Bava Metzia 99b — the Talmud in English

And the beraita continues:

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land is acquired with money, with a document, and with possession, so rental is acquired with money, with a document, and with possession.

And we raise a difficulty from the end of the beraita:

rental—

which is written in the beraita, and it implies that it is speaking even of the rental of movable property—

what is its relevance,[

what is its subject here] that it should be acquired through the modes of acquisition of land?

And we answer:

Rav Hisda said:

The beraita spoke only about

the rental of land.

The preceding sugya compared the law of private property with the law of sacred property: the acquisition effective for acquiring from private property takes sacred property out to the ordinary domain and causes meila.

And incidentally, the Gemara brings the statement of Shmuel, that one must distinguish between private property and sacred property with regard to liability for payments.

Shmuel said: One who steals a clump of dates [

dates stuck together]

from his fellow, and there are fifty dates in it.

Together they are sold for fifty minus one [

when they are sold together, their price is forty-nine] prutot. But when they are sold

one by one, they are sold for fifty [

they are sold one by one for fifty] prutot.

Therefore, if he stole

from private property,

and the stolen object is no longer in his possession,

he pays fifty

prutot

minus one [

one less], according to the price at which all the dates are sold together. And likewise, if he damaged the dates belonging to private property, he pays forty-nine prutot.

But

for sacred property,

in which he committed meila, his law is more stringent, and he

pays fifty

according to the value of each date separately,

and their fifth [

and their fifth] he adds to the principal, according to the Torah law that one who commits meila adds a fifth [Leviticus 5:16].

This is not so with one who damages

sacred property,

for he does not pay the fifth ,

but he pays sacred property only fifty.

For the Master said

in a beraita: It is written in the Torah concerning teruma [Leviticus 22:14], “

And if a man eat a sacred thing unwittingly

he shall add its fifth to it.” And they expound:

excluding one who damages

teruma, who does not pay a fifth. And meila is learned from teruma through a gzera shava.

Rav Bibi bar Abaye objected to him: For private property, why does he pay fifty minus one? [

Why does he pay the owner forty-nine] according to the value of all the dates together?

Let him say to him: I would have sold them one by one! [

let him say to him: I would have sold them separately], and if so, according to this, the value of the dates should be established.

Rav Huna son of Rav Yehoshua said

to answer this difficulty: The payments are according to the value of all the dates together, for we have the rule that

“we appraise a beit se’a in that same field,” we learned.

The Mishna in the chapter HaKones [Bava Kamma 55b] says: An animal that entered a field and ate the produce of the garden bed—how does it “pay for what it damaged”? We appraise a beit se’a in that same field: how much it was worth and how much it is worth. That is, one does not appraise the value of the garden bed separately; rather, one is lenient with the damager, and appraises the land—in the measure of a beit se’a—in which the garden bed is located: for how much it would have been sold before the damage and for how much it is sold now. The difference between the prices is small, and that amount the damager pays.

And the Gemara there learns this law from the verse [Exodus 22:4], “and it consumes in another’s field,” teaching that the damage is appraised not in the damaged garden bed, but “on the back of another field.”

And from this law one can also learn regarding one who damages or steals detached produce, that one should not appraise the value of each fruit separately; rather, one should appraise the general value of the produce, and ascertain by how much the general value decreased, which decreases only by a small, proportionate amount.

But the Torah innovated this leniency only with one who damages private property, and we cannot learn from this regarding payments for sacred property, whose law is more stringent.

And the Gemara wonders:

Does this mean that Shmuel holds [

that is to say, that Shmuel holds]:

the law of private property is not like the law of the Most High,

but is more lenient than it.

But we learned [

Meila 19b]:

If

the treasurer for himself

took a stone or a beam from sacred property,

because he thought it was his,

he did not commit meila,

because this is not removal from the domain of sacred property, since even before he took it, the sacred property was located in his domain.

If he gave it to his fellow

as a gift,

he committed meila,

since he removed the stone from the domain of sacred property.

And his fellow,

who received the stone from him,

did not commit meila,

since the stone was released from its sanctity through the treasurer.

If he built it

the treasurer

inside his house, he did not yet commit meila

with it, because he did not remove it from sacred property,

until he props up the roof with it,

and then he benefits from sacred property, and meila can occur either through removal or through benefit that he derives from sacred property,

worth a pruta.

And Rabbi Abahu was sitting before Rabbi Yohanan, and he was sitting and saying in the name of Shmuel: This means: One who dwells in his fellow’s courtyard without his knowledge must pay him rent.

The Gemara discusses in the chapter Keitzad HaRegel [Bava Kamma 20–21] the law of an abandoned house that is not intended for rental or other use, and a person came and dwelled in it without the knowledge of the owner of the house, and after some time the owner of the house claims rent. Is the one who benefited from his fellow’s property without his fellow suffering a loss thereby obligated to pay him for the benefit or not?

And Shmuel proved from the Mishna in Meila that benefit obligates one in payment even if the property from which he benefited was not diminished, for the stone of sacred property was not diminished through its use.

And from these words of Shmuel one can learn that Shmuel equated the law of private property with the law of sacred property, for if the law of sacred property were more stringent than that of private property, one could not bring proof from the obligation stated with regard to sacred property to obligate one even with regard to private property. And this contradicts what Shmuel said above, that one must be more stringent with sacred property than with private property!

He retracted [

he changed his mind]

from that

proof that he brought from the Mishna in Meila.

And

we raise a difficulty:

From where is it established that he retracted from that [

from where do we know that Shmuel retracted his statement there]?

Perhaps he retracted from this [

perhaps he retracted his statement in this sugya] regarding one who steals a clump of dates]!

And we answer:

No,

it does not appear so; rather, it is more reasonable that

he retracted from that,

because Shmuel’s proof from the Mishna in Meila can be rejected,

as Rava,

who rejected the proof with the claim that one must distinguish between sacred property and private property in the law of one who benefits, even if in every other regard sacred property is not more stringent than private property.

For Rava said: Sacred property without knowledge is considered like private property with knowledge,

and one cannot bring proof from it regarding one who dwells in his fellow’s courtyard without his knowledge, because one who benefits from sacred property is comparable to one who dwells in his fellow’s courtyard with his knowledge, for the Holy One, blessed is He, knows.

The preceding sugya dealt with one who steals or damages an object whose price can be assessed in two ways.

And incidentally, the Gemara brings the law concerning one who damages an object whose price changes on market day.

Rava said: These porters who broke a barrel

of wine belonging to a shopkeeper [

porters who negligently broke a barrel of wine belonging to a shopkeeper].

On market day,

when there is then great demand for wine,

it is sold [

the barrel is sold]

for five

, on other days it is sold for four.

And they broke the barrel before market day.

The law is:

If they return payment to him on market day [

if they pay him on market day] or before it,

they may return to him a barrel of wine [

they may return to him a barrel of wine] or pay five.

And if they pay him

on other days

after market day,

they return to him five

and not a barrel of wine that is now sold for four. For the shopkeeper could have sold the broken barrel for five. And the porter cannot say to the shopkeeper, “Wait until the next market day.”

And we said this law [

we said that after market day they are obligated to pay five]

only when he did not have wine to sell [

only if he lacked wine to sell] on market day, and he claims: “I could have sold the barrel for five.”

But if he had wine to sell

on market day and did not sell it,

then he should have sold it [

for he could have sold it], and he cannot make the claim that he would have sold the barrel. Therefore, the porter may pay him a barrel of wine.

And

when he pays five,

he deducts from it [

he reduces for him] the porter from the payment

the wage for his trouble,

for had he sold the barrel for five, he would have had to trouble himself to sell to many people little by little. And they assess how much a person is willing to lose in order not to have to trouble himself,

and the cost of the bung-making

that he would have had to pay a craftsman who makes a bung for a barrel.