Rambam In-Depth: Five Payments, Only ONE Mitzvah — Here’s Why

Welcome to Rambam In-Depth: Hilchos Chovel uMazik — the Rambam’s preface listing the mitzvah of this section

Why do you need a special pasuk to be liable when your ox does damage, but not when you do the damage yourself? That one distinction explains how the Rambam counts, and groups, the laws of damages.

The Rambam opens Hilchos Chovel uMazik by stating that it contains a single positive mitzvah: the law of one who injures his fellow or damages his property (din chovel bachaveiro o mazik mamono). Two questions jump out.

First: someone who injures another person owes five separate payments: nezek (the loss in value), tza’ar (pain), ripui (medical costs), sheves (lost work time) and boshes (embarrassment). Rav Saadia Gaon counts them as separate mitzvos. Why does the Rambam count only one? Because of his own ground rule in Sefer HaMitzvos: the details of a mitzvah are not counted as separate mitzvos, even when they are written in different places in the Torah.

Second: why is damaging another person’s property grouped here, with injuring a person, and not with the laws of damage done by one’s ox, pit or fire? The sefer Mitzvas HaMelech answers based on Tosafos in Kesubos (56a). When your property does damage, you would be exempt if not for the pasuk, because you didn’t do it. That liability is a gezeiras hakasuv, which is why the Torah gives separate parshiyos for shor, bor, eish, shen and regel. But when a person does the damage himself, liability is simple logic: a person is responsible for his actions, whether the victim is a person or property. So it all belongs in one category, adam hamazik.

🔎 In this video we explore:

• Why five payments (nezek, tza’ar, ripui, sheves, boshes) are still just one mitzvah
• Where Rav Saadia Gaon and the Rambam part ways on counting mitzvos
• The Sefer HaMitzvos rule: a mitzvah’s details aren’t separate mitzvos, even when written in different parshiyos
• Why damaging someone’s property sits in Hilchos Chovel uMazik, not with ox, pit and fire
• Tosafos in Kesubos: why damage done by your property needs a gezeiras hakasuv
• Why shor, bor, eish, shen and regel each get their own parsha
• Adam hamazik: liability that comes from logic, not from a decree

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

📚 Sources discussed: Rambam, Hilchos Chovel uMazik (preface); Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvos (Shorashim); Rav Saadia Gaon’s count of the mitzvos; Sefer Mitzvas HaMelech; Tosafos, Kesubos 56a; Acharonim on the separate parshiyos of shor, bor, eish, shen and regel