Three Cases Where Sifrei Bamidbar Closed a Halakhic Loophole

Most readers, encountering rabbinic legal interpretation, expect it to add stringency. The rabbis fence the Torah. The fences make the law harder to keep. Sifrei Bamidbar, the tannaitic halakhic midrash on Numbers compiled around the third century in the school of R. Yishmael, often does the opposite.

In three cases from the book of Numbers, the Sifrei uses interpretive technique not to make life harder but to close loopholes that would have made specific people worse off. A converted Jew without heirs. A Nazirite whose ram requires bread. A Nazirite whose shave looks undignified. In each case the midrash supplies the missing rule that prevents an unjust outcome. Three Sifrei passages illustrate the technique.

The Convert Who Could Not Be Repaid

Sifrei Bamidbar 4 opens with a problem the Torah's plain reading does not solve. And if the man does not have a redeemer to whom to return the debt (Numbers 5:8). R. Yishmael raises the question. Is there a person in Israel who has no redeemer? The Torah commands restitution to the wronged party. If the wronged party has died, the restitution goes to that person's heirs. Every Israelite has some heir.

Except, R. Yishmael argues, a convert. The convert has no Jewish blood relatives. If a convert is robbed, swears the robber's innocence on a false oath, and then dies before the truth surfaces, the conventional restitution chain breaks. The robber owes the principal and a one-fifth penalty but has no one to pay them to.

The Sifrei closes the loophole by ruling. The principal and the one-fifth go to the priests. The guilt-offering goes to the altar. The robber, in other words, cannot escape repayment by waiting out the convert's death. The midrash uses the verse to specify who receives the restitution when no natural heir exists.

R. Nathan extends the ruling. The verse mentions a man. What about a robbed female convert? The midrash rules the same way for women, deriving the extension from the phrase to whom to return the debt. The closing of this loophole, the Sifrei is teaching, applies equally regardless of the convert's gender.

The Nazirite Whose Ram Required Only Two Breads

Sifrei Bamidbar 34 handles a different kind of loophole. The Torah specifies that the Nazirite at the end of the vow brings a basket of unleavened bread along with the ram. The first phrase is general. Fine flour, cake mixed with oil follows. The second phrase is particular.

The rabbinic interpretive rule, the Sifrei teaches, is that a general-followed-by-particular construction excludes anything not named in the particular. Without this rule, a careless reader might import the thanksgiving offering's four-kinds-of-bread requirement onto the Nazirite ram. Both offerings require bread. Both involve festive eating. The kal va-chomer argument from the thanksgiving offering to the Nazirite ram is tempting.

The Sifrei blocks the import. The general-particular grammar tells the reader that only the two kinds named in the particular phrase are required. The Nazirite at the end of a vow, often already exhausted from a long period of abstention, does not have to procure four kinds of bread. Two kinds suffice. The rabbinic rule is preserving the Nazirite from a stringency the verse did not actually impose.

The Nazirite Whose Shave Could Not Be Public

Sifrei Bamidbar 35 handles the most physically awkward of the three loopholes. The verse commands that the Nazirite shave the head at the door of the tent of meeting (Numbers 6:18). Read literally, this would require the Nazirite to shave in public, at the threshold of the sanctuary, in full view of everyone arriving for offerings.

The Sifrei refuses the literal reading. The dignity of the sanctuary forbids it. The midrash cites Exodus 20:23, which warns priests against ascending the altar by steps lest their bodies be exposed. If priests are protected from incidental exposure, how much more so a Nazirite who would be deliberately bareheaded in public.

The Sifrei rereads the verse. At the door of the tent of meeting, the midrash teaches, refers to the location of the peace-offerings (Leviticus 3:2 uses the same phrase) rather than the location of the haircut. The Nazirite shaves after the peace-offerings are brought. Abba Channan, in the name of Rabbi Eliezer, adds that the cooking room is where the actual shaving happens, and only when the door to that room is open. The midrash has closed the dignity loophole by relocating the practice indoors.

What the Three Loophole-Closures Had in Common

Stack the three passages and the Sifrei's reading of the Numbers material comes into focus. Sifrei Bamidbar is not interested in stringency for its own sake. It is interested in preventing specific unjust outcomes that the Torah's plain reading leaves on the table.

A convert's robber would escape repayment if no rule existed. A Nazirite would have to procure four kinds of bread if the wrong analogy were imported. A Nazirite would be exposed in public if the verse were read literally. In each case, the rabbinic intervention removes the unjust outcome by specifying a rule the Torah implies but does not explicitly state.