Rabbenu Hananel on Herod: Can a Beautiful Captive Woman Be a Bondwoman?

The rabbi’s opening post

Rabbenu Hananel on Herod: Can a Beautiful Captive Woman Be a Bondwoman?

Posted on 16/11/2006

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Rabbenu Hananel on Herod: Can a Beautiful Captive Woman Be a Bondwoman?

In the sugya in Bava Batra 4a, Rabbenu Hananel writes:

For Hyrcanus, the father of Herod, once went to fight against the Romans and was victorious. Among the captives he saw a certain beautiful bondwoman, desired her, and acted toward her in accordance with Torah law; he had relations with her and begot from her that same Herod …

And a few lines later he writes that Herod was a slave, obligated in the commandments like a woman and exempt from time-bound positive commandments.

These remarks seem to me highly puzzling:

1. First, why is his father called Hyrcanus here?

2. How was that woman a bondwoman? Is this a bondwoman in the halakhic sense, or merely a slave woman belonging to a gentile?

3. What did his father do with that bondwoman? Was this under the law of the beautiful captive woman? He writes, “beautiful in form … and acted toward her in accordance with Torah law.” But it is forbidden to marry a bondwoman (perhaps he married her unlawfully, but it says that he acted toward her according to Torah law).

4. Is there halakhically valid marriage to a bondwoman here?

5. And if you say that she was a gentile slave woman (not in the halakhic sense), then how is Herod a slave who is obligated in the commandments like a woman?

I am beginning to think of the following possible resolution: she was indeed a genuine halakhic bondwoman (who, for some reason, happened to be among the Romans). Now the law of the beautiful captive woman allows one to take a gentile woman as a wife (as a concession to the evil inclination in wartime), so why should a bondwoman be worse off than an ordinary gentile woman, when she is better than an ordinary gentile woman (for she is at least obligated in some commandments, and is not a full gentile). Consequently, the son is an ordinary slave (the child of a bondwoman), and everything works out very well.

But there is a major novelty here: there is a way for a free Jew to marry a bondwoman, by way of the law of the beautiful captive woman.

Under the law of the beautiful captive woman, could a person also marry other women who are forbidden to him (perhaps a woman of illegitimate status)? Gentile women, or also Jewish women (after all, the evil inclination is still at work; and if there is a Jewish woman in the area, his inclination may also run wild toward her)?

And I still have not understood whether Antipater was called Hyrcanus by him. But that really is a side point.

What do you think?

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The title was shortened

Source (the “Stop Here, Think” forum): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2085032&forum_id=1364