열왕기상 2:29의 Halakhah

One nineteenth-century rabbinic authority does state explicitly that the king may pass judgment on the basis of umdana or circumstantial evidence alone.²⁶Teshuvot Ḥatam Sofer, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, no. 208, states cryptically: “But that which is not mentioned in the Torah … the king and Sanhedrin may see in accordance with the place and in accordance with the time and similarly, a fortiori, they may remove the many destructive [persons], the murderers, without witnesses or the like. …” R. Zevi Hirsch Chajes, Torat Nevi'im, chap. 7,²⁷Published in Kol Sifrei Maharaẓ Ḥayes, I, 49. states that Rambam's source for his ruling that the king may execute a person who commits an act of homicide even in the absence of prior warning, even though biblical law requires prior warning, is a discussion found in Sanhedrin 49a. The discussion seeks to elucidate King Solomon's justificaton for the execution of Joab (I Kings 2:29-34). The Gemara states that Joab was culpable for the murder of Amasa despite the fact that there was no prior warning. R. Chajes argues that the same talmudic discussion serves to establish that the king may administer punishment on the basis of circumstantial evidence. R. Chajes endeavors to show that proof of Joab's culpability was entirely circumstantial. Amasa died because he was struck by Joab "on the fifth rib" (II Samuel 20:10). Similarly, Abner, was killed by Joab with a blow "on the fifth rib" (II Samuel 3:27). The blow "on the fifth rib" was fatal, declares R. Joḥanan, because that is "where the bile and the liver are attached." Joab's premeditation to kill, argues R. Chajes, could have been known only circumstantially, i.e., by the unlikelihood that the vulnerable spot near the fifth rib could have been struck other than by direct aim.