Kilayim 4:7 - 4:8

שורה אחת בתוך שלו ושורה אחת בתוך של חבירו – and we are speaking, as for example that one row of the two vines and one row of a third, and even Rabbi Shimon who stated further (see Mishnah 9 of this chapter) regarding one who intertwines his vine over the grain of his fellows, he did not sanctify it (i.e., prohibit the use of) for a person cannot forbid something that is not his, here he agrees that they combine to prohibit the seeds because there is his and that of his fellow.

ודרך היחיד ודרך הרבים – that not one of them is eight cubits wide, for at a width of eight cubits, we state at the end of our chapter (see Mishnah 8) that they don’t combine.

הרי אלו מצטרפות – to be called a vineyard and one must distance it four cubits.

אם ערסן מלמעלה (if he connected them – the two rows of vines – above so as to form an arbor) – that he raised the tops of the vines on top of the fence and he mixes them that are on the side of the fence from here with those which are on the side of the fence from there. And the word, "ועירסן"/if he trained [the vines] is the language of "איזה עריס"/what is an arbor/espalier [of grape vines?] (in a legal sense), meaning to say, that he made of them a bed.

הנוטע שתי שורות – of two vines each, and not one of them that goes out with a tail.

אם אין ביניהם ח' אמות לא יביא זרע לשם – for they combine to become a vineyard, but if they are distant eight [cubits] outside from the place of the vines, they do not combine/mix, and behold they are like an individual vine, and one distances six handbreadths from this row and six handbreadths from that row and sows the six cubits that are in the middle.

בין שורה לחברתה – for since there are three rows, they are like a large vineyard, and the place that is between each of the two rows from them is judged like the law of a razed portion of a vineyard (see Tractate Kilayim, Chapter 4, Mishnah 1), which is sixteen cubits. But if the middle row was dried up/ruined, according to the words of the first Tanna/teacher, we do not require between them the measurement of a razed portion of a vineyard since a vineyard did not remain, and it is to be compared to a vineyard of four or five rows, for once the middle was laid waste, there still remains a vineyard; therefore, we require the razed place to be sixteen cubits.

רבי אליעזר בן יעקב אומר אפילו חרבה האמצעית – from after there already was a vineyard, even now, it has the law of a vineyard, and he needs sixteen cubits [between one row and the next and cannot seed it].

שאילו מתחלה נטען – that is to say, if they never reached the rule of a vineyard, he would not have planted them from the outset, other than two rows, he would not need that there to be between them other than eight cubits as we stated above [in the first clause of the Mishnah], now, that he planted them and the reached the rule of the vineyard even though that its middle was laid waste and there didn’t remain other than two [rows], they are like a vineyard that its middle was laid waste and it requires sixteen cubits. But the Halakha is not according to Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov.