json/Midrash/Aggadah/Midrash Rabbah/Bereshit Rabbah/English/Trans. Ephraim Nissan, 2023.json

{
    "language": "en",
    "title": "Bereshit Rabbah",
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    "versionTitle": "Trans. Ephraim Nissan, 2023",
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    "direction": "ltr",
    "heTitle": "בראשית רבה",
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        "Midrash",
        "Aggadah",
        "Midrash Rabbah"
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            "“Reuben, thou art my firstborn” (<i>Genesis</i> 49:3). Rabbi [Judah the Prince] used to say on this something complimentary and something uncomplimentary: “Thou art a firstborn, and Esau is a firstborn”: “And Esau went to the field to hint some game” (<i>ibid.</i> 27:5). Were he to find any, good. Or else, he would bring home the fruit of robbery and extortion. As for thee: “Reuben went at the time of the wheat harvest” etc. [“and found mandrakes in the field”] (<i>ibid.</i> 30:14). [So Reuben and Esau are alike in that both went to the field.]. “My might and first fruit of my vigour” (<i>ibid.</i> 49:3): these are the <i>za‘qafin,</i> i.e., the <i>zeqifin,</i> of war [defined by Marcus Jastrow as “officers ‎for ‎restoring ‎the ‎line ‎of ‎battle, ‎guards ‎against ‎desertions”]. “Exceeding in rank and exceeding in honour” (<i>Genesis</i> 49:3): “And their faces were a lion’s face” (<i>1 Chronicles</i> 12:8) [i.e., fierce, definitely not in the sense of the medical phrase <i>facies leonina,</i> as a symptom of the effects of leprosy in the sense of Hansen disease]. And he [Rabbi Judah the prince] use to say on this something uncomplimentary: “Reuben, thou art my firstborn”, thou art a firstborn and I am a firstborn, I, until the age of eighty-four had not seen any seminal emission, whereas thou [of thee Scripture says:] “he went and had intercourse with Bilha” [Jacob’s concubine] (<i>ibid.</i> 35:22). “My might and first fruit of my vigour”, my investment(?) of strength, and my investment(?) of pain. “Exceeding in rank and exceeding in honour” (<i>Genesis</i> 49:3): firstborn status was thy entitlement, and priesthood was thy entitlement, and kingship was thy entitlement, but now that thou hast sinned, firstborn status was given to Joseph, and priesthood to Levi, and kingship to Judah. Said Rabbi Aḥa: “It was not thine, firstborn status!” Did Jacob go to Laban other than for the sake of [obtaining as wife] Rachel?! “All the ploughing [intimacy] I ploughed in thy mother [Leah], did it note behove me to plough them in Rachel [instead, and in her alone?]?! Now, firstborn status has reverted to where it belonged”. "
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