Lomdus on the Parsha: Va'Eschanan
Based on the Acclaimed Sefer Chavatzeles HaSharon
Q: Is it actually halachically possible to transgress the prohibition of coveting “your neighbor’s wife”?
You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. Likewise, none of you shall crave your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s. (Deuteronomy 5:16-17)
R. Yehoshua Leib Diskin raises a puzzling issue with the premise of coveting another’s wife: How is it possible to actually transgress this sin?
To understand this question, we need to review one of the most fundamental disputes in the nature of lo sachmod, the prohibition against coveting. The Rambam writes in the Mishneh Torah (Hilchos Gezeila V’Aveidah 1:9) that the sin of lo sachmod is not transgressed by coveting alone, but by going so far as to exert enough pressure on the owner that he is willing to relinquish his property:
Anyone who covets a servant, a maidservant, a house or utensils that belong to a colleague, or any other article that he can purchase from him and pressures him with friends and requests until he agrees to sell it to him, violates a negative commandment, even though he pays much money for it, as Exodus 20:14 states: "Do not covet." The violation of this commandment is not punished by lashes, because it does not involve a deed. One does not violate this commandment until one actually takes the article he covets, as reflected by Deuteronomy 7:25: "Do not covet the gold and silver on these statues and take it for yourself." Implied is that the Hebrew tachmod refers to coveting accompanied by a deed.
The Ra’avad (ad loc) critiques what appears to be an inconsistency in the Rambam: If one does not violate lo sachmod until he physically takes the object he covets then how is this sin not classified as an active violation of the Torah whereby the offender would incur lashes (as opposed to non-physical sins which generally do not incur corporal punishment)?
R. Mordechai Carlebach explains that whereas the Ra’avad views the act of taking the object as the cause or culmination of the sin (sibah), the Rambam merely views it as an indication (siman) that this individual was so covetous that he was even willing to persuade and take the object from the other party. In other words, for the Rambam, the sin of lo sachmod is about the subjective experience of coveting - however, the external threshold for determining when one has transgressed this commandment is assessed by their willingness to act upon it.
According to the Ra’avad, it is difficult to understand how one could violate lo sachmod vis-a-vis someone else’s wife. Unlike a possession that can be transferred directly from one party to the other, the husband would need to first divorce his wife, whereby she would be single, and only then could the second man enter and betroth her. Thus, there is no violation of lo sachmod since the original “owner” merely relinquished jurisdiction instead of transferring “ownership.” Whereas, according to the Rambam who holds that the violation of lo sachmod is fundamentally about the subjective experience of coveting and the action is only an extrinsic threshold, what matters is that he successfully convinced the original husband to divorce his wife, even if she does not go automatically to him at the moment of divorce.
This difficulty in understanding the Ra’avad led the Minchas Chinuch (38:7) to conclude that according to the Raavad there is no independent case of lo sachmod vis-a-vis someone’s wife. Rather, in the event that one commits an act of adultery they would additionally be liable for lo sachmod as well. Of course, this explanation is not satisfying since the Torah explicitly lists coveting someone’s wife as an example, which suggests that it is indeed its own independent sin.
However, we may yet have a way to defend (ironically) the Ra’avad’s contention:
(1) The Responsa of Chasam Sofer (E.H. 1:109)
suggests that even according to those who hold that if a man coerces a woman to say she is willing to marry him it is a valid betrothal (see Bava Basra 48b), such a man would still be in violation of lo sachmod. Thus, we do have a case in which only the prohibition of lo samchmod applies.
While this case makes sense even according to the Ra’avad, it does not account for the Torah’s explication of “your neighbor’s wife,” which implies that there is a case of lo sachmod even for a woman who is already married.
(2) There is, however, still at least one other possibility
in which there will be a transgression of lo sachmod even vis-a-vis a married woman. If a man performs an act of betrothal on a woman while she is currently married with the stipulation that it take effect immediately upon her divorce, and then proceeds to persuade the husband to divorce her, she would effectively go directly from the auspices of her first husband to that of her new husband. In such a case, the husband’s relinquishment essentially becomes one of transference, and thus there would be a violation of lo sachmod even according to the Ra’avad.
Needless to say, both of these answers are not very compelling. Indeed, the Panim Yafos, in addressing the first iteration of the Ten Commandments, sees this precise difficulty as a proof that the Rambam’s formulation of lo sachmod is the correct one.
Of course, whether or not one is technically guilty of violating lo sachmod, clearly this entire enterprise is immoral from the outset. We should live to see a day when the integrity of marriage and the value of family returns to its pedestal of glory and that it become respected throughout the entire world.
Note: This series is not intended to dispense practical halachic conclusions. The Torah presented here is but a small extraction from the breadth of the sefer Chavatzeles HaSharon and is not affiliated with the author in any official capacity. Translations are adapted from Sefaria, Chabad.org, Mechon Mamre, and my own. Contact: [email protected]
