Welcome to the penultimate chapter of Tractate Shevuot! This one goes over a typology of oath-takers in a variety of everyday disputes, and the mishna starts off by distinguishing Torah-sourced oaths from Rabbinic ones. The Torah-sourced scenario is the one we’ve already discussed: a defendant swears an oath admitting only partially to a claim. The rabbinic scenarios, which involve plaintiffs taking oaths, are: (1) a hired worker claiming not to have been paid his wages; (2) the victim of a robbery/larceny asking to receive his stolen property back; (3) the victim of battery claiming compensation for an injury; (4) a litigant in a case involving an opposing party whose oath is suspect; and (5) a storekeeper swearing as to the truth of his ledger to get paid. For each categories, there’s a dispute: the majority opinion is that the oath takes place if the defendant denies the claim, whereas Rabbi Yehuda opines that the oath takes place if the defendant partly admits it. Here’s an example regarding the hired worker (scenario (1)):
Similar deal with (2), the robbery victim (general opinion: defendant denies the robbery, Rabbi Yehuda’s opinion: defendant says he only took some of the disputed loot) and with (3), the battery victim (Rabbi Yehuda would only require an oath if the defendant claims to have only struck the victim once rather than twice).
Scenario (4) - an opposing party whose oath is suspect - involves people who were found to have falsely sworn in the past (as witnesses or on a deposit or in vain), gamblers (dice, pigeons), and crooks (folks who sell Sabbatical year produce). If both parties are suspect, according to Rabbi Yosei, the oath “returns to its place” (this concept will be explained on the next installment).
Scenario (5), the storekeeper story, involves a customer sent employees (or his kid) to buy something; the storekeeper claims he gave the item to the employees (and has the ledger to prove it) but they swear they did not receive it. The storekeeper swears that he gave, and receives compensation from the customer; the employees swear they were not paid and also receive wages from the customer/employer. Ben Nannas flags a problem: surely, either the storekeeper or the employee is lying, as both can’t be true at the same time. So, he suggests forgoing an oath in this situation.
The mishna flags a few additional special situations. The first one involves a grocer and a customer:
Similarly, if Man goes to a money changer to get coins for his dinar, Man swears as to the dinar and the money changer swears as to the coins (though Rabbi Yehuda flags that money changers would never give coins before receiving the dinar - that would be bad business.)
A couple of analogies from family law (Ketubot 87a): a woman who admits she received partial payment for her ketubah, or who is accused by one witness to have taken full payment, must swear an oath. Same deal for orphans who want to collect on a promissory note their father had (Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel clarifies: unless the father, before death, said the note had not been paid off, in which case the children do not have to swear).
There are a few additional people who swear an oath not as defendants, in the context of a dispute: business partners, serfs, stewards, women doing business from home, and household members who run the house affairs. If someone says to them, “I don’t have a specific claim, just swear that you have not taken any of my stuff,” they must swear an oath nonetheless.
Once partners or serfs have concluded their business together, they cannot commit each other to an oath. But if anyone owes an oath for some other matter, it can be broadened to include the partnership/serfdom dispute. And, a Sabbatical year abrogates the obligation to swear an oath.
Let’s turn to the Gemara. Shmuel mentions the magnitude of the Rabbinic regulations: setting the oath on the wage worker protects both him (that’s his livelihood) and future employers (who must depend on a guarantee of the worker’s honesty to hire him). While both parties are sensitive to manipulations, it is plausible to suggest that the employer could’ve forgotten to pay. The oath, then, is sworn to avoid him feeling cheated by the workers, given that both parties usually prefer the payment to take place at the end of the day (שְׁנֵיהֶן רוֹצִין בְּהַקָּפָה).
The question whether the employer is distracted is in dispute: there’s a baraita that says that, if an artisan says “you promised to pay me 2 coins” and the employer says, “nope, I promised only one,” the burden is on the artisan (הַמּוֹצִיא מֵחֲבֵירוֹ עָלָיו הָרְאָיָה), which is weird given that the employer surely remembers what he set as payment. Could it be that the passage of time makes a difference? The presumption is that the employer does not violate the biblical prohibition against delaying wages (בַל תָּלִין), so even if he is distracted and forgets, he shouldn’t forget to do it by the biblical deadline. But there’s also a presumption that the wage worker won’t be cheating the employer by demanding payment twice (בַּל תִּגְזוֹל). What supports the employer, though, is not only the assumption that he won’t delay wages, but also the assumption that the worker won’t forgo asking for them within the allotted time (דְּאֵין שָׂכִיר מְשַׁהֶא שְׂכָרוֹ).
Shmuel suggests that the oath requirement only applies when the artisan was hired in the presence of witnesses. If that was not the case, the employer can be believed, seeing as he could have made the more advantageous claim, “I never hired you” and is therefore deemed credible when saying, “I did hire you but I paid you already.” Everyone agrees, including Rabbi Yohanan, which raises the question what Resh Lakish thought (seeing as they often disagreed). The Gemara hypothesizes that Resh Lakish was drinking, or simply kept mum. Ramei bar Hama thinks this principle could apply to any transactional dispute: the guardian could deny ever getting the item (unless there are witnesses or a note). Hence, if there were witnesses to the deposit, the return does not call for witnesses, but if there’s a note, there should be witnesses who can testify as to the return.