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Arakhin 12 for kids: Songs and Jubilee Years

ערכין י״ב

📅 Does wine poured on the altar by itself need a song from the Levites? The daf also counts Sabbatical and Jubilee years to understand when the two Temples were destroyed.

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Stories from Arakhin 12

Words to know

Rashi and Tosafot on Arakhin 12 in simple English

Rashi on Arakhin 12a, in English Tab translation (22)
  1. Libations brought by themselves — For example, a communal offering was brought today without its libations, and the libations were brought tomorrow. For the Sages said that its meal offering and libations may be brought at night, or even the next day.
  2. Eating and drinking — The animal offering and its libations.
  3. But Rav Mari, son of Rav Kahana, taught — Above, he taught that a voluntary burnt offering does not require song, since it has no fixed time.
  4. Can you really think so? — Could they have sung this as the prescribed song on Sunday?
  5. A mishap could result — People might say that just as song for libations brought by themselves is optional, so is song for libations brought with an offering.
  6. Our captivity — The exile of Jehoiachin, the craftsmen, and the smiths. Ezekiel was among them.
  7. Jubilee — Its new year is on Yom Kippur, when the court blows the shofar, slaves return home, and fields return to their owners. Thus the Jubilee was in the fourteenth year after the Temple’s destruction, initially counting the year of destruction itself. A Jubilee always follows a Sabbatical year, since the forty-ninth year is Sabbatical.
  8. But if you think it was destroyed in the year after a Sabbatical year — How could the fourteenth year, counting the year of destruction, also be the year after a Sabbatical year, the first year of the cycle?
  9. After the year — Count fifteen years back from the Jubilee, and the destruction falls in the year after a Sabbatical year: the thirty-sixth year of that Jubilee cycle.
  10. If so — If that prophecy was in the fifteenth year counting from the destruction, it was in the twenty-sixth year of Jehoiachin’s exile.
  11. For the Master said, they were exiled — The Israelites were exiled with Jehoiachin.
  12. In the seventh — In the seventh year after Jehoiakim’s subjugation.
  13. They were exiled in the eighth — That same exile was in the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, for he subjugated Jehoiakim in his second year, as explained below.
  14. They were exiled in the eighteenth — With Zedekiah, when Jerusalem was destroyed. This was the eighteenth year after Jehoiakim’s subjugation and Nebuchadnezzar’s nineteenth year.
  15. From the seventh to the eighteenth — From Ezekiel’s exile in the seventh year to the Temple’s destruction in the eighteenth are eleven years, counting the year of his exile. Add the fifteen years from the destruction to the Jubilee, counting both the destruction year and the Jubilee year, and the result is twenty-six. How, then, could Ezekiel call the Jubilee the twenty-fifth year of our captivity? This assumes he counted the year of exile.
  16. But according to you — You want to include the year of destruction in those fourteen years. Does that resolve the difficulty?
  17. After all, they were also exiled in the nineteenth — The questioner assumes there were three exiles: those listed in the eighteenth and nineteenth years were separate, and the destruction occurred in the eighteenth. Even if the fourteen years include both the destruction year and the Jubilee year, the Jubilee would fall in the twenty-sixth year of Jehoiachin’s exile, counting the year of his exile.
  18. Rather, what must you say — How should Ezekiel’s phrase ‘in the twenty-fifth year of our captivity’ be counted?
  19. Excluding the year they were exiled — The year Jehoiachin and Ezekiel were exiled is not counted.
  20. In any case, the nineteenth remains difficult for Ravina — The destruction certainly occurred during the final exile. According to Ravina, fifteen years passed from the destruction to the Jubilee. From Jehoiachin’s exile to the destruction in the nineteenth year are eleven years, excluding both the year of exile and the year of destruction. Together that makes twenty-six.
  21. Do you think there were three exiles? — The suggestion above of an exile in the nineteenth year was mistaken. There was one final exile: Jerusalem was destroyed in the eighteenth year after Jehoiakim’s subjugation, which was Nebuchadnezzar’s nineteenth year. Excluding both the year Jehoiachin and Ezekiel were exiled and the year of destruction, then adding the fifteen years that include the destruction year and the Jubilee year, gives twenty-five.
  22. For the Master said — In Seder Olam.
Tosafot on Arakhin 12a, in English Tab translation (8)
  1. Do libations brought by themselves require song? — This refers to libations for a communal offering that were not brought on the day of the offering and are brought later. The words “and their meal offerings” teach that they may be brought up to ten days later. It cannot refer to someone’s voluntary gift of a libation meal offering: even if brought alongside his obligatory offering, that offering does not require libations. The question concerns libations brought by day, for Rabbi Elazar says that just as atonement takes place by day, so does song.
  2. And can you understand? The day’s song is “The earth is the Lord’s” — Even if libations brought by themselves require song, it would be the song for the day the libations are brought, not the day the offering was brought.
  3. From one Sabbatical cycle to the next — He is counting backward, arriving at fifteen years.
  4. Ravina said — The fourteenth year after the year in which the city was struck was the fifteenth year from the destruction; that was the Jubilee year.
  5. Twenty-five years? It is twenty-six — “They were exiled in the seventh year” means the seventh year after Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jehoiakim, which he did in Jehoiakim’s fourth year. Jehoiakim reigned eleven years. In that final year Nebuchadnezzar killed him, and his son Jehoiachin reigned for three months. At the turn of the year, Nebuchadnezzar exiled Jehoiachin to Babylon along with the craftsmen and smiths. Ezekiel was exiled then.
  6. They were exiled in the eighteenth year after the conquest — This was when the city was struck.
  7. From the seventh year, when they were exiled, to the eighteenth, when the city was destroyed — Excluding the eighteenth year, which belongs to the count of fifteen years, there are eleven years. The seventh year was Jehoiakim’s last; Zedekiah then reigned for ten years before the year of destruction. Eleven plus fifteen is twenty-six. If the verse meant the fourteenth year counting the destruction itself, fourteen plus eleven would correctly give twenty-five. One might answer that the year of exile was Zedekiah’s first, leaving only ten years until the destruction, but that is not so: the exile occurred in a year counted to Jehoiakim.
  8. But is it any better according to you? — They were exiled in the nineteenth year, when the city was struck. From the seventh year to the nineteenth is twelve years; with fourteen, that makes twenty-six. One could also challenge the view that the eighteenth and nineteenth years mark separate exiles: If the city was struck in the eighteenth, it was not struck in the nineteenth. This is only a provisional discussion; the Gemara’s conclusion resolves it.
Rashi on Arakhin 12b, in English Tab translation (16)
  1. He conquered Jehoiakim — This was not an exile: Nebuchadnezzar deported no one, but made Jehoiakim his subject. Jehoiakim served him for three years, then rebelled for three. Daniel’s reference to Nebuchadnezzar coming to Jerusalem in Jehoiakim’s third year means the third year of his rebellion, since Nebuchadnezzar did not begin to reign until Jehoiakim’s fourth year. Jehoiakim’s successor, Jehoiachin, was exiled in the seventh year after Jehoiakim’s conquest, which was Nebuchadnezzar’s eighth regnal year. Thus Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jehoiakim in his second year.
  2. Four hundred and twenty — Complete years, apart from the year in which the Temple was destroyed.
  3. It would fall in the sixth year of the Sabbatical cycle — The 420 complete years ended in its sixth year, and the Temple was destroyed in the seventh year itself.
  4. The fiftieth year counts — It is both the Jubilee year and the beginning of the next Jubilee cycle. Thus, according to Rabbi Yehuda, each cycle contains only forty-nine years.
  5. If according to Rabbi Yehuda — If you attribute Rabbi Yosei’s statement to Rabbi Yehuda, you cannot find that the First Temple was destroyed in the year after a Sabbatical Year.
  6. Seventeen Jubilees — This follows from the verses: 480 years passed from the Exodus to the building of the First Temple. Subtract the forty years in the wilderness, and 440 remain from entry into the land to the Temple’s construction. The Temple stood for 410 years, making 850 years in all—seventeen cycles of fifty years.
  7. And you cannot say they counted from when they entered — If they began counting Sabbatical and Jubilee cycles upon entering the land, the Temple was destroyed at the beginning of a Jubilee cycle: in the Jubilee year itself. It cannot have been destroyed in the following year, for subtracting the fourteen years of conquest and division would then place the destruction in the thirty-seventh year of a cycle, the second year of a Sabbatical cycle, rather than the year after one. Nor would the Jubilee fall fourteen years after the city was struck, as Ezekiel says.
  8. Remove from them the seven years of conquest — They did not begin counting Sabbatical and Jubilee cycles until after the fourteen years of conquest and division. Subtracting fourteen from fifty leaves thirty-six: the Temple was destroyed in the thirty-sixth year, the year after a Sabbatical Year, and the Jubilee fell fourteen years after the destruction. But if Rabbi Yosei’s statement follows Rabbi Yehuda, add one year for each of the seventeen Jubilee cycles. After accounting for the fourteen years of conquest and division, three years remain, placing the destruction in the third year of a Sabbatical cycle.
  9. Those years from Sennacherib’s exile until Jeremiah returned them — One explanation excludes only the three years in which Sennacherib besieged Samaria, when its people could not farm, from the count of Sabbatical and Jubilee cycles. Rashi rejects this: subtracting three years puts the destruction in a Sabbatical Year, fails to place the Jubilee fourteen years after the destruction, and ignores the rule that Jubilees ceased throughout the tribes’ exile. One also could not interrupt an existing count for three years and then resume it. Rashi therefore reads the text as excluding the entire period from Sennacherib’s exile of the tribes until Jeremiah returned them. A new Jubilee count began in Josiah’s eighteenth year. From then to the destruction was thirty-six years, placing it in the year after a Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee fourteen years later. Rashi says this is his own explanation, which he later found in a corrected old manuscript.
  10. If you wish, say it follows the Rabbis — Rabbi Yosei’s statement can follow the Rabbis despite the earlier objection that the destruction would fall in the sixth year of a Sabbatical cycle.
  11. When it teaches ‘and likewise for the Second,’ it refers to the other details — The Ninth of Av and a Sunday.
  12. They came up from the exile — In Ezra’s time.
  13. Jedaiah, Harim, Pashḥur, and Immer — In the First Temple, their priestly watches served in that order.
  14. They divided them into twenty-four watches — They did not know in what order the watches should serve.
  15. They mixed them — They wrote the names of the twenty-four watches on twenty-four slips of paper.
  16. And put them in a receptacle — Guided by divine inspiration, the representative of Jedaiah drew his own slip, then drew five more. The watches named on the slips served after his in the order drawn.
Tosafot on Arakhin 12b, in English Tab translation (5)
  1. It would be in the sixth year of the Sabbatical cycle — The 420 years ended in the sixth year of the cycle, and the Second Temple was destroyed in the twenty-first year of the Jubilee cycle, as the discussion indicates. The First Temple, which stood for 410 years, was destroyed in its 410th year. Thus it was destroyed at the beginning of a Jubilee cycle, in the Jubilee year itself. Rashi.
  2. Rather, subtract the seven years of conquest and the seven years of division — Thirty-six years remain, and the city was destroyed that year, the year after a Sabbatical Year. But according to Rabbi Yehuda, adding one year for each of the seventeen Jubilees gives fifty-three years, putting the destruction in the third year of the Sabbatical cycle. The Gemara could equally have asked how, on his view, Ezekiel’s prophecy could have occurred fourteen years after the destruction.
  3. The years when Sennacherib exiled them — Do not read ‘three years’: the period from Hezekiah’s sixth year until Josiah’s seventeenth year, when Jeremiah brought them back, was nearly a hundred years. Rashi raises another objection to that wording and calls it a mistake.
  4. The years from Sennacherib’s exile until Jeremiah brought them back are not counted — Jeremiah brought them back in Josiah’s eighteenth year. Count fourteen years of Josiah’s thirty-one-year reign and twenty-two years under Jehoiakim and Zedekiah: the city was destroyed in the thirty-sixth year. But if so, why does the baraita say that counting from the entry into the land would put the destruction at the beginning of a Jubilee cycle? Jubilee counting had stopped during the exile; once the tribes returned, it resumed, with only thirty-six years until the destruction. Rabbi answers that the baraita follows the Rabbis, who hold that the fiftieth year is not part of the Sabbatical-year count. On their view, although Jubilee observance stopped during the exile, Sabbatical years continued to be counted and sanctified. As stated at the end of this tractate, Jubilees were counted only to establish the Sabbatical years. Thus Jeremiah’s return of the tribes did not begin a new Jubilee count; the old count continued. Counting from the entry into the land would therefore put the destruction in a Jubilee year. According to Rabbi Yehuda, however, the fiftieth year is part of the Sabbatical-year count, and during the exile neither Sabbatical years nor Jubilees were counted. When Jeremiah brought the tribes back and Jubilee observance resumed, they had to begin the count anew.
  5. Was Jehoiarib’s watch present during the Second Temple? — Rabbeinu Elchanan asks: Bava Kamma 110a speaks of giving the money to Jedaiah and the guilt offering to Jehoiarib, implying that Jehoiarib’s watch existed during the Second Temple. One answer is that the Mishnah describes a time near the First Temple period. Alternatively, ‘Jehoiarib’ is not meant literally; it refers to the watch that took its place.

Sources

Kid summary and story cards written by Tab from the William Davidson Edition English (Sefaria, CC BY-NC 4.0).

Tab translation (machine-assisted) of Rashi and Tosafot, from the Vilna Edition Hebrew (public domain) on Sefaria. May contain mistakes.

In the app, the Gemara text comes from Sefaria (William Davidson Edition, CC BY-NC 4.0; Hebrew/Aramaic Vilna Edition). Rashi and Tosafot Hebrew: Vilna Edition (public domain) via Sefaria.

Also spelled: Arachin, Erchin 12.