Q&A: An Analogy Between Plain Meaning and Derash
An Analogy Between Plain Meaning and Derash
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
In Sanhedrin 15a, in the discussion about one who has intercourse with a male animal, as far as I understand, the Talmud there makes a derivation in two stages. First, it derives the verse “whoever lies with an animal” by means of the principle of “if it is not needed for the matter itself” to refer to the one with whom intercourse was performed, and afterward there is an analogy between the one who lies and the one with whom intercourse was performed in order to derive the number of judges. Is there here an analogy between the plain meaning and the derash of the verse? Between the word actually written and the word that we derived through “if it is not needed for the matter itself”?
I just saw in the Talmudic Encyclopedia that they bring an analogy of “appears-appears” based on the read form and the written form of the word, which may be somewhat similar to this issue—but still not on the level of “if it is not needed for the matter itself,” where it is hard to say that this is the plain meaning of the verse in any sense.
I heard an explanation that the analogy is between the verse in Leviticus (“a man who gives his emission”) and the verse in Exodus, but I seem to remember hearing from the Rabbi that an analogy must be within the same verse or within the same topic in the Torah (for example, adjacent verses or the same section). How should this derivation be understood?
Answer
I don’t see there an analogy between plain meaning and derash, but rather a consideration that is entirely derash. The verse teaches the law of the passive partner through “if it is not needed for the matter itself.” The Talmud wonders why it did not simply write the passive partner explicitly and teach it through the plain meaning rather than through derash. Because of that difficulty, it derives from this that the wording was chosen in order to draw an analogy between the active and passive partners. This is not the standard hermeneutic principle of analogy, one of the methods of derash that compares two plain textual contexts; rather, it is an independent derash that comes to explain why the Torah chose a complicated formulation when a simpler one was available.