Comentários de Citação sobre Levítico 10:11

וידבר ה׳ אל משה אחרי מות, G'd spoke to Moses after the death, etc. Why doesn't the Torah spell out what G'd told Moses on this occasion? Secondly, why did the Torah have to add that this communication occurred after the death of two of Aaron's sons? What bearing does this have on the content of G'd's message? Thirdly, why did the Torah have to add the words: בקרבתם לפני ה׳ וימותו, "when they came close to the presence of G'd and died?" If the Torah wanted to tell us the reason these sons died, we have been told this already in Leviticus 10,1, when the Torah wrote: ויקריבו לפני ה׳ אש זרה? The Torah was far more specific about the death of these sons in that context than it is here. We could not determine what the sin of these sons of Aaron had been by relying merely on what the Torah has written here. What is so terrible about wanting to come close to the presence of G'd? Fourthly, the word וימותו, they died, is quite superfluous seeing the verse commenced with the mention of their deaths? Fifthly, why did the Torah use the additional letter ו in the word וימותו?

And regarding what it says “and they had no children,” and there is an opinion that they died because of the sin of not having children (Yevamot 64), we have already explained in Parshat Shemini (10:11) that with idolatry, this is the measure [of divine justice]: that the Holy One, blessed be He, visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth [generations]. That is to say, sometimes the Holy One, blessed be He, waits until the second generation, and sometimes until the third or fourth generation. And if they had had children, then out of respect for Aaron, the Holy One, blessed be He, would have waited another one or two generations. But since they had no children, it was necessary to visit the sin upon them directly.

There is yet another approach to our problem based on Torat Kohanim which quotes a Baraitha in Yuma 53."Rabbi Eliezer says: ולא ימות עונש, כי בענן אראה אזהרה; יכול קודם מיתת בני אהרון, תלמוד לומר אחרי מות; יכול שניהם אחר מיתת בני אהרון, תלמוד לומר אראה. הא כיצד אזהרה קודם, מיתה אחר כך. "The words: 'so that he shall not die," are the penalty for entering; 'for I will be visible through the cloud is the warning;' I might have thought that this warning was issued prior to the deaths of the sons of Aaron; hence the Torah writes: 'after the death.' How did it all work? The warning was issued before, the death followed afterwards." The Talmud there enquires what we are to learn from Rabbi Eliezer's statement. Rava says that the expression אראה is a future tense, and that the Torah speaks of something that had not yet occurred, i.e. the cloud had not yet enveloped the Tabernacle (Leviticus 9,23). Accordingly, the sons of Aaron who are reported to have offered incense did so after the cloud had already appeared on that very day (Leviticus 10,1) and they were killed before a penalty had been decreed for this by the Torah. Keeping this in mind, we have to explain our verse here as follows: אחרי מות, after the death, etc.; G'd does not want you to think that the fact that the Torah records the prohibition to enter the Holy of Holies at will except when the High Priest was equipped with the cloud of incense was a belated warning, and that the sons of Aaron died for not heeding it. It says in 10,1 that "the sons of Aaron each took a censer with incense and placed fire on it, etc." The fact is the sons of Aaron had not been warned not to enter the Holy of Holies. This leaves us with the question why they had to die. The Torah therefore had to inform us that these deaths were not just a legal matter, a penalty which anyone else who had done the same thing would also have been subject to. The reason that the sons of Aaron died when attempting to enter the Holy of Holies was because בקרבם לפני ה׳, they attempted to draw too near to G'd. Seeing that they considered themselves as fit to be so close to G'd, G'd applied a more stringent yardstick when judging their behaviour. This is why a minor misdemeanour was treated as if it were a major sin. The Torah alluded to this with the additional letter ו in the word וימותו, i.e. there was an additional factor which contributed to their deaths.

makes the heart sick Heb. מחלה, brings sickness to the heart. This מחלה is not a noun like (Ex. 23:25): “And I will remove sickness (מחלה) from your midst,” but like (Lev. 11:6): “bringing up (מעלת) the cud.”