Q&A: Several Questions in Sanhedrin 39
Several Questions in Sanhedrin 39
Question
In honor of the Rabbi, may he live long and well,
A few comments on Sanhedrin 39:
A) A heretic said to Rabban Gamliel: Your God is a thief, as it is written, “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept.” His daughter said to him: Leave him, and I will answer him. She said to him: Give me one military officer. He said to her: Why do you need one? She said to him: Bandits came upon us last night and took from us a silver jug and left us a gold jug. He said to her: If only they would come upon us every day! And was it not better for Adam, the first man, that they took one of his ribs and gave him a maidservant to attend him? He said to her: That is what I mean — he should have taken it openly. She said to him: Bring me a piece of raw meat. They brought it to her; she placed it under the ashes, took it out, and said to him: Eat from this. He said to her: It is disgusting to me. She said to him: So too with Adam the first man — had she been taken openly, she would have been disgusting to him.
And one should examine whether this was said by the daughter of Rabban Gamliel or by the daughter of the Caesar.
And see Rashi later on 91a: “His daughter said to him” — “the Caesar’s daughter” to Rabban Gamliel, “Leave him…”
And one should consider why he did not explain it that way here.
B) A heretic said to Rabban Gamliel: You say that the Divine Presence rests in every group of ten; how many Divine Presences are there? He called to his attendant and struck him with a ladle. He said to him: Why does the sun enter the heretic’s house? He said to him: The sun benefits the whole world. And if the sun, which is only one out of a thousand thousand myriads of attendants before the Holy One, blessed be He, benefits the whole world, then the Divine Presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, all the more so.
And in Rashi: “The sun benefits the whole world” — “sun” means the sun itself.
And one should examine what Rashi means by this, and also why he did not explain it that way at the beginning of the Talmudic passage.
C) Rabbi Yitzhak said: The Holy One, blessed be He, said: Let Obadiah, who lived among two wicked people and did not learn from their deeds, come and prophesy concerning Esau the wicked, who lived among two righteous people and did not learn from their deeds.
And in Rashi: “two righteous people” — Isaac and Rebecca. And one should consider why he did not mention Jacob.
With great respect,
Answer
A. The simple straightforward reading is that this is referring to Rabban Gamliel’s daughter, not the Caesar’s daughter, and therefore here Rashi wrote nothing. There, he needed to explain that it was the Caesar’s daughter. That is why here he did not explain it, whereas there he did. But why did he indeed think there was a difference? Perhaps because there it says, “two craftsmen in our city,” and the simple reading is that this was in the Caesar’s city, not Rabban Gamliel’s. And in the Caesar’s city, if Rabban Gamliel visited there, what was his daughter doing there? Still, it is somewhat unclear how compelling this is, since “in our city” could perhaps mean Rabban Gamliel’s city. And it is also still unclear how she knew the teaching of the school of Rabbi Yishmael.
B. Here of course it is simple. He is coming to exclude the interpretation that “shamsha” means an attendant. Above, when he called to the attendant, it is obvious that it refers to the attendant himself and not to the sun. But in this sentence there was room to interpret it either as the attendant or as the sun, so Rashi wrote that the meaning is the sun.
C. “He lived among two righteous people” means his parents. Why explain it as a parent and a brother when it says “two righteous people”? If they had wanted to include Jacob too, they would have said three righteous people.