One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת נִזְקֵי מָמוֹן
Damages to Property · Chapters 12-14
Sefer Nezikin · The Pit and Its Owner • Every Obstacle Is a Pit • Fire as His Arrows (the treatise closes)
10
Handbreadths: the depth
at which a fall kills
8
Cubits of water
a fire will not cross
30
Days to take down
an unsound wall or tree
16
Cubits: the narrowest
a public path may be
Ch 12The Pit, and Who Owns a Hole
- The verse demands an owner. Dig in the public domain and you pay in full though the ground is not yours, since you dug without permission. Dig on your own land with the opening facing out, or renounce the land while keeping the pit, and you pay. Renounce land and pit together and you owe nothing, because "the owner of the cistern must pay" requires an owner. Buying or inheriting a field with a pit makes you that owner. (12:1-3)
- Ten handbreadths is the killing depth. Pit, ditch, cave and trench are one law; the Torah says cistern to teach the depth sufficient to kill, which is ten handbreadths. Below ten there is no payment for a death but full payment for an injury, and the same applies to a mound ten handbreadths high. A pit stuffed with wads of wool still obligates, since the air alone can kill. (12:1, 12:10, 12:14-15)
- An ox and not a man, a donkey and not utensils. No liability for a human being who falls in and dies, even if blind, even at night, free man or servant. Nor for a mentally competent animal that fell by day, since animals watch their footing. Liability runs for the small, the blind, the incompetent animal and the fall at night, and for full damages where a competent human or animal is merely injured. (12:16)
- Covers, partners and watchmen. A cover that holds oxen but not camels obligates him wherever camels pass even rarely; one that decayed from within exempts him. Of two partners the first bears it until he hands over the buckets. A pit entrusted to a deaf mute, an incompetent or a minor stays the owner's, since pits get uncovered. Borrowed buckets reclaimed by their owner leave the liability with him. (12:4-9)
RememberAn ox pushes an animal into a pit: if mu'ad, half from each owner; if tam, a quarter from the ox's own body and three quarters from the pit owner's choicest property, since the animal is treated as having fallen at night.
Ch 13Derivatives: Everything Left in the Road
- Every obstacle is a pit. A cistern is a primary category whose derivatives are mu'ad from the outset, and whenever a person leaves an obstruction in the path of living beings that is a pit. A stone, knife, straw or load left in public obligates full damages to a person or animal whether or not he declared it ownerless, and never anything for utensils, even an ox's load that broke in the fall. (13:1-3)
- Who should have been looking. A passerby who breaks your jug in the road owes nothing, "for it is not the practice of people to look out on the way as they walk," and you pay for his injury even if you renounced the jug. In front of the wine vats, where jugs belong, the passerby pays and you owe nothing, unless it was dark or you filled the whole path with jugs. (13:5-6)
- A body can be a pit. A potter who fell and could have risen pays for the next man's body, not his vessels; where the third man was hurt by the second man's load the claim fails, for "I did not dig this cistern." A jug that broke by accident leaves no court liability, only a moral obligation to gather the shards. A warning given clears the man who fell. (13:7-11)
- Out in the street. Water poured in public obligates even once absorbed if the ground stays slippery. Sewage is barred in the dry months and permitted in the rains, with liability either way, because permission is not immunity. An unsound wall or tree gets 30 days. Balconies must clear a camel and its rider, nothing dug beneath a public road, and a public path is never under 16 cubits. (13:12-13, 13:19, 13:23-27)
RememberThe pious men of earlier generations buried their thorns and broken glass three handbreadths down, below any plow, or burned them, or threw them in the river. No halacha required it.
Ch 14Fire, and the Last Word of the Treatise
- Distance is measured against the flame. Kindling in another man's field is full liability even with precautions. On your own land you must retreat by the height of the fire; a stream or rain pool eight cubits wide, or a wall measured against the flame and the fuel near it, clears you. A flame that rears up and bends over gets no estimate at all: a thousand cubits and he pays. (14:1-3)
- Who was holding it. Give a child or an incompetent a coal and no court charges you, only a moral obligation, since coals usually die out; give a flame and the damage is yours. A competent agent or an appointed watchman bears it himself. Of wood and flame, whoever came second pays, and the one who fanned it pays; an uncommon wind exempts everyone. (14:5-7)
- Hidden property. A thresher or cattle yoke burnt inside a grain heap is paid for, clothing and glassware are not, since nobody hides them there. A fire begun on his own land pays nothing for hidden goods but pays as though that space had held wheat or barley. Burn a man's house and you pay for all it contained, on his oath taken while holding a sacred article. (14:8-9, 14:12)
- Fire is his arrows. A fire that injures a person obligates all five payments, damages, lost work, medical costs, pain and humiliation, exactly as if he had struck the man himself, where an animal or a pit obligates the bare damages alone. The camel overloaded with flax pays for the burnt stall; a shopkeeper whose lamp sat outside pays instead and refunds the flax, even a Chanukah lamp, since he should have sat and watched it. (14:13, 14:15)
RememberNizkei Mamon ends on the derivatives of fire: a stone, a knife or a load left on your roof and brought down by an ordinary wind is reckoned as fire, not as a pit. An uncommon wind exempts.