You Cannot Sell Tomorrow

About This Talk

Chapter 22 draws three lines around what a sale can touch: nothing that has not yet come into existence, so a clause selling what a field will produce or the offspring an animal will bear conveys nothing; nothing outside the seller's domain, so a net's future catch, an inheritance from a living father and a field he is about to buy are all void; and nothing without substance, so the fragrance of an apple, the taste of honey and the bare right to eat a palm's fruit cannot be transferred, with emergency exceptions for a poor heir selling to bury his father and a destitute fisherman selling the day's catch, a gift to one's own unborn son that binds because of a father's closeness, and vows to the Temple or the poor that bind the mouth even where they cannot move property. Chapter 23 supplies the lawful route to a future by selling the body for its produce, a field for its yield, a tree for its fruit, a dovecote or hive for the benefit it gives, and then limits the buyer: he may not alter land bought for produce though a fixed-term buyer may build and destroy, eggs and fledglings are not acquired until they fly, he must leave the mothers' first pair and two pairs from the daughters so the dovecote stays populated, take three swarms before sharing one for one with the hive, and leave stumps by species, two fistfuls on an olive and a handbreadth on an ordinary tree. Chapter 24 ties trees to ground: three trees in a pot-stand arrangement four to sixteen cubits apart carry the land that nurtures them and every tree between, two trees carry nothing, sunlit trunk growth goes to the tree owner and root growth to the field owner with palms excepted, ambiguous deeds are read generously against the seller, a deed must say "from the ground of the earth's depths to the heights of the sky" for cisterns and upper spaces to pass, and a sold grave still receives its owner's burial against the buyer's will.