We now come to dealing with protection of property. A thief had to make multiple reparation for any sheep or ox that he stole. By the way, the fact that these laws refer explicitly to sheep and ox (and other animals elsewhere) is illustrative of the fact that the details are specific to OT Israel, it is the spirit of the Law that we should focus on.
We see that a person is allowed to defend his home, but only with reasonable force. For if the act occurs in daylight, the defender who kills the thief will be judged to have known exactly what they were doing.
If a person could not pay the due fine, then they had to sell themselves as a slave to make good the damage.
Property is clearly considered to be important, and everyone is to have due concern for the effect of their actions on other people's property.
The second half of the chapter deals with various matters of social responsibility. A woman's well being was heavily dependent in those days on being married, this is why someone who seduced a virgin had to marry her.
They were not to mistreat foreigners, nor take advantage of the poor. It is a recurrent theme in the Bible that God hears the cry of the poor and oppressed, so if we are responsible for harming them we had better watch out.
In lending to the poor people were to make sure that did not deprive them of their livelihood.
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