Ishmael Sacrificed Grasshoppers
Ronit Nikolsky
Introduction
The interpretation of biblical verses and
narratives is apparent already in the Bible itself. Certainly by the
Second Temple Period exegetical explanation and expansion of the
biblical verses and stories were part of the Jewish culture. Such
expansions and exegesis, perhaps a result of the work of small study
groups, is prevalent in many Second Temple and Late Antique
compositions, such as Pseudepigrapha or the Dead Sea Scrolls. Much of
the material found its way into the rabbinic literature.
The exegetical material found in rabbinic writings
varies in terms of its antiquity and origin. In the Tannaitic Period,
interpretive material was used as an argument in a halakhic debate.
Some interpretations stemm from oral traditions that were passed on
since the Second Temple Period, other interpretation are new, and at
time are even an ad-hoc creations constructed for literary purposes.
In order to study each of these cases separately, I will use the
concept of “exegetical motif.” An exegetical motif
is an idea, of how to explain a particular biblical verse. An
exegetical motif appears as a short explanation, supported by a
narrative unit that expands the biblical scene, usually termed a
“gap-filling story”; it illustrates the situation that is
not told in the biblical text.
Such exegetical motifs with narrative expansions
are found in the rabbinic literature with regard to Hagar.
The story of the expulsion of Hagar posed a
difficulty for the rabbis. The biblical text does not appear to give
a good enough reason for it, stating that “... Sarah saw the
son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing”
(Gen 21:9). After seeing Ishmael playing, Sarah demanded the
expulsion of Hagar and her son. Apparently, simply “playing”
did not seem to the rabbis to be a good enough reason for expulsion.
This issue comes up in a Tannaitic discussion in
the Tosefta, and solutions to the situation of the biblical scene are
suggested.
The solution that the rabbis found was to explain
the word “playing” in the verse in a way that would make
the story acceptable. The word was explained as indicating a grave
sin committed by Ishmael, one that would serve as a good reason to
expel him and his mother.
We find in the Tosefta four such explanations,
four different sins, which are four exegetical motifs used for the
word “playing” in the verse from Genesis. These are: 1.)
Ishmael was an idol-worshiper; 2.) Ishmael’s behavior was
incestuous; 3.) Ishmael was a murderer and 4.) Ishmael threatened
Isaac’s inheritance. Each of these sins is an appropriate
reason for Abraham to expel Hagar and Ishmael, and all four
exegetical motifs are found in one passage in Chapter 6 of Tractate
Sota in the Tosefta.
One of these motifs, namely the claim that Ishmael
was an idol-worshiper, appears in the previous chapter of the Tosefta
as well, in Chapter 5 of the same tractate.
In this article I will study the two passages
about the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael found in the two chapters of
the Tosefta. I will try to trace the origin of the four exegetical
motifs found in Chapter 6. As to the motif that shows Ishmael as an
idol-worshiper, which appears in two separate chapters, I will try to
decide which of the two contexts is the original, if either of them.
1. Tosefta Sota 6:6
The verse about Hagar, which is interpreted
in the Tosefta 6:6, is Gen 21:9, “And Sarah saw the son of
Hagar the Egyptian which she bore to Abraham playing.” Three
exegetical motifs for this verse are said to come from sages of the
school of Rabbi Akiva. Alongside R. Akiva’s interpretation of
the verse, there are interpretations by two other rabbis. All these
Akivian interpretations are challenged by Rabbi Shimon son of Yochai
(henceforth, Rashbi), who then offers his own interpretation, which
is the fourth exegetical motif of this verse.
The passage begins with the
statement that “R. Shimon son of
Yochai said: Four things R. Akiva was learning [from the text] but my
opinion [about this verse] make more sense than his,” then
it runs as follows:
1.
R. Akiva learned, “And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian
which she bore to Abraham playing (מצחק),”
the “play (צחוק),”
which is said here, means “idol worshipping.”
[We learn this when we look at the verse
in the narrative about the golden calf] which says (Exodus 32:6),
“The people sat down to eat, and they drank, and they rose to
play (לצחק).”
2. This teaches that Sarah our mother saw
Ishmael building bemas,
and hunting grasshoppers and sacrificing and burning incense to an
idol.
3. R. Eliezer, the son of R. Yose the
Galilean says: The [word] “playing”
means incest.
2b. [We learn this, when we look at the
verse in the narrative about Joseph with Potiphar's wife], which says
(Gen 39:17): “The Hebrew slave [which you brought to us] came
to me [to play (צחק)].”
4. This teaches that Sarah saw Ishmael
conquering the roofs and abusing the women.
5. R. Yishmael says: the word “play”
refers to manslaughter.
[We learn this when we look at the verse]
which says (2Sam 2:16) “[And Abner said to Joab:] let the young
men rise and play
before us. And Joab said: Let them rise. And they rose and passed by
the number, and held each other’s head, and [each] his sword at
the side of the other, and they fell [dead] together.”
6. Teaching [us] that our mother Sarah
saw Ishmael take bow and arrow and shoot it toward Isaac, as it says
(Proverbs 26:18-19), “As a madman who throws firebrands... so
is the man who deceives [his neighbor and says ‘I am only
playing!’],”
etc.
7. But I say [i.e., Rashbi]: God forbid
that there will be such in the house of this pious man! Is it
possible, in the house of one about whom it is told, “for I
have chosen him that he may charge his children and his household
after him to keep the way of the Lord” (Gen 18:19), etc., that
there will be idol worshipping, incest and manslaughter?
Therefore, the “laughing,”
which is mentioned here, is about inheritance:
8. When our father Isaac was born to our
father Abraham everyone was glad, and they were saying, “A son
is born to Abraham, a son is born to Abraham, he will inherit a
double portion of the inheritance!” And Ishmael was laughing in
his mind and saying, “Don't be fools, don't be fools, I am the
first-born, and I get the double portion.”
9. From the continuation of the
[narrative] I learn [this], since it says: “And she said to
Abraham, send away this slave-woman and her son, so that the son of
the maidservant will not inherit,” etc.
In his interpretation, R. Akiva (§1) studied
the usage of the word “playing” (מצחק)
in another biblical verse, namely in Exod 32:6. In Exodus the word
“to play” (לצחק)
describes the Israelites’ act of worshipping the golden calf.
R. Akiva takes the semantic context from the verse in Exodus over
into the narrative of the verse in Genesis, concluding that in the
verse in Genesis, the word “playing” refers to idol
worshipping as it did in the verse in Exodus. We learn that Ishmael
was an idol-worshiper and, therefore, the expulsion of him and his
mother was justified.
In what follows (§2) R. Akiva offers a
gap-filling story
that describes Ishmael’s idolatrous custom: Ishmael built
altars, hunted grasshoppers, sacrificed and burnt incense to idols.
Hunting grasshoppers in itself, and even eating them, is not
forbidden in Jewish culture,
but the idea of sacrificing a grasshopper to an idol is puzzling; we
do not know of any such custom.
But while the nature of the act is not clear, the meaning of it in
the passage is obvious: it is an act of idolatry.
In the next sections (§§3-6) we find two
other interpretations of the word “playing” by two other
Tannaitic sages, R. Eliezer son of R. Yose ha-Glili and R. Yishmael.
They interpret the word “playing” using a technique
similar to the one used by R. Akiva, that is, comparing it with a
word of the same root in another verse, taking over the meaning from
the new verse to the Genesis narrative, and offering a gap-filling
story that expands the biblical narrative by using the new meaning of
the verse.
R. Eliezer, the son of R. Yose (who lived one
generation after the Bar-Kokhba revolt),
interprets the word “playing” as referring to an
incestuous act. He has understood this from the word לצחק
in the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Gen
39:17), where the word refers to sexual play. His gap-filling story
tells about Ishmael’s incestuous behavior.
The other sage, Rabbi Yishmael (of the same
generation as R. Akiva), understands the verse from Genesis as
referring to manslaughter. The biblical narrative, which R. Yishmael
quotes, is that of the young men of Joab and of Abner who “played”
(in fact, fought) until all of them were dead. The gap-filling story,
which R. Yishmael provides, tells how Ishmael was shooting arrows at
Isaac.
In this last gap-filling story, we find an extra
detail which was lacking in the other two gap-filling stories; this
story has a supporting verse (Proverbs 26:18-19):“as a madman
who throws firebrands and death, so is the man who deceives his
friend and says I am only playing (מצחק).”
In the final sentences of this passage (§7),
Rashbi criticizes the interpretations of the other Tannaitic sages.
He is not arguing directly against their interpretive method, but
against the conclusions that stem from these interpretations. It
cannot be imagined, says Rashbi, that such grave sins would have been
committed in the house of Abraham, about whom it is said (Gen 18:19),
“For I have chosen him that he may charge his children and his
household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing
righteousness and justice.” From this verse we learn that
Abraham was a good educator and a good manager of his household and
one cannot imagine having idol-worshipping, incestuous behavior or
manslaughter in his house. Rashbi’s alternative interpretation
(§8) is not based on comparing the use of the word “playing”
in the Genesis verse to that in other biblical narratives. He
understands (§9) the verse in Gen 21:9 from its immediate
textual context, that is, the verse following it (Gen 21:10) that
reads, “For the son of this maidservant will not inherit
together with my son.” Since the next verse talks about
inheritance, says Rashbi, we can assume that the verse, “And
Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian which she bore to Abraham
playing,” also refers to inheritance. Here Rashbi offers his
own gap-filling story, describing Ishmael’s thoughts and
intentions concerning Abraham’s inheritance.
Methods of Interpretation
R. Akiva’s method of interpreting biblical
verses, as it appears in the Tosefta passage just studied, involves
understanding verse A by pointing to a similar lexical component in
verse B, and then interpreting verse A according to the semantic
field of verse B. This is an early rabbinic method of interpretation,
attributed to Hillel and is called “analogy” (gzera
shava).
The method of analogy ignores, in the first instance, the context of
the lexical components, and relies on the phonetic similarity. Later,
the context is introduced into consideration. Because of this initial
stage, this method can be called, using the (not very accurate, but
hopefully indicative) term, the “deconstructive method.”
The other examples of Akiva’s interpretative method are not
necessarily analogies, but they also exhibit the use of a single
aspect in the verse as a source for non-contextual understanding of
the verse in question, thus they are also deconstructive.
These examples of the deconstructive method are
actually not extreme ones, certainly not the most extreme
deconstruction that R. Akiva is said to be capable of. R. Akiva is
known not only to take a word out of its context; he can make
“mountains of interpretations” based on one letter.
Rashbi, on the other hand, proposes a method of
interpreting the text, which does not deconstruct it, but on the
contrary, understands the meaning of a sentence from its immediate
context. This method has ended up being known as “a matter
understood by its context,” or “a matter understood by
its end” (davar halamed me‘inyano or davar
halamed misofo), in the traditional lists of rabbinic
interpretive techniques (Bacher 1990, I, 142; Kahana 2006, 14). This
method does not appear to be popular in rabbinic literature. It
occurs considerably less often in the literature than do other
methods of interpretation.
The archeology of the passage in Tosefta Sota 6
The three interpretations of the school of R.
Akiva, put together, result in Ishmael committing what is conceived
of as three grave sins in the Jewish culture: idol-worshipping,
incest and manslaughter.
These sins are part of the list of seven sins,
which not only Jews but also Gentiles are expected to avoid. But it
seems that these three sins form a short list on their own in
Tannaitic literature. These sins are usually said to be committed by
Gentiles; in one case in the Tannaitic literature Israelites of the
early period also commit them. In all cases where there is a
reference to these three sins, it is a society and not an individual
which is the sinner. The gravity of the sins is made obvious by
connecting them to great calamities that befall the sinners.
When associating Ishmael with these sins, the Tosefta presents him
not only as a foreigner, a Gentile, but as a heavily sinful one as
well.
It is not necessary for Ishmael to commit all
three sins in order to be declared unwanted in the house of Abraham.
The existence of these three exegetical motifs certainly is
excessive. It seems that the reason behind piling up all these
explanation is a literary one: constructing a list of three offenses
that together form a well-known list (at least well known in the
Tosefta). Such an accumulation creates a literary tension, which is
waiting to be resolved. And indeed, following these three
interpretations, we find that the fourth one, that of Rashbi.
Rashbi’s interpretation overpowers all previous ones, and
serves as the solution to the literary tension created before. It is
the climax of the passage. The Tosefta passage is, then, a
well-structured literary text.
A closer look at the “building blocks”
of the passage reveals a discrepancy in the apparent symmetry. The
three exegetical motifs are not of the same exegetical value.
The second exegetical motif explains the word
“playing” as incest, an act belonging to the semantic
field of negative sexual activity. Although the most common meaning
of the root צחק
or שחק
in biblical Hebrew is to laugh, to sport or to play,
this root does appear in the biblical text in a sexual connotation as
well. One such case is the verse alluded to by R. Yosse (Gen 39:16);
another case where the sexual connotation is also very obvious is Gen
26:8, where “Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out of a
window and saw Isaac fondling (מצחק)
Rebecca his wife.” We see, then, that the interpretation of R.
Eliezer, the son of R. Yosse the Galilean, is not very innovative,
perhaps not an interpretation at all, but almost a straightforward
understanding of the verse.
The third exegetical motif leads us in a different
direction. We already noted above that the gap-filling story of this
motif, unlike the others, is supported by a biblical verse from
Proverbs. The text in the Tosefta explains, in fact, that the verse
(Proverbs 26:18-19), “As a madman who throws firebrands and
death, so is the man who deceives his friend and says I am only
playing,” refers to Isaac and Ishmael. This practice of showing
how verses from the later books of the Bible refer to events from the
Pentateuch is typical of rabbinic culture.
This exegetical motif could, then, be quite old, originally
constructed around the verse in Proverbs and reworked by an editor or
author of the Tosefta into the context of Gen 21:9, which is under
discussion.
As opposed to the two motifs discussed above,
where we find a satisfying raison d’être, the
first exegetical motif, where the word “playing” is
explained as idol-worshipping, is the most unusual, and perhaps the
most innovative. Why would the word “playing” mean
idol-worshipping? One can conjecture a remote semantic connection if
one thinks of the word “playing” as referring to singing
and dancing, and if one then connects this to the singing and dancing
that perhaps took place in the worshipping of local gods. This move
does seem a bit conjectural, and in itself would not be a
sufficiently obvious explanation of Ishmael’s behavior. But R.
Akiva did, brilliantly, find the word “playing” in the
verse in Exodus 32:6 where the singing and dancing of the Israelites
is closely related to the worshipping of the golden calf. The
interpretive move in this case is indeed innovative, since it stems
from a biblical verse, which is unusual, but does make the connection
between playing and idol-worshiping. Thus Hagar, the Gentile woman,
and her son Ishmael, the idol-worshiper, should indeed be expelled,
lest Isaac learns the bad customs . R. Akiva’s interpretation
is innovative and well focused on the narrative discrepancy.
It seems, then, that the editor/author of this
passage created literary tension by compiling three exegetical motifs
attributed to the school of R. Akiva. The first is perhaps an
original exegesis by R. Akiva, the second, an almost banal one, which
could have been created ad hoc for this passage, and a third, which
is originally an exegesis of a verse in Proverbs, explaining it as
referring to the Isaac-Ishmael story. To these three arguments the
editor/author added a fourth one, which criticizes the previous three
interpretations, and serves as the literary and ideological climax of
the passage.
The issue at hand in the
Tosefta passage is a question of exegetical strategies; Hagar and
Yishmael are considered only in as much as the case serves the
discussion about exegesis. The focus on exegetical technique becomes
even more obvious when we consider the context in which we find this
discussion. The interpretation of Hagar’s expulsion in the
Tosefta is part of a sequence of four interpretations of biblical
verses. The three other verses are Numbers 11:22, Ezek 33:24 and Zach
8:19.
The passage from the Tosefta about the four
exegetical topics over which Rashbi and R. Akiva differ is quoted
within the discussion of the water of bitterness.
Why was this digression inserted into the text of the Tosefta?
In order to answer this question, it will be useful to check the
parallel passage in the Mishna.
2. Mishna Sota 5
In the parallel chapters in the Mishna, the
sequence of the four exegetical issues over which R. Akiva and Rashbi
differ is missing. But we do find, in the middle of the discussion
about the water of bitterness, a different digression, one that
presents some of R. Akiva's interpretations of biblical verses.
Here is a summary of this digression:
1. Within the halakhic discussion of the
unfaithful wife, R. Akiva introduces a new personage to the
discussion, the lover; the lover, says R. Akiva, is also tested by
the water of bitterness. Akiva learns this by using a sophisticated
interpretive method on verses from Numbers (5:11-31), understanding
this from an appearance of the same word twice in one biblical
passage. R. Yehoshua and R. Yehuda, the Prince, both make reference
to opinions of earlier sages, which agree with R. Akiva’s
conclusions. The agreement with established authorities also imparts
authority to R. Akiva’s interpretation. This passage has an
introductory nature and it is a later addition to a list of Akivian
interpretations.
2. Next, R. Akiva learns the rule that a
loaf of bread, which was in an impure vessel, is itself impure. This
understanding agrees with what was known already to R. Yochanan son
of Zakai, a rabbi of great authority who lived one generation
earlier, but it contradicts a straightforward command found in a
biblical verse (Leviticus 11:33). R. Akiva again uses a sophisticated
interpretive move to show that the rule is, in fact, based on a
biblical verse. R. Yehoshua is happy with R. Akiva’s
interpretation.
3. R. Akiva explains a contradiction
between two biblical verses regarding the distance that one is
allowed to walk on a Shabbat. The halakhic rule is a known one, and
it is not dependant on any biblical verse; R. Akiva’s
innovation is the connection he makes between the rule and the
biblical verse.
4. R. Akiva uses a sophisticated
interpretation of an apparently surplus word in the biblical text to
explain how the reading of the “song of the sea” (Exod
14:1) was performed: Moses uttered one sentence, explains R. Akiva,
and the Israelites repeated it. In opposition to R. Akiva’s
interpretation, R. Nehemia claims that both leader and people were
singing together at the same time. The implication of R. Nehemia’s
opinion is that the Holy Spirit descended on the Israelites as much
as it did on Moses; otherwise, how could they have known what to sing
along with Moses.
5. Yehoshua son of Hyrcanus, who is
presented as a pupil of R. Akiva (Rosen-Zvi 2006b, 117), interprets a
verse from Job to prove that Job worshipped God out of love and not
out of fear, as was understood by R. Yochanan son of Zakkai. The
former learned this from a straightforward reading of a verse in the
book of Job. Yehoshua’s interpretation is sophisticated and
follows the Akivian method of interpretation.
In his study of this Mishnaic chapter, Ishai
Rosen-Zvi concluded that the intention of the digression from the
halakhic topic was to show and praise R. Akiva’s method of
interpreting the scriptures. What is perhaps implied, but not
specified strongly enough in Rosen-Tzvi’s article is that the
important factor in R. Akiva’s innovation is not his method of
interpretation, but the fact that he insists on having a biblical
support for all halakhic rules.
The need to combine halakha with biblical context is so strong, in R.
Akiva’s view, that one may even use “extreme”
interpretive methods to reach this goal. Chapter 4 of the Mishna is,
then, a celebration of the Akivian method as a peak of interpretive
virtuosity, which was not surpassed before or after R. Akiva, all
with the purpose of combining halakha and Scripture into one cultural
unity.
The currently accepted scholarly view about the
development of rabbinic culture is that by the end of the Second
Temple Period the Pharesean law had developed into an independent
body of halakhic rules, while the priestly culture was more closely
linked to the biblical text. In the Tannaitic culture, which
inherited the Pharesean one, the urge to connect the halakha with
scripture rose again, and this urge arose in proximity to R. Akiva,
whether initiated by him or brought by him to a new level.
Seeing the chapter of the Mishna in the light of
this cultural trend, it is all the more interesting to see what the
focus and the aim of the parallel chapter in the Tosefta is.
In the parallel passage in the Tosefta the
compiler seems to react against the glorified image of R. Akiva as
portrayed in the Mishna, by making every possible move to downplay
the greatness of R. Akiva. In the parallel Tosefta passage, we find
the following steps. The introductory passage where R. Akiva is being
praised at great length is omitted in the Tosefta. Omitted also is R.
Yehoshua’s praise of R. Akiva in the ruling about impurity. R.
Akiva’s name is omitted from the ruling about the
Shabbat-distance. With regard to “the song of the sea,”
in the Tosefta it is accepted that the Holy Spirit entered all of the
Israelites (this is the opinion, which in the Mishna was supported by
R. Akiva’s opponent). To this the Tosefta adds a wealth of
opinions regarding the manner of singing and, by so doing, the
opinion of R. Akiva is but one of many possible ones, and not the
preferred one as it was in the Mishna. With regard to Job’s
faith, in the Tosefta we find the opinions of two other rabbis, not
of R. Akiva, which prove that Job’s faith was based on love,
not on fear; R. Akiva’s name is omitted again.
Here is a schematic representation of the sequence
of the two corpora, the Mishna and the Tosefta:
Mishna Sota Chapter 5
|
Tosefta Sota, Chapter 6
|
1: An introductory halakhic passage about the unfaithful wife,
with a ruling by R. Akiva who uses his interpretation of a verse
to prove a halakha.
|
(the whole passage is missing or omitted)
|
2. R. Akiva rules regarding impurity; R. Yehoshua praises the
ruling.
|
The same ruling of R. Akiva as in the Mishna. R. Yehoshua’s
praise is omitted.
|
3. Akiva’s ruling about the Shabbat limit; the mixture of
halakha and scripture is not accepted by R. Eliezer son of Yosse,
who is younger than R. Akiva, hence showing R. Akiva’s
uniqueness (Rosen-Tsvi 2006b, 104).
|
The same ruling of R. Akiva as in the Mishna, but attributed to
another sage (Yehuda son of Petiri); R. Eliezer’s opinion
is also presented as referring to scripture, so R. Akiva’s
virtuosity loses its uniqueness.
|
4. R. Akiva’s sophisticated interpretation of the singing
of “the song of the sea” is contrasted to R.
Nehemia's method, which is a simple understanding of the verse,
but implies that the Holy Spirit impregnated all the Israelites
during the event.
|
(this appears as the last passage in the Tosefta)
After stating that the Holy Spirit descended on the Israelites in
the desert (as was the opinion of R. Nehemia in the Mishna, who
opposed R. Akiva), the Tosefta introduces a wealth of opinions
about the manner of singing “the song of the sea,”
thus reducing R. Akiva’s opinion to merely one of many.
|
5. R. Akiva’s interpretation of the Job story: he
worshipped out of love, not fear.
|
(Appeared before “the song of the sea” issue in the
Tosefta, in order to enable a longer discussion of the “song
of the sea” later on?)
The discussion here does not include R. Akiva's interpretation at
all; it is quoted by another sage.
|
The chapter is finished;
next comes a new chapter about a new halakhic issue regarding
jealousy.
|
Here the text about the four issues on which R. Akiva and Rashbi
differ is added. This text fundamentally criticizes R. Akiva’s
interpretive method.
|
In the Tosefta, then, R. Akiva’s opinion is
omitted from as many passages as possible and, when not omitted, his
is reduced to one among many other opinions or, at the very least, it
is not being praised.
In contrast to the parallel in the Mishna, the
compiler of the Tosefta seems to take for granted the fact that a
halakha has to be supported by an interpretation of a biblical verse,
an issue which was represented in the Mishna as Akiva’s
novelty. What is being criticized in the Tosefta is the particular,
sophisticated deconstructive method of interpretation, a method that
was presented in the Mishna as necessary in order to find a biblical
support for a halakha that was not rooted in the biblical text. Akiva
needed the sophisticated deconstructive method in order to bridge the
gap between the halakha that he held as valid, and the scripture,
which he also took to be authoritative. For Rashbi the connection of
the authority of both halakha and scripture is unquestionable, but
the sophisticated method of interpretation does an injustice, as he
shows, to the authoritative biblical figure Abraham. Rashbi,
therefore, rejects the Akivian method of interpretation.
This is true, not only with regard to the story of
the expulsion of Hagar, but also with regard to the other three
interpretive issues that appear in the Tosefta.
The passage about the expulsion of Hagar and
Ishmael is not halakhic, but narrative. The motive behind the debate
over it is not legal, but concerns cultural narrative: how can we,
the rabbinic culture, accommodate the character of the father of the
nation as it appears in the biblical text. It is less
institutionalized than halakhic topics, but instead has more to do
with portraying cultural identity and its nature. In other aspects,
however, it does tackle the same issue as the halakhic debate. And
this is: what kind of exegetical strategies are accepted, and what is
the rabbinic view of R. Akiva’s exegetical activity and his
readiness to resort to extreme exegetical technique in order to
combine halakha and scripture, or in this case, halakha and cultural
narrative.
So far we have dealt with the exegetical motif
about the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, knowing that the real issue
at hand was the exegetical method itself. But once accepted as part
of the authoritative literature, these exegetical motifs, together
with their literary context, have been reused in other contexts. Such
is the case with the exegetical motif of Ishmael the Idol-Worshiper,
which found its way into another discussion in the Tosefta, where the
household of Abraham is the focus.
3. Tosefta Sota 5: Is this a text?
The image of Ishmael as an idol-worshiper,
which was a motif exemplifying the interpretive method of R. Akiva,
is found at another place in the Tosefta, just one chapter before
that discussed above. This occurs while discussing the same general
halakhic topic: the drinking of the water of bitterness by an
unfaithful woman (TSot 5-6).
After discussing the question, that is, after what
kind of family arguments must the woman drink the water of bitterness
(TSot 5:1-5), along with some other domestic issues (TSot 5:6-11),
the text refers to one particular type of domestic quarrel about
which the rabbis refrain from making any judgment. This is the case
in which a woman asks heaven to mediate between herself and her
husband. An example of such a quarrel is the one between Abraham and
Sarah about the expulsion of Hagar. In the biblical text, Sarah does
seem to ask for heavenly intervention in the verse (Gen 16:5), “May
the Lord judge between you and me.” The quarrel between Abraham
and Sarah, as it is represented in this rabbinic passage, does not
focus simply on the request for heavenly intervention, but the accent
is on the fact that each of the parties promotes his or her line of
action by invoking the argument, “If we do not do as I suggest,
the name of heaven will be desecrated.”
The deviant topic and the self-coherence of the
passage both suggest that we have here an independent textual unit
that was incorporated into the Tosefta. This passage appears in all
witnesses of the Tosefta, including a Geniza fragment. For our
purpose, this passage is interesting because it uses the exegetical
motif of Ishmael as an idol-worshiper.
Here is the passage, Tosefta Tractate Sota,
Chapter 5 (according to the Vienna ms.):
1. If a woman says to her husband:
“Heaven will [decide] between my [opinion] and yours,”
they [the couple] will ask for [a heavenly intervention] between
them.
2. As we find regarding our mother Sarah,
who said to our father Abraham: “May the Lord judge between you
and me.”
3. Indeed she said this to him: “Expel
this maid-servant and her son.”
This teaches that our mother Sarah saw
Ishmael building bemas, and hunting grasshoppers and
sacrificing and burning incense to an idol.
4. She said: “Lest my son Isaac
will learn this, and will go and worship in this manner, and the name
of heaven will be desecrated by this.”
5. He [Abraham] said to her: “After
one acquits a person, one convicts him?
After we made her a queen and we made her
a lady and we brought her into this greatness, we will send her away
from our home?
What will people say about us?
Will not the name of heaven be
desecrated?”
6. She said: “Since you say that
this is a desecration of heaven and I say that this is a desecration
of heaven,
God will decide between my words and
yours.”
7. God decided between her words and his,
as it says: “Everything that Sarah tells you, listen to her
voice.”
8. Why
is it written, “everything”?
This teaches that [God] decided in the
second time as He did in the first instance: as in the second
instance it was a testimony regarding Hagar, so in the first instance
it was a testimony regarding Hagar.
Following the initial statement about the
nature of the dispute and its heavenly solution (§1),
the discussion between Abraham and Sarah regarding Hagar is used as
an example of such a dispute (§2). We find, then (§3), a
gap-filling story telling how Sarah saw Ishmael worshipping idols.
The sentence gives a description of Ishmael’s action, similar
to R. Akiva’s formulation in Chapter 6, which was discussed
above. An additional narrative (§4) tells how Sarah wants to
keep the bad influence away from Isaac, lest the name of heaven be
desecrated by Isaac’s worshipping foreign gods. Abraham, on his
part, claims (§5) that since he and Sarah raised Hagar to the
status of a lady and a mistress (that is, a legitimate wife), sending
her away would make a bad impression, apparently referring to people
who will speak evil of Abraham’s family and as a result also
about the God of this family. Also, in such a case the name of heaven
will be desecrated. Since both parties invoke the argument of
sacrilege, Sarah suggests (§6) letting God make the decision.
And indeed, says the Tosefist (§7), God intervened, and made the
decision that Sarah's opinion should be followed. God’s
decision is made clear in Gen 21:12, where He tells Abraham:
“Everything that Sarah tells you, hearken to her voice.”
So far, the narrative of this Tosefta passage
seems fluent and logical, the arguments seem complete and there is no
need for any further remarks. But at this point we find an additional
sentence (§8): Why does it say, “everything that
Sarah says?” Is Abraham supposed to obey Sarah in everything?
The answer given is that “everything” here means that
Sarah’s opinion with regard to Hagar should be followed in the
first instance as it was in the second.
At this stage the reader is reminded, if he or she
did not realize it before, that in the biblical narrative there are
two instances in which Hagar found herself in the desert, one in
Genesis Chapter 16 and the other in Chapter 21. In the first
instance, she ran away to the desert because, after treating Sarah
with disrespect, Hagar was tortured by Sarah and eventually escaped
to the desert. In the second instance, Hagar was expelled by Abraham
following Sarah’s request, after seeing Ishmael “playing.”
In this context the statement in Section §8 of the Tosefta is
clear: Just as God instructed Abraham to obey Sarah regarding the
expulsion of Hagar in the second instance (Chapter 21), so should
Abraham have accepted the expulsion of Hagar to the desert in the
first instance (Chapter 16), which is what Abraham actually did.
In the previous paragraph I was trying to “make
sense” of a passage in the Tosefta. But the truth is that the
argument is not smooth and the narrative is not fluent. In Chapter
16, where the first time Hagar went to the desert is recounted and
where we find the verse, “Let God judge between me and you,”
Ishmael had not yet been born, so it is hardly probable that Sarah
would see him building an altar and sacrificing grasshoppers to
idols. Furthermore, Isaac had also not yet been born, so Sarah could
not have been worried about the effect of the unborn Ishmael’s
customs on the un-conceived Isaac.
It is possible to conjecture that Sections 3 and 4
are a later addition to the argumentation, added by an unlearned
scribe or editor. But, if we omit Sections 3 and 4 from our
narrative, we will lose Sarah’s argument for the whole textual
unit, namely, the desecration of the name of heaven.
It is more plausible to conjecture that originally
Sarah used a different argument to support the expulsion of Hagar,
perhaps an argument that proves that, if Hagar stays in the house, a
sacrilege will result. This would parallel nicely with Abraham’s
argument that sending Hagar away (by letting Sarah torture her) would
also result in sacrilege, making the dispute undecidable, and in need
of heavenly intervention. Such an intervention is called for by Sarah
with the words, “May the Lord judge between me and you.”
If this analysis/conjecture is true, we can assume
that the original passage was a combination of two exegetical
motifs.
The first is an exegetical motif concerning the words of Sarah, “May
the Lord judge between me and you,” explaining these words as
referring to a dispute that Abraham and Sarah had concerning Hagar.
The two arguments brought up by the two parties (the one by Sarah,
which is lost, and the one of Abraham) are gap-filling stories, that
is, describing a scene not told in the biblical text.
In the latter part of the passage, we see a second
exegetical motif that is focused on the verse, Gen 21:12, “Everything
which Sarah says, hearken to her voice.” The word “everything”
is explained as referring to the two times Hagar was sent/escaped to
the desert.
Once Sarah’s proper argument was replaced by
the argument that Ishmael was an idol-worshiper, the narrative became
incoherent. But the fact that it was replaced shows that this
exegetical motif about idol worshipping had gained a status of
authority, at least in the eyes of the scribe or the editor who chose
to replace the original argument with this one. The lexical similarly
between the “idol worshipping” motif here and in Chapter
6, suggests that it was influenced by the phraseology found in
Chapter 6 of the Tosefta.
Concluding Summary
In this article I studies the two passage
about Hagar that are found in chapters five and six of the Tosefta. I
was using the method created by James Kugel, of analyzing the
exegetical motifs that developed around particular biblical verses.
Through this analysis I found that the passage in Tosefta Sota
chapter six, which is the earlier of the two passages, is a
construction made up to present Rashbi’s exegetical method as
superior to three others that stem from the school of Rabbi Akiva.
The three motifs presented as Akivian are of varied exegetical value:
One (Ishmael is an idol-worshiper) is a innovative exegetical move on
the part of Rabbi Akiva, another (Ishmael is a man-slaughterer) was
originally an explanation of a verse from Proverbs, and still another
(Ishmael was incestuous) seems redundant. In contrast, Rashbi’s
exegesis (Hagar was expelled because Ishmael wanted a greater
inheritance) does not deconstruct the verse, but learns about its
meaning from its context.
The passage about Hagar in chapter five of the
Tosefta also discusses Hagar’s expulsion, and Sarah’s
request for divine intervention in solving the argument between
herself and Abraham. The text as is found in chapter five is
incoherent. It seems to mix two biblical stories: Hagar’s
flight into the desert (found in Genesis 16) and the expulsion of
Hagar (Genesis 21). My conjecture was that an unlearned copyist
replaced an original argument of Sarah’s, which is now lost,
rendering a whole Tosefta passage incoherent. This could happen only
because the exegetical motif of Ishmael as an idol-worshiper took on
authoritative status and became a fixed textual unit.
This study shows the vitality of the exegetical
motifs as an cultural unit that could serve as a agent conveying
cultural content and readily available to be used and reused by the
sages. The exegetical motifs could be shifted from one context to
another, they served as a genres in which ad hoc units were created,
they were used as pieces of information in a debate (between Rabbi
Akiva and Rashbi) and they were combined to create larger textual
units. It seems that the knowledge of exegetical motifs, and the
creation of new ones, was a natural part of the culture of these
sages.
Bibliography
Kahana, M.,“The Halakhic Midrashim”, in: Sh. Safrai et al
(eds.) The Literature of the Sages, 13-26, Assen 2006
