A treatise on a remote city.
The Rambam rules that the children of the workers in the remote city are also killed, but the Manach makes it difficult. If so, witnesses who testify about the remote city cannot be punished for “when they plotted,” since you cannot kill their child (for him or his offspring), and if so, this is evidence that you cannot plot.
My rabbi explained that the plot to kill the children was not a plot against the worker himself, but rather a plot against the children as “the children of a worker in a remote city,” and if so, the witnesses plotted to kill a few people and nothing more. (This is not similar to the witnesses testifying against the son of a divorced woman, where the impermissibility of killing children is a consequence of the impermissibility of killing the father).
I am not entirely sure that I would accept the excuse even if it were not for Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance (Chapter 6, Halacha 1), who says that part of the reward and punishment in this world are repaid by a person with his body, his property, and his young children, since young children are like a person’s property. In that case, the problem returned to the Dokhta, since they plotted to harm his property, such as his children, and their plot was not carried out.
I wanted to know whether, in the Rabbi’s opinion, it is possible to bring evidence from the Rambam in the laws of repentance, that is, does the Rambam, even in the halakhic sections, only write laws that can be determined precisely?
Simply put, evidence can be presented, although the litigant may disagree. It is also not clear that these are legends.
Although I am not sure that there is evidence for the matter itself, even if evidence can be provided from legends. What the Rambam writes in the Teshuvah is that in principle a man is atoned for by his sons (for example, for the sin of vows, his sons die), but this does not mean that even in a remote city when his sons die, it is a punishment for him. It is possible that there it is actually an obligation to destroy them and not a punishment for him.
But as for the essence of the issue, I don’t think it’s necessary to reach your rabbi’s words. According to the Manach’s method, how do you accept testimony about a divorced woman’s son? After all, it cannot be conspired. The whippings are the application of the “when they conspired” (and not just whippings for not answering, otherwise the testimony could not be accepted because conspired is impossible). If so, it can also be said that the killing of the children in the remote city is indeed a punishment for the father, and yet this testimony can be conspired, since the witnesses who were conspired were beaten like the witnesses of the divorced woman’s son. It should be noted that here the whippings are a death penalty and not a personal status penalty for the divorced woman’s son, and perhaps in the 23rd century it was not a “when they conspired” case.
Regarding the Rabbi's excuse:
A. According to the second excuse of the first Toss, it cannot be said that it is a matter of life for life, that is, whippings are not sufficient to punish for the imposition of death.
B. If we accept the narrow excuse of the Menach or any other excuse that would provide a certain possible basis for testimony about a remote city, then there is no excuse for the first Toss' excuse either, since all that the witnesses are bound by in Ben Grosha is only because there is no party to hold them accountable for this testimony when they conspired and therefore they entered into the law of whippings, which is not the case in a remote city, which according to the possible excuses, there is a possibility of holding them accountable when they conspired.
The excuse that seemed to me in the matter is that the witnesses can claim that they did not come to the debtor sentenced under the laws of a remote city, but came to charge him with stoning as a criminal, and the unavoidable circumstances brought the reality into the law of a remote city.
It was difficult for me because according to this law, the witnesses will receive a death sentence by stoning, even though the one who was sentenced was sentenced to sword, and it has already been said that all conspirators are predestined for that death, except for conspirators of a daughter of a priest, and they will not receive a death sentence.
And I replied: A. We cannot learn from the generalizations, even if it is said otherwise. B. We must distinguish between conspirators of a daughter of a priest who knew and plotted exactly how she would be killed and who are killed by a different death, since in a remote city it is not necessary that the city be judged as a remote city.
PS. I do not know if the rabbi is interested in being dragged into this academic discussion at all, my main question was about learning from the words of the Rambam's agga, and it was answered. Thank you.
Regarding the Rabbi's rejection of the excuse: When the Rambam writes a source on the matter of his sons dying for his sins, he writes that those punished are written as people and they are not people, meaning that therefore there is no reason for them to die other than their father's sins. It is proven that a child is not killed because of himself at all, but because of his father.
A. That's what I wrote. But there is no need to reject one first-person system on the basis of another first-person system.
I didn't understand your rejection of my rejection. The argument is that the children are not punished, but rather there is an obligation to banish them from the world. Therefore, it is either a punishment because of their father or an obligation to banish them, which is not a punishment. Beyond that, the Rambam there, in the matter of death because of vows, speaks of heavenly punishments. The problem is that these are punishments in the law.
Okay, I'll explain.
A. I do not reject one first-born's method from another, I have evidence from the Rambam himself that he does not believe that the whippings come because of the one who conspired, but because you will not answer (there is explicit conclusive evidence, and this almost makes a real difference).
Regarding the rejection, I will phrase it differently: the Rambam writes there that small years are a person's inheritance and therefore harming them (even though it is in the hands of God) is harming him, and therefore when the witnesses conspired to kill his sons, they conspired to harm his inheritance in the form of sons, and for them you cannot harm the inheritance in the form of sons.
So no matter why you harm his small sons, you harm his inheritance.
Leave a Reply
Please login or Register to submit your answer
