The Price You Have to Name

The Hook

A man trades a needle for a necklace, and the law shrugs. A man sells a field worth a thousand zuz for one zuz, and the law shrugs again. A shopkeeper tells you he bought the coat for a sela and is selling it to you for ten, and the Rambam says that is permitted. Then a merchant counts out a hundred nuts, hands over a hundred and one, and the extra nut can be reclaimed years later. A utensil worth ten dinarim turns out to have a flaw that knocks an isar off its value, and the buyer may hand the whole thing back.

Today’s three chapters close the Rambam’s laws of ona’ah, unfair pricing, and open the laws of the sale made in error, and if you only watch the numbers you will think the law is inconsistent. It lets enormous gaps stand and reopens tiny ones. What is it actually protecting, if it is not the price?

Mechirah 13

Where the Sixth Does Not Reach

The previous chapter set the famous measure. A price that misses the value by less than a sixth is simply waived, the way people let small differences go. A miss of exactly a sixth stands, and the difference is returned. More than a sixth, and the sale itself can be undone. Chapter thirteen now walks the edges of that measure, and almost every edge is about knowledge.

It opens with barter. When a person exchanges one article for another, even a needle for a necklace, even a lamb for a donkey, the laws of ona’ah do not apply, and the Rambam gives the reason in one quiet clause: this person may desire the needle more than the necklace. There is no market price for desire. But produce traded for produce is different, because produce has a going rate and nobody wants this particular wheat for its own sake.

Then the conditions, and here the chapter becomes a lesson in what it means to give something up. If two people complete a sale on the condition that there will be no claim of ona’ah, the condition is worthless, and ona’ah applies. Why? Because the other party does not know how much money he is forgoing. But if the seller says plainly, I am selling you this for two hundred and I know it is worth one hundred, on condition that you do not hold me responsible, the condition holds, because every condition two parties accept in matters of money is binding. A blank waiver is not a waiver. A waiver with a number in it is.

The same logic produces the most liberating ruling in the chapter. A person who buys and sells in a faithful manner, who says, this is what I paid and this is the profit I am taking, is outside the laws of ona’ah altogether. He may not play games inside that honesty. If he buys a lot of garments and utensils together, he may not sell the poor items at cost plus profit and the fine items at market value; he must choose one method for the whole lot. He may add what he paid the porters, the donkey drivers and his lodging, but not his own wages as a worker. Those he must name as profit, and be specific about the amount.

Then the four things to which ona’ah does not apply at all: land, servants, promissory notes and consecrated property. The Rambam derives them from the verse, from the hand of your colleague, which speaks of something passed from hand to hand, and land is not. A promissory note is excluded because nobody is buying the paper; it is only proof of a debt. Sell any of these worth a thousand for one, or one for a thousand, and the sale stands. Livestock, pearls, a sword and a Torah scroll, by contrast, are ordinary movable property, and ona’ah applies to them like anything else.

And then the chapter reverses itself on the question of who is selling. All of this applies when a person sells his own property. An agent who errs by the slightest amount, on land or on movables, has his sale nullified, because he was sent to do good and not to be generous with somebody else’s money. The Rambam adds in his own voice that a guardian of orphans is the same, since he is one individual and not a court. A court that sells orphans’ property and errs by less than a sixth is treated like anyone else; at a sixth the sale is undone. Brothers and partners who divide movables are treated as buyers: less than a sixth stands, more than a sixth undoes the division, and an even sixth stands with the difference returned. The chapter ends on rentals and hired labor, where renting land and hiring a worker carry no ona’ah, renting a utensil or an animal does, since rental is a sale for a day, and the Rambam rules, again in his own voice, that a contractor who agrees to weave a garment for ten zuz falls under ona’ah too.

Mechirah 14

Prices, Storehouses, and Words

Chapter fourteen begins by affirming the honest merchant once more. Even if he says I bought it for a sela and I am selling it for ten, it is permitted. And immediately the Rambam turns from the private deal to the public one. The court is obligated to regulate prices and appoint officers, so that people at large cannot take whatever profit they desire, and to limit profit to a sixth. On what? On the things our lives depend on: wine, oil, fine flour. On herbs and fragrances like costus and frankincense there is no limit. Eggs may carry only one profit; the first merchant earns it, and the one who buys from him sells at cost.

Then the storehouse. In Eretz Yisrael one may not trade in staples at all; let each person bring from his own heap so that food stays cheap, though where oil is abundant one may trade in oil. Staples bought in the market may not be hoarded in Eretz Yisrael or in any place where most of the inhabitants are Jews, because it causes anxiety for the Jewish people. A man may store the produce of his own field. Storing is permitted in the three years around the Sabbatical year, and in a year of drought one may not store even a kav of carobs, because it brings a curse on the market. The Rambam says that whoever raises prices or hoards staples is likened to one who lends at interest. Staples may not be carried out of the land, or even from one king’s domain to another’s within it.

The townspeople may set prices for whatever they wish, even meat and bread, and fix penalties. Craftsmen may agree among themselves that one does not work on the day another works. But in a city with a distinguished sage who guides its conduct, such a stipulation has no force without his consent, and whoever causes a colleague a loss under a stipulation the sage did not approve must pay for it.

And then, without warning, the chapter leaves the market. Just as ona’ah applies to buying and selling, it applies to speech. You may not say to a person who has returned to God, remember your earlier deeds. You may not remind a descendant of converts of his ancestors, or ask a convert who comes to learn whether a mouth that ate forbidden meat should study the Torah. You may not speak to a man burying his children the way Job’s friends spoke to Job. You may not send donkey drivers looking for grain to someone you know has never sold grain, and you may not ask a man who never studied a subject what he thinks of a hard question in it. Whoever wrongs a convert in money or in words transgresses three prohibitions at once.

And the Rambam ranks them. Verbal ona’ah is more severe than financial ona’ah, because money can be returned and words cannot, and because one touches a person’s possessions and the other touches the person. That is why the verse adds, and you shall fear your God, since this is a matter of the heart that only God sees. And whoever cries out because of words is answered immediately.

Mechirah 15

The Sale Built on a Mistake

Now the strange precision from the hook. When a person sells by measure, by weight or by number and errs by the slightest amount, the buyer may seek redress at any time. The Rambam draws the line sharply: ona’ah concerns value, and value is a matter of judgment, so small gaps are forgiven. A miscount is not a matter of judgment. A hundred nuts for a dinar, and he gave a hundred and one, or ninety nine: the sale stands and the nut goes back, even after years. Even if they made a formal act of acquisition declaring that nothing more is owed, it is undone, because it was made on a mistaken premise.

A hidden blemish works the same way. Land, a servant, an animal, a utensil, sold with a flaw the buyer did not know of, may be returned even years later, unless he went on using it after he discovered the flaw. And the court does not measure the flaw. A utensil worth ten dinarim with a blemish worth an isar may still be returned, because the buyer may say, I wanted a perfect article. If he prefers to keep it and ask for a discount, the choice passes to the seller: take it at the full price, or take your money and go. What counts as a blemish is what the people of the city call a blemish, since a person who buys without stipulating is assumed to follow local custom, and is assumed to want something whole.

So can a seller protect himself by saying, I sell this on condition you never return it for a blemish? Not unless the buyer says, I accept any blemish I find even though it lowers the value by such and such. The same rule from chapter thirteen returns: a person who gives up money must know how much he is giving up.

Then the most psychologically subtle ruling in the day. A seller lists blemishes, some obvious and some hidden: this cow is blind, it is lame, it bites, it crouches suddenly. The buyer sees with his own eyes that it is neither blind nor lame, and later finds it bites. That sale was made in error, and the Rambam explains why from inside the buyer’s head. He saw that the obvious flaws were false and assumed the hidden ones were false too, that the seller was only making him feel good about the deal. But if the cow was lame and not blind, and turns out to bite, the sale stands, because once one of the obvious claims proved true he had reason to take the rest seriously. The Rambam carries this to price: a seller who says this is worth only a zuz and sells it for a hundred on condition of no ona’ah has said nothing believable, and ona’ah applies, until he names a figure close enough to be true.

The chapter ends with the law of servants, where only flaws that prevent work are grounds for return. A mole, a scar from a dog bite, bad breath are not. Debilitating boils, a weakening illness, epilepsy, insanity, a revolting skin affliction are. So is a servant who turns out to be an armed robber, or one already conscripted by the king. A thief, a runaway, a glutton are not, because these are presumed of every servant, unless the buyer stipulated otherwise.

The Unifying Principle

Put the three chapters together and the inconsistency dissolves. The law is not protecting the price. It is protecting the picture. A sale is two people agreeing on a picture of what is changing hands and what it is worth, and the law asks only one question: did both of them see the same picture? A man who trades a needle for a necklace saw exactly what he was doing. A man who sells his land for a pittance knew it was land. A merchant who announces his profit has handed you the whole picture, and you may take it or leave it. But a blank waiver, a miscounted nut, a hidden flaw, a list of blemishes designed to be dismissed, all of these break the picture, and no time limit protects a sale whose foundation was false.

And then chapter fourteen shows where the picture extends beyond two people. A city is also a party to every sale of bread. A hoarder has not cheated his buyer; he has made the whole town anxious, and the Rambam compares him to a lender at interest. And the sharpest extension is to words, where the thing being priced is a person. To remind a returnee of his past is to sell him a picture of himself that is no longer true, and that is why it is worse than any overcharge. Money comes back. A picture planted in someone’s mind does not.

The Talmud says the first question asked of a person at the end of his days is whether he dealt in business with faithfulness, be’emunah. Chassidus loves to read that word twice, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe often drew on the reading: did you conduct your business with faith, with the awareness that God is present at the counter? The faithful merchant of chapter thirteen is that idea in law. He does not hide the picture, because he is not alone with the customer.

The Alter Rebbe teaches in the thirty sixth chapter of the Tanya that the purpose of creation is that God desired a dwelling place in the lowest realms, and few places are lower than a haggle over nuts. The Rambam does not leave the marketplace to its own morality; he fills it with sixths and miscounts and the inner thoughts of a man looking at a cow. And the Baal Shem Tov taught that everything a person sees or hears is meant as a lesson for his own service of God. If a seller can be held to account for one nut, a person might ask what account he keeps of the words he hands out every day without counting.

Modern Application

We live inside the fine print. Every screen asks us to accept terms on condition that we will not complain, and the Rambam would say most of those waivers are worth exactly what a waiver without a number is worth. Consent requires knowing what you are giving up. That is a sharp standard to hold yourself to as a seller: not, did they click, but did they see the same picture I saw.

And chapter fourteen is uncomfortably contemporary. Panic buying is hoarding with a shopping cart, and the Rambam calls its effect anxiety for the whole people. The verbal laws are even closer. The comment about someone’s past, the knowing question asked of the person you know cannot answer it, the friend who sends a struggling colleague to a dead end as a joke, these are all on the Rambam’s list, and they are ranked above fraud.

The Closing

A needle for a necklace stands because the man wanted the needle. A hundred and one nuts do not stand because nobody wanted the hundred and first. The law has no interest in making every deal fair by its own measure. It has every interest in making sure nobody walks away holding a picture that was never true.

That is why the same chapter that lets a merchant charge ten times what he paid forbids a single sentence that reminds a man of who he used to be. You may name your price. You may not sell anyone a false picture, not of the goods, not of the market, and least of all of themselves. And whoever cries out over words is answered immediately.