This Mishnah is going to talk about somebody who sells a field to his friend. He tells him that he’s going to sell him a bet kur. A bet kur is a certain amount of land that could produce a kur (measure of barley) of barley, which is 75,000 square amot (cubits). He tells him he’s going to sell him that amount. Let’s see how it plays out.
The Mishnah says: Somebody tells his friend, “I’m selling you a bet kur of land, of earth.” At that point, he has to give the buyer a full bet kur, one that could be plowed and harvested as one entity. He’s selling him one bet kur. Therefore, the whole area he’s selling him has to be plowable. If there were cracks in the field that were 10 tefachim (handbreadths) deep, those cracks go all the way down, and when he’s plowing, he’s unable to reach them. Or there are stones that are higher than 10 tefachim there, so he can’t reach the higher parts of the field where the stones are. These parts of the field are not counted toward the 75,000 square amot that we’re looking for, because you have to have 75,000 amot of plantable area that’s part of one field. If a person can’t plow in one shot—if he has to adjust his plow in such a drastic way in order to plow those other parts of the field—it’s not considered to be part of the one field that he sold his friend. Therefore, we don’t count that part toward the 75,000 square amot.
But if they’re smaller than that—if there are rocks that are smaller than 10 tefachim high, or cracks that are less than 10 tefachim deep—they’re considered to be part of the field, because we understand that no field is perfectly level. There are cracks and there are points in the field that rise up. Therefore, they would be included in the 75,000 square, because they’re only considered to be small bumps or small dips in the field, and they’re still part of that one field.
But if he used a different type of lashon (language), and the seller told the buyer, “I’m selling you like a field of bet kur, of earth,” then he’s not required to give him a bet kur that would be level. In that situation, if there are cracks deeper than 10 tefachim, or stones higher than 10 tefachim, they are measured with the rest of the field. Since he used the lashon, he used the language “like a bet kur of earth.” He’s not telling him, “I’m selling you a bet kur of earth”; he’s telling him, “I’m selling you something similar.” Therefore, he’s telling him that anything like a bet kur would be enough and doesn’t have to be exactly 75,000 square amot.