Aligned sentence by sentence
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[The following completes the close of Chapter Nine; it is not part of *Ḥeleq* itself.] As for one who is impure and ate pure *terumah*, [his liability to death by Heaven] derives from the verse "and they shall die for it if they profane it" (Leviticus 22:9); and concerning one who eats untithed produce (*tevel*) Scripture says, "and they shall not profane the holy things of the Children of Israel" (Leviticus 22:15) — so that just as the "profanation" mentioned in connection with *terumah* carries death, so too the "profanation" mentioned in connection with untithed produce. And [the same applies to] a non-priest who ate *terumah*, for after the verse "and they shall die for it if they profane it" Scripture says, "no non-priest shall eat of a holy thing" (Leviticus 22:10). A non-priest who performed [Temple] service [incurs death], as is made plain by "and the non-priest who draws near shall be put to death" (Numbers 18:7). An impure person who performed service [derives his liability] from the verse concerning the impure, "that they separate themselves from the holy things of the Children of Israel and not profane [them]" (Leviticus 22:2–3) — and this "profanation" is like the "profanation" mentioned in "and they shall die for it if they profane it."
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One who immersed that day [but had not yet waited until nightfall, the *tevul yom*,] is derived by tradition resting upon the verse "they shall be holy to their God and shall not profane [it]" (Leviticus 21:6). One lacking [the requisite priestly] garments [is derived] from the verse concerning the priests, "and you shall gird them with sashes, Aaron and his sons" (Exodus 29:9) — for while their garments are upon them their priesthood is upon them, but if anything of them is missing he is like a non-priest. One still lacking [the requisite] atonement [offerings, the *meḥusar kippurim*, is derived] from "and the priest shall make atonement for her and she shall be clean" (Leviticus 12:8), which proves that before bringing her atonement she is called impure; and it is established that an impure person performs no [valid] service, and if he performed service he incurs death.
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And [the prohibition against serving] without having washed hands and feet is made plain by "they shall wash with water, that they die not" (Exodus 30:20–21). [And concerning those who drank wine,] "Wine and strong drink you shall not drink" etc. (Leviticus 10:9). [And concerning those with disheveled hair and torn garments,] "Do not let the hair of your heads grow long, nor rend your garments, that you die not" (Leviticus 10:6). And the law is not in accordance with R. Akiva.
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Mishnah 1
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It has seemed good to me to speak here of many principles belonging to matters of belief that are of very great moment.
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Know that the people of the [revealed] Law have differed greatly in their views concerning the felicity that a person attains by fulfilling these commandments which God prescribed for us through Moses our Teacher, and concerning the misery that overtakes us when we transgress them — they have differed exceedingly, in accordance with the differences of their intellects, and over this their minds have fallen into great confusion. Indeed, you will scarcely find anyone at all for whom this matter has been clarified, nor will you find on it any well-ordered discourse from anyone, except amid much confusion.
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One group holds that the felicity [in question] is the Garden of Eden, and that it is a place where one eats and drinks without bodily toil and without exertion, where there are houses of precious stones and couches of silk, and rivers that run with wine and fragrant oils, and much of this kind. And [they hold] that the misery is Gehinnom, a place that blazes with fire in which the corpses are burned and where people are tormented with kinds of torments too long to describe. This group adduces support for this belief from many sayings of the Sages, may peace be upon them, whose plain sense — by your life — agrees with their claim, or with most of it.
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A second group holds and supposes that the hoped-for felicity is the days of the Messiah — may he be revealed speedily — and that in that age all people will be everlasting kings, their bodies will grow mighty, and they will inhabit the whole earth forever; and that this Messiah, by their reckoning, will live as long as the Creator, may His praise be exalted, endures; and that in that age the earth will bring forth woven garments and baked bread and many such impossible things. And the misery [on their view] is that a person should not be alive in that age and should not merit to behold it. They too adduce support for this from many sayings found among the Sages, and from verses of Scripture whose plain sense agrees with their claim, or with part of it.
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A third group maintains that the hoped-for felicity is the resurrection of the dead — that is, that a person should live again after his death and return among his family and kin, eating and drinking and never dying again. And the misery is that he should not live again. They too adduce support for this from sayings of the Sages and from a few passages in Scripture whose plain sense agrees with this claim.
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A fourth group maintains that the felicity we attain by fulfilling the commandments is bodily ease and worldly aspirations in this world — such as the fertility of the land, abundance of wealth and children, length of days, soundness of body, security, having a king from among us, and our holding dominion over those who have been our enemies. And [they hold] that the misery that overtakes us when we transgress is the contrary of all these conditions — as is in fact our state in this present age, the age of the exile. They adduce support, by their reckoning, from all the verses of the Torah concerning the blessings and the curses and the like, and from the whole of the narratives recorded in Scripture.
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A fifth group — and these are the majority — combines all these things and says that the [object of] hope is that the Messiah will come and revive the dead, and that they will enter the Garden of Eden and there eat and drink and remain in health as long as the heavens and the earth endure.
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But as for that strange and rare notion — I mean the World to Come — you will scarcely find anyone at all to whom it has ever occurred, or who ponders it, or takes up this principle, or asks about this term, [inquiring] to what it refers, and whether it is the [ultimate] end, or whether one of the foregoing views is the end, and [who] distinguishes between the end and the means leading to the end. You will not find anyone at all asking about this or discoursing upon it.
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Rather, all people — common and elite alike — ask how the dead will rise, naked or clothed, and whether they will rise in those very garments in which they were buried, with their embroidery and ornament and fine stitching, or in a covering that merely covers them; and whether, when the Messiah comes, he will equalize rich and poor, or whether in his days there will [still] be the strong and the weak; and many such questions, time and again.
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Now you, sir, grasp this parable from me, and then set your mind to hearing what I have to say in all of this. Suppose a small child, of tender years, is brought to a teacher to be taught the Torah, which is a great good for him because of the perfection it will bring him; yet on account of his young age and the weakness of his understanding he does not grasp the measure of that good nor what perfection it leads him to. The teacher, who is more complete than he, is therefore obliged of necessity to spur him on to study by means of what he loves on account of his young age, and so says to him: "Read, and I will give you a walnut or a fig, or I will hand you a piece of sugar." So he reads and exerts himself — not for the reading itself, since he sets no value upon it, but to obtain that food; and eating that food is, in his eyes, better and more of a good than the reading, without any doubt. Therefore he reckons the reading a hardship and a toil that he undergoes in order, by that toil, to attain that beloved end, which is a nut or a piece of sugar.
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When he grows older and his mind matures and that thing he formerly prized loses its value for him, while another thing comes to be prized [in its place], his teacher will encourage him toward that thing he now desires, saying: "Read, and I will buy you fine shoes, or a garment of such-and-such a cut." So again he exerts himself — not for the reading itself, but for that clothing; for that garment is, in his eyes, better than learning, and is the end of his reading.
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When he grows more perfect in mind and that too loses its worth for him, he sets his desire upon something higher than that, and his teacher says to him: "Learn this section, or this chapter, and I will give you a dinar or two." So he reads and exerts himself in order to take that money — and taking the money is then, in his eyes, more honorable than the reading, since the end of his reading is now that he should take the gold he was promised.
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When he grows more discerning and this too loses its worth for him, seeing that it is a paltry thing, he sets his desire upon something greater still; and he is told: "Study, so that you may become a master and a judge, that people may honor you and rise before you and obey your commands, and that your name be magnified in your life and after your death, like so-and-so and so-and-so." So he reads and exerts himself to attain that rank, and his end is now that people should honor and exalt him and praise him.
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Now all of this is blameworthy. One resorts to it only because of the weakness of the person's mind, who makes the end of learning something other than learning itself, and says: "Why do we learn this knowledge, except to obtain by it these things?" — when [in truth] he should learn for the sake of [attaining] true wisdom. This is what the Sages call [learning] "not for its own sake" (*she-lo li-shmah*) — that is, that one fulfills the commandments, performs them, reads, and exerts himself, not for the sake of the thing itself but for the sake of some other thing. The Sages, may peace be upon them, forbade this and said: "Do not make them a crown to magnify yourself, nor a spade to dig with" (m. Avot 4:5).
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— alluding to what I have explained to you, that one should not make the end of knowledge the people's honoring of him, nor the acquiring of money, and should not take the religion of God as a livelihood, but should have no end in his learning other than the knowledge itself. So too, the end of [grasping] the truth is only to know that it is true; and the [revealed] laws are true, so their end is the fulfilling of them.
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A complete person ought not to say, "If I practice these virtues and shun these vices which God forbade, with what shall I be rewarded?" — for that is like the saying of the child: "If I read, what will be given me?" — to which the answer is, "Such-and-such a thing." For when we see the weakness of his mind, which cannot grasp this much and seeks an end for the end, we answer him according to his ignorance, [as it is written,] "Answer a fool according to his folly" (Proverbs 26:5).
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The Sages have forbidden us this too — namely, that a person should make some [external] thing the end of his worship and of his fulfilling the commandments. This is the saying of the perfect, complete man who apprehends the truths, Antigonos of Sokho: "Be not like servants who serve the master in order to receive a reward, but be like servants who serve the master not in order to receive a reward" (m. Avot 1:3). By this they meant that one should believe the truth for the sake of the truth itself; and this is the meaning they express by [the phrase] "one who worships out of love."
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The Sages, may peace be upon them, said concerning the verse "He delights greatly in His commandments" (Psalms 112:1): "R. Eliezer said: 'in His commandments' — and not in the reward of His commandments" (BT Avodah Zarah 19a). How great is this proof and how clear! For it is a plain demonstration of what we said before.
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And greater still than this is their saying in the text of the *Sifrei*: "Lest you say, 'Behold, I will study Torah in order to be rich, in order to be called Rabbi, in order to receive reward in the World to Come' — Scripture teaches, 'to love the Lord' (Deuteronomy 11:13): whatever you do, do only out of love" (Sifrei Deuteronomy 41).
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So this meaning has become clear, and it is established that this is the aim of the [revealed] Law and the foundation of the belief of the Sages. None turns a blind eye to it save an ignorant fool whom the whisperings of feeble notions and defective fancies have ruined. This is the rank of Abraham our father, who worshiped out of love; and it is along this path that one is bound to strive.
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Yet because the Sages, may peace be upon them, knew that this matter is exceedingly hard, and not everyone apprehends it, and even one who does apprehend it does not at first accept it nor regard it as a sound belief — for a person performs his deeds only to attain some benefit or ward off some harm, else his action is in vain; so how can one say to a person bound by the Law, "Perform these deeds, but do not perform them out of fear of God's punishment or in hope of His reward"? This is very hard, since not all people apprehend the truths and become like Abraham our father.
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— they therefore permitted the multitude to remain in their belief that they do good deeds in hope of reward and shun evil deeds in fear of punishment, and they urge them on in this and strengthen their resolve in it, until the one capable of apprehending apprehends and comes to know the truth and the most perfect way. This is just as we deal with the child in teaching him, as in the parable we set out.
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And they faulted Antigonos of Sokho for declaring openly to the multitude what he declared, and said concerning this: "Sages, be careful with your words" etc. (m. Avot 1:11), as we shall explain in [our commentary on] Avot. The multitude lose nothing thereby; for in their fulfilling the Law out of fear of punishment and hope of reward, [it is true] they are not complete — but this is to be encouraged in them, so that they may acquire a settled disposition and a habit in fulfilling the Law, and may pass on to the truth and become "those who worship out of love." This is their saying, may peace be upon them: "Let a person always occupy himself with the Torah even not for its own sake, for from [doing it] not for its own sake he comes to [doing it] for its own sake" (BT Pesaḥim 50b).
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Now among the things you must know is that, with respect to the sayings of the Sages, may peace be upon them, people have divided into three groups.
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[The First Approach — the Crude Literalists.] The first group — and they are the majority of those I have seen, and of those whose compositions I have seen and of whom I have heard — take [the Sages' words] according to their plain sense and do not interpret them figuratively at all; to them all the impossibilities become necessities of existence. They did this only out of their ignorance of the sciences and their remoteness from the branches of knowledge, and because they are not perfect enough to rouse themselves of their own accord, nor have they found anyone to rouse them. So they suppose that the Sages, in all their well-considered sayings, intended nothing but what they themselves understood from them and that [these sayings are] to be taken at face value.
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— even though the plain sense of some of their words is of a strangeness such that, were it described to the common people at its face value (let alone to the elite), they would be astonished and say, "How could there be in the world anyone who imagines this and regards it as a sound view, let alone deems it good?" This wretched group is to be pitied for its ignorance: for it has, by its own reckoning, exalted the Sages, when in truth it has degraded them to the utmost degree of degradation without realizing it.
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By the life of God, this group does away with the beauty of the religion, darkens its splendor, and turns the religion of God into the very opposite of what was intended by it. For God says in the perfect text of the revelation, "[the nations] who shall hear all these statutes [and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people]" (Deuteronomy 4:6) — yet this group recites, from the plain sense of the Sages' words, things that, when the nations hear them, lead them to say, "Surely this little nation is a foolish and senseless people."
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Those who do this most are the preachers (*darshanim*) who explain to the people what they themselves have not understood. Would that, since they understood nothing, they had at least kept silent — "If only you would keep utterly silent, that would be wisdom for you" (Job 13:5) — or that they had said, "We do not know what the Sages meant by these words, nor how they are to be interpreted." But they suppose they understand, and set themselves to teaching the people what they themselves understood — not what the Sages [meant] — and they expound to the masses the homilies of [tractate] Berakhot and of the chapter *Ḥeleq* and the like at their plain sense, word for word.
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[The Second Approach — the Embarrassed Allegorizers.] The second group is also numerous: these are those who saw or heard the sayings of the Sages, took them at their plain sense, and supposed that the Sages meant nothing by them but what the plain sense of the words indicates; and so they set themselves to belittling and disparaging them, and to denouncing as outrageous what is not outrageous, and at times they mock the words of the Sages, and suppose themselves more intelligent and of keener mind, and [suppose] that the Sages, may peace be upon them, were deluded, deficient in judgment, and ignorant of the whole of existence, apprehending nothing at all.
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Most who fall into this belief are pretenders to medicine and those who rave with the verdicts of astrology, since they fancy themselves clever, wise philosophers — though how far they are, in truth, from being human beings in the eyes of [genuine] philosophers! They are more ignorant than the first group and more foolish; and it is an accursed faction, for it presumes against persons of high rank whose learning has been made plain to the learned.
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Had they but trained themselves in the sciences, so as to know how discourse upon divine matters and the like ought to be conducted before the multitude and before the elite, and had they mastered the practical part of philosophy, it would have become plain to them whether the Sages were learned or not, and the meanings of their words would have become clear to them.
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[Rambam's Approach.] The third group — and by the life of God they are exceedingly few, so few that they can scarcely be called a "group" except as one calls the sun a "species" — are those for whom the greatness of the Sages and the excellence of their thought have been established by what is found woven into their words, [namely] phrases that point to entirely sound meanings, even if these are few and scattered in [various] places of their compilations; yet they prove [the Sages'] perfection and their apprehension of the truths.
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There has also been established for them the impossibility of the impossible and the necessity of the necessary, so that they know that the Sages, may peace be upon them, do not speak of what is absurd; and they are convinced that [the Sages'] words have an outer sense and an inner sense, and that whatever [the Sages] say of impossible things, their discourse upon them is by way of riddle and parable. Such is the way of the great sages.
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Therefore the chief of the sages [Solomon] opened his book and said: "To understand a parable and a metaphor, the words of the wise and their riddles" (Proverbs 1:6). And whoever knows the [Hebrew] language knows that *ḥidah* (riddle) is discourse whose aim lies in its inner, not its outer, sense, as in "Let me put a riddle to you" (Judges 14:12). For the discourse of all the men of knowledge upon those sublime matters which are the [ultimate] end is by way of riddle and parable.
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How, O people, can you find it strange that they composed [their] knowledge by way of parable, likening it to base and common things, when you see the wisest of men do this by the holy spirit — I mean Solomon — in Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and part of Ecclesiastes?
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And how can you find it strange to interpret their words and draw them out from their plain sense so that they accord with reason and agree with the truth and with the books of revelation, when [the Sages] themselves interpret the verses of Scripture, drawing them out from their plain sense and rendering them parable — and this is the truth? For we find them saying that the verse "He smote two ariels of Moab" (2 Samuel 23:20) is a parable; and likewise "he went down and slew the lion in the midst of the pit" (2 Samuel 23:20) is a parable; and "who will give me water to drink" (2 Samuel 23:15) and the rest of what occurs there — all of it is parable. So too the book of Job in its entirety: some of them said it was a parable, but did not make plain to what end the parable was set. So too the vision of Ezekiel: some of them said it was a parable. And much of this kind. So if you, sir, are of either of the first two groups, pay no heed to my words on any of this matter, for nothing of it will agree with you; rather it will harm you and you will hate it. How should light, temperate food, of measured quantity and balanced quality, suit a person who has grown accustomed to bad, heavy foods? It would actually injure him and he would loathe it. Do you not see what those who were accustomed to eating onions and garlic and fish said of the manna? — "and our soul loathes this insubstantial bread" (Numbers 21:5). But if you are of the third group, then whenever there comes before you any of their words that reason rejects, pause at it and know that it is a riddle and a parable; and lie down with mind absorbed and thought given over to interpreting it, intent upon attaining the doctrine of truth and the right view, as it is said: "to find delightful words and to write rightly words of truth" (Ecclesiastes 12:10). Consider my words, and you will succeed, if God, exalted be He, so wills.
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And now I shall begin to speak of what I intended.
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Know that, just as a blind man does not apprehend colors, nor a deaf man sounds, nor a eunuch the pleasure of intercourse, so too bodies do not apprehend the pleasures of the soul.
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And just as a fish does not know the element of fire, since it dwells in its opposite, so too, in this corporeal world, the pleasures of the spiritual world are not known.
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Indeed, among us there is no pleasure at all save only the pleasure of bodies and the apprehension of the senses through food, drink, and sexual union;
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and whatever is beyond this is, for us, non-existent — we neither discern it nor apprehend it at first thought, but only after much refinement. This is necessarily so because we are in the corporeal world, and so apprehend only its pleasure;
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whereas the pleasures of the soul are perpetual and unceasing, and between them and these [bodily] pleasures there is no proportion whatever.
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It is not permissible, either in our Law or in the view of the divine philosophers, to say that the angels, the stars, and the spheres have no pleasure; on the contrary, they have a very great pleasure in what they have intellectually apprehended of the Creator, may He be exalted and magnified, and thereby they are in a perpetual, unceasing pleasure — a pleasure that is not corporeal and that they do not apprehend [through senses], for they have no senses like ours by which we apprehend what we apprehend.
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So too, when one of us has been purified and reaches that rank after death, he does not apprehend the corporeal pleasures, nor does he desire them — any more than a great and mighty king desires to strip off his kingship and go back to playing ball in the marketplace,
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though there was undoubtedly a time when he would have preferred playing with that ball to kingship: namely, in the days of his childhood, when he was ignorant of both states, just as today we prefer the corporeal pleasure to the spiritual.
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If you reflect upon these two pleasures, you will find the baseness of the one and the loftiness of the other, even in this world.
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For we find that most people — indeed all of them — burden themselves and their bodies with hardship and toil beyond all measure in order to attain some eminence or to be honored by others; and this pleasure is not the pleasure of food or drink.
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Likewise, many people prefer vengeance upon an enemy to many bodily pleasures; and many shun the greatest of bodily pleasures out of fear of incurring disgrace or shame from others, or in pursuit of a good name.
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If, then, our condition in this corporeal world is such, how much more so in the spiritual world, which is the World to Come, in which our souls apprehend [something] of the Creator like that which the higher beings apprehend, or more! For that pleasure cannot be divided nor described, nor can any likeness be found by which to represent it.
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Rather, as the prophet said, marveling at its greatness: "How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You, which You have wrought for those who take refuge in You, before the sons of men" (Psalms 31:20).
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So too the Sages, may peace be upon them, said: "The World to Come — there is in it no eating, no drinking, no bathing, no anointing, and no marital intercourse; rather the righteous sit with their crowns upon their heads, taking delight in the radiance of the Divine Presence" (BT Berakhot 17a).
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By their saying "their crowns upon their heads" they mean the persistence of the soul through the persistence of its object of knowledge, the two being one and the same thing — as the masters of philosophy have mentioned by ways too long to set out here.
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And by their saying "delighting in the radiance of the Divine Presence" they mean that those souls take delight in what they apprehend of the Creator, just as the holy living-creatures and the other ranks of angels take delight in what they have apprehended of His existence.
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Thus the felicity and the ultimate end is to attain to this exalted company and to come to be in this rank, and the persistence of the soul, as we have described, unto infinity, through the persistence of the Creator, may His praise be exalted, who is the cause of its persistence by virtue of its apprehending Him — as is made plain in First Philosophy.
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This is the great good with which no good can be compared and to which no pleasure can be likened; for how should what is everlasting and infinite be likened to a thing that comes to an end? — as it is said, "that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days" (Deuteronomy 22:7),
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which has reached us by tradition [interpreted as]: "'that it may be well with you' — in a world that is wholly good; 'and that you may prolong your days' — in a world that is wholly long" (BT Ḥullin 142a; BT Kiddushin 39b).
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The complete misery is the cutting off of the soul, its destruction, and its not persisting [in existence]; and this is the *karet* mentioned in the Torah. The meaning of *karet* is the cutting off of the soul, as is made plain by "that soul shall surely be cut off" (Numbers 15:31); and the Sages, may peace be upon them, said: "'cut off' (*hikkaret*) — in this world; '[surely] cut off' (*tikkaret*) — in the World to Come" (BT Sanhedrin 64b). And Scripture says, "but the soul of my lord shall be bound [in the bundle of life]" (1 Samuel 25:29).
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So everyone who has clung to corporeal pleasures, cast off the truth, and preferred falsehood, has been cut off from that loftiness, and there persists only the [bare] matter, cut off.
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The prophet has [further] made plain that the World to Come is not apprehended by the bodily senses, in his saying: "No eye has seen, O God, besides You, [what He will do] for the one who waits for Him" (Isaiah 64:3); and in explaining this they said: "All the prophets prophesied only concerning the days of the Messiah; but the World to Come — 'no eye has seen, O God, besides You'" (BT Berakhot 34b).
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As for the promise and the threat mentioned in the Torah, their interpretation is as I shall describe to you. [The Torah] says to you: if you fulfill these commandments, We will help you to fulfill them and to be perfected in them, and We will remove from you all the impediments — for a person cannot perform [divine] service when sick, or hungry, or thirsty, or amid war;
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and so [the Torah] promises the removal of all these, that [people] shall be in health and at peace, until their knowledge is made complete and they merit the life of the World to Come. The end of the Torah, then, is not that the land be fertile, that lives be long, and that bodies be sound; rather, by all these things one is helped toward fulfilling it.
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And likewise, if you transgress, your punishment will be that all those impediments will arise, so that you cannot do good works, as it is said, "because you did not serve the Lord [your God in joy]" etc. (Deuteronomy 28:47).
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If you reflect upon this wondrous reflection, you will find that it is as though [the Torah] says: "If you have performed some of these commandments out of love and zeal, We will help you to [perform] all of them by removing from you the impediments and obstacles; and if you have neglected some of them out of contempt, We will bring upon you obstacles preventing you from [performing] all of them, so that you attain neither perfection nor [eternal] persistence." This is the meaning of their saying, may peace be upon them: "The reward of a commandment is a commandment, and the reward of a transgression is a transgression" (m. Avot 4:2).
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As for the Garden of Eden, it is a fertile place, of the most abundant of the earth's soil, rich in waters and in fruits, which God will disclose to mankind in the future and to which He will direct them, so that they may take delight in it. It may be that there are found in it exceedingly strange plants of great benefit and abundant delight, other than these known to us. None of this is impossible or far-fetched; rather it is near to possibility, even had the Law not mentioned it — how much more so when this has been made plain in the Law and become well known.
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As for Gehinnom, it is an expression for the pain that overtakes the wicked. The character of this pain is not made plain in the Talmud: some say that the sun draws near to them and burns them, adducing support from the verse "for behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven" etc. (Malachi 3:19); others say that a strange heat arises within their bodies and burns them, adducing support from the verse "your own spirit, a fire, shall devour you" (Isaiah 33:11).
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And [as for] the resurrection of the dead, it is a principle among the principles of the Law of Moses — and there is no portion nor any bond with the Jewish people for one who does not believe it; yet it is for the meritorious [in particular]. The text of *Bereshit Rabbah* [states]: "The might of the rains [is] for the righteous and for the wicked, but the resurrection of the dead is for the righteous alone" (Bereshit Rabbah 13:4).
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For how should the wicked live again, when they are dead even in their lifetime? — and thus they said, may peace be upon them, "The wicked, even in their lifetime, are called dead; and the righteous, even in their death, are called living" (BT Berakhot 18a–b). And know that a human being necessarily dies and is dissolved into the [elements] of which he is composed.
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As for the days of the Messiah, it is an age in which kingship will return to Israel, and they will return to the Land [of Israel]; and that king who arises will have the seat of his kingdom in Zion, and his name will be magnified and will fill the horizons of the earth, greater than the kingdom of Solomon and more; the nations will make peace with him and the lands will obey him on account of the greatness of his justice; and wonders will appear at his hands; and everyone who rises against him, God will cut him off and deliver him into his hand.
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All the verses of Scripture bear witness to his felicity and to our felicity through him. Nothing in the order of existence will change from what it now is, save that kingship will belong to Israel; and the text of the Sages [says]: "There is no difference between this world and the days of the Messiah except [the end of] the subjugation to [foreign] kingdoms alone" (BT Berakhot 34b; BT Sanhedrin 91b).
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In his days there will [still] be the strong and the weak relative to one another, but in those days a person's livelihood will be very easy for him, so that he will labor the least of labor and arrive at a great yield. This is the meaning of their saying: "The Land of Israel is destined to bring forth ready loaves and fine woolen garments" (BT Shabbat 30b; BT Ketubbot 111b)
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— for people say, when one finds a thing prepared with ease, "So-and-so found baked bread and cooked food." Your proof of this is the saying of the text, "and strangers shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers" (Isaiah 61:5), which shows that there will [still] be plowing and harvesting; and for this reason the [Sage] who uttered this saying grew angry at his disciple when the latter did not grasp this intent from him and supposed the words to be at their plain sense, so [the Sage] answered him according to his [limited] apprehension — and that was not [really] the answer; the proof that he did not answer him in earnest is his adducing "do not answer a fool according to his folly" (Proverbs 26:4).
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The great benefit in that age is that we shall rest from the subjugation of the wicked kingdom, which keeps us from [acquiring] all the virtues, and knowledge will increase, as it is said, "for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord" (Isaiah 11:9); and strife and wars will cease, as it is said, "nation shall not lift up sword against nation" (Isaiah 2:4). So one who lives in those days will attain a great perfection by which he will ascend to the life of the World to Come.
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And the Messiah will die, and his son and his son's son will succeed him; and God has made plain his death, saying, "He shall not grow dim nor be crushed until he has set justice in the earth" etc. (Isaiah 42:4); and his kingdom will endure an exceedingly long while, and lives too will be long, for with the lifting of griefs and sorrows lives are lengthened.
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Do not find it strange that his kingdom should endure thousands of years, for the sages have said that when an excellent assembly gathers, it seldom disperses.
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And do not [wrongly] crave the days of the Messiah on account of an abundance of crops and wealth, nor in order to ride horses and drink to the sound of instruments of revelry, as those of confused mind suppose; rather the prophets longed for them, and the meritorious yearned for them, because of the excellent company that will be in them, and the good conduct, and the knowledge, and the justice of the king and the greatness of his learning and his nearness to his Creator — as [God] said to him, "You are My son" (Psalms 2:7) —
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and [because of] the fulfilling of the whole Law of Moses without weariness, without distress, and without compulsion, as [God] promised, "no longer shall each man teach his neighbor" etc., "for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest" (Jeremiah 31:33), "and I will put My Torah within them" (Jeremiah 31:32), "and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26) — and many such verses bearing on these aims. By these conditions one attains the life of the World to Come with a firm attainment; and the [true] end is only the World to Come, and toward it is the striving.
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It is for this reason that the one [Tanna] aided by the truth fixed his gaze upon the ultimate end and set aside all besides it, saying: "All Israel have a share in the World to Come."
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Yet, even though it is the [ultimate] end, one who wishes to be a worshiper out of love ought not to worship in order to attain the World to Come, as we explained earlier; rather he should worship in the manner I shall describe. Namely: when he believes that there is a [body of] knowledge that reached the prophets from God, [in which] He taught them that the virtues are such-and-such and the vices are such-and-such, it becomes binding upon him — inasmuch as he is a well-ordered human being — to do the virtues and shun the vices.
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When he does this, the meaning of "human being" is perfected in him and he is set apart from the beasts; and when a person becomes complete, it is among the excellences of the [complete] human being, whom no impediment has hindered, that his soul should persist through the persistence of its object of knowledge — and this is the World to Come, as we explained.
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This is the meaning of [the verse] "Do not be like a horse, like a mule, without understanding" etc. (Psalms 32:9): that is, what restrains [the beast] from going astray is something external, like the bit and the bridle. A human being should not be so; rather what restrains him should be his very self — I mean his human form, which, when it is complete, restrains him from those things that the [state of] completeness restrains [him from], and these are called the vices, and it urges him on toward that by which he is made complete, and these are the virtues. This is what I have been able to gather from the whole of their words upon this sublime and momentous matter. I shall [one day] compose a work in which I gather all the homilies (*derashot*) found in the Talmud and elsewhere, and explain them, and interpret them in a way that accords with the truths, adducing proof for all of this from [the Sages'] own words; I shall show which of them are at their plain sense, which are parable, and which befell in dream and were recorded in unqualified terms as though they had befallen while awake. In that work I shall make plain to you many beliefs; and in it I shall set out the full account of those matters of which I have here given you only a few small samples by which to measure the rest. Let no one find fault with the looseness in some of the wording and meanings in my discourse here, which the people of [exact] science would criticize; for I have allowed myself this much latitude in order to make [the matter] intelligible to one who has had no prior training in any part of this sublime aim that not all people apprehend.
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The word *Epikoros* is a Syriac term whose meaning is making light of and treating with contempt the [revealed] Law or the bearers of the Law; and therefore they apply this name to anyone who does not believe the foundations of the Law, or who treats the Sages, or any disciple of the Sages, or his master, with contempt.
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As for "the outside books" [in the mishnah], they said: "the books of the heretics (*minim*)." So too the "books of Ben Sira" — and he was a man who composed books of drivel on matters of physiognomy in which there is no knowledge or benefit, but only the squandering of one's life in vanity, like these books found among the Arabs: books of chronicles, the doings of kings, the genealogies of the Arabs, songbooks, and the like, in which there is no knowledge and no bodily benefit, but only the squandering of time.
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And "one who whispers over a wound" [forfeits his share] on condition that there be spitting along with it, for in that there is a profaning of the [Divine] Name. And "one who pronounces the [Divine] Name with its letters" — that is, one who spells out *yod heh vav heh*, which is the Explicit Name. [The Sages] mentioned other things besides these whose doer has no share,
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saying: "One who shames his fellow's face in public has no share in the World to Come," and "one who calls his fellow by a nickname," and "one who exalts himself through his fellow's disgrace" (BT Bava Metzia 58b–59a) — for none of these deeds, even if they are slight in the [offender's] reckoning, issues except from a deficient soul that has not become complete and is not fit for the life of the World to Come.
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Among the things I must mention here — and this is the fittest place to mention it — is that the foundations and principles of our Law are thirteen principles.
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**The First Principle** — the existence of the Creator, glorified be He. That is, that there is an Existent, complete in all the modes of existence, who is the cause of the existence of all existents; by Him their existence subsists, and from Him they derive their permanence. Were we to suppose His existence removed, the existence of every existent would be void and nothing would remain subsisting of itself;
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whereas were we to suppose the removal of all existents besides Him, His existence, may He be exalted, would not be void nor diminished, for He, may He be exalted, is sufficient unto Himself and stands in no need of the existence of anything other than Himself. And all that is other than He — that is, the Intellects (the angels), the bodies of the spheres, and what is below them — all of it stands in need of Him for its existence. This first principle is what is indicated by the saying, "I am the Lord your God" (Exodus 20:2).
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**The Second Principle** — the unity of the Creator, may He be exalted. That is, that this Cause of all is one — not one as one of a genus, nor one of a species, nor like a single composite individual which divides into many units, nor one like a single simple body, numerically one, which admits of division and partition unto infinity; rather He, may He be exalted, is one with a unity such that there is no unity like His in any respect. This second principle is what is indicated by the saying, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4).
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**The Third Principle** — the denial of corporeality of Him. That is, that this One is neither a body nor a power within a body, and that the accidents of bodies do not attach to Him, such as motion and rest, neither essentially nor accidentally. Therefore [the Sages], may peace be upon them, denied of Him conjoining and separating, saying: "no sitting and no standing, no *ʿoref* and no *ʿippui*" — meaning, no separating, which is *ʿoref*, and no conjoining, for *ʿippui* is from the verse "and they shall swoop down upon the shoulder of the Philistines" (Isaiah 11:14), that is, they thrust them with the shoulder by reason of their being joined to them.
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And the prophet said, "To whom then will you liken God?" etc. (Isaiah 40:18), and "To whom then will you liken Me, that I should be equal [to him]?" etc. (Isaiah 40:25) — for were He a body, He would resemble bodies. And whatever comes in the [sacred] books describing Him with the attributes of bodies — such as moving about, standing, sitting, speaking, and the like — all of it is figurative; and as they said, "the Torah spoke in the language of the sons of men" (BT Berakhot 31b). People have discoursed much on this matter. This third principle is what is indicated by the saying, "for you saw no likeness" (Deuteronomy 4:15) — meaning, you did not apprehend Him as possessing any likeness, for, as we said, He is neither a body nor a power within a body.
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**The Fourth Principle** — priority. That is, that this One, so described, is the Prior [Being] absolutely; every existent other than He is non-prior in relation to Him. The proofs of this in the [sacred] books are many. This fourth principle is what is indicated by the saying, "the eternal God is a dwelling place [and underneath are the everlasting arms]" (Deuteronomy 33:27).
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And know that the great foundation of the Law of Moses our Teacher is that the world is created [in time] — that God brought it into being and created it after absolute non-existence; and what you see me circling about regarding the notion of [God's] priority [over against] the view of the philosophers [who hold the world eternal] is [only] for the sake of [securing] the absolute demonstration of His existence, as I have made plain and explained in the *Guide*.
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**The Fifth Principle** — that He, may He be exalted, is the one who ought to be worshiped, magnified, and proclaimed in His greatness, and that obedience is to be rendered to Him. One must not do this for that which is below Him in existence — angels, stars, spheres, the elements, or what is composed of them — for all these are determined to their own actions, having no [free] judgment nor choice, but only the love of Him, may He be exalted; nor are they to be taken as intermediaries by which to reach Him, may He be exalted. Rather it is toward Him, may He be exalted, that one's thoughts should aim, setting aside all that is below Him. This fifth principle is the prohibition of idolatry, and most of the Torah is [taken up] with prohibiting it.
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**The Sixth Principle** — prophecy. That is, that one should know that within this human species there may be found individuals of greatly superior natural endowment and great perfection, whose souls are made ready until they receive the form of the intellect; then that human intellect conjoins with the Active Intellect, and a noble overflow flows upon them from it — and these are the prophets; and this is prophecy, and this is its meaning.
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To set out this principle in full would be very long; and it is not our aim to demonstrate each principle and to make plain the modes of apprehending it, for that is [the matter of] all the sciences together; rather we mention them only by way of report. The verses of the Torah bear witness to the prophecy of many prophets.
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**The Seventh Principle** — the prophecy of Moses our Teacher. That is, that one should believe that he is the father of all the prophets — those before him and those after him — all of whom are below him in rank; and that he was the chosen one of God out of the whole human species, who apprehended of Him, may He be exalted, more than any human being who has been or will be apprehended;
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and that he, may peace be upon him, rose to a height above humanity until he attained the angelic rank and became [as] one of the ranks of the angels — no veil remained that he did not pierce, no corporeal impediment hindered him, and no defect, small or great, mingled with him; the powers of imagination and of sense were suspended in him in his apprehensions, his appetitive power was stilled, and there remained intellect alone. For this reason it is said of him that he addresses God without the mediation of the angels.
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I would here have explained this strange matter, and unlocked the sealed verses of the Torah, and made plain the meaning of "mouth to mouth" (Numbers 12:8) and the whole of that verse and the rest of its purport, had I not seen that these matters are exceedingly subtle and require lengthy exposition, premises, and illustrations — and that one would first have to make plain the existence of the angels and the diversity of their ranks from the Creator, and to set out [the nature of] the soul and all its powers, and the discussion would widen to the [scriptural] forms by which the prophets described the Creator and the angels; and this single aim would not be served, even in the utmost brevity, by less than a hundred pages. I therefore leave it to its place — whether in the Book of the Interpretation of the Homilies which I have promised, or in the Book on Prophecy which I have begun, or in a book I shall compose explaining these principles.
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Let me return to the aim of this seventh principle. I say that the prophecy of Moses is distinguished from the prophecy of all the [other] prophets by four distinctions. The first distinction: any [other] prophet — God spoke to him only through an intermediary, but [to] Moses without an intermediary, as it is said, "mouth to mouth I speak with him" (Numbers 12:8).
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The second distinction: to every [other] prophet revelation comes only in a state of sleep, as it says in [various] places, "in a dream of the night," "and he dreamed," "in a dream, a vision of the night," and much of this purport — or by day, after a deep sleep falls upon the prophet and a state overtakes him in which his senses are suspended and his thought left empty, like sleep; and this state is called *maḥazeh* and *marʾeh*, and it is of this that [Scripture] says "in visions of God" (Ezekiel 1:1). But to Moses the address came by day, "as he stood between the two cherubim," as God promised him, "and I will meet with you there and speak with you" etc. (Exodus 25:22). [God], may He be exalted, said: "If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord make Myself known to him in a vision, in a dream I speak with him; not so My servant Moses" (Numbers 12:6–7).
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The third distinction: when revelation comes to a [other] prophet — even in a vision and by means of an angel — his nature flags, his frame is shaken, and an exceedingly great terror falls upon him so that he is all but undone, as is made plain concerning Daniel: in Gabriel's speaking to him in a vision he said, "and no strength remained in me, and my comeliness was turned in me to corruption, and I retained no strength" (Daniel 10:8), and "but I had been in a deep sleep upon my face, with my face to the ground" (Daniel 10:9), and "in the vision my pangs were turned upon me" (Daniel 10:16).
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But Moses is not so; rather the address comes to him without any disturbance at all overtaking him — this is the saying, "And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his fellow" (Exodus 33:11), meaning that just as a man is not seized with alarm at the speech of his fellow, so too he, may peace be upon him, was not alarmed by the address, even though it was "face to face" — and this is by reason of the strength of his conjunction with the intellect, as we said.
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The fourth distinction: to all the [other] prophets revelation does not come at their own choosing but by the will of God; for a prophet may remain for years without revelation coming to him, and a prophet may be asked to deliver some [matter] by revelation and may [have to] wait until he prophesies it after days, or after months, or may never come to know it at all.
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We have [also] seen among them one who would prepare himself, putting his soul at ease and clearing his mind, as Elisha did when he said, "bring me a musician" (2 Kings 3:15), whereupon revelation came to him — yet it was not necessary that revelation come to him whenever he prepared himself. But Moses our Teacher, whenever he wished, would say, "Wait, and I will hear what the Lord commands concerning you" (Numbers 9:8), and "Speak to Aaron your brother, that he come not at all times [into the holy place]" (Leviticus 16:2); and [the Sages] said: "Aaron was under [the rule of] 'let him not come,' but Moses was not under 'let him not come'" (Sifra, Aḥarei Mot).
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**The Eighth Principle** — that the Torah is from Heaven. That is, that one should believe that this entire Torah, which is in our hands today, is the Torah sent down upon Moses, and that all of it is "from the mouth of the Almighty" — meaning that it reached him, all of it, from God by that reaching which is called, figuratively, "speech"; and none knows the manner of that reaching save he, may peace be upon him, to whom it reached; and that he was as a copyist to whom [a text] is dictated and who writes it down — all of it: its chronicles, its narratives, and its laws — and for this reason he is called a "scribe" (*meḥoqeq*).
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There is no difference between "and the sons of Ham: Cush and Egypt and Put and Canaan" (Genesis 10:6) and "and his wife's name was Mehetabel the daughter of Matred" (Genesis 36:39), on the one hand, and "I am the Lord" and "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one," on the other: all of it is "from the mouth of the Almighty," and all of it is "the Torah of the Lord, perfect, pure, holy — truth."
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Manasseh was, in their view, the most utterly unbelieving and faithless of all unbelievers, because he supposed that the Torah has a kernel and a husk, and that these chronicles and narratives are of no benefit and were [composed] by Moses [of his own accord]; and this is [the meaning of] "[one who says] the Torah is not from Heaven."
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[The Sages] said: he is one who believes that the whole Torah is "from the mouth of the Almighty" except for one verse, which (he claims) the Holy One, blessed be He, did not say, but Moses [said] of his own accord — and this is [the meaning of] "for he has despised the word of the Lord" (Numbers 15:31). God is exalted above the saying of the unbelievers! Rather, every letter of it contains wisdom and wonders for the one whom God has given to understand it; and the utmost of its wisdom cannot be apprehended — "longer than the earth is its measure and broader than the sea" (Job 11:9);
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and a person has only to [follow] the way of David, the anointed of the God of Jacob, who prayed, "open my eyes that I may behold wonders out of Your Torah" (Psalms 119:18). So too its traditional interpretation is likewise "from the mouth of the Almighty"; and this which we practice today as to the form of the *sukkah*, the *lulav*, the *shofar*, the *tzitzit*, the *tefillin*, and the rest, is the very form that God told to Moses, and [Moses] told to us — and he is a faithful messenger in his delivery. The saying that indicates this eighth principle is, "By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me [to do all these works, and that it is not of my own heart]" etc. (Numbers 16:28).
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**The Ninth Principle** — abrogation [denied]. That is, that this Law of Moses will not be abrogated, and no [other] Law will come from God besides it, and nothing will be added to it nor taken from it, neither in the text nor in the interpretation, as it is said, "you shall not add to it, nor diminish from it" (Deuteronomy 13:1). We have already set out what is fitting concerning this principle in the introduction to this work.
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**The Tenth Principle** — that He, may He be exalted, knows the deeds of men and does not neglect them. (*Divine knowledge of human deeds*: that God knows and does not neglect the deeds of human beings.) [This is] not as the view of one who said, "the Lord has forsaken the earth" (Ezekiel 8:12); rather it is as [Scripture] said, "great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men" (Jeremiah 32:19), and "and the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (Genesis 6:5), and "the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, because it is great" (Genesis 18:20). This indicates this tenth principle.
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**The Eleventh Principle** — that He, may He be exalted, rewards the one who fulfills the commands of the Torah and punishes the one who commits its prohibitions; and that His greatest reward is the World to Come, and His severest punishment is *karet*. We have already said in this section what is sufficient on this. The text that indicates this principle is His saying, "if You will forgive their sin —; and if not, blot me out, I pray, from Your book" (Exodus 32:32), and His answer, may He be exalted, "whoever has sinned against Me, [him will I blot out of My book]" (Exodus 32:33) — a proof of the [exact] reckoning of the obedient and the disobedient, that He may reward this one and punish that one.
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**The Twelfth Principle** — the days of the Messiah. That is, the belief and affirmation that he will come, and not to deem him slow [in coming] — "though he tarry, wait for him" (Habakkuk 2:3) — and not to set a [fixed] term for him, nor to interpret the [scriptural] verses so as to extract a time for his coming. The Sages say, "may the spirit of those who calculate the [messianic] ends expire" (BT Sanhedrin 97b). And [one must] hold concerning him such reverence and love, and pray for him, in accordance with what has come [in prophecy] at the hand of every prophet from Moses to Malachi.
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Whoever doubts him or makes light of his matter gives the lie to the Torah, which promised him explicitly in the portion of Balaam (Numbers 24:17) and [in the portion] "You are standing this day" (Deuteronomy 30:3–5). Included in this principle is that there is no king for Israel except from [the house of] David and from the seed of Solomon in particular; and everyone who contests the [right of] this house has denied God and the words of His prophets.
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**The Thirteenth Principle** — the resurrection of the dead; and we have already made it plain.
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When a person has accepted all these principles and his belief in them is sound, he has entered into the community of Israel, and it is an obligation to love him and to have compassion upon him, and [he is entitled to] all that God commanded one of us toward another with respect to love and brotherhood. And even if he has committed whatever transgressions there may be, out of desire and the prevailing of [his] defective nature, he is punished according to the measure of his disobedience, but he [still] has a share [in the World to Come] and is [counted] among "the transgressors of Israel."
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But when one of these principles becomes corrupted for a person, he has gone out from the community and denied a fundamental [of the faith]; and he is called a heretic (*min*) and an *Epikoros* and "one who cuts among the plantings," and it is an obligation to hate him and to destroy him; and concerning him it is said, "Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord?" etc. (Psalms 139:21).
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I have spoken at very great length and have departed from the aim of my composition; but I did so because I saw benefit in it for [matters of] belief, for I have gathered for you many beneficial matters scattered through great works — so be happy with them. Go over this discourse of mine many times and reflect upon it well;
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and if your fancy beguiles you into thinking you have grasped its aims at one reading, or even at ten, then God knows your fancy has beguiled you with the impossible. So do not be hasty with it, for I did not set it down as it chanced, but only after reflection and deliberation, after examining both sound and unsound views, and ascertaining which of them one is bound to believe, and after marshalling arguments and proofs for each and every point. From God I ask the granting of success toward what is right. And [now] let me return to the aim of the chapter.
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Mishnah 2
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[The Mishnah] mentioned these [particular individuals who have no share] only on account of the greatness of their rank in learning; for one might have supposed that, because of the greatness of their learning and the merit of the Torah in whose study they were engaged to a high degree, they would have a share.
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So [the Mishnah] informs us that the foundations of belief had become disordered with these [men], and they had fallen into doubt concerning some of them, and therefore they were excluded from the life of the World to Come.
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And it made mention of Balaam — even though he is not of Israel — because "the pious of the nations of the world have a share in the World to Come"; so [the Mishnah] informs us that Balaam was of the wicked of the nations of the world.
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Mishnah 3
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We have already told you several times that every dispute that occurs among the Sages which does not entail [a matter of] practice, but only the holding of an opinion, has no occasion for deciding the law in accordance with one of them.
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[The Mishnah] mentioned this matter in its entirety in this tractate because of the prior mention of the modes of court-imposed execution and of those liable to *karet* and [death by] Heaven: it informs you that if a person sins and is put to death by one of these modes of execution, you should not suppose that he has no share in the World to Come; rather, he has a share in the World to Come — and this is the statement, "whoever confesses has a share in the World to Come."
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To this statement it joined "and these are they who have no share in the World to Come." Then it returned to the aim of the tractate, which is the understanding of who is to be put to death and how he is to be put to death, and so it said [what follows].
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Mishnah 4
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The properties of individuals liable to court-imposed execution [pass] from them to their heirs; but as for the many — the people of an apostate city — the text of the Torah came regarding the destruction of their property and what they had acquired.
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Mishnah 5
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His statement, "the caravan of asses and the caravan of camels that passed by" — all of these are descriptions, with the [noun] described omitted, as though he had said, "a caravan, the asses; and a caravan, the camels that passed from place to place."
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"And [as for] the righteous" — he so names the persons who were not led astray by it; and "the wicked" are those who were led astray.
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Mishnah 6
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"Heave-offerings (*terumot*) shall be left to rot" — [this applies] if [the produce] had [already] come into the hand of the priest and he had taken possession of it, so that it became his property; but if it was [still] in the hand of an Israelite, it is given to a priest of another city, for it is "the spoil of Heaven." The law is in accordance with R. Akiva.
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Chapter Eleven [continuation of the segment — the next Mishnah chapter]
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#### Mishnah 1 Since [the Mishnah] said, "he is not liable until he makes in them a wound," you understand from this that one who strikes a corpse is exempt, since [the corpse] cannot be [made] subject to a wound at that point; and so the statement, "this is the stringency [in one case] as against [the case of] one who curses" etc., fits this sense.
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R. Yehudah says, "until he derives the value of a *perutah*'s benefit from it"; and the Sages say, "as soon as he has used it, even less than a *perutah*'s worth." The law is not in accordance with R. Yehudah in either of the two opinions, nor with R. Yoḥanan ben Beroka.
#### Mishnah 2 The "rebellious elder" (*zaken mamre*) is one who says, "Thus did I expound and thus did my colleagues expound; thus did I learn and thus did my colleagues learn." And his statement, "if they have heard [a tradition], they tell them" means: those [members of] the court, if they have knowledge of that ruling and have heard the legal warrant for it, inform the rebellious elder and those who differed with him of what they possess, and they make known to them the truth and with whom it lies.
And if those [members of] the court have no knowledge of that matter, they ask those above them, until [the question] reaches the Great Court; and if the Great Court has some tradition on the matter, they teach them what they possess of the received tradition; and if they too have nothing on it, then they employ the legal analogies (*qiyāsāt*) known to them, until they — or the majority of them — agree that the ruling is such-and-such, and they so inform them; and it then becomes obligatory to comply. One who differs [in practice] from what they transmitted or derived by analogy is the "rebellious elder." God said, "according to the Torah which they shall teach you, and according to the judgment [which they shall tell you, you shall do]" (Deuteronomy 17:11) — and "this is the thing which they derive by analysis and to which reasoning leads them: God commanded us to act upon their word," which is His saying "you shall do"; then He said, "you shall not turn aside from the thing which they tell you, to the right or to the left" (Deuteronomy 17:11) — and this is the thing that is transmitted among them generation from generation, namely that they say "thus have we received," and for this reason He said "which they tell you," for in that [domain] they have only the report, that is, they inform you of the received tradition they possess.
[The elder] cannot be [adjudged] a "rebellious elder" liable to death until he issues a ruling contrary to theirs in matters learned by analogy or interpretation, "in a matter whose willful [violation entails] *karet* and whose inadvertent [violation entails] a sin-offering," or where his ruling leads to that. For example: he differs with them concerning a certain fruit, whether it is subject to *ʿorlah* or not, or concerning a certain kind of planting, whether *ʿorlah* applies to it or not — for such a dispute leads to "a matter whose willful [violation entails] *karet* and whose inadvertent [violation entails] a sin-offering": for one who betroths a woman with that produce — according to the view that holds it *ʿorlah*, she is not betrothed and one who has relations with her is exempt; but according to the view that holds it not *ʿorlah*, she is betrothed, and one who has relations with her [unlawfully] is, if inadvertent, liable to a sin-offering, and if willful, to *karet*. So too [a dispute over] whether this touched something impure or something pure leads, in the matter of the impurity of the Sanctuary and its holy things, to "a matter whose willful [violation entails] *karet* and whose inadvertent [violation entails] a sin-offering"; and so reckon the rest.
This is a subtle matter requiring much skill, for a dispute, when traced through very many transmitted steps and through the actions accompanying it at each step or at some of them, may at the end of the matter lead to "a matter whose willful [violation entails] *karet* and whose inadvertent [violation entails] a sin-offering." So too if he differs with them in the interpretation of a received [law] in which there is no [room for] analogy, even though his ruling leads only to the prohibition of a negative or positive commandment, he is put to death inasmuch as he is a sectarian (*min*); and in [the matter of] the "five *totafot*" he becomes a rebellious elder even with respect to this particular positive commandment, for it has gathered conditions not found in others, as is made plain in the Talmud. We have already set out, in the introduction to this work of ours, principles useful in this chapter regarding our distinction between the interpretation that is received [by tradition] and that which is derived by analogy.
[The elder] cannot be [adjudged] a "rebellious elder" unless he is "a scholar who has reached [the level of issuing] instruction," whose word is heeded and who is entitled to issue rulings, as it is said, "if a matter be too hard for you" etc. (Deuteronomy 17:8) — [meaning] one from whom nothing is hidden save the strange and abstruse matter. But a "disciple who has not reached [the level of issuing] instruction" — to whom everything is [too hard] — does not [become a rebellious elder]. And his statement, "his stringency [results in] his leniency" [means]: because he is "a disciple who has not reached [the level of issuing] instruction," he is not permitted to issue rulings, even on the truth concerning which there is no dispute; so when he overstepped and issued a ruling on a matter under dispute, whose [presuming to rule] is the added stringency — being subject to two prohibitions, the prohibition of issuing rulings and the prohibition of [ruling on a matter of] dispute — he is exempted from death, and there came concerning this an opinion that he does not incur death.
#### Mishnah 3 His statement "exempt" [refers to a case] where he acknowledges its [the commandment's] obligation upon him, but neglects it by way of disobedience — as it says, "to transgress the words of the Torah" — so long as he admits that it is a transgression; for this reason he does not incur court-imposed death, since one who [merely] neglects a positive commandment is not put to death. But if he said, "there is no [obligation of] *tefillin* upon me" by way of unbelief, he is put to death inasmuch as he is a sectarian (*min*), not inasmuch as he is a rebellious elder.
This matter is exceedingly fine; for this point is liable to confuse many of the learned, who suppose that when [the Sages] say in the Talmud, concerning the rebellious elder, "he is not liable until he says such-and-such, and until he does such-and-such, and on such-and-such conditions," it means that whenever those conditions are not all fulfilled he goes free of [all] liability. But it is not so; rather its meaning is that he is not liable on the score of [being] a rebellious elder, and is exempt under the law of the rebellious elder — yet he may [still] deserve death on other grounds.
Consider: a man who says that his view and belief is the duality [of God] or the trinity — and this, beyond doubt, gives the lie to the saying of Scripture, "the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4) — shall we say that this one is not put to death, or that he is [merely] a rebellious elder? [Rather,] this one is put to death inasmuch as he has "gone out from the rule," that is, from the community of Israel, from whom come the sinners, one of whom — that is, one of the sinners — is the rebellious elder.
For the rebellious elder is not one who [seeks to] uproot the [whole] Law, nor one who at a single stroke gives the lie to the entire [body of] tradition, like the Sadducees and the Boethusians; rather he is a man who prefers his own opinion to the opinion of the Great Court, and Scripture imposed death upon him in order to magnify their right [to authority], just as Scripture imposed death upon one who curses his father, in order to magnify the right of his parents.
For this reason some of [the Sages] said: "[the death of] a rebellious elder is [only] by leave of the [Great] Court; should the court wish to forgive him, they forgive him" — but it is not so, for a reason they mentioned: "lest disputes multiply in Israel." As for the Sadducees and the Boethusians, who give the lie to the [entire] tradition at one stroke and confine themselves to the text of the Torah and their own interpretation of it, they are not of this category at all; rather they are of the category of those who say "the Torah is not from Heaven," as we explained in the tenth chapter of this tractate, where we set down the principles of the Law.
Such men are put to death [precisely] for unbelief, just as one is put to death who denies the divine Lordship or who gives the lie to the prophecy of Moses; for everyone who demolishes one of those principles which I made plain to you has gone out from the rule of those who hold by the Law. I have prolonged this discourse only because in it, too, there are principles of belief of which not everyone has taken note.
#### Mishnah 4 [The Mishnah] makes clear that [the rebellious elder] is put to death only by [the testimony of] witnesses and [after due] warning; for among all those liable to death or *karet* there is none who does not require warning except for the inciter (*mesit*) and the conspiratorial witnesses (*ʿedim zomemin*). For the [very] character of the inciter's case makes warning impossible with it, as is made plain in [chapter] seven; and likewise the conspiratorial witnesses — had we warned them, they would not have given their testimony, and the [very] existence of this law would be done away with, yet God brought it into being and decreed it. The law is in accordance with R. Akiva.
#### Mishnah 5 "What he did not hear" — this means that he says [in God's name] what no revelation ever brought to him from God at all. "And what was not said to him" — this means that he claims [as his own] the prophecy of another, saying, "to me God spoke this speech," when it was not said to him but was said to another. We have already explained, in the introduction to this work of ours, the kinds of prophets among those who lay claim to prophecy, and how the true one is distinguished from the false. "And one who disobeys the words of a prophet" means that he is lax and slack toward the commands of the prophets and does not fulfill them with diligence and care.
God said: "And it shall come to pass that the man who will not hearken to My words" (Deuteronomy 18:19) — read it: "who is not heard" (*lo yishamaʿ*), "who does not hear" (*lo yishmaʿ*), "who does not let [others] hear" — the meaning of this being: one from whom [the prophet's words] are not heard [i.e., the disobedient]; or [the prophet] himself, if he does not let another hear what he was commanded to make heard; or [the prophet] himself, if he does not himself hear [obey] what he was commanded and rebels against his [own] prophecy — for all [of these], "I will require it of him" (Deuteronomy 18:19), and that is "death at the hand of Heaven." We have already explained, in chapter nine, what "death at the hand of Heaven" is.
#### Mishnah 6 His statement, "even though she has not [yet] been cohabited with" [means]: if she is a maiden, a virgin, you should not suppose that she is [subject to] stoning on account of her being a virgin; rather, from the moment she "entered the husband's domain" she has gone out from the category of "a betrothed maiden" and her law has become like the law of every married woman — [death] by strangulation. And it is established with us that one who has relations with the daughter of a priest [who has committed adultery] is [subject to death] by strangulation, like the law of [the adulterer with] every married woman: both she and he [are punished] by strangulation.
Scripture excluded the daughter of a priest from the general rule by its statement, "and the daughter of a man, a priest, when she profanes herself by playing the harlot" etc. (Leviticus 21:9) [— making her liable to burning], but her partner remained within the general rule. And [as for] those who conspire [falsely] against a priest's daughter, [their punishment] is reckoned according to her partner, not according to her, as it is said, "as he purposed to do to his brother" (Deuteronomy 19:19) — "to his brother," and not "to his sister"; that is, when the testimony embraces a man and a woman, one considers what would fall upon the man by their testimony, and that is what falls upon [the conspiring witnesses]. And this daughter of a priest — whether she was the wife of a priest or the wife of a *natin* or a *mamzer* — and [the point is] that this marriage involves a transgression, since she is a married woman: if she commits adultery, [she is liable] to burning.