Parshat Matot Rabbi Chaim Brovender

Let us learn a posuk with Rashi

The verse reads: "…and he called lah-it, Novach, as was his own name..." (32: 42).

The story is that Novach led an attack and captured a city, Kenath and its surrounding areas. He renamed the captured territory Novach. In Hebrew, the verse reads "...he called her (lah) Novach...". Rashi points to a somewhat arcane grammatical anomaly. The word lah is vocalized without a dagesh in the heh; when "lamed-heh" is used as a pronoun it takes a dagesh. Of course, the written text of Torah is not vocalized. Our tradition regarding how to pronounce the text is presupposed by the question.

Rashi quotes an interpretation of this anomaly found in the book of R. Moshe the Darshan: "This [lack of the dagesh] was because the new name did not last. Therefore the heh is 'weak' [la and not lah]. It is like the Aramaic word la which means 'no'." On this view, a subtlety of language suggests a hidden message. The verse seems to say that the cities captured by Novach were renamed. This renaming is itself similar to what occurred with Yair, who renamed cities he captured Havvot Yair. However, according to the tradition of vocalization our verse misreads the pronoun as some kind of indicator of negation. R. Moshe explained this negation: the name Novach did not endure as the name of this captured city. It was as if it was not renamed.

This interpretation seems remote from the peshat of the verse. Rashi takes the trouble to mention it here in order to highlight the grammatical question; he goes on to criticize and reject the position of R. Moshe the Darshan. "What will he explain regarding two other cases in the Tanach where a word appears without the dagesh and cannot be explained in this way?" Rashi asks. [Those examples are Ruth (2: 14), and Zecharya (5: 11).]

We may summarize the position. First, Rashi acknowledges that there is an anomaly in the traditional vocalization of the word. The fact is deserving of explanation. Second, Rashi is prepared to accept a derash such as that of R. Moshe up to a point. Arguing in favor of changing the word from the pronoun, "her", to a negative word "no" is legitimate and might make sense as an explanation. However, Rashi maintains that such an explanation would need to fit other similar deviations in the tradition of vocalization such as those found in the books of Zecharya and Ruth. Since that is not the case, Rashi quotes the interpretation given by R. Moshe but finds it lacking because it fails to explain all the occurrences of the phenomenon.

We see that Rashi thought that the tradition of vocalization was serious and demanded careful consideration.

A further point. A verse in Divrei Hayyamim, indicates that the land captured by the children of Machir was eventually lost: "And he took Gershur and Aram, with Havvot Yair from them and Kenath and its environs…" (Chronicles I, 2: 23). The verse indicates that the name Novach did not endure and the place continued to be called Kenath.

For Rashi (who does not mention the verse in Divrei Hayyamim), it is clear that the interpretation of R. Moshe is correct from a factual, historical perspective. Rashi simply could not accept the claim that the verse alluded to this fact on the basis of an ad hoc interpretation of the tradition of vocalization.

Gut shabbos,
Chaim Brovender

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