One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת חוֹבֵל וּמַזִּיק · הִלְכוֹת רוֹצֵחַ וּשְׁמִירַת נֶפֶשׁ
One Who Injures a Person or Property 7-8 · Murderer and the Preservation of Life 1
Sefer Nezikin · Chovel u'Mazik closes and Rotze'ach u'Shmirat Nefesh opens • Damage the eye cannot see • The informer • The pursuer and the duty to save
10
Gold pieces for taking
another man's mitzvah
0
Owed by a rescuer who
breaks things in the chase
3
Commandments broken
by watching a pursuit
1
Soul destroyed, counted
as a whole world destroyed
Chovel 7Damage the Eye Cannot See
- Invisible damage is a penalty, not a debt. Harm that is not evident to the eye carries no Scriptural liability, since the object has not changed and its form is not altered. The Sages imposed payment anyway for the drop in value, collected from his finest property: rendering a colleague's food impure, mixing produce into terumah so the batch becomes dimu'a, letting one drop of idolatrous wine forbid a whole barrel. They enacted it so that a ravager could not ruin produce and then plead that nothing was technically owed. It is a penalty, so one who damaged inadvertently or under forces beyond his control pays nothing. (7:1-3)
- Intent decides, and some debts have no bailiff. Priests who deliberately render a sacrifice piggul repay the owner and are exempt if they did it unintentionally, and the same holds for deliberately working with a red heifer or the water for its ashes. One who brings the heifer to a threshing floor so she will nurse and thresh, and one carrying purification water whose attention drifts, are not liable in an earthly court and are still obligated to pay. Pouring a colleague's wine as a libation does not forbid it unless the pourer is a partner, an apostate, or was warned, acknowledged it and poured anyway. (7:4-6)
- The primary cause pays; a finished loss does not. Throw your own utensil onto pillows and a second man pulls the pillows away, and he pays the whole damage as if he broke it by hand. Throw another man's utensil onto the owner's pillows and the owner pulls them away, and the thrower pays; if a third party pulls them, both pay. But smash a utensil with a staff while it falls toward bare ground and you owe nothing, since it is as if you broke a broken utensil. (7:7-8, 7:12)
- Paper, liens and imprints are value too. Burn a colleague's promissory notes and pay the whole debt, but only if you admit the note was validated in court, for that sum, and that it can no longer be collected; deny any of it and you owe the price of the paper. Sell a note and then waive the debt and you owe the buyer what he can no longer collect. Free a servant you pledged as security and you owe the creditor. Scraping the imprint off his dinarim, blemishing his cow's ear, pushing him so his coin rolls into the sea: all paid. Slaughtering an ox already condemned, or covering the blood after another man's slaughter, is paid as the judges dictate, with some authorities fixing ten gold pieces for taking a mitzvah he was fit to perform. (7:9-11, 7:13-14)
- When nobody can price the loss. Where the extent is unknown the victim takes an oath, as a robbery victim does, and collects what he claims, provided the claim fits a man like him. A wallet thrown into the sea may be sworn to have held gold coins; a leather sack may not be claimed to have held pearls, since pearls are not kept in sacks, and there the owner is treated as negligent. If the damager admits there were gold coins but cannot say how many, the victim collects his thousand with no oath at all, because the oath has landed on a man who cannot take it. (7:17-19)
RememberThe eye was never the measure. A barrel nobody may drink from is a barrel destroyed, and the Sages priced it even though Scripture would not.
Chovel 8The Informer, Duress, and the Chase
- Pointing is paying. One who informs about a colleague's property and causes a strong, lawless person to take it reimburses the owner from his finest property, and is liable even though he handed over nothing and merely told the man where to look. It makes no difference whether the lawless person is a gentile or a Jew. A king demands wine or straw, a man volunteers the location of a neighbor's storehouse, and the whole seizure is on his account. (8:1, 8:3)
- Duress excuses the mouth, not the hands. Compelled by force to show a colleague's property, he is exempt, since refusal would have had him beaten or killed. Take the property and hand it over and he pays even under that same compulsion, because one who saves himself with money belonging to a colleague must reimburse him. The one exception: if the lawless man was already standing over the goods and they had come into his possession, a Jew compelled to cart them elsewhere is exempt, since it is considered as if everything there had already been consumed by fire. (8:2, 8:4)
- Guardrails around outside power. Two men disputing property, and one turns it over to a gentile: he is placed under a ban until he removes the lawless man, restores the situation, and brings the case to a Jewish court. A man seized on a colleague's account cannot bill him for what was taken, except for the annual head tax owed by every resident or the gift owed when the king and his soldiers require hospitality, and then only if the money was taken explicitly on that man's account before witnesses. Where witnesses saw the informing but cannot value it, a plaintiff who has seized property keeps it on an oath taken while holding a sacred article. (8:5-7)
- No oath, no portion, and a license kept narrow. The voluntary moseir is granted no oath at all, neither the severe oath nor the lighter one, because he is deemed wicked and there is no greater disqualification; one who was compelled is liable but swears like any worthy man. Informing is forbidden even about a man who is wicked, who sins, or who merely causes you irritation, and whoever does it has no portion in the world to come. He may be killed before he informs once he has declared his intent, been warned, and answered brazenly that he will inform anyway; after he has informed, the Rambam writes in his own voice that it appears to him this is forbidden unless informing has become his established pattern. His property may not be destroyed, since his money belongs to his heirs. (8:8-11)
- The chase costs nothing. A pursuer who breaks utensils while chasing, whether his victim's or a stranger's, owes nothing, since the pursuit itself makes him liable to be killed. The pursued owes nothing for the pursuer's property, which is not dearer than his life, but pays for a stranger's property, since a man who saves his own life with another's goods must repay. A third party chasing the pursuer to save the victim owes nothing for anything he breaks, and the Rambam says plainly that this is not the letter of the law but a Rabbinic ordinance, so that nobody will hold back or proceed carefully while he runs. The treatise ends on a sinking ship, where the cargo is the pursuer and the man who jettisons it performed a great mitzvah. (8:12-15)
RememberHe carried nothing and he pays for everything. Fear can excuse your mouth; it cannot excuse your hands.
Rotze'ach 1Murder, the Pursuer, and the Duty to Save
- The instrument does not matter, and the redeemer is the heir. Whoever kills transgresses the commandment against murder, and intentional murder before witnesses carries decapitation whether the weapon was iron or fire. It is a mitzvah for the blood redeemer to carry out the execution, and the redeemer is whoever is fit to inherit the victim's estate, man or woman. Where he is unwilling, unable, or there is no relative, the court executes. If a father killed his son, the victim's son must act as redeemer against his grandfather; with no son, the brothers do not, and the court acts instead. (1:1-3)
- No ransom, and no execution by onlookers. The court may not accept ransom to spare a murderer, not all the money in the world and not even where the blood redeemer is willing to forgive, because the soul of the victim is not the property of the redeemer but the property of the Holy One, who commanded that no ransom be taken for the soul of a murderer. Nothing in the Torah is warned against so strongly. And a willful murderer is not to be killed by the witnesses or by those who watched, but brought to court and sentenced, since he may not be put to death until he stands before the congregation in judgment. (1:4-5)
- Everything inverts while the pursuit is still happening. That rule governs a man who has already acted. While one is pursuing a colleague to kill him, even a minor, every Jew is commanded to save the pursued, and the pursuer may be killed although he never acknowledged the warning, since he is still coming. If a limb will do, a limb is required: an arrow, a stone, a sword, his hand, his leg, his sight, whatever stops him short of his objective. Only where there is no way to aim may his life be taken. On this basis a fetus endangering its mother in birth is treated as a pursuer and may be removed, and once the head has emerged it may not be touched, since one life is not set aside for another. (1:6-9)
- The limits are as much law as the license. Pursuit to rape a consecrated maiden, or any woman forbidden as an ervah, carries the same law, since Scripture equates that crime with murder. But one running to desecrate Shabbat or to serve idols may not be struck down in advance and waits for the court. Once the pursuer has seized his victim and begun, he goes to court rather than being slain. If the pursued woman tells her rescuers to let him be out of fear for her life, they do not listen. And a rescuer who could have maimed the pursuer, did not take the trouble, and killed him instead, is regarded as one who shed blood and liable for death, although the court does not execute him. (1:10-13)
- Standing there is the transgression. Whoever can save a life and fails to transgresses the prohibition against standing idly by while your brother's blood is at stake: a colleague drowning at sea, attacked by robbers or by a wild animal, whom you could save yourself or hire others to save; people conspiring against him or laying a snare whose warning you do not pass on; a man of force with a grievance whom you could have appeased on his behalf. One who watches a pursuit and does nothing breaks three commandments at once. No lashes are given, since no forbidden deed was performed, and the Rambam calls them nevertheless very severe: destroying one soul is counted as destroying the whole world, and saving one as saving the whole world. (1:14-16)
RememberEvery case on the Rambam's list is one where the rescuer is safe and merely inconvenienced. The danger excuse is removed so that only indifference is left, and that one is named a transgression.