1:
Our present mishnah is rather simple to understand but very difficult to translate. This is because it contains many 'technical' terms that are now obsolete. (Or, at least, their meaning will not be immediately clear to someone who has no experience with the harvesting of the fruits of the earth that are the subject of our mishnah.)
2:
Our mishnah is concerned with the extent to which the law of shikheĥah can be applied. We can imagine that the owner of a field or orchard, either because of haste or because of an oversight on his part or on the part of his workers, might forget to collect some of the produce which has been harvested. We can also imagine the crowd of hopeful poor people who are waiting to get into that field to pick up what was forgotten. In the normal run of things we can expect that the owner will want to collect his whole harvest and the poor will want him to forget as much as possible. (I am not forgetting that there may well have been many kindly farmers who instructed their workers to deliberately 'forget' some of the produce. But this is not the situation which our mishnah tries to describe.)
3:
But what if the amount of produce that is accidentally left in the field is so great that it could be ruinous for the farmer? How does one distinguish between what was accidentally 'forgotten' and a major organizational mishap – of the kind that will fill the farmer with despair and the waiting poor with ecstasy?
4:
Our mishnah presents the view of Bet Hillel in this matter: if the workers clearing the field forget to collect one or even two sheaves of wheat they are the legitimate perquisite of the poor. But if the workers accidentally overlook three or more sheaves they cannot be considered shikheĥah and the farmer must be permitted to correct the oversight. I presume that the rationale behind this thinking is that it just is not reasonable to expect that a farmer would normally permit such a grievous error.
5:
Throughout our discussion on the law of shikheĥah so far in this tractate we have used the example of the harvesting of grains – wheat, barley, oats and so forth. But, of course, there were other branches of agriculture to which the law equally applied. As I hinted above, the terms used to described the various agglomerations of produce as it is harvested from the ground or from the trees and bushes are recondite to us today. But the technical differences between the terms used need not prevent us from understanding the purport of the mishnah.
6:
Just as those working in the field of wheat would gather the reaped produce into bundles and stacks so, mutatis mutandis, would be the procedure in harvesting other products. Olives would be heaped beneath the tree; so would carobs. Flax, which would eventually produce linen among other things, would be bundled for collection. Already in Pe'ah 007 we noted that the term shikheĥah was only applied to the grain harvest. The same concept, when applied to the grape harvest, was called peret. (And, even though the term is not used in our present mishnah, as regards the olive harvest it was called pe'er.) Bunches of grapes would be piled beneath the vine for collection. In all such cases, say Bet Hillel, if two piles were inadvertently overlooked they are the perquisite of the poor by Torah law; but if three or more piles were overlooked this is not the case.
7:
The siefa of our mishnah points out that Bet Shammai do not agree with Bet Hillel as to the amounts involved. For them the amounts are higher: if the farmer overlooks three piles they still belong to the poor; it is only when the oversight reaches four piles that the error becomes correctable.
8:
The Gemara [Peah 19c] tries to explain this divergence of views as being hermeneutical. That is to say that the two schools are basing their views on differing interpretations of the Torah. This valiant effort seems very flimsy, and I think that we can be reasonably sure that the true etiology for this divergence of opinion is to be found in the differing economic 'base' of the two schools – as taught by the late Rabbi Eli'ezer Finkelstein (Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, 1941-1972). The Gemara, for what it's worth, says that Bet Shammai relate to the three terms used to indicate the needy in the Torah [Deuteronomy 24:19] – "it shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow". Bet Hillel base their view on on another verse [Leviticus 19:10] where only two examples of indigence are given – "you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger".
