[30] The most sacred of all the dealings between man and man is the deposit on trust, as it is founded on the good faith of the person who accepts it. Formal loans are guaranteed by contracts and written documents, and articles lent openly without such formality have the testimony of the eye-witnessess.
[31] But that is not the method of deposits. There a man gives something with his own hands secretly to another when both are alone. He looks carefully all round him and does not even bring a slave, however loyal, with him to act as carrier, for the object which both of them evidently pursue is that it should be impossible to show what has happened. The one wishes that nobody should observe his gift, the other that no one should know of his acceptance. And this unseen transaction has assuredly the unseen God as its intermediary, to whom both naturally appeal as their witness, one that he will restore the property when demanded, the other that he will recover it at the proper time.
[32] So then he who repudiates a deposit must be assured that he acts most wrongfully. He deceives the hopes of the friend who confided his goods to him. He has disguised under fair words the vileness of his character. In the faithlessness of his heart he has assumed the mask of a bastard faithfulness. The assurance of the hands given and taken is rendered null and void, the oaths are unfulfilled. Thus he has set at nought both the human and the divine and repudiated two trusts, one that of him who consigned his property, the other that of the most veracious of witnesses who sees and hears all whether they intend or do not wish to do what they say.
[33] But if the deposit, which the receiver accepts as something sacred and feels bound to keep unharmed because of his reverence for truth and good faith, is purloined by stealthy mischievous intruders, cutpurses and burglars on the watch to take what does not belong to them, the offenders if caught must pay a fine of double the value.
[34] If they are not caught the receiver of the trust must go of his own freewill to the court of God and with hands stretched out to heaven swear under pain of his own perdition that he has not embezzled any part of the deposit nor abetted another in so doing nor joined at all in inventing a theft which never took place. Otherwise an innocent party would be mulcted and the person who ran to avail himself of the good faith of a friend would on account of the wrong he has suffered from others cause injury to that friend, and either of these is preposterous.
[35] But deposits include not only inanimate things but living animals who are liable to be endangered in two ways: one by theft which they share with the inanimate, the other by death which is peculiar to themselves. The first of these has been dealt with above and we must proceed to lay down laws for the second.
[36] So if any animal left in trust dies the person who has accepted the trust must send for the consigner and show him the dead body, thus shielding himself against any suspicion of dishonesty. If the consigner is absent from home, it would not be right for the caretaker to summon other people from whom the depositor may have wished to keep the matter secret, but when he has come home he must swear to him to show that he is not using a fictitious death to cloak an embezzlement.
[37] But if any utensil or any animal has been received not as a trust but for his use in response to a request and then either of these is stolen, or the animal dies, the borrower will not be responsible if the lender is living on the spot, since he can call him to witness that there is no pretence. If he is not living on the spot the borrower must make good the loss.
[38] Why is this? Because in the absence of the owner the borrower may either have worn out the animal by constantly overworking it and so have caused its death, or may have risked the loss of the utensil out of carelessness for what is another man’s property, whereas he is bound to keep it carefully and not provide thieves with facilities for carrying it off.
[39] The lawgiver with his unsurpassed power of discerning how things follow each other gives a series of successive prohibitions in which he aims at logical connexion, and makes a harmonious combination of the subsequent with the preceding. He tells us that this accordance between each thing said and each thing still to be said is proclaimed in an oracle spoken by God in his own person in the following terms “Ye shall not steal and ye shall not lie and ye shall not bring false accusations against your neighbours and ye shall not swear in my name to an injustice and ye shall not profane my name.”
[40] Excellent indeed and full of instructions, for the thief convicted by his conscience disowns the deed and lies through fear of the punishment which confession entails. Then he who disowns his deed in his eagerness to fasten the charge on someone else brings a false accusation and devises schemes to make the accusation seem probable. And every such accuser is necessarily a perjurer with little regard for piety, for since he lacks just arguments he takes refuge in the unscientific method of proof, as it is called, namely that of oaths, because he thinks that by appeal to God he makes his hearers believe him. Such a one may be assured that he is unholy and profane, since he pollutes the good name which is by nature unpolluted, the name of God.