The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the law of entrusted property with precise legal architecture. "If the thief be found, he shall restore two for one. If the thief be not found, the master of the house shall be brought before the judges, and shall swear that he hath not put forth his own hand upon the property of his neighbour" (Exodus 22:7).
The scenario: someone has left valuables in your safekeeping. A thief breaks in, steals them, and vanishes. What happens now?
The Targum preserves the two-step investigation. If the thief is caught, he pays double — the principle of kefel that governs all biblical theft law. The depositor is made whole. But if the thief escapes? Now suspicion turns inward. Did the trustee himself take the item and claim a theft? The Targum is blunt: the master of the house shall be brought before the judges.
And the resolution is neither conviction nor acquittal. It is an oath. The trustee stands before the beth din and swears that his hand did not touch his neighbor's goods. If he swears truly, he goes free. If he swears falsely, he has added the sin of a false oath — and we have already seen what the Targum thinks of that (Exodus 20:7). The Day of Great Judgment will find him.
This is ancient but sophisticated jurisprudence. Without fingerprints, without cameras, without forensic evidence, the Torah relies on the ultimate form of self-incrimination — the oath in the name of God. A thief might steal from a neighbor, but only the hardest heart will swear falsely in God's name to cover it up. The oath becomes a filter: honest trustees clear their names; dishonest trustees either refuse the oath (and pay) or swear falsely (and face Heaven's court).
The takeaway: when human evidence runs out, the Torah invokes the one witness who cannot be deceived — the self, under oath, before God.