1:
Mishnah 3 is a direct continuation of what was discussed in the previous mishnah and mishnah 4 is essentially an amplificatory explanation of mishnah 3. The first of the two mishnayot which are the subject of today's shiur is possibly one of the most enigmatic that we could find. However, a little imagination together with the good offices of mishnah 4 will help along our understanding. The mishnayot in this chapter may sometimes seem to us to be dealing with imponderable
minutiae, but to the agricultural economy of mishnaic times they were of technical importance. Since the Torah allocates to the poor any sheaf that remains after the farmer has cleared his field of his reaped crop it is essential (for the poor at least) to define what may be considered 'forgotten' in the sense intended by the Torah and what is not.
2:
In order to understand the intentions of the Mishnah here we must try to transport ourselves into the situation in a field being harvested in earlier times. As we have progressed through this tractate we have gradually seen unfold the harvesting process which the sages knew. The reapers would embrace an armful of wheat and with their other hand would cut it near the ground with their scythe. They would then deposit the reaped armful into a bag held by another worker following behind them. When his bag was full the worker would dump the contents of his bag onto the ground in some designated free space in the field. (Where there were not enough working hands the reaper himself would have to dump his armfuls in the designated space.) Obviously, as the harvesting of the field progressed more and more space would become available for these reaped 'armfuls'.
3:
Other workers would take these armfuls and arrange them in larger bundles and these larger bundles would eventually be built into stacks for convenient transporting from the field to the granary where they would be stored and processed. (In mishnah 3 the granary is termed 'town' in order to distinguish it from the field which is 'country'.)
4:
Now let us try to imagine a field which has been reaped and the work force is getting the crop ready for transportation. The bare field will now have orderly rows of sheaves of wheat where they were bundled. For the sake of convenience let us imagine that the field now consists of ten rows of sheaves and that each row consists of ten sheaves. A worker collecting the sheaves from the northernmost row might leave one sheaf in place in order to indicate where the next row to its east begins. According to mishnah 3 the orderly nature in which these uncollected sheaves are left serves to 'prove' that they have not been 'forgotten' – however much the waiting poor may wish to claim otherwise.
5:
Now let us now imagine that two workers start collecting the sheaves from the outermost row in order to prepare them for transportation or stacking. They stand in the middle of the row, one facing one way and the second facing the other way, and they start collecting the sheaves, gradually moving away from each other. Almost inevitably one sheaf is going to be left uncollected because each worker, with his back to the other, assumes that it was collected by his colleague. Mishnah 4 teaches that this sheaf, which is behind them both, is not to be considered shikheĥah – a forgotten sheaf which becomes the property of the poor: when they reach the end of the row they will realize and correct their mistake. However, if one of them ignores a sheaf which was in the direction in which he was facing ('ahead') it does come under the category of shikheĥah.
6:
The opposite applies when a single worker is involved. If he missed a sheaf in the middle of the row ('behind' him) this sheaf must be considered 'forgotten' because he has passed it by without collecting it and by Torah law he may not 'turn back' to get it. But if the sheaf is still ahead of him and he leaves it in place in order that it serve as a marker (as described in #4 above) when he starts on the next row that marker sheaf is not to be considered 'forgotten': it was still 'ahead' of him and he intends to deal with it at the end of the process, when he collects the last row of sheaves.
7:
The seifa [last clause] of mishnah 4 introduces a general rule. In order to understand this general rule we must first reference the original legislation of the Torah [Deuteronomy 24:19]:
When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow – in order that your God may bless you in all your undertakings.
Any sheaf which would require the worker to backtrack in order to retrieve it is to be considered 'forgotten' and it comes under the general rubric of '
do not turn back to get it'.
8:
The 'everyone' at the end of mishnah 3 refers to Bet Hillel. This connects with the previous mishnah. Bet Hillel admit to Bet Shammai that when a sheaf has been handled – collected – by the workers it may not be considered thereafter as shikheĥah even if it has not yet been transported from the field with the others. The fact that it was collected with the others, as described above, indicates the farmer's intention of removing that sheaf to the granary.
