A Brief Note on S 5:38

And the male thief and the female thief--cut off their hands as repayment for what they have earned as an exemplary punishment from Allah. And Allah is mighty, wise.

Their hands are to be chopped off. But the problem, apart from the obvious, is that the text has hands in the Arabic plural--i.e. three or more. The word in question is aydiyahumā. We might have expected YADAhumā. Yad is the singular, plural: aydin or ayādin. -humā is the third person dual pronominal suffix 'their', used of two persons.

1) Two thieves are mentioned, a male and a female; is a male thief to be mutilated alongside a female thief and the one losing both hands and the other the one?

2) Have they earned the thing stolen?

3) Is mutilation repayment? How might that benefit the victim of theft?

جَزَاء • (jazāʾ) m

1. verbal noun of جَزَى‎ (jazā, “to repay, reward, punish”) (form I)

2. repayment

3. recompense, return quotations ▼

   1. punishment, penalty

1. compensation, set-off

2. amends, reparation

جزاء - Wiktionary

Further reading: The Penalty for Theft