Sotah 060

1:
This mishnah continues with material unrelated to the general topic of the tractate – material which has been prompted by an associational format: midrashic explications given by Rabbi Akiva "on that very day" – on the day that Rabban Gamli'el was deposed from the presidency of the Sanhedrin and replaced by Rabbi El'azar ben-Azaryah.

2:
The Torah [Numbers 35:4-5] presents two verses that seem to be mutually contradictory; and yet the usual suggestion of moderns that there are here two texts from different sources cannot be upheld. All agree that these two verses – consecutive in the Torah – are from one source. The Torah institutes special cities in Eretz-Israel for the tribe of Levi, which had been allocated no territory of its own. The other tribes were to allocate from their particular territory forty-eight towns which were to include a "surround" for "their cattle, possessions and domestic animals". In verse 4 the Torah prescribes as follows:

And then, the continuation in verse 5 reads:

There seems to be a clear contradiction between the two thousand cubits prescribed for the "surround" in one verse and the one thousand cubits prescribed in the other.

3:
In mishnaic times the towns and villages were settlements that were usually enclosed by a protecting wall; outside the wall was a free area in which nothing could be built or planted [Tractate Bava Batra, chapter two]. The Gemara there [Bava Batra 24b] says that this was for aesthetic reasons, though in all probability there were also security considerations involved. This free area was surrounded by allotments, so that every inhabitant who wanted to could have a plot of land on which to grow produce – vegetable gardens, orchards and vineyards, olive groves, cereal crops and so forth. These plots were a part of the family's freehold inheritance and were passed down from generation to generation. Thus the inhabitants could use the produce that they grew for their own sustenance, for selling at a profit, or both. (Certain kinds of livestock were permitted within the towns and villages and other kinds were not permitted even in the allotments – for ecological and social reasons.)

4:
Rabbi Eli'ezer, the son of Rabbi Yosé ha-Gelili, gives a reasonable interpretation to the discrepancy between the two verses of the Torah. The smaller figure refers to the free area outside the walls of the towns which was for recreational purposes, and there was an additional one thousand cubits (making two thousand in all) for kitchen gardens, allotments and so forth. But his interpretation is not the one which tradition accepted. It was the interpretation offered by Rabbi Akiva that became the norm, and broke new ground.

5:
Rabbi Akiva holds that the one thousand cubits outside the walls of the townships refers to the whole of the area allocated for both recreational and horticultural purposes. The two thousand cubits refers to the Sabbath boundary. This is an unenclosed area around the township which is considered to be part of the boundary of the town. One of the requirements of Shabbat is the prevention of travel (by any means). The origin of this restriction is to be found in the Torah [Exodus 16:21-29], which describes the manna provided for the Israelites in their desert wanderings and the way in which it was collected:

The Karaites in the middle ages, who adopted a literal approach to the text of the Torah and denied the validity of the Unwritten Torah of the sages, required their adherents to remain in one room throughout Shabbat. The sages were much more liberal, and interpreted the term "place" in the Torah as meaning "township": "let no one leave his township on the seventh day". One could walk any distance within the town or village where one was when Shabbat began, and one could even walk 2000 cubits (about 1 kilometre) beyond the furthest residence of the place. But that was all. Anyone who went further inadvertently was restricted to his own personal space only [see Gemara, Eruvin 41b].

6:
Today the Sabbath boundary of a town is described by an imaginary square drawn round the town one of whose sides is 1 kilometre distant from the outermost house in the town.