Baba Metzia 9:4-5

Baba Metzia 9:4

Let’s say that one person receives a field from another (as a tenant) but he doesn’t want to weed it. He says to the landlord, “Why do you care, so long as I pay my rent?” This argument is not accepted because the landlord can reply that the tenant will eventually return the field to him, by which point it will only produce weeds.

Baba Metzia 9:5

Let’s say that one person receives a field from another (as a sharecropper) but the field doesn’t produce. If it yields enough produce to make a heap, the sharecropper is required to take care of the field. Rabbi Yehuda defined a heap as the amount of grain one drops in planting that field (i.e., a measure relative to the size of the field).