Study Bava Kamma folio 68B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Know that an ordinary case of theft is assumed to result in the owner’s despair of recovering the stolen item. In other words, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, one may assume that the victim of theft has despaired of recovering his item.
The reason is that the Torah stated that if a thief slaughtered or sold the animal he had stolen, he pays the fourfold or fivefold payment. But why is this so? Perhaps the owner did not yet despair at the time the thief sold the animal, in which case the sale is invalid, and there should be no fourf
The Talmud asks a question with regard to R' Elazar’s assumption: But perhaps the Torah obligates the thief to pay the fourfold or fivefold payment even if the owner has not yet despaired at the time of the sale, despite the fact that the sale is invalid, as Rav Naḥman stated.
In response to this question the rabbis say: This cannot enter your mind, as R' Elazar maintains that the juxtaposition of slaughtering and selling in the verse that states: “And slaughter it or sell it,” teaches that the thief’s sale of the animal is similar to his slaughter of it. Just as slaugh
The Talmud asks another question with regard to R' Elazar’s reasoning: But perhaps the Torah requires the fourfold or fivefold payment only in the specific case where the animal is sold after we heard that the owner despaired of its recovery. The rabbis respond to this and say: This cannot enter yo