Exodus 22:7-9

"If a man shall deliver unto his neighbor money or stuff to keep, and it be stolen out of the man's house; if the thief be found, he shall pay double. If the thief be not found, then the master of the house shall come near unto God, to see whether he have not put his hand unto his neighbor' s goods. For every matter of trespass, whether it be for ox, for ass, for sheep, for raiment, or for any manner of lost thing, whereof one saith, This is it, the cause of both parties shall come before God; he whom God shall condemn shall pay double unto his neighbor."

"If a man shall deliver unto his neighbor ..." This has reference to the deposit of one's goods with a trusted friend or neighbor, a custom universally followed in antiquity and until very recent days. There were no banks, bonded warehouses, depositories, or safety-deposit boxes known until comparatively recent times. Sometimes, one merely buried his treasure in a field, as was the case in one of our Lord's parables. As recently as 1812, even in America, there were no banks available to ordinary people. This writer's great-great-grandfather, a citizen of Luray, Virginia, deposited $44,000.00 in gold in the Public Mill in Luray, $4,000.00 of which was a bequest to the "poor of Page County," and the rest of it for distribution among his heirs. The will of Samuel Coffman with the above provisions was probated in Page County, Virginia, several years after the birth of the youngest heir in 1812, and following his death, the date of which is not exactly known. The death of that youngest heir, David Carl Coffman (this writer's great-grandfather) was written up in the Page-Courier on February 1,1883. He received none of the gold which was divided among his four sisters, but he received the ancestral lands bestowed upon the family by a grant from the King of England, a large tract lying along the Shenandoah River.

The real problem in view here was that of a loss of the goods (through theft or by some other means) before they were returned to the owner. The surety who held the deposit in such cases confronted a real problem, that is, how to establish his innocence. It was allowed here that the man's solemn oath in the presence of God was sufficient.

"He whom God shall condemn ..." Bringing such a dispute before the duly-constituted authorities was considered bringing it "before God." Also, "He whom God condemns" is a reference to a judgment by the magistrates.

"For every matter of trespass ..." This reveals the exemplary nature of the judgments presented here. They were given for the principles involved.