Arachin, Chapter 3, Mishnah 5. Our chapter has been working through the list opened in the first mishnah, cases in which a fixed sum set by the Torah turns out to be a leniency in one situation and a stringency in another. Here we arrive at the last item on that list: motzi shem ra, the husband who slanders his wife.
Here is the scenario. A man betroths a woman, and afterward he pays witnesses to lie about her, claiming that while she was already bound to him yet still living in her father's house, during the stage of erusin and before nisuin had taken place, she had relations with another man. When the scheme collapses and the falsehood is exposed, the Torah imposes on him a fine of one hundred sela'im, paid on her account.
A Fixed Sum That Cuts Both Ways
The mishnah states: "Bemotzi shem ra lehakel ulehachamir": in the case of one who spreads an evil name about his wife, there is an aspect of leniency and an aspect of stringency.
"Keitzad?" the mishnah asks: in what way? It then supplies the two ends of the spectrum. Take a man who directed his slander against a "gedolah shebikehunah", a daughter of the most eminent and chashuv family among the kohanim, and a man who aimed the identical slander at a "ketanah shebeyisrael", a girl of the least prominent family in Yisrael. For each of them the ruling is the same: "notein me'ah sela", he hands over one hundred sela'im, no more and no less.
The fine does not move with the standing of the woman, and that is precisely why it can work in either direction. When the wife comes from an eminent family, the disgrace he inflicted on her is worth far more than one hundred sela'im, and so the fixed sum lets him off lightly: by rights her humiliation should have carried a heavier price. When the wife comes from an undistinguished family, the damage caused by such slander would be assessed at far less than one hundred sela'im, and here the fixed sum weighs against him: he pays the full high figure even though the injury, measured in monetary terms, was smaller.
The Mouth Costs More Than the Deed
Out of this the mishnah extracts a striking principle: "nimtza ha'omeid befiv", it turns out that one whose offense consists of nothing but what he said with his mouth is judged "yoteir min ha'oseh ma'aseh", more severely than a person who carried out a physical act.
Compare the sums. A man who speaks evil about his wife and manufactures a scandal against her pays one hundred sela'im. A man who violates or seduces a na'arah, the cases the mishnah discussed just before this one, pays fifty. The deed carries fifty; the words carry double.
The Decree in the Midbar
A second demonstration is drawn from our own past: "shekein matzinu", for this is what we find, that the "gezar din" pronounced "al avoteinu bamidbar", against our forefathers in the wilderness, was never sealed for any cause "ela al lashon hara", other than evil speech, which alone locked their fate.
"Vayenasu oti zeh eser pe'amim" (they have tested Me these ten times), "velo shame'u bekoli" (and they have not heeded My voice).
They tested Me ten times and did not listen to My voice. Bnei Yisrael provoked Hashem again and again in the midbar, yet it was on that tenth occasion that the verdict came down: forty years in the wilderness, and the generation that left Mitzrayim would die there. And what was that tenth episode? The spies who spoke lashon hara about Eretz Yisrael, and a people who accepted their report. All the earlier failures had been sins of action; only when the sin was one of speech was the hammer brought down and the decree sealed.
The lesson of the mishnah is clear. Lashon hara is not a lesser category of transgression to be weighed against "real" sins. Measured by the Torah's own penalties and by the fate of an entire generation, evil speech is treated more severely than many an aveirah carried out by deed.