פירוש על עבודה זרה 106:20

In all of these scenarios, the owner hopes to recover his idol and therefore has not annulled it in his heart.
According to the rabbis, when the Canaanites fled when Joshua was conquering the land they intended to return. Therefore, they were not really abandoning their idols.

The Talmud now explains why we needed all four of these cases.
Clearly he is not annulling the idol by using it as collateral. This is not like selling the idol where he will not receive it in return. But if an avalanche fell on it, we might have thought that since he did not clear the rocks away, he has annulled it. Therefore, the baraita needs to teach that he has not.

We might have thought that when it came to the avalanche he did not annul it because he knows where it is. All he has to do is clear the rocks and get it. But when it comes to the robbers, he does not know where it is, so we might have thought that in this case he did annul it.

Finally, when the idol is stolen he might still assume that whoever stole it would either worship it, or sell it to someone who would. Therefore he did not annul it. But if he abandoned it, we might have thought that he annulled it.
Therefore we need all of these cases to learn that in none of them do we consider him to have annulled the idol.

The problem is that the Canaanites whom Joshua dispossessed did not return. The Talmud explains that the baraita means that they had the intent to return. The fact that they did not return is not relevant, only their intent is. We should note that this comparison is probably made so that the rabbis can understand why the Jews had to destroy these idols. After all, if they were abandoned, then they were annulled. The answer is that the Canaanites planned on returning.

The baraita above could have just said that if the idolaters intend to return, it is prohibited. Why mention the war waged by Joshua? The Talmud will now say that the baraita does so in order to teach something else. The issue is a case where an Israelite set up something to be worshipped, but an idolater worshipped it. Although generally a person cannot make something prohibited when it is not his, in this case he does. We will now see that this is derived from the conquest of the land. The baraita teaches us that the laws of idolatry can be learned from what occurred during this period.

The Talmud makes a fascinating analogy. The Torah says that when the Israelites conquer the land, they must burn the asherim trees. But why should the fact that the idolaters worshipped these these trees make them prohibited? These trees belong to Israel because God promised the land to Israel, and if so, how could the idolaters have made them prohibited. And if we were to say that the verse refers to trees planted before God’s promise, then the Israelites would not have to destroy the trees—annulment would have been sufficient (an idol worshipped by a Jew must be destroyed, but one worshipped by a non-Jew may be annulled). The answer is that when the Israelites worshipped the Golden Calf they revealed their idolatrous proclivities. Therefore, when idolaters worshipped these trees, they were only fulfilling the Israelites’ will and this gives them the ability to make something that does not belong to them prohibited. The same is true with the brick. Since the Jew set it up to be worshipped, he reveals that he has idolatrous proclivities and the non-Jew can prohibit it by worshipping it.

The Talmud points out that just because Israelites worshipped the Golden Calf it does not prove that they also wanted their trees to be worshipped as asherim.
The answer is that we know from their words “these are your gods” that the Israelites were willing to accept many gods, including the trees.

After the Golden Calf, Israel repented. Therefore, any asherim created after this point should not be prohibited. They belong to the Israelites because God gave Israel the land, and Israel no longer wants them worshipped.
The problem is that there would be no way of knowing which asherim were worshipped only after the incident of the Golden Calf and which were worshipped before. Therefore they all must be burned.

If an idolater abandoned his idol in time of peace the idol is permitted since we can assume that the idolater has no intention of returning to worship the idol. For instance if Maximus the idolater decides to move from Jaffa to Caesarea and he leaves his idols behind, he has shown that he doesn’t intend to worship them anymore. However, if Maximus the idolater flees his home during a war and in distress leaves his idols behind, he may intend to return and worship them when the war is over. Therefore they are not considered to be annulled.

Pedestals which were set up on the sides of roads to place upon them idols when kings pass by are not forbidden to Jews, since they are only temporarily used by the kings. During other times, when normal people pass them by, they do not worship these pedestals.

The Temple of Nimrod, is, at least according to Rashi, the Temple built to Nimrod, led the rebellion against God before the flood. Theoretically when God dispersed them, they were leaving in a time of war and therefore the idols in this Temple should remain prohibited, as we learned in the Mishnah. But since they have had time (thousands of years) to return and reclaim the idols, and yet have not done so, it is as if they have annulled them.
I’m not sure what this Temple of Nimrod actually was—did it exist in the time of the rabbis? Perhaps it was some sort of idolatrous Temple that lay in ruins that looked really old. The rabbis might have assumed that it came from the time of Nimrod.

Yohanan explains why the pedestals set up for kings on the side of the roads are permitted. These are only temporary pedestals. As soon as the king takes another road, the old pedestal is abandoned, and thereby annulled.

Ulla sits on a broken pedestal, not one set up for kings on the roads, but a normal pedestal used for idolatry. Rav Judah attacks him for doing so. Rav and Shmuel, earlier authoritative amoraim, both agreed that broken pedestals remain prohibited. Even the position that holds that broken pieces of idols are permitted would agree that broken pedestals are prohibited. So Ulla—get off that pedestal!

Ulla graphically disagrees with R. Judah, quoting, not incidentally, a tradition ascribed to two Eretz Yisraeli sages. According to both of them, even those who hold that broken fragments of idols are prohibited, this is because they do not annul idols even when broken. But pedestals are not themselves worshipped, so when a pedestal breaks, they just throw it away and get another one.

The baraita accords with R. Yohanan and Resh Lakish—a broken pedestal is permitted.

An altar has more than one stone, whereas a pedestal has only one.
Hezekiah cites a verse that proves that an altar has multiple stones and that in order for it to be annulled it must be completely shattered. The verse refers to how the “iniquity of Jacob” can be expiated.