Commento su Levitico 24:16

That is that He commanded us to believe in His awe, may He be exalted, and to be afraid of Him. And we should not be like the heretics who walk brazen-heartedly and heedlessly, but should be scared with the fear of His punishment at all times. And that is His saying, "And you shall fear the Lord, your God." And in the Gemara (Sanhedrin 56a), they said by way of give and take about His saying, "And if he pronounces (nokev) the name, Lord, he shall be put to death" (Leviticus 24:16) - "Say that [nokev] is to mention, as it is stated (Numbers 1:17), 'who were mentioned (nikvu) by name,' and its prohibition is from, 'And you shall fear the Lord, your God.'" That is to say, maybe His saying, "And if he pronounces," is only that he mention [God's] name [even] without cursing. And if you will say, "What transgression is there in that" - we will say that it is because he neglected fear. For included in the fear of God is not to mention His name gratuitously. The answer to this question, and its rejection, was, "First, you need the name with the name" - as they said, "Yossi should smite Yossi" - "and also, that this is [only] a prohibition of a positive commandment. And any prohibition of a positive commandment is not called a prohibition" - for it is a command and a positive commandment, and we cannot prohibit with a positive commandment. Behold it has been made clear to you that His saying, "And you shall fear the Lord, your God," is a positive commandment. (See Parashat Ekev; Mishneh Torah, Foundations of the Torah.)

ונקב שם AND HE THAT UTTERETH BLASPHEMOUSLY THE NAME [OF THE LORD SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH] — He is not liable to the death-penalty at the hand of the judges unless he utters the Divine Tetragrammaton blasphemously, but not if he execrateth the Lord by only mention of one of the substitutes for the Divine name (e. g., רחום, חנון, אל etc.), (cf. Sifra, Emor, Chapter 19 5; Sanhedrin 56a).

ונוקב שם ה' מות יומת, the penalty of someone cursing the tetragram is not comparable to the punishment for someone who “merely” cursed one of G’d’s attributes. The individual described in our verse will be executed publicly by stoning, and all who heard him commit this crime must participate actively in the execution.

HE SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH. This is to be explained in this manner, according to its plain sense.

בנקבו שם יומת, “when he curses the holy Name he shall be executed.” The Torah immediately continues to write that any man committing murder shall be executed. This prompted our sages in Sanhedrin 58 to teach that anyone striking the cheek of his fellow is considered as if he had struck G’d’s “cheek” (in an allegorical manner of speaking).

ונוקב שם ה' מות יומת, ”anyone who curses the ineffable name of the Lord is to be executed.” The verb used here for G–d is the one used by the prophet Bileam when he said that “it is useless for me to curse anyone who has been blessed by this attribute of the Lord.” (Numbers 23,8)

'כגר כאזרח וגו, “both convert and natural born Jew, etc;” we might have expected the Torah to mention the natural born Jew first; but the Torah wanted to teach us that the convert who had been born as a pagan, and had had to overcome many obstacles to convert, is given additional credit for having made this effort by being named here before natural born Israelites.

ונקב here is an expression denoting “cursing”, like (Numbers 23:8) “How shall I curse (אקב) [when God hath not cursed]” (Sanhedrin 56a).

כגר כאזרח, and the type of the penalty applied to the blasphemer in our paragraph was not especially harsh seeing the guilty person had been a convert. Natural born Jew and converts are treated exactly alike in the legislation concerning blasphemy.