031a – המוכר שדהו – פרק תשיעי – ערכין, דף לא ע”א

A beraisa^[1] taught:

תני חדא - Concerning one who consecrates an ancestral field^[2], it is the same as what was taught above: 'If he redeems, he may redeem'. This teaches that he borrows and redeems, and so on. R. Shimon is the one who says this; the other, the Rabbis, disagree with him.

One who borrows and redeems, and one who redeems in halves.

But another beraisa taught: he does not borrow and redeem, and does not redeem in halves?

This is no difficulty: this one is the Rabbis, and that one is R. Shimon.

Mishnah

One who sells a house in walled cities^[3] may redeem it at once.

הרי זה גואל מיד - And it does not have the law of an ancestral field, which must wait two years.

And he may redeem throughout all twelve months.

This is like interest^[4],

הרי זה כמין רבית - That when he returns the money to him within a year, and the buyer gives back nothing, then he has used the house as payment for the time his money was held.

And it is not interest^[5].

ואינה רבית גמורה - Interest in the full sense arises only through a loan, and not through a sale.

If the seller dies, his son may redeem.

יגאל בנו - Within the year, if he wishes; but after a year it is forfeited and is never redeemed again, as it is written (Leviticus 25): 'And if he does not redeem it until a full year has passed for him, and so on.'

If the buyer dies, his son may redeem at once.

The year is counted only from the time of the sale.

אלא משעה שנמכר - That if Reuven sold it to Shimon in Nisan, and Shimon sold it to Levi in Iyar, then once the next Nisan arrives it is forfeited; and we count the year for the second sale only from the first.

As it is said (Leviticus 25:30): until a full year has passed for him.

שנאמר עד מלאת לו שנה - This implies that it was his ancestral field, so we count the year.

When it says 'complete' (temimah), it comes to include the intercalary month^[6].

את חדש העיבור - That if it was a leap year, it is not forfeited until thirteen months have passed.

Rabbi says: give him a year and its intercalation^[7].

שנה ועיבורה - Whether in a common year or in a leap year, we give him a lunar year, and the extra days by which the solar year exceeds the lunar year, which is eleven days, from which we intercalate the year.

When the twelve-month day arrives and it has not been redeemed, it becomes permanently his^[8]. Whether the buyer, or the one who was given it as a gift,

ואחד הניתן במתנה - If he wishes to redeem within his year, he may redeem it; if not, it becomes permanently his.

As it is said (Leviticus 25:30): 'in perpetuity':

Gemara

The Mishnah does not follow Rabbi.

מתני' - That it says "he redeems at once", which implies that even on the very day it was sold it is permitted to redeem, not following Rabbi.

Rabbi says: 'days' — days are not fewer than two.^[9]

ימים תהיה גאולתו ואין ימים פחותין משנים - So that the buyer does not hold it for fewer than two days.

And the Rabbis: what do they do with this 'days'?

It is needed^[10] to teach 'from day to day.'

מיום ליום - That if he sold it on the first of Nisan, we do not count a year by the world-era count, as one might say that once Tishrei arrives a year has been completed for him, since that year has gone out. Rather, until the next first of Nisan it is not forfeited.

And Rabbi: from where does he know 'from day to day'?

He derives it from (Leviticus 25:29) 'from the end of the year of its sale'^[11].

שנת ממכרו - And not the world-era count of years.

And the Rabbis: that [verse] is needed for 'the year of its sale', his own year and not the year of the world count; and 'days' is needed to teach from moment to moment^[12].

ורבנן - Indeed, that [verse] is certainly needed for this: [the year runs] from its sale and not from the world-era count; and 'days' is needed for 'moment to moment'. If he sold it on the first of Nisan at midday, the year is not counted for him until midday of the next first of Nisan.

For if it said only 'from the end of the year of its sale', I would have thought 'from day to day' is yes and 'from moment to moment' is no. The Torah wrote 'days'.

And Rabbi: from where does he know 'from moment to moment'?

He derives it from temimah (complete).

And the Rabbis: that [word] is needed for the intercalation.

And Rabbi too: but that [word] is needed for the intercalation!

So indeed: 'from day to day' and 'from moment to moment' both come from 'from the end of the year of its sale'.

This is like interest, etc.:^[13]

But it was taught: This is outright interest, except that the Torah permitted it?

R. Yochanan said: There is no difficulty: this (the Mishnah) is R. Yehudah, and that (the beraisa) is the Rabbis.

מתני' ר' יהודה היא - That is, [the Mishnah] follows the one who holds that one-sided^[14] interest is permitted. Interest that comes through a sale is called one-sided, because it does not come into interest from both sides: if he does not redeem it and it is forfeited to him, there is no interest; but a loan certainly leads to interest, since it is never forfeited.

As it was taught: If a man was owed a maneh by his fellow, and made him a sale of his field,

ועשה לו שדהו מכר - That he pledged his field^[15] to him for that maneh, and wrote to him: 'If I do not give you the maneh from now until three years, the field is yours.'

When the seller eats the produce, it is permitted.

בזמן שהמוכר אוכל פירות - All those years it is permitted.

If the buyer eats the produce, it is forbidden.

לוקח אוכל פירות אסור - Lest he redeem it within three years, and it turns out that he ate its produce as interest.

R. Yehudah says: Even when the buyer eats the produce, it is permitted.

R. Yehudah said: There was a case of Beitos ben Zonin, who made his field a sale on the ruling of R. Elazar ben Azariah^[16], and he was the buyer who ate its produce.

מעשה בביתוס בן זונין - Our text reads:

They said to him: Is that a proof? He was the seller who ate the produce, not the buyer.

What is the difference between them?

There is one-sided interest between them.

צד אחד ברבית - That if he redeems it there is interest, and if not, there is no interest.

The first Tanna^[17] holds: one-sided interest is forbidden.

And R. Yehudah holds: one-sided interest is permitted.

Tosafot

תני חדא לוה וגואל לחצאין - Rashi explains that this refers to one who consecrates an ancestral field. But in my view this is difficult: if so, it would be a general Mishnah teaching that in consecrated property one may redeem everything, following R. Shimon and not the Rabbis. The Ri explains that it refers to one who sells a house in a walled city, as the Gemara in Kiddushin (21a, and there 20b) proves. But for one who consecrates an ancestral field, even the Rabbis agree that one who borrows and redeems redeems half.

Tosafot cite the Torat Kohanim on one who sells an ancestral field and counts the years of its sale: the years you count, but you do not count months. If he wishes to count months, it says 'a year', and the Torah says 'and he shall count' (v'chashav). One may ask: how do we find that both are for the seller's benefit, so that the seller gains? When one counts months, one finds a case: for example, if he comes to redeem in the middle of the year, we count the months that passed, so the buyer's use reduces the redemption price, just as we count the years that passed. But if you do not count months, how is that case found? One may answer that it is found, for example, if he sold in Nisan for ten and a half liras, and there are ten and a half years until the Jubilee, and he comes to redeem on Rosh Hashanah, and there are five more years until the Jubilee.

מיום ליום ומעת לעת מעד תום שנת ממכרו נפקא - In Niddah 47b, and there at 'kulan', R. Elchanan explains that only for walled-city houses do we require 'moment to moment' (by the hour). For the other cases there, one can say that we count by their own years and not by the years of the world, so there we do not require 'moment to moment' (by the hour), since only the walled-city house was specifically taught by the verse. But the Tosafists wrote here that it is the same in all cases: we require 'moment to moment' (by the hour), because we derive 'year' from the walled-city house, as the Gemara says later about another matter.

והתניא הרי זו רבית גמורה אלא שהתורה התירתו - Rabbi Yochanan concludes: 'This is R. Yehudah, that is the Rabbis.' The Mishnah follows R. Yehudah, who holds that one-sided interest is permitted; and the beraisa that calls it 'full interest' follows the Rabbis. If you ask: what is the difference from a pledge without deduction? That is only 'the dust of interest', as stated in Eizehu Neshekh (Bava Metzia 62). Rabina said to him: a pledge without deduction, in their courts, they remove the borrower from the lender, but in our courts they do not return it from the lender to the borrower; so it is not full interest, yet here it says it is full interest. According to Rashi, who distinguishes between a field and a house, this works. For the statement in Eizehu Neshekh (Bava Metzia 64) that one who lends to his fellow may not dwell in his courtyard free, or rent from him at less, because that is interest, Rashi there asks what the difference is from a pledge with deduction, which is permitted, and answers that one may distinguish between a field and a house: perhaps the field will not produce fruit, but one cannot avoid benefiting from a house by living in it, so when he deducts from the rent, it is interest. By this, too, here: a house he lives in is undoubtedly full interest; but a field, which perhaps will not produce fruit, when he eats it without deduction, is not full interest. But R. Tam does not accept this distinction, because in a house too there is a doubt: perhaps it will fall or burn. Rather, there is no distinction between field and house, and the case of 'one who lends may not rent from him at less' can be answered: it is not like a pledge without deduction, which is permitted, since that pledge concerns a loan made on the field, and the borrower cannot rent it to another because it is in the lender's hands; therefore it is not interest, since anyway it is void. The Mishnah's 'one who lends may not rent from him at less' refers to a case where he did not lend on a field or a house, and the borrower is free to rent it to another, so if the rent is reduced, it is interest. According to R. Tam, who does not distinguish between field and house, the question returns: what is the difference from a pledge without deduction, which we do not count as full interest? One must say that 'full interest' is said by rabbinic law; and what he said, 'but the Torah permitted it', means: since the Holy One wrote for us the law of walled-city houses, He teaches us that even so, this is not interest by Torah law.

ור' יהודה סבר צד אחד ברבית מותר - And if you ask: according to R. Yehudah, a pledge without deduction should also be permitted, since it is one-sided interest, and perhaps he will not redeem it later. One can answer that we count one-sided interest only where there is a sale-side, as in 'he made his field a sale', where if he does not redeem it within the time set for him, it is a sale. But a pledge without deduction has no sale-side, since it always remains in the borrower's hands to redeem it; and if he redeems it, since the lender does not deduct from him the produce he ate, it is interest, like lending a se'ah for a se'ah. R. Yehudah does not count it as one-sided interest. Even though perhaps the price will not rise, since it has no sale-side it is forbidden, and R. Yehudah does not count it as one-sided interest.

Notes

1. 1. A beraisa is a tannaitic teaching that is not included in our Mishnah.
2. 2. An ancestral field (sadeh achuzah) is land that a family holds as its permanent inheritance in the Land of Israel. It may be sold, but the seller or his relatives may redeem it, and at the Jubilee it returns to its original owner.
3. 3. A house in a walled city (ir chomah, a city walled since the days of Joshua) is treated differently from a field: it does not return at the Jubilee. The seller may redeem it within a full year; if he does not, it becomes the buyer's permanently (Leviticus 25:29-30).
4. 4. Interest in the Torah sense is a profit on a loan. Here the buyer lives in the house while the seller's money is in the buyer's hands, so the Mishnah calls it 'like interest'.
5. 5. Not full interest: true interest arises only from a loan, not from a sale, as Rashi explains below.
6. 6. The intercalary month: the extra month added in a leap year (Adar II in the Hebrew calendar). The word 'complete' (temimah) is read to include it, so the year runs to thirteen months.
7. 7. The Jewish calendar is lunar: twelve months, about eleven days shorter than the solar year. To keep the festivals in their seasons, a year is intercalated by adding a month. 'A year and its intercalation' means a year counted on that calendar.
8. 8. Permanently his: the field becomes the buyer's outright and can no longer be redeemed by the seller or his heirs.
9. 9. The plural 'days' is read to mean no fewer than two days: the buyer holds the field for at least two days.
10. 10. 'It is needed for...' (mevai leih) is the Gemara's way of saying that a word in the verse has no other purpose, so it must teach this law. Here 'days' is needed to teach counting 'from day to day'.
11. 11. The year runs from the day of the sale, not by the world-era count of years (counted from creation).
12. 12. 'Moment to moment' means counting to the exact hour: a sale at midday on 1 Nisan starts the year at midday, not at the beginning of the day.
13. 13. In practice, the buyer uses the field while the seller's money is with him. That is the background the Gemara's question assumes, and why the Mishnah says 'like interest'.
14. 14. One-sided interest is an arrangement in which interest arises from only one side: here, it becomes interest only if the seller does not redeem. R. Yehudah permits it; the first Tanna forbids it.
15. 15. A sale disguised as a pledge: the field is pledged for the loan; if the debt is not repaid within three years, it becomes the lender's. While the lender holds it and eats its produce, it is treated as interest.
16. 16. R. Elazar ben Azariah, a Tanna of the Yavneh generation (general knowledge). Beitos ben Zonin is named as the subject of the case.
17. 17. The tanna kama (the first, unnamed Tanna) gives an opinion without a name; the Gemara sets his view against R. Yehudah's.