פירוש על גיטין 5:2

אין נפרעים מכנסים משועבדים – such as a borrower who sold his middle-range [property] which was mortgaged to the creditor, the creditor cannot seize it from the purchaser if free-standing property remains with the borrower, and even though they are not other than the lowest level property.

Introduction This mishnah continues the topic which was begun in yesterday’s mishnah which type of land is used to pay off debts.

Payment cannot be recovered from mortgaged property where there free property is available, even if it is only of the lowest quality. Payment can be recovered from orphans only from land of the lowest quality. As we learned yesterday, generally debts are repaid with middle quality land. When a person takes out a loan, all of his currently owned land automatically becomes collateral for the loan. If the creditor should come to collect, and the debtor only has poor quality land, but at the time of the loan he had middle quality land and subsequent to the loan he sold or gave it away, the creditor collects from the poor quality land. This is a case of conflicting values. We want the creditor to be able to collect from better property in order to encourage people to lend. However, the collection of debts from third parties is terribly disruptive to the economic system. Therefore, in order to prevent losses to the third party in other words for tikkun olam the creditor can only collect from the poor quality land in the debtor’s actual possession.

If a creditor is collecting from the orphan of the debtor, he can only collect from the poor quality land. Again this is because of tikkun olam and to make things easier for the orphans.