The table below presents an aligned extract of verses
in
Ex13-09c, Ex13-16
Both verses
discuss
the obligation to place Tefillin on the left hand.
The alignment justifies the Rashi assertion that
The Tefillin must be placed on the handlet - the weaker
hand which in most people is the left hand.
Verse
|
Text of Verse
|
Rashi comment
|
Ex13-09c
|
And it
shall be for a sign unto thee upon thy hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the law of HaShem may be in thy mouth; for with a strong hand hath HaShem brought thee out of Egypt.
|
The underlined words require that the Tefillin be placed
on presumably any hand.
|
Ex13-16
|
and it shall be a sign upon your handlet ....
|
The word handlet never occurs in the Bible.
The contrastive alignment with hand suggests
a coined term meaning the weaker hand. Hence the requirement
is to place tefillin on the left hand.
|
Advanced Rashi:
The actual aligned Hebrew words are
Yud-Daleth-Caph vs. Yud-Daleth-Caph-Hey.
A terminal hey in Hebrew indicates a feminine or weaker
form. This explains the Rashi comment: the weaker hand, the
left hand.
English however has no letter indicating the feminine.
To mimic the Hebrew we used the let suffix: hand-handlet. The purpose of this construction was to give
the feel underlying the Rashi.
The use of skillfully constructed English analogies
to mirror Biblical derivations was advocated in my
article
Biblical Formatting found on the world wid web at
http://www.rashiyomi.com/biblicalformatting.pdf.
|