Bava Kamma 097

1:
We have reached the last mishnah of this chapter. In the Babylonian Talmud this mishnah is the direct continuation of the previous mishnah and they are presented as one mishnah. This is logical, because our present mishnah continues to elaborate on the efforts of an erstwhile thief who wishes to put matters right.

2:
We have seen that there are two stages in the process by which the repentant thief can right the wrong he has done: he must repay what he stole together with an "added fifth" and, when the Bet Mikdash was still in existence, he had to bring a guilt offering. Thus he would expiate his sin against his fellow man and against his God.

3:
We have also seen, in the previous mishnah, that if it is no longer possible for the thief to repay what he stole to the person from whom he stole or his heirs he must give the money to one of the priests on duty in the Bet Mikdash. The first clause of our mishnah states that once the money that was stolen has been given to a priest in the Bet Mikdash, should some previously unknown heir suddenly appear he cannot claim the money from the priest. This is because the Torah [Numbers 5:10] specifically says that "each priest shall keep what is given to him."

4:
The process of putting matters right must follow a strict order: first the money must be delivered (to the person from whom it was stolen or to his heir or to a priest) and then the thief must bring his guilt-offering. In other words, first the offended party must be appeased and only then shall God be appeased concerning the sin of theft which had been committed.

5:
The remaining clauses of our mishnah elaborate on this issue of which element of the process must precede the other. It is logical to assume that a thief in such a situation will pay the money to a priest and present the same priest with his guilt-offering for sacrifice. But this need not be the case. What if one priest gets the money and a different priest – even at a different time – receives the animal for sacrifice?

6:
When we studied tractate Tamid we learned that all the priests were divided up into 24 divisions and each division provided the religious staff of the Bet Mikdash for one week on a rota system. Each of these divisions was given a name, deriving from an eponymous ancestor.

7:
So, if our thief delivered the money to a priest from the Yehoyariv division and delivered his animal for sacrifice to another priest from the Yedayah division the process is valid provided that the priest from the Yedayah division brought the man's sacrifice to the altar at a time later than the time when the money was delivered to the priest from the Yehoyariv division: if the animal was still alive at the moment the money changed hands the process is valid. However, if the priest from the Yedayah division offered the animal as a sacrifice before the thief had delivered the money to the other priest the process is not valid – and a second animal must be sacrificed.

8:
The last clause of our mishnah explains that the requirement that repayment precede sacrifice applies only to the original amount stolen. If the thief has not yet repaid the "added fifth" the process is still valid.

9:
This conlcudes our study of Chapter 9. God willing, in our next shiur we shall begin our study of Chapter 10, the last chapter of Tractate Bava Kamma.

It surprises me that this question of Reuven Artzi has not been asked until now!

Male heirs, male heirs, but not one female heir?? (And what about the daughters of Zelofḥad?)

I respond:

Zelofḥad, man from the tribe of Menasheh, had five daughters and no sons [Numbers 27:1-11]. In a tribal system where land was the essential part of a man's estate it would cause havoc to the system if women were to inherit their father's estate because they would then marry and the ownership of the land would be transferred a man from a different tribe. The ruling in the case of the daughters of Zelofḥad is that they may inherit their father's land provided that they married only a man from their own tribe. After the collapse of the tribal system with increasing urbanization the ruling was of no consequence.

Some time ago I answered a question concerning the rights of a wife subsequent to her husband's death. This applies here too. Let me give a brief recapitulation.

A woman's private property became her husband's property upon their marriage. (There were certain exceptions but they need not detain us now.) A man's estate was to be inherited by his nearest male relatives – sons, and grandsons in the line of descent if the sons were deceased; or brothers, uncles and so forth in a line of ascent. The man's wife and daughters inherited certain rights. The main rights of the wife were the right to continue in residence in her husband's home and the right to be fed and clothed by her husband's heir. These rights were to continue until she remarried or until the heir paid her off the money of her Ketubbah which he inherited from the deceased. The daughters had the same rights until they married. But neither wife nor daughter inherited the estate of the deceased.