Q&A: The Roots of Maimonides’ Enumeration of the Commandments
The Roots of Maimonides’ Enumeration of the Commandments
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I’ve seen that you’ve dealt extensively with the topic of Maimonides’ enumeration of the commandments and the roots he lays out on this subject. I admit I haven’t gone through everything you wrote about it, but with your permission perhaps you could address one question I’ve had for several years.
Despite the roots Maimonides wrote in order to explain why one commandment is counted and another is not, I feel that a fifteenth root is missing, one that underlies the whole system but was never stated.
According to Maimonides’ rules, I understand that if there is a positive commandment and a prohibition regarding the same commandment item (like the Sabbath), both should be counted.
I can’t understand why there are sections in the Torah that are counted as only one commandment, such as: the law of corpse-impurity, the law of garment leprosy, and so on.
On the other hand, if we take the Passover offering for example: “(1) To slaughter the Passover offering at its appointed time. (2) Not to slaughter it while there is leavened food. (3) Not to leave its sacrificial fats overnight. (5) To eat the meat of the Passover offering with matzah and bitter herbs on the night of the fifteenth. (7) Not to eat it raw or cooked. (8) Not to take any of the meat of the Passover offering out of the group. (9) That an apostate may not eat from it. (10) That a resident alien or hired laborer may not eat from it. (11) That an uncircumcised person may not eat from it. (12) Not to break a bone in it. (14) Not to leave any of it until morning. (16) Not to leave any of the meat of the festival offering of the fourteenth until the third day.” Why is this not one commandment: “the law of the Passover offering”?
If I may, it seems to me that Maimonides, like other enumerators of the commandments, is walking a tightrope. On the one hand, there is the statement of the Sages that there are 613 commandments, no more and no less; and on the other hand, there are countless places in the words of the Sages where it is apparent that two details of a commandment are considered two separate commandments. So those who enumerate the commandments had to expand in one place and condense in another. Maimonides sketched an entire method of where to expand and where to condense, but this basic root is missing—the one founded on the fact that there are 613 commandments and that there is a rabbinic tradition regarding quite a few of the commandments. I think there is a hint to this in the second root, where Maimonides says that commandments derived through the thirteen hermeneutic principles should not be counted unless the Sages indicated that they should be counted separately (if I remember correctly, the prohibition of relations with one’s daughter is a good example of this).
If you addressed this in your writings, I’d be happy for a reference to look into.
Sabbath שלום
Answer
Clearly that is true, and it is explicit in his words in several places. But even if one follows the Sages, they themselves ought to have some rationale that calls for explanation.
As for the matter itself, I don’t have a full and convincing answer for every such decision. See our articles on the site about the eleventh and twelfth roots, and in the book He Sent Forth His Roots.
Just a note about the Passover offering. The sacrificial procedure is not split up, because there it is one whole complex of the manner of offering it up (twelfth root). By contrast, the collection of commandments you mentioned, although all of them relate to the Passover offering, really are a set of separate details that do not combine into one unit. Each one commands something different and for a different purpose. Therefore it makes sense to split them up in the count.