that our sins rarely stay neatly contained — anger, dishonesty, and addictions spread to harm people we love and never intended to wound. The call here is not to perfectionism but to honest moral accounting: name what was damaged, and actively seek to restore it.
Commentary
Exodus 22:5 — Stray Animal, Stolen Harvest
The Hebrew verb translated "causes to be eaten" (וּבִעֵר, uvi'er) is intensive, suggesting not a single lapse but an act of real carelessness — a man who "sends out" (שִׁלַּח, shilach) his animal, a word used elsewhere for deliberate release. The law covers both field (שָׂדֶה, sadeh) and vineyard (כֶּרֶם, kerem), two primary forms of agricultural wealth in ancient Israel, each representing years of labor and the source of a family's food security. Allowing livestock to wander into a neighbor's cultivated land was not an abstract offense: it could mean the difference between harvest and famine for a subsistence farming household.
The standard of restitution is noteworthy: the offender must compensate not from inferior or average stock, but from "the best (mêtav) of his own field and vineyard." This requirement exceeds mere equivalence. It forces the responsible party to feel the weight of his negligence personally — he cannot fob off poor-quality land as payment. The law insists on a generosity calibrated to the dignity of the loss suffered. This principle anticipates what later rabbinic tradition would call tashlumin (restitution), distinguishing it sharply from mere apology.
Exodus 22:6 — Fire Unleashed, Ruin Spread
Verse 6 moves from an animal — a controllable living thing — to fire, whose spread is notoriously difficult to contain in a dry, agricultural landscape. The scenario is vivid and practically real: a farmer burns thorns (qotsim) to clear land or remove brush, a common Near Eastern agricultural practice, and the fire jumps to standing grain (qamah) or stacked shocks (gadish). The structure of the Hebrew escalates the categories of loss from stored grain to unharvested grain to the entire field, suggesting the law envisions a range of disasters all flowing from the same root act.
The law assigns liability without requiring proof of intent: "he who kindled the fire (ha-mabit ha-esh) shall surely make restitution." The doubled verb (shallêm yeshallem, literally "make restitution, he shall make restitution") is an emphatic infinitive absolute construction, expressing absolute obligation. There is no defense of accident; the one who lit the fire bears the consequence of its uncontrolled spread. This reflects the Mosaic legal tradition's concern not only with moral guilt but with objective harm to the neighbor.