Bava Batra 62A

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Text Excerpt

ואי אמר ליה: ״נכסי״⁠ – אפילו בתי ועבדי.

And if he said to him: I am selling you my property, it means that he is selling him even his houses and his Canaanite slaves.

מצר לו מצר אחד ארוך ומצר אחד קצר ⁠– אמר רב: לא קנה אלא כנגד הקצר.

§ The Talmud continues its examination of the concept of delineating boundaries in a wide manner, and considers the following case: If in the bill of sale the seller delineated one boundary line on one side of the field long, and the other boundary line on the opposite side of the field he delineated short, Rav said: The buyer acquires only a width of land corresponding to the short border, as it is assumed that the short boundary line delineates the actual size of the field that was sold to him, while the long boundary line was merely intended to point to the field under discussion. That is to say, the seller delineated the boundaries in a broad manner, but did not intend to include everything found within those boundaries in the sale.

אמרו ליה רב כהנא ורב אסי לרב: ויקנה כנגד ראש תור! שתיק רב.

Rav Kahana and Rav Asi said to Rav: But let him also acquire the triangular plot [rosh tor] bounded by the diagonal line connecting the end of the short border and the end of the long border. Rav was silent and did not respond.

ומודה רב, היכא דאיכא מצר ראובן ושמעון מחד גיסא, ומצר לוי ויהודה מחד גיסא; מדהוה ליה למכתב ליה דראובן כנגד לוי ודשמעון כנגד יהודה, ולא כתב ליה; שמע מינה כנגד ראש תור הוא דאמר ליה.

And Rav concedes that where there is a boundary line defined by the fields of Reuven and Shimon on one side of the field being sold, and a boundary line defined by the fields of Levi and Yehuda on the other side, and in the bill of sale the seller describes the field being sold as bordered by the fields of Reuven and Shimon on one side but mentions only the field of Levi on the other side, since had he intended to sell only half the field he should have written for the buyer in the bill of sale that the field is bordered by the field of Reuven on the one side, which is opposite that of Levi on the other, or by the field of Shimon on the one side, which is opposite that of Yehuda on the other, but he did not write that for him, one can conclude from it that he is telling him that he is selling him not only the area between the fields of Reuven and Levi, but also the triangular plot bounded by the diagonal line connecting the end of Shimon’s field to the end of Levi’s field.

Text data via Sefaria: William Davidson Edition - English and William Davidson Edition - Vocalized Aramaic, CC-BY-NC; edition provenance: Koren. Display terminology has been modernized for readability.