Does Every Verse Necessarily Teach the Opposite of What It Says?

The Rabbi’s opening post

Does every verse necessarily teach the opposite of what it says?

Posted on 20/9/2008

| |

Does every verse necessarily teach the opposite of what it says?

An example by way of introduction

In preparation for a lecture I gave today, I came across quite a number of later authorities who link the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petora regarding two people walking in the desert with a flask of water (Bava Metzia 62a) to the dispute between Rabbi Yoḥanan and Reish Lakish in the Yerushalmi, Terumot, regarding non-Jews who surrounded a city and demanded, ‘Hand over one of you.’

In the Yerushalmi there, the Amoraim disagree about a case where the non-Jews demand a specific person (and not just any one of them), who is not independently liable to death. According to Rabbi Yoḥanan, that very person whom they demand should be handed over, whereas according to Reish Lakish this is forbidden (and Maimonides rules accordingly in Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 5:5).

And the Kesef Mishneh there already raises the enormous difficulty with this ruling: after all, the rule that one must be killed rather than violate the prohibition of murder derives from the reasoning, ‘What makes you think your blood is redder? Perhaps that man’s blood is redder.’ Yet in this case that reasoning does not apply, since whether they hand him over or not, he will die. If so, his blood is certainly less red than the blood of the others, and therefore the logic of that reasoning should lead us to hand him over.

To this the Kesef Mishneh answers with a remarkable innovation: the rule that one must be killed rather than transgress in the case of murder is not derived from the reasoning of ‘what makes you think your blood is redder?,’ but is rather a tradition handed down to us. That reasoning was written only to provide a verbal rationale and the like.

If so, according to Reish Lakish (and Maimonides), the obligation to be killed rather than transgress is not based on the ‘your blood is redder’ argument, whereas according to Rabbi Yoḥanan it is.

Now the same point of dispute can also be seen in the disagreement between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petora. The ‘your blood is redder’ principle would instruct us not to give the flask to the other person, since the flask is mine and the other person’s blood is no redder than mine. If so, Ben Petora, who derives from a verse that there is an obligation to share the water, apparently accepts at bottom the ‘your blood is redder’ reasoning, and only the verse teaches that nevertheless the water must be shared. Rabbi Akiva, by contrast, who derives from the verse that your life takes precedence, apparently holds at bottom that the obligation to be killed rather than transgress is not based on the ‘your blood is redder’ reasoning (as in the Kesef Mishneh above), and therefore he needs a verse to teach that nevertheless one should not give the flask to the other.

On this basis they explained the fact that Maimonides rules like Reish Lakish against Rabbi Yoḥanan, which runs contrary to the usual rules of halakhic decision. The law follows Rabbi Akiva against his colleague, and therefore Maimonides, who rules like Rabbi Akiva, is thereby committed to ruling like Reish Lakish, who follows the same line.

I would note that all this is based on the assumption that Ben Petora derives his rule from a verse and not from reason. That fits the version in the Sifra, but not the version we have in Bava Metzia 62a.

Incidentally, if Ben Petora derives his rule from reason, then Maimonides’ ruling is even better grounded, since it would follow that Ben Petora too holds that the obligation to be killed rather than murder is not based on the ‘your blood is redder’ argument, as in the Kesef Mishneh above.

The problem itself

All this is only an introduction. Let us now turn to the substantive discussion. The assumption of those later authorities is that if Rabbi Akiva derives from the verse that your life takes precedence, that indicates that at bottom he held that we ought to share the water—that is, that the reasoning underlying ‘be killed rather than murder’ is not the ‘your blood is redder’ argument—and therefore a verse is needed to teach that his life takes precedence. And likewise regarding Ben Petora: the fact that he derives from the verse that one must share the water tells us that at bottom he holds that his own life takes precedence—that is, that the reasoning underlying ‘be killed rather than murder’ is indeed the ‘your blood is redder’ argument—and therefore a verse is needed to depart from that.

According to this common pattern of thinking, whenever a verse teaches us something, in truth we learn from it the opposite. For if the reasoning were not the opposite, why would we need a verse? This is very strange. The result is that the Torah cannot teach us anything, because whenever it writes something, we infer from it the opposite. That is a conceptual difficulty.

But beyond that, there is also a difficulty from the sources themselves (=that is, there are rabbinic sources from which the opposite seems to emerge). Many broad principles are learned from verses. For example, the rule that a positive commandment overrides a negative commandment is learned from the fact that we make a wool-and-linen mixture in ritual fringes. Yet according to the logic of those later authorities, we should learn from there precisely the opposite: apparently a positive commandment does not override a negative commandment, for if it did, we would not need a verse to teach that one may make a wool-and-linen mixture in ritual fringes. ‘Each of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths’ (Leviticus 19:3) teaches that if a father tells his son to commit a transgression, he may not obey him. Yet apparently we should have learned the opposite: apparently one must obey his father even to commit a transgression, for otherwise why would a verse regarding the Sabbath be required? And so on; there are, of course, many more examples.

What is the alternative (see Shimon Peres, ibid., ibid.)?

I, in my humble opinion, hold precisely the opposite. Rabbi Akiva learns from the verse that very point itself: that the governing principle is the ‘your blood is redder’ argument, and therefore the person should drink and not give the water away. Ben Petora, by contrast, learns from that very verse the rule that the reasoning is not the ‘your blood is redder’ argument.

That is, if there is a verse that teaches a certain rationale, the conclusion is that this very rationale is the correct one the Torah wishes to teach us. Revolutionary, isn’t it?

[In parentheses I would add that if you ask about a contradiction in Maimonides’ rulings, since on my approach he should have ruled like Rabbi Yoḥanan, I would say that that entire passage in Maimonides has nothing to do with Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petora. As I wrote in the thread on separating Siamese twins (citing Prof. Enker), and in my article in Techumin cited there, the sugya there concerns the laws of desecration of God’s name and capitulation to terror, not the laws of saving lives (which is why the entire rule is brought in Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, not in Hilkhot Rotzeach u’Shemirat HaNefesh). According to this, there is no need at all for the Kesef Mishneh’s strained reading, and this therefore appears to be the straightforward reading of Maimonides and the Yerushalmi.]

Of course, one must distinguish between different situations (in some of which one should learn the opposite from the verse and in some the very thing written in it), and/or make this depend on the question of what our initial assumption would have been without the verses, and also distinguish between places where reason has room to decide and places where it does not. But before discussing the issue in general, I would prefer to discuss the sugya I brought as an example. Afterwards we will try to extend the insights that emerge here to other contexts and draw distinctions.

Can anyone explain the reasoning of those later authorities, who in effect consistently reverse the Torah’s intent? As stated, I would be happy if at first we focus on this example concerning Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petora.

A concluding note

It seems to me that this prevalent yeshiva-style approach (to learn from every verse the opposite of what it says) is based on the conception that all the Torah’s laws come to run counter to straightforward human reason, and that they themselves have no ordinary human explanations. By contrast, the approach I suggested sees the verses of the Torah as a source for guiding our reasoning, and therefore one should always seek the explanation for the law that the Torah introduces, and use that explanation to decide in other places as well.

I will bring just one example. In Encyclopedia Talmudit, s.v. ‘Ein Onshin Min HaDin’ (=that is, a matter whose prohibition is learned by an a fortiori inference does not incur punishment as does the case from which it is derived), the entry offers three explanations for this rule:

1. Perhaps the a fortiori argument is subject to refutation.

2. Perhaps the punishment appropriate to the graver case is greater than the original punishment, and therefore the original punishment is insufficient.

3. A scriptural decree derived from the verse ‘and to his sister’.

And I have always wondered why the third possibility is different from the previous two. The first two possibilities are rationales at the foundation of the rule, whereas the third is a source for the rule. Why is a source presented as an alternative to rationales? We are forced to conclude that they (=the editors of the encyclopedia) understood that if something has a scriptural source, it apparently has no rationale. This is the same approach I discussed above.

[And in parentheses I would add that, in my opinion, the first two rationales are indeed not the basis of the rule. Rather, what we have here is a different conception of punishment. The severity of the punishment is not necessarily proportional to the severity of the transgression, and therefore deriving a prohibition of a negative commandment does not require a parallel derivation of the punishment. But this is not the place to elaborate.]

Source (the ‘Stop Here, Think’ forum): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2486789&forum_id=1364