Who is this palit? Rashi states:
מ[מדרשו] לפי פשוטו זה עוג שפלט מן המלחמה, והוא שכתוב (דברים ג יא) כי רק עוג נשאר מיתר הרפאים, וזהו נשאר שלא הרגוהו אמרפל וחבריו כשהכו את הרפאים בעשתרות קרנים, תנחומא (חקת כה). ומדרש בראשית רבה (מב ח) זה עוג שפלט מדור המבול, וזהו מיתר הרפאים שנאמר (ו ד) הנפלים היו בארץ וגו' ומתכוין שיהרג אברהם וישא את שרה:
The word מדרשו, in brackets, is not in my mikraot gedolot, so let us pretend for a moment it is not there.
To translate: According to its simple meaning (peshuto), this is Og who had escaped from the battle, and this is what is stated in Devarim 3:11:
nish`ar, "remained," in that pasuk, in that Amrafel and his fellows did not kill him when they smote the Refaim in Ashterot Karnayim. (This is a citation from Tanchuma, Chukat, 25.) Rashi continues, but let us stop here for now.
Now this is quite surprising! How can Rashi label this peshat?!
Part of the surprise is that the one identified is Og. Og, after all, is very popular in aggada, with all sorts of fantastic stories about him lifting mountains, and tusks growing, etc.
Another part of the surprise it that in the immediate context, only one group is said to have a remnant that survived and fled to the mountains - that is the Sodomites. If it was a remnant of the Refaim, shouldn't the pasuk in close proximity have mentioned survivors?
Another part of the surprise is that if the Sodomites were explicitly said in close pasuk proximity to have escaped, and Lot was living in Sodom, as the pasuk states, we would expect a Sodomite to know and tell of Lot's capture.
Yet there are strong text-based reasons for associating this palit with Og, and the fact that Rashi labels this as peshuto, and selects this as peshat as opposed to an even more midrashic statement from Bereishit Rabba (and which Rabbi Yochanan states) demonstrates that Rashi would consider this peshat.
What are the textual features in play? They all center on the word happalit.
1) Note that no name is given, and in general Chazal, and Rashi in their footsteps, do not like random people popping out of the woodwork. This is the classic closed canon approach, which states that if an unknown person is mentioned in place X, more information about him can be found in place Y, where both X and Y are within the canon of Jewish Scripture. An example of this approach is associating with Eliezer the eved Avraham that went to find a bride for Yitzchak.
2) The word happalit has the heh hayediya, the definite article. Claim if you like that this is a midrashic feature, but a frequent approach is that the heh hayediya designates something of someone already known from elsewhere. Thus, the encouragement to look for more information. (The midrash from Rabbi Yochanan that Og was also the sole remnant of the Nefilim, which we will discuss shortly, is based in part of the heh hayediyah. He is a survivor and remnant from before. When before? From Noach's flood.)
3) The word happalit is in the singular. In contrast, the Sodomites who survived were more than one, and are described in the plural. Three pesukim earlier:
they that remained fled to the mountain. Yet happalit implies only one. Thus, we might say that it refers to a survivor from a different group.
Then, we turn to that pasuk in sefer Devarim:
only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Rephaim, and we see that the Refaim were smitten by Amrafel in Emek Refaim, then we have the sole survivor. The fact that this is hundreds of years later does not have to matter even on a peshat level, given the insanely long lifetimes of people back then.
Of course, I would claim that peshat in that pasuk in Devarim is that a bunch of Rephaim survived, but the years passed and they slowly died out, and Og was the last of these mighty Refaim, having been born to then many generations later.
However, Rashi, and the midrash upon which he bases himself, does not have to say this. We thus have a match for the singular palit, and evidence that only a single survivor survived from the Refaim -- and further, that there were survivors of those smitten in Emek Refaim -- not something mentioned explicitly in Bereishit -- and so, it is quite likely that Og is the palit.
And this on the level of peshat. Now, Some versions have midrasho lefi peshuto, which would have Rashi presenting two midrashim, and labeling one of the two as the more peshat oriented of the two. It is possible, but not necessary, in my opinion. What we consider peshat is not necessarily the same thing Rashi considers peshat.
Rashi then presents the midrash from Bereishit Rabba, labeling this extension of the Og identification as midrash:
ומדרש בראשית רבה (מב ח) זה עוג שפלט מדור המבול, וזהו מיתר הרפאים שנאמר (ו ד) הנפלים היו בארץ וגו' ומתכוין שיהרג אברהם וישא את שרה
I will not go into local textual features of the Noach story to show what implies there was a survivor there. There are such textual features, I believe. However, local to parshat Lech Lecha, the strongest textual feature is happalit. The heh hayediah implies that this is some known entity, and specifically one known for escaping. Thus, we have the escapee from the flood of Noach.
Why specifically from the flood of Noach? Rashi cites Bereishit Rabba which cites the pasuk from parshat Bereishit, in Bereishit 6:4:
benei elohim. Their descendants were giants. And even on a peshat level, the Refaim were supposed to be fearsome and giants. So the identification of Refaim and Nefilim is somewhat warranted. But how could the giants have survived if everything alive perished. It must be that there was a survivor of the flood from the giants. And this was the palit, who was Og.
This additional stretch is more clearly in the realm of midrash, and Rashi labels it as such. This does not mean that Rashi does not believe it to be true, I would posit -- just that the methods used to make this connection are midrashic methods rather than peshat-methods.
Ibn Ezra is a pashtan of the type that we think of nowadays when we think of peshat. He takes exception to Rashi's labeling of this midrash from Tanchuma as peshuto shel mikra. In one of his commentaries, he omits the words veyesh derech derash, but in the other he writes it. I posit that his writing veyesh derech derash is assigning other explanations to the realm of derash, and thus he is obliquely taking on Rashi.
Ibn Ezra writes:
ופי' הפליט שברח ונמלט מבני סדום, וכן בא אלי הפליט מירושלים (יחז' לג, כא). ויש דרך דרש:
What is Ibn Ezra's point here? He cites Yechezkel 33:21:
happalit with Og in Lech Lecha on a number of levels. Firstly, by showing that happalit exists elsewhere, he demonstrates that this is just Biblical style to mean one of those who had escaped. Thus, on a peshat level,
1) the plural vs. singular distinction is of no significance
2) nor is the heh hayediyah
Thus, we can return to just the local-to-Lech Lecha features, note that there were many Sodomites who escaped, and this was one of them.
Note also something that is not immediately apparent if we only focus on Ibn Ezra and not on other suggests, say in Rashi. The peshat which Ibn Ezra proposes is entirely at odds with the midrash. This is significant in determining Ibn's Ezra's position of peshat relative to derash. While some pashtanim say ain mikra yotzei midei peshuto, and imagine that peshat and derash are two levels of meaning encoded in the pasuk, and that these levels coexist, one cannot say this here. Either the palit was one of the Sodomites or else it was Og. It couldn't be both. (Unless one goes through unbelievable kvetches.) This is a peshat that actively rejects the derash, and the derash is really all that we know from sources of classic Chazal.
Ibn Ezra thus appears to take the position -- and he takes this position elsewhere as well -- that one can argue with Chazal, proposing peshat against what they say. Perhaps we can fit this in with, e.g. the position of R' Avraham son of Rambam and Shmuel haNaggid that narrative midrashim are not halacha leMoshe miSinai but rather their own opinions, and therefore one can argue on them or accept them -- whatever appeals to the intellect. Or perhaps we can find some other explanation of Ibn Ezra's readiness to propose peshat that contradicts, rather than coexists with derash.
Meanwhile, if we compare what Rashi labels as peshat and derash respectively, at least in this instance we discover that they can work in harmony. It is either Og, one of the Refaim, or else it is that same Og, but we add some information that he had been previously saved from the mabul.
Video to come, I"Y"H.
3 comments:
btw, why does it still say רָאשֵׁי הַמַּטּוֹת - מַסְעֵי בְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל on the side of the page?
I like to chazer.
;)
Seriously, I have to remember to update the file it fetches it from by hand. Thanks for the reminder.
What does it mean that many other mefarshim say it's Malach Michoel?
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