3. SECOND THOUGHTS
Recently, a later edition of Rambam’s Commentary on the Mishnah was printed, and in this version, he in fact writes: “we would have thought that according to this opinion, if they were questioned... and found to understand, then we would cease examining them.” This means that Rambam (in his final edition) actually had the version in the Gemara of “and knew how to utter a vow” (as Kessef Mishneh and Radvaz concluded).
However, the following remains unclear: Since Rambam accepted the version “and did not know how to utter a vow” in his “first edition” (and this edition of Commentary on the Mishnah was widely disseminated throughout all Jewish communities across the generations), it is clear that according to him, this version also has validity (by relying on one of the many explanations offered by the commentators concerning the possible thought that “where we examine her... and she did not know how to utter a vow properly, {one might} say that one should examine her no further”). Given this, we must clarify why he had a change of heart and specifically chose the unconventional version of “and knew how to utter a vow.”
This question becomes more pressing: According to Rambam’s version of the Gemara (in his later edition) “and knew how to utter a vow,” a tremendous novelty emerges: While throughout the Torah we can rely upon a person’s chazakah {presumed status}, vows work differently — even though the individual was already examined and is now presumed to know how to utter a vow, they must nevertheless be examined anew because they may have changed!
Furthermore: Rambam’s wording {in Mishneh Torah}, “they must be questioned again {for the vow} to be maintained,” implies that until the minor is examined, their vow is completely not binding, even out of doubt (and as is spelled out even more explicitly in Tur’s wording, “it is not a vow until they are examined again”) — even though they are already presumed {based on earlier vows that they made} to “know how to utter a vow”!
In the face of these issues, we must certainly find a very compelling reason why Rambam took back what he wrote in his first edition, and instead adopted the unconventional version {of the Gemara} and the novel rule that we do not rely on a person’s presumed status when it comes to vows (even out of doubt).
