Q&A: Counting the Plain-Sense Commandments
Counting the Plain-Sense Commandments
Question
Greetings,
In II Kings (12:21-22) there appears the story of the conspiracy and murder of Joash king of Judah by his servants, and in chapter 14 (5) it recounts the accession of Amaziah his son to the throne and notes that he killed those very conspirators who had plotted against his father. However, "the sons of the killers he did not put to death, as is written in the book of the Torah of Moses, which the Lord commanded, saying: 'Fathers shall not be put to death for sons, nor sons be put to death for fathers; rather, each man shall die for his own sin'" (ibid., v. 6).
And the commentators on the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) have already often noted that the Sages expounded the verse "Fathers shall not be put to death for sons," etc., as disqualifying a father's testimony regarding his son and a son's testimony regarding his father. Even so, they wrote that the Sages added to the plain meaning of the Torah also the law of testimony by relatives; but the meaning of the text is also to command, according to the plain sense, that fathers not be put to death for the sin of their sons, and sons not be put to death for the sin of their fathers. Some even went so far as to say that the second law is derived from the end of the verse, "rather, each man shall die for his own sin," whereas the prohibition against accepting relatives is derived from the beginning of the verse. (See the Ran on Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 27b, Malbim, Ralbag, Radak, and others.)
Be that as it may, one must ask why in the books that enumerate the commandments by the medieval authorities (Rishonim), this prohibition that emerges from the plain meaning of the verse—namely, forbidding the execution of a son because of the father's sin—was not counted, and why they saw fit to mention only the prohibition that emerges from the homiletic interpretation, namely, the disqualification of relatives as witnesses.
Thanks in advance.
Answer
I once wrote an article on the Midah Tovah site about uprooted verses—that is, explicit verses that are not counted in the enumeration of the commandments and do not appear in Jewish law (for example, the cessation of one’s son’s labor on the Sabbath, aside from Rashba’s view brought in the Magen Avraham). I don’t have a good answer to this. It seems obvious that there is a prohibition here, and the halakhic decisors, out of habit, did not bring what does not appear in the Talmud or in the literature of the Sages. And clearly, the Hebrew Bible here is only a revealing indication; in truth, even without it we ought to have counted this prohibition, since a verse does not lose its plain meaning. This requires further analysis.
In parentheses I’ll note that this reinforces my general approach that the biblical text has no real status in Jewish law (apparently because it is open to many interpretations and is not unambiguous), but דווקא where the matter is clear, this really does require further analysis.
Discussion on Answer
No. My claim is about the present, not the past. The Sages probably drew from the biblical text as well. But nowadays that doesn’t happen. We don’t really learn anything from the biblical text. I’ve discussed this at length in several columns in the past (and systematically in the second book of the trilogy), so it’s not worth reopening that here.
Hello, and thank you.
One more point I wanted to sharpen regarding the above answer (to the first question): do you mean that the halakhic decisors did not bring this prohibition because it is not mentioned in the Talmud—in other words, they did not mention this particular prohibition, but within the prohibition they did mention, which refers to this verse, this prohibition of killing sons for the sins of their fathers is also included? Or do you mean that the halakhic decisors counted only prohibitions mentioned in the Talmud, and in the enumeration of the commandments they did not count at all those prohibitions not mentioned in the Talmud?
The second.
Hello again.
If I’ve understood you correctly, you mean to say that the enumeration of the commandments is merely a counting of the commandments of Jewish law, not the commandments of the Torah; and since the biblical text has no real status in Jewish law (in your words), the plain-sense commandments were therefore not counted.
Now, the source of the concept of the 613 commandments is in the Talmud in tractate Makkot (23b): Rabbi Simlai expounded, “Six hundred and thirteen commandments were said to Moses: 365 prohibitions corresponding to the days of the solar year, and 248 positive commandments corresponding to the limbs of a person.” And from here those who enumerate the commandments saw fit to identify those 613 commandments.
So you see that the point of departure from which those who enumerate the commandments set out was the project of counting the 613 commandments that were said to Moses at Sinai (as the Talmud itself says there). And surely the commandments of Jewish law were not said any more than the commandments according to the plain meaning of Scripture. If so, it follows that those who enumerate the commandments missed their goal, no?
Clearly. If there are more commandments, then commandments must be removed to make room for them. Of course, that doesn’t mean there are halakhic errors here, since removing commandments from the count is not always based on a halakhic consideration. In most cases a commandment is dropped because it is included within another one, not because it is not correct in itself.
For some reason it seems to me that here you wrote Moses and another. That commandments derived from interpretations should not be counted. That is of course incorrect (except for Maimonides’ view in the second root). For most of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), commandments derived from interpretation are also considered as though they were said to Moses at Sinai.
Hello, and sorry for the ongoing bother.
A. I did not mean that it is incorrect to count the commandments derived from interpretation, but rather that in any case, when there are commandments that contain both interpretation and plain sense, and for some reason the enumerators saw fit to count only one of them, the plain sense should be preferred over the interpretation.
B. Let me clarify my question:
Is the reliance on commandments written only in the Talmud a mistake from the outset, or is it a certain mode of counting?
So I understand there’s a new halakhic ruling that it’s forbidden to study Torah and not learn anything from the Torah.
So how does Maimonides rule the opposite? Was he mistaken?
“And one is obligated to divide his study time into three parts: one-third in the Written Torah, one-third in the Oral Torah, and one-third in understanding and grasping the end of a matter from its beginning, deriving one thing from another, comparing one thing to another, and understanding through the interpretive principles by which the Torah is expounded, until he knows what is the essence of those principles, and how to derive the forbidden and the permitted and the like from matters learned through the oral tradition. And this matter is what is called Gemara.”
Honorable “The Last Decisor,” are you asking me?
If so, it would be helpful if you would kindly point out where I wrote that new ruling you’re talking about (please indicate in which of the passages I wrote such a thing was said, maybe even in which line).
When there is both interpretation and plain sense, what is halakhically binding is always the interpretation. Therefore that is what they count. “An eye for an eye” means monetary compensation—that is the law, and not the plain sense.
B is a different question. I don’t think they made a mistake. Only in a place where there is a plain sense that is not contradicted by the interpretation, and it too remains intact—if for some reason they ignored it, that is a mistake in my view.
When you say that the biblical text has no real status in Jewish law, do you mean that Jewish law is drawn solely from tradition and received teaching?