It must be borne in mind, however, that neither Hillel, Ishmael, nor Eliezer ben Jose sought to give a complete enumeration of the rules of interpretation current in his day.
[3][1] Those rules are traditionally studied and applied to the religious texts of some biblical canon, which were commonly believed to be inspired by God himself, through the words and the actions of human people.
All the hermeneutic rules scattered through the Talmudim and Midrashim have been collected by Malbim in Ayyelet HaShachar, the introduction to his commentary on the Sifra, and have been reckoned at 613, to correspond with the 613 commandments.
The antiquity of the rules can be determined only by the dates of the authorities who quote them, meaning that they cannot safely be declared older than the tanna to whom they are first ascribed.
[1] The Talmud itself gives no information concerning the origin of the middot, although the Geonim regarded them as Sinaitic (הלכה למשה מסיני, "Law given to Moses at Mount Sinai"; comp.
He established two principles broadening the scope of the rule of his teacher Nahum Ish Gamzu, who had declared that certain particles, like את, גם and או, were inclusive and certain others, such as אך, רק and מן, were exclusive.
Ishmael, on the contrary, lays down the principle "the Torah speaks in the language of men",[6] and thus may have employed superfluous words and sounds; and forced values should not be assigned to them for the purpose of deducing new rules therefrom.
Thus, for instance, in Numbers 5:5-8 the Torah repeats the laws of Leviticus 5:20-26[8] for the purpose of teaching the new ruling that in certain cases recompense for sin shall be made directly to the priests.
Since the vowelization indicates the plural, Akiva concludes that a quarter-log of blood (the minimum quantity by which a priest becomes impure through contact with a single corpse) also defiles him when it issues from two bodies.
According to Ishmael, however, this minimum quantity defiles a priest only when it issues from a single corpse (for the word, according to the consonantal text, is to be read in the singular "nafshat").
[11][1] According to Rabbi Akiva, laws may be deduced from the juxtaposition of two legal sections, since "every passage which stands close to another must be explained and interpreted with reference to its neighbor".
Ishmael explains the occurrence of a section in a place where it does not properly belong (ולמה נכתב כאן) by declaring that "there is no first or last in the Scriptures",[13] not as due to any special reason.
[1] The first rule of Hillel and of Rabbi Ishmael is "kal va-chomer" (Hebrew: קל וחומר), called also "din" (conclusion).
It is formulated thus: דיו לבא מן הדין להיות כנדון ("The conclusion of an argument is satisfied when it is like the major premise").
Before long, however, the latter class was designated as hekkesh, while the phrase gezerah shavah was limited to analogy in the case of two different Biblical laws containing a word common to both.
The gezerah shavah was originally restricted to a δὶς λεγόμενον (dis legomenon), i.e., a word occurring only in the two passages offering the analogy.
In the Babylonian Talmud (Pesahim 66a), Hillel the elder made use of an argument by analogy when he wanted to show that it was permitted for a man to do labor on the Sabbath day when preparing his Passover offering on the eve of the Jewish holiday.
Hillel observed that in two biblical verses appeared the words, "at its appointed time" (Hebrew: במועדו), the one in Numbers 28:2, for which there is some prior knowledge about its practice, viz.
28:2), used here in connection with the daily whole-burnt offering, one is permitted to do labor on the Sabbath day pursuant to its preparation, so, too, the words "at its appointed time" (Num.
Consequently, in order to be binding, a gezerah shavah was obliged to conform to two requirements which, on the one hand, greatly restricted its application, and, on the other, gave legal decisions thus obtained the value of those deduced from a superfluous word in the Holy Scriptures.
According to the former, who follows his teacher Rabbi Nehunya ben HaKanah, the particular is only an elucidation of the preceding general expression, so that the latter includes only what is contained in the particular (כלל ופרט אין בכלל אלא מה שבפרט).
Akiva, on the contrary, applies the rule of increase and decrease (רבוי ומיעוט) which had been taught him by his teacher Nahum of Gimzo.
The two general terms are decreased in only one respect by the intermediate particular (רבוי ומיעוט ורבוי ריבה הכל ומאי מיעט דבר אחר ; Shebu.
[1] The difference between kelal u-perat u-kelal (כלל ופרט וכלל) and ribbui u-miyut u-ribbui (רבוי ומיעוט ורבוי) is exemplified in the following example: Exodus 25:31 states ועשית מנרת זהב טהור מקשה תיעשה המנורה, "You shall make a Menorah of pure gold, hammered out shall the Menorah be made."
This argument arose because the gemarah made reference to a wooden Menorah overlaid with tin that was constructed in the times of the Chashmunaim and used in the Temple service.
The rule "Ka-yotze bo mi-makom acher" ("Like that in another place") refers to explaining a Biblical passage according to another of similar content.
A halakic example of this form of hermeneutics is the interpretation of the word "kapot" (bough; Leviticus 23:40) as though it were "kaput" (bound; Sifra, ed.