questions on parshat Mishpatim
Feb. 21st, 2009 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThings noticed in this Shabbat's torah portion:
1. When Israel's leaders go up on the mountain for their group encounter with God, the torah tells us that Aharon's sons Nadav and Avihu are in the group. Aharon has two other sons who are not included. Later on (in parshat Sh'mini) Nadav and Avihu are going to have a fatal problem when they offer "alien fire" (eish zarah) in the mishkan. This leads me to wonder about connections between this encounter and that event. Did the encounter with God make them over-confident, leading them to think that they could innovate in the mishkan? Or is it that someone else doing so wouldn't have generated such a harsh response, but because they had had a direct encounter with God they were changed in some way (or should have known better)? (This also raises the question of just what happened in the mishkan -- was God punishing them, or was their zapping an uncontrolled and unfortunate consequence of "playing with fire"? Either is possible; I personally lean toward the latter.)
2. The rabbi at the Thursday-morning minyan pointed this one out to me (and he doesn't know why either). 21:12 is usually translated "if one person fatally strikes another..." (the killer is put to death). The verb that's translated "fatally strike" is "makeh", which is sometimes translated "smite". A few verses later (21:15) we get another case of "makeh", this time translated "whoever strikes (or injures) his mother or father..." (is put to death). Ok, so why is the former strike fatal and the latter not when it's the same word? And in the Hebrew, isn't the latter case a subset of the former? "Makeh" someone and be put to death, or "makeh" a parent and be put to death -- this is already covered. There is a tradition that there are no unnecessary words in the torah; is that how we end up with the first being fatal and the second not? Did they need to understand the general case as being more severe to differentiate it? (Insert reminder here that every translation is a commentary...)
1. When Israel's leaders go up on the mountain for their group encounter with God, the torah tells us that Aharon's sons Nadav and Avihu are in the group. Aharon has two other sons who are not included. Later on (in parshat Sh'mini) Nadav and Avihu are going to have a fatal problem when they offer "alien fire" (eish zarah) in the mishkan. This leads me to wonder about connections between this encounter and that event. Did the encounter with God make them over-confident, leading them to think that they could innovate in the mishkan? Or is it that someone else doing so wouldn't have generated such a harsh response, but because they had had a direct encounter with God they were changed in some way (or should have known better)? (This also raises the question of just what happened in the mishkan -- was God punishing them, or was their zapping an uncontrolled and unfortunate consequence of "playing with fire"? Either is possible; I personally lean toward the latter.)
2. The rabbi at the Thursday-morning minyan pointed this one out to me (and he doesn't know why either). 21:12 is usually translated "if one person fatally strikes another..." (the killer is put to death). The verb that's translated "fatally strike" is "makeh", which is sometimes translated "smite". A few verses later (21:15) we get another case of "makeh", this time translated "whoever strikes (or injures) his mother or father..." (is put to death). Ok, so why is the former strike fatal and the latter not when it's the same word? And in the Hebrew, isn't the latter case a subset of the former? "Makeh" someone and be put to death, or "makeh" a parent and be put to death -- this is already covered. There is a tradition that there are no unnecessary words in the torah; is that how we end up with the first being fatal and the second not? Did they need to understand the general case as being more severe to differentiate it? (Insert reminder here that every translation is a commentary...)
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Date: 2009-02-23 02:18 am (UTC)Interesting stuff.
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Date: 2009-02-23 03:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-23 04:26 am (UTC)