Welcome to Maseches Makkos. We begin with chapter 1, mishnah 1. Our starting point: the Torah contains a law known as eidim zomemin - witnesses who have been proven to be liars. We will see shortly how that proof is established and what turns them into eidim zomemin. The Torah's law is that their punishment is determined by the principle "ka'asher zamam la'asos le'achiv" - whatever they sought to bring upon the defendant through their false testimony is the punishment imposed upon them.
The mishnah's question - "keitzad ha'eidim na'asim zomemin":
At first glance this is a puzzling question, because the example the mishnah brings is specifically a case in which the witnesses are not given "ka'asher zamam" - we do not impose upon them what they intended to bring upon another. The Gemara addresses this difficulty and explains that the mishnah is referring to a case similar to the one studied at the end of Maseches Sanhedrin, in which we are unable to carry out "ka'asher zamam" and impose upon them exactly what they sought to do. If so, the mishnah's question is: in a case of eidim zomemin where it is impossible to punish them with the punishment they intended, what punishment is imposed upon them?
The first case - ben gerushah and ben chalutzah:
"Me'idin anu be'ish peloni shehu ben gerushah uven chalutzah" - the testimony concerns a kohen, and the witnesses claim that he is not a kohen at all, but rather the son of a divorcee or the son of a woman who underwent chalitzah. Both of these women are forbidden to marry a kohen, and when they do marry one, the child born is a chalal, who is no longer considered a kohen. It emerges that the witnesses are seeking to disqualify his kehunah.
"Ein omrim yei'aseh zeh ben gerushah uven chalutzah tachtav, ela lokeh be'arba'im" - one might have thought that if the witnesses are themselves kohanim, we would make them a ben gerushah and a ben chalutzah as well and rule that they are not kohanim. The mishnah establishes that we do not do so; rather, we give them lashes - forty lashes, which in practice are thirty-nine.
The Gemara explains why it is impossible to punish here with the punishment of eidim zomemin: the verse says "va'asisem lo" - to him and not to his sons and his offspring, meaning that only the witnesses themselves may be punished with the punishment of eidim zomemin, and not their children. And if you should say, let us disqualify the witnesses themselves from their kehunah while the children born to them afterward remain kohanim - this too is not a fulfillment of "ka'asher zamam," since their intention was to impose a disqualification that would affect him and all the generations that follow him. And since we are unable to punish with the punishment of "ka'asher zamam" and do to them as they schemed to do, we give them lashes for having transgressed the Torah's prohibition against giving false testimony.
The second case - exile:
The mishnah brings a similar case: the witnesses testify about a man that he killed unintentionally, and therefore he must go into exile to a city of refuge. When they are shown to be zomemin, we do not say that the witness will be exiled in the same manner that he sought to bring upon his fellow; rather, once again we give them lashes for having transgressed the prohibition of false testimony. The reason we do not impose exile upon a zomem witness is derived from the wording of the verse, that the one who kills unintentionally is the one who flees to a city of refuge - he and not the zomem witness, and this is the derashah of Chazal on the matter.
The third case - kesubah:
Here the mishnah moves to a case in which it is difficult to determine what exactly "ka'asher zamam" would be, that is, what the witnesses actually tried to bring about against the man they testified against. The witnesses testify that a certain man divorced his wife and did not pay her kesubah, and through their testimony they seek to obligate him to pay the kesubah, after which they are shown to be zomemin. But whether today or tomorrow, he will ultimately be obligated in the kesubah - or more precisely, he may well become obligated in it. Had she died in his lifetime and he inherited her, he would not have paid the kesubah at all. The mishnah's point is that there is a significant likelihood that he will be obligated to pay the kesubah in any event. If so, in what way did the eidim zomemin cause him a definite loss?
The mishnah teaches how to calculate the potential loss: we assess how much a person would pay on the open market for this woman's kesubah, taking upon himself the risk involved in such a transaction:
If she is widowed or divorced: she collects her kesubah, and the buyer enjoys the proceeds.
If she dies in her husband's lifetime: the husband inherits her, and the buyer receives nothing at all.
Whatever a person would pay on the open market for such a kesubah is its value, and that is the loss the witnesses sought to inflict on the husband. This is how the Rambam explains the Mishnah, and there are Rishonim who understood it differently. For now we will stay with this approach.
The fourth case - a thousand zuz within thirty days:
The witnesses testify that someone owes his fellow a thousand zuz and must repay within thirty days, while the borrower claims the loan was for ten years and not for thirty days - and afterwards the witnesses were proven zomemin, and it emerged that it was indeed a ten year loan. Either way he has to pay, so how do we calculate the loss? We assess how much a person would pay for the right to hold a thousand zuz in his hand, that is, the difference between an obligation to repay after thirty days and an obligation to repay after ten years. That sum is the loss the witnesses sought to cause, and that is what they must pay for shortening the term of the loan.
In summary: in this Mishnah we learned that when it is impossible to carry out "ka'asher zamam" - as he plotted - against the zomemin witnesses, as in the case of a ben gerushah and a ben chalutzah, which is excluded by "va'asisem lo" - "and you shall do to him" - and in the case of exile, which is excluded by "hu velo zomem" - he and not the one who plotted - the witnesses receive lashes for having transgressed the prohibition of false testimony. We also examined two cases in which the loss is not certain but in doubt, a kesubah and a loan whose repayment date was moved up, in which we calculate the value of the loss according to the market price of the right the witnesses sought to take away.