Study Megillah folio 9B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
״לא חמד אחד מהם נשאתי״. ״אשר חלק ה׳ אלהיך אתם להאיר לכל העמים״.
Instead of Moses’ assertion: “I have not taken one donkey [ḥamor] from them” (Numbers 16:15), they wrote in more general terms: “I have not taken one item of value [ḥemed] from them,” to prevent the impression that Moses took other items. To the verse that discusses the worship of the sun and the moon, about which it is written: “Which YHWH your God has allotted to all the nations” (Deuteronomy 4:19), they added a word to make it read: “Which YHWH your God has allotted to give light to all the nations,” to prevent the potential misinterpretation that the heavenly bodies were given to the non-Jews so that they may worship them.
״וילך ויעבוד אלהים אחרים אשר לא צויתי לעובדם״.
The verse: “And has gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or the moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded” (Deuteronomy 17:3), could be understood as indicating that God did not command their existence, i.e., these entities created themselves. Therefore, when these Elders translated the verse they added a word to the end of the verse to make it read: Which I have not commanded to serve them.
וכתבו לו: ״את צעירת הרגלים״, ולא כתבו לו ״את הארנבת״, מפני שאשתו של תלמי ארנבת שמה, שלא יאמר שחקו בי היהודים והטילו שם אשתי בתורה.
And in the list of unclean animals they wrote for him: The short-legged beast [tze’irat haraglayim]. And they did not write for him: “And the hare [arnevet]” (Leviticus 11:6), since the name of Ptolemy’s wife was Arnevet, so that he would not say: The Jews have mocked me and inserted my wife’s name in the Torah. Therefore, they did not refer to the hare by name, but by one of its characteristic features.