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    7. RASHI METHOD: FORMATTING
    BRIEF EXPLANATION:Inferences from Biblical formatting: --bold,italics, and paragraph structure.
    • Use of repetition to indicate formatting effects: bold,italics,...;
    • use of repeated keywords to indicate a bullet effect;
    • rules governing use and interpretation of climactic sequence;
    • rules governing paragraph development and discourse
    This examples applies to Rashis Dt05-16b
    URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/w34n6.htm
    Brief Summary: There are two commandments in the 10 commandments which state AS GOD COMMANDED YOU. The CONTEXT therefore suggests both references are to the same source.

This example continues rule #1, reference.

Both the Biblical and modern author use the paragraph as a vehicle for indicating commonality of theme. Hence if two ideas are in a paragraph they may be assumed to have a similar context, (unless explicitly stated otherwise, for example, if the two ideas are indicated as contrastive.) The reader will no doubt recognize this formatting rule as none other than the most intuitive of the Rabbi Ishmael style rules which orthodox Jews recite every day as part of their daily prayer: the rule of inference from context. Today's example illustrates this.

    The ten commandments are presented in Ex20 and are repeated in Moses' farewell speach in Dt05-06:18. The repetition has an unusual feature: At two commandments we have added a phrase
  • Observe the Sabbath ....as God your Lord commanded you
  • Honor your Father and Mother...as God your Lord commanded you.

It is natural to inquire what the underlined phrase as God your Lord commanded you refers to. We have seen above in rule #1, reference that the Sabbath laws were given in the Seen Desert prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai (Ex16-28:30)

However we find no place where God commanded people to honor one's parents. But we do find a place, pre-Sinai Marah, where God commanded a statute and ordinance (Ex15-25).

Rashi therefore assumes that this statue and ordinance refers to the commandment to honor one's parents which is qualified with the phrase as God your Lord commanded you.

The driving force behind Rashi's logic is that Just as the phrase as God commanded by the Sabbath commandment refers back to the pre-Sinai Seen desert, so too, the phrase as God commanded by the Parent commandment, refers back to the pre-Sinai Marah. The reason we treat these two phrases the same is because they occur in the same context / paragraph.

We can also understand this type of paragraph derivation as an example related to the Talmudic methods of hekesh or semuchin. 


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