Yerushalmi Ketubot 10:5 ירושלמי כתובות י׳:ה׳

MISHNAH: If somebody was married to four women when he died, the first one¹The wife whose ketubah is dated earlier. precedes the second²Since a ketubah is a mortgage lien, the holder of the earlier mortgage has the right to foreclose any real estate before the holder of the later mortgage may foreclose. The rules of this Chapter are in essence rules of privileged creditors in bankruptcy proceedings since they become irrelevant if the estate is large enough to satisfy everybody., the second the third, and the third the fourth. The first one swears to the second⁸⁰She has to swear that during their husband’s lifetime she did not receive any downpayment on the ketubah, so that she is fully entitled to the sum she is receiving from the executors of the estate. The second wife can demand this oath because every penny the first one receives dimishes her chances of being fully paid by the remaining estate., the second to the third, and the third to the fourth; the fourth is paid out without an oath⁸¹No oath is due to any co-wife since all had been paid in full; she might have to swear to the heirs.. Ben Nanas said, should she be preferred because she is the last one? She also should be paid only after an oath⁸²There is a possibility that the prior wives might be disadvantaged if the fourth is paid too much: If any ketubah was satisfied by transfer of title of a field that turned out to be mortgaged and was repossessed by the lender, that wife then has regress on the remainder of the estate and, therefore, has a vital interest that the fourth wife not be paid too much. The Babli, 94a, has some additional reasons for Ben Nanas’s opinion.. If all [ketubot] were executed on the same day, one who precedes another one even if only by an hour has acquired [precedence]; therefore in Jerusalem one used to note hours⁸³Not only the date but also the hour of the signing of a contract were written into the document.. If [the documents] were all executed at the same hour and there is only one mina, they split evenly⁸⁴As already noted in Mishnah 4..

HALAKHAH: “If somebody was married to four women when he died,” etc. Rebbi Abuna in the name of Rebbi Samuel: Following Ben Nanas, if one document was produced against (the wife) buyers, they all divide evenly⁸⁵This sentence makes no sense; the word האשה clearly is wrong. In the absence of parallel sources, the exact wording cannot be reconstrued. The consensus of the commentators is that one must read approximately: “if one document was produced against [several] buyers, they all divide evenly”. The deceased husband had taken a loan which cannot be satisfied by a single property; if the mortgage document is presented after the wives’ ketubot were satisfied, they all have to contribute equally to the satisfaction of the mortgage.
Clearly, the title “Rebbi” given to Samuel here is misplaced. A similar statement is attributed to Samuel in the Babli, 94a.. Rebbi Aqiba⁸⁶This seems to be a scribal error. said before Rebbi Mana: Does this not disagree with Rebbi Samuel, since Samuel said, sharpness of the judges⁶³Samuel seems to indicate that the court has to investigate and choose the method of distribution which seems most appropriate for the case before them, to whom to give real estate and to whom money or securities.
The translation of שוחדא is tentative. In the Babli, the word appears as שודא which either is derived from the Aramaic root שדי “to throw” (interpreted to mean that the court may “throw” the properties to the party it feels has the best claim) or it is identical with Galilean שוחדא because of the disappearance of ح in Babylonian speech. I am proposing to derive שוחד̇א from Arabic شحذ “to sharpen (a knife)”, Mishnaic Hebrew שחז.? As in the case of two mortgages written on one field, to whom they want to hand it over in possession they hand it over⁶⁴If the field is too small to be useful as property if divided up. The holder of the second mortgage (assuming both were written on the same day) has to be indemnified with money; this is Samuel’s position in Babli 94a.. And here, he says so⁸⁷Should the court not direct the claimant to one field, with the other buyers contributing money?? Not with two mortgages, what about one⁸⁸In his opinion, the case of one claimant against multiple owners is not covered by Samuel’s original statement.? He did not hear what Rebbi Abin said in the name of Samuel: There is no difference, whether two mortgages were written on two fields or two mortgages were written on one field⁸⁹It seems that the deviation of this quote from the original in Halakhah 4 is a scribal error, but this cannot be proved. Samuel’s statement can easily be applied to our case of a single document covering a multiplicity of real estate., to whom the court decide they hand it over in possession. Rebbi instituted that one follows Ben Nanas in matters of annona⁹⁰Latin annona, the prestations in kind required by the Roman army in the provinces; cf. Peah 1, Note 85. It is not clear what the relationship is between the statement of Ben Nanas and the collection of taxes. Since the tax was imposed on the community to be repartitioned by the local person responsible, the latter could impose an oath on the tax payer that he declared his situation honestly., head taxes, and real estate taxes⁹¹Greek ἀναφορά “report, listing”. In the opinion of A. Gulak, this is the yearly tax which people paid who had the right to farm imperial domains in perpetuity; cf. S. Lieberman, תוספתא כפשוטה מעשר שני, p. 710..

As the following⁹²This paragraph refers to the Mishnah which states that the date of a document determines its status in foreclosure proceedings.. Relatives of Rebbi Yose bought fields from the family of Bar Tapqan. Those from the family of Bar Tapqan went and married women, and gave them šeqi‘in⁹³The word שקיעין as designation of a document appears only in this paragraph. Since שקע means “to sink, to go down”, it is reasonable to assume that שקיעין are mortgages on real estate the usufruct of which is given to the creditor to reduce the amount due and finally to retire the mortgage. This is called מַשְׁכַּנְתָּא דְּסוּרָא“Suran mortgage” in the Babli (Baba meṣi‘a 67b, 110a; Baba batra 35b, 38a), and corresponds, in the interest-charging Gentile environment, to the ἀντίχρησις of the Digests (20,1,11,1) and the Egyptian papyri (P. Gron. 11), “substitution of usufruct for interest”.
It seems that the men gave their brides documents on the fields they had sold which were predated before the date of the sale.. They came and wanted to attack the relatives of Rebbi Yose⁹⁴To take the usufruct of the fields for a fixed number of years.. Rebbi Mana said to them: I know that at the moment at which you bought these fields, these šeqi‘in were not before you⁹⁵A predated document is invalid..