Welcome to our Perek Shira class. Today's song is the song of אֵלִים שֶׁבַּשְּׁרָצִים ,the powerful strong rodents. And they say
. אֶשְׁתְּךָ
כְּגֶפֶן פֹּרִיָּה בְּיַרְכְּתֵי בֵיתֶךָ בָּנֶיךָ כִּשְׁתִלֵי זֵיתִים סָבִיב
לְשֻׁלְחָנֶךָ: (תהילים קכח ג)
Your wife is like a fruitful
vine, on the side of your house. Your
sons are like olive saplings around your table. (Tehilim 128,3)
What do these rodents have to do with this healthy pregnancies and children? So to say? We go back to the Gemara
in Masechet Sotah that tells us that in the merit of the
righteous woman we left Mitzrayim. What did the righteous women do? They
convinced their husbands to have children even in extenuating circumstances
with all the challenges that went with being in Mitzrayim with all the back breaking labor.
The sefer Kol Rina says that the husbands told their wives, I'm
working hard. You are working hard. Who says that your pregnancy will be
successful? What, are we doing here?" And the ladies told their husbands, אֶשְׁתְּךָ כְּגֶפֶן פֹּרִיָּה :Your wife is like a vineyard. The Midrash
Raba in Shemot Raba perek 16 tells us that one who that sees
grapes in a dream, his wife will not miscarry, as the Gemara in Berachot
47A says. So the wife was telling her
husband, Don't worry, I'm like a vineyard where the grapes are attached to the
cluster very strongly and they don't fall down. And when the husband said, How
am I going to support them, his wife
said, Don't worry, your sons are going to be like olive saps, as it says, one who
sees an olive in his dream will have many children and these many children, סָבִיב לְשֻׁלְחָנֶךָ
they will be
like olive saplings around your large table. You'll have money to support them.
Additionally, the term Sheratzim also refers to the
Jewish wives in Mitzrayim (although rodent is a negative term), as it
says
וּבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל
פָּר֧וּ וַֽיִּשְׁרְצ֛וּ וַיִּרְבּ֥וּ
they multiplied like rodents, six at a time. So –although it doesn't sound nice to us , we're referring to the Jewish woman who had the
strength to give birth to six at
a time, like these rodents do, with very healthy offspring.
Furthermore, the Midrash Raba says on the pasuk Shemot
31
וּבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל
פָּר֧וּ וַֽיִּשְׁרְצ֛וּ וַיִּרְבּ֥וּ that there is a
machloket among the Amoraim. One says,
we're compared to the strong Sheratzim, which gives birth to six at a time.
Others say it's to the smallest Sheratzim, that give birth to 60 at a
time. Regardless, the point is that like
little scorpions that come out as teeny
little things, but yet strong and healthy, so too we're being told that even
though they were six at one time, they were healthy. It wasn't like modern times, where if someone had sextuplets, they'd
be weak. פָּר֧וּ
וַֽיִּשְׁרְצ֛וּ וַיִּרְבּ֥וּ וַיַּֽעַצְמ֖וּ ׃ They
were very strong. They're very powerful.
The sefer Kenaf Rananim
asks why it says אֶשְׁתְּךָ כְּגֶפֶן פֹּרִיָּה בְּיַרְכְּתֵי בֵיתֶךָ /she's all over the different sides of your house? Because sometimes when a lady many children,
she's tired, she's in bed, she's too weak to take care of the household. But
here, we're saying, No, she's all
over the house. She's taking care of everything.
Rabbenu Bachye adds beautiful thought on Bereshit 34,1 from Midrash Tanhuma on Vayishlach chapter six that says that when
a lady is , אֶשְׁתְּךָ כְּגֶפֶן
פֹּרִיָּה בְּיַרְכְּתֵי בֵיתֶךָwhich means she's on the side of her house, she's inside, she's
modest, she's sanua. She brings kapara because it uses the term yerech
which is the side, and it says in Vayikra
1,11 yerech Hamizbe'ach-, so the lady who's a modest lady is like an altar that
brings kapara and she will have children. The next term talks about the olive
sprouts because the children will be fit to be anointed with the holy
anointing oil, which is made out of olive oil.
He continues on, to tell us that Masechet Yoma daf 47 describes the lady called
the Kimchit who had seven sons
that all became Kohanim Gedolim because of her tremendous modesty. And
again, this goes back to the modest woman of Mitzrayim. It says none of
them did anything improper. There was only one lady Shlomit bat Divri that was
called out. All the other ladies were modest. And that's adds to the, the, the
tremendous beracha that came upon the ladies of Mitzrayim and allowed them to raise these
wonderful families. In their merit, we
were saved from Mitzrayim.
So again, this pasuk captures the greatness and the righteousness
of the Jewish women at that time. And
that is the strength of the
rodents.
The Chatam Sofer, in his commentary on Tehilim on this pasuk, adds something beautiful. And he says
that a lady is compared to a vine because wine is
easy. You put the wine in the barrel and you sit it and it develops. SO she'll have
children easily, but raising children is not as easy. If you
want to turn an olive into olive oil, you
have to crush it and smash it and push
it. It's not as easy to make olive oil from olives as it is to get wine from grapes (a little hinuch hint)
And finally, a beautiful thought from the Midrash Shemuel in his commentary on
Pirkei Avot 3,1
He's bothered by the word אֶשְׁתְּךָwhich has a segol
with three dots rather than the typical spelling of wife which is
Ishtecha- with a hirik- which has one dot. He says that
there are three partners in a person- a husband, wife and God. And so we put
the three dots there to tell you that if you want to have a successful
marriage, we need the Shechina to come down. He says, that's why it says כְּגֶפֶן
פֹּרִיָּהIt could have said porah. Why
is there an extra Yud there?
Because then פרעה jas a Yud
and Heh and as we know, it says that when the Jewish people left Mitzrayim, God
Himself testified on the kashrut of the Jewish people. If one would say,
"Oh you Jewish people were in Egypt all those years, and you think your
lineage is pure?" God testified, הַפָּלוֹי, all the names have a ה in the
beginning and a י at the end, and they're called Shivteh
Yah tribes of God, עדות לישראלthe tribes of God. God came
down and testified that, that they all proper couples. And that's why this
pasuk specifically referring to those ladies, is Ishtecha not Eshtecha
and Gefen Poriah, not Porah.
Rashi brings down this point
that Hashem testified to the fidelity of the Jewish people. (See Rashi in Bamidbar
26,5 and Tehilim 122,4)
