The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders a tight principle of agricultural damages. "If a man break in upon a field or a vineyard, and send in his beast to feed in another man's field, the best of his field and the best of his vineyard he shall restore" (Exodus 22:4).
The Hebrew is ambiguous — does the damager pay from his own best produce, or from the best of the victim's ruined field? The Targum commits to the first reading. The damager pays from his own best field and his own best vineyard. He does not discount the damage. He does not estimate low. He reaches into his finest produce and hands it over.
This is a moral principle disguised as agricultural law. The Torah assumes a simple truth about human nature: when we owe for damage, we are tempted to pay from our worst. We compensate the broken window with a cracked pane from our scrap pile. We replace the eaten hay with the moldy stuff from the back. The Targum slams that door. The best of his field and the best of his vineyard.
The Talmud (Bava Kamma 6b) extends the principle into all damage law. A person who injures another must pay from their most valuable assets, not their least. The rabbis see in this verse a general axiom: compensation is measured by the victim's loss, not the damager's convenience.
There is also a spiritual reading. The Torah trains the eye of the repairer. If you must pay from your best, you begin to think of your best as already belonging to someone else — to the neighbor whose field you might one day accidentally harm. This is the habit of mind that makes a righteous community.
The takeaway: when you have caused damage, the test of your repentance is not whether you pay, but whether you pay from your best.