We come now to chapter 1 of Pirkei Avos, mishnah 9, and to the words of Shimon ben Shatach. Shimon ben Shatach was the brother of Queen Shlomtzion, who ruled Judea in her own right for nine years, and during her reign he was elevated to a position of prominence. The queen favored the Perushim and restored them to power in the Sanhedrin and in the government, and in her days a number of important enactments were legislated that strengthened the religion and were consistent with the tradition.
Enactments instituted in this period:
Strengthening the rights of women: The kesubah was strengthened in a way that allowed a woman to collect her kesubah claims more easily and more freely should she be divorced or widowed.
Education of children: Under Shimon ben Shatach a network of Jewish schools was established in Eretz Yisrael, a form of universal education, at least on an elementary level, for boys - an important development in Israel, and perhaps the first of its kind in the history of the world.
"Hevei marbeh lachkor es ha'edim":
Shimon ben Shatach too is speaking to judges, and therefore the direct application of his words is limited, since they concern the way a judge conducts himself during a trial. He says: "Rabbi Shimon ben Shatach omer: hevei marbeh lachkor es ha'edim" - when you examine the witnesses, you must be thorough in your questioning.
It must be understood that in a Jewish court there are no lawyers who present the arguments and help their clients cast their claim in the best possible light. In monetary cases the two litigants stand before the court, and the deciding court, made up of three, is the one that conducts the entire investigation: it questions the litigants and their witnesses, examines them, and on that basis arrives at a ruling.
Therefore Shimon ben Shatach says that the judge must be alert to leave no stone unturned, to investigate, to get to the root of the matter and to arrive at the facts. One should not accept anyone's words at face value, but rather look into them deeply - both in questioning the witnesses, as the mishnah states, and in questioning the litigants themselves, as Tosafos note.
"Vehevei zahir bidvarecha":
The mishnah continues: "Vehevei zahir bidvarecha, shema mitocham yilmedu leshaker" - lest through careless questioning those being examined pick up a hint as to what the correct answer is, and learn how to lie and how to navigate the system. One must therefore be very careful not to ask leading questions that allow those being examined to evade the issue or to manipulate the system.
Interestingly, the Ruach Chaim of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin states that at times it is even appropriate to ask misleading questions, in order to reach the root of the matter without giving those being examined any hint as to how the thing is supposed to work.
Another approach to understanding the mishnah:
Some commentators understood that we have here two separate points: the first - that the judge must be careful and thorough in his examinations. The second - that once the judge issues his decision and his ruling, he must be careful in how he formulates it, so that he not thereby provide insight into how a person might in the future manipulate the system and obtain the ruling he desires, a sort of circumventing of the system.
According to this reading, we have two stages before us:
During the proceedings: "Hevu mesunim badin" - one must ask thorough questions in order to get to the bottom of the matter.
After the proceedings: once the case has been concluded and the court issues its ruling - "Vehevei zahir bidvarecha" - one must be careful with the words and with the way the reasoning behind the ruling is formulated. "Shema mitocham yilmedu leshaker" - perhaps from those words, and from the emphasis placed on the relevant and decisive arguments, these or other litigants will learn how to lie in the future in order to get what they want, and will exploit the judicial system improperly in future cases before the court.
In summary: in this mishnah we learned about the responsibility of a judge: a thorough and penetrating examination of the witnesses and of the litigants, without taking anything for granted, and alongside it, care with language - both in the formulation of the questions, so that they do not hint to the person being questioned what the desired answer is, and also, according to an additional approach, in the formulation of the ruling, so that no one will learn from it how to manipulate the system in the future.