Q&A: A Question on the Talmud in Bava Metzia
A Question on the Talmud in Bava Metzia
Question
In Bava Metzia 88b: "We have found regarding a person attached produce, and regarding an ox detached produce. From where do we know detached produce regarding a person? By an a fortiori inference from an ox: just as an ox, which may not eat attached produce, may eat detached produce, so a person, who may eat attached produce, is it not all the more so that he may eat detached produce?"
What is there to say to this? An ox is different, for you are commanded not to muzzle it. Will you say the same about a person, regarding whom you are not commanded not to muzzle him? And let a person be subject to a prohibition of muzzling by an a fortiori inference from an ox: just as an ox, which you are not commanded to keep alive, you are commanded not to muzzle, so a person, whom you are commanded to keep alive, is it not all the more so that you are commanded not to muzzle? The verse states: "as your own desire" — like the desire of the laborer himself: just as with himself, if you muzzle him you are exempt, so too with a laborer, if you muzzle him you are exempt."
I didn’t understand the a fortiori inference in the Talmud. How can it assume that a person is more stringent than an ox from the fact that he may eat attached produce, unlike an ox, and then infer that he may also eat detached produce? If that works, one could say the opposite: that an ox is more stringent than a person because it may eat detached produce, unlike a person, and then infer that it may also eat attached produce.
I don’t understand how you can make an a fortiori inference if in law A there is a, and in law B there is b. How can you say that each one is more stringent than the other?
To assume that one law is more stringent than the other, it should also include the other law in addition to its own law. For example, if in law A both a and b exist, then you can assume it is more stringent than law B, in which only a exists.
Does the Rabbi have an explanation for this?
Answer
Any a fortiori inference that is based on two data points can be reversed. There are several such cases in the Talmud. See the article “A Good Measure,” 5765–6, on the Torah portion Shemini.
The assumption here is that there are three data points: a person may eat attached produce, and an ox may eat detached produce but not attached produce. At first, the assumption is that these are three data points (including the fact that an ox may not eat attached produce — that too is treated as a datum and not merely a lacuna), and then they derive by an a fortiori inference that a person may eat detached produce, as with every a fortiori inference in the Talmud.
If we were to think that the fact that a person may not eat detached produce is also a datum and not just a lacuna, then indeed we would have to assume that the fact that an ox may not eat attached produce is not a datum but a lacuna, and then we would make the reverse a fortiori inference. But the Talmud assumes the first possibility, and therefore makes the first a fortiori inference, until the refutation.
Now you can understand that in the first case there are indeed both data points, while in the second there is only one of them — exactly as is required in order to make an a fortiori inference.
Discussion on Answer
I’m not in the middle of this passage right now. You’d have to see from where all these laws are derived, and maybe from there you can understand what is a lacuna and what is a positive law.
There’s another possibility too. If we assume that eating detached produce is a smaller novelty (that is, it is more reasonable to permit attached produce), then permission to eat detached produce means that attached produce remains an open question, and therefore it is a lacuna and not a law. But when eating attached produce is permitted, then detached produce is certainly permitted, so that is a law and not a lacuna.
Is there any logic behind the Talmud’s assumption that the fact that a person may not eat detached produce is a lacuna, while the fact that an ox may not eat attached produce is an actual datum?