I didn’t understand what you meant by saying that sometimes things are written from the editor’s point of view.
P.S. the part connected to Bible scholars in these questions is very simple; the issue is only what the Sages thought.

Sometimes there are verses that are indeed placed at a certain point in the text, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were said at that moment. The editor writes it and decided to place them there. That is the meaning of the expression “to this very day,” which is written from a later point of view. Regarding the sciatic nerve this is very prominent (“Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve… to this day”). There the phrase “to this day” appears, and the Tannaim disputed at the end of the chapter of Gid HaNasheh when that verse was said.
By people who deal with Bible I do not mean Bible critics, but those who study Bible. They also deal with what the Sages thought. Rabbi Medan, Rabbi Samet, Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, Rabbi Amnon Bazak, and others.

With God’s help, eve of the Sabbath, Shemini 5782

To the Yeshiva Student—greetings,

Sennacherib’s policy, as we see from the exile of Israel, was not to carry out a “complete exile.” He exiled a large part of the people but left many from the tribes of the kingdom of Israel in the land, and brought into the land foreign settlers from Cuthah and Sepharvaim. The method was to create in every conquered land a mixture of peoples, “one kind with another unlike it,” so that “divide and rule” would work. That is how Sennacherib “mixed up the nations,” in order to prevent rebellious organization.

He apparently acted this way in Ammon too. Unlike the kingdom of Israel, in the kingdom of Ammon there remained an autonomous Ammonite “king,” but he was an Assyrian vassal. Yet the population over which he “ruled” was a mixed dough: only part of it consisted of authentic Ammonites, and a large part was made up of foreign peoples exiled to the land of Ammon and over time assimilated, to one degree or another, into the receiving people. Therefore Rabbi Yehoshua could determine that the “Ammonite” before you is not necessarily an ethnically Ammonite person.

As stated, in Ammon there remained a “vassal-king” “ruling over his mixed dough” until the days of Jeremiah—namely Baalis, who arranged the assassination of his counterpart in the kingdom of Judah, Gedaliah son of Ahikam, who had been appointed by the king of Babylon to rule over the Jewish vine-dressers and farmers left in Judah. About what remained of “Ammon,” Jeremiah prophesied in chapter 49 the prophecy of exile and return.

Regards,
Yaron Fishel Ordner

A reality like this, in which even in “Ammon” there was no genetically pure Ammonite population, underlies Zeresh’s hesitation: “If Mordecai the Jew is of Jewish seed…” because a person might be called “a Jew” based on his origin from Yehud Medinata, even if he is not “of Jewish seed.”

The Amoraim who discuss the passages in the book of Samuel in detail certainly know the book they are discussing very well (unlike certain yeshiva students who know the Hebrew Bible from surfing polemics websites 🙂 ), and they know perfectly well that Saul’s kingship came as a result of Samuel’s premature aging.

Rather, the Sages say that the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw that Saul would need to be pushed aside for David, and also foresaw Samuel’s distress over “the nullification of his life’s work in his own days” (which is why Samuel cries out to God all night on Saul’s behalf). Therefore the One “who calls the generations from the beginning” planned that old age would come upon him suddenly years earlier, so that he should not appear to have died in the prime of life.

Regards,
Alter Jungleit

On this principle of “divine planning in advance” based on an expected future event, the Sages also explain the exclusion of Ammonite and Moabite women from the prohibition of “shall not enter the congregation of the Lord,” because the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw “two precious offspring” in the future—Ruth the Moabite and Naamah the Ammonite.

The fact that some verses are not in their place is irrelevant to the question from Samuel, because there Samuel’s old age is the reason for appointing his sons, which is the reason for Saul’s appointment, as the Maharsha already noted. Besides that, the old age is also mentioned by the people in their request for a monarchy:
“Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah. And they said unto him: Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways; now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.”
1 Samuel chapter 8.
(As for Sennacherib, Jeremiah lived after him, so that definitely does not work as an answer.)
I really will, with God’s help, direct the question to people more involved in the Hebrew Bible.
Thank you very much.

To the owner of the changing screen names, regarding Samuel:
Nice idea, the problem is that it doesn’t fit the Talmud very well:
“The Holy One, blessed be He, said: What shall I do? If Saul dies, Samuel will not allow it. If Samuel dies while still young, people will speak critically after him. If neither Saul dies nor Samuel dies, David’s kingship has already arrived, and one kingdom does not overlap another even by a hair’s breadth. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: I will cause old age to come upon him suddenly.”
Ta’anit 5.
But you definitely reduced the force of the question.

As for Sennacherib, let’s assume the answer you gave is the height of straightforwardness—the Mishnah also speaks about Moab:
“Rabbi Yehoshua said to him: But are the Ammonites and Moabites still in their place?”
From Yadayim 4:4.
And about Moab it says:
“Moab has been at ease from his youth, and he has settled on his lees, and has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither has he gone into exile; therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent has not changed. Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, that I will send tilters to him, and they shall tilt him, and empty his vessels, and smash their jars.”
Jeremiah 48.

Did your knowledge of the Hebrew Bible come, in my opinion, from dancing the kazachok??

By the way, the prophecy of the restoration of Ammon contradicts Zephaniah’s prophecy:
“I have heard the reproach of Moab and the insults of the children of Ammon, with which they have reproached My people and magnified themselves against their border. Therefore, as I live, says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, a possession of nettles and salt-pits and a desolation forever.”
Zephaniah 2.
Maybe someone like you, who is expert in the Hebrew Bible from surfing apologetics websites, can help resolve the contradiction without disagreeing with the Mishnah, which claims that the restoration of the children of Ammon did not take place before Zephaniah.

I don’t know how, when I wrote the questions, I forgot this difficulty:
At the end of Makkot the Talmud says:
“Once again they were going up to Jerusalem. When they reached Mount Scopus they tore their clothes. When they reached the Temple Mount they saw a fox emerging from the place of the Holy of Holies. They began to weep, and Rabbi Akiva laughed. They said to him: Why are you laughing? He said to them: Why are you weeping? They said to him: About a place of which it is written, ‘And the stranger who draws near shall die,’ and now foxes walk in it—should we not weep? He said to them: Therefore I laugh, for it is written, ‘And I will take to Me faithful witnesses, Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah.’ Now what connection is there between Uriah and Zechariah? Uriah was in the First Temple and Zechariah in the Second Temple! Rather, Scripture linked the prophecy of Zechariah with the prophecy of Uriah. In Uriah it is written, ‘Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field…’ In Zechariah it is written, ‘Old men and old women shall yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem.’ Before the prophecy of Uriah was fulfilled, I feared that the prophecy of Zechariah might not be fulfilled. Now that the prophecy of Uriah has been fulfilled, it is known that the prophecy of Zechariah will be fulfilled.” In this language they said to him: “Akiva, you have comforted us; Akiva, you have comforted us.”
Makkot 24b.
The Talmud here treats the fox’s emergence as proof of the fulfillment of Uriah’s prophecy. The problem is that the one who prophesied “the Temple Mount as the high places of a forest” was Micah:
“Micah the Morashtite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying: Thus says the Lord of Hosts: Zion shall be plowed as a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the House as the high places of a forest.”
Jeremiah 26 (also found in Micah 3:12).
About Uriah the verse says only:
“There was also a man who prophesied in the name of the Lord, Uriah son of Shemaiah from Kiriath-jearim, and he prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah.”
There.
And Jeremiah’s words there are:
“And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord: If you will not listen to Me, to walk in My Torah which I have set before you, to listen to the words of My servants the prophets whom I send to you, sending early and often, but you have not listened, then I will make this House like Shiloh, and this city I will make a curse to all the nations of the earth.”
Since Uriah prophesied an ordinary prophecy of destruction, the proof for the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy had been available long ago and has nothing to do with the poor fox.
Tosafot there already asked this question and answered that it implies that Uriah spoke like Micah. That answer is simply not correct, as above.

With God’s help, 24 Adar II 5782

To the Yeshiva Student—greetings,

You added a difficulty from Moab, which in Jeremiah’s prophecy (48) is mentioned as one that “has not gone into exile,” and I raised a difficulty from Baalis king of Ammon, who was in Jeremiah’s time (and who sent men to assassinate Gedaliah son of Ahikam).

Before I repeat my answer from Friday night (which works nicely for both difficulties), I will explain from where the Sages learned that “Sennacherib mixed up the nations.” The source is Sennacherib’s boast when he came to besiege Jerusalem: “For I have done it by the strength of my hand… and I have removed the boundaries of peoples…” and Jonathan translated there: “I exiled peoples from country to country.”

This was not only Sennacherib’s method, but also that of his predecessors—Tiglath-Pileser III, Shalmaneser V, and Sargon II—and it continued in the days of their successors, the kings of Babylon. In a case of a severe rebellion they exiled almost the entire nation, and in a less severe case they sufficed with exiling the “elite.” Thus Nebuchadnezzar in the days of Jehoiachin exiled only “the craftsmen and the smiths,” and when the rebellion recurred, he exiled nearly the entire nation, leaving only a few “vine-dressers and farmers” with an autonomous governor.

In Sennacherib’s time rebellions broke out throughout the empire. After suppressing the revolts in Babylon, he turned to suppress the rebellion in the west and arrived in the region with a huge army. Sidon and Phoenician cities (except Tyre) were conquered, and Ashdod, Edom, Ammon, and Moab submitted. He laid a prolonged siege on Jerusalem, offering its inhabitants exile to “a land like your own,” a plan that was never carried out. According to the Bible, because of a plague that struck his army; and according to Sennacherib’s boast inscription, because Hezekiah agreed to pay tribute. (And of course I do not expect the boasting king of Assyria to mention the blow he took, which caused him to give up the exile plan 🙂 )

Accordingly I suggested on Friday night that Sennacherib left the kingdoms of Ammon and Moab in place, but took part of the elites into exile, and settled in them “colonists” from foreign lands who muddled the ethnic “purity” of Ammon and Moab. The serious blow to their “ethnic purity” was received by Ammon and Moab at the end of the Persian period, when the Nabateans invaded their lands and completed the process of “mixing up the nations” that Sennacherib had begun.

Regards,
Y. F. O.

As for the tension between Zephaniah’s words about an “eternal desolation” and Jeremiah’s words about restoring their fortunes—it is possible that the Sages understood Jeremiah’s later words as announcing a softening of the divine decree because their deeds had improved. Presumably the commentators dealt with this issue.

I noticed that Jeremiah’s prophecy about Edom opens with content identical to Obadiah’s prophecy, to which the prophet adds additional material. It is possible that the prophecy in the same chapter about Ammon also predates Jeremiah’s time, and was included in his book because of his own addition, “and afterward I will restore,” but this requires investigation.

A. The difficulty from “has not gone into exile” is not answered by your nice assumptions, which still leave us with exile.
B. The more we minimize the part that happened in Sennacherib’s days, the less likely it is that the Sages really meant these theories.
C. The Sages assumed as a presumption that Sennacherib came and mixed up the nations even where they had no information about it; that assumption should be reconsidered in light of updated theories.
D. If Sennacherib brought only a minority of exiles, then even after assimilation it would still be forbidden to marry members of the mixed population.
E. The Sages discussed whether the people known today as Ammonite / Moabite / Egyptian are that ancient nation, without any knowledge they had of their identity with the ancient people, and relied on the presumption in point C. (And regarding Egypt there is a tannaitic dispute whether they returned or not.)

In detail, regarding what Shatzal says: what he says in A does not resolve difficulties A and B. And to resolve D (or the verse in Nehemiah) he added the Nabateans—an incorrect assumption, as I wrote in E.

A few more notes:
A. On Friday Shatzal wrote:
“He exiled a large part of the people but left many from the tribes of the kingdom of Israel in the land, and brought into the land foreign settlers from Cuthah and Sepharvaim. The method was to create in every conquered land a mixture of peoples, one kind with another unlike it… Apparently he acted this way in Ammon too. Unlike the kingdom of Israel, in the kingdom of Ammon there remained an autonomous Ammonite ‘king,’ but he was an Assyrian ‘vassal,’ while the population over which he ‘ruled’ was a mixed dough of which only part were authentic Ammonites and a large part were foreign peoples.”
Today he wrote (after explaining that the exile was not always complete):
“Accordingly I suggested on Friday night that Sennacherib left the kingdoms of Ammon and Moab in place, but took part of the elites into exile, and settled in them ‘colonists’ from foreign lands who muddled the ethnic ‘purity’ of Ammon and Moab. The serious blow to their ‘ethnic purity’ was received by Ammon and Moab at the end of the Persian period, when the Nabateans invaded their lands and completed the process of ‘mixing up the nations’ that Sennacherib had begun.”
No big deal; a person is always allowed to change his mind, right?
B. In Nehemiah it says:
“On that day they read in the book of Moses in the hearing of the people, and it was found written in it that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the congregation of God, because they did not meet the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them, though our God turned the curse into a blessing.”
Nehemiah 13.
But one could argue that although by that time an anonymous Ammonite was no longer presumed to be a real Ammonite, there were some who had detailed lineage (maybe?? happy is he who believes).
C. The question about Sennacherib appears in the commentary to Yadayim and in Tosafot on Yevamot.

With God’s help, Saturday night, Shemini 5782

To the Yeshiva Student—greetings,

Nachmanides also speaks of the partial exile of Moab in Sennacherib’s time, in his novellae to Yevamot 76:

“…And everywhere the mixing up is attributed to Sennacherib, as it is written, ‘And I removed the boundaries of peoples,’ meaning that he removed the boundaries of all the nations. Sennacherib did not exile Ammon and Moab completely, but he destroyed part of them, as it is written about them in Isaiah: ‘Within three years, as the years of a hireling, the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt… and the remnant shall be very small, not great.’ Thus some remained who were not exiled at all, and about them it was said in Nebuchadnezzar’s prophecy, ‘Moab has been at ease from his youth, and has not gone into exile.’ But since Sennacherib brought others and settled them in those places he had destroyed, as was his practice throughout the world, therefore any convert who comes from the land of the children of Ammon is permitted to enter the congregation, for most are from those other peoples, and whoever separates is presumed to have separated from the majority. Nevertheless, there were some who remained in their place from earliest times, even after Nebuchadnezzar…”

So we learn that there are two prophecies about the exile of Moab:

A prophecy from Isaiah’s days, set for “within three years as the years of a hireling,” in which it says that there will remain in Moab “a very small remnant, not great” [and opposite the many exiles, Sennacherib brought, according to Nachmanides, foreign settlers who turned the Moabites into a minority in their own land].

And a second prophecy of Jeremiah, about an additional exile of Moab (fulfilled perhaps in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, with the Nabatean invasion), in which Ammon and Moab lost their political independence and their religious-cultural identity. Thus in the days of the Tannaim it apparently was clear that “the dripping waters exceeded the flowing ones,” and therefore most of the Tannaim held that the Ammonites and Moabites in their lands were not authentic.

Regards,
Y. F. O.

The Tannaim’s opinion that “Ammon and Moab” returned could exist under the conditions of the Persian and Hellenistic empires, when the world became a “global village.” That is indeed what happened among their Jewish neighbors, who from a few tens of thousands at the beginning of the “Return to Zion” became hundreds of thousands and more by the end of the Temple period.

But among the Jews there were prophets, sages, scribes, and the Men of the Great Assembly, who led the people to continue seeing their land as the religious center and not to assimilate into the culture of their neighbors. In the case of the Moabites and Ammonites it is very hard to assume a “repatriation” on such a scale.

The Men of the Great Assembly established communities in every place, in which the Torah, the words of the prophets, and the prayers for redemption were central to life. They were careful to make pilgrimage three times a year, and thus Zion continued to serve as the spiritual and religious center. And from religious consciousness to actual aliyah, the road is short. Therefore although most of the people still remained in exile, there was constant and impressive growth in the Jewish settlement in the days of the Second Temple, until the destruction and suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt reduced the Jewish settlement in its land.

With God’s help, 24 Adar II 5782

To the Yeshiva Student—greetings,

Studying Jeremiah 26 in its original context teaches us that the “men of the elders of the land” who defended Jeremiah compared his harsh words, “this House shall be like Shiloh and this city shall be desolate without inhabitant,” to the harsh words of Micah the Morashtite: “Zion shall be plowed as a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the Temple Mount as the high places of a forest.” Jeremiah, like Micah, prophesies total destruction, and our duty is to act as Hezekiah did, whose response to Micah’s harsh prophecy was that he “feared the Lord and entreated the favor of the Lord, and the Lord relented of the evil He had spoken against them.”

Surely Rabbi Akiva knew that “Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah,” whom he signed as witnesses on the deed of sale, are not “Uriah son of Shemaiah” who was murdered in the days of Jehoiakim, nor “Zechariah son of Iddo” the prophet who had not yet been born. But Rabbi Akiva says that Jeremiah did not choose witnesses named “Uriah” and “Zechariah” for the field-sale transaction for nothing—a transaction meant to clarify to the people that the exile was temporary and in the end we would return to the land. The two witnesses allude by their names to the two prophets—the earlier Uriah and the future Zechariah—to teach us that the two opposite sides, the terrible destruction and the rebuilding, are two sides of one coin. There is a long-term process here: the hard destruction paves the way for repentance that brings restoration and healing.

Rabbi Akiva saw the end already at the beginning. In our generation there are many who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust and the terrors of war, but also saw with their own eyes rebuilt Jerusalem, with very old men sitting in it alongside boys and girls playing in its streets.

Regards,
Ami’oz Yaron Schneizler

Nehemiah 13 we will, with God’s help, leave for tomorrow.

The fact that Nachmanides already wrote that there is no contradiction between the verse “Moab has been at ease,” etc., and an earlier exile or destruction does not lessen the question. In any case, thanks for the new reference.

Continuing from yesterday: the answer of Tosafot (Yevamot 76b) and the Rash is that Nebuchadnezzar really exiled Ammon, and they called it by Sennacherib’s name.

Shatzal, I noticed you have a habit of ignoring arguments that were said and do not fit your answers, and in this case that includes the fact that Rabbi Akiva’s whole linkage was based on “the Temple Mount as the high places of a forest.”

To the Yeshiva Student—greetings,

To your distinction between Jeremiah’s prophecy and Micah’s prophecy, I answered that the elders defending Jeremiah tell the king that Micah had already prophesied such a prophecy. Both “this House shall be like Shiloh” and “the Temple Mount as the high places of a forest” mean the same thing: total destruction. That is the nature of a destroyed place: it becomes a dwelling place for wild animals.

Rabbi Akiva and his fellow Tannaim were expert in Scripture forwards and backwards (and in their time even the ordinary person, who from age five to ten memorized the twenty-four books of the Bible from morning till night, had mastery of Scripture; all the more so the Tannaim, for whom close analysis of verses was the basis for their halakhic and faith conclusions). So when Rabbi Akiva speaks of Uriah’s prophecy, “the Temple Mount as the high places of a forest” (an expression he preferred because of the fox), it was obvious to everyone that he meant Micah’s prophecy, identical in content to Uriah’s prophecy.

Only in an atmosphere of total expertise in Scripture could one instantly raise such a complex associative move, linking the fox with the “high places of the forest,” and from Micah to Uriah son of Shemaiah, and from him to “Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah,” the witnesses to Jeremiah’s deed of acquisition, and from there to “Zechariah son of Iddo,” the prophet of consolation.

On the one hand, this looks like an unrestrained “Hasidic vort,” and on the other hand there is here a deep insight into Jeremiah’s purchase of the field just before the destruction, in order to express that at the very moment of destruction the seeds of redemption are already sprouting, and the prophecies of destruction and consolation “were spoken in a single utterance.”

If you merit to read Scripture and the words of the Sages as a source for beliefs, opinions, and values, you will also understand the secrets of style and literary design, in which complementary opposites, associations, and wordplay are among the building blocks of the art—and not “glitches.”

Regards,
Hanoch Henekh Palti-Feinschmaker

Nachmanides showed that already in Assyrian times most of the Moabites were exiled from their land, for Isaiah prophesies that within three years “the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt, and the remnant shall be very small.”

Regards,
Yaron Fishel Ordner

With God’s help, 24 Adar II 5782

To the Yeshiva Student—greetings,

Regarding your question—why the reading of the prohibition of “Ammonite and Moabite” led to separation from marriage with them after the authentic Moabites and Ammonites had already been nullified in the majority—Rabbi Cherlow gives a good answer (in “Ammonite and Moabite…,” on the Kipa website) to a similar question: why did Nehemiah fight marriages to Ammonite and Moabite women, if the halakhah had already been established as “an Ammonite, but not an Ammonite woman; a Moabite, but not a Moabite woman”?

Rabbi Cherlow answered:

“Nehemiah is not conducting the struggle on the background of the Torah commandment and the prohibition of Ammonite and Moabite. Nehemiah is conducting the struggle because this is assimilation. It is possible that formally there is no prohibition; more than that—it is possible there was a formal conversion (just as Maimonides explained regarding Solomon’s wives).

However, these women imported their foreign culture into the Israelite nation, allowing that culture to seep into the people of Israel. Hence the great struggle. The fact that the children are growing up as half-gentiles, and that this is expressed in their language, only proves that Nehemiah’s struggle is justified.

This teaches you that meeting the halakhic criteria is not enough from the point of view of prophecy. Prophecy examines things from within—‘and the Lord sees into the heart’—and it determines that despite the fact that this process may have been in accordance with Jewish law, it was a process of assimilation. That is how it should be judged, and therefore Nehemiah led the struggle against it.”

Similarly, one can explain the persuasion to separate from the Ammonites and Moabites. Halakhically the prohibition does not apply, because these are not ethnically “Ammonites and Moabites.” But the psychological trait of cruelty and alienation is deeply embedded in Ammonite-Moabite culture, and the new Ammonites-Moabites also adopted this negative character trait.

Regards,
Eliam Fishel Workheimer

And so it seems to me that this is the Sages’ intent in Megillah, where the sages of Israel suggested to Ahasuerus that he refer Vashti’s trial to the people of Moab, who are “at ease from their youth.” After all, Vashti’s trial takes place in Shushan, but the spirit of the judges is exactly the spirit of “ease”—detached indifference devoid of compassion—which characterized Ammonite-Moabite culture.

Likewise, the identification “Memucan is Haman” is explained by the Maharal in Or Chadash not as a literal identification, since the Talmud says that Ahasuerus killed the judges who advised him to remove Vashti. The identification is in the mode of operation. Both Memucan and Haman take a personal, impulsive anger and turn it into an “ideology for fixing the world.”

It isn’t respectable to punish Vashti / Mordecai just like that because she doesn’t honor you. One has to find here some ideological threat to the order of government or family in the entire empire. The woman / nation that refuses threatens the entire order of society and state. No less 🙂

A. Regarding Nachmanides’ words: the fact that there is another contradiction in the Bible does not prove the first one is not difficult (on the contrary, see “the tanna taught and omitted”?), especially since one can always invent harmonizations (see Tyre).
B. The place to which you brought Rabbi Cherlow’s words—they are not relevant.
I don’t think there is any need to add more than the following verses:
“On that day they read in the book of Moses in the hearing of the people, and it was found written in it that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the congregation of God, because they did not meet the children of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them, though our God turned the curse into a blessing. And it came to pass, when they heard the Torah, that they separated all the mixed multitude from Israel.”
Nehemiah 13.
As for his actual words, maybe I’ll respond later.

Oops, mistake.
Shatzal’s proof in the name of Nachmanides was that if Isaiah already says that Moab was exiled, then there is no contradiction between “Moab has been at ease” and the Sages’ assumption that Sennacherib mixed up all the nations.
And what I wrote in the previous message was a mistake.