daf bit: Bava Metzia 110

[cellio]

The talmud is discussing the payment of workers' wages; the employer is responsible for paying the day laborers he hires that night (not holding their wages until morning). The g'mara raises the case of agency: if an employer tells his neighbor "go and hire me laborers" and they are not paid on time, who has transgressed? The answer appears to be that neither transgresses the commandment for prompt payment -- the employer did not himself hire them and the neighbor did not benefit from the labor. However, the neighbor is nonetheless responsible for the wages unless he said "the employer is responsible for your wages". Yehudah b. Meremar used to instruct his attendant to say this explicitly (so there would be no risk to his attendant). (110b-111a)

It seems to me that the case here must be one of uncompensated agency. If the neighbor gets a fee like the modern contract house or headhunter, I would expect that to be different because he is benefiting. That's not covered here, though.

Comments

[cellio]

Cool -- thanks!

There is a midrash, though I either forgot or never knew the source, where Moshe asks God to show him the future and he's shown a yeshiva where some unrecognizable bit of torah is expounded, ending with the assertion that this is as it was told to Moshe on Har Sinai. The midrash as I recall it has God doing the moral equivalent of a shrug when Moshe comments on this.

[magid.livejournal.com]

What I remember of that story is Moshe being confounded by whatever is being discussed, and comforted when he hears himself cited. That story feels like it has a different emphasis to me, more about the chain of transmission than on the current link, as it were.