One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
חובל ומזיק
Chovel u'Mazik 4-6
Sefer Nezikin · One Who Injures a Person or Property · Who collects the five assessments, why payment never closes a bodily injury, and how domain and timing decide liability for property.
5
Assessments, each with its own owner
2/3
To the wife when the wound is concealed
1
Prutah: below it, lashes and no fine
6
Ways the donkey is split when nobody knows
Ch 4Who collects, and who cannot be sued
- The fetus is assessed to the husband. Strike a pregnant woman and cause a miscarriage and you pay her for the injury and the pain, and pay her husband the difference between her value before birth and after it. If he died first, or if she was a maidservant or gentile at conception and was freed or converted before the blow, the fetus assessment is hers. (4:1-4)
- A capital act cancels the money. If she miscarries and dies, nothing is paid, even unintentionally, because Scripture does not distinguish intent where the court can execute. Same for drawing blood from a parent or injuring anyone on Shabbat, where the Rambam calls injuring constructive work because the man is satisfying his evil inclination. Yom Kippur is the exception: he pays, though the act carries lashes. (4:5-9)
- A visible wound splits one way, a hidden one the other. A stranger who injures a married woman pays the lost wages and medical costs to her husband; for damage and shame, a wound on her face, neck, hands or arms is one third hers and two thirds his, and a concealed wound is two thirds hers and one third his. If her own husband injures her, the whole sum is hers outright and he has no rights to the income from it. (4:15-16)
- A minor's debt never attaches; a wife's is only parked. A deaf mute, a mentally incompetent person or a minor who injures someone owes nothing, and still owes nothing after gaining speech, competence or majority. A servant or married woman who injures is competent, so the obligation waits and is collected once she is divorced or widowed or he is freed. (4:20-21)
RememberEvery one of the five assessments has an owner, and the person who bled is frequently not the one who collects.
Ch 5The prohibition, and the debt money cannot close
- Raising a hand is already the offense. It is forbidden to injure anyone, including yourself, learned by a kal vachomer from the Torah's limit on a convict's lashes. One who lifts a hand without landing the blow is called a wicked person. A blow too slight to be worth a prutah brings lashes, since there is no fine to levy. (5:1-3)
- Admission pays three of the five. Where no witnesses saw it, his own confession does not create the damage and pain payments, which are penalties. It does create the lost work, medical and embarrassment payments. The embarrassment is genuine because a private injury shames nobody; it is the admission in court that does the shaming. (5:6-8)
- Property closes with payment, a body does not. One who damages property receives atonement when he pays what he owes. One who injures a person does not, not with all the rams of Nevayot, until he asks the injured man to forgive him. And the injured man is forbidden to be cruel: once asked twice by someone visibly repentant, he must forgive. (5:9-10)
- You may give away your jug, not your eye. "Break my jug and you are not liable" exempts; "blind my eye and you are not liable" leaves full liability, since it is known nobody truly wants that. Told to break a third party's utensil, the one who swings pays in full, while the one who gave the order pays nothing and is a partner in the transgression who placed a stumbling block before the blind. (5:11-13)
RememberPayment closes a jug. Only a request out of your own mouth closes a face.
Ch 6Property: domain, timing and the shared street
- Full liability even for forces beyond control, but only on the owner's ground. Fall off a roof onto his dishes, or trip and land on a utensil, and you pay the full damage whether or not you meant it. On your own ground you pay only if you did it deliberately; on a third party's ground, with permission or without, an accident costs you nothing. (6:1-4)
- Stopping to rest is liable; stopping to adjust is not. Beam in front, jug behind, both walking the public domain: no liability. If the beam carrier halted to rest under the weight without calling out, he pays. If he halted to shift the load, he counts as still walking and pays nothing, and warning the man behind also clears him. (6:8)
- The runner pays, except at the edge of Shabbat. Walker and runner collide and the runner pays for departing from the norm. After sunset on Friday he does not, since he has permission to hurry so Shabbat does not find him unready. If both were running, neither pays, on any day of the week. (6:9)
- Your force is your hand until it comes to rest. A thrown stone, a shot arrow, an opened channel of water, a blacksmith's spark off the anvil, spit or mucus still traveling by your power: all are your own hand. Once the spittle settles on the ground and a man slips on it later, it is judged as a cistern instead. (6:10-11)
RememberLiability for property is mostly a question about location and timing, and sometimes about three seconds of standing still.