Is it that it’s a sin to steal something of such little monetary value as a pin?
Or is there something about pins specifically that makes it a sin to steal them?
I don’t understand the question. Why wouldn’t it count as stealing?
It belongs to someone else. If someone other than the owner takes it to keep it, that’s stealing.
How do you understand the concept of stealing?
Because it rhymes. That’s ten extra points right there.
This.
And because religiously based moral codes (especially when they are being packaged to be taught to children) tend to deal in moral absolutes.
Pins used to be relatively more expensive items. Isn’t that where the term “pin money” came from? Housewives would save up so they could buy them.
Exodus 20:15 = "Thou shalt not steal."
not
Exodus 20:15a = "Thou shalt not steal any item valued at more than ten sheckles."
To those who mentioned it: I’m fully aware that theft is theft. But sometimes proverbs aren’t that literal. It sounds like some of you learned the rhyme as small children. I’ve only recently heard it. So the question (which has been answered) was whether it simply means that it’s a sin to steal, or if there is some folklore surrounding pins – perhaps some fairytale where something bad happens to someone who steals a pin – that makes stealing a pin more damnable than, say, stealing a feather.
It is a crime to steal. It is probably unethical to steal. It might even be immoral to steal.
But it ain’t no sin cause there ain’t no such thing as sin.
Do note though that the Bible did allow the poor to trespass on other people’s property during harvest season and take what you left behind–in fact, it was a sin to go back and get anything you missed. And then there’s Proverbs 6:30 which says that at least other people didn’t care if you stole out of hunger, even if you were required to pay it back sevenfold in verse 31. (But note that the punishment would not be that severe for the truly poor, since it is the lesser of all your possessions or seven times the amount.)
It’s illustrating the idea that it’s wrong to steal even something that you (as the thief) consider small and inconsequential. Someone who has a pin (especially in the era pre-safety pins) likely has many pins. But that doesn’t help if they don’t have enough for what they’re doing.
Put it in monetary terms. You see a cup full of change sitting somewhere, and you take a nickel. A nickel may not mean much to you, but if there was $1.05 in that cup and I, as the owner, was counting on using my that $1.05 to buy a $1 sandwich that has 5¢ tax and you take a nickel, having the dollar is for naught. I end up without my sandwich, maybe without anything at all.
Little stuff counts.
Because God said so.
“The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing.” – Jim Casy, in Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
I probably haven’t read that book in a decade.
I re-read it maybe twice in a five year span. Even so, I had to look for your quote and it is there. Thanks for pointing it out.
One of my ancestors was sentenced to death for stealing three handkerchiefs.
hajario:
In fact, pins became so identified with money that we enter a “PIN” to get money from an ATM.
On a more serious note: according to Halacha (Jewish Biblical Law), a person is not criminally liable for theft unless the item he steals is worth more than a “perutah” which is usually translated as “penny.” Essentially, that was the lowest-denomination coin in Talmudic times.
The Midrash says that amongst the sins of the generation wiped out by the flood is that they used to steal, en masse, less than a perutah’s worth of something from a person, with none of the individual thieves being liable but the owner losing a significant amount in the end.