Rosh Hashana 1:6 — Forty Pairs on the Road
A reading aid, not an exact translation.
This English is a clause-by-clause rendering to help you follow the Hebrew. It is not word-for-word literal, and it is not a transcript of the recorded shiur — the audio carries explanation and context the translation deliberately leaves out.
| Case | Ruling | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Beis Din needs one pair and forty are on the road — may the rest be held from going further? | R' Akiva: He held them at Lud | — |
| Rabban Gamliel: They go on | hold them back today and the witness who comes alone next month stays home |
A machine transcript of the recorded shiur.
This is the shiur as spoken, transcribed automatically and left unedited — the wording is Ephraim's, and occasional transcription errors remain. It follows the audio word by word.
An amalgam of commentaries, including original insights.
These insights draw on the commentaries to this Mishnah and on the recorded shiur. Those commentaries often rest on earlier sources — the Gemara, the Yerushalmi, the Rishonim, and one another — without always saying so; where they do, we generally cite the one we read. Every commentary consulted is kept, verbatim, with this card.
מֵאַרְבָּעִים זוּג — than forty pairs
Bartenura reads the count: כתי עדים זוג אחר זוג — sets of witnesses, pair after pair. Testimony in halacha takes two kosher eidim, and the chachamim learned that kiddush hachodesh runs on ordinary beis-din testimony from the pasuk כי חק לישראל הוא משפט לאלהי יעקב. So each pair on the road was itself a complete testimony.
וְעִכְּבָן רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא בְלוּד — and Rabbi Akiva detained them in Lud
Bartenura explains the detention: שלא היה לבית דין צרך בהן — the beis din had no need of them. Rambam explains the stumbling Rabban Gamliel feared: שמא יהיה אצל אחד מהם בזמן העתיד עדות מועיל בירח אחד — one of these witnesses may one day hold the only useful testimony for some month, and stay home because his words went unheard before. Bartenura closes: והלכה כרבן גמליאל.
אִם מְעַכֵּב אַתָּה אֶת הָרַבִּים — if you hold back the many
Rashash reads Rabban Gamliel's warning as said לרווחא דמילתא, for extra measure, even on Rabbi Akiva's own terms. The coming mishnah carries a nearer reason to let witnesses keep traveling: שאם יפסל א' מהן, lest one prove disqualified. Perhaps, Rashash offers, that concern fits one pair and not forty — or Rabbi Akiva held like R' Yosi, that a moon seen by this many is ודאי נראה בעליל, plainly visible.
מַעֲשֶׂה — it happened
The story splits the meforshim on a quiet question: was it Shabbos? The dominant narrative is that it took place on Shabbos, and Rabbi Akiva balked at forty pairs being mechallel Shabbos for redundant testimony — the Meiri, following the Bavli's lead, combines this mishnah with the previous one and ties the hesitation to Shabbos explicitly. Most other meforshim do not say our mishnah is a Shabbos scenario at all; the detention was then simply an affront to Rabban Gamliel's central beis din — a theme that returns at 2:8.
Lud is an ancient city, already mentioned in Tanach, standing where the coastal plain meets the ascent to the mountains of Yehuda — a junction point, so travelers from nearly anywhere passed through it. Yavne lay to the southwest. Mishnat Eretz Yisrael traces this very road: העדים באו מצפון יהודה ועברו בלוד בדרכם ליבנה — the witnesses came from northern Yehuda and passed through Lud on their way to Yavne, where the beis din sat.
Did Rabbi Akiva detain them at all? Tosafos Yom Tov brings the braisa: אמר רבי יודא ח"ו שר"ע עכבן — chas v'shalom; it was Shezafar, ראשה של גדר, whom Rabban Gamliel then removed from his post. And there is precedent for such a rescue: the cow of R' Elazar ben Azarya, which Shabbos 5:4 says went out with a strap between its horns against the will of the chachamim — Bartenura explains there that it was really his neighbor's cow. So יש לתמוה, Tosafos Yom Tov wonders: why does Bartenura not say the same here? Melechet Shlomo adds that the texts of the Yerushalmi split between ראש גולה and ראש גדר. (See Tosafos Yom Tov and Melechet Shlomo here, and Shabbos 5:4.)