הלכה על בבא מציעא 9:6

Two classic situations illustrate this principle. In the times of the Mishnah a classic clause in a sharecropper’s contract would be “im ovir v’lo a’avid ashaleim b’meitvah”: if I do not work the field, I will pay you generously (Bava Metzia 9:6). This means the sharecropper agrees to pay the landowner based on a high-end estimate of what the field would have produced had he worked the field. The Beit Meir (cited in Pitchei Teshuvah E.H. 50:9) explains that since the stipulated payment is only a small exaggeration it does not constitute asmachta. In such a situation we do not assume that the one making the agreement had no intention to fulfill it.