What is on my mind today? Well I'll tell you.
Turns out, the Hebrew verb ד.ח.פ., which in its active form means "push," only appears in the Bible in one book: Esther. (Ok fine, it also comes up once in 2 Chronicles, but whatever.) It appears in Esther three times, and only in the passive (twice in נפעל and once in פועל), and it doesn't mean "push" at all. Despite it's passive construct, it means "hurry," and is a synonym of "ב.ה.ל." (as in מבוהלים ודחופים). Haman hurried home, pissed because of Mordechai. The messengers hurried off with the king's message. (It sort of comes up in Psalms 140:12, but in a convoluted form meaning something like "to his overthrow" or "such that he be thrust down" or something like that. Fine, so it comes up in more than Esther, but only in K'tuvim and mainly in Esther.)
In rabbinic literature its active form is quite common, whether in the context of pushing someone off a rooftop in order to carry out his biblically mandated death sentence, or pushing a priest into a cemetery. But the passive form comes up only twice, both times in Vayiqra Rabbah. In 21.7 it means something like "to be exiled" or "sent away," because God tells Moses to tell Aaron that he shouldn't come into the Kodesh. That same meaning is used in the active form in Pesiqta d'Rav Kahana, referring to God's future expulsion of the angel of Edom from God's quarters. But in Vayiqra Rabbah 4.6 it means something else entirely, and how we translate it affects our view of the scene there.
A non-Jew comes and asks Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korhah a question. The rabbi answers, but in doing so he sort of humiliates him. Then it says, about the non-Jew: "נדחף והלך לו". That could either mean "He was exiled, and he left," or "He hurried off." The difference between the two meanings affects how we understand the rabbi's role. Did he kick him out of the room, or did he just insult him a bit. I think he just insulted him a bit. There are no other examples of "נדחף" used without a clear agent, and the rabbi's agency here is far from clear. So it turns out that while the rabbi was rude (and rabbis in the Talmud are rude to plenty of people, not just non-Jews), he didn't kick the guy out of the room, nor perhaps even expect him to leave. I don't blame the non-Jew; I'd have left too. But still - it really matters how we translate that word, and it doesn't necessarily mean what we thought it did!
Welcome to Lav Davka. My posts will not necessarily all be like this, but this is a dissertation day, so there ya have it.
First comment ever! Do I get a prize?
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