[Avodah] Dovid Hamelech had 400 children from yefas toars

[Sholom Simon]

>
>
> R' Marty Bluke via Avodah asked:
> >> . So how do we understand that Dovid had
> >> 400 children from yefas toars! Did he have such a great yetzer hara that
> >> he couldn't control?
>
> Reb Sruli Bornstein has a fascinating Reid Bite about this. (
> https://pca.st/episode/df681bfc-981f-4b34-ab04-cf4e52a686c9)
>
> He quoted Rav Reuven Margolies zt"l who proposed that this was one of many
> places where numbers were abbreviated and then badly deciphered.
>
> I.e. Dovid Hamelech had ? (Tof) kids from YT. That's short for Tisha, and
> he goes on to show from Divrei Hayomim that indeed there were 9
> "motherless" kids....
>
> - Danny
>

Thanks for the link to the shiur (note to others: it's only 10 minutes --
it's also at https://alldaf.org/p/213657/).  The mention of 9 kids with no
mothers listed in Divrei HaYamim seemed pretty persuasive.

Nevertheless, even with 9, it's still surprising (to me, at least)

As a tangent, I listen to the shiurim by R Sholom Rosner for daf yomi, and
he has pointed out a number of times (I can't remember if this is b'shem
someone else, it probably is) that often the number 400 is used to mean "a
lot", and not mamesh 400.  We do see a number of incidents in the gemara
with 400: R Preida (400 years, 400 times), in Berachos, a wine glass broken
at a wedding worth 400 zuz, 400 benches were added; a court case where 400
barrels of wine were stolen (Bava Metzia), a 400 zuz bet that a guy can
make Hillel angry (Shabbos 31), etc.  FWIW

-- Sholom
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20250315/21a09d06/attachment.htm>