Seeds That Were Meant to Grow

The Hook

A man sells a packet of radish seeds and a sack of wheat on the same morning. Both buyers go home and sow what they bought, and neither field comes up. The radish seller must give the money back. The wheat seller owes nothing. The seeds may have been equally dead. What changed was what each seller could assume about the purpose of the sale.

Today’s three chapters are about the part of a sale that nobody writes down: what the buyer meant to do with it, what the words of the deal actually name, and what the goods look like when they are laid on the counter. The Rambam treats all three as part of the merchandise. So what exactly are you selling, when you sell?

Mechirah 16

The Purpose Comes With the Goods

Chapter sixteen opens with the seeds. When a person sells seeds of garden vegetables, seeds that people do not eat, and they do not grow, the seller must return the money. The reason is one plain clause: we can assume he bought them to sow them. Nobody buys radish seed for dinner, so the purpose is part of the sale whether or not anyone said it aloud. The Rambam adds a limit at once. This holds only if the failure lay in the seeds themselves. If hail struck the land, the seller is not responsible, for perhaps the hail is the reason.

Then the contrast. If he sold seeds that are eaten, wheat or barley, and the buyer sowed them and they failed, the seller owes nothing. Even flax seed, which most people buy for sowing, does not make the seller responsible, because some people eat it. Where a purpose is not universal, the seller cannot be held to it. But if the buyer told the seller, I am buying these to sow, the seller is responsible. The same applies to things bought for medicine or for dye. A spoken purpose becomes a term of the deal.

From here the Rambam draws a striking rule. A buyer who tells the seller he means to carry the goods to another city and sell them there, and then finds a blemish that voids the sale, cannot be told, bring my article back here. The seller must refund him and take the trouble of retrieving the goods or selling them where they are. Even if they were lost or stolen after the buyer gave notice, they are counted as in the seller’s domain. A buyer who said nothing and moved the goods anyway keeps them in his own domain until he returns them.

Then a run of cases about who carries the risk once a flaw is known. Produce with a known blemish that is then lost or stolen is the buyer’s loss until he returns it. Produce that turns wormy and spoils from age is the seller’s. A buyer who saw the trouble coming and failed to tell the seller bears it himself. An ox that turns out to gore can be defended by the seller with one sentence, I sold it to you for slaughter, as long as the buyer buys oxen both to slaughter and to plow. If the seller knows this buyer buys oxen only to plow, the sale was made in error and is void. Once again, what the seller knew about the purpose decides the case.

An animal sold for slaughter that proves to have been trefah from the start goes back with its money, even though the buyer has already slaughtered it. From this the Rambam derives a general rule about a second blemish. A buyer who damages the article in the course of ordinary use, as slaughtering a trefah animal, is not liable for that damage. A buyer who deviates from ordinary use returns the article and pays for what he did. A garment cut for a cloak that reveals a flaw in the cutting may be returned in pieces; if he already sewed the cloak, he may return it and collect for the value his sewing added. A buyer of land who lived on it and then found a flaw pays for the benefit he had, rent for the courtyard he lived in.

Then the ox with no molars. The buyer put it with his herd, laid out feed for them all, and never noticed this one was not eating until it starved. He may return the carcass and get his money back. But if the seller was a broker who buys from one person and passes the animal on without keeping it, we assume he never knew, and after a Rabbinic oath he is free. The buyer should have checked it himself and returned it while there was still time.

The chapter ends on forbidden food. Meat of a firstborn sold without being shown to an expert, a cow that proves trefah, produce that proves to be tevel, wine used for idolatry: what the buyer already ate is not counted, and the seller returns the money. That holds for anything forbidden by Torah law. For something forbidden only by Rabbinic law, what remains is returned for its price, but what was eaten was a benefit and nothing is owed for it. Where benefit itself is forbidden, the money always goes back.

Mechirah 17

What the Words Name

Chapter seventeen turns from purpose to description. There are four states of a seller. He said the wheat was fine and it was poor: the buyer may retract, but not the seller. The buyer persuaded him it was poor and it was fine: the seller may retract, but not the buyer. He said poor and it was poor but not the poorest, or fine and it was fine but not the finest: then we measure for a sixth, and if the gap reaches it, neither may retract, but the difference is returned. And if he said red wheat and it was white, olive wood and it was wild fig, wine and it was vinegar, both sides may retract, because this is simply not the thing he said he was selling.

Then wine, which turns. Wine poured into the buyer’s own jars that sours at once is not the seller’s problem, even if the buyer said he wanted it for cooking, unless the seller knew it was turning. But wine left in the seller’s jars that sours is different. If the buyer said, I need this for cooking, he may return it and say: here is your wine and here are your jars; I did not buy it to drink, I bought it to cook with a little at a time. If he never said so, the seller may answer: why did you not drink it right away? A barrel of beer that sours in the seller’s barrel within three days is the seller’s loss; after that, the buyer’s. A barrel bought to sell off slowly may be returned if half or a third sours, unless the buyer moved the spout hole or let a market day pass without selling.

The descriptive words carry promises. Fragrant wine must keep its fragrance until Shavuot. Aged wine must be from last year. Vintage wine must be in its third year and hold its flavor until Sukkot. Where there is a local custom, the custom governs. A buyer of a cellar of wine with no description, or of this cellar of wine for cooking, accepts ten jugs in a hundred that have begun to turn, and no more. A cellar of wine for cooking with no particular cellar named, or a barrel of wine, must be good throughout. This cellar of wine, said plainly, means ordinary shop wine, neither bad nor fine. And if a man said, I am selling you this cellar, and never said wine, the buyer takes it even if it is all vinegar. He bought a room.

The chapter ends with the kneading tray. A man who says, I am selling you a kneading tray, may not hand over a block of wood that a tray could be carved from. He must give a finished tray, one that anyone who sees it would call a kneading tray. The word names the finished thing, not its potential.

Mechirah 18

The Truth of Appearances

Chapter eighteen opens with a sentence that stretches far beyond the market. It is forbidden to deceive people in business or to beguile them, and this applies to Jews and gentiles alike. A seller who knows of a blemish must disclose it. It is forbidden even to deceive a person with flattering words.

Then the cosmetics of the market. One may not dress up a servant, an animal or old utensils to look new. One may polish, press and beautify new utensils as much as is needed. One may not feed a man bran water to swell his face, paint his cheeks, inflate intestines on a butcher’s counter or soak meat in water. One may not sell a gentile meat of an animal not ritually slaughtered as if it had been, even though to him it makes no religious difference. The lie itself is the wrong. One may husk grain, but not only the top of the sack, because that gives the impression the whole sack is husked.

Then a ruling that refuses to call good business deception. A merchant may hand out roasted grain and nuts to children and maidservants so they will come back to his shop. He may sell below the market price to win customers, and the other merchants cannot stop him. A kindness and a bargain are not a lie.

Mixing is forbidden. Two batches of the same produce may not be combined, even both freshly harvested, and certainly not old with new, even if the old is dearer, because the buyer may want produce that stores. Strong wine may be blended with light wine while it ferments, since each improves the other, and a wine whose flavor is distinct may be mixed at any time, since the buyer can detect it. Water may not be mixed into wine for sale. Wine that has water in it may not be sold in a shop without telling the customer, and may not be sold to a merchant even with notice, lest he deceive others. Dregs may not be mixed into wine or oil in the slightest amount.

Then the honest allowances, which read like an inventory of reality. Refined oil means no dregs at all; plain oil carries a log and a half of dregs in a hundred. Wheat carries a quarter kav of legumes per se’ah, barley a quarter kav of dried kernels, lentils a quarter kav of pebbles, figs ten wormy in a hundred. If the impurities exceed the allowance, the seller must sift the entire batch. Where there is a custom, the custom rules, even a custom of half dregs. And in such a place, a man who takes a stone from his neighbor’s grain heap pays for it as if it were wheat. He may not offer to put the stone back, because adding even a stone to produce is forbidden.

The Unifying Principle

The three chapters describe three layers of a sale, and the Alter Rebbe gives us the words for them. In the fourth chapter of the Tanya he teaches that the soul expresses itself through three garments: thought, speech and action. A sale wears the same three garments.

Chapter sixteen is the thought of the sale: the purpose. The seller of radish seed knows what the buyer is thinking even if he never says it, and he is held to it. The seller of wheat cannot know, so he is not held, until the buyer says it aloud. Then the thought becomes a term.

Chapter seventeen is the speech of the sale. Words are not decorations on a deal; they are its content. Fragrant means fragrant until Shavuot. A kneading tray means a tray, not a log. A cellar without the word wine is a room. When the Talmud teaches, let your yes be righteous and your no be righteous, it is describing a person whose words name exactly what they mean.

Chapter eighteen is the action of the sale: the goods themselves as they appear. The Talmud records Shmuel’s teaching that it is forbidden to deceive people, even a gentile, and the Rambam places it here, at the head of a chapter about polish and paint. A picture can lie without a word being spoken. A sack husked only on top is a sentence of false testimony.

Read together, the chapters teach that a person is answerable for the whole of what he hands over, not only the object but what he knew it was for, what he called it and how he made it look. The Rambam refuses to let any of the three garments come apart from the others.

Modern Application

Every modern business runs on these layers. The seed seller who must refund failed radish seed is the software company whose product does not do the one thing everyone buys it for. The buyer who says, I am buying this to resell in another city, is the customer who tells you his use case, and the Rambam says that once you hear it, you share its risk. The four states of the seller are a lesson in describing your goods: overpromise and the buyer may walk; undersell and you may walk; be roughly accurate and only the money is adjusted.

Chapter eighteen reaches every listing photo and every staged showroom. New goods may be polished as much as needed. Old goods may not be dressed up as new. The test is not whether something looks good, but whether its look tells the truth. And the merchant who hands out nuts to children reminds us that generosity and low prices are not tricks. The Rambam has no quarrel with winning customers. He has a quarrel with misleading them.

The Closing

The radish seed and the wheat may have been equally dead. One seller pays and the other does not, because one knew what his buyer was hoping for. The ox with no molars, the barrel left in the seller’s cellar, the tray that must already be a tray, each of them asks the same question: what did both people understand was changing hands?

That is the whole of these chapters. You do not sell an object. You sell what you knew it was for, what you said it was, and what you let it look like, and you answer for all three. Thought, speech and action go out the door with the goods.