# Thou Shalt

"thou shalt not steal" is one of the Ten Commandments of the Jewish Torah (known to Christians as the first five books of the Old Testament), which are widely understood as moral imperatives by legal scholars, Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, and Post-Reformation scholars."Steal" in this commandment has traditionally been interpreted by Jewish commentaries to refer to the stealing of an actual human being, that is, to kidnapping. With this understanding, a contextual translation of the commandment in Jewish tradition would more accurately be rendered as "thou shalt not kidnap". Kidnapping would then constitute a capital offence and thus merit its inclusion among the Ten Commandments.