The משנה says that if you are מודר הנאה from a person and you want to be מבקר חולה, you can do it standing but not sitting. The explanation of this is that a person is not allowed to take money for ביקור חולים since it is a מצוה, but apparently is allowed to take money for sitting with the person. Therefore if you are not going to take money, you can only sit but not stand or else you are providing benefit to the person by not charging for you sitting there. The source of the איסור to take money for a מצוה is not clear. The רא"ש here says because it’s a considered to be מבזה מצוה ביקור חולים. The שיטה מקובצת says a different פּשט: it is similar to the איסור of getting paid to teach תורה. If so, that would seem to say that the מצוה of מה אני בחנם אף אתם בחנם applies to all מצוות. It should therefore apply to מוהלים, שוחטים, doctors, and anyone else doing a מצוה. The only היתר to pay them would be שכר בטלה.

As mentioned, one can get paid for sitting with the חולה. The לשון of the שולחן ערוך in סימן רכ"א סעיף ד is “לצוות לו” which means the purpose of sitting there is to keep the person company. The purpose of standing which is typically shorter is simply to see what the person needs, say hello, and daven for them. One would think that both sitting to see what the person needs and sitting to keep the person company would be considered a מצוה. So why can you only get paid for sitting and not standing? Perhaps it is similar to the רשב"א in יבמות דף ו׳ ע"א ד"ה מה להנך who says that by כיבוד אב ואם the main מצוה is מאכילו, משקיהו etc. However, if the father says to do something for him that he has no benefit from (such as for the son to wear a sweater outside), it’s a מצוה, but not the main מצוה and we wouldn’t say for example עשה דוחה לא תעשה in that case. Similarly here, siting with the חולה may be a מצוה but it isn’t the main מצוה so you could get paid for it.

There is another example of this in our סוגיא: there is a discussion as to how the concept of מצוות לאו ליהנות ניתנו works with the מצוה of ביקור חולה for a מודר הנאה. For example, the גמרא says that if the נכסי חולה are אסור on the מבקר then he can’t even stand in the house since he is getting הנאה by being in the house. Why don’t we say מצוות לאו ליהנות ניתנו and the מבקר is allowed to benefit since he is there to do a מצוה? The מרומי שדה explains that according to the ר"ן, מצוות לאו ליהנות ניתנו only means the קיום מצוה itself is not considered a הנאה. If so, we can understand why that would not be a היתר to stand in the חולה’s house. However, if you hold like the רשב"א that מצוות לאו ליהנות ניתנו means that any הנאה that comes from the מצוה is not considered הנאה, why cant you stand there? He has two answers. One is that even according to the רשב"א, the only הנאה you can get is the מצוה itself. So you can enjoy the מצה on פּסח since that is the מצוה. However, standing in the house is just coincidental to the מצוה and that is still considered a prohibited הנאה. His second answer is relevant to the concept we mentioned above. He says that the בעל המאור holds that the היתר of מצוות לאו ליהנות ניתנו is only by מצוות דאורייתא and not by מצווה דרבנן. Similarly, says the מרומי שדה, ביקור חולים itself is not a מצוה that is explicit in the Torah, (even

though it is surely included in the broader מצוה of ואהבת לרעך כמוך) and therefore we cannot apply the concept of מצוות לאו ליהנות ניתנו. This is another example of something that is surely רצון ה but not an explicit מצוה מוגדרת, at least not מדאורייתא, so we can’t apply the general rules that govern מצוות מוגדרות

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