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rosends · Sep 21, 2022

I went to a shiur by one of our teachers today and he presented a list. On the list, there were p'sukim in which the meaning of a word on teh surface was difficult until one realized that the letter preceding the problematic word needed to do "double duty" -- finish of the word it was in and also be applied to the next word.

For example, the verse about sending the mother bird away reads לא תקח האם על הבנים but it only finds meaning if the mem at the end of Ha'em is applied to the next word, making it "me'al".

In the verse about Lot and his daughters it reads בלילה הוא but it means "HAhu" using the hay from the end of balailah.

But this doesn't happen in every case so I am wondering why in these cases and not in others?

The person who gave the shiur suggested that this is a remnant of when the Torah was first written down without spaces but then the question remains about why it only happens in some cases and not others.

Is anyone familiar of any discussion of this either grammatically or exegetically?

Harel13 · Sep 21, 2022

I think Rabbi Reuven Margolies has a discussion on this in his book המקרא והמסורה. I'll check when soon.

Harel13 · Sep 21, 2022

Yup, found it. I'm attaching a scan of the essay. He brings a whole list of examples. My personal favorite (upon first reading this a couple of years ago) is the first one, the Dan-Dedan one, although there are other ways to explain the apparent anachronism.

Harel13 · Sep 21, 2022

Harel13 said:
Yup, found it. I'm attaching a scan of the essay. He brings a whole list of examples. My personal favorite (upon first reading this a couple of years ago) is the first one, the Dan-Dedan one, although there are other ways to explain the apparent anachronism.

I see now that he referenced more material in the 2nd footnote. I'll try to look it up tomorrow.

Harel13 · Sep 22, 2022

Okay, so I found the two things he referenced. One is the second footnote in his previous essay, so I just attached the whole thing (it's short). The other is another essay on the subject by ע' בן עזרא (don't know who that is).

rosends · Sep 22, 2022

Harel13 said:
Okay, so I found the two things he referenced. One is the second footnote in his previous essay, so I just attached the whole thing (it's short). The other is another essay on the subject by ע' בן עזרא (don't know who that is).

thank you!

Harel13 · Sep 22, 2022

Harel13 said:
The other is another essay on the subject by ע' בן עזרא (don't know who that is).

So it turns out his name is Akiva Ben Ezra and he wrote at the end of the essay (which was really interesting by the way) that he's been working for some time now on making an all-encompassing list of all such verses and hopes to publish the research some time. When I'll have some time, I'll try to see if it was ever published.

rosends · Sep 22, 2022

Harel13 said:
So it turns out his name is Akiva Ben Ezra and he wrote at the end of the essay (which was really interesting by the way) that he's been working for some time now on making an all-encompassing list of all such verses and hopes to publish the research some time. When I'll have some time, I'll try to see if it was ever published.

Fantastic. The person here who point a few of these examples to me suggested that it is purely a function of safrut but I'm not convinced -- if the torah existed before it was written down, then the particular words shouldn't be liited by how they appear in print (IMHO)

Harel13 · Sep 22, 2022

rosends said:
Fantastic. The person here who point a few of these examples to me suggested that it is purely a function of safrut but I'm not convinced -- if the torah existed before it was written down, then the particular words shouldn't be liited by how they appear in print (IMHO)

Well, Ben Ezra seems to suggest that it was also due to safrut. And thus you can explain various targums and translation choices - all based on how the scribe who authored the MS or MSS that they used split the words. And if not that scribe, then some lineage of scribes. Whichever scribe last had the text in undivided words.

rosends · Sep 22, 2022

Harel13 said:
Well, Ben Ezra seems to suggest that it was also due to safrut. And thus you can explain various targums and translation choices - all based on how the scribe who authored the MS or MSS that they used split the words. And if not that scribe, then some lineage of scribes. Whichever scribe last had the text in undivided words.

But if any of the examples is in the chumash, it would affect the count of letters and the exegesis from that if some sofer were to decide arbitrarily when to drop a letter.

Harel13 · Sep 23, 2022

rosends said:
But if any of the examples is in the chumash, it would affect the count of letters and the exegesis from that if some sofer were to decide arbitrarily when to drop a letter.

Oh, it's definitely not an arbitrary decision, according to Ben Ezra. And yes, it does appear to be exegetical. It was less obvious in Rabbi Margolies's essay, but there are actually serious p'shat ramifications for the dropping or adding of letters, as evident from what Ben Ezra wrote. He really went all out and compared Jewish targumim, as well as the LXX, Samaritan targum and even renaissance Christian bibles (King James and Luther). In my opinion, one of his biggest chiddushim was the view that the LXX translates Shemont 12:40 "וּמוֹשַׁב בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יָשְׁבוּ בְּמִצְרָיִם שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה." as "And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Chanaan, four hundred and thirty years" simply because of an added Vav, reading the verse as "וּמוֹשַׁב בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יָשְׁבוּ וּבְּמִצְרָיִם שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה." And the addition of the word Canaan comes to explain where else they lived.

rosends · Sep 23, 2022

Harel13 said:
Oh, it's definitely not an arbitrary decision, according to Ben Ezra. And yes, it does appear to be exegetical. It was less obvious in Rabbi Margolies's essay, but there are actually serious p'shat ramifications for the dropping or adding of letters, as evident from what Ben Ezra wrote. He really went all out and compared Jewish targumim, as well as the LXX, Samaritan targum and even renaissance Christian bibles (King James and Luther). In my opinion, one of his biggest chiddushim was the view that the LXX translates Shemont 12:40 "וּמוֹשַׁב בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יָשְׁבוּ בְּמִצְרָיִם שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה." as "And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Chanaan, four hundred and thirty years" simply because of an added Vav, reading the verse as "וּמוֹשַׁב בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יָשְׁבוּ וּבְּמִצְרָיִם שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה." And the addition of the word Canaan comes to explain where else they lived.

but if it has exegetical levels then a decision by a human sofer to drop a letter because of the space or the writing process introduces what we will later explicate as innovated by human sensibility, not divine.

Harel13 · Sep 23, 2022

rosends said:
but if it has exegetical levels then a decision by a human sofer to drop a letter because of the space or the writing process introduces what we will later explicate as innovated by human sensibility, not divine.

Yes. When all is said and done, that is exactly what the Masoretic Text is.
That's why it is often said that if we were to find Moshe's original Torah scroll, it would be halachically invalid nowadays, for, among other reasons, it being radically different from an MT scroll. Radically of course in terms of separation of words, number of letters, variant spellings, and so forth.

rosends · Sep 23, 2022

Harel13 said:
Yes. When all is said and done, that is exactly what the Masoretic Text is.
That's why it is often said that if we were to find Moshe's original Torah scroll, it would be halachically invalid nowadays, for, among other reasons, it being radically different from an MT scroll. Radically of course in terms of separation of words, number of letters, variant spellings, and so forth.

It would also mean that some of the laws and lessons "derived" are not divinely sourced because they are later introductions based on the "whim" of the sofer who codified the space laden printed text.

Harel13 · Sep 23, 2022

rosends said:
It would also mean that some of the laws and lessons "derived" are not divinely sourced because they are later introductions based on the "whim" of the sofer who codified the space laden printed text.

I suppose that depends on whether there is a significant nafka mina about verses related to laws. But yeah, if there is such a case, then it would seem so.

Jayhawker Soule · Sep 23, 2022

Sadly I have nowhere near the language skills to effectively follow this thread, but I find it intriguing and valuable. Thanks.

Harel13 · Sep 29, 2022

By the way, a slightly related issue is verse numbering. I saw in Rabbi Chanoch Ehrentreu's book עיונים בדברי חז"ל ובלשונם (Studies in the Teachings of the Sages and Their Language) (available on Otzar Hachochmah) that Masoretic chumashim feature gematriyas of the number of verses at the end of each parsha. Famously, Tzav's verse count is stated to be צ"ו verses, 96 verses, just like the name of the parsha, but Tzav actually has צ"ז (97) verses. So what gives? Rabbi Ehrentreu suggested that the person who had formulated these gematriyot of verses that had eventually been attached to MT chumashim had a different verse count for Tzav. Some reference to such a circumstance can also be seen in the Shas.

rosends · Sep 29, 2022

Harel13 said:
By the way, a slightly related issue is verse numbering. I saw in Rabbi Chanoch Ehrentreu's book עיונים בדברי חז"ל ובלשונם (Studies in the Teachings of the Sages and Their Language) (available on Otzar Hachochmah) that Masoretic chumashim feature gematriyas of the number of verses at the end of each parsha. Famously, Tzav's verse count is stated to be צ"ו verses, 96 verses, just like the name of the parsha, but Tzav actually has צ"ז (97) verses. So what gives? Rabbi Ehrentreu suggested that the person who had formulated these gematriyot of verses that had eventually been attached to MT chumashim had a different verse count for Tzav. Some reference to such a circumstance can also be seen in the Shas.

This reminds me of what I learned about the Bal Haturim and his gematria -- it is often plus or minus 1 and yet it still "counts."

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rosends

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rosends

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rosends

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