Kommentar zu Wajikra 21:14

וחללה OR A PROFANE [SHALL HE NOT TAKE] — i. e. a woman born from marriages forbidden to the priesthood alone (cf. v.7) (Sifra, Emor, Chapter 2 3).

כי אם בתולה מעמיו יקח אשה, “but he must take for a wife a virgin belonging to his own people.” These words are the definition of the previous והוא אשה בבתוליה יקח in verse 13. In other words, [if the High Priest was not yet married at the time he was appointed as such, a most unlikely scenario, Ed.] he is not allowed to marry a woman who has already had carnal relations with another man. Verse 13 is what is known as לאו הבא מכלל עשה, negative commandment arrived at by bringing it into line with an existing positive commandment. Now, by repeating the same concept as a positive commandment, it is much stronger. [The author understands the positive message in verse 13 as only an indirect prohibition to marry a woman no longer a virgin. Ed.]

כי עם בתולה מעמיו, “except for a virgin from his people.” Why is this verse necessary, seeing that it has just been written in verse 13 that he must marry a virgin? According to Kidushin 10 the repetition teaches that if the High Priest performed marital intercourse with his wife to be (by mutual consent) relying on this as the act acquiring her as his wife, this is not admissible in his case, [although a legal option to anyone else. Ed.] The reason for this is that halachically speaking, the completion of the act of coitus is when the acquisition becomes effective, i.e. a point in time when the girl in question is technically no longer a virgin. Technically she became a בעולת עצמו, a woman who had already had intercourse with the same man. A High Priest is forbidden to marry a בעולת עצמו no less than he is forbidden to marry someone who had had sexual relations with another male. This prohibition is known in the Talmud as לאו הבא מכלל עשה, “a negative commandment which is the logical result of a positive commandment related to the same subject.”

Born of [a marriage] forbidden to the kehunoh. You might ask: Rashi already explained this above (verse 7)? Furthermore, if Rashi wanted also to explain [the verse] here as well, he should have also mentioned the second explanation [of profaned woman as] he explained above, and also explained the word “harlot” written here. The answer is: he has to explain the meaning of “profaned woman” here, since you may have thought the case is specifically that she was invalidated from kehunoh through having sexual relations with one of those people forbidden to kehunoh, i.e., even if the relations were unnatural [and she remained a virgin according to the opinion of Rabbi Meir (see Yevamos 59a)]. But [you may have thought that] a virgin born from someone invalidated from kehunah would not be considered a profane woman, since the verse specifically writes חללה זונה, which implies, a profane woman who is [also] a harlot. [You might think this] because preceding this, the verse wrote אלמנה וגרושה (“a widow and a divorcee), which implies a widow or a divorcee. If so, here [too] it should have written וזונה (and a harlot), which would have implied “or a harlot.” Therefore, because it writes “harlot” without a ו, this implies that she is a profaned woman who is also a harlot. Therefore, Rashi has to explain that [a daughter] “born of [a marriage] forbidden to the kehunoh” is also considered a profaned woman, and that the word “harlot” is not connected with the word “profane woman.” The reason Scripture does not write “and a profaned woman and a harlot,” is because it is normal for verses to write in this way. For example, above (verse 2) [it says], “Except to his kin to whom he is closely related, for his mother and his father,” it should have said “and for his mother.”

אלמנה וגרושה, “a widow or divorced woman;” seeing that the High Priest is not allowed to marry a widow, is it not obvious that he may not marry a divorced woman? Why did the Torah have to spell this out for us? Answer: I might have thought that seeing a widow is permitted for the ordinary priest to marry, a divorcee who is also forbidden to an ordinary priest and who is certainly forbidden to the High Priest, that if the High Priest had contravened this law, the son from such a union is not only no priest but has the status of a mamzer, someone who is not allowed to marry a Jewish woman. By phrasing it as it does, the Torah limited the fallout from such a contravention to demoting the issue to be like an ordinary Israelite, not a priest. Or, if the Torah had written only that the High Priest must not marry a divorced woman, I would have thought that the son of a marriage between a High priest and a divorced woman would indeed not be a priest, whereas the son of a union between a High Priest and a widow would be considered as a normal priest; therefore the Torah has to state that the consequences are more serious than we would have thought. In short, the unnecessary word גרושה is interpreted as lenient, whereas the unnecessary word אלמנה is interpreted as additional severity. (Sifra)

וחללה זנה, “or a profaned woman or a harlot;“ the missing letter ו in the word זונה is comparable to the missing letter ו in Chabakuk 3,11, “their habitation” in the word זבלה which should have been זבולה, “its respective habitation (orbit)” or as in Deuteronomy 32,42: וכפר אדמתו עמו, where the ו is missing at the beginning, so that it will be understood: “and His people.”

את אלה לא יקח, “these (who have been mentioned) he must not marry.” (publicly, in a ceremony of a wedding)

כי אם בתולה מעמיו, “but he must marry a virgin of his own people.” If she is not a virgin he would have transgressed a positive commandment. (The transgression is not punishable by lashes. If you were to ask what is different here from the commandment that the Passover lamb must only be eaten broiled on the fire, not boiled or steamed, where the sages interpreted this not as a positive commandment but as a negative commandment (Talmud tractate Pessachim folio 41) and they decreed that someone not doing so would receive lashes on account of having transgressed two negative commandments, one for having eaten it raw, the other for not having eaten it broiled? Here too the commandment of marrying a virgin is a positive commandment? Answer: the words: כי אם בתולה, “only a virgin,” refer to the part of the verse that began with the words, and refer to what follows; whereas in the verse speaking of how to eat the Passover lamb, the words כי אם צלי אש, refer to what had already happened, something which is not followed by another positive commandment, i.e. יקח אשה.