Avot321

1:
With this mishnah we begin a series of seven mishnayot that are based on the number four. This is obscured in some versions by the fact that our present mishnah is conjoined with the previous one. We have here adopted the division into mishnayot which Rambam used in his Mishnah Commentary.

2:
In the previous mishnah plague – epidemics and pandemics – was attributed to "capital crimes … not being brought to court and because of seventh-year produce." Our present mishnah takes a different tack. Plague is now attributed to the fact that the poor and needy are not given those donatives to which they are entitled by Torah law. We explained in great detail what are these donatives (that part of his crop which the farmer must set aside for others) when we studied Tractate Pe'ah, so here I shall just give as brief a resumé as possible.

3:
The Torah makes provision for the sustenance of the poor in several ways:

1. In every cycle of seven years a tithe was to be set aside by the agriculturist for the poverty-stricken. In most years, after the donative for the priests had been set aside from the harvested crop the farmer was required to give one tenth of what was left to the Levite of his choice. However, in the third year and sixth year of each cycle this tithe was to be given to the poor.
2. While the produce was still in the fields the poor had the right to gather [glean] some of the wheat, the olives, and the grapes.

For a more detailed discussion of the Destitute's Tithe see Pe'ah 044, paragraph 3. For a more detailed discussion concerning the gleanings please see Pe'ah 077, paragraph 6. The terms appear in that tractate so often that it would be advisable to use the search engine.

4:
The plague which is threatened in the Tokheĥah [Leviticus 26:25] is associated here with the denial of the rights of the poverty-stricken. In the fourth and seventh year of each sabbatical cycle epidemics can break out, says the tanna of our mishnah, because the poor were not given their rightful dues in the outgoing year.

5:
In the first year of the cycle (the one following the seventh) epidemics can break out because the poor were not permitted to collect the produce which grew naturally (without human planning) in all the fields. We have explained the nature of the law of the sabbatical elsewhere in this chapter and there is no need to repeat it here.

6:
Our mishnah says that epidemics could also break out after the festival of Sukkot [Tabernacles] every year. This is because the festival of Sukkot represents the end of the agricultural year: if the poor had not been permitted by then to glean in the fields, the farmers had, to all intents and purposes, stolen that produce from the destitute, because the Torah had transferred the right of ownership of the gleanings from the farmer to the destitute.

7:
Two things stand out from this mishnah. Firstly, the very fact that the mishnah bewails the non-observance of the poor law says loud and clear that already in tannaïtic times not all the farmers permitted the poor to glean in their fields and not all of them set aside the poor man's tithe as required. Secondly, this is the fourth time in this chapter that we have found an accusatory tone regarding the observance (or rather non-observance) of the sabbatical year. This, of course, speaks volumes about the extent to which this law was ignored.

I have been asked (in particular by Ze'ev Orzech) to draw your attention to the blurb that appears beneath the ruled line after every shiur, including this one. You will find there links to the search engine on the home page, the archive of this series of shiurim, and information about dedicating a shiur and also about the RSS (XML) service..