Terumos Chapter 7, Mishnah 1. In this chapter we open a new topic: whereas in chapter six we dealt with the consequences of eating Terumah by accident - eating done inadvertently by someone who is not permitted to eat it - here the Mishnah deals with eating Terumah deliberately, with intent, and with the consequences that follow from it.
Three possible consequences of eating Terumah deliberately:
Payment for the damage: Someone who is not permitted to eat Terumah and ate it deliberately took what was not his and destroyed it. Just as a person who breaks into his fellow's yard, takes his bottle of wine and pours it down the drain must compensate him for the loss of the wine, so too one who takes the bottle of Terumah wine and pours it down his own throat must pay for it. This is the basic point: one who damages deliberately must compensate the one he damaged.
Death at the hands of Heaven: Literally, death before one's time. This punishment too applies to one who eats Terumah unlawfully, Heaven forbid.
Lashes: When certain conditions are met, as will be explained below.
Unlike what we learned in the previous chapter, here there is no concept of 'preserving the Terumah' - the obligation to replace the Terumah and designate new Terumah from unconsecrated produce - nor is there a process of atonement accomplished by adding a fifth. When Terumah is eaten deliberately, the Torah does not grant the sinner the option of a simple atonement through restitution plus a fifth; that is not enough. He must pay because he took what was not his, but his process of atonement is between him and the Almighty: he must repent and do the best he can, and there is nothing more in his power to do.
Lashes - with witnesses and a warning:
As a rule, one who deliberately transgresses a Torah prohibition - such as eating Terumah when he is not permitted to - receives lashes only when there are witnesses and a warning: two valid witnesses who warn him and say to him, "If you eat this Terumah you will bear the consequence and receive lashes." If he responded that he does not care and ate it anyway, the court can be certain that he understood the consequences of his actions, acknowledged them, and did it nonetheless, and therefore he bears the consequence - lashes. But all of this applies only when witnesses warned him properly.
And if he was indeed warned properly and the court imposed lashes upon him, the halachah follows the Rambam: when a single act generates two possible punishments - a monetary payment, such as returning the value of the Terumah he ate, alongside a physical punishment of lashes - he receives lashes and does not pay. The two punishments are not cumulative; it is one or the other, and the lashes take precedence. So rules the Rambam, and so we will accept as the halachah.
Our Mishnah continues from this point, assuming that there were no witnesses or that there was no adequate warning, and therefore there is no room for lashes. It emerges that we are dealing with the consequences of eating Terumah deliberately without witnesses, in which case the ordinary monetary obligation to make restitution to the injured party remains - the owner from whom the Terumah was stolen, or whose Terumah was damaged or lost.
This obligation applies in any event. In chapter six, eating in the normal manner was required in order to obligate principal and a fifth for eating Terumah inadvertently, and therefore one who smeared grape juice on his skin was exempt from principal and a fifth, since that is a manner of destruction and not a manner of eating. Here that is not the case at all, since the essence of the obligation stems from damaging his fellow's property. Therefore, if he did not eat it but destroyed it - there is indeed no death at the hands of Heaven here, but the ordinary obligation to pay stands in place, as though this were not Terumah at all, like one who broke into his fellow's yard, took his bottle of wine and poured it down the drain.
The wording of the Mishnah:
"Ha'ochel Terumah mezid" - one who eats Terumah knowing that it is forbidden to him, and does so anyway. Assuming there are no witnesses and no adequate warning - "meshalem es hakeren ve'eino meshalem es hachomesh" - he pays the principal and does not pay the fifth. He must return the principal, the loss he caused the original owner, to the kohen whose Terumah it was; but he does not make the payment of a fifth. In fact he may not even do so, and paying the fifth would not help him achieve atonement. All that is incumbent upon him is to return what he took.
The nature of the payment:
According to the value of the Terumah: Terumah sells on the market for less than ordinary produce, because it is less desirable - only a kohen may eat it, and only while he is tahor, and it becomes disqualified once it contracts tumah. Consequently a person would not choose to hold Terumah rather than ordinary produce, so its price is lower, and the payment is fixed according to the value of the Terumah that was lost.
In money, not in food: In the previous chapter, where he ate by mistake, he had to pay with properly tithed ordinary produce and with regular Maaser, and once he gave them to the kohen they became Terumah by Torah law all over again, so that the Terumah that had been lost to the world was restored. Here there is no such thing. His obligation is a straightforward monetary obligation to return what he stole or damaged, and it can be paid in cash; there is no need to pay in food and in ordinary produce.
For this reason the Mishnah says: "VeHaTashlumin Chulin" - what he pays back remains ordinary produce. Even if he paid with actual food and made an exchange, the payment does not become Terumah.
"Im Ratzah HaKohen Limchol - Mochel" - if the kohen wishes to waive the monetary debt owed to him for the damage done or the theft from his property, he is entitled to do so. This is unlike the case in the previous chapter of one who eats Terumah by mistake, where the kohen may not forgo the payment, because the Torah obligates him under the principle of preserving the Terumah - restoring Terumah to the world. Here there is no such restoration at all, only a simple debt to the kohen for what was damaged and what was taken, and therefore if the kohen does not want to take the money, he has the right to waive it, and the one who caused the damage owes him nothing further. Even so, either way, he still has to stand before the Holy One, blessed is He, to obtain atonement.
In summary: In this chapter we moved from eating Terumah by mistake to eating it deliberately. We examined the three consequences - payment for the damage, death at the hands of Heaven, and lashes when there are witnesses and a warning - and the rule that where there are lashes there is no payment. In a case where there are no witnesses and no warning, the Mishnah rules that one who eats deliberately pays the principal alone and does not pay the added fifth, since there is no preserving of the Terumah here and there is no atonement through the fifth but only through repentance; the payment is fixed according to the value of the Terumah, it is made in money, it remains ordinary produce, and the kohen may waive it.