Pe'ah 008

1:
The Written Torah sets no maximal or minimal limits to the size of the portion of a field that the farmer must leave unharvested as Pe'ah. Nevertheless (and given human frailty, perhaps inevitably), the sages did set minimal limits (and also implied a maximal limit). Our mishnah states that no farmer should leave less than one-sixtieth of his field for the poor to reap as Pe'ah. This is the equivalent of one and two-thirds percent. (Later tradition decided that this amount typifies the miserly and that most farmers would leave two percent and the generous would leave two and one-half percent.)

2:
The sages are justified in setting these limits since, as we have previously explained, the land – and its yield – are not considered as belonging to the farmer in any case. Thus, there is here, a very important distinction between poor law as it is usually understood in the West with poor law as developed in the Torah. The poor person enters another person's field and takes of his produce by right, not by charity. This is why the farmer does not – may not – do the work for the poor person: just as the farmer must labour to reap his part of the field's yield so must the poverty-stricken labour to reap their part of the harvest. That same Power that granted the farmer his rights in the field granted similar rights to the indigent person. Thus, as we shall see several chapter hence, the poor reapers did not feel shame and degradation because they were receiving a 'handout' from the kind heart of a generous agriculturalist: they felt that they were exercising their legal right – nay, their divine right.

3:
My translation of the second clause of our mishnah is not strictly literal. I did this in order to make the text more easily understood. The farmer is exhorted to take into account three criteria when deciding how much of his field he will leave as Pe'ah. First of all he should base the extent of his generosity on the size of his field. The larger the field the more generous he can afford to be. However, this also implies a negative criterion: the farmer should not be overly generous; he should carefully estimate the size of his field and decide how much more than the minimum he can give without harming his own needs and the needs of his household. (Bear in mind that in the kind of agricultural society with which we are dealing most often the family plot was used for personal sustenance rather than for commercial profit.) Thus mishnah 2 sets not only a minimal limit to the mitzvah of Pe'ah, but also a suggested maximal one.

4:
The second criterion upon which the farmer should judge how large a portion of his field should be left as Pe'ah is the extent of poverty. In an agricultural society the extent of poverty can vary widely depending on several factors, including simple meteorology. The number of poor people needing help today is not necessarily the same number as there was yesterday or the same number as there will be tomorrow. The farmer must also bear in mind that people were wont to go from settlement to settlement in search of sustenance, so he could not just take into account local needs. To the greatest extent of his ability he should leave more for the poor to reap if there are many poor people to do the reaping. Conversely, if there are not so many poor people needing to exercise their right to reap his field he may permit himself to be less generous than he otherwise would.

5:
The third criterion is the quality of the yield of his field. The Hebrew term used here is not as clear to us today as it presumably was in mishnaic times. My translation reflects the generally accepted understanding of the term. The quality of the yield that a farmer gets from his field is dependent on many factors. (These would include the richness of the soil, the climate of the area, the watershed and so forth.)

6:
The Gemara [Pe'ah 5b] compares our mishnah with a baraita which reads:

The Gemara understands that this sets a limit on the permitted extent of the farmer's generosity: he may not say to a favoured poor man, "Bring your truck and take as much as you like", because the purpose of the law is to help the poverty-stricken, not to enrich them. The Gemara then brings another baraita:

This baraita suggests that there could be circumstances in which the farmer could suffer because of Pe'ah. However, Rabbi Shim'on understands both situations in terms of benefit of the farmer: If his field is large and there are few poor people he should give according to the number of poor people, and be generous; if his field is small and there are many poor people he should give according to the size of his field and possibly even give less than the required minimum. The Gemara rejects this interpretation and insists that the meaning of our mishnah is that all three criteria must be applied to any given situation and that it should not be interpreted as permitting a farmer to give less than the minimum.

7:
Rambam [Mishneh Torah, Matnot Aniyyim 1:15] summarizes all this as follows: