Mishpatim 5780

Question: Why are the laws of damages to servants interrupted?

Approach: There are a number of ways that the תורה could have presented the rules of damages - based on offending party, damaged party, severity of the crime etc. From a closer reading of the text, it appears that the primary factor is severity of crime. Hence why the cases of causing death to humans, or close to it, come before damages to property. Within each category, the order seems to be the nature of what is damaged, based on who/what is the damaging party. Hence, causing death to a “regular” human precedes causing death of a slave, which itself precedes the death to a fetus, which is essentially the ultimate damage to a human limb. Damages to slaves is then the first in the category of damage to property.

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