Thursday, June 21, 2007

Yevamos 49b - Moshe vs. Other Nevi'im

I always found Rashi's peshat in this gemara to be very insightful. The gemara implies that bec. Moshe's prophecy was with clarity he commented that no one can see Hashem, whereas Yeshaya who did not have clarity commented that he saw Hashem. The exact opposite should make sense! Rashi explains that Moshe had enough clarity to realize that what he was seeing was not Hashem, whereas Yeshaya who did not have clarity was fooled into thinking he saw Hashem even though he actually did not see Hashem. From Rashi we see that sometimes we can define clarity as knowing what we don't understand. For example, one can learn a sugya and comment "the whole thing makes no sense" - that is a lack of clarity. But one can learn the sugya and say "i understand everything except for these 3 points" - that is clarity. The greatness of Moshe is that he had an honest vision and knew what he was not understanding.
Perhaps this would be an alternate explanation to the gemara in chagiga 13b that differentiates between the prophecy of Yeshaya and Yechezkel (aside from rashi and tosafos), that the elaborate details of Yechezkel are indicative of a non-clear vision, where he thought that he saw what he described but didn't even realize he wasn't seeing what he thought he was. Yeshaya who did not elaborate was less fooled by his nevuah than Yechezkel.

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