Arachin, Chapter 9, Mishnah 1. This chapter turns to a new subject: the sdei achuzah, an ancestral field in Eretz Yisrael that a man has sold to someone else. The Torah does not allow such a field to be sold away forever. At the yovel it returns to the family that inherited it, and even before the yovel arrives the original owner holds the right to buy his field back from the purchaser. The question our mishnah opens with is one of timing: how long must the seller wait after the sale before he may exercise that right of redemption?
The Two Year Waiting Period
"HaMocher et sadehu bish'at haYovel": a person who sells off his ancestral field during the era when the yovel cycle is operating. Such a seller, says the mishnah, "eino mutar lig'ol," is given no license to redeem, "pachot mishtei shanim," in under two years. For that span the purchaser's hold on the land is secure, and a demand to take it back before then carries no legal weight at all.
Where does this come from? A pasuk that addresses exactly such a transaction: "Bemispar shnei tevuot yimkor lach," by the reckoning of the years of crops shall he sell to you. The Torah writes the word in the plural, years of harvest, and a plural at its smallest is two. The purchaser must therefore be left with two harvest seasons at the very least, and only when they have gone by does the seller's power to redeem come alive.
Which Years Count
Notice what the pasuk emphasizes: shnei tevuot, two years of produce. The measure is not simply two years on the calendar but two years in which the land was capable of yielding a harvest. The mishnah therefore rules out certain years from the tally.
"Haytah shnat shidafon veyerakon": if one of the two years was a year of shidafon, when powerful winds battered the field and the stalks of grain were left hollow and never came to anything, or a year of yerakon, when the heat was so intense that the grain yellowed and dried out and produced nothing, "o shevi'it," or if it was the shemittah year, when planting crops, fruits and vegetables in Eretz Yisrael is forbidden, then "eina olah lo min haminyan," that year is not included in the count. A year in which the land could not produce, whether because of the weather or because of the sanctity of shemittah, is not one of the two years of produce the Torah stipulated.
Now the mishnah shows us the reverse case. "Narah o hovirah": the year was an ordinary one, and the purchaser turned over the soil yet never sowed a thing in it, or simply left the ground idle without even breaking it up. In that case, "olah lo min haminyan," such a year is credited toward the two. What the Torah demanded were years suited to bearing a crop, and this year was entirely suited to it. That the purchaser declined to make anything of his opportunity is his own loss, and the seller remains barred from redeeming.
Rebbi Elazar: Three Harvests in Two Years
"Rebbi Elazar omer," Rebbi Elazar offers a case: "Mechara lo lifnei Rosh HaShanah," the transfer took place in the days just before Rosh HaShanah, "vehi mele'ah peirot," while the land stood laden with its ripened crop. In such a situation, "harei zeh ochel mimena," the purchaser will draw from that field "shalosh tevuot lishtei shanim," three yields across a period of only two years.
Follow the sequence. The sale is concluded in the final days of the year, with the crop already standing in the field, so the buyer harvests that yield and takes it all. Immediately after Rosh HaShanah he plants again and reaps at the end of that year. After the following Rosh HaShanah he plants a third time and reaps once more. Three harvests have come into his hands, and only then may the seller redeem.
The principle behind this is the point of the whole mishnah. What the Torah imposed on the original owner is a wait of two full years, not a limit on the number of crops the buyer may gather. Here the buyer picked up an extra harvest at the very start, but that windfall does not shorten the clock by so much as a day. The true owner of the sdei achuzah must still let two years of produce pass before he can buy his field back.