ואלה המשפטים, “and these are the ordinances, etc.” The introductory letter ו at the beginning of the word ואלה means that what follows must be understood as a continuation of what preceded it, i.e. the Decalogue. Alternately, what follows are new ordinances, continuing the laws which had been revealed already at Marah, where the Torah spoke of two types of laws that were taught to the people, i.e. חוק ומשפט. The reason why the Torah chose to follow this pattern is because at the beginning of the Decalogue G’d had first introduced Himself with the words: “I am the Lord your G’d, etc,” so here too Moses introduces all these laws by reminding the people that they had just recently experienced the revelation, In other words, all that follows originates with the same G’d as did the Decalogue. Moses’ words: אתם ראיתם וגו', corresponds to the first two commandments (i.e. the ones heard and understood by the people spoken to them by Hashem directly.) What follows under the heading of ואלה המשפטים corresponds to such commandments as לא תחמוד, indicative of the final and perhaps ethically most demanding commandment (as it tries to control our feelings and desires that are unspoken) If man does not know the legal aspects of private property, how can he be sure that he does not violate G’d’s will in this respect? This is why G‘d used the term תשים לפניהם, meaning that the laws following must be clearly set out for the people, must be elaborated on. No one must remain in doubt so that he cannot claim that what he coveted was not something belonging to someone else.

אשר תשים לפניהם, ”which you are to set out before them.” Our sages (Mechilta) draw attention to the word לפניהם, meaning “before the Israelites,” but not before the gentiles or the common, uneducated people. Had the Torah wanted that Moses explain the details of the following legislation to unlearned people, it would have written a different formulation, such as אשר תלמדם, which you are to teach them, or אשר תשים להם, a formula used when Moses taught the people some of the laws atMarah. (Exodus 15,25) The expression לשום לפני וגו' is a standard phrase when the Torah means for something to be taught to the judges, the elders of the people. All litigants always have to appear before a quorum of judges, compare Deut. The judges are described as יודעי דת ודין, possessing knowledge in matters or ritual law and interpersonal relations requiring legal decisions. The reason the Mechilta understands the word לפניהם as excluding gentiles, is to warn Israelites not to have their disputes judged by a court composed of gentiles even if the laws of the gentile host country are similar to ours in that matter. Even if both litigants are agreeable to submit their dispute to a gentile court for a ruling, the Torah does not permit this. If, however these same Israelites agree to submit their dispute to three gentile laymen, (or more or fewer) this is acceptable as G‘d’s jurisprudence has not been slighted thereby. Rabbi Joseph Kimchi draws attention to the Torah not having said תשפטם, “you are to render judgment,” but תשים לפניהם, “submit before them,” as the Torah speaks of a situation when the basic halachic rulings were known to the parties. However, this is insufficient, as it allows the owner of a Hebrew servant to claim that had he known that this man’s services would be limited to 6 years, he never would have bought his services in the first place, and that therefore the entire transaction had been based on a misunderstanding. Or, for instance in the case of an ox goring a gentile servant with fatal results, for which the Torah fixes that the owner of the ox which gored has to pay 30 shekel, (a small and fixed amount) even if in the market place such a slave while alive could have fetched several times that amount. Pleading ignorance of the legislation is no reason to revoke transactions that had involved ignorance of the finer points of the law of compensation.

כי תקנה עבד עברי, ”When you acquire the services of a Jewish labourer,” Nachmanides writes that the reason why the Torah commences the legislation following with this example of the details of setting such a labourer free from his obligations vis a vis you in the seventh year, is that this law contains reminiscences of the Jewish experience in Egypt. This is why the Torah (in Deut. 15,15) writes: “you shall remember that you were a serf in the land of Egypt and the Lord your G’d set you free; this is why I command you this thing this day.” In addition to the reminder of the bondage experience of the Jewish people in the legislation containing the treatment of Jews performing forced labour, there is also a reminder of the 6 days of Creation followed by the Sabbath, the same cycle (in terms of years) applies to the period that a man who has sold himself, or been sold by the Court, has to serve out his term with the same master. The element of the sanctity of the seventh time seven years surfaces once more if said servant voluntarily extends his term of service for the same master. The entire legislation reflects symbolisms, seeing that the number seven surfaces as something intrinsically holy, or as something to be sanctified in terms of years or multiples of shemittah cycles. This is also why the prophet Jeremiah 34,13 warns the Jews that they will be punished with exile (becoming slaves again) for collectively violating the law which required them to release their servants not later than after 49 years, i e in the Jubilee year, as well as the law governing the abstention from working one’s land or orchard every seventh year. The Torah continues with laws governing murder or killing through negligence, which is the most serious of crimes committed against one’s fellow man, followed by the laws about not treating parents with the respect due them, even bodily harming them, followed by the laws about stealing property, etc., one after another in logical sequence.

אם בגפו יבא, “if he enters service as a single individual,” a reference to his body גוף being unattached. Marriage can be perceived as the reuniting of two bodies separated at the time the first woman was separated from the body of the first man, Adam. Alternately, it means that this person did not own anything but his body, hence he was sold into service for his debts.

אם בעל אשה הוא, “if he was married at that time, etc.” if he was already married to a Jewish woman, his master may assign a non Jewish woman to be his mate. If, however, he had not been married yet, his master must not assign a non Jewish woman for him as a mate. The psychology underlying this legislation is that a normal person does not feel at ease with his fate unless he shares his life with the first woman who became his mate. If the first woman who became his mate is a gentile, he will most likely be so attached to her that even after his term of service he will not want to part from her although she is bound to her master for life. If the same servant had been married before his labour was sold for six years to the same employer, he is likely to yearn for his wife, and will not choose to remain with his master until the Jubilee year.

ויצאה אשתו עמו, “his wife will leave together with him.” From this verse we deduce that the servant’s master had obligated himself to look after the needs of the servant’s wife and children. (not voluntarily, but this was part of the contract the Torah has in mind).

והגישו אדוניו אל האלו-הים, “his master is to bring him to the Court.” The word אלו-הים here refers to a Court. Ibn Ezra writes that the reason why the judges in the Torah are often referred to not as שופטים but as “elohim” is because they are G’d’s agents on earth, carrying out His will. Nachmanides understands our verse to mean that the master is to bring the servant in question before a judge, a legally constituted tribunal, a site which enjoys the presence of the Shechinah and which inspires the judges to ensure that their verdict will be in line with G’d’s wishes. These judges are authorized by G’d to either exonerate or to condemn as evil, as guilty. (compare 22,8) Moses also stated: כי המשפט לאלו-הים הוא, “Justice belongs to G’d,” when he referred to the function of tribunals on terrestrial earth. (Deut.1.17) We also have an explicit verse illustrating this concept in Psalms 82,1, i.e. אלו-הים נצב בעדת א-ל, “G’d stands in the divine assembly.”

והגישו אל הדלת, “he shall bring him to the door.” According to the plain meaning, seeing that the court holds its session publicly as we know from Ruth 4,1 where the judges sat near the city’s gate, the servant’s ear would be pierced on the door of the city’s gate. This would ensure maximum publicity of the person’s new status. Some commentators say that the point of the procedure is to indicate by the hole in the servant’s ear that this individual is charged with guarding the “door, entrance” to the home of his master Other commentators claim that the procedure itself as well as where it took place, will ensure that this servant could never claim that the hole in his ear was self-inflicted, as his master by bringing him to the door where the procedure had been performed can demonstrate that the height of the mark left on the door by the chisel that pierced his ear matches exactly the height from the floor to the servant’s ear.

ועבדו לעולם, “he will continue in service to his master until the Jubilee year.” Seeing that the word לעולם in our verse cannot possibly mean: “forever,” the alternate meaning of this word in Scripture is: “until the Jubilee year,” and is applied here. Ibn Ezra explains that the word לעולם in the Holy Tongue describes a certain period of time as we know from Kohelet 1,10 כבר היה לעולמים, “it has already existed in antiquity.” In this verse it refers to a well-known point in time, one that recurs every 49 years. In terms of time cycles in the Jewish calendar, or history, it is the longest such cycle, and therefore the word לעולם, commonly translated as “forever, without end,” is most appropriate. At the end of this cycle a new עולם, “world,” opens up before this servant.

לא תצא כצאת העבדים, “she will not be free in the manner male servants are freed.” Loss by the servant of an eye or a tooth, through violent action by the master, leads to the servant’s immediate freedom. The same rule applies to the male Jewish servant. We need a special verse for this lack of symmetry governing treatment of gentile slaves when abused, and that of Jewish servants similarly abused, as without it we would have deduced from an a fortiori, that if a gentile slave is freed immediately due to his master having rendered a tooth or an eye useless, a Jewish servant would be entitled to at least the same privilege. If this logic were to be applied, the Jewish servant would forfeit his entitlement to compensatory damages, something he does not in fact forfeit. The basic difference in the legislation is that in the case of the gentile slave the freeing of the slave (whose body was owned by his master) is in the nature of a penalty to his master for having abused him. Whenever the Torah legislates a penal measure it cannot serve as a model for other situations. Our verse must be understood as a negative commandment not to release a female or male Jewish servant for loss of eye or tooth, and that doing so, far from being a charitable act, is in fact the violation of a negative commandment. The Torah is stringent with the master, closing a loophole that would have enabled him to escape his financial obligations to the victim of his cruelty or carelessness. The Hebrew servant or female servant is compensated according to the rules prevailing for any other Jewish male or female, and in the event that the compensation exceeds the value of the servant’s labour still to be rendered under his contract, the master (employer) does not have the option of freeing such a servant forthwith. Such a temptation for the master is especially likely when the incident occurred near the end of the forced employment term of said servant. Alternatively, the plain meaning of the phrase is that maidservants, unlike men servants, are not supposed to be sent outside, into the fields, for instance, to perform their labours, but are to do this in the house of the master or in his yard.

לעם נכרי לא ימשל למכרה, “he must not sell it to a member of a different family.” Our sages deduced from this wording that a father must not sell his daughter into service again after she has been released from her first master. Similarly, her first master, instead of releasing her, is also prohibited to sell her services to someone else, seeing he has not kept the promise that was implied when he first acquired her services contractually from her father. He had betrayed her trust by not marrying her when she attained the age of puberty or shortly thereafter. It is also possible that the meaning of our verse is to inform us that the criteria which apply to someone who sells himself, occasionally even to a gentile (Leviticus 25,47) if he cannot find a Jewish employer who pays his wages years in advance, so that he can pay back money he owes, are not the criteria that apply to a young girl’s father, or her employer, although, basically, her father had the right to sell her services as had her employer to buy her services, effectively preventing her from quitting he employment prematurely. This is why the Torah warns that no father has the right to sell the services of his daughter to a gentile. The Torah adds that if the father had bought his daughter out of her original contract (when it became clear that her employer had no intention to marry her, for instance) he is not allowed to sell her services to a gentile instead. He cannot do so even for a very short period of time. Another possibility of understanding our verse is: “when a father is about to sell the services of his daughter the minor, his authority is restricted to his doing so to a Jewish employer.” At any rate, at all events we derive from this verse that a second sale of the same girl by either the father or her former employer is absolutely prohibited. The extra wording in the verse that enables us to derive this rule is בבגדו בה, “seeing he has betrayed her.” The prohibition not to sell her to a gentile would have been clear from the words לעם נכרי לא ימשול למכרה, “he has no authority to sell her to a gentile.” Nachmanides writes that the plain meaning of the verse is as follows: when a man sells his daughter’s services the rules of her release from service are not identical to those applying to males mentioned earlier, such as her being wed by her employer, for instance. If this is the case, the father cannot redeem her by some means to prevent her becoming married to said employer. [the girl herself can, of course, decline such offer of marriage. Ed.] If she does not find favour in the eyes of her employer so that he wants to marry her, the father cannot sell her services instead to anyone else, seeing that he had betrayed her originally by selling her services to someone who had no intention of making her his wife.

ואם לבנו ייעדנה, “if he had intended her as a wife for his son;” the expression ייעדנה is equivalent to the Torah writing “הזמינה,” “invited her.” The expression occurs in this context in the Scriptures in Samuel II 20,5 מן המועד אשר יעד, “than the time planned for him.”

כמשפט הבנות יעשה לה, “according to the rights of young women he shall treat her.” A reference to the master’s son. The entitlements of the young women are spelled out as שארה, כסותה, ועונתה, her food, clothing, and marital rights.” She is not to be derived of all or any of her statutory rights. He must, in the event that he does not personally marry her, provide her with the equipment given to Jewish daughters when they are about to marry. These endowments are known as מוהר בתולות. These rights are parallel to the economic stake a master has to give a male servant upon his release from service after the requisite number of years, (usually after 6 years.) All of the above legislation is a demonstration of G’d’s loving concern for the economically underprivileged, whose experience in service was, after all, a result of such under privilege. Nachmanides writes, that according to the plain meaning of the text one may understand the legislation as the employer of the girl who intended her as a bride for his son having to give her a dowry out of his own pocket.

שארה, according to Rashi this is a reference to her entitlement to food. According to Nachmanides [who considers the opinion expressed about this as that of a single scholar, not binding, and not halachically accepted as being of such axiomatic nature. Ed.], this line according to the plain meaning refers to conjugal marital rights, the word שאר normally meaning גוף, body, especially when referring to family relations. Nachmanides views the meaning of the word as an expanded version of one’s own personal flesh, i.e. genetically related relations, “blood relations.” We know from Lavan that he said to his nephew Yaakov “אך עצמי ובשרי אתה,” “after all you are my bone and my flesh.” (Genesis 29,14). Flesh that is consumed, eaten, is also called שאר as we know from Psalms 78,27: וימטר עליהם כעפר שאר, “He rained meat on them like dust.” [a quantity of meat as generous as the dust on earth. A reference to the Israelites in the desert, compare Numbers chapter 11. Ed.] The reason why it is called this is that meat has a tendency to attach itself to other food. Blood relations also have a tendency to cling to one another. The description by the Torah of conjugal rights of intimacy by the wife as something anchored in law is therefore quite understandable. Naturally, this right is mutual, the husband being reciprocally entitled to intimacy with his wife’s body.

כסותה, “her covering,” i.e. bed covers.

עונתה, “her entitlement to conjugal relations.” At least after her having ritually immersed herself.

לא יגרע, “he must not diminish.” He must not marry another woman in addition, and thereby reduce this former servant’s status to that of a concubine both in appearance and by her reduced conjugal rights The second wife is not to sit on the bed of the first wife, thereby causing her mental anguish. Any marriage to an additional wife must not be at the expense of the first wife.

שלש אלה, “these three,” the three options the Torah provided to the master-employer, 1) to marry her herself; 2) to make her his son’s bride; 3) to release her before her contractual 6 years of service have expired if she showed premature signs of puberty. No compensation for time not served is due her master/employer in such or similar circumstances.

מכה איש ומת, “if one strikes a man with fatal results, etc.” According to our sages the conceptual linkage between these apparently unrelated subjects is that when a capital punishment is imposed on someone for a crime normally involving compensatory financial damages, the sinner does not also have to pay financial compensation to his victim. The repetition of the words מות יומת implies that with his judicial death he has paid for all his crimes.

וגונב איש ומכרו, “and he who kidnaps a person and sells him, etc.” The Torah inserts this verse (subject) between the verse dealing with murder, and the one dealing with physically assaulting one’s parents, or cursing them. Some commentators feel that the point of the sequence is to list two crimes both of which are punishable by strangulation of the sinner together. Cursing parents, on the other hand, is punishable by the guilty party being stoned to death, a more painful and demeaning manner of execution. This commentary does not seem very convincing to me, as if that were the reason the Torah adopted this sequence, the verse dealing with kidnapping should have preceded that of describing parents being assaulted. In that way the verses dealing with improper behaviour against parents could have remained part of the same sequence, and the two crimes for which the punishment is strangulation could also have been written sequentially. Rabbeinu Saadyah gaon explains that seeing most victims of kidnapping are small children, who as a result of being sold, will be raised far from their parents’ homes, not even able to recognize their parents, the chances that at sometime during their lives they will curse or physically assault a parent, not even being aware that the person they cursed was a parent, the kidnapper deserves the penalty which otherwise would be applicable to the victim of the kidnapping had he done what he did deliberately. This is why the Torah chose this apparently obscure sequence. The penalty for a son who curses his father without laying a hand on him is more severe than the penalty for physically assaulting one’s parent, because this offense is more commonplace than the one of actually raising a hand against a parent. In order to act as a deterrent, the Torah imposed a harsher penalty. It is also possible that the reason why the penalty for cursing one’s parents is harsher than for striking them, is that cursing involves using the holy name of the Lord for such a nefarious crime. [Halachically, “cursing” means to curse someone in the name of G’d, to try and call down G’d’s anger against the person one curses. Ed.] He who curses parents has committed two major sins simultaneously.

ומכרו ונמצא בידו, “and he sold him but the kidnapper is apprehended while still having the kidnapped person under his control.” According to Rashi the victim is found in the kidnapper’s possession before the sale. Nachmanides writes that if this were so the Torah would not have needed to bother to write the line ונמצא בידו, “the victim was still in the kidnapper’s control.” Seeing that we obviously have witnesses to the crime, the kidnapper had both kidnapped and sold the person concerned, he clearly was under his control. He therefore understands the meaning of the words ונמצא בידו to mean that the kidnapper has brought the kidnapped person into his private domain to mean that until the kidnapper had brought his victim into his private domain he is not liable to the penalty the Torah decrees. The rule is parallel to someone who has stolen and then slaughtered or sold the animal in question. His penalty of making 4 or 5 fold restitution is also applicable only if the stolen animal had first been transferred to the private domain of the thief.

או באגרוף, “or with a fist.” According to our sages the word אגרוף refers to a fist, i.e. a palm balled into a fist. It describes the injury being caused as like a punch by a boxer. The reason the Torah mentions either a stone or a fist as being the cause of the non-fatal injury, is that both a stone and a fist when used in a fight are proof of a degree of premeditation. Even though, generally speaking, a stone inflicts a more serious injury, both of these weapons do not as a rule cause fatal injuries, although, admittedly, being hit by a stone appears to be more serious. Some commentators understand the word אגרוף as referring to dust, the word occurring in this context in Joel 1,17 עבשו פרודות תחת מגרפותיהם, “the seeds have shriveled under their clods of earth.”

על משענתו, “on his cane.” According to Rashi the Torah means that the injured person can manage to walk without any external assists, as distinct from sick and weak people who require canes or “walkers.” Nachmanides writes: “it appears to me that the Torah means that if this injured person is able to walk even only with the help of a cane, or “walker,” that the person who has hit him is exonerated from the charge of manslaughter (if eventually, more than 24 hours later the victim dies) The Torah’s example is based on the most likely result of injuries sustained by being struck by a stone or a fist. The immediate result may be a short sojourn in bed followed by a rapid recovery. The fact that the victim has ventured outside before he died, is an indication that any danger he had been in had already passed before that stage. If he had only been able to hobble around indoors, the attacker is not exonerated from causing the death of his victim.

רק שבתו יתן ורפא ירפא, “he only has to pay compensation to the victim for time lost from work, and for his medical expenses.” The Torah refers only to the fee of the attending physician, not to the cost of medications, which, if prescribed by the physician will also be supplied by him. The victim is not entitled to forego the medications and retain the cost of them. Unless he uses them, the attacker is not liable for their cost. Our sages derive from the wording ורפא ירפא that the physician is permitted to practice his art, and that we do not adopt the attitude that if G’d wants him to recover he will recover and if not he will die, i.e. that it is not up to us to interfere. (Baba Kama105). The comment in the Talmud is strange as we have a law (Leviticus 19,16) that one must not stand idly by when a fellow Jew is in mortal danger and could be saved when one takes the appropriate action. The answer given is that the verse ורפא ירפא is needed to make clear that if through lack of skill or misdiagnosis the patient dies after receiving treatment, we do not hold his physician responsible for the death. Another interpretation of the line is that the physician is entitled to charge for his services. If not for this verse we would have assumed that it is one’s moral and ethical duty to heal for free, just as judges do not get paid, and just as Torah is taught for free. [the latter, no longer common, is excused by Abravanel on the grounds that if the teacher of Torah is economically underprivileged, lives in dire circumstances, his students will not want to “buy his wares,” i.e. his Torah, believing that Torah scholars are slated for a life of poverty. Ed.]

וכי יכה איש את עבדו, “if someone strikes his (gentile) slave, etc.” The subject of this verse is only a gentile slave, whose body is owned by his master. The Torah teaches that although the stick had been used as a disciplinary rod, and the stick was not a walking cane (whose use as a disciplinary means might inflict far more pain and injury,) the owner must take care not to inflict the kind of injury that might prove lethal. Otherwise, the death is to be avenged.

אך אם יום או יומים יעמוד, “but if he will survive one or two days, etc.” seeing that if a survival of a single day suffices not to treat this death as manslaughter, why does the Torah add the words “or two days?” Our sages answer that what the Torah refers to is a day that is comparable to two days, i.e. the minimum period of survival is 24 hours, even on two successive calendar dates. (Mechilta)

כאשר ישית עליו בעל האשה, “according to the assessment levied upon him by the husband of the pregnant woman whose fetus died.” The Torah emphasizes that the injured party herself, i.e. the woman, is not allowed to determine the scale of compensation as she has no ownership rights concerning her children. [she is not allowed to “sell” her daughter, for instance, whereas the father is. However, she is compensated for pain, etc. Ed. Ibn Ezra explains that our verse allows for a mutually agreed settlement between the husband of the woman and the one causing the injury, failing which the court, i.e. בפלילים will assess the amount of damages payable. Nachmanides explains that the new aspect of this legislation is the fact that although the damage is not definite as no one knows if the woman would have successfully carried out this fetus, and normally when the value of the damage cannot be assessed with precision, no financial damages are payable, the nature of this payment is under the heading of “punitive damages.” The Torah gives the husband leeway to determine the amount of punitive damages due to him. The reason is that he is presumed to have a greater stake in the loss of this fetus. The reason that the Torah also involves the court, בפלילים is to ensure that the husband does not make unreasonable demands, above the value of such a fetus if it had been born already, for instance.

וכי יכה איש את עין עבדו, “if an owner strikes the eye of his slave, etc.’ The Torah speaks of a gentile slave. The legislation pertaining to the destruction of such a servant’s eye formulated here applies equally to 23 other parts of the body enumerated in the Talmud. The reason the Torah chose the eye as the example of the organ whose loss results in the slave’s being freed forthwith, is that when Cham, Noach’s younger son, saw his father in a state of nudity due to his being drunk, instead of covering him he told his brothers i.e. he employed his teeth in doing so. This is why even the loss of a tooth is considered so important by the Torah, (verse 27), as it too is an organ capable of causing serious harm.

וגם בעליו יומת, “also its owners shall be executed.” This execution would be at the hands of heaven, not by human tribunal. [clearly, the owner could not have been warned of what his ox was going to do and that he would be executed if he did not prevent it so that legal proceedings against him would result in a death sentence. Ed] Nachmanides writes that he cannot follow the translation of Onkelos who takes the text decreeing execution of the ox’s owner literally. He speculates that possibly Onkelos meant that the owner deserves to be executed. Instead, the Torah, in this instance, provided monetary compensation to be paid by the owner. Alternately, what Onkelos meant to say was that this owner, when the day would come when he was meant to die, would die a violent death instead of dying from natural causes. In other words, by his negligent conduct with this aggressive ox he made himself liable to G’d’s direct intervention in causing his death.

אם כופר יושת עליו, “If monetary atonement be assessed against him, etc.” The introductory word “if” presents a problem; what is “iffy” about this? The matter is similar to the atonement for sins obtained through the offering of a sin offering for instance. When such an offering has been legislated by the Torah, the court does not send enforcers to see to it that the party obligated to offer it does so. If he does not, he will not attain atonement. Similarly, in the case of the owner of the ox. If he fails to pay the assessment he remains out of grace with his Creator, but the court does not check if he has in fact made the payment decreed by the court. This is why the Torah prefaces the legislation with the word אם.

או בן יגח או בת יגח, “whether it gores a boy or it gores a girl, etc.” The Torah considers the death through an owner’s negligence of a minor as just as serious as the death of an adult. The reason why we needed a specific verse for this legislation to be spelled out is that when an ox kills a man it is as if a bear enraged through the loss of one of its young goes on a rampage, i.e. disregarding danger to itself. On the other hand, I might have thought that when an ox gores a minor this was not such a serious departure from its normally tame behaviour that the owner forthwith has to guard it with all the means at his disposal. The Torah therefore informs us that any animal which kills any human being, even a minor, has changed its status to becoming a שור מועד, an aggressive ox, with all that this implies for the precautions its owner has to take to neutralize it as a source of danger.

או כי יכרה איש בר וגו', “or if he digs a pit.” The word for “pit” here is spelled without the customary letter ו, the only instance in the Torah when it is spelled in this manner. The reason is that the Torah implies that even if the digger of this pit dug far less that the minimum depth required for the pit to become a lethal hazard, (10 tefachim, 40 cm) it is the last such tefach which makes him liable for the consequences, even if he had only deepened an existing pit by a single tefach. The sages rule that in such an event it is also the last digger who is responsible for the damages caused. (Baba Kama 51)