Q&A: Lashes for Conspiring Witnesses
Lashes for Conspiring Witnesses
Question
Hello and blessings!
How can one understand the positions of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) who hold that, regarding lashes for conspiring witnesses, the rule of "as he conspired" is fulfilled, even though the witnesses themselves did not conspire to bring about any action of that kind at all?
It occurred to me to say that, in the end, all the experiences we go through (illnesses, disasters, insults hurled at us) are connected to the way we experience them. If we were to map the experience of happiness and suffering on a scale of 1-10, every event we go through places us at a certain point on that scale. When we plan to obligate so-and-so to exile, the exile itself is only a practical means of bringing so-and-so to point x on the happiness-and-suffering scale. If so, then even if we give the witnesses lashes and thereby bring them to that same point on the happiness-and-suffering scale, we are fulfilling "as he conspired," because that itself was their plot.
Admittedly, this scale is subjective for each person, and therefore in general we would punish the witnesses in the same way they planned to punish the defendant; but when that is not possible, we would choose lashes in order to reach the optimal result.
What is your opinion, and do you have an alternative explanation?
Answer
I did not understand the question, and even less the answer. What makes you think that lashes correspond exactly to the suffering involved in exile, or in any other punishment that cannot be imposed? The reasons why the punishment cannot be imposed vary, but these are entirely different punishments and entirely different kinds of suffering. Even in the two examples in the first Mishnah in Makkot—exile and disqualifying someone from the priesthood as the son of a divorced woman—do you think that is the same level of suffering? What is the connection at all? And is that level of suffering even close to the suffering of lashes? How do you know that? That, then, regarding your answer.
As for the question itself, it is clear that the lashes are not a fulfillment of "as he conspired," but rather the necessary fallback when "as he conspired" cannot be carried out. So the difficulty does not arise in the first place. When "as he conspired" cannot be carried out, they receive lashes for the prohibition of "You shall not bear false witness," just like any other prohibition. This is not a fulfillment of "as he conspired" in its essential sense, and therefore there is no need to look for why there would be some equivalence in the suffering it causes.