Cytowanie Komentarza do Kapłańska 26:19

AND THE RAINS FROM THE HEAVENS WERE WITHHELD.¹³⁵Verse 2. This means that no more rain came down until they [Noah and his family and all living creatures] went out of the ark for by this wind [which G-d made to pass over the earth] the heavens became as iron.¹³⁶See Leviticus 26:19. Neither dew nor rain came down, the air lost its moisture, and the waters dried up for the rain of the flood completely stopped after the fortieth day.

"Let there be a firmament:" The Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to inform Israel that neither the sun nor anything else controls the rain, to bring it down or not to bring it down. Therefore, He told about the existence of the higher waters before the existence of the luminaries. "Firmament (rakiya):" [It is] a body that stretches out like a plate, [as in] the expression, "To the One that stretches out (rokea) the earth over the waters" (Psalms 136:6); "And they flattened (yiraka'au) the gold [into thin plates]" (Exodus 39:3); and [also] "And over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of a firmament, like the color of the terrible ice" (Ezekiel 1:22). And here it portrayed the air between the earth and the clouds as a body that extends and separates between the waters on earth and the waters in the clouds, and carries the waters upon it; and by the will of God, the water descends from there to the earth. And it is like it states (Deuteronomy 28:12), "And God will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its time;" and in the Curse, when it states (Leviticus 26:19), "And I will give your skies to be like iron," to prevent the descent of water upon them; and so [too] below (Genesis 7:11), "and the windows of the heavens opened." But afterwards, in the time of Yishiyahu, it appears that they knew that there are no storehouses of water above, and that rain waters return above; since behold, he says (Isaiah 55:10), "For just as the rain and the snow come down from the skies, and do not return there except when the earth is satiated;" [which] implies that after it is satiated, it does return to there, see my commentary there. And so [too], Yirmiyahu said in the way of a question, "do the heavens give raindrops?" (Jeremiah 14:22); [which] implies that [the heavens] do not give them by themselves, since they do not have storehouses of water in them. And so [too], they called the vapors that rise up from upon the earth [and become clouds] the name, nissi'im (raised up ones), as [in], "He raises nissi'im from the end of the earth" (Psalms 135:7); "He raised the nissi'im from the end of the earth" (Jeremiah 10:13; 51:16); and so [too], "Nissi'im and wind, but no rain" (Proverbs 25:14). And we do not know from what time this word (nissi'im) became common; as Psalm 135 is not attributed to David and it is not clear that the Book of Proverbs from Chapter 25 is by Shlomo. And in Job, he says (Job 38:22), "Did you come to the storehouses of snow, did you see the storehouses of hail?" - and this is a proof of the antiquity of that book. And since the word, rakiya, is based on the belief in higher waters - "the waters that are above the heavens" (Psalms 148:4) - that the rakiya supports, and that belief became antiquated and forgotten; the word, rakiya, also became antiquated. And [rakiya] is only used to indicate the skies in three [other] places. Two are in Psalms - "and the acts of your hands, does the rakiya proclaim" (Psalms 19:2); "praise Him in the rakiya of His strength" (Psalms 150:1) - since the word remained in poetic use; as it is the custom in all languages for the poets to use antiquated words. And the third place is in Daniel 12:3, "And the enlightened ones will shine like the splendor of the rakiya;" and there also, it is a poetic expression. And so [likewise], in Malachi 3:10, "I will open for you the windows of the heavens," is by way of poetic expression. And we have also found a variant of rakiya referring to the heavens in Job 37:18, "Tarkiya (Did you spread out) the skies with Him;" and this too is a sign of the antiquity of this book. And he finishes [this verse], "they are as strong as a molten mirror," as they carry the weight of many waters. And so [too] did Shlomo say (Proverbs 8:28), "And in His strengthening of the skies above." And behold, the Torah spoke as in the language of people, and stated, "let there be a firmament," according to their thought (that it actually existed). And nonetheless, what was intended does not deviate from being true and solid, and that is that God implanted in the nature of water to rise upwards and to descend afterwards down to the earth. And in the Greek translation attributed to the seventy elders (the Septuagint), rakiya is translated as strauma, [which] is a matter of strength, and so [too] did they translate it afterwords into Latin [as] firmāmenta and this came to them from the use of the root, raka, in Syriac, which denotes strength; and so [too], rakiya in Syriac is strong and hard. And Johannes Clericus says that they translated it thus, because it was the opinion of some of the ancient philosophers that the heavens and air that surround the earth on all sides, prevent it and everything on it from getting detached and crumbling apart; and behold, they cause the earth to stay hard and its parts to remain fastened together. And he explains the expression to be one of hitting and trampling, as in "hit with your hand and stamp (reka) with your foot" (Ezekiel 6:11); "because you hit with your hand and you stamped (rakacha) with your foot" (Ezekiel 25:6); because the heavens are stamping on the earth and stopping its parts from detaching. And all of this is far from the simple meaning of the verses. And nonetheless, [his] words, that the origin of the root, raka, is from stomping and hitting, are plausible. And because something that is hit [becomes] flat and stretched out, the root, raka, is borrowed to indicate stretching out and flatness.

Maggid Rach’tzah: Before one partakes of a meal, one should study (yagid) and pray and then wash as is the law, reciting the blessing, al n’tilat yadayim before the meal. The sages offered the following interpretation of scripture, “You shall not do anything with its blood (hadam):” you shall not eat before you have prayed for your blood (life).⁶Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 10b and Leviticus 26:19 Also they taught, “It is forbidden for a person to taste anything before he has prayed.”⁷BT, Kiddushin 10b This is a rebuke to those people who drink coffee on Shabbat and Holiday mornings before attending the synagogue service. Not only is it forbidden before Kiddush but it is forbidden to make Kiddush without its being accompanied by a full meal. Concerning such people we learn: “Rabbi Isaac said in the name of Rabbi Jochanan, who had it from Rabbi Jose, son of Rabbi Hanina in the name of Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob: If one eats and drinks and then says his prayers, of him the Scripture says, ‘And you have cast me behind your back.’ Read not gavekha [your back], but gei’ekha [your pride]. Says the Holy One: After this one has exalted himself, he comes and accepts the kingdom of heaven!”⁸BT Kiddushin 10b also see 1 Kings 14:9 Where is the reverence of one who enters synagogue to pray with a full stomach? The Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, emphasized this law greatly and even said that it was forbidden to eat before sunrise.

Bulei: An expression of wealth; as we say (Gittin 37a), "'And I will break the pride of your power' (Leviticus 26:19) - these are the bulaot of Judea."

והיו שמיך אשר על ראשך נחשת AND THY HEAVEN WHICH IS OVER THY HEAD SHALL BE COPPER — These curses (i.e. all the curses contained in this chapter) Moses expressed them as though they came from his own mouth (Megillah 31b) whilst those he spoke on Mount Sinai (Leviticus 26), he expressed them as though from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, as indeed is implied by them (by the expressions used), for so it states there: “And if ye will not hearken unto Me”; “And if ye walk contrary to Me”, whilst here it says: “[And if thou wilt not obey] the voice of the Lord thy God”; “The Lord shall make cleave unto thee”; “The Lord shall smite thee”. Moses was milder in his curses, expressing them in the singular (“The Lord shall smite thee”, not “you”, the entire people), and similarly in this curse, too, he was milder, for in the former curses (those in Leviticus) it states, (Leviticus 26:19) “[I will make] your heaven as iron and your earth as copper”, i.e., that the heaven would not exude moisture, just as iron does not exude, and there would therefore be drought in the world, whilst the earth would exude moisture (be humid) just as copper sweats, and it would consequently rot the fruits. Here, however, it states, “Thy heaven shall be copper and thy earth shall be iron”, i.e. that the heavens would exude moisture: even though they might not pour with rain, at any rate there would be no ruinous drought in the world; whilst the earth would not exude moisture just as iron does not sweat, and consequently the fruits would not perish. Nevertheless this is a curse: for whether it (the earth) be as copper or whether it be as iron it will produce no fruit, and the heaven, too, will not pour with rain (give rain in abundance) (cf. Sifra, Bechukotai, Chapter 5 3 on Leviticus 26:19).