출애굽기 21:29의 유대 사상

(1) The main reason for repeating the me-ilah legislation and adding new details is to impress on us the urgency of mobilising all our forces and making every effort not to be defeated in the ongoing struggle against the yetzer hara. The offerings, the confession etc. are all weapons given to us by the Torah for that fight. (2) The apparent repetition of the situation in verse fourteen, and again in verses twenty nine and thirty, are not repetitions at all. If the jealousy of the husband is justified, it will lead to the sotah being punished. If, as in verse thirty, we deal with jealousy of the husband only, the procedure prescribed in the Torah must be applied in order to exonerate the wife. Either way, clarification of the truth is an end in itself. The sotah may have sinned for a variety of reasons. A) Sexual urge. B) To affront G'd, the lawgiver. C) Because she does not believe that there is a G'd, a lawgiver. In the first situation, her punishment is simple. She is divorced, and loses her ketuvah, financial settlement. In the second case, the words u-ma-alah bashem, she has trespassed against the Lord applies, i.e. she has sinned intentionally; she deserves a much greater penalty. If she had only intended to sin against her husband, she will be afraid to drink the waters, take the oath etc., but will rather confess. If, on the other hand, she had meant to offend G'd, then she becomes the victim of two ke-na-ot , jealousies, that of her husband and that of G'd. Her death then will surely be the result. In that event, her husband will be shown to have been innocent of sin. Since this nation is deemed worthy of having the Divine Presence in its midst, Divine assistance is invoked to eliminate those whose conduct make the continued presence of the shechinah in our midst impossible.

Since the deluge had been the great rehabilitation of the human race or what had remained of it, man's image had been completely restored. It was he who had insured the survival of the animals, having tended to them and fed them on a round-the-clock basis for an entire year. Man had thereby acquired the right to exercise dominion over them in greater measure than ever before. By serving man as food, the animal is actually elevated in stature, seeing that serving a master of higher stature is a promotion vis a vis serving a master of more humble stature. Of course, the need to consume meat, as opposed to the ability to digest heavenly food such as the manna, is a relative shortcoming in man. More of this in the section dealing with manna. Once the consumption of meat had been permitted, certain restrictions such as the consumption of living tissue or blood from a living animal were imposed. The reasons for this will be discussed in Chapter 64. Also, should the animals act contrary to their supposed nature, they are warned of heavenly retribution. They must know that they are not to attack and kill man, nor are they allowed to feed on human remains. In the case of man versus man, the main concern of the legislation is man killing man, since injuring him for food consumption is uncharacteristic. Possibly, the wording indicates heavenly retribution in cases where witnesses are lacking and murderous intent cannot be presumed. Only man, "he who spills the blood of man" (Genesis 9,6), is subject to retribution by a human Court of Law. Animals will be dealt with by celestial tribunal only. Only after the Torah had been given to the Jewish people do we find a law that makes beasts subject to human justice, as in the case of the bull which has gored a human being, especially if that bull was the property of a human being, who is charged with negligent supervision (Exodus 21,29).