민수기 23:14의 인용 해설

Reading of the Leyden ms. סכותא is Onqelos’s translation of Hebrew צופים (Num. 23:14). The printed editions have here and in Ketubot סכנתא “danger”. In the parallel [Gen. rabba 33(3)], the students are appointed to go with him to the אשונא so he should not stay too long and endanger himself. אשונא is shown by L. Ginzburg (Notes to Kohut’s Arukh, p. 436) to be Syriac אשחונא̇ “calidarium, sauna”; Lieberman (הירושלמי כפשוטו ע׳ יא) translates סכותא by unctuarium.

ממחרת השבת יניפנו הכהן, “from the day following the rest day the Priest shall wave it.” The word שבת In this verse does not refer to the שבת בראשית, the fixed Sabbath, the one which recurs every week, but to the first day of the Passover festival on which the performance of work is prohibited. This is also the way Onkelos understands the word when he writes: מבתר יומא טובא, “the day after the festival,” i.e. the day following the 15th of Nissan. The Torah prohibited eating from the new barley harvest until the 16th day of Nissan. This is the meaning of the line: “you shall not eat bread or roasted kernels or plump kernels until this very day, an eternal statute applicable to all your dwellings” (verse 14). This means that the prohibition to eat from the new barley harvest applies as a Biblical prohibition even outside the boundaries of the land of Israel throughout the ages (Compare Kidushin 37). Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish states that there are three commandments which though primarily linked with our living in the Holy Land, also apply in the Diaspora. They are חדש-כלאים- ערלה, the prohibition listed here, the prohibition of cross breeding, and the prohibition of eating of the fruit of a tree during the first three years of its existence. The prohibition listed here is Biblical, whereas ערלה is known as decreed by Moses at Sinai, i.e. not derived through exegesis but through tradition, a decree of the sages effective since the time the Torah was given. The prohibition of cross breeding in its application outside the boundaries of the land of Israel is of later origin, a Rabbinical decree. (Compare Sifra Emor 10,11).

The most important aspect of the commandment to count in our verse is that one must begin the count on the 16th of the month of Nissan. This is the first day of the reaping of the barley harvest. The first cut barley (of good grade) is offered as a communal offering as a gift to the Lord as described in verses 12-13. The number 50 (of counting) comes to an end with the harvesting of the first wheat from which again an offering is brought in the form of two loaves of bread which are baked as leavened loaves (as spelled out in verses 18-20). The principal part of the whole commandment is the ritual of the offering of these two loaves. The accompanying animal sacrifices were precisely that, they did not constitute the principal part of the combined offerings. If, for some reason, no new wheat was available on that date the accompanying animal sacrifices mentioned here would not be offered.
The word חדשה, ”new,” which the Torah writes describing this gift-offering of two loaves of bread from the new wheat harvest which is to be brought on the fiftieth day of the count, constitutes the festival of Shavuot. When giving further details of this counting etc., the Torah adds that it is to be an “eternal statute in all your dwellings” (verse 14). Seeing that the performance of the Omer sacrifice is dependent on the subsequent offering of the two loaves on the Shavuot festival, it would have been easy to imagine that in the absence of a Temple where the latter could be offered, the former, i.e. the “count-down” would also become redundant; therefore the Torah had to write that this applies throughout the generations in all our dwellings, as distinct from “in your dwellings” (verse 17) which is the Torah’s wording for the applicability of the offering of the two loaves. Not only the counting but also the accompanying prohibition of eating from the new barley prior to the beginning of the count-down is applicable nowadays also. The commandment not to perform work on the Shavuot festival is also in effect just as it was when the Temple was standing, although the only commandment which dis- tinguishes that festival cannot be performed in our time. The common denominator of all the festivals listed in the Torah is that they apply both in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora and both when the Temple is standing and when it is not. If the Torah saw fit to emphasise that the Day of Atonement remains in effect throughout the earth and regardless of whether the Temple is standing, this may be due to the fact that our atonement is linked to the sacrifices offered on that day. Seeing we are not able to offer these sacrifices while we are in exile, we might have assumed that the day has lost its sanctity. The Torah therefore makes clear that the sacrifices are not the condition for the effectiveness of the Day of Atonement. In our portion the words “an eternal statute in all your dwellings” are not mentioned in connection with Passover, seeing this has already been mentioned in Exodus 12,14,17, where the Torah speaks of the consumption of unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Seeing that these parts of the ritual can be performed without the Temple, the Torah there had to spell this out. This is the commentary of Nachmanides on the Torah omitting the words “an eternal statute in all your dwellings” in connection with Passover in this portion.

‎ וישקף means HE LOOKED, as much as to say, He turned towards them to destroy them (cf. Rashi on Genesis 18:16), and its rendering in the Targum, ואסתכי, is also an expression denoting looking, just as he translates (Numbers 23:14), “the field of the watchers (צפים)” by “the field of ,סכותא” which denotes “looking”.