Sotah 16a — the Talmud in English

Isi ben Yehuda says: to include the ground of

Shiloh, Nob, and Gibeon

the eternal House

the Temple that was in Jerusalem, for it is stated in the verse: “And from the dust that shall be in the ground of the Tabernacle”; we have thus learned this with regard to the Tabernacle, but with regard to the Temple we did not know it.

Isi ben Menachem—

he holds like the first beraita mentioned above—and

says: It is not necessary

to derive the ground of the eternal House from “in the ground,” for:

And if with regard to the lesser impurity,

that is, and if concerning the lesser prohibition of impurity—that is, entering the Tabernacle with bodily impurity, for which there is no capital punishment by the court, but only karet—

the verse did not distinguish

between the Tabernacle and the eternal House.

With regard to the impurity of a married woman,

the

more severe

impurity—for which one is liable to capital punishment by the court—

is it not all the more so

that the Torah equated the Temple with the Tabernacle, to take dust from there in order to test her, and to remove the impurity from within them?

And

if so, what is the meaning of

“in the ground of the Tabernacle”?—

To teach:

that he may not bring

dust

from his container

into a vessel and bring it into the Sanctuary, and that is sufficient. Rather, he must take dust from the floor of the Tabernacle. And if there is no loose dust there, he brings dust from outside, places it in the ground of the Tabernacle, and takes it from there and puts it into the water.

In the beraita brought in tractate Hullin, chapter “Covering the Blood” [88b], we learned: “They cover [the blood of a wild animal or bird after slaughter] only with dust,” the words of Beit Shammai. Beit Hillel say: “We find that ash is called dust, as it is stated: ‘And they shall take for the impure person from the dust of the burning of the sin-offering.’”

And the reason of Beit Shammai, who hold that they cover only with dust and not with ash, is that ash is called “dust of burning,” but ordinary dust is not called [dust], as explained in the Gemara there.

They raised a question before them:

If

there is no

dust

that he can put into the water of the sota,

what is the law: may he put

ash in its place

?

And the Gemara explains the sides of the uncertainty:

According to Beit Shammai—

you need not ask!

There is no room for uncertainty, for certainly he may not give ash, since

Beit Shammai say:

Beit Shammai say:

We do not find ash that is called dust,

and for this reason they hold that the blood is covered only with dust, as the verse says, “and he shall cover it with dust.” The same applies with regard to the sota: since the verse says “and from the dust,” he cannot put ash in its place.

When you ask—

according to Beit Hillel, who say: We find ash that is called

“dust,”

as it is stated, “and they shall take for the impure person from the dust of the burning of the sin-offering,” and for this reason they cover even with ash—

what

is the law of ash with regard to the dust of a sota?

And the Gemara explains the sides of the uncertainty:

Should we say:

even though

ash

is called

“dust,”

nevertheless,

here,

with regard to the sota,

“in the ground of the Tabernacle”

is written?

And although it is not necessary that he bring it from the ground of the Tabernacle, since all dust is included by “that shall be,” nevertheless, the Torah said “from the ground of the Tabernacle” in order to teach that the dust must be like the ground of the Tabernacle, and to exclude ash.

Or perhaps: this

“in the ground of the Tabernacle”

is to teach

according to Isi ben Yehuda, and it is according to Isi ben Menachem that it comes

[it comes], as was explained in the beraita above: for one according to his view, and for the other according to his view.

And if because the Torah said “and from the dust”—we find that ash is called “dust.”

Come and hear

a proof that ash is not fit for a sota—

From

what Rabbi Yohanan said in the name of Rabbi Yishmael:

In three places a halakha

that was stated to Moses at Sinai

follows the verse!

It weakens the standing [status] of the verse and uproots it from its plain meaning.

a. With regard to covering the blood,

the Torah said

“and he shall cover it”

“with dust,”

and

if

the halakha

given to Moses at Sinai were that the blood is covered

with anything

that grows plants.

b. With regard to the nazirite,

the Torah said

“a razor

shall not pass over his head,”

and

if

the halakha

given to Moses at Sinai were that the nazirite is prohibited

with anything

that removes the hair at its root, like a razor.

c. With regard to a bill of divorce,

the Torah said

“and he shall write for her”

“a document

of severance,” and it implies that he writes the bill of divorce on parchment, whereas

the halakha

given to Moses at Sinai is that

on anything

upon which the bill of divorce is written, it is fit, even on an olive leaf or a cow’s horn.

And the Gemara explains its proof from this beraita that ash is not fit for a sota, for:

If it is so,

if there is a halakha that even ash is fit to put into the water of a sota,

let Rabbi Yishmael count

it as well,

this

[he should have mentioned also the ash of a sota among the matters in which the halakha given to Moses at Sinai uproots the meaning of the verse]!? And we reject this:

The tanna

Rabbi Yishmael taught three matters

and left out

other matters that he did not mention. Therefore, one must say that the ash of a sota is also among the matters that Rabbi Yishmael did not mention.

But the Gemara asks:

And what did he leave out,

that Rabbi Yishmael left out, such that it can be said

that this

—the ash of a sota—also

did he leave out?

For it is not the way of a tanna to leave out only one matter!

And we explain:

Rabbi Yishmael left out

the case of

the leper,

with regard to his second shaving, at the end of the days of his counting. For although we cannot learn from the Torah that he must shave his entire body, a halakha comes and follows the verse and obligates the leper to shave all the hair of his body, until he becomes smooth like a gourd.

As it was taught:

It is stated in the section of the leper [Leviticus 14:8], with regard to his first shaving, which he performs at the end of the “days of his confinement,” when he is healed from the leprous affliction: “And the one being purified shall wash his garments, shave all his hair, bathe in water, and become pure; afterward he may enter the camp, but he shall dwell outside his tent for seven days,” and it implies that he shaves every hair on his body, until he becomes like a gourd.

But with regard to the second shaving that the leper performs at the end of the seven days [after he has been healed, returned to the camp, and dwelt outside his tent; there, verse 9], it is stated: “

And it shall be on the seventh day: he shall shave all his hair, his head and his beard and his eyebrows, and all his hair he shall shave.”

And so the verse said with regard to the second shaving of the leper: “

And it shall be on the seventh day; he shall shave all his hair.”

“All his hair”—this is a

generalization.

“His head and his beard and his eyebrows”—this

is a

specification.

“And all his hair he shall shave”—

the verse returned

and

made a generalization.

And this is the principle of “generalization, specification, and generalization”:

with a generalization, specification, and generalization, you may derive

to include

only something resembling the specification. What

the

specification

—the head, beard, and eyebrows—

explicitly

is

a place where hair gathers and is visible

to the eye,

so too every place

that is

a place where hair gathers and is visible

to the eye: only that place must the leper shave.

And before the Gemara finishes explaining what Rabbi Yishmael left out, the Gemara first explains the beraita itself:

What did he include

[which hair was included by virtue of the generalization, because it resembles the specification]?

He included the hair of the legs,

that is, the pubic hair, which is a place where hair gathers and is visible [when the person is not clothed].

What did he exclude

[which hair was excluded by virtue of the specification, because it does not resemble the specification]?

He excluded:

a. The hair

of the armpit,

which is a place where hair gathers, but it is not visible.

b.

And

the hair

of his entire body

[the hair of the entire body, apart from the places mentioned], which is not a place where hair gathers, although it is visible to the eye.

And here the Gemara returns to explain what Rabbi Yishmael left out:

For from the verse we would have excluded every place that is not a place where hair gathers and is visible,

and

if

the halakha

given to Moses at Sinai follows the verse and says that even in the second shaving he

shaves

until he becomes

like a gourd.

For

indeed, this is how

we learned

in tractate Nega’im:

The priest came

to

shave the leper all around

[to shave him entirely] at the first shaving;

he passes a razor over all his flesh,

and makes him like a gourd.

And it teaches in the latter part

of that same Mishna:

“And on the seventh day”—

of his days of counting—

“he shaves him with a second shaving like the first shaving!”

It follows that then, too, he must shave all the hair of his body until he becomes like a gourd, just as he does in the first shaving.

It follows that Rabbi Yishmael left out even the second shaving of the leper: the verse does not obligate him to shave until he is like a gourd, whereas the halakha follows the verse and obligates him to perform a shaving until he is like a gourd.

And since Rabbi Yishmael left out the shaving of the leper, we may say that he also left out ash for the water of a sota.

Rav Nahman bar Yitzhak said:

The shaving of a leper is not an omission!

Since

when Rabbi Yishmael counts

he counts only a

halakha

that

follows

the

verse,

which stands against an explicit verse, such as “dust,” “razor,” or “document.”

But

this

—the leper—[our reading is:

it follows a rabbinic derivation,

and some read:

it follows a homiletic interpretation]!

That is: the halakha does not follow something explicit in the verse, but rather something learned from expositions of the written verses, for in the end the Torah said, “And it shall be on the seventh day: he shall shave all his hair”; it is only that the specification that follows it interprets it and excludes from it, and this is not an explicit verse, but an exposition.

Rav Pappa said

another reason that the leper is not an omission:

when Rabbi Yishmael counts

among the matters in which the halakha follows the verse, he counts only a

halakha

that

follows

the verse

and uproots

it, as in the three matters mentioned in his statement.

But

this

—the leper—the halakha

follows and adds

to the verse: the verse did not obligate shaving until he becomes like a gourd, and the halakha came and added that he must shave until he becomes like a gourd.

When a general wording is written in the Torah [such as “he shall shave all his hair”], and also a detailed wording concerning certain particulars [such as “his head, his beard, and his eyebrows”], this matter can be expounded in two ways:

The first: by the principle of “kelal u-ferat,” that if a general statement was written and afterward a פרט, and then it again returned and stated a general statement, “you may expound—to include within the law of the Torah—only something resembling the פרט”.

The second: by the principle of “ribu’i u-mi’utei,” that if a ריבוי [a general wording] was written and afterward a מיעוט [a detailed wording], and then a ריבוי [a general wording] was written again, then: “ריבוי ומיעוט וריבוי, it included everything.” Nevertheless, the מיעוט was useful, to exclude one thing.

And concerning this Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva disagreed throughout the entire Torah, for Rabbi Ishmael expounds “kelal u-ferat,” whereas Rabbi Akiva expounds “ribu’i u-mi’utei”.

Rav Ashi said

another reason that the metzora is not considered a remnant:

This teaching

of “three places,”

whose is it? —

It is Rabbi Ishmael

[for Rabbi Yohanan said these words in the name of Rabbi Ishmael] —

For

he

expounds

throughout the entire Torah

“general statements and particulars,”

and according to his view, in truth the metzora does not need to perform a second shaving completely, like a gourd, as was explained: that according to the principle of “general statement, particular, and general statement,” the hair found in a place that is not a gathering of hair or is not visible was excluded.