Study Bava Batra folio 169B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Rav Pappa or Rav Ashi said to them: Do not draw this conclusion. It is possible that the tanna of the baraita holds that generally the court writes a receipt when a creditor has lost his promissory note. And here, this is the reason that it does not write a receipt: As, perhaps the creditor, i.e.,
The Talmud asks: Ultimately, don’t these purchasers go back to the owner, i.e., the seller, of the land to demand reimbursement? At that point the seller will produce the receipt, exposing the double collection, and the entire process will be reversed, so that ultimately the purchaser who suffered
The Talmud answers: While it is true that ultimately the deception will be discovered, in the interim, between the time the land was unjustly repossessed from the purchaser and the time when the injustice is reversed, the one who repossessed the land seizes the land and consumes its produce, i.e.,
Alternatively, the reason the option of writing a receipt for the seller of the land is not pursued here is that there is a concern about one who purchases land without a guarantee. As such a purchaser knows that he has no recourse to be reimbursed from the seller if the land he bought is reposses
The Talmud asks: If so, the same concern should be taken into consideration in the case of promissory notes as well. And yet Rav Pappa, or Rav Ashi, said that the tanna of the baraita concedes that a receipt may be written for the debtor to enable the collection of a debt in the event of the loss