One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
חובל ומזיק
Chovel u'Mazik 1-3
Sefer Nezikin · One Who Injures a Person or Property · A new treatise opens: five separate payments for one wound, each measured against the particular person who suffered it, and the one harm no court can price.
100
Sela'im for a backhand slap
35
Gold dinarim for shaming a scholar
Ch 1An Eye for Its Price
- Five assessments, never retaliation. One who injures pays depreciation (nezek), pain, medical treatment, lost work and shame, all from his choicest property. "An eye for an eye" is proven to mean money because the same verse continues "a blow for a blow," and for a blow the Torah states outright that he pays idleness and medicine (1:1-5)
- No mercy inside the number. "Do not have compassion" is addressed to the assessors: neither his poverty nor his lack of intent may be allowed to shave the sum down (1:4)
- A man is mu'ad at all times. Awake, asleep, intoxicated, deliberate or careless, he pays. But where one man was already asleep and the other lay down beside him afterward, only the latecomer is mu'ad, and the sleeper who rolls over and tears his garment owes nothing (1:11)
- Shame is the one payment needing intent. So a wood chopper whose chip wounds someone, or a customer struck in the face by a block in a carpenter's shop, with permission or without it, yields four payments and no shame. A trespasser may be removed but not injured, and he too is paid (1:10, 1:16-17)
RememberMoney is not a substitute for the eye. It is what a court is able to do about the eye.
Ch 2The Price Is Person Shaped
- The five scale down. A severed finger carries all five; a swelling that will subside carries four; a blow where nothing shows carries pain and treatment only; a swat with a handkerchief carries shame alone; a locked room carries lost wages alone (2:2-3)
- Permanent loss triggers everything. A knocked out tooth, hair burned away so it never regrows, even a barleycorn of flesh: all five. The gums still need treatment, scar tissue replaces skin, and a man who was fit to dance and shake his locks has lost that trade (2:4-6)
- Fright is a debt of Heaven only. Scaring a man into illness, or shouting until he is deafened, without touching him, carries no earthly liability but a moral and spiritual obligation to compensate. Seize him first and blow a horn in his ear and the court does collect; deafness costs his entire worth (2:7, 2:12)
- Pain is priced to the sufferer. A delicate wealthy man and a strong poor laborer are owed different sums for the same wound. For a lost limb, ask what he would pay to have it removed by a drug rather than by a sword (2:9-10)
- The medical money has its own rules. The lump sum assessment is an enactment for the injurer's benefit, so he may decline it and pay day by day. The victim may not take cash and heal himself, and the injurer may not supply a physician who works for nothing; he must bring a professional who charges (2:14-18)
RememberThere is no such thing as the price of a hand. Only the price of his hand.
Ch 3Where the Money Runs Out
- Shame is measured on both parties. Everything depends on the character of the one who shames and the one shamed, and the Rambam rules that shame caused by an ignoble person is greater, not lesser (3:1)
- Only a felt shame is payable. Nothing is owed for shaming a man already naked, a bathhouse bather, or one who has lost his mind. A deaf mute, a convert, a servant and a sleeping man are owed; a minor only if he feels the shame; a man who died in his sleep unaware is not collected for, though a seizure by his heirs stands (3:2-4)
- Words carry no payment, and the gravest guilt. Verbal abuse, or spitting on clothing rather than skin, brings no financial penalty, only restraints the court imposes as it sees fit in each place and time. Yet whoever shames a proper Jew publicly with words has no share in the world to come, and only a wicked and foolish person insults people (3:5, 3:7)
- Two fixed tariffs. A Torah scholar collects the full measure of shame for mere words, a set 35 gold dinarim, exacted in Eretz Yisrael and the diaspora alike. And the Sages fixed per blow sums: a kick 5 sela'im, a knee 3, a fist 13, a palm 1, a slap in the face 50, a backhand or a pulled head covering 100, charged for every single blow (3:5, 3:9)
RememberThose fixed sums are for a man who minds; a man who does not mind receives only what the judges assess (3:11). The one injury with no invoice is the one that costs a share in the world to come.