Wednesday evening we began a new mishna that asks the question, "why did the Torah - in reference to the number of witnesses required to execute an individual - say, 'based on two or three witnesses a person will die..." If two witnesses are sufficient to institute capital punishment, surely three are no worse! Kal V'chomer they are effective!
There are three views in the mishna on this:
a) Tanna Kamma: The Torah is linking three to two - just as edim who are "meizim" two witnesses are believed - so, too are edim who are "meizim" three witnesses. We discussed the הוא אמינא/assumption that we would have had - had this pasuk not been taught; the bottom line is, however, that that three cannot fend off two עדים מזימים. Also, 100 are incriminated by two (or even more!)
b) R. Shimon: The Torah is linking three to two- just as if you are not meizim both witnesses in a regular edut, you cannot kill two members of a group of three witnesses, even if those two COULD HAVE constituted a "stand-alone" edut. Since they came as a group of three, you need to be "meizim" all of them to kill any one of them. The same applies to 100 - if you incriminated 99 of them, but not the 100th - you cannot kill the 99.
c) R. Akiva: The Torah did not come to be lenient but to be strict - we ended yesterday's shiur with the Rashi on this comment of R. Akiva, and we will return to that Rashi at the start of today's shiur..........
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