Sotah 086

1:
After the Designated Priest has addressed the people it is the turn of the officers to speak to them. In a most extraordinary passage these officers give permission to a large segment of the massed soldiery to leave the battle front and return home. Here is the text of the Torah [Deuteronomy 20:5-7]:

This passage seems to be yet another example of the extreme and impractical idealism of many aspects of the book of Deuteronomy.

2:
As with the preceding mishnah, our present mishnah takes the biblical text and presents an halakhic elaboration on it. To any soldier who has built a new house and not yet had the opportunity to dwell in it the officers give permission to retire from the field of battle! As if this were not sweeping enough our mishnah extends the permission to the meanest of buildings – even sheds and outhouses used for storage of food for farm animals and human beings.

3:
The Torah [Leviticus 19:23-25] legislates concerning a newly planted vineyard. This is known in rabbinic parlance as Neta Reva'i. The term means "fourth-year plants", and refers back to the biblical law:

While the terminology is rather quaint and surprising, the import of the law is quite clear: after a tree has been planted in Eretz-Israel its fruit shall not be eaten during the first four years of its growth. The fruit of the first three years is completely forbidden, the fruit of the fourth year must be dedicated 'to God', and only from the fifth year onwards may the fruit of the tree be eaten 'normally'. The term 'dedicated to God' was understood by the sages as meaning that the fruit – or its equivalent worth in money – must be consumed in Jerusalem, the home of the Bet Mikdash, the palace of the Divine King. This is the reference in our present mishnah to the soldier who has a new vineyard but has not yet had the opportunity to 'desanctify it' in order to start using its fruit in the fifth year.

4:
Our mishnah even extends this permission to include other agricultural activities. Even if he had not planted a whole vineyard but just five fruit trees the soldier receives permission to retire from the front. Furthermore, even if it is not a real orchard but just five solitary trees each of a different fruit (which presumably would not have had any real commercial value in the ancient economy) he has permission to retire. The 'sinking' mentioned in our mishnah refers to the action of the agriculturalist in which he bends the branch of a growing plant and buries it under the ground so that it seems to continue its growth as a separate plant.

5:
Over the years we have had many opportunities to explain that in ancient Israel a man betrothed a woman (Kiddushin) and then they waited for one year before setting up home together (Nissu'in). It is to this interim period that the Torah is referring, and our mishnah extends this to include even a 'shomeret yavam' – a childless widow awaiting marriage with her deceased husband's brother. Even more extraordinarily, our mishnah states that if the soldier hears of his brother's death in the battle he must retire from the field in order to be able to marry his sister-in-law!

6:
Finally, almost as if amazed at the audacity of the permissions given, our mishnah teaches that those who have received permission to retire from the field continue to serve the nation in a civilian capacity: they must feed the troops and maintain the roads.