Comentario citado sobre Deuteronómio 1:1

The words of Koheles. Wherever it is stated, “the words of דִּבְרֵי,” it introduces words or reproof. [For example,] “These are the words הַדְּבָרִים that Moshe spoke,”¹Devarim 1:1. [followed by,] “And Yeshurun became fat [and kicked].”²Ibid. 32:15. [Also,] “The words דִּבְרֵי of Amos,”³Amos 1:1. [followed by,] “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan.”⁴Ibid. 4:1. [Also,] “The words דִּבְרֵי of Yirmiyahu,”⁵Yirmiyahu 1:1. [followed by,] “Ask now and see whether a male gives birth, etc.”⁶Ibid. 30:6. [And finally,] “And these are the words דִּבְרֵי of Dovid,”⁷II Shmuel 23:1. [followed by,] “But the wicked are all like thorns thrust away.”⁸Ibid. 23:6. “The words דִּבְרֵי of Koheles” [is followed by,] “The sun rises ... All the rivers flow into the sea.”⁹Below, verse 5. He refers to the wicked as the “sun,” the “moon,”¹⁰Below, verse 7. and the “sea,” which earn no reward. So it was taught in Sifre. I learned from there that the section deals with the wicked and he compares them to the rising sun, which ultimately sets. Addendum: Another explanation, “All the rivers flow into the sea.” What is the meaning of this? This is stated concerning idolaters, the fools who prostrate themselves to the water thinking that it has substance because they see the Great Sea, into which all the rivers flow and it is not full, but they have no understanding that to the place where the rivers flow, they repeatedly go, for the water of the rivers that flow into the sea are the very same waters that already flowed; they flow from under the deep and flow above the surface until the sea and then flow again. Therefore, the rivers do not stop, and the sea is not full, and not because they have substance. End of addendum.

ואלה המשפטים, “and these are the ordinances, etc.;” Rashi has pointed out that whenever a paragraph in the Torah commences with the word אלה, this signifies that it is not a continuation of something that had been written previously. However, when the paragraph begins with the word: ואלה, “and these, etc., it signals some kind of continuation. From Rashi’s words it would appear that the laws promulgated from here on in did not originate at Sinai as when the Torah wrote in Exodus 19,20 that Hashem descended to Mount Sinai, the whole point was that He did so in order to give the people the whole Torah.In order to solve this apparent contradiction, we need to view the word: פסל used by Rashi to signify a break with what preceded it, is to be understood as in Exodus 34,1 where G–d told Moses to hew himself two Tablets to replace the ones he had shattered after coming down from the Mountain for the first time. The act of “hewing” means to separate what you carve out from a greater quantity of the same base material, i.e. rock. In other words, what we are going to read from here on in are laws that, though of the same origin as the Ten Commandments, had been separated somewhat in time from when and how they were presented to the people. What Rashi meant to tell us was that if this paragraph had commenced with the word אלה, I would have thought that what followed was not of Sinaitic origin at all. In order not to mislead the reader, the Torah added the prefix ו to make clear that what follows was also of Sinaitic origin, i.e. G–d taught Moses all the Torah while he was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. The letter ו here has the same meaning as the word את in Exodus 9,29, where Moses said: כצאתי את העיר, “when I go out from the city.” We find a similar construction in Deuteronomy 28,69: אלה דברי הברית, “these are the words of the covenant, ”where the admonitions have been separated from the blessings. The blessings in that paragraph had been preceded by curses. We find something similar in Deuteronomy 1,1: אלה הדברים אשר דבר משה, “these are the words which Moses had spoken, etc.” where we cannot understand this as something unconnected to what preceded it, but the letter ו is omitted as we are dealing with a different Book of the Torah, one that had not been dictated to Moses, but which G–d had approved after the event as deserving to be part of the written Torah. In Genesis 2,4 the words אלה תולדות השמים והארץ, “these are the generations of heaven and earth are separated from the prehistoric period when the Torah had described the tohu vavohu which had preceded the creation of light.

It disqualifies that which preceded it. If you say: [This rule seems not true because] in Parshas Bechukosai (Vayikra 27:34) it is written, “ אלה (These) are the commandments.” And in Parshas Masei (Bamidbar 36:13) it says, “ אלה (These) are the commandments and the laws.” And in Parshas Matos (ibid 30:17) it says, “ אלה (These) are the statutes.” And in Parshas Ki Savo (Devarim 28:69) it is written, “ אלה (These) are the words of the covenant.” And in all theses cases we do not interpret it as disqualifying that which preceded. The answer is: We only interpret it this way for “ אלה (These) are the histories of the heaven and the earth” (Bereishis 2:4; see Shemos Rabba 30:3), where the histories were already mentioned above, so a difficulty arose: why are they repeated and detailed? Similarly for “ אלה (These) are the descendants of Noach” (Bereishis 6:9), where the descendants were mentioned above in Parshas Bereishis, so a difficulty arose: why were they mentioned again? Thus we say they were mentioned again in order to disqualify the preceding. [The meaning of “disqualify” is discussed in the next entry.] But with “ אלה (These) are the commandments” and all the above verses, nothing was mentioned [preceding them that was similar to them], so אלה cannot mean to disqualify the preceding. Similarly in Parshas Devarim, where it says “ אלה (These) are the words” (Devarim 1:1), we cannot interpret אלה as disqualifying the preceding, since Chumash Devarim is Mishneh Torah [i.e., its primary purpose is a repetition of the Torah].

תקרא את התורה הזאת [WHEN ALL ISRAEL IS COME TO APPEAR BEFORE THE LORD …] THOU SHALT READ THIS LAW [BEFORE ALL ISRAEL] — The king read from the beginning of the section “These are the words” (Deuteronomy 1:1), — as is set forth in Treatise Sotah 41a — upon a wooden platform that was erected in the forecourt.