In the last three perakim (chapters), we spoke about shevuot, swears that a person would have to do under de'oraita biblical law. This perek will deal with swears that are de-rabbanan (rabbinic) in nature. We'll first talk about the differences between de'oraita and de-rabbanan swears.
The Mishnah says: In all those types of swears that we are obligated to make under Torah law, a person swears and does not have to pay. In other words, whenever the Torah requires us to swear that a certain claim would be true, it's not the person making the claim who has to swear in order to collect; rather, it's the defendant who has to swear in order to free himself from paying. That's the way it works. The defendant is the one who swears, and he then frees himself from having to pay.
But in the following cases of de-rabbanan swears, the people involved would swear, and that would make them collect. So they're the ones coming with the claim, and they're the ones who are going to collect payment. They include a hired worker, somebody who was robbed, somebody who was injured, and someone who, let's say, is dealing in court with somebody who is supposed to testify and swear but is not trusted to testify. That person is problematic and is suspected of making false oaths, for example. They would usually defend themselves and swear, but they can't swear. We don't trust them. So in this instance, we would tell the person with the claim to swear, and he would collect. There's also a storekeeper who is making a claim based on what's written in his book of accounting. We'll now elaborate on each one of these cases.
What's a case where a hired worker would swear and collect? If a worker says to his employer, “Give me the salary that you owe me,” but the employer says, “I already gave it to you,” and the worker says, “No, I never received it,” Hu nishba ve-notel. The worker in this case would swear that he was never paid, and he would collect his salary.
The Hachamim (the rabbis) instituted this type of swear because an employer is very busy with all of his workers and is responsible for so much that's going on that he sometimes could make the honest mistake of thinking he paid somebody but never actually paid them. So the rabbis gave the worker the right to swear and then collect.
Rabbi Yehuda says the worker is not believed to swear and collect unless there's an admission to part of the claim by the employer. Unless the employer is saying that he partially paid. We'll elaborate on what that means. How is that? For example, let's say the worker said to the employer, “Give me my salary of 50 silver dinarim (dinars) that you owe me.” The employer tells him, “I already gave you a gold dinar.” A gold dinar is worth 25 silver dinarim. So the original claim was 50 silver dinar. The employer is saying he already paid him a gold dinar, which is the equivalent of 25 silver dinarim. So he's admitting that he owes him 25 silver dinarim. So the owner here is therefore sort of obligated to swear on a biblical level that he doesn't owe him the rest. So in this case, what the Hachamim did was take the obligation to swear away from the employer and give it to the worker to swear that he was owed the full amount of silver dinarim that he was claiming. Once he makes that swear, he could collect. But if the employer denies the entire claim, Rabbi Yehuda says, the worker cannot swear and collect his wages; rather, he is stuck now in that situation.