Keeping Your Word Before It Counts

About This Talk

Mechirah 7 to 9 govern the space between paying and acquiring that opened when the Sages required meshichah for movables. Chapter 7: one who retracts after money was paid but before meshichah, even after a partial deposit, buyer or seller, is not acting in a Jewish manner and receives the adjuration mi shepara, invoking the generation of the flood, the dispersion, Sodom and Amorah and the Egyptians at the sea, after which the money is returned; if the buyer retracted the money is an entrusted object in the seller's hands, while a retracting seller bears responsibility until he has received the adjuration; selling for an existing debt counts as payment, and land sold for a debt is binding; collateral completes nothing and brings no adjuration; a mark made in the seller's presence or at his invitation brings the adjuration and, where custom treats it as binding, completes the sale; one who retracts from a purely verbal deal is faithless and the spirit of the Sages is not pleased with him, and so is one who fails to give a small promised gift, though not a large one; an agent who buys for himself with his own money keeps it but is a man of deceit, unless the seller would sell only to him or the opportunity would be lost, and then he must inform his principal; the Rambam rejects the view that an agent who used the principal's money as a loan keeps the purchase; three senders with mixed money share the purchase, while a sealed purse that was used makes it that partner's alone. Chapter 8: a seller who keeps pressing for the balance, even one zuz, has not transferred the field, even with a deed or possession, and the retracting party has the lower hand, the seller giving the worst land or the buyer taking the best; if he was not pressing, the balance is a debt; one who sold poor land completes the sale even while pressing, and movables follow the same rules; a field worth 100 sold for 200 with pressing is unresolved, neither may retract and a seller who seized land for the balance keeps it; an error in payment is corrected even years later; a kinyan saying if I sell, it is yours from now for 100 binds a later sale at 100 but not at a higher price, and an appraisal by a court of three needs two, as three say needs all three, a court of four needs four, and the seller cannot demand a new appraisal. Chapter 9: a promise to the Temple treasury of ten zuz for an item worth 100 is binding, since a word to the Most High is like delivery to an ordinary person; the treasury always has the upper hand as prices move and never receives the adjuration; orphans follow similar rules, adjusted in each case so that people will still pay them in advance and sell to them on credit; and on the eves of Shemini Atzeret, Pesach, Shavuot and Rosh HaShanah a butcher who took one dinar toward a steer must slaughter it, and the buyer bears the loss if it dies first.