This Mishnah will discuss the halakha (law) regarding a goy, a non-Jew, vis-à-vis Erech vows and actual value vows. Damim (actual value on the market) and Erech—that’s how we’ll refer to them. Erech refers to the amounts set by the Torah, and a person’s actual value on the market is Damim.
When the Torah starts to talk about the Erech vows, it starts with the words, “Speak to Bnei Yisrael, the Jewish people, and say to them: ‘When a man is going to make a vow.’” The words here, “speak to the Jewish people, the children of Israel,” tell us that the Erech vow was given only to Bnei Yisrael, to the Jewish people. But the word ish (man), ish ki yafli neder (when a man is going to make a vow), is understood to be inclusive, to include non-Jews as well. So we learn that the law of Erech vows applies to non-Jews as well, in some capacity. Here we’ll have a machloket (dispute) about which part of the law applies to non-Jews and which applies only to Jews.
The Mishnah says, haNochri, a non-Jew, with regard to Erech vows. The halakha says as follows: Rabbi Meir omer (says): ne’erach aval lo ma’arich. He can be the subject of an Erech vow made by a Jew, but he cannot make an Erech vow about somebody who is Jewish. If a non-Jew does make an Erech vow, the vow is not effective whatsoever. That is the opinion of Rabbi Meir. According to this opinion, it would make sense for the Torah to allow the non-Jew to be the subject of the vow, but not give him the ability to make that type of vow. We have other groups of people who could also only be the subjects of an Erech vow, but they can’t be the ones to make it: cheresh, shoteh, vekatan (deaf-mute, mentally incompetent, and minor), as we said in the previous Mishnah. So if we have to choose here, in the situation of a non-Jew, because we have a word that seems to include and also a word that seems to exclude, if we’re choosing one over the other, he should be treated like the cheresh, shoteh, vekatan: he could be the subject of a vow, but he can’t make the vow.
The argument, though, could go the other way, as explained to me by Bartenura: maybe we should have given the non-Jew the ability to make an Erech vow, but not allow him to become the subject of a vow. We find that with a Tumtum and Androgynos: they could make an Erech vow, but they can’t be the subject of one. So we may think to go the other way. But Rabbi Meir would say that it would make more sense to compare the non-Jew to the three categories of people, the cheresh, shoteh, vekatan, as opposed to comparing him to the Tumtum and the Androgynos, which are just two categories. But that is the opinion of Rabbi Meir.
Rabbi Yehuda says the opposite: the non-Jew can make an Erech vow that he’s going to give the Erech of a particular Jew, but he can’t be the subject of an Erech vow, even if that vow was made by another Jew. An Erech vow has brackets given by the Torah for where people fit in and how they’re categorized, and those categories are only given, or only said, about Jews. So Rabbi Yehuda would compare the non-Jew, unlike Rabbi Meir, to the Tumtum and Androgynos, as opposed to the cheresh, shoteh, vekatan. He would say that the cheresh, shoteh, vekatan are all part of one category of people who cannot make vows, since they’re disqualified for the same reason: they don’t have da’at, they don’t have intelligence. But the Tumtum and Androgynos have intelligence, and they’re counted as two different categories of people who have uncertain genders, because they’re two different kinds of uncertainty. The Tumtum has one set of private parts, but we can’t tell which one they are, because they’re covered up. And the Androgynos has two sets of private parts, but we can’t determine: is he actually a male or a female? Therefore, Rabbi Yehuda says, we’re going to compare the non-Jew to the Tumtum and Androgynos. They’re two categories, as opposed to the one category of total. The cheresh, shoteh, vekatan fit into one category of people who lack... That is the opinion of Rabbi Yehuda.
And now we’ll talk about the law of a non-Jew for vows of actual value. Both Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda agree that a non-Jew could vow to give another person’s actual value, what they would have sold for, and a non-Jew could be the subject of a vow for their actual value. When the Torah excludes non-Jews from Erech vows, it excludes them only from Erech vows, not from other types of values. The Torah gives non-Jews the ability to make a vow. We see this from other laws that allow a non-Jew to offer certain types of korbanot (offerings), and it’s only with the Erech vows that the Torah says they’re excluded in some capacity from these types of vows.