Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was once asked a question that sounds strange to modern ears. Why does Jewish law punish a thief — who works by stealth — more severely than a robber, who takes by force? The robber is the more violent man. The thief is only sneaky.
The Rabbi's answer, preserved in the Mishnah (Bava Kama 7:1) and the Tosefta, reframed the whole question. "The robber," Yochanan ben Zakkai explained, "treats God and a slave alike. He does his work in broad daylight. He does not care who sees him — not a passerby, not his victim, not the Holy One. Everyone is equally beside the point to him. The thief, though, treats God even worse. He hides from human witnesses because he fears them. He does not hide from God because he has decided God cannot see or hear. He honors the slave — the human witness — more than he honors the Master of the Universe."
Rabbi Meir, in the name of Rabban Gamliel, added a complementary parable. "The thief is like a man who invites all the people of the town to a feast but leaves the prince off the guest list. He has acknowledged everyone else as important enough to court and flattered. He alone has he snubbed. The robber is like a man who invites no one at all. He insults the prince, but at least he insults everyone equally. The thief is the worse offender — because he has signaled, by his selective flattery, whom he really fears."
The teaching, preserved as exemplum no. 278 in Moses Gaster's 1924 The Exempla of the Rabbis, is a quiet diagnostic. A person's sins reveal not just their moral failures but their cosmology. What do you hide? From whom? The answer to those questions, the Rabbis say, will tell you exactly how much of your own faith you actually believe.