Comentários de Citação sobre Jó 14:4

But certainly all these [dietary laws] are only intended for the healing of the soul. For they defile the pure soul and drive away the spirit of purity and holiness from man, and produce dullness of intellect and the trait of cruelty. So wrote [the author of] Akeidat Yitzchak and Abarbanel. And the proof of this is that a cow born from a donkey is forbidden, because what comes from the unclean is unclean. This implies that the parent transfers its bad characteristics to its offspring. And in this vein it is said, But these you shall not eat from among those that bring up cud and from among those that have split hooves. The letter mem in umimafrisei [and from those that have] is superfluous, for it should have said “from those that bring up cud and those that have split hooves.” Rather, it is teaching separate points, meaning: But these you shall not eat even if they have all signs of purity, namely if it is born and comes from merely a cud-chewer like a cow from a camel, or merely from a split-hoofed animal, meaning a cow from a pig. This is how the ancients explained it. They also provided reasons for all the signs of impurity, as they all indicate toughness of flesh and bad temperament that produce negative qualities in the body of the one who eats them, and there is no need to elaborate on this. And on this it is said Who can bring forth something pure from something impure? (Job 14:4). Is it possible that from an impure thing would emerge something pure, and are not the one who begets and the one who is born as one, as the offspring is like the thigh [an extension] of its father?

Tanchuma goes on (on verse 7) that there are four pieces of Torah legislation which are targeted by the evil urge especially, all of which have been defined by the Torah as חקה, statute. They are: 1) the prohibition of marrying the wife of one’s brother (as a divorcee or widow with children, whereas she is to become the wife of that same brother-in-law if her husband had not sired children). 2) the prohibition of wearing wool and linen in one garment or sowing different species of seed in the same field. Seeing that it is permitted to make a talit of linen and attach woolen tzitziyot, the evil urge targets this legislation presenting it to us as illogical. 3) the law of the scapegoat which apparently carries the sins of the people as a gift to Satan. The Torah demands that the person accompanying said scape-goat purifies himself (as if the sins of these people “carried” by the beast had contaminated him whereas the scapegoat itself is killed while conferring life (forgiveness) on the sinners whose sins the beast “carries” (Leviticus 16,26). 4) The legislation of the red cow. What arouses the ire of the evil urge is the fact that all those who are involved in the ritual of the red cow, though of superior degree of ritual purity, are contaminated by it, whereas the ash of the same beast sprinkled on a ritually impure person has the power to purify such a person. According to that Midrash, Job 14,4 had this legislation in mind when he said: “Who can produce a clean thing out of an unclean one? No One!” (only G’d). Examples of G’d being able to produce the clean out of the unclean are 1) Avraham sired by an arch idolater such as his father Terach. 2) The king Chizkiyah of Yehudah whose father Achaz was a confirmed heretic. 3) Mordechai who was descended from Shimi of the tribe of Binyamin who had cursed David in the vilest terms. The people of Israel who emerged from amongst all the idolatrous Gentile nations are another example of the seemingly impossible becoming reality. So is the promise of the world of the future which will be the outcome of a transformation of this present world of lies and deceit. Job meant that the only one able to orchestrate such totally unlikely phenomena is the Unique One, the Lord! The Midrash adds the fact that the minimum size which makes an afflicted person subject to the tzoraat disease and contamination being the size of half a bean, while if the entire surface of the skin is covered by the eczema the person thus afflicted remains ritually pure.

ונערותיה הולכות, walking with her ladies-in-waiting, etc. Why is that detail pertinent to the story of Moses' rescue? Perhaps the Torah felt that inasmuch as Batya (Pharaoh's daughter) had performed such a great deed in rescuing the life of a Jewish baby, she deserved that all the details be revealed for all to know. It is a well known fact that a Royal princess does not go down to the river to bathe without her attendants. Moreover, it is customary that amongst her attendants there should be one who is senior, in charge of all the other junior attendants. The Torah speaks about "her attendants who were walking, etc." Presumably, the Torah means that at the time when the princess was actually bathing in the water all the other attendants were walking some distance away, affording the princess a degree of privacy while she bathed. Only the senior attendant stayed close to the princess. The Torah referred to this senior attendant when it writes: "she sent out her maidservant who picked up the basket." It is possible that the princess sent her maidservant to save the baby whereas the maidservant merely picked up the basket without the baby. In either event, the princess deserves praise for displaying noble human feelings. Her soul was pure, indicating that sometimes something pure emerges from something impure (Job, 14,4). One of two things may have happened. 1) Although the princess was attended by only a single servant at the time, she sent even that servant away and she herself picked up the baby remaining alone and vulnerable at the time. 2) Although the princess had only one attendant close by at the time, having sent her other maids some distance away, she even took a chance by sending the one remaining servant to pick up the basket with the baby.