Don't Deliver a Slave to His Master

Continuing where we left off the other day, about Sages who maintained that one can transfer an entity that hasn’t yet entered the world, the top of Kiddushin 63a shows how Rabbi (Yehuda HaNasi) maintains the same:

״לֹא תַסְגִּיר עֶבֶד אֶל אֲדֹנָיו״, רַבִּי אוֹמֵר: בְּלוֹקֵחַ עֶבֶד עַל מְנָת לְשַׁחְרְרוֹ הַכָּתוּב מְדַבֵּר. הֵיכִי דָּמֵי? אָמַר רַב נַחְמָן בַּר יִצְחָק: כְּגוֹן דִּכְתַב לֵיהּ: ״לִכְשֶׁאֶקָּחֲךָ, הֲרֵי עַצְמְךָ קָנוּי לְךָ מֵעַכְשָׁיו״.

With regard to the verse: “You shall not deliver a slave to his master” (Deuteronomy 23:16), Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says: The verse is speaking of one who acquires a slave, not to enslave him but in order to emancipate him. The court may not deliver the slave to this master, as this master has no right to enslave him. The Gemara asks: What are the circumstances of this case? Rav Naḥman bar Yitzḥak says: For example, if the new master wrote to the slave in his bill of manumission: When I will purchase you, you are hereby acquired to yourself from now. In that case the slave acquires himself from that moment, despite the fact that the buyer does not own him. This shows that Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi maintains that a person can transfer an item that has not yet entered the world, as one can emancipate

I recently posted about the importance of dikduk mastery, to be able to sense what Chazal are doing with their derashot. As well as the importance of actually looking up the pasuk in a Chumash. And I gave a concrete example, showing how the basis of a derasha was not that yakriv implied compelling him and then that lirtzono implied voluntarily, since neither means that as a matter of peshat. Instead, both were non-literal interpretations of the word, and the midrashist was playing on the Biblical parallelism and that these two phrases could be reinterpreted to create a contrast.

Deducing Internal Conflict

Here as well, I think a close reading can reveal what Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi intended with this derasha.

The popular understanding is given by Rashi ad loc. Thus:

לא תסגיר - אזהרה לב"ד שלא יסגירוהו לבעליו להשתעבד בו:

בלוקח עבד ע"מ לשחררו - דאי בשיחררו ובא להשתעבד בו לא קרי ליה קרא עבד:

לכשאקחך - דבר שלא בא לעולם הוא:

Everything is based on the snippet of the pasuk, which is the beginning of the verse until the etnachta midpoint. Artscroll does better by providing English translation of the latter half of the verse, and also printing the full verse on the side, in the Torah Ohr HaShalem.

Rashi explains that the לֹא תַסְגִּיר is an admonition to Beit Din, not to any individual, that they should not give him back to his master to make him work. Now, the verse calls him an עֶבֶד, a slave. If he were an entirely free slave, whom his master tried to illegally enslave, he would not have been called an eved. This is not specified by Rashi explicitly, but I suppose the idea then is: rather, he must have been purchased by someone as a slave. That would be the second master. And the reason that he isn’t then legally a slave is that there was a prior arrangement, that the slave purchase would indeed happen, but then the document of manumission, freeing the slave, would kick in. There is a lot of work being done implicitly here, to get us to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s conclusion.

I think that an examination of the full verse, and some creative grammatical manipulation, can get us much further than the implicit path described above.

The full verse is in Devarim 23:16:

לֹא־תַסְגִּ֥יר עֶ֖בֶד אֶל־אֲדֹנָ֑יו
אֲשֶׁר־יִנָּצֵ֥ל אֵלֶ֖יךָ מֵעִ֥ם אֲדֹנָֽיו׃

You are not to hand over a serf to his lord
who has sought-rescue by you from his lord.

That is the simple peshat translation. The implication is that we are dealing with a single master, and the asher clause is modifying the slave.

The derasha, with a bit of kvetching, will make the asher clause modify the master. Thus:

You are not to hand over a serf to [his lord(1) to whom he sought rescue by you=him from his lord(2)].

There are two lords in the verse. Lord(2) is the original master. He sought rescue, that is full freedom, from Lord(2), by means of Lord(1). How would Lord(1) accomplish this? He would have purchased him from Lord(2), with the prior understanding (and giving a bill of manumission to the serf) that the serf would then go free. It is to Lord(1) that you / beit din should not hand over the serf for the sake of servitude. Because the prior bill of manumission is effective, despite targeting a davar shelo ba le’olam.