A price for produce may not be fixed until the market price is known. When the market price is known, a price may be fixed, and although this one does not have, someone else does have.  [If] he was the first of the reapers, he may fix a price with him on the stack of grain, or on the vat of grapes, or on the vat of olives, or on the clay balls of a potter, or on lime after it has been sunk into the kiln. He may fix a price on manure all the days of the year. R’ Yose says: A price may not be fixed on manure unless he had manure in the dung heap; the Sages, however, permit [it].  He may fix a price with him at the best rate. R’ Yehudah says: Although he did not stipulate with him at the best rate, he may say: `Give me at such [a price], or give me my money.”

A person may lend his sharecroppers wheat for wheat —- for sowing, but not for eating. For Rabban Gamliel would lend his sharecroppers wheat for wheat for sowing, [and if he lent them] at a high price and it became cheap, or [if he lent them] at a cheap price and it became expensive, he would take from them at the cheap price —- not because the law is so, but because he wished to be stringent with himself.

A person may not say to another: “Lend me a kor of wheat and I will pay you at threshing time.” But he may say to him: “Lend me until my son comes,” [or] “until I find the key.” Hillel, however, prohibits [it]. And so Hillel used to say: A woman may not lend another a loaf until she assesses its price, for perhaps wheat will become expensive, and they will come to [a transgression of] interest.

A person may say to another: “Weed with me and I will weed with you,” [or] “Hoe with me and I will hoe with you”; but he may not say to him: “Weed with me and I will hoe with you,” [or] “Hoe with me and I will weed with you.”  All the days of the dry season are alike, [and] all the days of the rainy season are alike. [However] he may not say to him: “Plow with me during the dry season, and I will plow with you during the rainy season.”  Rabban Gamliel says: There is interest paid in advance, and there is interest paid afterward. How? [If] he decided to borrow from him, and he sent to him and said: “[I am doing so] in order that you lend me” —- this is interest paid in advance. [If] he borrowed from him, and returned his money to him, and sent to him, and said: “[This is] because of your money that was lying idle with me” —- this is interest paid afterwards.  R’ Shimon says: There is interest with words —- he may not say to him: “Be informed that so-and-so has come from such and such a place.”