"The Goat Shall Bear Upon Itself"
That’s a reference to Vayikra 16:22:
וְנָשָׂ֨א הַשָּׂעִ֥יר עָלָ֛יו אֶת־כׇּל־עֲוֺנֹתָ֖ם אֶל־אֶ֣רֶץ גְּזֵרָ֑ה וְשִׁלַּ֥ח אֶת־הַשָּׂעִ֖יר בַּמִּדְבָּֽר׃
and the goat shall bear upon it all their iniquities to a barren land: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.
In Taanit 25, there is reference to goats with bears on their horns
רַבִּי חֲנִינָא בֶּן דּוֹסָא הֲווֹ לֵיהּ הָנָךְ עִיזֵּי, אֲמַרוּ לֵיהּ: קָא מַפְסְדָן. אֲמַר: אִי קָא מַפְסְדָן — נֵיכְלִינְהוּ דּוּבֵּי, וְאִי לָא — כֹּל חֲדָא וַחֲדָא תַּיְתֵי לְאוּרְתָּא דּוּבָּא בְּקַרְנַיְיהוּ. לְאוּרְתָּא אַיְיתַי כֹּל חֲדָא וַחֲדָא דּוּבָּא בְּקַרְנַיְיהוּ.
Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa had some goats. His neighbors said to him: Your goats are damaging our property by eating in our fields. He said to them: If they are causing damage, let them be eaten by bears. But if they are not eating your property, let each of them, this evening, bring a bear impaled between its horns. That evening, each one brought in a bear impaled between its horns.
We find reference to this in yesterday’s daf yomi, Bava Metzia 106a:
מִשּׁוּם דַּאֲמַר לֵיהּ: אִי הֲוֵית חֲזֵית לְאִיתְרְחוֹשֵׁי לָךְ נִיסָּא, הֲוָה (אִיתְרְחִישׁ) [מִיתְרְחִישׁ] לָךְ נִיסָּא כְּרַבִּי חֲנִינָא בֶּן דּוֹסָא דְּמֵתְיָין עִיזֵּי דּוּבֵּי בְּקַרְנַיְיהוּ. וְנֵימָא לֵיהּ: נְהִי דִּלְנִיסָּא רַבָּה לָא הֲוָה חֲזֵינָא – לְנִיסָּא זוּטָא
The Gemara answers: This is because the shepherd could say to the owner: If you were worthy of a miracle occurring to you, a miracle would have indeed occurred to you as it did to Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa, when his goats brought bears impaled on their horns without any assistance on the part of a shepherd (see Ta’anit 25a). The Gemara asks: And let the owner say to him: Granted that I was not worthy of a great miracle, but of a small miracle
Bears impaled by goats is slightly strange. We would expect the natural predators to be be wolves, not bears. So, for instance, in Bava Batra 15b,
מַאי ״וּמִקְנֵהוּ פָּרַץ בָּאָרֶץ״? אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹסֵי בַּר חֲנִינָא: מִקְנֵהוּ שֶׁל אִיּוֹב פָּרְצוּ גִּדְרוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם; מִנְהָגוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם – זְאֵבִים הוֹרְגִים הָעִזִּים, מִקְנֵהוּ שֶׁל אִיּוֹב – עִזִּים הוֹרְגִים אֶת הַזְּאֵבִים.
The Gemara continues with its explication of these verses. What is meant by: “And his livestock is increased [paratz] in the land” (Job 1:10)? Rabbi Yosei bar Ḥanina says: Job’s livestock breached [paretzu] the order of the world. It is the way of the world that wolves kill goats, but in the case of Job’s livestock, the goats killed the wolves.
So aside from the standard, perhaps modern assumption, of natural predators and prey being wolves and goats, not bears and goats, the idea is encoded in the Talmud as well.
Meanwhile, if we look at Bartenura’s commentary on the Mishnah in Sotah 9:15, discussing Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, he says that the goats brought wolves, not bears, impaled on their horns.
בטלו אנשי מעשה. שעושים מעשים מופלאים כדאמרינן בתעניות [כה.] יאמר לחומץ וידליק ולעזים להביא זאבים בקרניהם:
שבטלו אנשי מעשה – they do wondrous deeds as we state in [Tractate] Taanit [25a]: he will ordain that vinegar should burn, and to goats that they should bring wolves on their horns.”
Indeed, even Rashi on Taanit mentions wolves.
דובים – וזאבים בשדות:
Bears and wolves in the fields.
Someone asked me about this contradiction, and if there were any manuscripts differences that might have been before Bartenura.
So, if we check Hachi Garsinana for variants on Bava Metzia, all the standard printings and manuscripts have דובי. The one exception is Oxford: Heb. e. 73/84–89, which has דיבי with a yud.
If we look to Taanit 25, the primary sugya, we find more variants along these lines. Thus, the printings: Venice, Vilna, and Pisaro, have dubei, bears, or duba, a single bear. So does the Gottingen 3 manuscript, Munich 140, Vatican 134, and CUL: Add. 1009.1. So too British Library 400, Munich 95 (almost, but see below). I listed these separately because I was looking for both “bears” and “bear”, and it occurs in both the condition and in the fulfillment, sometimes in different forms.
However, some manuscripts have dibei and diba, with a yud instead of vav in the middle. This would include: Yad Harav Herzog, Munich 95 in the second instance, what the goats actually brought back on their horns, Oxford 366, and Vatican: Vat. ebr. 487/86.
Why does this matter? Well, recall that a daled in Aramaic is often a zayin in Hebrew. דיבי or occasionally דאיבי is simply the cognate of Hebrew זאיבים, and דיבא is cognate of זאיב, a wolf! So it actually is talking about a wolf. And in Bava Metzia, we should want it to be wolves, because the preceding text was about a lone shepherd against a wolf or a lion.
What I would guess occurred is that scribes didn’t recognize דיבי and דיבא and lengthened the yud into a vav, making it a more familiar word, thus transforming a wolf into a bear. But Bartenura, and perhaps Rashi, know that we are talking about wolves.