Thursday, April 06, 2017

Thoughts on Bava Batra 74-75

74:
An interesting al tikrei X but Y. Don't read yam but sar shel yam. How does this work? You need to know the Chronicles of Baal, where Baal slays Prince Yam and doesn't let him trespass on dry land. Then you know that Yam is a name. So what we are really saying is don't read yam lowercase but Yam capital.

75:
The derasha from Iyov that the righteous will eat a feast of the Leviathan and that merchants will deal in its flesh is interesting. If you read the many surrounding pesukim, you see that they are all preceded with the interrogative ha-. That is to say, "would you think it so that X?!" The implication is obviously that it is not so. This particular pasuk
  יכרו עליו חברים יחצוהו  בין כנענים

is missing the leading ha-, and it is then taken as a statement of fact about the future use of the Leviathan!

In the following section of gemara, a pasuk with the interrogative ha- is brought. How can they ignore the ha-, to say that it is a plaything?
ההשחק בו כצפור ותקשרנו לנערותיך:

It seems that there, it is saying that obviously humans cannot do it, to the exclusion of Hashem, who can do all this. If so, maybe we would say the same about the pasuk without the ha-, that it still is a question, but Hashem's intervention is different.

No comments:

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin