Shevuot 2

Welcome to Tractate Shevuot, which explores the laws of oaths. In our day, oaths are taken rarely but feature prominently at certain critical and often ceremonial moments of assuming responsibility: upon taking public office, joining the military, becoming a physician or obtaining citizenship. The other place we are likely to encounter oaths is in the courtroom, where they are sworn by jurors and witnesses. In all cases, the purpose of an oath is to underline the significance of a person’s words and hold them accountable to them.

In the ancient world, where there were far fewer written documents and more limited mechanisms of proof and accountability, oaths were even more critical to judicial proceedings. In the absence of evidence and witnesses, a defendant’s willingness to swear an oath — for instance, that they do not owe the other party any money — might be the only way a case is brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

This system worked because swearing a false oath was considered a grievous transgression — a violation of the third commandment (Exodus 20:7). Consequently, a significant portion of Tractate Shevuot is devoted to understanding what constitutes a false oath and what atonement is required after one is made. Even an oath taken in vain — such as an oath that promises something impossible or that attests to an obviously true fact, like swearing the sky is blue — is considered a violation of Torah law that must be addressed.

Shevuot begins with a mishnah that offers this summary statement about oaths:

With regard to oaths, there are two types that are actually four.

In other words, there are two major categories of oaths and two subcategories within each. This is reminiscent of the opening mishnah of Bava Kamma, which states that there are four primary categories of damages. But unlike Bava Kamma, which goes on to list and discuss those four categories, the mishnah that opens Shevuot gathers other examples of Jewish legal material that divides into two main categories and then two subcategories. It continues:

With regard to cases of knowingly defiling (the Temple), there are two types that are actually four.

With regard to acts of carrying that are prohibited on Shabbat, there are two types that are actually four.

With regard to the appearance of marks of tzaraat on a person’s skin, there are two types that are actually four.

Each of these is its own category of Jewish law, some of which are discussed elsewhere. We might expect the mishnah to now end or return to the first subject, oaths — but it doesn’t. Instead, the mishnah launches into detailed discussion of the four categories of knowingly defiling the Temple — a discussion that continues almost to the bottom of the second side of today’s daf. Here’s a sample:

In cases in which one had awareness (that he was ritually impure) at the beginning, (i.e., before he transgressed by entering the Temple or eating sacred foods), and had awareness at the end, (i.e., after the transgression), but had a lapse of awareness in between, this person is liable to bring a sliding-scale offering.

For cases in which one had awareness at the beginning but had no awareness at the end, the goat (sacrificed inside the sanctuary on) Yom Kippur suspends any punishment that he deserves until he becomes aware of his transgression; and then to achieve atonement he brings a sliding-scale offering.

In the first case, the person had awareness both before and after the transgression, and so he can only atone by bringing a sliding-scale offering, which is exactly what it sounds like: an offering he can afford. In the second case, the person who transgressed had awareness at the beginning but not at the end. In this case, one of the Yom Kippur sacrifices holds off punishment until he comes to awareness and offers the necessary sacrifice, again on a sliding scale. In both cases, an individual sacrifice is ultimately necessary.

The other two cases discussed in the mishnah are what one would expect: someone who is not aware at the beginning but becomes aware later, and someone who is never aware of their sin, before or after it is committed. Both of these — for which, before the transgression, he was completely unaware of what he was doing wrong — are atoned for through communal sacrifices. Which sacrifices accomplish that atonement are subject to further debate in the mishnah.

This is the material that the Gemara tackles first, taking us on a journey through ways of atoning for defilement of the Temple. Although this system was already inoperative by the time the Talmud was written, the Temple having been destroyed hundreds of years earlier, it was nonetheless important to the rabbis to explore its laws in depth — in my view, because they hoped and perhaps even expected the Temple would be rebuilt soon. But this will be a brief foray. We’ll spend about a year and a half in similar material once we move out of Seder Nezikin (the order devoted to damages and legal proceedings) and enter Seder Kodashim. Consider this a taste of things to come.

But before we do even that, the Gemara asks the same question that might now be on your mind: Why does Shevuot begin with material that has nothing to do with oaths? That is asked and answered on tomorrow’s daf.

Read all of Shevuot 2 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on May 3, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.