Exodus 22 and liability for watching other people's property

PROF. RABBI MARTIN LOCKSHIN: Does the Torah Differentiate between an Unpaid and a Paid Bailee? (TheTorah.com).

For the first nine hundred years after the writing of the Mishnah in the early third century, Jews thought that laws about bailees or custodians (שומרים) in the Mishnah and in the Talmud corresponded closely to the plain meaning (peshat) of the Torah. But in the Middle Ages, Rashbam challenged that assumption, proposing an understanding of the Torah that contradicted Jewish law.

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