On today’s daf, we encounter a mishnah that examines the role of testimony in establishing chazakah, or presumptive ownership, and liability for false testimony:
If two witnesses testify on his behalf that he profited (from a field) for three years, and they were found to be conspiring, they must pay the full value.
The mishnah is referring to a case of edim zomemim, or conspiring witnesses, who testify that someone worked a field for three years and therefore has a claim of presumptive ownership. If the witnesses were found to be testifying falsely, they must pay the full value of the field to the true owner they were seeking to take it from.
There are two primary ways witness testimony can be invalidated: either by the facts themselves being disputed by another set of witnesses, or another two witnesses testifying that the initial pair could not have witnessed the thing they’re testifying about. The latter case is what we call conspiring witnesses. So if Rivkah and I claim that we saw Sarah rob someone on the street on Thursday morning, but two other people testify that they were in minyan with us at that time and couldn’t have seen her, then Rivkah and I are rendered conspiring witnesses and our testimony is invalidated.
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The crucial distinction between these two cases is what happens to the witnesses whose testimony has been disqualified. If the facts of our testimony are merely disputed — that is, another set of witnesses testifies that Sarah was with them on a different block on Thursday morning — then Sarah cannot be held liable for robbery and Rivkah and I are not liable for anything. It’s possible that we were lying, but it’s also possible that one set of witnesses were merely mistaken. But in a case where definitionally we could not have witnessed the event about which we are testifying, it’s clear that we were purposefully lying. In this scenario, the rule is that whatever we were conspiring to have happen to the accused happens instead to us. If this were a capital case, then Rivkah and I would be subject to the death penalty since our testimony might have resulted in the killing of the defendant. But in monetary cases, we must pay whatever we sought to make the defendant pay.
Our mishnah is a case of the latter. If Rivkah and I testify that we witnessed Leah work and profit from land that she has possessed for three years, and we are proven to be incapable of giving that testimony — for example, perhaps we were not in the country for some amount of that time — then we were trying to wrongfully establish the land in Leah’s hands and expropriate it from its rightful owner. Therefore, just as we sought to deprive the rightful owner of their field, so too we must pay the value of that land when our deceit is proven.
The second clause of the mishnah plays out this concept in relationship to testimony in which multiple sets of two witnesses each testify about one aspect of the claim — in this case, that someone possessed and profited from a piece of land for one year:
Two witnesses testify about the first year, two about the second year, and two about the third, (and all were found to be conspiring witnesses), payment is divided among them.
This clause teaches us two things. First, it teaches that testimony can be combined to establish a chazakah, a position the Gemara will reveal is disputed. Second, it teaches that each set of conspiring witnesses is liable for only a portion of the penalty. One might have thought that since each pair individually was insufficient to establish the chazakah, they should all be exempt from punishment. Instead, since their combined testimony is effective at establishing a chazakah, all six of them split the cost of the intended outcome.
Read all of Bava Batra 56 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 20, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
