Study Megillah folio 22A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
אין מתחילין בפרשה פחות משלשה פסוקים. ליקרי תרי מהא ותלתא מהך, פשו להו תרי!
one may not begin a new paragraph and read fewer than 3 verses from it. And if you say he should read two verses from this paragraph, i.e., the entire second paragraph, and then 3 verses from that final paragraph, only two verses will remain from the final paragraph. This is problematic because one may not conclude a reading with fewer than 3 verses left until the end of a paragraph and because the 4th reader will not have a sufficient number of verses to read.
אמר לו: זו לא שמעתי, כיוצא בה שמעתי, דתנן: ביום הראשון — ״בראשית״ ו״יהי רקיע״, ותני עלה: ״בראשית״ — בשנים, ״יהי רקיע״ — באחד.
Rava said to him: I have not heard a solution for this problem from my teachers. However, with regard to a similar problem I heard a solution from them, as we learned in a Mishnah (Ta’anit 26a): On Sunday, the non-priestly watches would read two paragraphs from the Torah: “In the beginning” (Genesis 1:1–5) and “Let there be a firmament” (Genesis 1:6–8). And it is taught in that regard that the paragraph “In the beginning” was read by two readers and the paragraph “Let there be a firmament” by one reader.
And we discussed this ruling and raised difficulties with it: Granted, the paragraph “Let there be a firmament” was read by one reader, as it consists of 3 verses. But how was the paragraph “In the beginning” read by two? It consists of only 5 verses, and it was taught in a Mishnah (23b): One who reads from the Torah should not read fewer than 3 verses.
ואיתמר עלה, רב אמר: דולג. ושמואל אמר: פוסק.
And it was stated with regard to that Mishnah that the amora’im disagreed about how to divide the verses. Rav said: The second reader repeats the last verse that the first reader had recited, so that each of them reads 3 verses. And Shmuel said: The first reader divides the third verse and reads half of it, and the second reader begins with the second half of that verse, as though each half were its own verse.