Bava Batra 108

Today, we begin the eighth chapter of Bava Batra which deals with laws of inheritance. The opening mishnah describes categories of relatives who inherit property and the order in which they become eligible to do so:

There are those who inherit and bequeath; and there are those who inherit but do not bequeath; and there are those who bequeath but do not inherit; and there are those who do not inherit nor bequeath.

There are relatives from whom inheritance goes both ways — we inherit from them and they inherit from us. In other cases, it only goes one way, either they can inherit from us or we can inherit from them, but not both. And there are some relatives who will never inherit our items, nor will we inherit theirs.

So which relatives fall into which category? The mishnah continues:

A father with regard to his sons, and sons with regard to their father, and paternal brothers — all inherit from one another and bequeath to each other. 

A man with regard to his mother, and a man with regard to his wife, and sons of sisters — all inherit from their respective relatives but do not bequeath to them. 

A woman with regard to her sons, and a woman with regard to her husband, and maternal uncles — all bequeath to their respective relatives but do not inherit from them. 

And maternal brothers, despite being blood relatives, do not inherit from each other nor do they bequeath to one another, as they are not considered relatives for the purpose of inheritance.

On the pages that follow, the Gemara, in its unique way, unpacks each of these lists. Today it begins with the first one and asks:

What is the reason that the mishnah first teaches: “A father with regard to his sons”? Shouldn’t it start with “sons with regard to their father”?

Just as sons inherit from their fathers, so too fathers inherit from their sons. The mishnah lists fathers first and then sons which the Gemara finds surprising. The expected order of things is that sons inherit from fathers, not the other way around. Therefore, the mishnah’s presentation, which places fathers first, implies tragedy: a parent losing a child. 

It’s worth noting that the Gemara names losing a child as a calamitous event. More often than not, the Gemara’s hyperfocus on the legal matters at hand keeps it from diving deep into issues of grief and pastoral care — at least on a surface read. (See, for example, the mishnah on Yevamot 43b which deals with a case in which four married brothers all die childless. There, the Gemara is only concerned about the obligation of any surviving brothers to perform levirate marriage and fails to acknowledge the pain and suffering any family would experience upon losing four sons in rapid succession.)

The Gemara’s second argument for reversing the order of the mishnah is that the second item on the list, that sons inherit from their fathers, has clearer biblical precedent: Numbers 27:8 states that “if a man dies, and has no son, then you shall pass his inheritance to his daughter.”  In other words, because the Torah states that daughters inherit from their father in a case where there are no sons, it is clear that sons are first in line. However, Numbers 27:11 doesn’t say explicitly that a father inherits from his son. (This will be a larger discussion on tomorrow’s daf.) Given that the rule that a son inherits from his father is stated explicitly, but a father inheriting from his father is only implied, the Gemara believes that the former should be listed first in the mishnah.

So why does the rule about fathers inheriting from sons come first in the mishnah? The Gemara concludes that the rule required more interpretive work which makes it “dear” to the author of this mishnah who therefore chose to lead with it.

All of these arguments about the best order of the mishnah most likely arose after the mishnah was already compiled and are speculative in nature. That being said, the emotional moments that leak into the text are fascinating, both the Gemara’s observation that losing a child is more tragic than losing a parent, and the notion that the emotional attachment of the editor to a particular explanation might cause them to reorder the text. It’s not so often that the heart wins out over the head in talmudic discourse.

Read all of Bava Batra 108 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on October 11, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.