Q&A: What does Rashi mean when he writes “an actual hand”?
What does Rashi mean when he writes “an actual hand”?
Question
Hello,
In various places Rashi writes about a “hand” said in reference to God, “an actual hand.” What does he mean by “an actual hand”?
- Exodus 7:5:
And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand over Egypt and bring the children of Israel out from among them.
Rashi: “My hand” — an actual hand, to strike them.
2. Exodus 14:31:
And Israel saw the great hand that the Lord inflicted upon Egypt, and the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in Moses His servant.
Rashi: “the great hand” — the great might that the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He, performed. And many expressions are based on the term “hand,” and all of them are expressions of an actual hand; but one who explains it should adjust the wording according to the context of the passage.
Answer
Good question.
From the second example you brought, it seems that his intention is to say that when we come to interpret the verse, we should assume that the word “hand” means a real human hand. But afterward, when applying this to the Holy One, blessed be He, one must understand that He does not literally have hands, and this is only something required for human language.
But I’m not sure. I’d be glad if the sages of this place would come and explain the matter.
Discussion on Answer
On Exodus 2:5, “by the Nile,” Rashi explains: next to the Nile, like “See, Joab’s field is next to mine,” and it is an expression of an actual hand, for a person’s hand is close to him.
And obviously the Nile does not have an actual hand any more than the Holy One, blessed be He, has an actual hand. Rather, we picture it as though the Nile has a hand, and therefore what is adjacent to the Nile is called “by the Nile.” The metaphorical frame does not depart from the plain sense of “hand” as an actual hand, but the referent is not a hand, rather something else.
Apparently Rashi is coming to reject the interpretation “His hand” = “His blow,” as the Targum and Ibn Ezra explain on Lamentations 3:3: “Surely against me He turns His hand again and again all the day.” And Ibn Ezra writes there: one who explains, etc., will explain “His hand” as “His blow,” as in “Behold, the hand of the Lord will be upon your livestock,” and the blow comes by means of the hand.
And Rashi says that even if in the end the explanation comes out as “His hand” = “His blow,” that is not a new and expanded meaning of the word “hand,” but rather a figurative description of an actual hand, even though there was no hand there, only its effects.
Once I heard a nice interpretation: that in fact God’s hand is the “real” hand, in the sense of the referent, and our hand is really the “imitation” or the metaphor. Of course we do not know its nature or what it looks like, if that notion even has any meaning in this case.
There is Rashi on the verse “And I will cover you with My palm,” where it is hard to force his words into that intention.
“And I will cover you with My palm.” (Torat Kohanim, parashat Vayikra) From here we learn that destroyers were given permission to destroy; and its translation is “And I will protect with My word.” This is a substitute expression used out of respect for Heaven on high, for He has no need to shield over him with an actual palm.
It is known that in France there were also literalists who ascribed physical form to God. Nachmanides, in his letter to the sages of France (“Before I answer, I do so unintentionally”), describes that some of their arguments for excommunicating Guide for the Perplexed and the Book of Knowledge were because Maimonides denied corporeality. And he is astonished at them, for Maimonides is right, and the Geonim also thought so (“And they called one who thinks otherwise a grumbler who separates close companions”). But from this Rashi it does not seem that he held corporeal views, because as the Rabbi wrote, Rashi says that the metaphor is an actual hand, and the referent is according to the context. Perhaps “He will repay you according to your deeds” — meaning that from the results it is as though God stretched out His hand, just as Maimonides explained that based on the results it is as though the Holy One, blessed be He, is gracious and merciful. “Hand” can also be interpreted as a portion, as in “ten portions,” or in other ways. Or “hand” in the sense of agency, so that the boils and the blood are God’s hand in figurative language, and Rashi comes to exclude that. Or “hand” in the sense of the agency of prophets, as in the Targum on Lamentations, “Sodom—no hands came upon her,” meaning prophets were not sent to bring her back in repentance. That Targum relies on verses that are slipping my mind right now.