신명기 19:19의 인용 해설

When do witnesses become zomemin. This is what it means to say, those witnesses that were found zomemin and we don't do to them the law of hazama, meaning that we don't fulfill in them "And do to them as they planned to do to their brother", how are they made zomemin.

כי יהיה ריב בין אנשים, “if an argument between two men results in their taking their case to the court;” Nachmanides writes, basing himself on a long standing tradition, that the penalty of 39 lashes is administered for deliberate transgressions of negative commandments when no specific penalty has been decreed by the Torah. Why would the Torah expand on this penalty when speaking about a fight between two people, when the same penalty is applied for people who eat meat that has not been slaughtered, or who indulge in a number of other forbidden activities? Furthermore, what law did these two people break when they engaged in a fight? The whole structure of our verse, which speaks about exonerating someone after judgment had been given and labeling the second party as “wicked” is problematic. Why do we need a verse telling us that the person found “justified” be so declared as such by the judges? Such considerations prompted our sages to understand the whole paragraph as dealing with a scenario involving a second set of witnesses appearing after initial judgment having been given. This second set of witnesses challenges the witnesses on the basis of whose testimony the guilty party has been convicted by claiming that those witnesses had been with them in a different location at the time the fight was supposed to have occurred, so that they could not have witnessed that fight at all. Normally, in such a case the first set of witnesses would be given the penalty that they had intended to be applied to their victim. (Deut. 19,19) When this is impossible, such as when they claimed that seeing the accused party was the son of a legally forbidden union and could not partake of certain privileges reserved for children of legitimate unions, then the court will impose the penalty of 39 lashes, as it is impossible to change those witnesses’ legal status in the community. The judges, when reversing the conviction, will have to make a public statement that the party originally convicted of the crime in question had in fact been righteous and had remained righteous throughout. According to a homiletic approach the reason why the number of lashes is described as being “40,” (excluding the 40th), is that the guilty party had violated a commandment that Moses had been given during the 40 days he had been on Mt Sinai without food and drink. Moreover, by sinning, the guilty party had condemned himself to death as it takes 40 days in the womb of its mother for the embryo to begin to evolve into a living human being. The 40 lashes are intended to absolve the sinner from further guilt.

Auf. Nachdem am Schlusse des Tr.’s Sanhedrin ein Fall behandelt wurde, bei dem an falschen Zeugen das Gebot: „ihr sollt an ihm tun, wie er getrachtet, an seinem Bruder zu tun“ (Deut. 19, 19), nicht vollständig zur Ausführung kommt, werden hier noch andere Bestimmungen über die Behandlung der als falsch befundenen Zeugen angereiht, und es ist zuerst von Fällen die Rede, bei denen das Gebot von Deut. 19, 19 gar nicht ausgeführt wird.