Biblical Interpretations Based on Physical Characteristics of Hebrew Letters

Introduction

In this article we will examine a few examples of Biblical interpretation based on the physical characteristics of the appearance of the Hebrew letters involved. Most examples involve occurrences of anomalous orthography found in the Masoretic Text, such as letters of unusual size or two words written as one long word. However this method was applied to standard orthography as well.

While this manner of interpretation is very rare, it is grounded in a certain type of traditional homiletic exegesis. TB Shabbat 104a contains a long teaching involving homiletic interpretations of the forms of the Hebrew letters. “The Rabbis told R. Joshua b. Levi: Children have come to the house of study and said things the like of which was not said even in the days of Joshua the son of Nun…gimmel dalet, show kindness to the poor [gemol dallim]. Why is the foot of the gimmel stretched toward the dalet? Because it is fitting for the benevolent to run after [seek out] the poor. And why is the roof of the dalet stretched out toward the gimmel? Because he [the poor] must make himself available to him. And why is the face of the dalet turned away from the gimmel? Because he must give him [help] in secret, lest he be ashamed of him…” The teaching includes homiletic interpretations of the forms of a number of the Hebrew letters.

In this article we will focus on the classic commentaries, from the Talmud, midrash and Sages of the early Medieval Period.

Genesis 1:1 Bereishit

The most well known example of this type of teaching is found in Genesis Rabbah 1:10, “R. Yona in the name of R. Levi said: Why was the world created with the letter bet? Just as the bet is closed on all of its sides and opened in the front, so too you do not have permission to say, what is below, what is above, what is before, and what is after.” These are the areas of inquiry forbidden in Mishna Chaggiga 2:1, “Anyone who looks into four things would be better off if he had not come into this world: what is above, what is below, what is before, and what is after.” This teaching of R. Yona in the name of R. Levi also appears in TJ Chaggiga 2:1 and in Pesikta Rabbati 21, with slightly different wording. It is explicit that the teaching here is directly connected to the physical characteristics of the letter bet.

Esther 9:9 Vaizata

Esther 9 gives a list of the ten sons of Haman, killed by Jews on the thirteenth of Adar. The first letter (vav) of the name of the last son on the list, Vaizata, is written oversized in scrolls today. This unusual way of writing his name is already noted in the Talmud, the only case of an unusually sized letter mentioned in the entire Talmud. TB Megilla 16b states: “R. Yochanan said: The vav of Vaizata must be lengthened like a boat-pole of the river Libruth. What is the reason? Because they were all strung on one pole.”¹

The meaning of the teaching of R. Yochanan is not exactly clear. Some have interpreted the lengthening of the vav in terms of extending its pronunciation, others as making it longer and bigger than a standard vav. While both approaches are noted parenthetically in the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayyim 691:4), the more widespread interpretation is that it refers to the oversized writing of the letter.² A third approach is found in the Talmud commentaries of the Medieval Spanish sages Rabenu Nissim and Ritva. They both explain that the letter vav here should be written stretched out, meaning that it does not have the small overhanging head on top, but is instead written as a straight line.³ This may also be the approach of Rashi, who explains that the vav should look like a “forche”, an Old French word, here apparently referring to the long straight handle of a pitchfork.⁴

How does a lengthened or straightened out vav indicate that “they were all strung on one pole”? The eleventh century sage Toviah ben Eliezer, in his work Midrash Lekach Tov, explains that the reference is to Ezra 6:11 where the punishment for disobeying the decree of the Persian king is to have a beam removed from his house, and he shall be impaled on it. The unusually written vav is meant to represent the beam that the sons of Haman were all hanged on. This interpretation is not explicit in the Talmud, Rashi, Ritva or Rabbenu Nissim, but it is reasonable that the simple understanding of their statements is that the long or stretched out vav graphically represents the large beam that they were all “strung on”.⁵

Nehemiah 2:13 Breached Walls

The first half of the Book of Nehemiah is concerned with the building of the walls of Jerusalem which were destroyed by the Babylonians. When Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem and performs a nocturnal inspection of the walls, we are told, “I surveyed the walls of Jerusalem that were breached, and its gates, consumed by fire” (Neh. 2:13). There is an orthographic anomaly in this verse, where the Hebrew words hem prutzim (that were breached) contain an open letter mem at the end of the word hem, rather than the final mem, always used when a mem is the last letter of a word. There is no other example in the Bible of a regular letter mem being used instead of its final form as the last letter of a word.⁶

Although as written the word appears to be hemprutzim, one word, it is read as two words, hem prutzim. It is an example of kri u’ktiv, when a word is read one way and written another. The Masoretes, in their notes to I Chronicles 27:12, listed 15 cases where two words are written as one, but still pronounced as two. Some are contractions, where a letter is dropped when the two words are combined,⁷ but nine of the cases have no letters dropped.⁸ The standard scholarly approach to this phenomenon is that the final forms of letters “gradually developed but were not used consistently,”⁹ and that Neh. 2:13 is an example of a non-final form at the end of a word, a remnant of the older way of writing.¹⁰

Ibn Ezra explains that the word should be viewed as one long word,¹¹ but notes that the Masoretes decided that it should be two words. He explains that homiletically it was explained that the open mem was used as opposed to the expected final mem, which is closed, as an orthographic reference to the open and breached walls of Jerusalem. Radak also brings this interpretation in the context of his comments to Isaiah 9:6.¹² Thus the open mem functions as a graphic representation of the breached walls of Jerusalem.

Daniel 6:20 Waking Up Early

Having seen three examples where the graphic appearance of a letter formed the basis of a homiletic interpretation, we will now turn to a case where this is not explicit.

The famous episode of Daniel in the lion’s den is told in Daniel chapter 6. Daniel 6:20 recounts how King Darius arose early in the morning to see if Daniel survived his night in the lion’s den: “Then, at the first light of dawn, the king arose and rushed to the lion’s den.” The Aramaic word for “at the first light of dawn” used in the text is bishparpara. This word has a unique orthographic anomaly; it contains both a small letter peh (the first peh in the word) and a large letter peh (the second one in the word). There is no other case in the Masoretic Text of one word containing both a big and small version of the same letter.

The earliest interpretation given to this unusual way of writing this word is found in Midrash Rabbi Akiva on the big letters in the Bible. This work is part of a body of midrashic literature attributed to R. Akiva having to do with homiletic interpretations of the letters themselves, the crowns on the letters, and large and small sized letters. They have been dated to the late 800s, early 900s.¹³

In Midrash Rabbi Akiva on the big letters it is explained that the large peh in bishparpara indicates that Darius “did not act according to the custom of kings who get up at the third hour (of daylight).”¹⁴ This refers to the statement of R. Yehoshua in the Mishna Berakhot 1:2 that the end time for the recital of the morning Shema is the third hour of daylight because that is when the princes get up. It is not entirely clear how this interpretation relies on the large letter peh. In fact, Rashi on this verse gives the same interpretation without referring to or relying on the large letter.

It may be that the orthography of the word itself is meant to visually represent getting up. Being that the first letter peh is written smaller than usual, the next letter resh is written normal size, and the following letter peh is written extra large, these middle three letters of the word appear to form a three level ascending step or staircase. This can be understood to graphically represent the rising out of bed of King Darius, the three steps corresponding to him getting up three hours earlier than other kings.

Conclusion

We have seen a few examples of an unusual form of homiletic exegesis, based on the physical appearance of the letters in words in the Masoretic Text of the Bible. Although not widespread or particularly well known, awareness of this method of exegesis can aid us in understanding otherwise cryptic midrashic interpretations, particularly when the letters in question have anomalous orthographic elements.