It was taught: R. Simeon b. Eleazar said: [If he vows] '[Konam. If I taste] fish [day],' he is forbidden large ones but permitted small ones '[Konam] if I taste dagah,' he is forbidden small ones, but permitted large ones. '[Konam,] if I taste dag [and] dagah,' he is forbidden both large and small ones. R. Papa said to Abaye: How do we know that '[Konam, If I taste] dag' implies large ones only? because it is written, Now the Lord had prepared a great fish [dag] to swallow up Jonah? But is it not written, Then Jonah prayed onto the Lord his God out of the fish's [dagah] belly? This is no difficulty: perhaps he was vomited forth by the large fish and swallowed again by a smaller one. But [what of the verse] And the fish [dagah] that was in the river died? did only the small fish die, not the large? — Hence dagah implies both large and small, but in vows human speech is followed.The nature of Rav Pappa's prooftext is interesting, and should be investigated. But first we shall consider the gemara's question and answer. Rav Pappa's prooftext is Yonah 2:1, which reads:
dag -- וַיְמַן ה דָּג גָּדוֹל, לִבְלֹעַ אֶת-יוֹנָה, but the second part of the verse is not explicitly cited, even though it mentions dag.
The gemara counters that the next verse reads:
| ב וַיִּתְפַּלֵּל יוֹנָה, אֶל-ה אֱלֹהָיו, מִמְּעֵי, הַדָּגָה. | 2 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly. |
The gemara's response is that "This is no difficulty: perhaps he was vomited forth by the large fish and swallowed again by a smaller one."
There are three difficulties with the gemara's response here. Firstly, it is far-fetched to claim that he was vomited and reswallowed by another fish. Secondly, at the very end of the perek, we see:
| יא וַיֹּאמֶר ה, לַדָּג; וַיָּקֵא אֶת-יוֹנָה, אֶל-הַיַּבָּשָׁה. {פ} | 11 And the LORD spoke unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. |
The brayta, after all, is discussing one who takes a vow not to eat dag, or not to eat daga. Small fish are small fish one would eat. Think herring, or goldfish. Large fish are large fish. Think carp, or think larger fish than that.
By definition, any fish capable of swallowing a man whole is a large fish. So it does not make any sense to say that a large fish first swallowed Yonah, then vomited him out, and then a small fish swallowed him. That "small" fish would have to be large enough to swallow Yonah, and thus would be a large fish. One is forced to say, if one wishes to salvage this answer of the gemara, that the terms are being used in a relative sense. But that does not really work well with the setup of the gemara.
Rather, one need not wait until the disproof from the fish of the Nile dying in the plague of blood for a disproof. The first is quite sufficient, and the setma digmara is perhaps overanalyzing Rav Pappa's proof.
Indeed, as with the conclusion of the gemara, it all goes after lashon benei adam. However, the impression one gets from the conclusion is that Rav Pappa's proof is rejected entirely. This need not be so. Rather, we may read it just as we did earlier in the gemara, where there was an argument about whether bishul encompasses tzli, with an accompanying prooftext from II Divrei Hayamim, where they "cooked" the Pesach, where clearly it meant they roasted it. As the gemara noted there, the basis for the dispute was not whether one follows Biblical or human speech patterns, but rather the verse was a mere asmachta, a hinting support, but not a real basis. We might say a similar thing for Rav Pappa's proof.
Indeed, Rav Pappa's proof is not as ambitious as it seems to have been taken. If we read him closely, he is only bringing a prooftext that dag means a large fish. He says nothing about the meaning / implication of daga. True, they are set up in the brayta as opposite one another, but all Rav Pappa said to Abaye was that he had a proof that dag meant large fish. And especially as it was an asmachta bealma, counterproofs from daga are not relevant.
When discussing this with my father-in-law and with my brother-in-law, both of course knew the pasuk by heart, but both independently came up with a suggestion as to the nature of Rav Pappa's proof. And that was that the pasuk states:
dag is associated with the large variety. Of course, one can counter that the fact that it was necessary to place the adjective there shows that dag need not refer to large fish, but at any rate, this is likely the basis of Rav Pappa's derasha. And it need not even bother us, if the rules of derash do not allow for this objection, or especially if it was intended as an asmachta bealma. Meanwhile, while the next pasuk does indeed refer to daga, it does not say it is a dagah gedolah. If so, there is no basis for objection. There is often such a chasm between the words of the Amoraim and the words of the setama digmara.
This idea of transfer from large fish to smaller fish is not unique to this possibly rejected explanation in the setama digmara. It also occurs, in different form, in Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer. Instead of focusing on large vs. small fish, it looks as the masculine vs. feminine and interprets it as male fish followed by female fish. Now if this was really from Rabbi Eliezer, then we have pre-Talmudic precedent to bolster the otherwise somewhat forced interpretation. But if it is actually, as dated, a post-Talmudic work, then perhaps this midrash was inspired, in part, by this back-and-forth in our gemara. (But perhaps this idea is mentioned in other midrashim as well? It is at the least inspired by the shift in the words in the pasuk.)
The gemara, and Rav Pappa's proof aside, what are we to make of this shift in language from dag to daga? We might say it is no big deal, and a switch from one to another should not be considered, from a peshat perspective. Alternatively, we might make something of it. Note that we could make a nice transition from the first pasuk of perek 2 to the last pasuk of perek 2:
| יא וַיֹּאמֶר ה, לַדָּג; וַיָּקֵא אֶת-יוֹנָה, אֶל-הַיַּבָּשָׁה. {פ} | 11 And the LORD spoke unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. {P} |
Meanwhile, the middle section reads like a perek of Tehillim. And like many perakim in Tehillim, there is a tenuous, or absent, connection between the designation of mizmor and the situation in which it was authored on the one hand, and the actual content on the other.
This certainly seems to hold true here. Sure, there are aspects that connote being swallowed by a fish, but not exactly. We have מִבֶּטֶן שְׁאוֹל which has mibeten, but Sheol is not exact. Pasuk 4 certainly holds true: וַתַּשְׁלִיכֵנִי מְצוּלָה בִּלְבַב יַמִּים, וְנָהָר יְסֹבְבֵנִי; כָּל-מִשְׁבָּרֶיךָ וְגַלֶּיךָ, עָלַי עָבָרוּ. And so does pasuk 6: אֲפָפוּנִי מַיִם עַד-נֶפֶשׁ, תְּהוֹם יְסֹבְבֵנִי; סוּף, חָבוּשׁ לְרֹאשִׁי. But pasuk 7, not so much: לְקִצְבֵי הָרִים יָרַדְתִּי, הָאָרֶץ בְּרִחֶיהָ בַעֲדִי לְעוֹלָם; וַתַּעַל מִשַּׁחַת חַיַּי, ה אֱלֹהָי. What is the pit? And if it is metaphorical, how do we know the rest is not also metaphorical, just like it is in a number of other perakim which occur in Tehillim? More problematic are the pasukim that suggest he has already been saved. שָׁמַעְתָּ קוֹלִי in pasuk 3 and וַתַּעַל מִשַּׁחַת חַיַּי in pasuk 7. There is midrash, in Talmud Yerushalmi 5:1, that explains that Yonah was the son of the widow of Tzorfat whom Yonah brought back to like, and this deals handily with interpreting these pesukim as Yonah already having been saved. Alternatively, it hooks in quite well with the midrash that there was transference from one fish to the other.
Or alternatively, this is the style of such Biblical poetic prayers. Regardless, this is a poem / prayer attributed to Yonah in such a situation. And so, we might suggest, the author inserted this second (earlier?) source in the narrative, together with the poem's attribution. And that attribution had the slightly different designation for the fish, namely daga, which was of course not modified.
No comments:
Post a Comment