Exodus 22:1

If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it (so as to make profit by it), he is to repay fivefold for the ox, and fourfold for the sheep. Cf. (with differences) Ḥamm. § 8 (see p. 420). The ox is reckoned as of higher value than the sheep on account especially of its being useful in agricultural work. The case of the animal being still alive, and in the thief's possession, is dealt with in v.4. The fourfold restitution of a sheep is the penalty named by David in his reply to Nathan's parable (2 Samuel 12:4): sevenfold restitution is mentioned only in the hyperbolical passage, Proverbs 6:31, but may be read rightly by the LXX. in 2 Samuel 12:4, -fourfold" being here not improbably a correction made on the basis of the present law. Fourfold restitution was also the penalty, when the thief was caught in the act, by the later Roman law; and for the theft of an animal it is still usual among the modern Bedawin (Cook, p. 216). Multiple restitution (in varying ratios) the penalty prescribed by Hạmmurabi for many cases of fraud (DB.v. 596 b): and it is still in many parts of the world a common penalty for theft (Post, Grundriss der ethnol. Jurispr. ii. 430 f.).

and kill it The word (ṭâbaḥ) is the one regularly used of slaughtering cattle for food (Genesis 43:16; 1 Samuel 25:11 al.).