Q&A: And Jacob Sent Messengers Ahead of Him
And Jacob Sent Messengers Ahead of Him
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi. I wanted to know whether it makes sense to use the following as an interpretive consideration:
It says, “And Jacob sent messengers ahead of him.” From the plain sense of the story, we are dealing with flesh-and-blood people.
However, from the plain wording of the verse it is (perhaps) speaking of angels, and therefore there are two possible ways to interpret whom he sent: flesh-and-blood people or actual angels.
Now I am torn between the two possibilities, with no real way to decide between them. But if the text had wanted to tell me that it was flesh-and-blood people, all it had to do was write “people.” Therefore, it is talking about angels.
That is, from the fact that the Torah put me into an uncertainty that cannot really be resolved, I infer the new possibility (the one that departs from the plain sense).
I am writing this because I did not really find a convincing source for interpreting it specifically as angels (people say that in nearby passages the use of the word “messenger” refers to the messengers of God, but there it is stated explicitly that it is His messengers). Thank you very much, and have a good and blessed week.
Answer
I do not deal with the Bible.
Discussion on Answer
With all due respect to the Rabbi, it feels to me like you did not read what I wrote. I am asking this question because I read what you wrote exactly on this topic in the book Good Measure 1 on the weekly Torah portion. Besides, the question is not about biblical scholarship, so I do not understand the connection to the answer; I could have asked the exact same question in the same way about an interpretation of a word in a verse with a halakhic implication.
I am asking whether a consideration like this is legitimate, whether in Bible interpretation or in the world of homiletic interpretation.
It is legitimate exactly like its opposite.
But it is not symmetrical. The plain sense of the story indicates that apparently it is talking about sending flesh-and-blood people, as you wrote there in the article. I will explain:
The text puts me into uncertainty because it wrote “messengers.”
It would *not* have put me into uncertainty if it had written “people.”
Amir Hoze, see Hullin 140b: “crouching”—because it does not say “sitting”; and Nedarim 30b: “one who vows [to abstain] from those who see the sun.”
The root l-‘-k in Ugaritic (a dialect close to the Hebrew dialect of the biblical period) parallels the Hebrew root sh-l-ḥ. In the Bible, mal’akh means “messenger” (and in an interesting parallel, melakhah means an occupation / line of work). The Holy One’s messengers were also called mal’akhim, and only at a later stage (not in the biblical period) was a distinction created between an ordinary messenger and an angel.