201. When the Injured Party Has Died

Teshuvah 2:10

A person is not permitted to be hard-hearted and refuse to be appeased. Rather, one should be easily pacified and hard to anger. When an offender asks for forgiveness, one should forgive him sincerely and willingly. One should not seek revenge or bear a grudge even against one who seriously wronged him. Doing so is not the Jewish way. In II Samuel chapter 21, the Gibeonites refused to be appeased and insisted on revenge. Even though they lived among the Jews, II Samuel 21:2 tells us that “The Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel.”

Teshuvah 2:11

If one person wronged another and the injured party died before the offender could ask him for forgiveness, the offender should take ten people to the injured party’s grave and say, “I sinned against Hashem, the God of Israel, and against this person by doing the following to him....” If he owed the deceased money, he should give it to the deceased’s heirs. If he doesn’t know who the heirs are, he should turn the money over to the court and confess his misdeed.