One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת גְּזֵלָה וַאֲבֵדָה
Robbery and Lost Property · Chapters 4-6
Sefer Nezikin · Proving a Robbery • The Law of the King • The Borders of Robbery
2
Witnesses that cost
a robber his oath
5
Claimants one robber
must pay in full
4
Mil from a town
before you may snare
50
Cubits: a dovecote's
distance from the village
Ch 4Oaths, Witnesses, and What Cannot Be Proved
- The oath is moved to the victim. As a penalty on robbers, where two witnesses saw a man enter empty handed and leave with utensils under his cloak that they cannot identify, the owner swears while holding a sacred article and collects everything he claims. (4:1-2)
- Three limits on that penalty. It applies only to articles the owner plausibly owned or might have been given for safekeeping, and only to what could be carried out as the witnesses describe. Where the witnesses never saw him leave carrying anything, he is exempt even if he denies entering, since entering with intent is not taking. (4:3-4)
- One witness is not a robber. With a single witness, the oath returns to the defendant. The owner's watchman, or even the watchman's wife, may swear in the owner's place; a hired worker or harvester may not. (4:5-7)
- When nobody can swear, a cherem. Owner absent, witnesses unable to identify, robber untrusted with an oath: the owner has a ban of ostracism issued against whoever took and will not admit it, and recovers only what the man admits. (4:8)
RememberRob one of five and the Sages make you pay all five. Turn yourself in to two men who never knew, and the law asks one payment split between them, because nobody is lodging a claim.
Ch 5Downstream of a Robbery, and the Law of the King
- Do not buy it, use it, or stand in it. Helping a robber acquire or alter stolen goods violates "do not place a stumbling block before the blind." A stolen animal may not be ridden, a stolen field not crossed even for shade, a bridge of stolen palm trees not walked on. (5:1-3)
- Who absorbs the loss. Eat it after the owner despaired and you owe nothing; before despair the owner may collect from the eater or from the robber. Heirs repay from land, and by the Geonim's ordinance from movable property too. (5:4-6)
- Market stability takanat hashuk. If the robber's reputation was public knowledge the buyer gets nothing; otherwise the owner reimburses the buyer's price, takes the article, and sues the robber. After despair, the purchaser keeps it outright. (5:7)
- The king's law is law. A collector with unlimited discretion is a highwayman; one taking a fixed share set by the king, adding nothing, is of upright character, and evading that tax is taking what is due the king. A universal decree is law; seizing from one man arbitrarily is robbery. (5:11-14)
RememberThe test of a government is its currency. If the king's coins are the tender of the land, the people accepted him; if not, he and his servants are a band of armed thieves and none of his laws bind.
Ch 6The Borders: Rescues, Doves, Dice and Bees
- Rescue turns on despair. Beams swept off by a river, articles pulled from a flood, a fire, or a lion's mouth are the finder's if the owners despaired, returnable if he does not know, and certainly returnable while they are chasing them. (6:1-3)
- Small borders, exact lines. Fresh cress among flax may be taken because it is damaging the flax; dried cress may not, and cress on the border not even fresh. Straw and hay in the public domain may be taken, feces never. Coats swapped at a mourner's or a celebration may not be worn. (6:4-6)
- Robbery by rabbinic decree. Setting doves into flight to bring back a neighbor's birds, snaring within four mil of a settlement or a hundred mil in vineyard country, dice played for stakes, and animal races: consent does not help, because the money is taken for nothing, as part of a sport. (6:7-11)
- What has not yet reached a hand. Emptying another man's snare is rabbinic robbery only, since the catch never entered his possession; olives a poor man has gathered and thrown down are full robbery. Bees are acquired rabbinically, and their owner may enter a field to retrieve a swarm, paying for damage but never cutting a branch on the promise to pay. (6:12-15)
RememberPlay dice with a gentile and it is not robbery, but it is occupying yourself with empty matters, and a person's days belong to words of wisdom or to pursuits that settle the world.