Thank you for your thoughtful, well researched answers.
If I am not mistaken "Hezek"-damage to a person is estimated/evaluated by what the person was worth as a slave before the damage and what he is worth as a slave after the damage. This sounds both round-about and the value of a slave is probably less than the true value of the damage. So why not just evaluate the actual damage.
I am not sure, but I think that there is a similar round-about way of estimating the damage to a field. How much was it worth before and how much is it worth now. If this is the case, again .... Why not just estimate the damage directly.
Thank you again.
Aurel Littmann
In order to understand how damages are paid, we need to understand what the Torah wants when it says to "pay" for damages. The word used is "Tashlum," but that could mean "Hashlamah," or completing something partial, since even after the damage is done the person still has some viability, and we need to understand the difference between that viability and the previous situation. It could also refer to a punishment, a form of compensation for the action, and this understanding would help us understand why the Torah stresses "an eye for an eye," meaning that technically this is what should happen but the compensation takes the place of doing the same act to the aggressor.
The Torah defines five different payments for a person who harmed another person. Since the pain aspect, shame aspect, lack of ability to work, and medical fees are dealt with by the other payments, the "damage" payment cannot simply be an assessment of the damage, as that would include all the other categories. Therefore, we need to see this payment as a "Hashlamah" derived from the word "Yeshalmenah," which is interpreted in other places as "completing," meaning that we can look what is missing in this person as opposed to beforehand (even after he has recovered). Since he is not necessarily a working person it is difficult (and imprecise) to define this based on the person himself, and therefore the analogy of the slave is used, since the slave does have specific value before and after. This is a utilitarian way of defining the damage, but it is one that would be used by insurance assessors up to our own time.
If we take the other definition of damages as a form of punishment, the other four forms of payment are part of the punishment and this part refers to how capable a person was before and after the damage was done. Using a slave is a fair calculation of that damage, so that is why he is punished in this manner.
Yoel Domb