Matot-Masei (5765)

From the book Mida Tova: Articles on the Hermeneutical Principles by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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With God’s help — Midah Tovah — Eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Mattot-Masei, 5766

Questions

1. Are there reasons for the mitzvot (commandments)?
2. What are the implications of this question for the enumeration of the commandments: an explanation of Maimonides’ remarks in the third root.
3. The disagreement among the medieval authorities about the meaning of gezerat ha-katuv (a scriptural fiat).
4. The disagreement among the tannaitic sages about expounding ta’ama de-kra.
5. What happens when the reason is written explicitly in the verse?
6. Why do we not expound ta’ama de-kra?
7. Does everyone who does not expound ta’ama de-kra think that the reasons cannot be understood?

The principles

• Kal va-homer (an a fortiori inference).
• Expounding ta’ama de-kra (deriving law from the reason of the verse).

“But if she vowed in her husband’s house, or bound herself by an obligation with an oath, and her husband heard it and remained silent to her, and did not restrain her, then all her vows shall stand, and every obligation by which she bound herself shall stand. But if her husband nullifies them on the day he hears them, then whatever proceeded from her lips regarding her vows or the obligation upon herself shall not stand; her husband has nullified them, and the Lord will forgive her. Every vow and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may uphold it and her husband may nullify it. But if her husband remains completely silent to her from day to day, then he has upheld all her vows or all her obligations that are upon her; he has upheld them because he remained silent to her on the day he heard. But if he nullifies them after he has heard, then he shall bear her iniquity.”

(Numbers 30:11-16)

Mishnah. If a man says to his wife, “All the vows that you will vow from now until I return from such-and-such a place are hereby upheld,” he has said nothing. If he says, “They are hereby annulled” — Rabbi Eliezer says: they are annulled, but the Sages say: they are not annulled. Rabbi Eliezer said: If he can annul vows that have already come into the realm of prohibition, should he not annul vows that have not yet come into the realm of prohibition? They said to him: Scripture says, “Her husband may uphold it, and her husband may annul it” — only that which can come into the realm of upholding can come into the realm of annulment; that which cannot come into the realm of upholding cannot come into the realm of annulment.

Gemara. They raised a question: According to Rabbi Eliezer, do the vows take effect and then become nullified, or perhaps they do not take effect at all? What practical difference would this make? For example, if another person attached his own vow to this vow. If you say that they take effect, then such attachment has substance; if you say that they do not take effect, then there is nothing to it. What then? Come and hear: Rabbi Eliezer said, “If he annuls vows that have already come into the realm of prohibition, should he not annul vows that have not yet come into the realm of prohibition?” Conclude from this that they do not take effect. Does it say, “that do not come”? It says, “that have not yet come” — they have not yet come, but they still may.

Come and hear: Rabbi Eliezer said to them, “If in a place where one cannot annul his own vows after he has vowed, he can annul his own vows before he vows, then in a place where he can annul his wife’s vows after she has vowed, is it not all the more so that he can annul his wife’s vows before she vows?” Is not the case of his wife analogous to his own case — just as in his own case they do not take effect, so too in his wife’s case they do not take effect? No. Each case stands on its own terms.

Come and hear: They said to Rabbi Eliezer, “Just as a ritual bath, which raises the impure out of their impurity, does not save the pure from becoming impure, so a person, who does not raise the impure out of their impurity, should certainly not save the pure from becoming impure.” Conclude from this that they do not take effect. But consider the end of that argument: They said to Rabbi Eliezer, “If one immerses an impure vessel so that it becomes pure, should one immerse a vessel now so that when it later becomes impure it will thereby become pure?” Conclude from this that they do take effect! They said: The Rabbis themselves did not accept Rabbi Eliezer’s underlying reasoning; rather, this is what they were saying to him: What exactly is your own view? If you hold that they take effect and are then nullified, then the case of the vessel refutes you. And if you hold that they do not take effect at all, then the case of the ritual bath refutes you.

Come and hear: Rabbi Eliezer said to them, “If impure seeds, once they are planted in the ground, become pure, then seeds that are already planted and standing should all the more so be pure.” Conclude from this that they do not take effect. And do the Rabbis not derive a kal va-homer? But was it not taught: Might a man sell his daughter as a maidservant when she is already a young woman? You may answer by a kal va-homer: if one who has already been sold goes free, then one who has not been sold should certainly not be sold. Yes, ordinarily they do derive a kal va-homer, but here it is different, because Scripture says: “Her husband may uphold it, and her husband may annul it” — only that which can come into the realm of upholding can come into the realm of annulment; that which cannot come into the realm of upholding cannot come into the realm of annulment.

(Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 75b-76a)

A. Summary of last year’s article

In last year’s article we discussed a husband’s annulment of his wife’s vows on the day he hears them. In the Mishnah cited above, there appears a kal va-homer that moves from the annulment of an already existing vow to the annulment of a vow that has not yet taken effect. The sages of the Mishnah dispute this kal va-homer: is annulling an existing vow indeed more difficult than preventing it from taking effect in the first place?

The Gemara discusses, according to Rabbi Eliezer’s view that annulment is effective even in advance, whether the vow first takes effect and is immediately annulled, or whether it never begins to take effect at all. The conclusion is that it does not take effect at all. In the course of the passage, a broader logical dispute develops: is preventing something from coming into being indeed easier than uprooting it once it already exists? The Gemara discusses a whole series of kal va-homer arguments of this type — regarding a ritual bath, seeds, and more — and this is a conceptual kal va-homer, not one of the formal hermeneutical principles.¹

We then explained the flow of the Gemara in detail, and concluded that one segment of the tannaitic discussion is missing from the Talmudic text. We pointed out that the kal va-homer from the ritual bath is entirely parallel to our case, whereas the kal va-homer from seeds differs from it, because it depends on a state — whether the seed is attached or not — rather than on an action, such as immersion or annulment.

At the end of the discussion in the first installment, we were left with the difficulty that Rabbi Eliezer’s reasoning — that preventing something from coming into being is easier than uprooting an existing reality — seems correct and intuitive, whereas the Talmudic discussion seems to imply that specifically the view of the Sages is more reasonable. We saw that the Sages’ position is indeed learned from a verse, but the verse teaches them a general principle: preventing something from coming into being is not necessarily easier than uprooting an already existing thing. Therefore they disagree with Rabbi Eliezer in every context in which a kal va-homer rests on this kind of reasoning.²

We proposed two principal ways to understand the Sages:

1. The Sages flatly disagree with Rabbi Eliezer and hold that preventing something from coming into being is not in fact easier than uprooting it. Therefore, a tool that can uproot an existing thing will not necessarily be able to prevent it from coming into being.
2. The Sages maintain that even if prevention is generally easier than uprooting, it is nevertheless a fundamentally different mechanism, and a different mechanism requires different tools. For example, uprooting a plant requires force and pulling it out. Preventing it from being planted, or from taking root in the ground, can be done by watering the soil with poison. It is true that preventing it from taking root is easier than uprooting it, but the tool of pulling will not help achieve that. Thus the relation of leniency and stringency does exist here, but it is not the only parameter. There are additional, specific parameters that govern the difference between the source case and the derived case.

The case of the Hebrew maidservant brought at the end of the passage shows that in some instances the Sages do, in principle, accept this hierarchical reasoning — that uprooting is more difficult than preventing a legal effect from taking hold — and this led us to conclude that the second explanation is more plausible for the Sages’ view.

We then brought an example from the laws of stipulations. We saw that Rabbi Akiva Eger and the Shitah Mekubbetzet apparently agree with the Sages, whereas the author of Kovetz Shiurim agrees with Rabbi Eliezer’s reasoning.

We ended the article with a lesson about the clash between an explicit verse or derivation and a kal va-homer consideration, because that is precisely the situation in our passage according to the Sages. At first glance, the verse always prevails, because it is explicit. If the kal va-homer were to override the verse, then a verse in the Torah would remain unexplained. By contrast, if the verse prevails, then it turns out that the kal va-homer was incorrect, but no verse in the Torah is left superfluous or unclear, since a kal va-homer is not based on any superfluous verse.

But in our case we saw that the matter is not so simple. If we do indeed take the verse seriously, then that verse teaches us that the reasoning underlying the kal va-homer is incorrect. That may have consequences elsewhere as well. In our example, the verse regarding annulment teaches that the claim that prevention is easier than uprooting is not correct, and as a result all kal va-homer arguments of that type collapse.³

The approach to the passage that we suggested does indeed end with such a conclusion. However, we saw that Tosafot and the Ran do not accept this conclusion across the board. They agree that according to the Sages the verse overrides the kal va-homer, but the basic reasoning learned from the kal va-homer remains valid in other contexts. In their view, even after the verse, the underlying logical principle of the kal va-homer remains intact: prevention is easier than uprooting.

We noted that this reflects a particular — and not universally accepted — conception of gezerat ha-katuv (a scriptural fiat). Tosafot and the Ran hold that the verse concerning annulment is a gezerat ha-katuv, and therefore we ought not seek reasons for it. One cannot learn from it that uprooting is not harder than prevention, not even as a possible refutation of a kal va-homer of this type, because to refute a kal va-homer it is enough to point to a possible line of reasoning; one need not prove it or accept it absolutely. This stands in contrast to the Meiri, cited in the page for Parashat Vayera, 5765, according to whom even a gezerat ha-katuv has reasons, and those reasons can be found and understood.

B. What is a gezerat ha-katuv?

Introduction

We mentioned the Meiri’s remarks, cited in the page for Parashat Vayera, 5765, where he explains that scriptural fiats have reasons and that we can even grasp those reasons with the help of the verse. The conclusion of our discussion last year was that Tosafot and the Ran probably disagree with the Meiri on this point. In this year’s article we will try to understand this disagreement, and its roots, a bit more fully.

The words of Maimonides

Maimonides, in the Guide of the Perplexed, part 3, chapter 31, addresses the question whether there are reasons for the mitzvot, and writes as follows:

There are among people some for whom it is difficult to assign a cause to any of the commandments. They think it better that neither commandment nor prohibition should have any intelligible meaning whatsoever. What brings them to this is a sickness in their souls: they cannot formulate it and do not know how to express it. For they imagine that if these laws were beneficial in this world, and that for this reason we were commanded concerning them, then they would seem to come from the thought and reflection of an intelligent being. But if a matter has no intelligible meaning at all and brings no benefit, then it must without doubt be from God, for human thought would not produce such a thing. It is as though, according to these weak-minded people, man were more perfect than his Maker, since man says and does only what serves some purpose, whereas God, according to them, would not do so; rather, He would command us to do what does not benefit us and forbid us to do what does not harm us. Far be this from Him, utterly far. The matter is the opposite. The entire purpose is to benefit us, as Scripture says: “for our good always, to preserve us alive, as it is this day,” and: “when they hear all these statutes, they shall say: surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” It has thus been made clear that even all the statutes indicate to all nations wisdom and understanding. For if there were a matter whose reason was unknown, which brought no benefit and averted no harm, why would one who believes in it or performs it be called wise, understanding, and greatly exalted, so that the nations should marvel at it? Rather, the matter is certainly as we have said: every one of these 613 commandments serves either to implant a true belief, remove a false belief, establish a just order, remove injustice, train us in good character traits, or warn us away from bad traits. Everything depends on three things: beliefs, character traits, and the practices of civic governance. For this reason we do not count verbal statements separately, since the statements the Torah urges us to say or warns us against saying belong either to the sphere of civic action, or to teaching true belief, or to teaching character. Therefore these three categories suffice for us in assigning a reason to every commandment.

Maimonides cites views that hold that the mitzvot cannot have reasons. They infer this from the very fact that these are religious commandments, for if commandments had reasons, then what would bind us would be their reasons rather than the command itself.

Maimonides says that these views make the Holy One, blessed be He, less perfect than His creatures, since complete human beings do not act without reasons and purposes, whereas according to these views God would do exactly that.

At the end of his remarks, Maimonides concludes that the commandments do have reasons, and he lists all the possibilities: the correction of beliefs, character traits, and civic — that is, social — order. The passage ends with the obscure sentence, “For this reason we do not count verbal statements…” and it is not at all clear what he means by it or why it belongs here.

It now seems that these remarks contain an illuminating hint to what Maimonides wrote in the ninth root, and we will discuss that briefly now.

The structure of the ninth root

In the ninth root, Maimonides argues that duplicate commands are not to be counted separately in the enumeration of the commandments. For example, the command regarding the Sabbath appears in the Torah twelve times, and the prohibition of eating blood appears seven times. Maimonides says that all commentators agree that one counts only one prohibition regarding the Sabbath and only one prohibition regarding eating blood. Here we will focus on two points in his words.

1. The formulation of the root is somewhat cumbersome:

The ninth root: one should not count the prohibitions and positive commands themselves, but rather the matters about which we were warned and those regarding which we were commanded.

He explains that one should not count the prohibitions and positive commands, but that is precisely what we do count. Clearly, what he means is that we do not count the commands themselves but their content. If there are commands — whether prohibitions or positive commands — that appear several times, as in the case of the Sabbath prohibitions, we do not count twelve prohibitions concerning the Sabbath, but only one. Why does this distinction touch precisely on the question of command versus content?

2. The second difficulty is that at the beginning of the root he devotes considerable space to specifying the different kinds of commands and prohibitions in the Torah:

Know that all the Torah’s commands and prohibitions fall into four categories: beliefs, actions, character traits, and speech. Thus, He commanded us to affirm certain beliefs, such as belief in His unity and love and fear of Him (positive commandments 2-4), or He warned us against holding certain beliefs, such as believing in the lordship of anything besides Him (prohibition 1). Likewise, He commanded certain actions, such as offering sacrifices (see positive commandments 27-28, 39-51, 55, 62-72, 76-77, 84) and building the Temple (positive commandment 20), and He warned us against certain actions, such as offering sacrifice to anything besides God, exalted be He, or bowing to what is worshiped other than Him (prohibitions 5-7). Likewise, He commanded us to conduct ourselves with certain character traits, such as compassion, mercy, charity, and kindness, as in “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (above, p. 55; positive commandment 206), and He warned us against certain traits, such as hatred, bearing a grudge, vengeance (prohibitions 302-305), blood vengeance (see prohibition 292), and other bad traits, as I shall explain. And He commanded us to utter certain statements, such as praising Him, praying to Him (positive commandment 5), confessing sins and transgressions (positive commandment 73), and the like, as will be explained. And He warned us against certain forms of speech, such as swearing falsely (prohibitions 61, 63, 249), tale-bearing (prohibition 301), evil speech (see the end of prohibition 281), cursing (prohibitions 315-318), and the like. Since these are the categories involved, what ought to be counted are the matters commanded and prohibited — whether they concern action, speech, belief, or character.

It is not clear why Maimonides mentions this classification here at all. This belongs to the reasons for the commandments, not to the technical question of how to enumerate them. Why should the kinds of content in the commands matter to the issue of this root, and why at such length?

Immediately afterward he gives the main directive of the root:

We do not pay attention to the multiplicity of commands that came concerning that matter, if it belongs to what was commanded, nor to the multiplicity of prohibitions that came concerning it, if it belongs to what was prohibited, for all of them serve only to reinforce…

And finally he concludes:

It has thus been made clear that the multiplication of prohibitions or positive commands does not multiply the number of commandments. It is already known that the command to rest on the Sabbath is repeated in the Torah twelve times (Exodus 20, 23, 31 four times, 34, 35; Leviticus 19, 23, 26; Deuteronomy 5). Would anyone who counts the commandments think that Sabbath rest is included among the positive commandments as twelve commandments? Likewise, the prohibition against eating blood appears seven times (Leviticus 3, 7 three times, Deuteronomy 12 twice). Would any intelligent person think and say that the prohibition of blood amounts to seven commandments? No one could err in this. Rather, the Sabbath rest is one commandment among the positive commandments (154), and the prohibition against eating blood is one commandment among the negative commandments (184).

Explaining Maimonides

It is clear that Maimonides intends to bring proof for the principle advanced in this root. To understand this, let us begin with the distinction made by Rabbi Elhanan Wasserman in his essay “Repentance” in Kovetz Ma’amarim. He points out that every commandment or transgression has two distinct components:

1. The essential repair or damage inherent in the commandment or transgression, which is why we were commanded concerning it.
2. Obedience or rebellion with respect to the command itself.

In other words: whoever commits a transgression both damages something and disobeys God’s command. By contrast, one who fulfills a commandment or refrains from a transgression both repairs something — or at least does not damage it — and also obeys.

Now according to Maimonides, if the commandments truly had no reasons, then one who violated a Torah command did not damage anything at all; he merely transgressed the command of the Merciful One, as discussed at the beginning of Babylonian Talmud, Temurah 4b-5a. If so, the number of commandments we should count would be the same as the number of commands he transgressed. According to this conception, one who desecrates the Sabbath has violated twelve commands, and therefore twelve prohibitions. On that view, the enumeration of the commandments should have included twelve prohibitions regarding Sabbath desecration. By contrast, according to Maimonides’ own conception, that every commandment has a reason and a purpose, one who violates the prohibition of labor on the Sabbath damages something in the realm of belief, speech, character, or action. If so, the essence of the transgression is also the content of the commandment, not just the bare fact of command. Therefore the prohibition of labor on the Sabbath is counted only as one prohibition. All the repeated commands point to that one content.

Thus the enumeration of the commandments serves Maimonides as proof for the position we saw above in the Guide of the Perplexed regarding the reasons for the commandments. If all enumerators of the commandments count each prohibition or commandment only once, that is a sign that the commandments have reasons. The discussion of contents is intended as a preface to the technical question of enumeration.

This is apparently also the meaning of the incidental sentence at the end of the cited passage in the Guide:

For this reason we do not count verbal statements separately, since the statements the Torah urged us to say or warned us against saying belong either to the sphere of civic action, or to teaching true belief, or to teaching character. Therefore these three categories suffice for us in assigning a reason to every commandment.

That is, the very enumeration of the commandments — in which we do not count verbal formulations but rather contents — proves that the commandments have reasons. This passage beautifully clarifies Maimonides’ remarks in his roots.

Distinguishing between two different questions regarding the reasons for the commandments

Let us now return to the issue of the reasons for the commandments. Two different kinds of questions can be asked here, and many tend to confuse them:

1. Are there reasons for the commandments at all?
2. Do those reasons concern us? Can we make use of them, and if so, how? Should the reasons serve as our motivations and grounds for observing the commandments?⁴

Maimonides’ remarks above are directed against those who claim that there are no reasons for the commandments at all. But views that maintain that the commandments do have reasons, while denying us the possibility of making this or that use of them, do not make the Creator less than His creatures. Maimonides’ arguments are not directed against them.

The views that maintain that the commandments cannot have reasons usually do so because normative instructions that have good reasons do not need to be written in the Torah. We can know them on our own, and we would also feel obligated by them even without a command from above. But this line of reasoning leads only to the position that we do not perform the commandments because of their reasons, whether because those reasons are not known to us or for some other reason. It does not prove that the commandments have no reasons at all.

Two parallel approaches to gezerat ha-katuv

The claim that a given commandment is a gezerat ha-katuv can also be taken in those same two ways. One can say that such a commandment has no reason at all. Or one can say that it has a reason, but that the reason is not accessible to us, or cannot be used by us. The Meiri says something much more moderate: even scriptural fiats have a reason, and that reason is even accessible to us. If so, why is the verse needed? Presumably only in order to ensure that we reach the correct law and the correct reason, since in these cases there is a concern that we might err about the reason.

True, the commandments about which the Sages speak in the language of gezerat ha-katuv are very particular commandments — what the Sages call hukkim (statutes), such as the red heifer and the like. The question regarding the commandments in general and the question regarding those particular commandments are separate questions. One could hold that there are reasons for the commandments in general, and only these special commandments have no reasons. One could also hold that with respect to these commandments the reasons are hidden, while from this it would follow that the reasons for the other commandments are revealed.

According to the Meiri, who says that even the reasons for scriptural fiats are accessible to us, we must say that in the other commandments the reasons are clear even without the verse’s disclosure. In that sense, according to the Meiri, those verses come out as superfluous. Thus the issue of gezerat ha-katuv lies at the heart of the question of the reasons for the commandments.

C. Ta’ama de-kra

Introduction: the tannaitic dispute whether we expound ta’ama de-kra

One of the questions above — ta’ama de-kra⁵, that is, whether one may use the reasons for commandments on the level of legal interpretation — is discussed explicitly in the Gemara. Many commentators on the Torah and many religious thinkers suggest various reasons for the commandments, but that is on the level of philosophical or conceptual interpretation. On the legal plane there is a dispute among the tannaitic sages whether one may expound the reasons of verses in order to shape the halakha (Jewish law), or whether the reasons remain only on the conceptual plane.⁶ One source for this is Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 115a:

Mishnah. With regard to a widow, whether she is poor or rich, one may not take a pledge from her, as it is said: “You shall not take a widow’s garment as a pledge.”

Gemara. The Sages taught: A widow, whether poor or rich, one may not take a pledge from her; these are the words of Rabbi Judah. Rabbi Simeon says: From a rich widow one may take a pledge; from a poor widow one may not take a pledge, because you are obligated to return it to her, and thereby you give her a bad name among her neighbors.

Rabbi Simeon expounds the reasons of verses and shapes the halakha accordingly. By contrast, Rabbi Judah shapes the halakha according to what appears in Scripture itself, without reference to reasons. The Gemara says in several places that Rabbi Simeon expounds ta’ama de-kra,⁷ whereas Rabbi Judah does not expound ta’ama de-kra. And so indeed we rule in practice: we do not expound ta’ama de-kra; see Encyclopedia Talmudit, s.v. “Ta’ama de-Kra.”

The views of Rabbi Simeon and Rabbi Judah when the reason is written explicitly in the Torah

Yet we find an opposite example in Mishnah Sanhedrin 2:4, Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 21a:

“He shall not multiply wives for himself” — only up to eighteen [the Gemara there derives that this is the measure of the prohibited excess]. Rabbi Judah says: He may multiply wives for himself, provided they do not turn his heart away. Rabbi Simeon says: Even one wife who turns his heart away — he may not marry her. If so, why does Scripture say, “He shall not multiply wives for himself”? To include even wives like Abigail.

In this Mishnah, Rabbi Simeon and Rabbi Judah disagree about the prohibition on a king multiplying wives for himself. The verse says: “He shall not multiply wives for himself, and his heart shall not turn away.” Rabbi Judah, seemingly, does expound the reason, and therefore rules that it is permitted to multiply wives, so long as they do not turn his heart away. Rabbi Simeon, by contrast, seems to ignore the reason and prohibit multiplying wives regardless of whether the heart is turned away.

The Gemara in the passage in Bava Metzia raises exactly this difficulty, and answers:

In general Rabbi Judah does not expound ta’ama de-kra, but here it is different because the verse itself states the reason: “He shall not multiply wives for himself, and his heart shall not turn away.” What is the reason that he shall not multiply wives? Because his heart might turn away. And Rabbi Simeon says: Since ordinarily we expound ta’ama de-kra, the Merciful One should have written only “He shall not multiply,” and there would have been no need for “and his heart shall not turn away,” because I would have known on my own: what is the reason that he shall not multiply wives? So that his heart not turn away. Why then did the Merciful One write “and his heart shall not turn away”? To teach that even one wife who turns his heart away he may not marry.

The Gemara explains the difference between the two passages by the fact that in the case of the king’s wives the reason is explicit in the verse, unlike the prohibition on taking a widow’s pledge, where the reason is a matter of interpretation. In such a case the positions reverse. According to Rabbi Judah, one does not expound ta’ama de-kra only when the reason does not appear in the verse; but here there is no obstacle to doing so. According to Rabbi Simeon, who normally expounds ta’ama de-kra even when it is not written explicitly, that very fact leads him here to ask why the Torah troubled to write the reason at all. We would have derived it even had the Torah not written it. He therefore concludes that the continuation of the verse — “and his heart shall not turn away” — is not a reason for the first command but an independent command. According to Rabbi Simeon, the result is that there are two commands: not to multiply wives, regardless of their character, and a further prohibition against marrying wives who turn the king’s heart away, whatever their number.

The disagreement between Maimonides and Nahmanides in the fifth root

Maimonides, in the fifth root, formulates the principle that verses intended to provide reasons for commands are not counted in the enumeration of the commandments. Only verses of command are counted. Nahmanides, in his glosses at the beginning of that root, brings the very example we are discussing here in order to show that such verses can also be verses of command:

As in the matter over which they disagreed in “He shall not multiply wives for himself, and his heart shall not turn away”: this second prohibition is certainly the reason for the preceding restraint from multiplying wives. Nevertheless, the sages of Israel disagreed about it. Rabbi Judah derives from it the reason for “He shall not multiply” — namely, because “his heart shall not turn away” — and teaches that he may indeed multiply wives, so long as they do not turn his heart away, that is, provided they are known to be upright. Rabbi Simeon interprets that prohibition as standing on its own. He said: Even one wife who turns his heart away he may not marry. If so, why is “He shall not multiply” stated? To teach that even wives like Abigail are included. Thus he made it an independent prohibition because of its apparent superfluity.

Nahmanides shows that Rabbi Simeon interprets the second half of the verse, which on its face seems to give a reason for the preceding command, as an independent command. In any event, even Rabbi Judah does not treat this verse as a mere statement of reason; he uses it to understand the law itself. Neither of them treats the second half as surplus material, or as words irrelevant to the legal plane, as would seem to follow from Maimonides’ remarks.

Yet when one examines Maimonides’ words in his Commentary on the Mishnah there, one discovers a surprising statement:

The halakha is neither in accordance with Rabbi Simeon nor with Rabbi Judah.

Maimonides rules that the law follows neither Rabbi Simeon nor Rabbi Judah. If so, in accordance with whom can we rule here? Is there another tannaitic view in the Mishnah? To answer this we must return to the Mishnah and read it again through Maimonides’ eyes.⁸

A careful look immediately reveals that Maimonides saw three tannaitic views in the Mishnah, not two as Nahmanides understood. In the Mishnah cited above there is an initial opinion that stands independently — Nahmanides saw it as merely the heading of the Mishnah, introducing the disagreement of Rabbi Simeon and Rabbi Judah, rather than as an independent legal opinion: “He shall not multiply wives for himself — only up to eighteen.” This is the view of the anonymous first opinion. Only afterward does the dispute between Rabbi Simeon and Rabbi Judah appear. Maimonides also rules in practice like that anonymous first opinion.

What, then, is the meaning of the anonymous first opinion? We saw that Rabbi Simeon views the two halves of the verse as two commands. Rabbi Judah sees here a command plus an explicitly stated reason, and therefore expounds it for legal purposes. But the anonymous first opinion apparently ignores the reason, even though it is written. It does nothing with it. That is precisely Maimonides’ view, which he rules as halakha. This can also be seen in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 3:2, where Maimonides rules this opinion in practice.

The meaning of the dispute among the tannaim and the medieval authorities

What exactly do the views in the Mishnah disagree about, and following them, the medieval authorities as well? Rabbi Judah does not expound ta’ama de-kra unless it appears explicitly in the verse. It is fairly clear that Rabbi Judah refrains from expounding ta’ama de-kra because he fears interpretive error. Therefore, when the Torah itself writes the reason, there is no such concern, and in such cases he does expound the reason. Rabbi Simeon, by contrast, does not fear error, and therefore expounds reasons even when they are not written explicitly. But the anonymous first opinion adopts a very surprising position: it does not expound ta’ama de-kra even when the reason is written explicitly in the verse. In other words, even when the reason is beyond any reasonable doubt, the anonymous first opinion, and Maimonides after it, do not expound ta’ama de-kra.

As noted, Nahmanides rules in practice like Rabbi Judah, since in his dispute with Rabbi Simeon regarding ta’ama de-kra the law follows Rabbi Judah. Hence Nahmanides, following Rabbi Judah, explains the principle that one does not expound ta’ama de-kra as rooted in the concern that we may err in interpretation and attribute the wrong reason. But Maimonides rules like the anonymous first opinion. That opinion also does not expound ta’ama de-kra, yet it refuses to do so even when the reason is written explicitly in the verse. If so, according to the anonymous first opinion, and Maimonides after it, the principle that one does not expound ta’ama de-kra does not stem from concern over interpretive error.

Several questions now arise: How can one ignore a reason that is written explicitly in the Torah? What is the meaning of that reason, and how is it related to the command? And why, according to Maimonides, do we truly not expound ta’ama de-kra?

Maimonides’ view of expounding ta’ama de-kra

Maimonides apparently understands the verse “He shall not multiply wives for himself, and his heart shall not turn away” as a command not to multiply wives of any sort. The reason that appears in the continuation of the verse merely explains that multiplying wives, even if they are as upright as Abigail, may turn the king’s heart away. That is, the command as read straightforwardly, even without the reason, yields exactly the same legal consequences as the application of the reason in interpretation. The legal conclusion is that a king may not multiply wives of any sort.

This gives us a firm foothold in understanding Maimonides’ view of ta’ama de-kra. It seems that according to Maimonides, the reason we do not expound ta’ama de-kra is that expounding it adds nothing to what already emerges from applying the command according to its wording. The results of ordinary textual interpretation are entirely identical to the results of interpretation in light of the reason. More than that: if it turns out that there is a difference between textual interpretation and interpretation that takes the reason into account, then apparently the proposed reason is not correct. If so, precisely when there would be an interest in expounding ta’ama de-kra — because the outcomes would change — one must not do so.

In the case of the prohibition on multiplying wives, Rabbi Judah’s application of the reason leads to conclusions that contradict the straightforward textual reading of the verse, and therefore it is clear that his understanding of the reason is incorrect. Rabbi Judah, who holds that only wives of improper character turn the king’s heart away, is mistaken. Any multiplication of wives turns his heart away. Therefore the application of the reason coincides with the textual interpretation that does not expound the reason.

Thus, according to the anonymous first opinion and Maimonides, we do not expound ta’ama de-kra not because of fear of error, but because we trust textual interpretation, and the application of reasons must always coincide with it. As a result, in those cases where a difference does emerge, it is indeed forbidden to expound reasons, because doing so will lead to error.

The connection to the Meiri, and an explanation of Tosafot and the Ran

We saw above that the Meiri holds that in all ordinary verses — as opposed to verses that are scriptural fiats — the reason is self-evident. At first glance, this is exactly Rabbi Simeon’s position, for he expounds ta’ama de-kra. Both display complete confidence in the Torah interpreter, that he will understand the reason for the law correctly.

However, as we noted above, the halakha was not ruled in accordance with Rabbi Simeon. In practice, we do not expound ta’ama de-kra. According to the Meiri, one must then ask: why not? After all, in most cases — apart from scriptural fiats — the reasons are accessible and clear to us. So why should we not expound them?

According to the explanation we proposed of Maimonides’ view, the matter is understandable. As we saw, according to the anonymous first opinion and Maimonides, we do not expound ta’ama de-kra even when the reasons are written explicitly in the Torah, that is, even when they are known to us with certainty. If so, even according to the Meiri, who holds that the reasons are known to us, there is still room to understand the rule that forbids us to expound ta’ama de-kra.

The conclusion is that the practical rule that we do not expound ta’ama de-kra does not necessarily stem from concern that we may err in extracting reasons from the commands. One may adopt an optimistic approach toward our ability to attain the reasons for the commandments and yet still reject expounding ta’ama de-kra. In other words, even one who disagrees with Rabbi Simeon may still trust our interpretive and conceptual tools as reliable tools.

Of course, the approaches of Tosafot and the Ran seem closer to what emerged from Nahmanides: scriptural fiats are laws whose reasons are entirely inaccessible to us, and the reasons for other laws may perhaps be more accessible, yet we are nevertheless forbidden to expound them on the legal plane.⁹

Footnotes