For the source text click/tap here: Bava Metzia 36
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A shomer hinam agrees to watch the object without receiving any payment. Although he is responsible for the object and will have to pay for it if he does not take care of it properly, if it is lost or stolen he can simply take an oath that he watched the object in a reasonable fashion and he is free of any further obligation.
A shomer sakhar gets paid for his efforts. If the object is lost or stolen he will have to pay for it, although if an ones – something beyond his control – takes place, he will not be held responsible.
Can someone charged with watching an object pass it on to a third party who agrees to watch it?
There were these gardeners who each day would deposit their spades with a certain old woman. One day they deposited their spades with one of gardeners. He heard noise from a wedding hall and set out and went there. He deposited the spades with that old woman. In the time that he went and came back from the wedding, their spades were stolen.
One who observed Rav’s ruling thought that Rav issued that ruling due to the fact that a bailee who conveyed a deposit to another bailee is exempt. But that is not so. There, in the case of the spades, it is different, as the gardeners themselves would deposit their spades with that old woman. Since the gardeners cannot claim that it is not their desire for their deposit to be in the possession of this old woman, the gardener who did so is exempt.
We explore the motif of the old woman in Ancient Greece vs Talmud ending with the Gardner by Kipling.