Comentário sobre Gênesis 10:12

העיר הגדלה THE GREAT CITY — This refers to Nineveh (not to Calah the last mentioned city nor to Resen), as it is said (Jonah 3:3) “Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city” (Yoma 10a).

ויבן את נינוה היא העיר הגדולה, most commentators believe that the words העיר הגדולה refer to the city Nineveh, seeing that this city has been described in similar terms in Jonah 3,3. I believe that actually, these words refer to רסן, seeing that our verse speaks about this city in the first place. The entire story, as we mentioned previously, has as its objective to demonstrate how ownership of even a sizable land or city is subject to rapid change. Even though Ashur established a great empire, this empire was crushed by the Babylonians who replaced them, and who, in turn were replaced in short order by the Persians and the Medes.

This refers to Nineveh. [Rashi explains this] because we do not know if “the great city” refers to Nineveh or to Kalach. [And Rashi knows it is Nineveh] because if Kalach was “the great city,” it should say, ובין כלח העיר הגדולה. Why does it say היא? (Nachalas Yaakov, citing Tosfos Yoma 10a, ד"ה איני)

ואת רסן בין נינוה , “and the great city of Nineveh situated between Ressen and Kolach”. He linked all three cities into one great metropolis. This is the reason why subsequently we find Nineveh referred to as: “the great city.”A different interpretation of the phrase: “and from this land Ashur emigrated.” The word Ashur is the name of a man, as suggested by Rashi, who described Ashur as being disgusted with his own children acclaiming Nimrod as deity, so much so that he decided to move far north east. In a Midrash, the source of which our author does not quote, the question is raised why G-d appointed a special prophet to warn the city of Nineveh of impending destruction if its people did not mend its ways. The answer given is that that this was in recognition of the courageous conduct of its founder Ashur, who had dissociated himself from Nimrod’s pantheistic kingdom. That Midrash cites our verse as the source for G-d’s special consideration for Nineveh’s people. The Midrash interprets the words: מן הארץ ההיא יצא אשור, as if the Torah had written: ‘the plan that prompted Ashur to move far away from the domain of Ni rod, eventually paid dividends by the inhabitants of their capital being given 40 days during which to reform heir lifestyle.” In Psalms 83,9, we are told that eventually also the Kingdom of Ashur turned anti Israel, as when they conquered the territories of the northern kingdom of the ten tribes and exiled its inhabitants in 722 B. C and that is why the Babylonians not long afterwards conquered the Kingdom of Ashur that had been predominant in that region. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish explains that the error made by the people of Ashur was that they thought the family of Put (verse 7) had become extinct, until we find in the Book of Ezekiel 30,5 that “both Put, Lud, and a mixed multitude of non pure ancestry,” is mentioned by the prophet as among the nations falling victim to conquerors together with the Egyptians whom they had supported. The reason that these details have not been spelled out in the Torah is that if you enumerate all these tribes we would think that there had been more than the 70 nations of which the Torah speaks after the fall of the Tower.