The Ban Addressed to Nobody

About This Talk

Chapter 4 is a penalty built out of oaths: because the Sages penalized robbers, where two witnesses saw a man enter a home carrying nothing and leave with unidentifiable utensils under his cloak, the owner swears while holding a sacred article and collects everything he claims, though only for articles he might plausibly have owned or been given for safekeeping and only for what could have been removed as the witnesses describe; if they never saw him leave carrying anything he is exempt even when he lies and denies entering, since entering with intent is not taking, and with one witness the oath returns to the defendant, who is no robber on a single testimony. A watchman, or even the watchman's wife, may swear in the owner's place while a hired worker or harvester may not, and where the owner was absent, the witnesses cannot identify the goods and the robber is trusted with no oath, the owner has a ban of ostracism issued against whoever took and will not admit it, recovering only what the man admits. Rob one of five who each claim it and the Sages make him pay all five after their oaths, though Scripturally a doubtful victim means no liability; notify two men yourself that you robbed one of them of a maneh and the law asks a single payment divided between them, because nobody is lodging a claim, while fulfilling the obligation to Heaven means paying each in full. A man who enters an absent owner's home and removes utensils before witnesses is a presumed robber who must return them first and sue afterward, and throughout the chapter the rule holds that whoever is obligated to swear and cannot swear must pay, as with the slab of silver and the twenty gold coins, where the Rambam records his own dissenting opinion that only a rabbinic oath is due. Chapter 5 follows the object downstream: no buying from a robber and no helping him change its form, which is placing a stumbling block before the blind; no riding a stolen animal, crossing a bridge of stolen palm trees, or entering a stolen house even for shelter from rain; eating it after despair carries no liability and before despair the owner may collect from the eater, heirs repay from land and, by the Geonim's ordinance, from movable property; for the sake of trade the buyer from a robber of no public reputation is reimbursed his price by the owner, who then sues the robber. Then the law of the king: a collector with unlimited discretion is a highwayman, but one taking a fixed share who adds nothing is of upright character and evading that tax is taking what is due the king, whether the king is Jewish or gentile; a universal decree is law and an arbitrary seizure from one man is robbery; a field sold for its own unpaid tax is validly sold while a field sold for an unpaid head tax is not, since a head tax is personal and may not be collected from land; and all of it holds only where the king's coins are the tender of the land, which is the proof that the people accepted him, failing which he and his servants are a band of armed thieves whose laws do not bind. Chapter 6 walks the border: beams swept away by a river, articles saved from a fire or a lion's mouth, turn on whether the owners despaired; fresh cress in the flax may be taken because it damages the flax and dried cress may not; straw in the public domain may be taken and feces never; coats swapped at a mourner's house or a celebration may not be worn until the owner trades back. Then the rabbinic tier, which is robbery that judges cannot expropriate and that carries no added fifth for a false oath: 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, a dovecote nearer than fifty cubits to a village, dice and animal races where consent does not help because the money is taken for nothing as part of a sport, playing with a gentile which is not robbery but is occupying oneself with empty matters, emptying another man's snare before the catch ever entered his possession, olives a poor man gathered and threw down, and a swarm of bees acquired by rabbinic law alone, whose owner may enter a field to retrieve it and pay for the damage but may never cut a branch on the promise of paying later, and about whose origin a woman or a minor is believed in the course of conversation.