One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת נַעֲרָה בְתוּלָה
Virgin Maiden · Chapter 2
Sefer Nashim · The Four Payments • How a Court Evaluates • Who Collects • Never a Price
50
Silver pieces: the fine,
identical for every girl
3
Payments owed
by a seducer
4
Payments owed
by a rapist
10
Categories carrying
no fine at all
Part 1The Four Payments, and Where the Fifty Stops
- The fifty covers one thing. The fine is payment for the pleasure of the act and nothing else. Humiliation boshet and damage pegam are charged separately, and pain tza'ar only where she was forced, since the verse about force uses a word of oppression that the seduction verse does not. (2:1-2)
- Flat fine, variable damages. Fifty is the figure whether she is the daughter of the High Priest, of a convert or of a mamzer; humiliation, damage and pain must each be evaluated by the court instead. (2:3)
- Different timing. A seducer pays humiliation and damage at once and owes the fine only if he does not marry her, as the verse says "if her father refuses to allow him to marry her, then he must pay." A rapist pays all four and marries immediately, and may never initiate a divorce. (2:7)
- And nothing afterward. If she chooses to end that marriage or is widowed, she receives nothing further, where another woman would collect on her marriage contract. (2:7)
RememberThree payments for seduction, four for force. The fourth is pain, and the verse's own wording is what adds it.
Part 2How a Court Puts a Number On It
- Humiliation is personal on both sides. It turns on her standing and on his: a girl of known lineage against a poor and unregarded maiden, a man of great stature against a base and empty fellow. (2:4)
- The measure of boshet. The judges assess how much her father and her family would have given to prevent this from happening with this particular man, and that is the sum he owes. (2:5)
- Damage by comparison. Pegam is the difference in what she would fetch, in the Rambam's own stark comparison, as a maidservant offered in the marketplace before and after. (2:6)
- Pain by the bodies involved. Tza'ar is weighed by her youth and the size of her body against his age and size, and by what a father would have paid so that such a daughter not suffer such pain from such a man. (2:6)
RememberThe fine needs no inquiry at all. The other three cannot be set by anyone who has not actually looked at this one person.
Part 3Who Is Owed, and Who Is Not
- Ten carry no fine. A bogeret, a girl who dissolved a childhood marriage by refusal mi'un, a divorcee, an aylonit, a girl who is not mentally competent, one who can neither hear nor speak, a convert, a captive, a freed slave, and one of tarnished reputation. (2:9)
- No fine usually means no damages. Where the fine is not owed, humiliation and damage ordinarily fall away with it. (2:10)
- Four exceptions. Force against a bogeret or a girl who used mi'un still owes humiliation, damage and pain; force against a girl who is not competent or who can neither hear nor speak owes pain. Seduction of any of these four owes nothing at all. (2:10-11)
- Order decides who bears what. Where two men were involved, the one who came first bears the damage as well as the humiliation and the second bears humiliation alone, since the damage was already done; the one who had relations owes the fine and every other payment either way. (2:8)
RememberThe list of ten marks where this one penalty runs out, not degrees of wrong.
Part 4Witnesses, Oaths, and the Father's Hand
- No fine on an admission. A k'nas is established only by witnesses, and an admission exempts him even if witnesses come afterward. He still owes humiliation and damage on his own words, and a flat denial of her claim costs him a rabbinic oath. (2:12)
- Force against seduction. If she claims he forced her and he claims he seduced her, he has admitted part of the claim, so he swears an oath required by Scriptural law over the payment for pain and pays the damage and the humiliation. (2:13)
- Filing fixes the money. Payments go to her father, since all monetary benefit of her youth is his. If she waits until bagrut, marriage or his death before suing, she collects; if she sued while he lived, he collects even after she matures or marries; if he dies after she filed, her brothers inherit the claim. A girl consecrated and then divorced takes the fine alone. (2:14-16)
- Never a price. The Rambam rules in his own voice on "do not defile your daughter" that a father may not make his daughter available in advance for payment. The Torah set a fine for the uncommon and the unplanned; make it an arrangement and no fine is owed at all and both parties are liable to lashes. (2:17)
RememberA fine states that something was wrong. It was never a price, and the moment it functions as one the chapter no longer applies.