<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><div id="yiv1345444051"><div id="yiv229363163"><div id="yiv1018423225"><div id="yiv1822632323">chumash: "And it came top pass, when Israel dwelt in that land,<br> that Reuven went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, and Israel<br> heard."<br><br>Rav Alex Israel/Yeshivat Har Etzion:<br>http://www.vbm-torah.org/archive/intparsha67/08-67vayishlach.htm<br> <br>Rashi cites the midrash brought on Shabbat 55b:<br> <br>Because he switched around his [father's] bed, the Torah treats him as if he slept with her. <br>Now, why did he switch and desecrate his bed? When Rachel died, Yaakov took his bed, <br>which was placed most frequently in Rachel's tent rather than the other tents, and Yaakov put his bed in Bilha's tent. Reuven came to protest his mother's insult. He said: "If my mother's sister was a rival-wife to my
mother, should the maidservant of my mother's sister now become a
rival-wife to my
mother?" Therefore, he
made the switch......[snip]<br> <br>Perhaps to emphasize our question, the "headline" for this midrash as it appears on Shabbat 55b is: "If you think that Reuven sinned, you are mistaken." How are we to <br>understand this rabbinic statement? Clearly Reuven sinned—it is explicitly written in the Torah text! How can Chazal utterly disregard the peshat?<br><br>hb 1; r. alex does not bring down the gm accurately in my opinion; the gemmara does not say reuven (or dovid, etc,) did not sin; only that "anyone who says so... is mistaken"; The loshon of the gemmara seems to be very round-about and does not explicitly say the people mentioned did not sin.....<br>2: we have a klal in torah that "ayn mikreh yotzei midei peshuto"; are we supposed to abandon this principle in favor of the gemmara's interpretation of
events that appears to go against peshutei d'mikreh in chumash, novi, etc??? HB <br></div></div></div></div></td></tr></table>