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Does a Thief who Slaughtered a Stolen Animal

for a Dangerously Ill Patient Incur the Penalty of
Four or Five-Fold Payment?

Question: A thief stole an animal and later slaughtered it to feed to
a dangerously ill patient. Will he have to pay the penalty of a four or
five-fold payment? This hinges on the following doubt. The gemara
(Bava Kama 68a) states that the penalty imposed by the Torah upon
a thief who stole an ox or sheep and later slaughtered [or sold] it, of
paying four times the sheep’s value and five times that of the ox, is
because the thief has sinned repeatedly [i.e. first by stealing the ani-
mal, then by slaughtering or selling it]. Thus, if the thief slaughtered
the animal for a dangerously ill patient he has committed no [extra]
sin whatsoever – even the animal’s owner would have had to do what
he did – and should perhaps be exempt from paying the four or five
times the animal’s worth.

Response: This question is dealt with in Mishnas R’ Aharon (Rav
Aharon Kotler, 18:2), where it is written: “He is certainly liable to
pay four or five-fold. Even though the slaughter was not a sin and
according to halachah the animal had to be slaughtered, when it is
the robber who slaughters it he is nevertheless liable to pay. This can
be proven from Bava Kama (76a), from the ruling that if the thief
slaughters the animal within on behalf of its owner he is [still] liable
[i.e. if he stole a sacrifice and slaughtered it in the proper manner on
behalf of its owner he is nevertheless obligated to pay four or five-
fold], despite the fact that the sacrifice must be slaughtered in this
way anyway. Why then should we impose the penalty upon him? It is
thus abundantly clear from here that no matter under what circum-
stances he slaughtered the animal after having stolen it -- even if he
did so in a permitted manner -- he is liable to pay four or five-fold.

Now the case can apparently be made for differentiating between
the two: when the robber slaughters a sacrifice no one asked him to of-
fer it. On the contrary it would have been better had he returned the
sacrifice to its owner for him to offer, allowing the owner to fulfill the

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