איש כי יפלא נדר, “if a man articulates a vow, etc.” According to Nachmanides this paragraph is also conceptually linked to the admonitions we have read in chapter 26. It was told to Moses already at Mount Sinai [see commentary at the beginning of chapter 25. Ed.] Seeing that part of this chapter deals also with the Jubilee year legislation inasmuch as it is relevant to redeeming matters declared sacred as a result of vows made, the thread has not been broken ever since the beginning of chapter 25, and the additional aspects of the legislations dealing with vows in which man declares someone or his equivalent sacred in terms of that person or object’s valuation only rounds out that section of legislation. To confirm this, the Torah, at the end of our chapter writes once more that all the aforementioned commandments were commanded by G’d to Moses to the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai [already. Ed.] What follows from now on was told Moses in the Tabernacle.

אך בכור אשר יבוכר לה' בבהמה לא יקדיש אותו, “However, a firstborn that will become a firstling for Hashem among livestock, one must not consecrate;” Rashi understands this to mean that such a firstling as is mentioned in our verse must not be consecrated to be an offering of a different category. [Based on Torat Kohanim, seeing that such a firstling does not belong to the “owner” in the first place.] Nachmanides does not view this verse as a prohibition, but as a reminder that there is no need to consecrate such an animal as the Torah had already conferred the status of “a consecrated” animal on that beast.

ואם בבהמה הטמאה ופדה בערכך , “and if among the ritually unclean animals, (he had mistakenly consecrated such a firstling), etc.” Rashi claims that this verse is not relevant to the legislation involving firstlings at all, but refers to someone consecrating a ritually unclean beast as an offering to the Temple treasury. [Consecrating it as an offering for the altar would be without legal value, as it is a non-starter. Ed.] Nachmanides, attempting to circumvent the need to explain the verse as referring to a subject that was discussed in a different context, tries to paint a scenario in which our verse would be relevant to the sequence in which it appears. He writes that it is possible that seeing that another kind of ritually unclean beast, namely the donkey, is exempt from what appears to be stated here, the Torah repeats that any other ritually unclean beast cannot legally be consecrated even if one had in mind to redeem it, as in the case of the donkey. (Compare Exodus 34,20) Such an animal which had been “consecrated” through ignorance of its owner may be redeemed without financial premium by anyone other than the owner who had “consecrated” it, seeing that it had never attained the holy status of a firstling.

כל חרם אשר יחרם מן האדם לא יפדה מות יומת, “Any condemned person who has been banned from mankind shall not be redeemed but shall be put to death.” Rashi understands the scenario of which our verse speaks as being the following: A man has been convicted of the death penalty. While he is en route to his execution, someone vows to give to the Temple treasury an amount equal to the value of this person, i.e. considering his age, etc., such a vow is meaningless in terms of Jewish law, and the person making such a vow does not have to give anything to the Temple treasury. (Based on Erchin 6) Nachmanides adds that according to the plain meaning of the text our sages are of divergent opinions concerning the above. The Torah had previously stated that anyone consecrating man or beast or chattels and land which he himself owns forfeits the right to redeem such as it automatically becomes the property of the priests and has already lost the status of being something consecrated. However, if someone consecrates something, i.e. the equivalent monetary value of something or someone whom he does not own, such property or people would not become the property of the priests. The classic example is that when the Israelites would go to war and vow to G’d that if He would grant them victory they would apply the law of חרם to such property, none of it would revert to the priests, seeing that the party or parties having made such a vow did not have in mind that the objects in question would become the priests’ henceforth, but they vowed not to personally benefit from that part of the loot. The warriors’ whole intent was to destroy. We find in Judges 21 that when the men of Yavesh Gilead had failed to honour [or even to be present during the taking of that oath, I am not clear about this. Ed.] the collective oath by all the tribes not to give any of their daughters to a member of the tribe of Binyamin as a wife, that 12000 men were dispatched as a punitive expedition against the inhabitants of that town and that only 400 virgins were spared, the ones who were then given to an equivalent number of young men from the tribe of Binyamin who had survived the civil war. Surely, if it had been legally possible to redeem the inhabitants of Yavesh Gilead, the people would have done so in preference of having to honour their oath, especially considering that their High Priest Pinchas was with the people at that time. Yonathan, son of King Shaul, had unwittingly become guilty of not honouring an oath by his father so that his father felt legally obligated to execute him. (Samuel I 14,27) Surely, if not for our verse here, there would not have been a need to proceed with the harsh measures envisaged by the utterance of a careless oath if redemption had been a legally acceptable option. I found further in Yalkut Shimoni chapter 76 on the Book of Judges that Rabbi Akiva is quoted as equating the word חרם in our portion with the word שבועה, oath. He derives from our verse that any High Court or legally appointed king, is entitled, especially, when all the tribes are represented when he declares such a decree, to impose the death penalty for violating an oath that bound the entire Jewish people to perform or to refrain from performing a certain task as the case may be. When we read in the above quoted chapter concerning Yonathan son of king Sha-ul that the people did redeem him, this was because Yonathan had been instrumental in performing a miracle and it became evident that Yonathan had not violated the oath knowingly. [Some suggest that the King asked the High Court to release him from an oath that had been ill conceived. Ed.] If so, we can understand Yiphtach’s cardinal error, due to arrogance, when he had failed to seek “redemption” from his vow, seeing he had never meant to sacrifice his only daughter if G’d were to grant him victory. He had mistakenly been under the impression that his vow (oath) was valid and could not be annulled. He was not unaware of the legislation enabling such annulment, but assumed that a leader of the nation could not avail himself of an option like this. It had not occurred to him that a vow to offer someone as a burnt offering, when that someone is essentially disqualified as an offering on the altar, has no legal validity at all. [Even if instead of his daughter being the first to welcome him, a cockerel had done so, he would not have had to kill that cockerel, as it is essentially not fit as an offering on the altar. Ed.] According to the opinion of our sages it is likely that our verse here contains a number of legal points, some relating to a person who is already guilty of execution by the Court, others governing how the Israelites were to conduct themselves during the forthcoming campaign to conquer the land of Canaan, as well as the rules governing someone who becomes guilty of acting in defiance of an oath by the King or an ordinance by the country’s highest court.