Numbers Rabbah

Numbers Rabbah (or Bamidbar Rabbah in Hebrew) is a religious text holy to classical Judaism. It is a midrash comprising a collection of ancient rabbinical homiletic interpretations of the book of Numbers (Bamidbar in Hebrew).

In the first printed edition of the work of Constantinople (1512), it is called Bamidbar Sinai Rabbah, and so cited frequently by Nahmanides (1194–c. 1270) and others. It is the latest component of the Rabbot collection of midrash on the Torah, and as such was unknown to Nathan ben Jehiel (c. 1035–1106), Rashi (1040–1105), and Yalkut.

Numbers Rabbah consists of two parts, which are of different origin and extent. The first portion, sections 1–14 (on Torah portions Bamidbar and Naso) — almost three-quarters of the whole work — contains a late homiletic commentary upon Numbers 1–7. The second part, sections 15–33, reproduces the Midrash Tanchuma from Numbers 8 almost word for word. Midrash Tanchuma generally covered in each case only a few verses of the text and had regular formulas of conclusion. The second portion of Numbers Rabbah follows closely those readings of the Tanchuma that appear in the oldest edition. M. Beneviste drew attention as early as 1565 to the fact that Tanchuma and Numbers Rabbah are almost identical from the section Behaalotecha onward. Solomon Buber gave a list of the variations between the two. Passages drawn from the Pesikta Rabbati are found exclusively in the first or later part of this Midrash. This is true also, with the exception of the interpretation of the numerical value of the Hebrew word for fringes, of the other passages pointed out by Leopold Zunz as originating with later, and notably French, rabbis. This numerical interpretation of “fringes” forms a part of a passage, also otherwise remarkable, at the end of the section on Korach (18:21), which, taken from Numbers Rabbah, was interpolated in the first printed edition of the Tanchuma as early as 1522, but is absent from all the manuscripts. Another long passage (18:22) which belongs to the beginning of Chukat, as in Tanchuma, is erroneously appended in the editions to the section on Korach.

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