New King / New Decrees
I can’t let the tragic events in Israel, over the first days of Yom Tov, go without mention, but I don’t have anything eloquent or deep to say about them. And you aren’t looking for my pronouncements on these matters anyway, and they wouldn’t do it justice. I’ll take a cop-out and link to someone else discussing a subset of them.
For today’s daf in Sotah (11a), some brief thoughts. I’ve been talking recently about hidden derashot, often but not always in the form of al tikrei, where the plain text and the meforshim don’t make the midrashic mechanism explicit.
We have one such on Sotah 11a.
״וַיָּקׇם מֶלֶךְ חָדָשׁ וְגוֹ׳״. רַב וּשְׁמוּאֵל, חַד אָמַר: חָדָשׁ מַמָּשׁ, וְחַד אָמַר: שֶׁנִּתְחַדְּשׁוּ גְּזֵירוֹתָיו.
מַאן דְּאָמַר חָדָשׁ מַמָּשׁ — דִּכְתִיב ״חָדָשׁ״, וּמַאן דְּאָמַר שֶׁנִּתְחַדְּשׁוּ גְּזֵירוֹתָיו, דְּלָא כְּתִיב ״וַיָּמׇת וַיִּמְלוֹךְ״
. ״אֲשֶׁר לֹא יָדַע אֶת יוֹסֵף״, דַּהֲוָה דָּמֵי כְּמַאן דְּלָא יָדַע לֵיהּ כְּלָל.
§ The Gemara proceeds to discuss the sojourn of the Jewish people in Egypt. The verse states: “And there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph” (Exodus 1:8). Rav and Shmuel disagree about the interpretation of this verse.
One says that this means he was actually a new king, and one says that this means that his decrees were transformed as if he were a new king.
The one who says that he was actually a new king holds that it is because it is written “new.” And the one who says that his decrees were transformed holds that it is because it is not written: “And the previous king of Egypt died and a new king reigned.” This indicates that the same king remained.
According to this interpretation, the words: “Who knew not Joseph” (Exodus 1:8), mean that he was like someone who did not know him at all. Although he certainly knew Joseph and his accomplishments, he acted as if he didn’t.
As I’ve spelled out in the past on parshablog (with a few other interpretations), the “new king” interpretation is the easiest, straightforward, explanation — what some might label peshat. In it, vayakam is an intransitive verb, “and arose a new king”. Just like “he grew”, “he became big”, “he was established / rose”. Meanwhile, in the less obvious interpretation — what some might label derash — vayakam functions as a transitive verb, “and the king decreed”. For an transitive verb, you not only need an actor (king) but a direct object. What did the new king decree / enact? Chadash, new decrees.
Then, according to this second explanation, אֲשֶׁר לֹא יָדַע אֶת יוֹסֵף most readily modifies the chadash, the new decrees. Those decrees were of a nature that they did not recognize Yosef’s historic role. I think that even the Talmudic Narrator here misses the midrashic mechanism, because דַּהֲוָה דָּמֵי כְּמַאן דְּלָא יָדַע לֵיהּ כְּלָל is within the second explanation, showing how the king, while not being new, would not know Yosef.
Hachi Garsinan went down right before Yom Tov, but it is now back up. I like the text of the midrashic analysis as we have it in our Vilna Shas / Venice printing, but there are some interesting variants.
Specifically, after the initial Rav / Shmuel, new king / new decree, there is a section of the gemara which analyzes how each takes the simple meaning of the pesukim. מַאן דְּאָמַר חָדָשׁ מַמָּשׁ — דִּכְתִיב ״חָדָשׁ״, וּמַאן דְּאָמַר שֶׁנִּתְחַדְּשׁוּ גְּזֵירוֹתָיו, דְּלָא כְּתִיב ״וַיָּמׇת וַיִּמְלוֹךְ״ = “One says that this means he was actually a new king, and one says that this means that his decrees were transformed as if he were a new king.”
In Munich 95, they don’t have a full analysis for each side, but take on the reasoning onto the second explanation:
ויקם מלך חדש על מצרי' רב ושמו' חד א' חדש ממש וחד אמ' שנתחדשו גזירותיו מדלא כתי' וימת וימלוך תחתיו
… and one says that this means that his decrees were transformed as if he were a new king. because it is not written: “And the previous king of Egypt died and a new king reigned.”
Something interesting happens in Oxford 2675:
The main text has like we have, with the prooftext of chadash. However, some scribal hand dislikes this, crosses out chadash, and in a marginal note, adds a lengthy alternate version, which goes:
וימת מלך מצרים אלא למאן דאמ' שנתחדשו גזרותיו מאי וימת מלך מצרים שנצטרע בשלמ' למאן דאמ' חדש ממש היינו דכתי' אשר לא ידע את יוסף אלא
Here, the prooftext is not “chadash”, with its plain straightforward meaning (but problematically was subject to interpretation as new decrees) but the words וימת מלך מצרים. And the other side would then need to reinterpret this explicit pasuk as referring to developing tzaraat.
The difficulty with such a prooftext is that while chadash is a verse from chapter 1, the explicit death of the king and the newly appointed king is a verse from the end of chapter 2:
וַיְהִי֩ בַיָּמִ֨ים הָֽרַבִּ֜ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיָּ֙מׇת֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרַ֔יִם וַיֵּאָנְח֧וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל מִן־הָעֲבֹדָ֖ה וַיִּזְעָ֑קוּ וַתַּ֧עַל שַׁוְעָתָ֛ם אֶל־הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים מִן־הָעֲבֹדָֽה׃
And it came to pass in the course of those many days, that the king of Miżrayim died: and the children of Yisra᾽el sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry rose up to God by reason of the bondage.
וַיִּשְׁמַ֥ע אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶת־נַאֲקָתָ֑ם וַיִּזְכֹּ֤ר אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־בְּרִית֔וֹ אֶת־אַבְרָהָ֖ם אֶת־יִצְחָ֥ק וְאֶֽת־יַעֲקֹֽב׃
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Avraham, with Yiżĥaq, and with Ya῾aqov.
Even though there are midrashim that even here there is not a new king, which together with the first lack of new king would make one king throughout, this is not at all necessary. Each occurrence could be optionally taken as the death of a prior king and arising of a new king of Egypt.
Rashi does note the tzaraat explanation for chapter 2, but we have other sources for this, not our gemara in Sotah.
וימת מלך מצרים THE KING OF EGYPT DIED — he became stricken with leprosy (and therefore may be spoken of as dead; cf. Numbers 12:12), and he used to slaughter Israelitish children and bathe in their blood as a cure for his disease (cf. Targum Jonathan and Exodus Rabbah 1:34).
There is another corpus of Rav / Shmuel disagreements about how to interpret pesukim in Eruvin 53a, and this one also appears there. So we could use it as a check, to see what variants appear there.
Munich 95 has the longer version there in Eruvin, as we have in Vilna (even here), presenting the strength of each man de’amar:
ויקם מלך חדש על מצרים רב ושמואל חד אמ' חדש ממש ... וחד אמ' שנתחדשו גזירותיו מאן דאמ' חדש ממש דכתי' מלך חדש ומאן דאמ' שנתחדשו גזירותיו מדלא כתיב וימת וימלוך ולמאן דאמ' שנתחדשו גזירותיו (מא) הכתי' אשר לא ידע את יוסף ההוא דהוה דמי ליה כמא'[ן] דלא ידע ליוסף כלל
There are several other manuscripts, and none have anything that matches that marginal textual expansion of Oxford 2675, about chapter 2 and the leprosy.
However, there was a very nice manuscript fragment in Eruvin, in CUL: Or. 1080.13.5:
Here, in explaining the position that it is not a new king, but that the decrees were new, the scribe writes:
ויקם מלך חדש על מצרים רב ושמואל חד אמ' חדש ממש וחד אמ' שניתחדשו גזירותיו בשלמא למאן דאמ' חדש ממש היינו דכ' חדש אלא למאן דאמ' שניתחדשו גזירותיו מדלא כת' וימת וימלוך ולמאן דאמ' שינתחדשו גזירותיו מאי אשר לא ידע את יוסף כיון דלא מקים גזירת יוסף כמאן דלא ידע ליה ליוסף כלל
Maybe I am imagining it, but I think that there may even be a strikethrough in the word כמאן that I bolded just above.
But here is a focus on the decrees of Yosef, vs. these decrees of Pharaoh. It is not precisely my interpretation, that these decrees were not ones which recognize Yosef, but it is about 85% of the way there. So I’d even posit that this was the original understanding of even the Talmudic Narrator, but later copyist didn’t understand and made it all about Pharaoh not recognizing Yosef.