Meyer Katzper Simile Elucidated
In this essay I (Meyer Katzper) will elucidate some uses of simile in the Tanach.
I plan to submit this to the Sepharia Source Sheets Some of the separate sections are marked with =-=-=-=-=-=-
In Sefer Ha-Aggadah we see challenges that Bialik and Ravnitzky faced in compiling Sefer Ha-Aggadah
The editor states about the aggadot "What makes them memorable is the cleverness of their exegeses, their use of startling similes derived from Scripture to convey the delights and attractions of Aggadah. "
The Rabbis were accepting of multiple explanations of the Torah. As can be seen from Sanhedrin 34a דבי ר' ישמעאל תנא (ירמיהו כג, כט) וכפטיש יפוצץ סלע מה פטיש זה מתחלק לכמה ניצוצות אף מקרא אחד יוצא לכמה טעמים
The school of Rabbi Yishmael taught that the verse states: “Is not My word like as fire? says the Lord; and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces” (Jeremiah 23:29). Just as this hammer breaks a stone into several fragments, so too, one verse is stated by God and from it emerge several explanations.
Rashi elucidates (even translating פטיש - פי"ק בלעז ויש אומר מרטיי"ל בלעז:
and as a hammer (pic in French), a pick. And some say (marteau in French), a hammer.
This strength of interpretation is not only the case for Aggadah but even for Halacha. Simile can lead one in many directions. That is both its strength and its possible downfall. That is because the interpretation can go in directions unintended by the author and leaving misunderstandings. Many similes or mataphores are easy to understand.However, some are not. We will deal with some of these.
Consider the Song of Songs sentence 7:5
צַוָּארֵ֖ךְ כְּמִגְדַּ֣ל הַשֵּׁ֑ן עֵינַ֜יִךְ בְּרֵכ֣וֹת בְּחֶשְׁבּ֗וֹן עַל־שַׁ֙עַר֙ בַּת־רַבִּ֔ים אַפֵּךְ֙ כְּמִגְדַּ֣ל הַלְּבָנ֔וֹן צוֹפֶ֖ה פְּנֵ֥י דַמָּֽשֶׂק׃
7:5 Rashi
צַוָּארֵךְ. הַהֵיכָל וְהַמִּזְבֵּחַ שֶׁהֵם זְקוּפִים וּגְבֹהִים, וְלִשְׁכַּת הַגָּזִית גַּם הִיא שָׁם עֲשׂוּיָה לְחֹזֶק וּלְמָגֵן "כְּמִגְדַּל הַשֵּׁן":
Rashi explains allegorically Your neck. The Temple and the altar, which are erect and tall, and the Chamber of Hewn Stone, which is also there, made for strength and for a shield, “like an ivory tower.”
Note we also find in the Song of Songs 4:4. Like the tower of David is your neck. Robert Alter comments on this " This simile, like a good many other in the poem, is “Oriental,” reflecting an aesthetic in which the poet pursues the momentum of the object of comparison, half forgetting the thing to which it is compared. Long necks—think of Nefertiti—were obviously thought of as beautiful."
Rashi continues -
עֵינַיִךְ. כַּבְּרֵכוֹת אֲשֶׁר בְּחֶשְׁבּוֹן הַמּוֹשְׁכוֹת מָיִם, כָּךְ עֵינַיִךְ עַל שַׁעַר בַּת רַבִּים. חֲכָמַיִךְ, כְּשֶׁהֵם יוֹשְׁבִים בְּשַׁעֲרֵי יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, הָעִיר בַּת רַבַּת עָם, וַעֲסוּקִים בְּחֶשְׁבּוֹן תְּקוּפוֹת וּמַזָּלוֹת, חָכְמָתָם וּבִינָתָם לְעֵינֵי הָעַמִּים, מוֹשְׁכוֹת כִּבְרֵכוֹת מָיִם. וְעוֹד יֵשׁ לְפָרֵשׁ "בְּרֵכוֹת בְּחֶשְׁבּוֹן" כְּמוֹ "יוֹנִים" וּלְשׁוֹן מִשְׁנָה הוּא: "הַלּוֹקֵחַ יוֹנֵי שׁוֹבָךְ מַפְרִיחַ בְּרִיכָה רִאשׁוֹנָה". קוביד"ש בְּלַעַ"ז:
Rashi continues -- Your eyes. Are like pools in Cheshbon, through which water flows, so are your eyes by the gate of the multitudes. Your sages, when they sit at the gates of Yerushalayim, the city of multitudes, and are involved in the calculation חֶשְׁבּוֹן of the seasons and the signs of the constellations, their wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations flow like pools of water. Alternatively, “בְּרֵכוֹת בְּחֶשְׁבּוֹן” can be explained as “doves,” and this is the language of the Mishnah, “One who buys the doves of a dovecote, he must let the first brood בְּרִיכָה fly away,” kovedes in O.F.
אַפֵּךְ כְּמִגְדַּל הַלְּבָנוֹן. אֵינִי יָכוֹל לְפָרְשׁוֹ לְשׁוֹן חֹטֶם, לֹא לְעִנְיַן פְּשָׁט וְלֹא לְעִנְיַן דֻּגְמָא, כִּי מַה קִּלּוּס נוֹי יֵשׁ בְּחֹטֶם גָּדוֹל וְזָקוּף כְּמִגְדָּל? וְאוֹמֵר אֲנִי, "אַפֵּךְ" לְשׁוֹן פָּנִים, וְזֶה שֶׁהוּא אוֹמֵר לְשׁוֹן יָחִיד, וְאֵינוֹ אוֹמֵר "אַפַּיִךְ", שֶׁעַל הַמֵּצַח הוּא מְדַבֵּר שֶׁהוּא עִיקַר הַכָּרַת פָּנִים, כְּעִנְיָן שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר, "הַכָּרַת פְּנֵיהֶם עָנְתָה בָּם". וְתֵדַע, שֶׁהֲרֵי מְקַלְּסָם וְהוֹלֵךְ מִלְּמַטָּה לְמַעְלָה. "עֵינַיִךְ בְּרֵכוֹת בְּחֶשְׁבּוֹן", וְאַחֲרֵיהֶם הַמֵּצַח. וְכֵן הָאֻמּוֹת מְקַלְּסוֹת "מִצְחֲךָ חָזָק לְעֻמַּת" מֵצַח כָּל הַבָּאִים לְהַרְעוֹתֵךְ וּלְפַתּוֹתֵךְ: כְּמִגְדַּל הַלְּבָנוֹן
This is one of my favorite Rashis and I frequently quote it. Here Rashi explicitly admits to his difficulty in understanding. -- Your face is like a tower of Levanon. I cannot explain this אַפֵּךְ to mean a nose, neither with respect to the simple meaning nor in reference to its allegorical meaning, for what praise of beauty is there in a nose that is large and erect as a tower?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--
Rashi then gives his attempted explanation.
Therefore, I say that “אַפֵּךְ” means a face, and the reason it is used in the singular form and does not state [the plural form], “אַפַּיִךְ,” is that it speaks of the forehead, which is the main distinguishing feature of the face, as the matter is stated, “The features of their faces testifies against them.” And you could prove this, because he continuously praises them from bottom to top, [and] “Your eyes are like pools in Cheshbon,” [was already mentioned,] And so do the nations praise, “and your forehead is strong against” the forehead of all who come to harm you and to entice you.
=--==-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I too found this phrase obscure till I came across the commentary by Ibn Ezra [from Sepharia with my translation].
7:5 Ibn Ezra on Song of Songs on the phrase "Like a tower of Levanon"
הפעם הא' The first time
אפך. החוטם: the nose "אַפֵּךְ"
הפעם הב' The second time
צוארך כמגדל השן. לבן: Your throat is like the ivory tower. white
ואחר שדמה עיניה לברכות שהן רחבות דמה החוטם [למגדל] שהוא שוה בלי עוות:
And after he compaired her eyes to pools that are wide he compaired her nose [to a tower] that is straight without crookedness.
הפעם הג' The tird time
צוארך. ראשי הצבא: Your throat, the heads of the army
עיניך. הנביאים שהיו בתחלה בחשבון עתה יהיו רבים:
your eyes. The prophets that were first enumerated now will be many.
(אפך. הוא הכהן הגדול) כענין ישימו קטורה באפך:
(Your nose. He is the high priest)Like the matter "they will place incense in yor nose" Deuteronomy 33:10
For a modern interpretation we see that of Robert Alter.
"Your nose like the tower of Lebanon. Even more than the image of the
neck as a tower, this simile is likely to seem incongruous to modern readers, but it reflects both the value set on a long, architecturally elegant nose as a sign of beauty and the tendency of this poetry to follow the momentum of the term of comparison in the simile."
=-=-=-=-==-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Another phrase which perplexed me is שׁוּבָ֣ה יהוה אֶת־(שבותנו) [שְׁבִיתֵ֑נוּ] כַּאֲפִיקִ֥ים בַּנֶּֽגֶב׃ Psalms 126:4
The אֲפִיקִ֥ים are the dry streams in the Negev. So why should one wish to be returnedlike dry streams?
And Rashi is unconvincing when he comments
כאפיקים בנגב. כאפיקי מים בארץ יבשה שמלחלחין אותה כך נהיה מרטיבין בשובך את שבותינו אשר הזורעים בה בארץ ציה בדמעה דואגים שסבורים שמא לא תצמח, ברנה קוצרין על ידי אפיקי המים כשהם משולחין בה:
like rivulets in arid land Like rivulets in arid land, which moisten it, so shall we be moistened [freshened] when You return [us from] our captivity, for those who sow in an arid land, with tears, worrying that it will not grow, reap with song through the rivulets of water, when they are directed into it [that land].
Ibn Ezra is a bit closer in explaining כאפיקים - כמים חזקים. Strong waters as אפיקים.
Isaiah 43:19 mentions “streams in the desert” as part of a promise to God’s people:
Modern tour guides know that 20 minutes after it rains in Jerusalem the streams in the Negev are filled with strong onrushing water.
And this is the true simile of “streams in the desert” that G-d should return us to Zion as rapidly as these streams fill up.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-
Sepharia mistranslation. Deuteronomy 28:37 "simile " is incorrect.
וְהָיִ֣יתָ לְשַׁמָּ֔ה לְמָשָׁ֖ל וְלִשְׁנִינָ֑ה בְּכֹל֙ הָֽעַמִּ֔ים אֲשֶׁר־יְנַהֶגְךָ֥ יהוה שָֽׁמָּה׃
And you will be [a source of] astonishment, parable, and simile [("This is exactly like what happened to…!")], and [a subject of] converse in all of the peoples whither the L-rd leads you.
The correct translation is mockery ַַלִגלוּג, צְחוֹק, לַעֲגָנוּת, הִתוּל, לָצוֹן byword
TANAKH: THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, PUBLISHED BY JPS is more correct. "You shall be a consternation, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples to which the LORD will drive you."
Rashi
לשמה [THOU SHALT] BECOME AN OBJECT OF ASTONISHMENT — This word means the same as תמהון, etourdison in old French, English astonishment. — Whoever will see you will be astonished about you.
לשמה. כְּמוֹ תִּמָּהוֹן, אש"ו אשטורדישו"ן, כָּל הָרוֹאֶה אוֹתְךָ יִשֹּׁם עָלֶיךָ:
למשל [T BECOME A PROVERB — i.e., when an extraordinary misfortune comes upon a man people will say: “This is like the misfortune that befell Mr. So-and-so!”
ולשנינה. לְשׁוֹן "וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם" (דברים ו'), יְדַבְּרוּ בְךָ, וְכֵן תַּרְגּוּמוֹ "וּלְשׁוֹעֵי", לְשׁוֹן סִפּוּר וְאִשְׁתָּעִי:
ולשנינה AND A BYWORD — This is an expression of the same meaning as (Deuteronomy 6:7) ושננתם, “And thou shalt speak often”. — “And thou shalt become a ״שנינה therefore means: they (people) will talk about you (make you the topic of their conversation). Onkelos, too, renders it thus: ולשועי, which has the meaning of “relating about a matter”, just as ואשתעי is the Targum rendering of ויספר, “and the related”.
=-=-=-===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Here I bring a series by Robert Alter of examples of the use of simile :
“I will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed, as the stars in the heavens and as the sand on the shore of the sea” (Genesis 22:17). If “seed” here is rendered as “offspring” or “descendants,” what we get are two essentially mathematical similes of numerical increase.
Ch 25:25. ruddy, like a hairy mantle . . . Esau. There is an odd displacement of etymology in the naming sentence, perhaps because the writer was not sure what “Esau” actually meant. “Ruddy,” ʾadom, refers to another name for Esau, Edom (as in verse 30), and the “hairy” component of the mantle simile, seʿar, refers to Edom’s territory, Seir.
ch 31:26 like captives of the sword. The daughters [of Tzelufchad] had spoken of their father’s treating them like chattel. Laban on his part chooses a simile with ominous military implications, suggesting that Jacob has behaved like a marauding army that seizes the young women to serve as sexual and domestic slaves. It is surely not lost on Jacob that Laban is leading a group of armed men (“My hand has the might to do you harm”)
Exodus Ch4:6 6. his hand was blanched like snow. The Hebrew metsoraʿat, here represented as “blanched,” is rendered as “leprous” in many older translations, but the modern scholarly consensus is that what is involved is some disfiguring skin disease other than leprosy. The comparison with snow would not refer to flaking, as some have claimed, because “like snow” is a known biblical simile for total whiteness—in the case of skin, loss of all pigmentation.
Exodus Ch 15:5-6 5–6. down they went in the deep like a stone. / Your right hand . . . mighty in power. The Song of the Sea is a rare instance in the Bible of a poem that has clearly marked strophic divisions, as Umberto Cassuto and others have noted. Near the end of each strophe one encounters the simile “like a stone” or “like lead.” The simile is followed by lines that celebrate the LORD’s triumphal supremacy.
it consumes them like straw. The straw simile might appear to conflict
with the stone simile, but it is generated, almost formulaically, by the
language of “wrath” and, in the next line, “breath of Your nostrils,” because in Hebrew poetic idiom, wrath is represented as a kind of fiery emanation from the nostrils. The Hebrew ʾaf thus means both “nose” and, by metonymy, “flaring anger.”
Ch 24:10 and beneath His feet was like a fashioning of sapphire pavement. Mere flesh and blood cannot long sustain the vision of God, and so the visual focus immediately slides down to the celestial brilliance beneath God’s feet. Even for this zone touched by the divine, direct linguistic reference is not possible, and so the writer uses a doubled simile— “like a fashioning of . ..,” “like the very heavens.
Ch 24:17 And the sight of the LORD’s glory was like consuming fire . . . before the eyes of the Israelites. After the direct epiphany to the elders, we get a long-distance view of God’s presence from the perspective of the people at the foot of the mountain. There is more mystifying occlusion than revelation here: an enveloping cloud, flashes of fiery effulgence from within it. Even such distant glimpses of the deity must be qualified by simile— “like consuming fire.
Ch 26 19. your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. This grim simile is a common feature in Assyrian treaty curses and is equally exploited in Deuteronomy 28:23, although in that instance bronze goes with the heavens and iron with the earth.
Ch 12:11–13. The rhetorical contrast between Aaron’s petition to Moses and Moses’s petition to God is pointed. Aaron’s speech is relatively lengthy and centers on an elaborate, and horrifying, simile of stillbirth for Miriam’s skin disease. (Perhaps that simile is dictated by Aaron’s consciousness of the sibling bond between Miriam and her two brothers, as though he were saying to Moses: look, the three of us were born into life from the same womb, and now our sister is suffering a fate no better than that of a stillborn fetus.) Moses’s prayer is a mere five words and five syllables
Ch 22:4. nibble away everything. The verb here for “chewing up” or “nibbling away” is generally reserved for animals, as the ox simile makes clear. The covering of the eye of the land in the next verse is an image borrowed from the plague of locusts in Exodus, which neatly catches the Moabites’ fearful revulsion at the sight of the Hebrew multitudes.
22. like the wild ox’s antlers for him. Toʿafot, the word translated as
“antlers,” usually means “mountain peaks” and perhaps is used
metaphorically here for what juts out from the top of the wild ox’s head. To whom does this simile refer? The more cautious reading is that it is a representation of the fiercely triumphant Israel, now a militant people after its liberation from Egyptian slavery. It may, however, be more in keeping with the archaic character of the poem to see the animal imagery as a representation, in accordance with the conventions of Canaanite epic, of the fierce God who has freed Israel from Egypt.
Judges 15:14. the ropes that were on his arms became like flax burning in fire. The fire motif is continued here in a simile, as it will be in Delilah’s failed attempts to have him bound. New ropes also occur in the Delilah episode, the idea being that new ropes are in no way worn or frayed and so are very hard to break. fell apart. Literally, “melted.”
II Samuel Chapter 17:8 warriors . . . bitter men . . . like a bear in the field . . . a seasoned fighter. Hushai uses language that, as Bar-Efrat and others have noted, recapitulates a series of moments from the earlier story of David. What he is doing in effect is invoking the legend of the heroic David, who as a boy slew bear and lion (compare the lion simile in verse 10), and who gathered round him bitter men, warriors, seasoned fighters.
12. we shall light upon him as the dew falls upon the ground. Hushai, as Fokkleman has observed, pairs the traditional simile of the sands of the seashore with a more innovative, yet related simile of dew on the field. The dew falls silently, effortlessly, and this is how this huge army will “light upon” David’s forces. Dew, elsewhere an image of peacetime blessing, is here associated with destruction
1 Kings 14:10. I will cut of from Jeroboam every pisser against the wall. This coarse epithet for males, which David uses in vowing to destroy Nabal and all the males of his household (1 Samuel 25:22), may well have been formulaic in pronouncing resolutions of total destruction, so that even God uses it.
1 Kings 14:10 as one burns dung. The Hebrew verb can mean “root out,” “eradicate,” but since pieces of dried dung were used as fuel, it is fairly likely that the sense of burning is activated here, or that there is a punning relationship between rooting out the house of Jeroboam and burning dung. The simile of dung obviously conveys a withering sense of the value of the house of Jeroboam.
Isaiah ch 17 12. Woe, crowd of many peoples. This marks a new prophecy, concerning not Damascus but the many nations that have despoiled Israel. The identification of a specific historical event has proved elusive. Although some scholars are inclined to attribute this prophecy to Isaiah, one reason to be skeptical about the attribution is that the poetry is in no way on the level of the great poetry of the book’s first chapters: both the simile of the roar of the seas and the wind-driven chaff (verse 13) are biblical clichés, and the verbatim repetition of the second half of verse 12 in the first half of 13 seems inert
Isaiah 26:17 As a woman with child draws near to give birth, / she shudders, she shakes in her pangs. These two versets vividly illustrate the tendency in many lines of biblical poetry to produce a miniature narrative from one verset to the next: first, the pregnant woman is nearing term; then, she is in the midst of violent labor. The third verset, as is often the case in triadic lines, strikes out in a new direction instead of continuing the parallelism— here, spelling out the referent of the simile. The next line then further develops the applicability of the simile to its referent.
Isaiah 28:24. Does the plowman plow all day to sow. These words initiate an extended simile—or perhaps it is meant to be a parable—that would have spoken directly to the ancient audience because of its agricultural imagery. Unfortunately, not all of the terms and agricultural procedures are transparent to modern readers. What compounds the difficulty is that the referent of the parable—the nimshal of the mashal—is barely hinted at.
Isaiah 29 8. the hungry man / . . . the thirsty man. In a rather peculiar move, the dream simile is now reversed: it is not Israel dreaming the nightmare of its destruction but the Assyrians dreaming of consuming the city who now awake and find that their hunger and thirst have not been satisfied.
Isaiah 31: 5. As birds fly above. The switch of similes is pointed: if God is a fearless lion confronting Israel’s enemies, He is also a gentle bird hovering protectively over His people
Isaiah 34: 4. All the heavens’ array shall molder. The apocalyptic scope of the poetry is strikingly evident here: the swath of divine fury will encompass the very heavens, withering the stars, which as the army or host of the heavens correspond to the armies subjected to God’s wrath in verse 2. as the leaf withers. The agricultural simile brings the distant and seemingly unassailable stars down to the familiar reality of transient things on earth, where a leaf or a date can wither overnight.
Isaiah 40: 11. Like a shepherd He minds His flock. This simile makes a lovely counterpoint to the previous verse: first God shows overwhelming force (“His arm commanding for Him”) and now tender solicitude as the shepherd gathering lambs in His lap.
There are many more metaphors and similes in the Bible. The Song of Songs is full of them. but, I am stopping here and the reader can be alert for their occurrence.