The Market the Thief Needs

About This Talk

Geneivah 4-6 moves the subject from the thief to everybody around him. Chapter four tracks the moment a trusted man converts: a watchman who claims an entrusted article was stolen, swears to it, and is then discredited by witnesses pays twice its worth, "for the watchman is himself a thief," and four or five times for an animal slaughtered or sold after that oath, with no guilt offering and no added fifth, since a fifth is never paid alongside a double payment; but the double payment applies only where the oath preceded the misappropriation, and a man who had already taken the article and only then swore is liable for the principal alone, because the instant he misappropriated it he became liable for it and acquired responsibility for it. Every refuted oath doubles again, even a hundred times over, so five false oaths cost six times the value; a child's deposit generates nothing, since the owner must be past majority both when he entrusts and when he demands; a finder who falsely claims armed robbery pays double from "any lost article"; and a watchman who steals from his own domain ends his watch by the theft, so returning the coin or the lamb does not clear him until he tells the owner, counting the wallet or the herd sufficing only where the owner knew, and a live animal never clearing quietly, because "the thief taught it a way other than that followed by the other sheep in this herd." Chapter five turns to the buyer, calling the purchase of stolen goods a severe sin that reinforces a transgressor, "for if he did not find a person who would purchase a stolen article from him, he would not steal," on Proverbs 29:24, then builds the market ordinance: before the owner despairs the article goes home and he reimburses the purchaser what he paid the thief and sues the thief himself, all to enable uninhibited trade, except that where the thief's reputation was public knowledge the Sages ordained no leniency at all; after despair the purchaser acquires through the despair plus the change of domain, owing the owner value only if the thief was notorious. Goods handed over to settle an existing debt get no leniency and are taken back without payment while the debt stands, goods given as surety are redeemed by the owner, the price paid governs rather than the worth whether it was 100 for an article worth 200 or 200 for one worth 100, and nobody profits: bought for 100 and sold for 120, the final purchaser is paid 120, the markup is recovered from the middleman and the principal from the thief, through a hundred hands if necessary. The chapter ends on proof, where a man not known to sell his belongings, or one whose goods were made to be lent or rented, reclaims what he recognizes after the holder swears to the price, where the night of the lodgers and the tunnel and the bundles on shoulders is believed, and where a known thief leaving a house with goods under his cloak is not believed even claiming purchase. Chapter six then forbids the purchase before any theft is proven: wherever the assumption is that an article is stolen, or most of that substance is stolen, buying is forbidden, so no wool, milk or kids from shepherds in a settled area though milk and cheese in the desert, four sheep or four fleeces from a small herd and five from a large one, the governing test being whether the owner would notice what was sold. Produce watchmen may be bought from only when they sit openly with baskets and scales before them, since then the matter is overt and will be spoken about, at a garden's entrance and not its rear, from a sharecropper who holds a share, not from married women, servants or minors absent a local assumption of the owner's gift as with Galilee linen and Sharon calves, eggs and roosters anywhere, a large measure of oil from a press owner but never a small one, and in every case a seller who says to hide the goods may not be bought from at all. The treatise closes on the craftsman's allowance, where the launderer keeps the fluff and three strands and no more though all black strands off a white garment, the comber's strands belong to the owner, a tailor returns thread beyond a needle's need and any offcut over three fingerbreadths by three, a carpenter keeps his plane shavings but not his hatchet chips and keeps nothing at all when he works as a hired hand, prevailing local custom governs throughout, and a craftsman selling what custom does not grant him may not be bought from because we assume it is stolen.