פירוש על ערכין 5:4

מת הנודר והנידר יתנו היורשים – and he that stood in judgement before he died, as was explained above, but the ending clause is necessary: “The price of so-and-so is incumbent upon me,” if the person taking the vow dies, the heirs will give the money, for you might have thought that even though that he stood in judgment, since the person making the vow died prior to making an estimate/valuation of the one whom the vow was about, his possessions are not mortgaged, for it comes to tell us that an approximate assessment/assessment by sight is a revealing a general thing, for since the person about whom the vow is taken lives, we assess him.

Introduction Today’s mishnah deals with a person who vows another person’s worth or value.

If he said: “The value of so-and-so is upon me,” if both the vower and the subject of the vow died, then the heirs must pay it. When the vower dies, the heirs of the vower incur the obligation to pay his vow. Even though the subject of the vow died they can pay his value, because the value is fixed and is not dependent upon an evaluation.

[If he said,] “The worth of so-and-so is upon me,” and the vower died, the heirs must pay it. But if the subject of the vow died, the heirs need not pay anything because dead persons have no worth. Here the vower dedicated someone else’s worth, which does require an evaluation. If the vower dies before he pays off his debt, the heirs must pay his debt. But if the subject of the vow dies, then the heirs do not owe anything because a dead person has no worth. This is basically the same halakhah that we learned in mishnah two.