The trup on יִלְבָּשָׁם הַכֹּהֵן תַּחְתָּיו

Summary: How shall we make sense of Rashi's comment on the tevir? Shadal makes up new trup and makes it simpler.

Post: Consider the following pasuk and Rashi in Tetzaveh (Shemot 29:30):

30. Seven days shall the one of his sons [who will be] the kohen in his place wear them, the one who is to enter the Tent of Meeting to serve in the Holy.		ל. שִׁבְעַת יָמִים יִלְבָּשָׁם הַכֹּהֵן תַּחְתָּיו מִבָּנָיו אֲשֶׁר יָבֹא אֶל אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לְשָׁרֵת בַּקֹּדֶשׁ:
Seven days: [I.e., seven] consecutive [days].		שבעת ימים: רצופין:
shall… [who will be] the kohen in his place wear them: [The son] who will arise from his [Aaron’s] sons in his place to the Kehunah Gedolah, whom they will appoint to be Kohen Gadol.		ילבשם הכהן: אשר יקום מבניו תחתיו לכהונה גדולה, כשימנוהו להיות כהן גדול:
the one who is to enter the Tent of Meeting: [I.e.,] that kohen who is prepared to enter the inner sanctum on Yom Kippur, and that is the Kohen Gadol, for the service of Yom Kippur is acceptable only through him. -[from Yoma 73a]		אשר יבא אל אהל מועד: אותו כהן המוכן ליכנס לפני ולפנים ביום הכפורים, וזהו כהן גדול, שאין עבודת יום הכפורים כשרה אלא בו:
one of his sons… in his place: [This] teaches [us] that if the Kohen Gadol has a son who equals him, they must appoint him Kohen Gadol in his place [i.e., after him]. -[from Sifra on Lev. 6:15]		תחתיו מבניו: מלמד שאם יש לו לכהן גדול בן ממלא את מקומו, ימנוהו כהן גדול תחתיו:
[who will be] the kohen in his place: From here there is proof that every expression of כֹּהֵן is an expression of doing, of actually serving. Therefore, the cantillation of the “tevir” extends before it [indicating a connection to the following word].		הכהן תחתיו מבניו: מכאן ראיה כל לשון כהן לשון פועל עובד ממש, לפיכך ניגון תביר נמשך לפניו:

Specifically the last Rashi on this pasuk. I cite all of Rashi's commentary on this pasuk for reasons which will become clear later.


Rashi brings proof that kohen is a verb. Thus, hakohen tachtav is the one who ministers in his place. The proof is the tevir extending before it. What does this mean? Well, the trup on the pasuk seems to be:

with darga on יִלְבָּשָׁם, tevir on הַכֹּהֵן, and tipcha on הַכֹּהֵן. But before providing an analysis of how this fits Rashi in word and theory, we should consider the following statement from Shadal:

"Rashi is gores יִלְבָּשָׁם with a tevir and הַכֹּהֵן with a mercha {and תַּחְתָּיו still with the tipcha}, and so is primary. But in the manuscript in my hand, and in the two manuscripts of the Rambamn {=Mendelsohnn} it is not. And really, it does not seem that הַכֹּהֵן should be like המכהן. Rather, it is a verse written in shorthand, 'the kohen who arises in his place', just as is rendered in the Targum Yerushalmi."

What is Shadal saying? That in יִלְבָּשָׁם הַכֹּהֵן תַּחְתָּיו, we want to place הַכֹּהֵן תַּחְתָּיו as a single unit, joined by mercha tipcha. And that יִלְבָּשָׁם stands separate from that. Thus, there is a tevir on the verb יִלְבָּשָׁם (shall wear them), and the actor is הַכֹּהֵן תַּחְתָּיו ("he who kohens in his place"). Of course, this trup is at odds with what appears in our Mikraos Gedolos.

By 'manuscripts', Shadal is not referring to manuscripts of Torah, but to manuscripts of Rashi's commentary. In terms of the texts of Chumash, I don't see that the Teimanim have it any different from what is pictured above. So too the Leningrad Codex.

In what manuscript is this Rashi missing? See for instance this manuscript from Rome, 1470:

The first orange box designates the beginning of pasuk 30. The second designates the beginning of pasuk 31. The Rashi in question should be the last one on pasuk 30, but it is not present.

(Indeed, it looks like there are a few runs through the pasuk, which might indicate a secondary authorship.)

It is also missing in the Rashi pictured to the right, Munich, 1233, which often is more expansive and includes other Rishonim as well.

And so too in this one, Cod Hebr 3, this Rashi is missing:

So maybe Rashi never said it. On to a bit of analysis. Let us turn to Mendelsohnn's Bei'ur:

First, he cites Rashi, as in the printed text, and notes that it does not exist in the two manuscripts in his possession. Then he writes:

 "And the intent is that the word kohen is a present-tense verb, referring to the actual action of serving (ein dienmender?), and not as a name to the owner of that occurrence (ein diener?). 

[And the explanation of this Rashi is as follows, in my humble opinion: That without a doubt this verse is written out of order, and its meaning is really: ילבשם הכהן מבניו תחתיו, for the custom of the Scriptures is to connect the verb with the noun, and to establish the word תחתיו {the adverb?} at the end, such as in (Bereshit 2:21) ויסגר בשר תחתנה {with mercha tipcha silluk} , and (Mishlei 11:8) ויבא רשע תחתיו  {with mercha tipcha silluk}, and others like them. And the verb with the noun are joined as well by the trup, as it is in the aforementioned verses and the ones like them. For the noun is what carries the occurrence of the action and is connected to it, which is not so for תחתיו {the adverb} which is another matter and a different informing {perhaps a prepositional phrase by itself?}. And so too if the noun and the adjective come combined with the word תחתיו, the noun and adjective come together and are also joined by the trup, and the word תחתיו is at the end and separated from them, such as (II Shmuel 10:11) וימלוך | חנון בנו | תחתיו {with tevir under  וימלוך, mercha tipcha on  חנון בנו , and silluk on תחתיו}, with  חנון בנו connected via mercha tipcha, and the word וימלוך 'fitting' as well to be joined with them, except that one cannot have three connected words in trup, so that it is separated a bit with the tevir which separates a bit less than the tipcha.

{Josh: Wickes would not necessarily agree. Rather, syntactically, where a verb leads, in your continuous dichotomy, you repeatedly chop off parts of speech from the end. Maybe the motivator for this is as described, or maybe it has to do with the weight of the verse. But the VERB part-of-speech status of  וימלוך  would lead to chopping off first תחתיו and next חנון בנו.}

And the proof regarding the twisting of the verse which stands before us, is that in the verse (Vayikra 6:15)

15. And the kohen who is anointed instead of him from among his sons, shall prepare it; [this is] an eternal statute; it shall be completely burnt to the Lord.

טו. וְהַכֹּהֵן הַמָּשִׁיחַ תַּחְתָּיו מִבָּנָיו יַעֲשֶׂה אֹתָהּ חָק עוֹלָם לַי־הֹוָ־ה כָּלִיל תָּקְטָר:

Rashi writes explicitly:

who is anointed instead of him from among his sons: [This is to be understood as if transposed: The kohen] who is anointed from among his sons instead of him.

המשיח תחתיו מבניו: המשיח מבניו תחתיו:

And he intends by this to connect the adjective הַמָּשִׁיחַ, 'who is anointed', to the noun מִבָּנָיו, in the way of language. 

And it appears to me that the cause of this twisting is so as not to explain תַּחְתָּיו as referring to יִלְבָּשָׁם, as it occurs in the verse וימלוך חנון בנו תחתיו, where תחתיו goes back on וימלוך. Therefore it is established between הכהן and מבניו which relate to one another. And since the word הכהן is more closely related to מבניו than to תחתיו, it is therefore not with a mercha, but rather with a tevir which separates a bit less than the tipcha.

And behold, יִלְבָּשָׁם הַכֹּהֵן are connected with trup of darga tevir {with darga as a conjunctive servus of the disjunctive tevir}, as is the fashion of the verb with the noun, or the participle {?}. And now, know that if the word הַכֹּהֵן is a participle, then the trup works out correctly, with יִלְבָּשָׁם הַכֹּהֵן joined, and הַכֹּהֵן with a tevir to inform on the twisting of הַכֹּהֵן מִבָּנָיו תַּחְתָּיו {into הַכֹּהֵן תַּחְתָּיו מִבָּנָיו}. And then the word הַכֹּהֵן  would be a present-tense participle in place of the future tense, in its normal manner, and its meaning is 'who will be yekhahen of his children'. But if it is a שם תאר {noun}, perforce we would need to add a verb which connect the two nouns, in this manner: hakohen (asher yekhahen [or: asher yakum]) mibanav. And then we would need to have the word הַכֹּהֵן with a trup sybol which divided more than a tipcha, which would be a zakef katon, and יִלְבָּשָׁם with a pashta {???} (since there are two vowels in the word הַכֹּהֵן before the melody). And therefore, Targum Yonasan ben Uziel, who explains הכהן as כהנא {and thus a noun, the kohen}, and not דיכהן {as a verb}, and thus renders it a noun, needs to add the word דיקום {who arises}.

And now you can understand Rashi correctly. And the Raza {R' Shlomo Zalman Hanau (Katz), in sefer Shaarei Zimra ש"ה {?} chapter 2, touches a bit of this in his explanation of this. However, some of it he saw, and some of it he did not see.

And the author of Mirkeves HaMishna, in his gloss {/critique} of the aforementioned sefer (which I possess in manuscript) wants to flip the intent of Rashi, and it does not seem so from his [=Rashi's] language."

Thus, Mendelsohnn explains Rashi as being in accord with our trup. Shadal, meanwhile, differed and has Rashi (or whoever authored this comment we find in our printed Rashi) have a different trup. I think Shadal's explanation is the simpler of the two. But then, he makes up trup to render the explanation simple. Also, I am not sure what nimshach should mean in לפיכך ניגון תביר נמשך לפניו.

Aside from any of this, we have to be careful about different theories of explaining trup. It is possible that whoever wrote the comment, if from the time of the Rishonim, had a different theory of the function of trup than Shadal or Mendelsohnn, in which case they are working to explain it within the wrong theory.

There is further to explore in this, in the seforim mentioned, such in Shaarei Zimra.