Dear Aharon Shalom U-vracha,

The truth is that the din of Tana Devei Chizkiah is not learned from a Sevarah but rather Chazal derived it from the "Middos by which the Torah is expounded". We say every morning at the beginning of the Tefillah, Rebbe Yishmael says: "The Torah is expounded through 13 middos" and some of the things there are essentially not Sevarah, for instance, "Gezerah Shavah".

We learned this week in Daf Yomi PESACHIM 66a, that we derive from a Gezerah Shavah that the Korban Pesach can be slaughtered on Shabbos becuse "Moado" is stated both in connection with the Korban Pesach and with the Korban Tamid. Just as the Tamid is slaughtered on Shabbat so too is the Pesach. The Gemara says there that a person cannot make a Gezerah Shavah on his own. Rashi DH Ve'Ki M'achar explains that one can only expound a Gezerah Shavah if one received it from Har Sinai. If one received it from one's teachers this is equivalent to it being written explicitly in the Torah. Therefore this is preferable to a Kal V'chomer because the latter is a Sevarah which one says according to one's intelligence and from one's heart, but something we received on Har Sinai is stronger because this way we do not need to rely on human Sevarah which can sometimes be wrong. A direct command from Hash-m is better.

Now let's return to Tana Devei Chizkiah. The Gemara says below on 35a that one derives the Din for someone who kills a person from the Din of someone who kills an animal. Just as someone who killed an animal must always pay whether he did so deliberately or b'Shogeg, so also someone who killed a person is always exempt from payment even if he did so b'Shogeg. Rashi DH Makeh Nefesh writes "Hukshu Yachad" i.e. the Din of Tana Devei Chizkiah is a "Hekesh" where one Din is "compared" to a second Din.

I looked up the "Encyclopedia Talmudica" vol. 10 p. 558 DH Ha'Hekesh, who discusses the source of Hekesh. Some say that this is included in the Middah of "Gezerah Shavah".

At any rate we can learn from this that the Din of Tana Devei Chizkiah was derived by the Chachamim from the Torah itself even though the Sevarah is not known to us. However if one desires a certain Sevarah, a Talmid Chacham suggested to me that one can explain that if someone did a very severe transgression, the Torah does not pay attention to the smaller transgression that he did simultaneously because the big transgression puts the smaller one "in the shade" relatively speaking.

Therefore, if someone killed someone else, it is such a severe crime that the Torah ignores the monetary damage he also did in the process, since relatively speaking this is less important. Even though he killed B'Shogeg, this is also an Aveirah (as one sees from the fact that one is required to bring a Korbon for atonement for this. Shogeg does not mean that it was totally unintentional (this would be called "Onus" or "Mitaseik") but rather that he mistakenely thought that killing was permissible. This is also an Aveirah.

Alley Ve-Hatzlayach!!

R. Dovid Bloom