Commentary for Kiddushin 55:7
אי הכי היינו קרקע מהו דתימא קרקע הוא דעבדי אינשי דמזבני בצינעא אם איתא דזבין לית ליה קלא
- But, said Raba: [He may demand of him:] 'Swear to me that you were not sold to me as a Hebrew slave'. But that is a proper claim?
Daf Shevui to Kiddushin
If the slave is owned by the master, then this is the same as land and we have already learned that if one can impose an oath on another over movable property, he can extend it to land. So what new halakhah are we learning here?
The answer is that were it not for this statement, I would have thought that oath extensions work for land, because people sell land secretly. The purpose of the oath is to uncover the truth, truth that would not have been otherwise unknown. So one might need to make the other take an oath over land. But if a person sells himself into slavery, everyone would know that he had done so. Therefore, we would not need to make him take an oath over such a matter. This is why the Talmud says oath extensions can even go this far. Even though it seems very unlikely that B is actually A’s Hebrew slave (had this been true we would know of it), A can still make him take an oath that he is not.
The answer is that were it not for this statement, I would have thought that oath extensions work for land, because people sell land secretly. The purpose of the oath is to uncover the truth, truth that would not have been otherwise unknown. So one might need to make the other take an oath over land. But if a person sells himself into slavery, everyone would know that he had done so. Therefore, we would not need to make him take an oath over such a matter. This is why the Talmud says oath extensions can even go this far. Even though it seems very unlikely that B is actually A’s Hebrew slave (had this been true we would know of it), A can still make him take an oath that he is not.
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