Study Yevamot folio 77A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
אקשי להו דואג כל הני קושייתא, אישתיקו. בעי לאכרוזי עליה. מיד ״ועמשא בן איש ושמו יתרא הישראלי אשר בא אל אביגל בת נחש״, וכתיב, ״יתר הישמעאלי״, אמר רבא: מלמד שחגר חרבו כישמעאל, ואמר: כל מי שאינו שומע הלכה זו — ידקר בחרב. כך מקובלני מבית דינו של שמואל הרמתי: ״עמוני״, ולא עמונית. ״מואבי״, ולא מואבית.
Doeg raised before them all those objections from the others who are disqualified from entering into the congregation, and they were silent, not knowing how to respond. Doeg then wanted to proclaim that David was disqualified from entering into the congregation. He was immediately answered. Here it says: “Now Amasa was the son of a man, whose name was Jithra the Israelite, that went into Abigal the daughter of Nahash” (II Samuel 17:25), and yet elsewhere it is written that Amasa’s father was named “Jether the Ishmaelite” (I Chronicles 2:17). Rava said: This teaches that he girded his sword like Ishmael, i.e., like an Arab, and said: Whoever does not accept this halakha and act accordingly should be stabbed with the sword. This is the tradition that I received from the court of Samuel from Rama: An Ammonite man is prohibited from entering into the congregation, but not an Ammonite woman; a Moabite man is prohibited from entering into the congregation, but not a Moabite woman.
ומי מהימן? והאמר רבי אבא אמר רב: כל תלמיד חכם שמורה הלכה ובא, אם קודם מעשה אמרה — שומעין לו, ואם לאו — אין שומעין לו! שאני הכא, דהא שמואל ובית דינו קיים.
The Talmud asks about this incident: And is he trusted to offer such testimony? But didn’t R' Abba say that Rav said: With regard to every Torah scholar who issues a halakhic ruling based on a tradition he claims to have received from his teacher, and that ruling has practical ramifications for himself as well, if he stated the ruling already before the incident, i.e., before it had a bearing on his own case, one listens to him; but if not, if he reported the tradition only after it was personally relevant to him, one does not listen to him, as he is an interested party. Since Amasa was the son of Jesse’s daughter Abigail, as stated in the aforementioned verse in Chronicles, the matter certainly affected his own status. The Talmud answers: Here it is different, as Samuel and the other members of his court were still living, and the truth of Amasa’s report could be easily verified.