Commentaire de citation sur La Genèse 1:24

Go to Pharaoh, to his palace. Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi said: There were two plagues involving water, one that the river turned to blood and all the fish died, and one that the frogs came out of the river. There were two plagues on land, the lice and the mixture of wild animals, as the verse states (Bereishis 1:24): “Let the earth bring forth living creatures.” Two were in the air, for pestilence was abnormal heat or chill that caused countless livestock to die at once, since all life depends on the atmosphere. The second one was the plague of rash, for the Torah calls the sky above their head the heavens (and Moshe began the plague of rash by throwing the furnace soot heavenward). The seventh plague (hail) was a mixture of the sphere of storm and fire, as the Torah describes (9:24): “There was hail and fire flashing among the hailstones.” The eighth plague, locusts, came from far away by means of the wind. The ninth one was a wondrous plague, in which the light of the luminaries and the stars disappeared from the land of Egypt. In the tenth, the destroyer came down from the sphere of splendor to kill the first born”.

ויזכר אלוקים את נח, “G-d remembered Noach, etc.” It would have been more appropriate for the Torah to write that “G-d remembered Noach and his sons, etc.” After all, we know that they too were beneficiaries of His presence since the Torah wrote in 9,8 “G-d spoke to Noach and to his sons, etc.” Why then did the Torah here mention only Noach as the one to whom G-d spoke? It is possible to understand the word את in front of the word נח as a reference to his sons. This would certainly not be the first time that the word את is used as a רבוי, a word which alludes to something additional which the Torah had not spelled out in detail. Seeing that Noach’s sons were extensions of his own self, the Torah did not see fit to mention them separately at this stage. We find a similar occurrence in Exodus 1,1 where the Torah mentions את יעקב, and Shemot Rabbah interprets the word את as a reference to all the people who descended to Egypt because they were “extensions” of Yaakov. This meant that sons and wives were automatically included in the people whose fate G-d had “remembered.” As to the fact that the Torah specifically refers to the animals and all other creatures in the Ark with Noach, something which at first glance makes it appear as if their fates were of greater concern to G-d than that of Noach’s wife, his sons and their wives, this is not so. We distinguish between השגחה כללית, and השגחה פרטית, G-d’s general overall concern and supervision of their fate, and G-d’s specific individual supervision of someone’s fate. Whereas the animals, etc., qualified for G-d’s general concern, Noach and his family qualified for G-d’s specific concern. Hence the word את is an indication that G-d’s specific concern extended also to the members of Noach’s family.
Alternatively, the reason Torah chose to mention G-d’s concern for the domestic beasts and the free-roaming animals was to draw our attention to the fact that He displayed no such concern for the birds; hence the birds are not mentioned in this verse. The reason may have been that seeing that the mammals were all created on the sixth day of creation, i.e. the same day as man, they shared special consideration by G-d with man; the birds which had been created already on the fifth day did not enjoy this distinction. This may also be reflected in the wording אשר אתו בתיבה “who were with him in the Ark.” The Torah wanted to stress that there was something that man and the other mammals shared to the exclusion of other phenomena on earth, namely G-d’s especial concern for their fates. It is noteworthy that the same word את occurs in the narrative of the Torah when it describes both man’s and the mammal’s creation on the sixth day. Please compare Genesis 1,24-25. The words אשר אתו in our verse here may be an allusion to that verse in 1,24.

V. 2. זאת החיה אשר תאכלו מכל בהמה וגו׳. Wir haben bereits zu Bereschit 1, 24 u. 25 bemerkt, wie im allgemeinen בהמה und חיה zwei charakteristisch gesonderte Klassen des Reiches der Säugetiere bezeichnen, indem unter בהמה diejenigen Tiere begriffen werden, welche sich dem Menschen dienend unterordnen, die במה seiner Hoheit bilden, der Begriff חיה hingegen alle die übrigen umfaßt, die sich seiner Herrschaft entziehen und ein "selbständiges Leben" zur Erscheinung bringen. So Bereschit 7, 14: וכל החיה למינה וכל הבהמה למינה , daselbst 8, 1: ואת כל החיה ואת כל הבהמה Allein es kommt auch die Bezeichnung חיה als Gesamtbegriff des Lebendigen vor, so daselbst 8, 17 u. 19: ' כל החיה אשר אתך וגו' כל החיה כל הרמש וג . So schließt auch unser Kapitel: להבריל וגו׳ ובין החיה הנאכלת ובין החיה אשר לא תאכל und umfaßt in diesem Ausdruck alle in diesem Kapitel besprochenen Tiere. Allein es kommt auch בהמה in erweitertem Sinne vor zur Bezeichnung der ganzen dem Menschen untergeordneten Tierwelt, so Bereschit 6, 7: מאדם ועד בהמה , so auch daselbst 7, 23 und Schmot 9, 25 u.a.m. In charakteristischer Weise treten aber beide Ausdrücke nebeneinander in unserem Satze auf: מכל בהמה וגו׳ .את החיה וגו׳, eine Wahl des Ausdrucks, die eine beziehungsreiche Absicht voraussetzen läßt. Chulin 70b und 71a wird auf diese und die korrespondierende Stelle Dewarim 14, 4 u. 5 hingewiesen, wie hier, nachdem zuerst חיה als Objekt des Satzes genannt ist, in der ergänzenden Beifügung מכל בהמה וגו׳ und im folgenden Satze mit בהמה fortgefahren wird, somit בהמה בכלל חיה , unter חיה hier בהמה mitbegriffen ist, und dem hingegen dort: זאת הבהמה אשר תאכלו שור וגו׳ איל וצבי וגו׳ offenbar בהמה ,חיה בכלל בהמה auch היה mitbegreift.