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This chapter introduces us to compensation for the harm a person inflicts directly upon another person. The assailant is liable for up to four types of harm, which are evaluated for compensation on separate standards:
Direct physical damage, which is essentially loss of productive value. This is evaluated (in the times of the Mishnah at least) by the victim's estimated worth in the slave market. For instance, if a person would have sold for $1,000 as a slave but only $800 with a broken leg — because they can do less work with a broken leg than with a healthy one — the assailant would owe $200.
Pain – Evaluated by estimating how much someone would pay to be anesthetized during such an ordeal so as not to feel any pain at all. (As an aside, one question to ask here is: Is this valuation the Mishnah's way of calculating the price of pain in the open market — or is it the Mishnah's answer to a pain scale? If it's a pain scale, there may be reason to look for different types of evaluation if the price of anasthesia goes down but, of course, the experience of pain doesn't change.)
Medical compensation for as long as symptoms caused by the injury persist.
Loss of work, which really means the ability to work in any function at all. The injured party is entitled to compensation of what today might be called minimum wage (the salary of a gourd-field watcher, in the language of the Mishnah).
It’s important to note that compensation for inability to work is essentially split between two categories: direct physical damages mentioned above, and loss of work as a separate category. To a large extent, damage accounts for the inability to be fully functioning in an economically valuable way (i.e. to earn one's full worth); loss of work is a separate liability that accounts for the inability to participate in the workforce.
Shame - This is evaluated based on (possibly) two categories.
- The first is the degree of affront: the worse the affront, the greater the liability. For instance, slapping someone with the front of the hand is subject to a greater penalty than a slap with the back of the hand.
- Social status of the two parties: a low-status individual who assaults a high-status one has caused a greater affront, and so is liable to a greater penalty. Notably, Rabbi Akiva disagrees with this second category, arguing that every Jew (since we are talking about the laws between Jews here) are inherently high-status as being the “the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
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