Our Gemara on Amud Beis discusses various implied conditions and additions in the sale of property. Within that discussion Rashbam notes that one cannot use a price as indicator of how much or how few extras were included in the property, because we have a general principle that there’s no such thing as overcharging or undercharging when it comes to real estate. Unlike chattel, real estate varies in price greatly and what is considered overcharging or undercharging has a significantly greater variance.

Yamin Yosef (Chaye Sarah) offer a logical reason as to why the standard rules of overcharging do not apply to real estate. He says, because real estate is generally involving land that generates produce, the variance is broad. A small parcel of land might generate bountiful crops and a large parcel of land might hardly produce. Arguably, the value of land is based on what it is able to produce. He then observes, based on “natural law“ principle, we can have insight into Efron’s surprising behavior. Avraham requested to purchase the Machpela cave as a burial site. However, the verse relates that Efron sold Avraham the field as well. Yamin Yosef says that Efron realized that he was charging a hideously large amount of money (400 shekels) and was afraid that Avraham would be able to claim that he was overcharged. But by selling him a field along with the cave, this could camouflage the price differential because he could argue that the field had an unusually high yield potential in terms of produce.

While we are discussing Efron, based on the Baal Haturim and Bereishis Rabbah (58:7) we can observe that Efron‘s name is written in Hebrew several times in the narrative as maleh (with the vav vowel), except once, when Avraham painstakingly doles out the full 400 shekel for Efron. In that version, the spelling of his name chaser missing, and is without the Vav. We saw earlier Efron’s obsession regarding the purchase price and fear that Avraham would renege. The greedy man who has little trust, never feels full or secure. Hence his name is literally written incompletely.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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