In the last Mishnah, we spoke about how edim (witnesses) are turned into zomemim when other people discredit them and say that they were elsewhere during the time they claim they saw a certain aveirah (crime) take place. Here, the Mishnah will tell us that after the second pair of witnesses showed up to make the first pair zomemim, other witnesses also arrived to testify and claim that they saw a certain person doing an aveirah, doing a crime. How does that work?
The Mishnah says: If witnesses testified about a murder, and then a second set of witnesses came and turned them into edim zomemim, and then another set of witnesses came and testified that they saw the same murder, the second pair who came—the witnesses who discredited the first pair—hizimu them (discredited them). The Mishnah says they made the third set of witnesses who showed up into edim zomemim as well. The second witnesses said to the first pair who came up, “You guys were with us when you claimed that you saw a certain aveirah,” and they’re now claiming to the other group as well, “Oh, you were also with us at that time.” Then another set of witnesses shows up, and they also claim that they saw the murder in question. That second pair who showed up, who were discrediting the other two pairs, also made the fourth pair of witnesses into zomemim. Even if a hundred sets of witnesses came to testify about the murder, and the same two witnesses claimed that they were with all of them at the same time, they made all of them zomemim. All the witnesses who were turned into edim zomemim could be put to death.
The Torah tells us that witnesses who show up and discredit other witnesses are the ones who are believed. According to what we’re saying here, Tanna Kama (the first Tanna) says there’s no limit to how many people they can make into edim zomemim. They could even claim that up to a hundred pairs of other people were with them: “They were with us; they couldn’t have been at the crime scene where the murder took place, because we were with all of them.” We believe them.
But Rabbi Yehuda argues: Rabbi Yehuda Omer (says), “How could we believe these two witnesses, who are claiming that everybody else was edim zomemim?” Rabbi Yehuda says, “Istatis hi zo”: The edim who are testifying about others, claiming that they are lying about the murder—claiming that everyone else is lying—are obviously people who are plotting. They’re trying to save the murderer, and therefore they’re falsely declaring all the other witnesses to the crime as edim zomemim. If you look at the odds, it can’t be that everyone else is lying and that only these two edim, who are claiming that the others are zomemim, are the only ones telling the truth. They really can’t be. Therefore, Rabbi Yehuda says, the zomemim—all those other people—are not killed unless they are the only set of witnesses to become zomemim. If more than one group is being discredited as zomemim by the same witnesses, we assume those witnesses are plotters, and they’re just here to save the murderer. They’re going to discredit everybody, and we don’t believe them about anybody, even the first group, if they’re giving testimony about more than one group.