One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת נִזְקֵי מָמוֹן
Damages to Property · Chapters 6-8
Sefer Nezikin · Making and Unmaking a Mu'ad • Guarding, Injury and Assessment • Whose Ox, and Where the Lien Sits
3
Separate days of goring
that create a mu'ad
100
Gorings in one day
that change nothing
½
A tam's damages, paid
from the ox's own body
90
Zuz: the payment when
the carcass rose to 120
Ch 6What Makes a Mu'ad, and What Unmakes One
- Three days, not one hundred times. Mu'ad means forewarned, and it takes testimony from two acceptable witnesses on three different days. A hundred acts of goring, biting, kicking or lying upon another animal in a single day do not qualify, since the animal may have been disturbed that day and its conduct is not its pattern. Three pairs testifying on one day is an unresolved doubt. (6:1)
- Warned in court, to the owner's face. The verse says the owners shall be warned, so the warning is given in the owner's presence and in a court of judges with semichah. The Rambam therefore rules that since semichah was nullified, no animal is made a mu'ad and these laws do not apply in the present age. (6:2)
- No record travels. Mu'ad toward oxen is not mu'ad toward camels, toward humans not toward animals, toward young animals not toward older ones, toward Sabbaths not toward weekdays. Outside the warning, the owner pays half. There are oxen mu'ad only for alternate days, and one that gores at a shofar blast three times is mu'ad for shofar blasts. (6:8-11)
- Sport and guardianship. Oxen trained to gore each other for a crowd are not mu'adim toward each other, and even one that kills a person is not executed, since "when an ox gores" means on its own initiative. For an ox of a deaf mute, an incompetent, a minor or a man overseas, the owner is exempt and the court appoints a guardian and warns him. (6:3-5)
RememberA sale or a gift returns the ox to tam status, a loan or a deposit does not, and a mu'ad becomes tam again when children play with it and it does not gore them.
Ch 7Guarding, Injury, and Putting a Number On It
- Guarding discharges the mu'ad, never the tam. Tied with a rope and locked in properly, and it broke loose: a mu'ad's owner pays nothing, from "and they did not guard him," implying that if they guarded they are exempt. A tam still pays half, which is why an ox mu'ad with its right horn only pays half with either horn. (7:1-2)
- An animal injuring a person is property damage. Tam pays half from its body, mu'ad pays in full, but nothing for lost work, humiliation, pain or medical costs, since those come from a verse about a man who blemishes his fellow. Yet an ox that injures its owner's father, or burns a grain heap on Shabbat, does create liability where the man's own hands would not. (7:3)
- The uninvited ox in a courtyard. Bring it in without permission and the courtyard owner is exempt if his own ox gores it or his dog bites it; your ox goring his is treated as the public domain, half or full and no more. A courtyard owner who damaged it unknowingly is exempt; knowingly he pays in full, since he may expel the animal but not harm it. (7:4-7)
- Assess the loss, and the carcass goes back. We never say take the broken utensil and pay its worth. "And the carcass will be his": a drop in the carcass's value before trial is the victim's loss, a rise is divided, so a 200-zuz ox whose carcass fell from 100 to 80 costs a mu'ad 100, and one that rose to 120 costs 90. The damager raises the carcass from the cistern himself. (7:8-13)
RememberA wound that keeps worsening is assessed at the trial, but the profit the gored ox never earned is grama and is not paid at all.
Ch 8Whose Ox It Is, and What the Claim Grips
- "An ox belonging to a colleague." Consecrated animals are outside the law of damages in both directions, and so is an ownerless ox; once consecrated, disqualified and redeemed, an animal is back in. A peace offering's damages come from its meat and never from the portions burned on the altar, and a thanksgiving offering's never from its loaves. (8:1-4)
- A tam's lien is on the animal's body. Sold before trial, the victim still collects from it and the buyer recovers from the seller. Consecrated, it is truly consecrated so nobody thinks sanctity lapses without redemption. Slaughtered, he collects from the meat; given away, the gift stands and the claim follows. After the trial, sale, consecration and gift are all void. (8:6-8)
- A mu'ad's lien is on everything the owner owns. Every sale, consecration, gift or slaughter stands, and a creditor who leads the ox away acquires it. Movable property is expropriated first, even poor-quality movables, before any land. From heirs, the land of least value is taken, until the Geonim ordained that movables may be reached too. (8:9-12)
- Nothing without acceptable witnesses. No damages, no atonement payment and no execution of an animal without definite proof from witnesses fit to testify. Shepherds and servants are the only ones in the stalls, and their testimony is still not taken; neither is that of women or minors about an injury. (8:13)
RememberAn ox known to gore, standing beside a gored carcass, proves nothing: circumstantial certainty is not evidence, and we do not say it is certain this one did it.