Pekudei (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 — Sabbath eve, Parashat Pekudei, 5765

Questions

1. The laws governing the threads in the white priestly garments: semantic meaning and interpretive derivation.
2. The division of interpretive methods into two types.
3. To which of the two does inclusion belong?
4. What is discussed in Maimonides’ second root-principle?
5. Why, in sacrificial matters, do we not derive from what is itself derived?
6. What is the rule in sacrificial matters that “Scripture must repeat it in order to make it indispensable”?
7. The importance of general interpretive rules for understanding different rulings of Maimonides.
8. How many valid interpretations can a biblical verse have?
9. Is a derivation an actual interpretation? What is the difference between it and the plain sense?

The Hermeneutical Principles

• Inclusion.
• “One does not derive from what is itself derived.”
• “In sacrificial matters, Scripture must repeat it in order to make it indispensable.”

A. What the Priestly Garments Are Made Of: Inclusion and Meaning

“And they made the tunics of fine linen, the work of a weaver, for Aaron and for his sons; and the turban of fine linen, and the caps of fine linen, and the linen breeches of twisted fine linen; and the sash of twisted fine linen, and blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, the work of an embroiderer, as the Lord had commanded Moses.”

(Exodus 39:27–29)

The Sages taught: With regard to garments concerning which the term “shesh” is stated, their thread is six-ply. If “twisted” is stated, it is eight-ply. The robe is twelve-ply. The curtain is twenty-four-ply. The breastplate and ephod are twenty-eight-ply.

From where do we know that their thread is six-ply? For Scripture says: “And they made the tunic, shesh… and the turban, shesh, and the caps, shesh, and the linen breeches, twisted shesh.” There are five scriptural mentions. One is needed for itself, to teach that they must be of linen. One teaches that the thread must be six-ply. One teaches that they must be twisted. One teaches this regarding the other garments for which “shesh” is not stated. And one teaches that these requirements are indispensable…

(Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 71b)

The Sages taught: “Bad” teaches that they must be of fine flax; “bad” teaches that they must be new; “bad” teaches that they must be twisted; “bad” teaches that their thread must be six-ply; “bad” teaches that he may not wear ordinary garments together with them.

Abaye said to Rav Yosef: Granted, that they must be of fine flax — this teaches us: fine flax, yes; anything else, no. But if “bad” teaches that they must be new, does that mean new, yes, worn, no? But was it not taught in a baraita that worn garments are valid?

He said to him: And according to your reasoning, if “bad” teaches that their thread must be six-ply — does not “bad” imply a single strand, one by one? Rather, this is what it means: Garments concerning which “bad” is stated require that they be of fine flax, new, twisted, and that their thread be six-ply. Some of these are ideal requirements, and some are indispensable.

(Babylonian Talmud, Zevachim 18b)

“Of fine flax” — meaning made of flax, as explained below from the word’s meaning.

“New” — as when it is still in its flax-stalk.

“That they be twisted, and that their thread be six-ply” — below the Gemara objects that “bad” by itself means “alone.”

“That he should not wear ordinary garments with them” — for it implies that he should wear them alone.

“And according to your reasoning” — if you derive this from the word’s meaning, from where do you derive six-ply thread?

“Garments concerning which ‘bad’ is stated require…” Some of them are ideal requirements — namely newness, for beauty, since that does not derive from the word’s meaning. And some are indispensable — flax, twisting, and six-ply thread. Flax, as the Gemara continues to explain: something that grows from the ground stalk by stalk. Twisting — since “bad” means flax, and elsewhere Scripture calls them “twisted fine linen.” And six-ply — as we say in tractate Yoma, where we derive from the verses that garments concerning which “shesh” is stated have a six-ply thread, and there this is derived as indispensable.

“Something that grows from the ground stalk by stalk” — a single stalk from each root, and not two stalks growing from one root.

(Rashi ad loc.)

3. The white garments are the four garments in which the High Priest serves on Yom Kippur: tunic, trousers, sash, and turban. All four are white, their thread is six-ply, and they are made of linen alone…

4. Everywhere in the Torah where it says “shesh” or “bad,” this means flax…

5. Everywhere in the Torah where it says “shesh” or “twisted shesh,” the thread must be six-ply. But in a place where it says “bad,” if it is a single thread alone it is valid, though the preferred practice is that it be six-ply…

(Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Vessels of the Sanctuary 8:3, 13–14)

Introduction

In this essay we will encounter a rare phenomenon. We will return to Maimonides’ interpretive theory, which we presented briefly in the essay on Parashat Yitro, and we will see that it has a direct halakhic (Jewish-law) consequence. There we saw that, according to Maimonides, derashot (interpretive derivations) do not uncover what is already present in Scripture; rather, they expand Scripture. Usually such a claim is treated as a meta-legal interpretation with no necessary legal consequences. According to most interpreters of Maimonides, the legal status of laws derived by exposition — which Maimonides defines as rabbinic in origin — is the same as that of Torah law. The claim that these are rabbinic indicates only their source, not the text of the Torah itself but something external to it, and not their legal force.

Quite surprisingly, we will see here a legal consequence that follows directly from this theoretical claim. Through it we will also understand several common rules relating to derivation, such as the rule that one does not derive from what is itself derived. From this we will also understand the meaning of inclusive derivations, and their interpretive and logical standing as against interpretations drawn from the word’s semantic meaning and against other methods of derivation.

The verses in our parashah

The verses cited above describe the making of some of the priestly garments. Mentioned here are the tunic, the turban, the caps, the trousers, and the sash. These garments are the white garments of the High Priest, which he uses on Yom Kippur, and also the garments of the ordinary priest. Three of them — the tunic, trousers, and sash — are the same for the High Priest and the ordinary priest. The difference is on the head: the High Priest has a turban, while ordinary priests have caps.

The Yoma sugya

All the garments described here are made of shesh — that is, linen — and the Torah takes the trouble to repeat this requirement separately for each garment. The passage in the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma, cited above, is troubled by this point: why did the Torah not write once, in general terms, that everything must be made of linen? The Gemara concludes from this that the repetition of the word shesh is meant to teach us several laws regarding the priestly garments:

1. For itself: they must be made of linen.
2. The linen thread from which they are made must be spun from six strands.
3. The threads must be twisted together.
4. The other garments, for which shesh is not stated, must also satisfy these laws.
5. These laws are indispensable.¹

The Zevachim sugya

In the parallel passage in Babylonian Talmud, Zevachim 18b, there is a different derivation, also cited above, which extracts five laws regarding garments for which the word bad is written. There we learn that they must satisfy the following conditions:

1. They must be made of fine flax, that is, linen.
2. They must be new.
3. They must be twisted.
4. They must be six-ply.
5. One may not wear ordinary garments together with them.

This derivation does not mention any superfluity, that is, any unnecessary repetition of the word bad. It therefore looks like a derivation based on the meaning of the word bad itself. For that reason it is no surprise that specifically in this sugya a discussion arises over what follows from the word’s meaning and what follows from some formal derivation. In the Yoma sugya, by contrast, there does not seem to be such a discussion, apparently because the superfluity in the verse can teach everything by way of derivation.

In the Zevachim sugya, Rashi explains that the meaning of bad is fine flax, that is, linen. In other words, that law is learned from the word’s meaning. With respect to the other requirements, however, it does not seem that they emerge from the plain meaning of the word. Some of them even contradict it. Indeed, Abaye objects to the requirement that the garments be new, from a baraita that rules that, after the fact, worn garments are valid. Rav Yosef answers him that, by the same logic, the requirement that the thread be spun from six strands is also difficult, since that requirement contradicts the meaning of the verse: bad suggests something singular, not multiple. From the Gemara’s wording it is not clear why this is relevant to Abaye’s question. Does Rav Yosef have any better explanation of how one derives from this verse a law that contradicts its plain wording? Why does he connect this difficulty specifically with Abaye’s objection from the baraita?

Rashi addresses this in his commentary here and explains that Abaye’s point was to raise an objection from the simple sense of the verse. Abaye’s claim is that the verse does not yield the requirement that the garment be new, and the baraita is brought only as proof of that claim, since it shows that this is not an indispensable law. Rav Yosef responds that the requirement of six-ply spinning also does not fit the plain sense of the verse, yet on this point even Abaye surely agrees that it is the law, and indeed an indispensable one, its source being the Yoma sugya noted above, as Rashi himself states, and as we indeed saw there: even garments for which the word shesh is not stated require spinning from six strands, and these laws are indispensable.

The Gemara concludes that some of the laws stated about these garments are indispensable, while others apply only ab initio. Rashi continues and sets the criterion that distinguishes between the two kinds of law: those that are not indispensable are the laws that emerge from derivation, namely that the garments must be new; whereas the indispensable laws are those that emerge from the word’s semantic meaning, namely that they be made of linen, spun from six strands, and twisted.

Summary of Rashi’s position

According to Rashi, only laws that emerge from the scriptural meaning are indispensable. To be sure, it is difficult to infer from here that in every law stated explicitly we would not require the rule that “Scripture must repeat it in order to make it indispensable.” The reason these laws are indispensable is apparently the derivation in Yoma, which teaches that they are indispensable. By contrast, the laws that emerge from derivation are not indispensable. According to Rashi, the two categories are these:

A. Indispensable, because they emerge from the meaning:

1. They must be made of linen.
2. The thread must be spun from six strands.
3. The threads must be twisted.

B. Not indispensable, because they emerge from derivation:

1. They must be new.

As for the rule that one may not wear ordinary garments together with them, it is not clear from Rashi where to place it — whether it follows from the word’s meaning or from derivation, and therefore whether it is indispensable or not.²

Rashi understands that all the teachings in the Yoma sugya emerge from semantic meaning, not from derivation, and therefore they are indispensable. Only the teaching that the garments must be new is absent there, and indeed it is not indispensable.

These matters require some explanation. The Gemara in Yoma does learn these laws by formal derivation. Moreover, the fact that they are indispensable is also learned by derivation, not by semantic meaning. If there were a general rule that laws derived from semantic meaning are indispensable, it would be unclear why one needs a derivation from the word shesh to teach that. Nor does that fit the rule we possess, in the context of sacrificial matters, that every law — even one written explicitly in the verse — is not indispensable unless Scripture repeats it for that purpose.

It therefore seems that Rashi does not mean to say that anything stated explicitly is always indispensable even in sacrificial matters, and that the rule “Scripture must repeat it in order to make it indispensable” applies only to laws derived by exposition. Rather, Rashi seems to mean the following: in the Yoma sugya there is a derivation teaching us that the laws stated there are indispensable. But it is unclear which of them are indispensable. Is it all of them? What about laws concerning garments for which the word bad is used rather than shesh? Are the three laws learned there also indispensable for them?

Rashi seems to hold that the laws stated in that verse are indispensable, because the derivation that teaches their indispensability also appears in that same verse. By contrast, the law learned only from the word bad — that the garments must be new — is not found in that verse, since it is not learned from shesh but from bad, and therefore the rule of indispensability does not apply to it. The reason is not that it is learned by derivation rather than from meaning, but that it is learned by derivation elsewhere.³

Maimonides’ position

From Maimonides’ words in chapter 8, law 14, cited above, it follows that he did not learn the Zevachim sugya the way Rashi understood it. Maimonides rules there that where the Torah says shesh or twisted shesh, the rule that the thread must be spun from six strands is indispensable. But where it says bad, six-ply spinning is only a preferred practice. In other words, Maimonides distinguishes between places where bad is written and places where shesh is written, and he does not appear to divide the laws learned from the word bad into two categories as Rashi does.

A proposal by Maimonides’ commentators

Maimonides’ commentators address this disagreement and understand that he read the Zevachim sugya differently from Rashi. The Kesef Mishneh on law 14 proposes that Maimonides simply divides the laws learned in Zevachim differently: what is indispensable is that there be only one type of thread — apparently meaning linen alone, without blue, purple, and scarlet yarn — while the law of six-ply spinning is not indispensable. The Kesef Mishneh himself notes that this is very forced in the language of the Gemara. It is not clear how this relates to semantic meaning as opposed to derivation, and the entire give-and-take between Abaye and Rav Yosef, which plainly assumes that six-ply spinning is indeed indispensable, becomes obscure.

Rabbi Yosef Korkos, in his commentary there, offers a different explanation of the Zevachim sugya. According to his proposal, Rav Yosef answers Abaye that in fact the law of twisting is not indispensable after the fact, exactly like the law of newness. And all this applies only where Scripture says bad, whereas where bad is not written, it is indispensable, as in the Yoma sugya. Thus “some are indispensable” refers to places where shesh is stated, whereas “some are not indispensable” refers to places where bad is stated. According to this, in places where bad is stated, none of the laws are indispensable — unlike Rashi, who divides them into two categories. Even so, the flow of the Gemara still remains unclear: the connection to Abaye’s objection, and the relation between semantic meaning and derivation.⁴

Our proposal for explaining Maimonides’ position

In our view, the more plausible explanation of Maimonides is that he in fact read the Zevachim sugya as Rashi did, but held that it conflicts with the Yoma sugya, and therefore ruled in accordance with Yoma. A proof is that the law forbidding the wearing of ordinary garments together with them — one of the laws learned only in Zevachim — is not cited by Maimonides at all. By contrast, in chapter 8, law 4, he does bring the other law learned only in Zevachim, namely that the garments must be new, and the commentators there have noted from his wording that he rules it applies only ideally and not indispensably. But he derives that law from another verse, not from the word bad as in Zevachim:

The priestly garments should ideally be new, handsome, and well made, in the manner of dignitaries’ garments, as it is said: “For honor and for beauty”…

From this there emerges a general picture according to which Maimonides did not rule the Zevachim sugya as halakha at all. For him, the laws of twisting and six-ply spinning derive from the Yoma sugya, which, as stated, he does rule as normative law.

But now we must ask: from where did Maimonides derive the result that in places where Scripture says not shesh but bad, the law of six-ply spinning is not indispensable? After all, the Yoma sugya explicitly says that the laws learned there also concern garments for which shesh is not written, that is, garments for which bad is written, and it also implies that these laws are indispensable there as well. Beyond that, it is unclear why Maimonides concludes that there is any contradiction at all between the two sugyot.

B. Principles in Interpreting Maimonides: Plain Sense and Derivation

A necessary general preface to understanding Maimonides

There is a common error in interpreting Maimonides, and Rabbi Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch called attention to it in the introduction to his book Studies in the Thought of Maimonides.⁵ Rabbi Rabinovitch explains that Maimonides’ commentators fall into two groups:

1. Those who formulate general interpretive rules for understanding Maimonides’ words. A significant portion of these rules actually comes from Maimonides himself, who possessed a highly developed reflective sense and was one of the only early authorities to take the trouble to explain his methodological principles in great detail. Yet these commentators do not usually apply the rules to local difficulties.
2. Ordinary commentators, who treat each difficulty locally and try to solve it only within its immediate context, while ignoring the larger system of rules, including those laid down by Maimonides himself.

Rabbi Rabinovitch argues there that in order to understand Maimonides properly, one must apply the general rules when resolving local difficulties as well. The sugya we are dealing with is a good example of this principle. Here too we are dealing with the application of a rule that Maimonides himself emphasizes in several places, as the key to understanding his words in our sugya.

Plain sense and derivation in Maimonides’ thought⁶

From Maimonides’ words in a number of places it emerges that his definition of “Torah law” differs from the accepted one. According to most commentators, Torah laws are laws that reflect the direct will of God. Rabbinic laws, by contrast, are laws whose source is the decision of the Sages, even if the authority of the Sages may itself draw on the Torah, for example through the prohibition against deviating from their rulings. Here is not the place to discuss that controversy. By contrast with all these approaches, Maimonides defines Torah laws as laws that appear in the written text, whereas rabbinic laws, or “the words of the scribes,” are laws that do not appear in the text. For example, Maimonides states in several places that a law given to Moses at Sinai is a law of rabbinic origin; see his Commentary on the Mishnah to Kelim 17:12, and his Responsa, no. 355 in the Blau edition, among other places. In the second root-principle, Maimonides states that laws derived by exposition are likewise not regular Torah laws but laws of rabbinic origin.⁷

It is important to understand that the terms “rabbinic” and “Torah law” in Maimonides’ thought usually indicate the source of the laws, and not necessarily their legal force or status. Laws whose source is the Torah text itself are called Torah laws, whereas laws whose source lies outside the text are called rabbinic laws. In a certain sense, Maimonides’ approach identifies the distinction between Written Torah and Oral Torah with the distinction between Torah law and rabbinic law. As noted, almost all other commentators disagree with him on this point.⁸

As Nachmanides already notes in his glosses to the second root-principle, the assumption that leads Maimonides to this surprising conclusion — for which he offers no real proof — is chiefly the interpretive assumption that a biblical verse can have only one valid interpretation, and no more. In rabbinic language: “A verse never departs from its plain sense.” Nachmanides disagrees with him on this point; see briefly the essay on Parashat Vayetze, part 3.

Nachmanides puts it this way, in his glosses to the second root-principle:

And behold, the master hung this tottering mountain by a hair, when he said: “The principle our Sages, peace be upon them, have taught us is their statement: ‘A verse never departs from its plain sense’…”

To explain why this is only “a hair” — and therefore why Maimonides’ mountain is “a tottering mountain” — Nachmanides attacks Maimonides directly on his basic conception of interpretation. He maintains that several different interpretations of the same biblical verse can certainly be true simultaneously.⁹ Nachmanides writes:

And so it is everywhere that they interpret matters by parable and figure: they believe that both are true, the inner and the outer…

And he adds at the end of his discussion of this issue:

This is what they meant when they said, “A verse never departs from its plain sense.” They did not say, “A verse has only its plain sense.” Rather, we possess its exposition together with its plain sense, and it departs from neither of them. The text can bear them all, and both are true.

In any case, Maimonides himself understands that each verse can have only one valid interpretation. From this description, an immediate and difficult question arises: according to Maimonides, are the laws that emerge from derivation not true? Do they not correctly describe the intent of the verses? Maimonides himself senses this difficulty and raises it in the second root-principle immediately after presenting his view of the relation between plain sense and derivation. He answers by saying that the laws derived by exposition are “branches from the roots that were explained to Moses at Sinai, and those roots are the 613 commandments.”

Maimonides’ intention is to argue that derivation is certainly correct, but it is not an interpretation of the written text; it is an expansion of the text. The law learned through derivation cannot be regarded as an interpretation of the text, because only the plain sense is the one valid interpretation of it. But that does not mean the derivation is false; rather, it is not an interpretation of the text. As we explained in the essay on Parashat Yitro, according to Maimonides the law that emerges from derivation is not uncovered from the text but constructed on its basis, as a branch emerging from a root, contrary to the view of Tosafot there, who apparently agree with Nachmanides here.

Returning to Maimonides’ understanding of derivation

We can now apply this general principle to Maimonides’ position regarding the priestly garments. As noted, in the Yoma sugya we include the other garments — those for which shesh is not written — from one of the superfluous occurrences of shesh in our parashah. According to what we have said in explaining Maimonides’ position, that inclusion does not uncover a law that was already present in the verses; rather, it constructs a new law as an expansion of what is present in the verses.¹⁰

Immediately afterward, another superfluous word is used to include the rule that all the laws found here are indispensable. To what does that rule apply? Most simply, to all the laws found in the verse from which it is included. If we include that everything stated in that verse is indispensable, then it applies to all the laws found in that verse. But are the laws regarding garments for which shesh is not written also found in those verses? As we saw above, according to Maimonides the answer is no. The laws concerning such garments are learned by inclusion, and, as we saw, derivation — especially inclusion — is an expansion of the text, not its deciphering. If so, the laws regarding garments for which shesh is not written are not found in those verses, and therefore the further inclusion that says the laws in those verses are indispensable does not apply to them.

Now Maimonides’ view becomes clear on its own. For garments in which shesh is written, all the laws learned concerning them fall under the principle that they are indispensable. But for garments in which bad is written, and not shesh, those same laws do apply by way of inclusion, yet they are not indispensable. The conclusion is that there is no inclusion upon inclusion.

Of course, this conclusion requires systematic study. We would need to examine whether in every place where there is an inclusion concerning laws that arise from certain verses, Maimonides does not apply it to laws learned from those same verses by a prior inclusion.¹¹

This is also the contradiction that Maimonides finds between the two sugyot. From the Yoma sugya it follows, according to his approach, that these laws are indispensable with respect to the white garments, but not indispensable with respect to the other garments. From the Zevachim sugya, however, it follows that even for the other garments some of them are indispensable. Maimonides read that sugya as Rashi did, since that is the straightforward reading, as later authorities note.

As stated, this is a unique example in which Maimonides’ interpretive theory yields a concrete legal result. To test this thesis systematically, one would need to study cases of inclusion built upon inclusion.

C. What Inclusion Is

Returning to Rashi

This point brings us back once again to Rashi’s view. As we concluded above, according to Rashi the distinction is not between laws learned from meaning and laws learned by derivation. Rather, Rashi’s point is that laws learned from somewhere else, and not from our verses, are not subject to the rule learned from these verses that makes them indispensable. But laws learned by inclusion from our verses certainly are indispensable, such as six-ply spinning in garments for which shesh is not written. If so, Rashi understands inclusion as uncovering, not as expanding, since in his view the teaching that a law is indispensable applies even to laws that emerge from scriptural inclusion. For him, laws that emerge from inclusion count as present in the written text itself. This matches the approach of Tosafot mentioned in the essay on Parashat Yitro, and also Nachmanides’ position here. Maimonides, by contrast, holds that even laws derived by inclusion from these very verses are not considered present in them, and therefore the rule that they are indispensable does not apply to them.

Inclusion and the thirteen hermeneutical rules

We conclude the discussion with a brief look at the interpretive rule of inclusion. At the beginning of the second root-principle, Maimonides rules that laws arising from derivation are not to be counted, and he specifies: the thirteen hermeneutical rules and inclusion. The other methods of derivation apparently are not included in the discussion of the second root-principle. The question is: what is the difference between the thirteen rules and the other methods of derivation? And why is inclusion itself grouped together with the thirteen rules?

In the essay on Parashat Vayeshev we discussed the three explanations offered by the author of Sefer Keritut for why Rabbi Yishmael decided to include only thirteen rules in his baraita of hermeneutical rules. Sefer Keritut explains that Rabbi Yishmael’s list excludes rules that are subject to dispute, rules of aggadic exposition, and rules regarded as explicitly written in Scripture. For our purposes, the third criterion is important. It follows from his words that the only accepted rules of legal derivation that were not included in the baraita are those regarded as explicitly written in the verse.¹²

According to this proposal of Sefer Keritut, Maimonides’ words can also be understood. As we saw above, in the second root-principle Maimonides deals only with rules that are not regarded as explicitly written in the verse, but only with rules that expand the text. Therefore he deals only with Rabbi Yishmael’s thirteen rules, since the other rules are regarded as explicitly written in the verse and therefore generate Torah law. In the second root-principle, Maimonides deals only with expansive rules, which generate laws of rabbinic origin.

Accordingly, we must examine the nature of inclusion. Why does Maimonides, contrary to Rabbi Yishmael’s classification, decide to include it among the rules that are not explicitly written in the verse? It may be that Maimonides includes it within the system of rules because he rules after a historical process — occurring mainly, though not only, in the amoraic period — in which Rabbi Akiva’s methods of derivation, based on inclusions and exclusions, were integrated into Rabbi Yishmael’s system of general and particular categories, thereby producing a broader and more varied interpretive system. See the essays on Parashat Toledot and Parashat Vayetze.

The conclusion is that Maimonides sees inclusion as a rule that expands what is stated in the verse, not as one that uncovers it. For example, in the second root-principle Maimonides attacks the Halakhot Gedolot for counting laws learned by inclusion, such as the obligation to revere Torah scholars, included from the word “et.” He asks why, then, it does not also count the duty to honor one’s father’s wife, one’s mother’s husband, or one’s elder brother, which are likewise learned by inclusion from the word “et” in the verse “Honor your father and your mother.” Nachmanides, in his glosses there, defends the Halakhot Gedolot by saying that these duties are included within the commandment of honoring father and mother. It follows that according to Maimonides, who raises the objection, they are not included in that commandment. Thus we see that, in Maimonides’ view, laws learned through inclusion are not included in the commandment present in the verse from which they are included. That is exactly our point here.

The connection to the question of “derived from the derived”

We noted at the outset that there are several differences between the laws of sacrificial matters and the rest of halakha. We have already mentioned the rule that in sacrificial matters “Scripture must repeat it in order to make it indispensable.” In addition, in sacrificial matters one often does not derive from what is itself derived — see Babylonian Talmud, Zevachim 50a and the surrounding discussion — meaning that one does not apply one of the thirteen hermeneutical rules to the result of a prior application of one of the thirteen rules. There are, admittedly, quite a few exceptions, as the sugya there shows. There are other differences between the fields as well, but we will not discuss them here, nor the question of what they have in common.

We wish to note only one point. In fact, the rule we have arrived at here is a kind of principle of “one does not derive from what is itself derived.” We have seen that one cannot apply inclusion to the result of another inclusion. In essence this is the prohibition against deriving from the derived in sacrificial matters, applied to cases of inclusion. It should be remembered that in the Zevachim sugya the principle of deriving from the derived is stated only regarding the thirteen hermeneutical rules, whereas here we see something analogous even with respect to inclusion. It may be that this phenomenon is connected to what we saw above: inclusion has a character similar to that of the thirteen rules, since, like them, it is not considered explicitly present in the written text. Therefore, at a relatively late stage in the development of the methods of derivation, it was attached to Rabbi Yishmael’s thirteen rules.

For that reason it is also reasonable to suppose that the rule of not deriving from the derived would apply to such a rule. Had we been dealing with a rule that uncovers what is already there, there would be no visible reason why we could not apply one uncovering rule to the result of another uncovering rule. All those layers are present in the text, one inside the next. According to our approach, the rule “one does not derive from what is itself derived” applies only to rules that do not uncover what is in the text, but expand the text. It limits the amount of expansion. How far may we expand beyond what is actually in the text itself?[^^13]

From this we have learned something both about the rule “one does not derive from what is itself derived” and about the nature of inclusion. Since inclusion, like the thirteen hermeneutical rules, expands the text — at least according to Maimonides — and since the rule of not deriving from the derived applies only to expansive rules, it is clear that it applies both to the thirteen rules and to inclusion. The same is true of the principle in Maimonides’ second root-principle, which, as we have seen, is also stated only regarding the fourteen expansive modes of derivation: the thirteen rules plus inclusion.

Footnotes