Lech Lecha (5764)

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 Lekh Lekha, 5765

A. Between A Fortiori Reasoning and Verbal Analogy

Rabbi Hanina ben Pazi said: Abraham did not know where he was to circumcise himself. The Holy One, blessed be He, hinted to him and told him where he was to circumcise himself: “And I will multiply you” — from the place by which you are fruitful and multiply. Bar Kappara says: Abraham expounded a qal va-homer (an a fortiori inference): If, in the case of trees, from what place does the obligation of orlah (the prohibition on a tree’s fruit during its first three years) arise? From the place where they bear fruit. Then I too must be circumcised at the place where I produce fruit.

Midrash Tanhuma, Buber edition, Parashat Lekh Lekha 27, s.v. “And I will establish My covenant.”

“And I will establish My covenant…” Rabbi Huna said in the name of Bar Kappara: Abraham sat and reasoned by gezerah shavah (a verbal analogy): “orlah” is said here, and “orlah” is said with respect to a tree. Just as the orlah said with respect to a tree is at the place that produces fruit, so too the orlah said with respect to a human being is at the place that produces fruit. Rabbi Hanina said to him: “Had verbal analogies already been given to Abraham? Astonishing!” Rather, [the hint was in the verse,] “And I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly” — from “I will multiply you exceedingly” [he inferred the meaning of] “And I will establish My covenant between Me and you.”

Bereshit Rabbah, Theodor-Albeck edition, parashah 46, s.v. “And I will establish My covenant.”

Rabbi Huna bar Kappara said: Abraham our father sat and expounded: “orlah” is said of a tree, and “orlah” is said of a human being. Just as the orlah said of a tree is at the place that produces fruit, so too the orlah said of a human being is at the place that produces fruit. Rabbi Hanina ben Pazi said: Did Abraham our father already know light-and-heavy inferences and verbal analogies? Rather, it was only hinted to him: “And I will establish My covenant between Me and you…” — the place where one is fruitful and multiplies.

Vayikra Rabbah, Vilna edition, parashah 25, s.v. “Rabbi Huna.”

Explaining Abraham’s reasoning

God commands Abraham (Genesis 17:10-11):

“… every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you.”

In response, Abraham wonders where on the body the circumcision is to be performed. The midrashim differ over how Abraham resolved this problem. Bar Kappara says that Abraham employed a qal va-homer. Rabbi Huna, in the name of Bar Kappara, says that he used a gezerah shavah. Rabbi Hanina rejects this and says that Abraham had not yet received the hermeneutical principles of rabbinic interpretation, and he therefore proposes as Abraham’s source a mere hint embedded in the wording of the divine command. In parallel versions, additional possible hints appear.

An anachronistic midrash

These midrashim (rabbinic interpretations) are anachronistic in character; that is, the Sages place in Abraham’s mouth forms of reasoning that were current in their own time. Even if Abraham knew all the methods of interpretation, as Bar Kappara’s words might suggest, it is very hard to understand how a Talmudic sage could know exactly which derivation Abraham used. Beyond that, it is hard to ignore the question of how Abraham, long before the giving of the Torah, could know that the word “orlah” is used at all with reference to trees. With respect to human beings it is used in God’s command to Abraham himself.¹

This difficulty sharpens the anachronistic character of these midrashim. It seems that the Sages are offering Abraham a mode of interpretation that would have been available to him had he known the Torah in the form in which it is now in our hands. The question of how Abraham knew where circumcision should be performed functions as a kind of riddle addressed to the sages’ own time, not as a historical report about Abraham. On this reading, the answers of Bar Kappara and Rabbi Huna do not claim that Abraham actually knew how to use these principles. Rather, they propose solutions to the riddle by means of contemporary methods. Rabbi Hanina, who is not engaging in riddling but in historical description, offers a possible explanation of what Abraham himself actually did.

The above midrashim as a double interpretive move

If so, the question of how Abraham knew, together with the various answers to it, is itself a kind of interpretive exercise. The Sages are making here a complex, indeed double, midrashic move: they interpret the verses, and at the same time explain that Abraham himself used hermeneutical principles. The result of this midrash is that Abraham is portrayed as making yet another move, which is itself a form of interpretation. Interestingly, it is precisely his move that explicitly uses the hermeneutical principles. It should also be noted that the Sages’ exposition of the verses is aggadic midrash (non-legal rabbinic interpretation), whereas the midrash that Abraham is said to perform is midrash halakha (legal rabbinic interpretation).

The conclusion is that the real subject of dispute between these interpretations is not Abraham at all, but the hermeneutical principles themselves, or perhaps the relation between circumcision and orlah. Since the disagreement concerns qal va-homer and gezerah shavah, we shall now try to understand these two principles somewhat better, and on that basis to propose an explanation of the disagreement between the midrashim.

Between qal va-homer and gezerah shavah

The two principles that Rabbi Huna and Bar Kappara place in Abraham’s mouth are qal va-homer and gezerah shavah. Rabbi Hanina, by contrast, argues that Abraham could not have used such principles. In his words, Rabbi Hanina uses the phrase “light-and-heavy inferences and verbal analogies,” a phrase that at first glance is natural in light of the two opposed alternatives. As we shall soon see, however, it is not entirely clear that this is really Rabbi Hanina’s intention.

Qal va-homer and gezerah shavah stand in opposition to one another in several respects:

1. First, qal va-homer is one of the logical principles. It rests on an inference concerning the content and character of the laws involved, like binyan av, an inference from a paradigm case, in its various forms. By contrast, gezerah shavah is one of the textual principles, that is, principles based on language and terminology rather than on content. It compares different topics by virtue of identical words that appear in them.

2. Therefore one may formulate a qal va-homer on one’s own, whereas one may not formulate a gezerah shavah on one’s own.²

3. Some maintain that unlike qal va-homer, where the Torah sometimes explicitly writes the rule that could have been derived from it — “for a matter derivable by qal va-homer, Scripture nevertheless took the trouble to write it” — with gezerah shavah the Torah never does this.³ The usual explanation is that gezerah shavah is simpler, though it is not entirely clear why. Presumably the point is that gezerah shavah is a formal principle that a person does not generate independently but receives by tradition, unlike qal va-homer, and is therefore more secure.

Given that qal va-homer is a logical rather than a textual principle, and especially if we take into account the simple explanatory character of the qal va-homer that appears here — it is a logical qal va-homer, not the ordinary formal qal va-homer of the hermeneutical system; see the sheet for Parashat Noah — it is somewhat difficult to say that Abraham could not have known how to use such a tool. Admittedly, Rabbi Hanina’s wording in the third midrash includes the phrase “light-and-heavy inferences and verbal analogies,” but it should be noted that in that very midrash the character of Bar Kappara’s derivation is not made explicit, whether it is gezerah shavah or qal va-homer. The formulation there plainly suggests gezerah shavah. If so, the expression “light-and-heavy inferences and verbal analogies” in Rabbi Hanina’s mouth is a stock phrase standing for the hermeneutical principles in general, and not necessarily for these two specifically. Indeed, the expression appears elsewhere in precisely this sense.⁴ It is plausible that precisely because of the contrast between these two principles, their pairing was chosen to represent the full range of interpretive methods.

One may of course also say that a regular formal qal va-homer was indeed unknown to Abraham, like the other principles. But, as noted, the qal va-homer here is logical and not formal, and therefore the assumption is that Abraham could have used it. If so, Bar Kappara’s interpretation, unlike Rabbi Huna’s, is not necessarily anachronistic. In principle, Abraham could have used it.

This distinction also emerges from the wording and structure of the three midrashim cited above. In the first midrash Abraham reasons by qal va-homer, and there there is no reservation at all about the possibility that he used such a principle. Rabbi Hanina’s view appears first there, as an independent view, without being grounded in a rejection of Bar Kappara’s position. By contrast, in the second midrash Abraham uses gezerah shavah, and there the reservation arises immediately, as it does in the third as well.

Gezerah shavah and mere clarification of meaning

It should further be noted that gezerah shavah is indeed a textual principle, but it is not a merely lexical tool. There is a simple interpretive logic in seeking the meaning of one occurrence of a word in light of its other appearances in Scripture. But gezerah shavah is not concerned with lexical meaning. For a mere clarification of meaning we do not need a halakha (authoritative legal tradition) from Sinai to reveal it; see also below, in section B.⁵ Gezerah shavah is a principle that transfers a law explicitly stated in one place to another place, and only the linkage between the two places is made on the basis of similar words.⁶ According to Rabbi Hanina, this is the method Abraham could not have known, since it was transmitted to us many centuries after him.

Returning to the difference between types of interpretation

Yet precisely in light of this, the gezerah shavah and the qal va-homer that appear in the midrashim above look very similar. In the qal va-homer as well, Abraham learns the law of the location of circumcision from the law of orlah in a tree. The essence of the difference is that in gezerah shavah the comparison between the contexts is based on the appearance of a shared word, whereas qal va-homer establishes a hierarchical relation — lighter and stricter — between the prohibition of orlah in a tree and the commandment of circumcision in a human being, on the basis of the content and character of these laws and without direct appeal to the word “orlah.”⁷ In the qal va-homer, the word “orlah” stands only in the background. It teaches that the act of circumcision is similar in some sense to the law of orlah.

There are thus two differences between the interpretations:

1. Gezerah shavah relies on a verbal comparison, whereas qal va-homer, especially the logical kind, relies on a substantive comparison.

2. In the comparison made by gezerah shavah, the two sides occupy the same logical status, whereas qal va-homer assumes that circumcision in a human being is, in some sense, more stringent than orlah in a tree.

It should be noted, as others have already noted,⁸ that in the final analysis the learning in both cases is based on logical similarity. The difference between the principles concerns only the hint, or source, that directs our attention to that similarity.

The difficulties in comparing circumcision and orlah

These midrashim raise several difficulties. First, there is the comparison between orlah in a tree and circumcision. Orlah in a tree is a prohibition, whereas circumcision is an act of removal. Tree-orlah is a prohibition on the fruits of a tree, whereas circumcision is performed on the person himself at the place from which the “fruits” — that is, offspring — emerge, and not on the offspring themselves. In addition, it is not clear what that “place” in a tree is that produces fruit. Does a tree have such a place, and how is the prohibition of orlah related to it? The prohibition concerns the fruit, not some particular place in the tree. To be sure, with respect to gezerah shavah the comparison can perhaps be understood, since it is not based on a comparison of content but on the transfer of a law through a shared term. The real difficulty concerns the qal va-homer. It is also difficult to see, in the qal va-homer, what exact stringency circumcision has over tree-orlah.

Nevertheless, a comparison: what does “arel” mean?

Let us try to use these difficulties as a lever for understanding the interpretations. First, from the comparison between orlah and circumcision there emerges a conception according to which orlah is a legal status in the tree and not in the fruits, as circumcision is in the human being.⁹ It seems that the prohibition on the fruits is only a halakhic consequence of classifying the tree as orlah. This is the fundamental basis for the comparison between the two contexts.

Let us add that in biblical usage, arel means blocked or sealed off; see Exodus 6:12 and Rashi ad loc. The orlah of the tree means that something in it is blocked, and the law of orlah is, as it were, intended to open or release it. The same applies to circumcision, which is meant to release something blocked in the human being. A tree develops by producing fruit, and therefore the conclusion is that what is blocked in it is its power of growth. As we have noted, there is no specific place in the tree that is responsible for its growth, and therefore the prohibition of orlah cannot be interpreted as applying to some location in the tree. The “place” is the power of growth, which is blocked, and we remove its orlah by forbidding the first fruits that emerge from it.

It now becomes clear why removing the fruits — that is, refraining from any benefit from them — is analogous to removing the flesh of the foreskin. The fruits are the concrete realization of the abstract power of growth, and the first fruits are the outer crust and valueless covering — the orlah — of that power of growth, which we “remove.”¹⁰ In the human being, by contrast, there is an organ that is responsible for procreation, and therefore the removal of orlah is performed there. So too we find in the Tosefta, Shabbat 15:

Rabbi Yose said: From where do we know that circumcision is at the place of fruit? For it is said, “You shall treat its fruit as orlah.” And it also says, “An uncircumcised male who does not circumcise the flesh of his orlah.”

One can now perhaps also understand the “stringency” of human circumcision as compared to tree-orlah. One may suggest a schematic argument of the following sort: If even a tree, which belongs to the vegetative realm, requires removal of orlah in order to render its power of growth fit, then a human being, who is more spiritual, all the more so must have an act of removing orlah that renders his power of procreation fit.¹¹

A proposal for explaining the dispute in the midrashim

Let us now return to the dispute among the Sages in the midrash. As we have seen, only qal va-homer — and especially logical qal va-homer — makes a substantive comparison between the cases under discussion. If so, it may be that Rabbi Huna did not accept the understanding of the law of orlah that we have proposed here, and therefore was unwilling to make a substantive comparison, that is, a qal va-homer, between it and circumcision. Because of the different meanings involved, he was compelled to use gezerah shavah, which is a formal comparison.¹² Bar Kappara, by contrast, understands the law of orlah as referring to the power of growth, and therefore can make a substantive comparison between orlah and circumcision, using qal va-homer.

In light of this explanation, let us compare the formulations of the three midrashim above. In the first midrash, the one using qal va-homer, it says: “If, in the case of trees, from what place does the obligation of orlah arise? From the place where they produce fruit…” By contrast, the wording of the two gezerah shavah midrashim — and we have seen above that the third is of this type as well — is somewhat different: “Just as the orlah said of a tree is at the place that produces fruit…” From the wording of the first midrash it is clear that the obligation applies to the place in the tree that produces fruit. From the two other midrashim one can also understand that they are not speaking at all about the “place” in the tree that is subject to orlah — especially since there is no such place. See the parallel in Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 108a, for an intermediate formulation.

At this point, perhaps the value of the anachronistic “exercise” carried out by the Sages in the midrash becomes clearer. They were not trying to teach us something about Abraham, but to present different conceptions of the law of orlah, conceptions that led them to employ different hermeneutical principles. These conceptions have many implications, both in halakha and in thought, but this is not the place to pursue them.

B. The Origins of the Hermeneutical Principles

A contradiction between scholarship and tradition

In the midrashim discussed above, Rabbi Hanina assumes — and it is likely that his colleagues agree with him on this point, the exposition being anachronistic — that the hermeneutical principles, except for logical qal va-homer, were not available to Abraham. This fits the common assumption among commentators that the thirteen principles are a halakha transmitted to Moses at Sinai.¹³ There is apparently no clear source for this in the words of the Sages, but such a tradition does exist, and there is also indirect evidence for it in rabbinic literature, such as our own midrash.

On the other hand, in the scholarly world it is very widely accepted that the principles developed over the course of the history of halakha and its interpretation. Comparisons are sometimes drawn — usually rather weak ones — to various interpretive rules current in antiquity.¹⁴ It is commonly held that the system of interpretation was first crystallized by Hillel when he came up from Babylonia — Tosefta, Sanhedrin 7, and Avot de-Rabbi Natan 37 — and formulated a system of seven principles, and that it was later finalized by Rabbi Ishmael in the baraita of the thirteen principles from his school, found at the beginning of Torat Kohanim. As for the thirty-two aggadic principles of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yose the Galilean, we have no clear source for them — the baraita in our possession is taken from Sefer Keritut, part 3 — and even their number is not entirely agreed upon.¹⁵

What is the relation between these two approaches? At first glance, this is a frontal contradiction. Some try to challenge the scholarly position by pointing out that if a method or idea appears in the sources only from a certain period onward, that is not necessarily proof that it originated then. We may further note that on the level of substance it seems difficult to reconcile the traditional conception with the claim advanced in the sheet for Parashat Bereshit, in the name of the Nazir, that the system of principles is a kind of logic rather than an arbitrary code. Can ordinary rules of logic be, or need they be, given at Sinai? Does the use of human reason require divine authorization? And what of the other logical rules that we use in halakhic and interpretive give-and-take? Why do they not require such authorization?

Reconciliation: the process of formalization

It would seem, however, that there is no contradiction at all between the traditional perspective and the scholarly approach just described. It is very plausible that the hermeneutical principles were in use among learners from the time that Moses received the Torah at Sinai. When the Holy One, blessed be He, taught the Torah to Moses, He naturally trained him to look at the verses in these ways. At the beginning of the process of transmitting the Torah, these modes of attention passed from teacher to student in a natural and intuitive way, without formal formulation of the rules. This is similar to the acquisition of a mother tongue, which does not occur by means of formal rules, but naturally. Over time, apparently because the intuitive ability to use the hermeneutical principles was lost, the rules began to be formulated explicitly and defined more formally.¹⁶ The process of consolidation and formalization reached its peak in the time of Hillel, and finally with Rabbi Ishmael.

Today we have lost the ability to use the hermeneutical principles, even though their formal formulations, as well as various examples, are in our possession. We are in the position of someone learning a language in an intensive language course, who must formalize natural rules in order to use them. Had the hermeneutical principles not been formalized in the course of history, we would have no ability at all to reconstruct their use. This is the principal importance of formalizing a natural system.

From this description it follows that the claim that the principles in their raw form were given at Sinai does not conflict with relating to them as meaningful tools. The principles reflect a mode of attention that would probably not have developed in us naturally. Even Abraham, in his rabbinic literary image, did not arrive at it, and therefore we needed to receive it at Sinai. Yet for all that, they are not an arbitrary conventional code. The fact that one can learn to use them naturally, without formalization, itself indicates that this system is somehow embedded within us, and within the world. This is the “midrashic Platonism” defined in the sheet for Parashat Bereshit. Therefore, the textual dimension in gezerah shavah is a kind of hint that directs our attention to the similarity between two subjects, and not a merely formal source. This topic will be discussed at greater length in next week’s sheet, on Parashat Vayera.

Two illustrative analytical extensions

Let us conclude with two examples that illustrate this point:¹⁷

1. Someone who has not studied plane geometry will probably not arrive at this knowledge on his own. Yet once he studies it, he discovers that this understanding was implicitly embedded within him. Geometry is an example of knowledge that is acquired with outside assistance — from mathematicians and teachers — and yet it is difficult, though some do “succeed” in claiming it,¹⁷ to say that geometry is a conventional and arbitrary system and that it has no objective significance with respect to reality.¹⁸

2. Another example of such a process appears in Nahmanides’ glosses to the second root in Maimonides’ Sefer Ha-Mitzvot.¹⁹ There Maimonides states that laws inferred by means of the hermeneutical principles are “like branches that emerge from roots” — the roots being the biblical verses. In Maimonides’ view, the analogical character of the hermeneutical principles — see also the sheet for Parashat Bereshit, end of part 2 — leads us to the conclusion that the laws learned through them are not contained in the depth of the verses themselves. Rather, they are an extension of them, and therefore they are regarded as rabbinic rather than biblical laws.

Nahmanides, in his glosses, disagrees and holds that these laws are of biblical status. It appears that he too agrees that the basic character of the hermeneutical principles is analogical and inductive. If so, it is not clear how he can claim that the conclusion yielded by them is hidden in the verses themselves. By the very definition of analogy and induction, the conclusion of such considerations extends the assumptions on which they are based; it does not simply expose what is already contained within them.²⁰

The explanation is that, according to Nahmanides, although the principles are analogical and inductive in character, this does not prevent us from treating them as disclosing the content hidden in the verses themselves — that is, in the premises. Scientific inquiry too proceeds by drawing a general conclusion from a collection of particular facts. For example, from observing several bodies with mass fall to the earth, we infer the general law of gravitation and assume that it applies to every body with mass. Here too, then, we have an inductive route that reveals the nature of the objects themselves: it adds to our knowledge about them, rather than constituting an arbitrary or merely conventional stance that we adopt toward them.²¹

Footnotes