Shortchanged?
“You Shall Count 50 Days”
(Menachos 65b)
Our Gemara discusses the mitzvah of the counting of the Omer at length, repeating the verse (Vayikra 23:16) “Until the morrow of the seventh week, you shall count 50 days…” We all know that in performing the mitzvah, one counts only 49 days. Where did the 50th day disappear?
Forty, Less One?
This question appears in the writings of the Rishonim and the Acharonim. The Rosh wrote (Pesachim 10:40): “Some ask, since the verse directs counting 50 days, why do we count only 49?” This question was asked not only about counting the Omer but also in regard to the punishment of 39 lashes. The Torah (Devarim 25:3) commands: “Forty shall he strike him, 40, he shall not add…” but Chazal (Makkos 22a) interpreted this as meaning “40, less one.” Indeed, Rambam (Hilchos Sanhedrin, 17:1) gives a reason: “The Sages said, ‘He is struck 39 times so that if [the person giving the lashes] adds one, [the defendant] is only struck with the 40 he deserves.” This apparently means that Chazal subtracted from the stipulated number in the Torah so that the one designated to mete out punishment avoids the prohibition of “he shall not add.”
But most Acharonim do not confirm this interpretation of Rambam due to a number of difficulties. If the deduction of one is uniform, one should subtract one lash from any number of lashes fixed by a beis din and not necessarily only from a person sentenced to suffer 40 lashes (Minchas Chinuch 594:4; see ibid.). Therefore, most Acharonim agree with the Kesef Mishneh (ibid., in his second explanation) “that the Sages received this interpretation from Moshe.” Thus, 39 lashes is a Torah stipulation.
The Torah’s Way
We thus contemplate our opening thought: The Torah instructed a certain number while it may have actually meant a lesser amount. How is that to be understood? The Rosh (Pesachim 10:40, and see Ritva, Makkos 22a) explains: “That is the way of the Torah: When a number approaches the tens less one, it counts it as a ten and pays no attention to the lack of one.” In other words, the Torah ignores the lack of one if it can include the number in whole tens: 40, 50, or the like.
“Im Hakolel”
According to others, this rule is valid when, by adding a unit of one, we can round out the number to a whole ten. There are two explanations. The first is that “it was not necessarily exact” (lo dak) – in other words, the lack of one does not matter. The second explanation is that the group of numbers is also considered a number and therefore can be added. This approach to Torah calculations is called “im hakolel.”
The Rishonim and Acharonim cite very interesting sources for this rule that the Torah is not exact about a single number. The Rosh (ibid.) mentions that the Torah counts “all the souls of the house of Yaakov coming to Egypt were 70” (Bereishis 46:27) even though they numbered only 69 (see ibid in Korban Nesanel, who asks from Chazal’s interpretation in Bava Basra 123b about Yocheved, who was born within the walls).
All For the Sake of Prevention
The author of Leket Yosher (O.C.) cites the following proof in the name of his mentor, the Terumas HaDeshen. The Gemara in Gittin 88a says that Hashem caused our forefathers to be exiled from Eretz Yisrael two years before their time to prevent their destruction, as we are told: “…and you will grow old (venoshantem) in the land and you will sin…for you will perish” (Devarim 4:25-26). In other words, if they sin in the land for 852 years, the numerical equivalent of “venoshantem,” then, Heaven-forbid, they would perish. To prevent such catastrophe, Hashem caused them to be exiled two years earlier, after being in the land for 850 years. Why didn’t it suffice to have them exiled only one year earlier? Because the Torah is not exact about a difference of one number and they could have been destroyed even one year before the allotted time.
Kabbalists cited a source for this rule from the verse “Ephraim and Menashe will be for me like Reuven and Shimon” (Bereishis 48:5). There is a hint here that Ephraim and Menashe are like Reuven and Shimon just as the numerical equivalent of their names is identical, though Ephraim and Menashe amount to 736, nine less than Reuven and Shimon, which amount to 745. We thus learn that a small difference does not ruin the comparison (Devash Lefi by the Chida 2:14, in the name of the pupils of the Rema and the Arizal; see further concerning this issue in Rema, O.C. 21:3; Magen Avraham 295, in the name of the Tashbatz; and the Beis Yosef, 582).