Another type of sale of land could lead to a problem of interest on a rabbinic level. The Mishnah says that somebody sells a field to another person, and the buyer pays only part of the money. The seller tells the buyer, regarding the balance he has not yet been paid: “Whenever you want, bring the rest of the money and take your field. It will be considered your field from now, but retroactively. When you hand me that money, we’ll consider it your field from this moment.” If you don’t bring me the rest of the money, we’ll say that the whole sale is nullified, and I’ll return the money you gave me, that initial part of the payment. I’ll give it back to you, and the whole sale will be null and void.
In this case, we say it’s asur (forbidden). The buyer or the seller. The seller is not allowed to take crops from this field until we see what develops. Either way, it could turn into a problem of ribit de-rabbanan (interest on a rabbinic level). It could turn into a problem of collecting interest on a rabbinic level. If, at a later point, the buyer makes the rest of the payment and fully pays everything off, we say that he would retroactively own the field from the initial time he gave the first money. Therefore, any produce the seller took while waiting for that final payment is considered a benefit to the seller of this property in return for the lag time, for sitting and waiting for that final money to come in. The eating of the produce during that interim is interest because, technically, the buyer owned it from the initial point in time when the money was transferred.
If the field ends up remaining the property of the seller, that means the buyer never gave the last installment of money. In the interim, if the buyer took some of the produce and ate it, it basically was never his. We consider him to be eating produce there, and that counts as interest for the initial money he gave the seller. We consider the money he gave the seller to be like a loan. Finally, when the seller paid him back, the loan was repaid and the buyer got his money back, but he also had all the produce he ate during that in-between time, until they clarified the situation. So that produce he ate could count as interest. Therefore, the buyer or the seller is not allowed to take any produce here. It has to be put in escrow, in a way. It has to be held by a third party. Eventually, when we see how things develop, if the buyer makes the final payment, then he takes everything. If the buyer doesn’t give the money and the seller refunds the initial deposit to the buyer, then we give all of that produce back to the seller.
The next part of the Mishnah is a loan arrangement where the lender may end up collecting a field worth more than the amount of the loan. The Mishnah says, “Let’s say somebody makes a loan to another person, and the lender, to the borrower.” It’s under the condition that if the borrower does not pay back the loan, the lender can keep the field. The lender tells the borrower, “If you don’t give me back the money within the next three years, then the field is mine as of right now, as of today.” Then what happens? If the borrower doesn’t pay back within the three years, then retroactively, from that initial discussion, the field is owned by the lender. The lender owns the field from the moment he gave the borrower the money.
We don't see, even here, if the field is worth more than the loan, it's considered okay. What we say is that the money he gave the borrower retroactively was never a loan, because he was never paid back for the loan. Rather, it was a payment to the borrower. It was a payment to the field. Maybe he bought the field at a cheap price. As we said earlier in the Perek (chapter), when it comes to property, there’s no ona'ah. There’s no amount that a property could be worth in terms of market value. Maybe a person bought it cheap. Maybe he bought it expensive. There are various reasons why people would sell land at a price different from market value. So we treat this as a field that was bought at a cheap price, and that is a valid deal. Even if the field was worth more than the actual loan, we turn the loan into a sale. Baitos ben Zonin used to do this in business. He had the approval of the rabbis. This type of loan that eventually turned into a sale retroactively was approved by Hachamim (rabbis).