Verses Lv06-13:14c describing the Priest Minchah offering
states
This is the offering of Aaron and of his sons, which they shall offer unto HaShem in the day when he is anointed: the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a meal-offering perpetually, half of it in the morning, and half thereof in the evening.
On a griddle it shall be made with oil; when it is soaked, thou shalt bring it in;
a broken meal-offering shall you offer it for a sweet savour unto HaShem.
Rashi explains the underlined word, broken by referencing another verse,
Lv02-05:06 which describes the fried meal offering:
And if thy offering be a frypan meal-offering, it shall be of fine flour unleavened, mingled with oil.
Thou shalt break it in pieces, and pour oil thereon; it is a meal-offering.
Hence the Rashi comment on Lv06-14c
The priest meal offering was broken in the same manner as the
frypan meal offering.
Verse Lv06-02b states
Command Aaron and his sons, saying: This is the Torah of the burnt-offering:
it is the up offering which goes up on its firewood upon the altar all night
unto the morning; and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning thereby.
The word Torah in this verse has 2 specific meanings
- It can mean the Bible, the book of the Torah
- It can mean guiding axiomatic principles
We shall explore the consequences of this in a moment. But first we give the
etymology of Torah. Torah comes from the Hebrew Biblical root,
Hey Resh Hey. which means to become pregnant. The translation of Torah
as meaning guiding axiomatic principles is similar to the English idiom,
embryonic idea which also uses pregnancy as a metaphor for axiomatic idea.
That is, we see the analogy, embryo:pregnant::embryonic idea:principles.
Rashi interprets guiding axiomatic principles to refer to broad sweeping
principles that apply universally to all areas of the sacrifices being spoken about.
Hence the Rashi comment:
As can be seen by the underlined words in the above cited verse, all up
offerings may have their organs on the firewood upon the altar all night
unto the morning.
To recap: Rashi infers that the specific remarks in Lv06-02 apply to all
up offerings from the emphasizing word, Torah which means axiomatic principles
which implies that the cited laws apply universally.
We can also understand why the Bible is called the Torah since all its principles
are really axiomatic motifs that guide us throughout life.
Advanced Rashi: Rashi makes further comments on this verse: This teaches
that an invalid offering whose invalidity was not noticed till the organs were placed on
the altar should remain there. It appears that this Rashi comment comes from the
word Torah which means axiomatic principles. But this is not the case.
We shall present an alternate derivation of this further Rashi comment in rule 7, Formmating
below.
For the moment we note an important concept about learning Rashi: Rashi may frequently
combine two separate Rashi comments in one Rashi with each Rashi comment
having a separate derivation. This can be very confusing for the reader.
A beautiful rule of grammar discovered by the great
Malbim is that there are two words for it in Hebrew
- Aleph Tauv Vav (Otho) means only it and
connotes limitation
- A terminal suffix vav means it
The examples below illustrate usage and connotation of Aleph Tauv Vav
- Verse Lv01-06b states
And he shall flay the burnt-offering, and cut only it into its pieces.
Rashi:
The priest only cuts the offering but does not cut the cuts
since the verse explicitly says cut only it
- Verse Lv02-06a states
Thou shalt break only it in pieces, and pour oil thereon; it is a meal-offering.
Rashi:
The priest only breakes the matzoh offering but does not further
break the broken pieces again since the verse explicitly says
break only it
- Verse Lv20-05b discussing the punishment of a person who
worshipped idols states
then I will set My face against that man, and against his family, and
will cut only him off, and all that go astray after him, to go astray after Molech, from among their people.
Rashi:
Although God places His Face against the person and his family nevertheless
God only cuts him off, but not his family, since the verse
explicitly says I will only cut him off.
We can slightly generalize the Malbim's principle as follows:
Any extra pronoun, or, full-word pronoun, when a suffix suffices,
indicates emphasis and can be translated using the word only.
We can apply this principle to verse Lv06-02:
Command Aaron and his sons, saying: This is the Torah of the up-offering:
It is the up-offering which goes up on its firewood upon the altar all night unto the morning; and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning thereby.
Any good high school student will recognize the underlined pronoun it as
unnecessary (You just stated the noun why introduce a pronoun immediately after it).
The verse reads quite smoothly, perhaps smoother, without the word it:
Command Aaron and his sons, saying: This is the Torah of the up-offering,
which goes up on its firewood upon the altar all night unto the morning; and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning thereby.
Applying our principle that unnecessary pronouns should be translated with
the word only we would translate Lv06-02 as follows:
Command Aaron and his sons, saying: This is the Torah of the up-offering:
Only It is the up-offering which goes up on its firewood upon the altar all night unto the morning; and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning thereby.
In our article Biblical
Formatting located on the world wide web at
http://www.Rashiyomi.com/biblicalformatting.pdf,
we have explained that such verses should be seen as indicating unspecified
emphasis. That is, the word only certainly creates emphasis. But we don't know
what is being emphasized, that is, the emphasis is non-specific. Note that
while the interpretation of the verse as indicating unspecified
emphasis is the simple intended meaning of the verse, the application of this
unspecified emphasis to something particular is exegetical and must be derived. The Talmudic
Rabbis traditionally interpret an unspecified emphasis as the worst case. Hence the Rashi
comment: If bestiality has been committed with the animal then even if it was inadvertently
placed on the altar it must be taken down since only it -
that is, only a proper up offering may be offered on the altar. Here Rashi
interprets only it to refer back to the up offerings which have been done
according to all requirements in the text.
Advanced Rashi: There is a big literature on whether Rashi indicates
the simple meaning of the text, intrinsic to it, or whether the Rashi comments are ways of
pegging oral laws on to the text. Our position is that very often Rashi comments are
reasonable interpretations of unpsecified emphasis. The unspecified emphasis is real
and intrinsic to the text but its application to specific contexts is not in the text
but a reasonable approach to the unspecified emphasis.
Thus here the Bible is talking about an up offering. The Bible then says only
this up offering is offered on the altar fire all night. The Talmudic Rabbis interpret
the unspecified emphasis of the underlined word only as referring to only up
offerings done according to proper procedure. The Rabbis then delimit only the worst
possible case where the animal committed bestiality. Such an animal cannot go up on the
altar nor remain there if it inadvertently already went up.
I believe the above approach to Rashi, interpretation of unspecified emphasis,
makes Rashis very palatable.
Note the contradiction in the following verse
discussing who eats a sin offering:
- Verse Lv06-19a states
The priest offering it for cleansing sin shall eat it; in a holy place shall it be eaten, in the court of the tent of meeting.
- But verse Lv06-22b states
Every male priest may eat thereof; it is most holy.
We see the contradiction, indicated by the underlined words. Which is it?
Is the sin-offering eaten by any male priest
or is it only eaten by the priest offering it.?
Rashi resolves this contradiction using the broad-literal
meaning method.
Any male priest who could have
offered the sin offering may eat it.
Here Rashi interprets
- Every male priests literally to mean any male priests
- The priest offering it broadly to mean the priest who could offer it
Sermonic points:
Although the Bible frequently emphasizes the values of individuality, here
the Bible emphasizes team work: It is the priestly team, not an individual,
who offers the sin-offering. It just so happens on any particular day that some
particular priest is offering the sin offering. But the whole unit gets to eat it
because the priests function as a team.
We have explained in our article
Biblical Formatting located on the world wide web at
http://www.Rashiyomi.com/biblicalformatting.pdf,
that the Biblical Author indicates bold, italics, underline by using
repetition. In other words if a modern author wanted to emphasize
a word they would either underline, bold or italicize it. However when the Biblical
author wishes to emphasize a word He repeats it. The effect - whether
thru repetition or using underline - is the same. It is only the
means of conveying this emphasis that is different.
With this in mind let us revisit verse Lv06-02b
which we studied above in rules #2,#3.
Command Aaron and his sons, saying:
These are the general principles of the UP-offering: ... an UP offering
on its firewood upon the altar all night unto the morning; and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning thereby.
Rashi comments on the repeated underlined words:
The repeated underlined words create emphasis: It is always an up offering
in all circumstances. The Talmud provides specificity to this emphasis by focusing
on a case where the offering was invalid - for example it had a blemish - it should
not have been brought. Nevertheless if it was already brought onto the altar fire
then we let it remain there because it is always an
up offering.
Advanced Rashi: As we have presented this Rashi it looks
quite reasonable. However the Rashi can become confusing because of conflicting
and different Rashi rules on the verse. We review the Rashis on this verse discussed
in rules #2,3,7:
- In rule 2 we saw that the word principles broadly extends the law
to all cases
All up offerings may have their organs on the altar fire all night
- In Rule 3 we saw that the redundant pronoun it which we have interpreted
only it is restrictive--only proper up offerings can continue
to remain on the altar fire; but not e.g. if bestiality has been committed.
- In rule 7 we see that the the repetition up offering up offering is
emphatic that it is still called an up offering (even if it shouldn't
have come up, e.g. because of a blemish!).
The advanced student of Rashi can now appreciate the problem with reading this verse.
Any one of the above 3 points reads smoothly by itself. But when the verse simultaneously
has the restrictive only it and the broadening up offering up offering indicators
the student can easily become confused. It begins to look arbitrary when the Talmud restricts
in one area and broadens in another.
Actually however we can redeem the intuitiveness of the Rashis by exploiting our
idea of unspecified emphasis. We agree to interpret it as only it and
to interpret up offering up offering as a bolded word. The verse then reads
as follows
Command Aaron and his sons, saying: These are
principles [of all] up-offerings - [in all circumstances, even
if they shouldn't have gone up, say, because of a blemish]
only them, [that is, only those that have been properly offered but not e.g.
an animal that committed bestiality, even if it was placed on the altar]; they
are placed on the altar fire the whole night till morning
The serious student of Rashi should carefully study the above verse with
its interpolated Rashi comments. As I indicated above each Rashi comment stands by
itself. To see all the Rashi comments simultaneously one has to combine the verse
phrases in the right way. One also has to stay on one's Rashi toes. There are three
different principles involved: word meaning, grammar, repetition. Only by fully
grasping all the intricacies of the verse can one really appreciate it. Finally I have
endeavored to capture all the Rashi comments in one punchy translation a technique I advocated
in my article Peshat and Derash