О восьмой заповеди
The Eighth Commandment Defined
The eighth commandment, "You shall not steal," is introduced and defined as prohibiting unjust acquisition of another's property.
Question 67. What is the eighth commandment?✦ Answer. "You shall not steal" (Ex.1 20:15).
Understanding "You Shall Not Steal"
This commandment encompasses various forms of unjust taking, including robbery, withholding property, damaging reputation, unfair taxation or labor demands, usury, and breaking contracts, all of which are condemned by Scripture.
Question 68. How should this commandment be understood?✦ Answer. This commandment teaches us never to take anything that belongs to someone else by any unjust means—not by robbery, not by theft, and not by holding onto another person's property. The same category includes damaging another person's reputation, demanding taxes or rent from those under your authority beyond what's due, and imposing work on them that's beyond their strength.2 Lending money at interest belongs here too.3 On all of this the Apostle pronounces this verdict: "Neither the greedy, nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God" (1 Cor.45 6:10). Understood here as well are all lawful contracts, in which good faith must be kept and from which mutual deception must be shut out.
Read the original Russian
Вопрос 67. Какая восьмая заповедь?
Ответ. "Не укради" (Исх. 20, 15).
Вопрос 68. Как должно понимать сию заповедь?
Ответ. Сия заповедь учит не присваивать себе никакой чужой вещи всяким несправедливым образом, или грабительством, или воровством, или удержанием собственности другого. К сему причисляется и то, когда кто-нибудь похищает у другого честь, когда кто требует от подчиненных своих подати, или оброка, сверх надлежащей меры, или налагает на них работы не по силам. Сюда относится и рост. На все это Апостол произносит такой суд: «ни лихоимцы, ни татие, ни пияницы, ни досадители, ни хищницы Царствия Божия не наследят» (1Кор. 6, 10). Здесь также должны быть подразумеваемы все законные договоры, где должна быть соблюдаема верность, и откуда должны быть исключены взаимные обманы.
Scripture echoes
Notes
- 1 ↩The commandment keeps its familiar scriptural cadence ("You shall not steal") rather than a flattened modern paraphrase, in line with the policy of preserving quoted Scripture's weight.
- 2 ↩«похищает у другого честь» is literally 'steals another's honor' — that is, damage to reputation counted as a form of theft. 'Good name' keeps the concrete, property-like sense the argument requires.
- 3 ↩«рост» is the standard Slavonic/older Russian term for usury — interest charged on a loan. Rendered explicitly since the bare English 'growth' would lose the sense entirely.
- 4 ↩The quotation follows the Church Slavonic wording of 1 Cor 6:10. «досадители» renders the Greek λοίδοροι (revilers/slanderers) and «хищницы» renders ἅρπαγες (the rapacious, swindlers). Final quotation form awaits Moses resolution.
- 5 ↩The sentence is split mid-citation in the source segmentation; the chapter-and-verse reference continues in the next sentence.
Orthodox Confession (Pravoslavnoe Ispovedanie) companion
Rule yourself daily, not just on retreat
Chosen Portion turns the mirror into a daily practice — a short reading and examining question each morning before you lead anyone.
Chosen Portion makes the mirror daily: the ruler-formation questions this collection preserves become a two-minute morning examination in the app.
- A daily formation reading drawn from centuries of counsel to those in authority
- One pointed examination question a day — two minutes, before the meetings start
- Track your practice over weeks and watch the examined life become a habit