daf bit: Bava Batra 88

[cellio]

The torah commands us to have honest weights and measures. The mishna on today's daf discusses application. A wholesaler of items like oil and wine must clean his measures once in 30 days, because the residue diminishes the volume of what his customer takes away so he can't let it build up. A producer must clean his measures once in 12 months; the talmud assumes that he has fewer customers and fewer transactions than the wholesaler, so stuff doesn't build up as quickly. (R' Shimon ben Gamaliel reverses these, though, arguing that frequent use prevents some buildup and infrequent use allows more to stick.) A shopkeeper, who is presumed to have more customers than the wholesaler, must clean his measures twice a week, wipe his weights once a week, and clean his scales after every weighing. This last is because the pans in the scale are concave, so there's a place for stuff to pool. (88b)

Comments

[cellio]

1) What's the punishment for not doing these things?

I can't find a clear statement in the talmud itself, though that doesn't mean it's not in there somewhere. According to Maimonidies (the Rambam), who wrote the *Mishneh Torah* to codify Jewish law for "regular folks" in the 12th century and is widely understood to have recorded the traditional interpretation (not an innovator), the penalty in a human court is just that he has to make restitution (he isn't even hit with the double payment for theft). However, in the divine court, it's worse than even adultery, for which the (divine) punishment was being "cut off from the people":¹

The punishment for the person who uses false measures is greater than the punishment for licentious sexual behavior, for this is a sin between a person and his colleague, and this is a sin between a person and God.

Whoever denies the mitzvah of just measures is considered as if he denied the exodus from Egypt, which is the first of God's commandments. Conversely, one who accepts the mitzvah of just measures is considered as if he acknowledges the exodus from Egypt, which brought about all of God's commandments. (source)

The talmud reports, and I saw but have lost track of an article saying this continued to the 19th century, that communities had inspectors who made the rounds of shops inspecting weights and measures. (Sort of like government health inspectors in restaurants today, I imagine.) According to the torah (Deuteronomy 25:13-15) even mere possession of dishonest weights and measures is a violation of torah law. I don't know how the inspectors handled it if they found problems, but if they couldn't confiscate them I strongly suspect that they made the matter known in the community.

¹ The word for this is karet, and it seems to boil down to "God is really not ok with what you did". Adultery (for example) could also be punished in a human court, and if all the (stringent) requirements of witnesses, warning, and so on were met, that would be a death-penalty offense. Often a human court cannot prosecute a case because there aren't sufficient witnesses or witnesses disagree, but God knows the truth.


2) How old do we think the torah is?

Biblical scholars think most of it was assembled in the 6th-7th century BCE. (That's torah specifically, meaning the five books of Moses.)

The talmud consists of the mishna and g'mara, both of which were oral tradition before finally being written down. The mishna was written down by Yehudah HaNasi c. 200 CE, and the (Babylonian) g'mara was written down by Rav Ashi and Ravina c. 400-475 CE. (475 is when Ravina died, so that establishes an upper bound. Rav Ashi was head of an important academy from 375-427, so probably started the work in that period.) Some scholars think it had some later edits, possibly as late as 700.


3) Are there actual words for "wholesaler" and "retailer" in the talmud? Or how are those ideas described?

Yes. I haven't looked up the words in a talmudic dictionary so I could be missing some nuances, but הסיטון is a wholesaler, and מקנח is a storekeeper. The original source is translated as "producer" in the Soncino translation (from which I prepare the daf bits) but "homeowner" on Sefaria, so I looked more closely at the Hebrew: ובעל הבית, literally "master of the house".


4) Is there some cost to the cleaning of scales and weights, such that everyone isn't just required to do it all the time? Is there some reason it's desireable to minimize the cleaning?

I don't know, and it's a good question. Given how severe the transgression seems to be, at least under heaven, you'd think that people would be fastidious about this. Was it hard? Super-inconvenient somehow?

[cellio]

Oh, just found this in the next chapter of Mishneh Torah:

The court is obligated to appoint police in every city and town to inspect the stores periodically, correct the scales and measures, and set the prices. They are permitted to beat any person who possesses an unjust measure or weight or an improper balance according to his capacity, and to fine him as the court sees fit to enforce the matter.

[siderea]

Hoobah! If in your literary perambulations you come across any historical case law examples, please send them my way.

[siderea]

Thank you for all this! Very helpful.

The talmud reports, and I saw but have lost track of an article saying this continued to the 19th century, that communities had inspectors who made the rounds of shops inspecting weights and measures. (Sort of like government health inspectors in restaurants today, I imagine.)

...like government inspectors of weights and measures today.

I think you just went from source to example. My thesis is that for better than 2,000 years, one of the most stablely defined crimes in Western society was giving false weight, and somehow today Americans don't even realize it's still illegal, or even wrong, or that there's a branch of law enforcement that handles it.

Yes. I haven't looked up the words in a talmudic dictionary so I could be missing some nuances, but הסיטון is a wholesaler, and מקנח is a storekeeper. The original source is translated as "producer" in the Soncino translation (from which I prepare the daf bits) but "homeowner" on Sefaria, so I looked more closely at the Hebrew: ובעל הבית, literally "master of the house".

Huh. We still call it "husbandry", in English, when it involves livestock, so I wonder if there's a parallel concept there. Modernly, we think of "wholesalers" as manufacturers, but I suppose the original "wholesaler" would be the farmer who raises cash crops.

Off to google the etymology of "retail"!

P.S. On further thought, I wonder if frequent cleaning would wear the weights/measures, making them (oops!) lighter, which would be rather counterproductive.

P.P.S. re 19th cen: Certainly by then in the US secular authorities handled that. E.g. Pittsburg, 1828. [Google Books]

[cellio]

Huh! I knew that this was illegal today but thought it in the general class of fraud; I didn't know that there are inspectors who enforce this! Thanks for the education.

Modernly, we think of "wholesalers" as manufacturers

Do we? I've always thought of wholesalers as the bulk distributors, not necessarily manufacturers. Their function is to broker what would otherwise be a big many-to-many mapping among original producers and end buyers. Not every farmer wants to run a store; selling your entire crop to one person who'll take care of it from there, though it brings a lower price than selling directly to buyers, can be worth it. Even today, when I was selling self-published books and musical recordings, I was quite happy to sell larger lots at a discount to stores so I didn't have to handle (as many) individual sales myself. (One always has CDs on hand at concerts, of course.)

Off to google the etymology of "retail"!

What'd you find?

P.S. On further thought, I wonder if frequent cleaning would wear the weights/measures, making them (oops!) lighter, which would be rather counterproductive.

That's a good question! The Rambam says don't make weights out of iron, lead, or other metals because they can rust (reducing their weight), though I can't tell if he's stating law or giving advice. He says to make them out of "marble, glass, diamond, and the like". I don't see anything about what liquid measures were made of; I wonder if, at least in the time of the mishna, they would have been earthenware? Does earthenware erode with washing?

Hoobah! If in your literary perambulations you come across any historical case law examples, please send them my way.

Will do! Does any of this come up in the code of Hamarabi, I wonder? I've heard that he covers many of the same topics that the torah does (not always in the same way of course), but I don't know much about it myself. I've seen the occasional "here's the torah passage, and here's the corresponding part of Hamarabi" in classes.