Q&A: Studying Verses
Studying Verses
Question
Can the Rabbi explain, or refer me to an article that explains, how an analogy from a prototype verse is derived? That is—when does a verse teach the opposite of what is written in it (for example, a carcass regarding the prohibition of benefit), and when is it taken only as an example from which a general prototype is built?
Answer
I don’t have a source that deals with this systematically. It seems to me that at the beginning of my lectures on Yevamot (see here on the site) there is a discussion of this (in the context of a positive commandment overriding a prohibition, which is learned from tzitzit and mixed fibers). You’d need to look there. In general, it depends on the question of what we would have said without the verse (that is, what logic would suggest).