You shall have an honest scale, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I am the Lord your G-d who brought you out of the land of Egypt. (Vayikra 19:36)

It always troubled me that the Torah separates what we would classify generally as “stealing” into several different prohibitions. There is the gazlan (the one who steals brazenly) and the ganav (the one who steals surreptitiously); there are those who take loans and purposely fail to repay them; and mentioned in this week’s parsha there are those who purposely have inaccurate weights and measures. Why is this type of theft mentioned as a separate category, as it seems to be just a sophisticated way of stealing small amounts at a time?

I knew a man who always seemed to be doing financially better than his competitors, even though all their businesses were basically the same. When asked what his trick was, he answered, “I would take merchandise without paying up-front, and being that I took a large amount they were willing to give me the merchandise on credit. But I never paid on time and when the manufacturer would come after me for a settlement, I would pay perhaps 80 cents on the dollar – effectively a 20% discount. All this gave me an edge over all my competitors and my business boomed.”

What would we call this? More importantly, it’s obviously dishonest, so does it matter what we call it?

The Netziv explains the juxtaposition of the idolatrous worship of Molech between the prohibitions of inaccurate weights and illicit relationships. He brings to our attention the fact that people may steal for a variety of reasons. Someone may see an item that his friend has and covets it so much so that he comes to steal it. The reason that he steals is not necessarily because he has a lack of funds, but because someone has something that he desires. There are people who are kleptomaniacs, and they steal just for the thrill. That is borne out of a different illicit desire of partaking in a game of cat and mouse.

What about the person who steals by having inaccurate weights? The Netziv tells us that his deviation from proper behavior is borne out of a lack of emunah and bitachon that Hashem can give him enough parnasa. He finds it hard to believe that through regular effort in his work Hashem can give him the success he is looking for. He is not missing emunah and bitachon when it comes to the big things in life. But in the small things, he feels that he must chisel away at his weights to bring the financial benefit he is looking for.

In truth the Beis Halevi says that many a thief will pray to Hashem for success. (There was once a successful thief who suddenly found himself being caught each time he tried to steal. He explained to his parents that he doesn’t understand what is going wrong with his “business”, to which his parents suggested to him, “Maybe you should check your mezuzahs?”)

There is a story told about the Kotzker Rebbe who saw a man race out of shul before the end of the last Kaddish, grab his pushcart, and rush off to sell his wares. The Rebbe asked him “Where are you going?” and the man answered, “To make my parnasa”. To that the Rebbe countered “How do you know that you are running to your parnasa? Maybe your parnasa is in the other direction and you are running away from it?!”

Many of us will sometimes be lax in fulfilling our spiritual obligations by cutting out time from davening, learning or chesed, to take care of “important business.” This is in effect the same deficiency from which the man who has chiseled away at the weight of his measuring stone suffers.

As Pesach is behind us and we feel infused with emunah and bitachon because of all the overt miracles that G-d has shown us, maybe we should try to infuse ourselves with the belief that Hashem runs the show, even in the small things that we do every single day.