[Avodah] Fwd (newsletterserver at aish.com): What's Bothering Rashi - Mishpatim

[Michael Makovi]

> I think RAB misses an important and more general issue.
>
> To the Rashbam and IE, "peshat" would mean avoiding the halachic pretense
> that the ba bamachteres is already dead. To Rashi, resolving word oddities
> by pointing to deeper layers of meaning /are/ part of "peshat". If the
> subject of the sentence is the thief, then Rashi finds it better to assume
> the word still means thief and go deeper than take his grandson's route.
>
> To my mind, this is but one example of their deeper stylistic difference.
>
> -Micha

I'll agree that Rashi and ibn Ezra/Rashbam disagree on what is p'shat.

I recall an essay on R' Student's blog, that Rashi seems to hold that
any midrash that fits into the p'shat, is p'shat; but Ohr haChayim
instead holds that only a midrash that has some concrete basis in the
text is p'shat. According to the former, a p'shat-ish midrash can fill
in the gaps and have no relation to what is in the text, as long as it
doesn't contradict the text. The latter disagrees.

But in this specific instance of blood on the thief, it seems a purely
grammatical question: he has no blood, but who is "he"? I don't see
any marked difference in methodology. To be sure, one's mindset will
affect which p'shat one chooses, but there's no nafka mina and it
seems to be 100% grammar-only.

Mikha'el Makovi