Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat from it; your donkey will be robbed from before you, but it will not return to you; your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no savior.
We need to understand the meaning of the three distinct penalizations that the Torah makes reference to; 'Your ox will be slaughtered, but you will not eat from it; your donkey will be robbed from before you, but it will not return to you; your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no savior'.
We can explain that the Torah is making reference to three rulings regarding the obligation and judicial approach to a thief's responsibility to pay back that which he stole.
The first reference is to the monetary penalty which is called, תשלומי ארבעה וחמשה - the fourfold and fivefold penalty. That is, a thief who steals a sheep or a goat and slaughters or sells it must pay four times its value, and if he steals an ox and slaughters or sells it, he must pay five times its value. Nevertheless, there is a prerequisite for this penalty, as the Mishnah in Bava Kama (עט ע"א) teaches us.
A thief pays the fourfold or fivefold payment only if he stole the animal from outside the owner's domain or he slaughtered or sold it outside the owner's domain. But if he stole the animal and also slaughtered or sold it inside the owner's domain, he is exempt from the fourfold or fivefold payment.
The second reference is to that which the Gemara in Bava Kama (צד ע"ב) teaches us regarding the remuneration of a thief who wishes to repent. The Gemara relates the following episode. There was an incident with a certain person who wished to repent from his engagement with thievery and lending on interest. His wife said to him, "Empty one! If you repent, even the belt that you are wearing is not yours". He thus refrained and did not repent. At that time the Sages declared: If thieves and lenders on interest wish to return their ill-gotten gains, their victims should not accept from them [i.e. so that they should not be deterred from repenting because of the great financial burden it would place on them]. And if one does accept from them, the spirit of the Sages is displeased with him.
The third is in reference to that which we learn in the Gemara Bava Kama (קיד ע"א). The Mishnah says: If bandits confiscated someone's garment and gave him another garment [i.e. which were clearly the property of another of their victims], they are his, because we presume that their original owner despaired of ever retrieving these clothing as soon as it was seized from them. Rav Bartenura quotes the Gemara to explain, that the Mishnah's contention 'that it may be assumed that the initial victim, who was the original owner of these clothing, has despaired of retrieving them, and thus the second victim can use them', was only said with regard to Jewish bandits, but with regard to non-Jewish bandits one would not be able to use the clothing that the bandits gave him.
The reason for this is because when robbed by Jewish bandits the victim may only summon them to a Jewish court, and thus the victim despairs from ever retrieving his belongings from the bandits because the Jewish court would never issue a verdict without clear testimony, and the victim knows that he cannot supply witnesses who have witnessed the robbery. But when robbed by non-Jewish bandits, he can summon them to a non-Jewish court who issues verdicts even without clear testimony, and thus the victim does not despair of retrieving his belongings, because he believes that he has a reasonable chance of recovering them.
Accordingly, we can explain the three distinct penalizations as follows.
Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat from it, is alluding as follows, 'Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes' - the thief will [steal and] slaughter the ox inside your domain, and thus, 'you will not eat from it' - the thief will be exempt from paying you the fourfold or fivefold payments.
Your donkey will be robbed from before you, but it will not return to you, is alluding to the wishes of the Sages that the victims should not accept reparation from those who robbed them.
Your sheep will be given to your enemies, stating clearly that although they will be taken by 'your enemies', namely non-Jews, whose court system would typically issue a verdict for the victim to receive back his property; nevertheless, you will have no savior, no one will help you retrieve that which truthfully belongs to you.
