Rabbi
Ammi says: etc., (
Sukkah 29b).
From these two citations it is evident that Rashi does not shrink
from complicated explanations, and that he does not comment on
the easy passages. In the following quotation, the discussion is
somewhat more difficult to follow.
Mishnah: A slave [non-Jewish] who has been made
prisoner and ransomed [by other Jews] in order to remain a
slave, remains a slave [this will be explained by the Gemara];
In order to be free, becomes free. R. Simon ben Gamaliel
says: In the one case as in the other, he remains a slave.
Gemara: With which case do we concern ourselves? If it
is before the renunciation of the right of possession [by the
first master, who has bought him from the hands of the non-
Jew], ransomed in order to become free, why should he not
remain a slave? It is, then, after this renunciation. But,
bought to be a slave, why should he remain a slave?
[Understand: of his first master; why should he remain a
slave, since there was a renunciation by which rights upon him
as a slave have been renounced?]. Abaye says: The case under
debate is always that In which the first owner has not yet
renounced his rights upon the slave, and if the slave has been
bought to remain a slave [on condition of being restored to
his first master, or even upon condition of belonging to him
who bought him], he remains the slave of his first master [the
second, in fact, has not acquired him, for he knows that his
master remains his master, until the master has given him up;
he would, therefore, be stealing the slave]; if the slave is
ransomed to become free, he is the slave neither of the first
nor of the second; not of the second, since he ransomed the
slave to set him free, nor of the first who possibly abandoned
him and did not buy him back.
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