“A Matter Learned from Its Context”: Between Midrash and Interpretation – Parashat Kedoshim

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“A Matter Learned from Its Context”: Between Midrash and Interpretation

Michael Abraham

In our portion we find an entire list of monetary prohibitions (Lev. 19:11-13):

You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. You shall not swear falsely by My name, thereby profaning the name of your God; I am the LORD. You shall not oppress your fellow and you shall not rob; the wages of a hired laborer shall not remain with you overnight until morning.

The sages note that there is here a repetition of the commandment in the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:13): “You shall not steal.” They resolve this duplication by means of a hermeneutical rule from Rabbi Ishmael’s list, “a matter learned from its context.” This rule instructs us to interpret an ambiguous expression according to the context in which it appears (see examples below).

And thus we find in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 86a:

Our Rabbis taught: “You shall not steal”—Scripture is speaking of kidnapping. Do you say it is speaking of kidnapping, or perhaps only of theft of property? You should say: go out and learn from the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded: a matter learned from its context. What is the passage speaking about? About persons; so here too, about persons. Another baraita taught: “You shall not steal”—Scripture is speaking of theft of property. Do you say it is speaking of theft of property, or perhaps only of kidnapping? You should say: go out and learn from the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded: a matter learned from its context. What is the passage speaking about? About property; so here too, about property.

The commandment in the Ten Commandments refers to kidnapping, since the context is the prohibition of murder (which appears there immediately before it), whereas the one in our portion deals with theft of property, for the other commands in the verses cited at the beginning of the article concern monetary law. Note that some of the early authorities also derive from the verse here the prohibition of deception.

The midrash cited above notes that it is employing a hermeneutical rule from Rabbi Ishmael’s list of thirteen principles. Such a formulation is not characteristic of the usual use of the hermeneutical principles. But in many cases, when rabbinic literature uses the rule of “a matter learned from its context,” it does appear with precisely this introduction.

For example, in the Babylonian Talmudic discussion in Hullin 63a, we find:

Our Rabbis taught: Tanshemet—do you say this is the one among the birds, or perhaps it is the one among the creeping creatures? You should say: go out and learn from the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded: a matter learned from its context. What is the passage speaking about? About birds; so here too, about birds. And similarly, a baraita was taught regarding creeping creatures in the same form: Tanshemet—the one among the creeping creatures. Do you say it is the one among the creeping creatures, or perhaps it is the one among the birds? You should say: go out and learn from the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded: a matter learned from its context. What is the passage speaking about? About creeping creatures; so here too, about creeping creatures.

Here they are trying to identify the tanshemet mentioned in the Torah. It appears in two contexts, one among the birds and the other among the creeping creatures. One midrash therefore concludes that it belongs among the birds, while another identifies it among the creeping creatures. Again there is a use of the rule “a matter learned from its context,” and again the expositor notes that he is using a rule belonging to Rabbi Ishmael’s list. So too in the Babylonian Talmud, Hullin 115b, and elsewhere.

Another example, this time in aggadic midrash, appears in Pesikta Zutarta:

“Who stands with me.” As in the verse: “And I stood on the mountain” (Deut. 10:10). But does it not say, “And I sat on the mountain” (ibid. 9:9)? What, then, is the meaning of “I stood”? I tarried. So too, “who stands with me over it”—this standing means nothing other than delay, because the Torah is expounded by thirteen principles, as Rabbi Ishmael expounded in Torat Kohanim, and this is one of them: a matter learned from its context.

The midrash sets two verses against each other. One verse speaks of Moses standing on Mount Sinai, and the other describes him as sitting. From the context we understand that the meaning is not standing in its ordinary sense but lingering. Here too, the midrash notes that the rule belongs to Rabbi Ishmael’s list.

Why is it דווקא this rule that leads the sages to emphasize that a principle from Rabbi Ishmael’s list is being used here? Before attempting an explanation, we must consider the way this rule operates.

In the book Yavin Shemu’ah, rule 147, it is explained that the rule of “a matter learned from its context” comes to interpret what is obscure, not to derive one law from another. It is a legal hermeneutical rule that teaches us a new law through the interpretation of a biblical word. The implication is that this rule is not a form of analogy but an interpretive principle (with legal significance), a case of clarification. The author of Middot Aharon, in chapter 14, states that this rule is what the Talmud usually calls “let the obscure be learned from the explicit.”

If so, the rule of “a matter learned from its context” is an interpretive principle that seems, at first glance, entirely self-evident. When we approach a book and want to understand the meaning of a term, we can consult a dictionary. But when several meanings are possible, we must resort to the context in which the word appears in the text. That is exactly what “a matter learned from its context” means: selecting one meaning מתוך several possible ones by looking at the context. In the example cited above, theft can be understood in several ways (persons, property, or deception), and the context teaches us that it is speaking about theft of property.

Yet precisely this simplicity raises a difficulty. Why is this rule counted among Rabbi Ishmael’s thirteen principles at all? Had we not received this rule by tradition from Sinai, would we not have used it anyway? After all, it is an interpretive tool applied to every text, not only to the Torah.

To sharpen the difficulty, let us look at an example from another hermeneutical rule: gezerah shavah (verbal analogy). The early authorities already noted that it has two basic forms: 1. legal gezerah shavah—comparison between two contexts in which an identical, or similar, word appears. 2. clarification—deciphering the meaning of a word on the basis of that same word’s appearance elsewhere. The treatment of these two exegetical tools differs, even though in many cases both are called gezerah shavah.

The Talmud states that a person may not formulate a gezerah shavah on his own unless he received it from his teacher, unlike an a fortiori inference, which one may formulate independently. Yet some of the early authorities wrote that a gezerah shavah that is merely clarification may indeed be formulated independently. Thus we find that the Gemara (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 87b) sought to derive the “standing grain” mentioned with regard to a laborer’s eating from the “standing grain” mentioned with regard to the reaping of the omer, that in both cases it refers to standing grain still attached to the ground and subject to challah. The conclusion of the sugya rejects this derivation, and from that it follows that it was not transmitted by tradition from Sinai. Accordingly, at least according to some of the early authorities, clarification of this kind is not really gezerah shavah at all, but an interpretive rule developed by the sages themselves. It is a logical interpretive tool that can serve us in reading any text, and for that reason it is used in biblical interpretation as well. Interestingly, some of the early authorities refer to such clarification as “let the obscure be learned from the explicit,” as we saw regarding the rule of “a matter learned from its context.” As noted, that rule too seems to be of this kind. It is another interpretive tool that learns the obscure from the explicit. So why is this rule included in the list of principles? Why is tradition required in order to authorize our use of it?

We saw that when the sages make use of the rule of “a matter learned from its context,” they find it necessary to point out that it belongs to Rabbi Ishmael’s hermeneutical principles. We can now suggest that they mean to tell us that this interpretive tool does involve a genuine innovation. It is not a trivial interpretive instrument, and therefore a tradition is needed to instruct us to use it. To see this, let us return to the example with which we began.

We saw that the term “theft” can be interpreted in two ways: persons and property. Is it really self-evident that its meaning can be learned from the context in which it appears? In the Ten Commandments the context is persons. How is this seen? Rashi explains in the Sanhedrin passage:

A matter learned from its context—if you do not know what the verse is speaking about, go and learn from the section in which it is written, for it was placed next to it in accordance with that section. And here, what is the whole context speaking about? About persons: “You shall not murder” and “You shall not commit adultery”—all these are offenses punishable by death at the hands of the court. So too, “You shall not steal” means theft that carries liability to death at the hands of the court.

But what about the two other important commandments that appear among the last five commandments? “You shall not covet” is a monetary prohibition, and “You shall not bear false witness against your fellow” is likewise not specifically about persons. And in our portion too, if we look at the verses above, there also appear false swearing and profanation of God’s name in the middle of all the monetary prohibitions. Thus in both these cases the context is not entirely coherent. In the Ten Commandments, not the whole context there deals with persons, and in our passage not all the verses deal with property.

If this were an ordinary interpretive inference, it is doubtful that we could decide that in Parashat Yitro the verse speaks about persons and here about property. But since there is a hermeneutical rule that we have received by tradition, instructing us that in a case of ambiguity in the meaning of a term we should learn it from its context, we may conclude that it is more plausible to read property in our portion and persons in the Yitro passage. The tradition is part of the path to the interpretive conclusion.

We conclude with a hypothesis that requires more systematic and comprehensive research: it may be that in midrashim where this rule is used without this introductory formula, what is really involved is a logical and universal interpretive tool, like clarification, and not a full-fledged hermeneutical rule. This would parallel the distinction we encountered above with respect to gezerah shavah.

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