Commentators:R. David Kimchi (Radak)/0

R. David Kimchi (Radak)

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Radak

Name	R. David Kimchi, Radak ר' דוד קמחי, רד"ק
Dates	c. 1160 – c. 1235
Location	Narbonne, Provence
Works	Commentaries on Bereshit, Nevi'im, Tehillim, Mishlei, and Divrei HaYamim, Sefer HaMikhlol and Sefer HaShorashim
Exegetical Characteristics
Influenced by	R. Yosef Kimchi, R. Moshe Kimchi, Ibn Ezra, Rambam, Ibn Janach, Ibn Chiyyug
Impacted on	Ramban, Meiri

Background

Life

• Name – Rabbi David Kimhi (רבי דוד קמחי) , acronym Radak (רד"ק)
• Dates – c.1160 – c.1235
• Location – Provence (Narbonne).
• Education – Bible, rabbinics, philosophy, science, philology
• Occupation – Teacher of rabbinic texts to youths
• Family – Son of R. Joseph Kimhi, brother of R. Moses Kimhi
• Teachers – His brother R. Moses Kimhi
• Contemporaries – Most notably R. Samuel ibn Tibbon of Provence, purveyor of Maimonides' Arabic works
• Time period
• Radak's family migrated from Spain to Provence in the wake of the Almohade invasion of the mid-12th century, and this Spanish legacy influenced his work substantially, as did the works of Rashi (and to a lesser extent those of others) composed in Northern Europe. Accordingly, Radak's work features a relatively early fusion of Northern European and Spanish influences. Polemical components of his work reflect the influence of his Christian environment.
• Translations of Maimonides' Arabic works began circulating during the early stages of Radak's exegetical career, and the Maimonidean component of his work (along with the writings of Samuel Ibn Tibbon and others) marks the beginning of the Maimonidean-Tibbonian philosophical-exegetical tradition that flourished in 13th-century Provence and beyond. Controversy over Maimonides' thought during Radak's time culminated in his efforts to defend the philosopher, as evidenced in Radak's exchange of letters with Judah Alfakhar in 1232.
• World outlook – Maimonidean philosophy dominates Radak's thought, including, inter alia, his affirmations of creation de novo, the presence of a natural order and the limited role of miracles, and the necessity of resisting the draw of the material world in order to unite with the active intellect and achieve immortality.

Works

• Biblical commentaries – Bereshit, Former Prophets, Latter Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, Chronicles.¹
• Grammar – Sefer Mikhlol which contains two parts: Sefer MIkhlol, a work on Biblical grammar and Sefer HaShorashim, a Biblical lexicon.²  These were written before Radak's Biblical commentaries and served as a foundation for them. They contain explanations to dozens of verses in Tanakh,³ but also provide the grammatical knowledge necessary to understand the text. For, according to Radak, attempting to study Tanakh without a grammatical base is almost futile.⁴
• Jewish thought – letters in defense of Maimonides
• Misattributed works – Et Sofer on Masorah (according to recently adduced evidence), as well as some collections of material from the Shorashim mistaken to be independent commentaries

Torah Commentary

Characteristics

• Verse by verse / Topical – Radak says explicitly with regards to his commentaries on the Former Prophets, Yirmeyahu and Divrei HaYamim⁵ that he will comment only on those verses which need explanation. Despite these words, however, in practice, Radak commented on almost every verse.
• Genre – explanatory commentary with partial emphasis on grammar and lexicography; periodic discussion of matters relating to philosophy, science, theology, and ethics
• Style – Radak's commentary is paraphrastic, often interweaving the text and commentary.
• Language – Hebrew
• Peshat and derash –  In his introduction to Yehoshua, Radak notes that he will deal with philology and grammar, turn to rabbinic interpretations when their authoritative explanations are necessary, and include "a few" homiletic midrashim "for lovers of derash". He implies, thus, that his emphasis will be on peshat⁶ while derashic interpretations will simply add occasional color to the commentary. While Radak's focus is definitely peshat, he nonetheless  more midrashim in his commentary than does Rashi,⁷ often quoting them directly. 
• Argues
• Agrees
• Contrast

Methods

Radak's exegesis synthesizes the methodologies of both the Spanish and French exegetical traditions, combining the Andalusian emphasis on philology, grammar and rationalism, with the Northern French and Provencal focus on literary exegesis, realia and Rabbinic literature.

• Grammar and Philology – Unlike some exegetes who separate their grammatical and philological analyses from their content discussions,⁸ Radak combines the two, believing that  one informs the other.
• Defining words – radak will explain difficult words both by looking atheir usage in Tanakh itself and by turning to Rabinnic Hebrew,⁹ Aramaic or Arabic.

 

• Radak provides explanations for masoretic alternatives reflected by qere-ketiv disparities.
• He displays considerable literary sensitivity of various kinds. He often attributes meaning to extraneous or otherwise distinctive biblical formulations, especially those found in the Pentateuch.
• He provides motives for the actions of biblical characters.
• He seeks to harmonize apparent biblical discrepancies, refusing to allow for the canonization of error on the part the inspired biblical author/editor.
• He recognizes parallelism as a rhetorical ("intensifying") feature of biblical poetry.
• He proposes historical contexts for individual Psalms.
• He attributes didactic or theological objectives to Pentateuchal stories.
• His exegesis of philosophically-charged material, especially on the opening chapters of Genesis and Ezekiel, bespeak an effort to apply a systematic Maimonidean approach, supplemented by his own exegetical and philosophical preferences.
• Crucially, his relatively expansive elucidations of the biblical text mark an important departure from the more concise and atomistic exegesis of his predecessors.
• Rationalism – although Radak was not an extreme rationalist there are some cases where he tries to minimize miraculous actions:
• Smaller miracle – Yehoshua 6:5.
• Miracle via natural means – Melakhim I 17:21, Melakhim II 6:6, Melakhim II 4:34.
• Prophetic vision – Shofetim 6:38.

Themes

• Rationalism –
• Miracles – Radak believed in the immutability in nature, leading him to minimize the miraculous, but not to reject it.¹⁰ He asserts that, for the most part, Hashem performs miracles by utilizing rather than overturning nature,¹¹ and that Hashem will only perform miracles when necessary.¹² These more overt miracles, he suggests, were preprogrammed into creation, and so do not really constitute a change in the natural order but rather a planned exception to it.¹³ He further asserts that since Hashem generally runs the world via nature, the righteous do not rely on miracles.¹⁴
• Anthropomorphism

Textual Issues

• Manuscripts – five extant manuscripts of commentary on Genesis; varying numbers of manuscripts of other works
• Printings – first printings in 15th and 16th centuries, chiefly in early Rabbinic Bibles; current best editions chiefly in Bar-Ilan's Mikra'ot Gedolot Haketer
• Textual layers – several works reflect stages of revision by the author

Sources

Significant Influences

• Earlier Sources – chiefly Talmud and Midrash, Rashi, R. Abraham Ibn Ezra, R. Jonah Ibn Janah, R. Joseph Kimhi, Maimonides
• Teachers – R. Moses Kimhi

Impact

Later exegetes

Radak's Shorashim became the standard biblical lexicon for centuries; and his commentaries on the Prophets and Writings likewise became standard, heavily influencing commentators such as Abarbanel and forming the basis of others such as Metzudat David.

Supercommentaries

Editions of various commentaries are available with limited annotation, and a more expansive supercommentary is available on Chronicles.

¹ As Radak often references his earlier commentaries in later ones, one can reconstruct the order of their composition as follows: Divrei HaYamim, Tehillim, Former Prophets, Latter Prophets, and finally, Bereshit. For some of examples of his self-references see: Tehillim 78:9 (where he refers to his commentary to Divrei HaYamim), Yirmeyahu 22:11 (where he refers to his commentaries on both Divrei HaYamim and Melakhim), or Melakhim I 13:28 (where he refers to his commentary on Tehillim). See also his introduction to Yirmeyahu where he explicitly addresses the order in which he composed the work, writing "וכן כתבתי פירושו אחר פירוש ישעיהו".  A few lines later, he compares what he plans to do in the commentary to what he had done in his commentaries to the Former Prophets (כמו שעשיתי בפירוש ד׳ ספרים הראשונים), providing clear evidence that those had been written before the commentaries to the Latter Prophets.

² The book, with its two parts (the section on grammar and the section on roots), was originally called Sefer HaMikhlol, but later publishers gave each section its own name by which they are now known.

³ See עזרא ציון צלמד "מפרשי המקרא", (ירושלים, 1978):783-788 for a full listing.

⁴ He compares it to one who attempts to plow a field with an ox but without a cattle prod: "אשר למד ותורה לו לקנין / ולא למד יסוד דקדוק ולא בן / כמו חורש אשר ינהג שוורים/ וידו בלי מלמד ודרבן" (Sefer HaMIkhlol, epilogue)

⁵ See his introductions to Divrei HaYamim and Yirmeyahu where he differentiates between his commentaries to these works (and the Early Prophets) and his commentary to Yeshayahu, claiming that only Yeshayahu was to be explained verse by verse.

⁶ See his introduction to Divrei HaYamim as well, where he explains that one of the motivations for writing the work was that the only commentaries he found on the book were those in Narbonne who followed "the path of derash".  Here, too, he  implies that his approach will differ, and that he will approach his commentary from a "peshat" perspective.

⁷ F. Talmage, David Kimhi: The Man and the Commentaries (Massachusetts, 1974): 74, writes, "If Radak was bringing midrashim for the lovers of peshat it would appear that he himself was chief among them... He did not bring all of the midrashic corpus. Yet as one peruses the commentaries, verse after verse, chapter after chapter... one almost feels that he tried to."

⁸ See, for example, Ralbag who has a section of his commentary entitled "פירוש המילים" and a distinct section "פירוש הענין".

⁹ See, for example, Shemuel II 16:12, Melakhim I 1:9, or Yirmeyahu 41:6.

¹⁰ Thus, he maintains that the snake in the garden miraculously talked (Bereshit 3:1), the skin tunics were miraculously made for Adam and Chavvah (Bereshit 3:21) and that there really was a shamir, the worm who could split stones (Melakhim I 6:7).  Similarly, though he brings an opinion that the boys revived by Eliyahu and Elisha were simply unconscious, he prefers the possibility that they actually died and were brought back to life.

¹¹ See Yehoshua 5:2 where he writes, "כי אף על פי שמשנה מנהג העולם בקצת הנסים בקריעת ים סוף והירדן ועמידת השמש לא יעשה כן ברוב הנסים כי אפילו בנצוח המלחמות ועזרו לאוהביו היה עושה ע״י סבה כמנהג העולם". For examples where miracles may be wrought through some natural means, see Melakhim I 17:21 and Melakhim II 4:34.(regarding Eliyahu and Elisha's actions to revive the boys).  In these cases, he also brings an opinion that the boys did not die at all, but were simply unconscious (but he prefers the idea that they died and were miraculously brought back to life).

¹² See, for example, his comments to Bereshit 2:21, Yehoshua 5:2, 6:5.

¹³ See Bereshit 2:1, drawing off Bereshit Rabbah 85, where he notes that already during the six days of creation Hashem commanded that the sea split, the sun stand still, the ravens feed Eliyahu, the lions not harm Daniel and that the fish save Yonah.

¹⁴ See Bereshit 12:12 and Shemuel I 16:2 and examples there.