The mishnah at the bottom of 68b listed items that are automatically included in the sale of a plot of land:
One who sells a field has sold the stones in the field that are for its use, and the reeds in the vineyard that are for its use, and the produce that is still attached to the ground, and the cluster of reeds that occupy less than the area required for sowing a quarter-kav of seed, and the watch station that is not plastered with clay, and the young carob tree that has not yet been grafted, and the untrimmed sycamore that is still young.
After this, the mishnah similarly goes on to list things that are not automatically included in a land sale — largely the inverses of items mentioned in the first part: stones and reeds not designated for use, produce not attached to the ground, a watch station that has been plastered with clay, etc.
The Gemara on today’s daf goes through each of these respective items, further specifying the circumstances of their sale:
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The produce that is still attached to the ground: Even though the time has already come for the produce to be cut down.
The cluster of reeds … Even though these reeds are thick.
The watch station that is not plastered with clay: Even though it is not fixed in the ground.
And the carob tree that has not been grafted, and the untrimmed sycamore: Even though they are big and thick.
Why the need for all these caveats? The Gemara appears to be answering an unarticulated question: Why do we need to list these items in the first place? Many of them, such as produce still attached to the ground, should feel intuitive. Would someone really assume unripe produce should be separated from the land in the course of a sale? Further, the construction of the mishnah is cumbersome. Do we really need to list all the items automatically included in a land sale and then all their inverses that are not automatically included? This seems an unnecessary repetition. Surely we could have inferred the second half of this mishnah from the first!
While the Gemara sometimes explains away repetition as being a stylistic choice — the mishnah, originally an oral text, often invokes parallel language and structures for easier memorization — when it can offer a logical solution for the seemingly extraneous language, that’s typically seen as preferable. Here, the Gemara offers various reasons that we need the full mishnah. I might have thought that since the produce is ready to be harvested, even though it’s still attached, I don’t think of it as having the same status as the land. If the watch station isn’t fixed in the ground, and therefore movable, I might have assumed it isn’t viewed as part of the field. And if the sycamore and carob trees are large and thick, I might have assumed this imparts enough significance to be treated as their own independent entities. The Gemara comes to dismiss all these assumptions: In each case listed above, the item is considered either to have the status of land, or to be insignificant enough to be rendered auxiliary to it and automatically included in any sale.
The Gemara then proceeds to go through the second clause and do the exact opposite — to give reasons why a watch station that’s been plastered or trees that have been grafted are insignificant enough to be included in a sale without specification, and likewise teaching that this is not in fact the case. In doing so, the Gemara is able to justify why it included each of these items in both clauses of the mishnah.
Read all of Bava Batra 69 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on September 2, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
