Meilah, Chapter 6, Mishnah 2. This chapter follows the chain of responsibility when hekdesh money is handed over to a messenger: who is the one who actually commits me'ilah, the sender or the one who carries out the errand? Our mishnah continues that theme, first with a messenger who is not halachically fit to be an agent at all, and then with a fully competent agent whose sender remembers, in mid errand, what the money really is.
An agent who is not an agent
The mishnah opens: "Shalach beyad cheresh, shoteh vekatan" - by error, a householder entrusted consecrated coins to messengers whom halachah does not recognize as capable of agency: a cheresh (one who neither hears nor speaks), a shoteh (one who lacks da'at), and a katan. He placed the money in their hands and told them what to buy.
The ruling: "Im asu shlichuto" - should they follow the instruction and purchase precisely what was requested - "ba'al habayit ma'al" - liability for me'ilah falls upon the householder who dispatched them. That outcome is surprising, since these three normally possess no power of agency whatsoever, and their deeds are never credited to whoever sent them out. Me'ilah, however, departs from that norm. Because the coins left hekdesh along exactly the path their owner mapped out, in accordance with his will and his directions, the misuse is charged to him no matter whose hands performed it. He set the whole thing in motion and it unfolded according to his plan, and that suffices to make him the mo'el, no differently than had the errand been given to a fully qualified adult.
When the errand is not carried out
"Lo asu shlichuto, hachanvani ma'al" - but if the messenger did not carry out the assignment, if he bought the wrong item or did something other than what he was told, then the ba'al habayit is not liable, because his instructions were never followed and the act was not his. Neither can we place the me'ilah on the messenger himself, since he lacks the da'at to be held accountable for his own actions.
The result is that no me'ilah was committed at all. Recall the principle: me'ilah strips the item of its kedushah. Here, since nobody committed me'ilah, the money never lost its holiness. It remains hekdesh even after it has passed into the hands of the shopkeeper. He is now the one holding hekdesh money, and although he has no idea of it, the moment he spends it he takes it out of hekdesh and he is the one who commits me'ilah.
A competent agent, and a sender who remembers
Me'ilah, as we have learned, is by definition an inadvertent misuse of hekdesh; it requires a mistake. The mishnah now turns to a case where the messenger is fully competent, and the question of liability turns entirely on who was aware of what.
"Shalach beyad pike'ach" - the coins were now placed in the hands of a competent adult, dispatched to make a purchase in a shop. "Venizkar" - the one who sent him then recalled the true status of that money, "ad shelo higi'a" - and this happened while the messenger was still on the road, "etzel chanvani" - not yet arrived at the shopkeeper. Here the sender bears no me'ilah: at the point when the coins were about to leave hekdesh he knew perfectly well what they were, and me'ilah cannot take place where the awareness is complete.
And the messenger? Should he have had no idea of the coins' sanctity, the me'ilah is his, incurred at the instant he pays the shopkeeper. If, however, he too knew that what he carried belonged to hekdesh and used it regardless, he also goes free of me'ilah, for nothing here was done in error.
"Hachanvani ma'al kesheyotzi" - in that case the shopkeeper is the mo'el. No me'ilah was committed earlier in the chain, so the money in his till is still hekdesh, and he commits me'ilah, unwittingly, when he spends it.
What the shopkeeper should do
The mishnah concludes with practical guidance for the shopkeeper of that last case. He learns that one of the coins he took in belongs to hekdesh, yet it has long since been mingled with the rest of his money, and there is no telling which perutah it is. "Keitzad ya'aseh?" - how is he to proceed?
"Notel perutah o cheli, ve'omer" - he picks up a single perutah, or an article worth that much, and pronounces the following formula: "perutah shel hekdesh bechol makom shehi" - that perutah of hekdesh, wherever among my coins it may be, "mechulelet al zeh" - is hereby redeemed onto this. The sanctity thus departs from the coin nobody can pick out and settles on the object in his hand, "shehekdesh nifdeh bechesef uvishveh chesef" - for consecrated property is redeemable by means of coin or by means of an article of equivalent worth.
The holiness of a hekdesh item may be moved onto something else, and so the shopkeeper shifts the sanctity of the coin he can no longer locate onto another perutah or onto an object of that value. From that point on, all the coins in his possession are ordinary money and he may use them freely.