A guy says to two people, “I know I stole a maneh from one of you, which is 100 zuz (coin), but I don’t know which one I stole from.” Or he says to one of them, “The father of one of you guys had a maneh that he left with me, and then he died, and I don’t know which one of you—which one of your fathers—left me that maneh.” So we say he has to give, or he should give each one of them a maneh, even though, in each case, he only had either 100 maneh that he stole or 100 maneh deposited with him. He should pay each one of these people that he’s mesupak, that he’s in doubt about, a full maneh, which is 200 maneh. Because he’s admitting this obligation by himself. He’s coming forward and telling us that he has to pay. There’s no claim being made against him, but he is doing this because he wants to be clean in the shamayim (heaven). He wants to have no penalties. He wants to have no punishment in the shamayim. He wants to have that moral clarity that he has fulfilled his obligation. There’s no legal obligation here. So what the Chachamim (sages) are telling him is, “Give a maneh to each person.” That’s the only way. That’s the only way to definitely know that you’re paying back that maneh that you either stole or were holding for somebody. That’s to fulfill your l’shem shamayim obligation, your moral obligation.
If there was actually a claim against him from both of these people, and he’s thinking that he only had one of them—he only stole from one of them, or he only had money deposited by one of their fathers with him—we say that, in that case, he’s legally obligated to give each one of them a maneh, even though he’s in doubt about it. Even though he only had a hundred zuz, either he stole it or he was watching it for somebody. In this case, Chachamim penalized this person because he was a thief or because he was a negligent shomer (custodian) and forgot who the owner was. Therefore, Chachamim went beyond the amount—that 100 that he either took by stealing or had deposited with him. And they said that, since he did something wrong in this case, he has to pay the full amount of 100 zuz each, which is a maneh to each one of the parties who has a claim against him.
But the topic of this Mishnah is the moral obligation, the l’shem shamayim obligation that he has.