Avodah Zarah 1:8 - 1:9

אבל מוכר הוא משיקוץ – that he should not sell it to him when it is attached [to the ground] but rather after it is cut away. But not all the while that it is attached. And the Torah stated (Deuteronomy 7:2): “And give them no quarter,” nor give them no chance of acquiring property (sell them no trees in the ground – see Talmud Avodah Zarah 20a).

אין משכירין להם בתים – it is a decree because of selling which is a prohibition from the Torah.

ואצ"ל שדות – for there are two levels of prohibition: acquiring property and exempting them from tithes.

ובסוריא – Aram Sobah which [King] David conquered and is not holy like the holiness of the Land [of Israel].

משכירין להם בתיים – and we don’t make the decree on account of selling and for alternatively, it would come to selling but he did not violate the Torah for just as it is written to not give them the chance to acquire property in the land of Israel, it is written, but however, ab initio not selling in the land of Israel because of selling of the land of Israel.

אבל לא שדות – because there are two levels of prohibition.

וח"ל – because of the distance, one cannot make a decree regarding selling for from there it does not lead to sale of the land of Israel.

מוכרין בתים ומשכירין שדות – but not the sale of fields because there are two [levels of prohibition].

רבי יוסי אומר כו'' -And the Halakha is according to Rabbi Yosi as long as one does not lease to three idolaters together so that they will not make a neighborhood of idolaters.

אף במקום שאמרו להשכיר – for Rabbi Meir in Syria especially, but not in the land of Israel and for Rabbi yosi even in the land of Israel.

לא לבית דירה אמרו – but rather to bring into there straw and wood and things like it.

מפני שהיא נקראת על שמו – because the idolater because he warms himself up on the Sabbath and they (i.e., people) will say “this is the bathhouse of so-and-so the Israelite where they wash in it on Shabbat” but it is not similar to a field of an Israelite where the tenant farmer is an idolater who does work on it on the Sabbath, for the field is worked for his tenancy and the idolater is a personal tenant farmer who is doing his own labor ( and not as the Israelite’s employee -see Talmud Avodah Zarah 21b). But a bathhouse is not for working as a tenant, and not everyone knows that he the Israelite leased it to an idolater and therefore, it is prohibited. But at the present time when it is manner to lower the tenant to the bathhouse for a year, for half, or a third or a fourth of the earnings, in the same manner that they bringing him down into the fields, they permitted to lease a bathhouse to an idolater, and even though [the idolater] does work in it on the Sabbath, people [surely] know that the idolater is a tenant there, for he he is doing his own tenancy while using it.