012b – אין נערכין - פרק שני – ערכין, דף יב ע”ב

In the second [year] he went up and subdued Yehoyakim.^[1]

And this is what we say: “In the second year he subdued Yehoyakim.”^[2]

“And so at the second [destruction].”^[3]

But the second [destruction] in the year after shemittah – how do you find it?

Now, how long did the Second Temple stand?

Four hundred and twenty [years].^[4]

ארבע מאה ועשרים - Complete years, apart from the year in which it was destroyed.

Four hundred are eight Yovel cycles; fourteen are two shemittah cycles; six remain – so it fell in the sixth year of the cycle!^[5]

הוה ליה בשיתא בשבוע - The four hundred and twenty years were completed [in the sixth year], and it was destroyed in the shemittah year itself.

Whose view is this?

It is Rabbi Yehudah, who said: “The fiftieth year counts both this way and that way.”^[6]

שנת חמשים עולה - It counts as the Yovel year, and it is also the start of the next Yovel cycle; therefore, according to Rabbi Yehudah, each Yovel cycle has only forty-nine years.

Bring eight [years] from the eight Yovel cycles; together with these six they make fourteen; it turns out that it was destroyed in the year after shemittah.^[7]

If it is Rabbi Yehudah, you cannot find it at the first [destruction]!^[8]

אי כר' יהודה - If you establish this [statement] of Rabbi Yosi according to Rabbi Yehudah, at the first [destruction] you do not find that the First Temple was destroyed in the year after shemittah.

For it was taught: “Yisrael counted seventeen Yovel cycles from when they entered the Land until they left it,

י"ז יובלות - This comes from verses, as it is written (Melachim I 6): “And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year” etc. Remove the forty years in the wilderness: it turns out that they entered the Land four hundred and forty years before the building of the Temple, and the First Temple stood four hundred and ten – that is eight hundred and fifty, which is seventeen Yovel cycles of fifty.

and you cannot say that they counted from the moment they entered, for if you say so, the Temple turns out to have been destroyed at the beginning of a Yovel, and you do not find (Yechezkel 40:1) ‘in the fourteenth year after the city was struck’ [to be a Yovel];^[9]

ואי אתה יכול לומר משעה שנכנסו - That they counted shemittah and Yovel from [when they entered] the Land; for if so, the Temple was destroyed at the beginning of the Yovel, that is, in the Yovel year itself. One cannot say that it was not destroyed until the fifty-first [year], for if so our sugya cannot stand: when you take away the seven in which they conquered and the seven in which they divided, you find the destruction in the thirty-seventh year of the Yovel cycle, which is the second year of the shemittah cycle, whereas we need the year after shemittah. Therefore “the beginning of the Yovel” is explained to us as the Yovel year itself. “And you do not find” a Yovel in the fourteenth year after the city was struck, as it is written in Yechezkel (chapter 40).

rather, take out of them the seven [years] in which they conquered and the seven in which they divided, and you find (Yechezkel 40:1) ‘in the fourteenth year after the city was struck’ [to be a Yovel].”^[10]

צא מהן שבע שכיבשו וכו' - They did not count shemittah and Yovel until after fourteen [years], [and] you find the Yovel year fourteen years after the city was struck. As Ravina resolved above: when you take fourteen out of fifty, thirty-six remain; it turns out that the Temple was destroyed in the thirty-sixth year, which is the year after shemittah, and the Yovel year comes fourteen years later, not counting the year of the destruction. But if that [statement] of Rabbi Yosi above follows Rabbi Yehudah, “bring seventeen years from the seventeen Yovel cycles and throw them onto these” – that is, throw them onto the Yovel years, and take fourteen out of these seventeen for the seven in which they conquered and the seven in which they divided; three remain, and it turns out that it was destroyed in the third year of the cycle.

And if it is Rabbi Yehudah, bring seventeen [years] from the seventeen Yovel cycles and throw them onto these – it comes to the third year of the cycle!^[11]

Those years from when Sancheriv exiled them until Yirmeyah came and brought them back – he does not count them.^[12]

ומשני הנך תלת שנין דאגלינהו סנחריב עד דאתא ירמיה ואהדרינהו כו'. - That is, those three years in which Sancheriv besieged them, as it is written (in Melachim II 17): “And the king of Ashur came up (against all) [throughout all] the land, and went up to Shomron, and besieged it three years” – and they had no opportunity to plough and sow, and did not count shemittah and Yovel – he does not count them. And what it says, “until Yirmeyahu came and brought them back,” is not precise, for it was more than ninety years from Chizkiyahu, when Sancheriv exiled them, until Yirmeyahu brought them back in the days of Yoshiyahu. Rather, this is what it means: the three years [of the siege] from which Sancheriv exiled them, and they remained in that exile until Yirmeyahu brought them back – he does not count those three years. So I heard. But there are many objections to this. First: when you take away three years, you find the destruction in the forty-ninth year, which is a shemittah year, whereas we need the year after shemittah. Further, you do not find that the fourteenth year after the city was struck was a Yovel; and one cannot say that Rabbi Yehudah does not hold of that exposition, for it is a written verse, and later on we find the seven years in which they divided only from this exposition, that the fourteenth year after the city was struck was a Yovel. Further, it is difficult for me: how can we take away only those three years? Did we not say in the last chapter (below, 32b): “Once the tribe of Reuven and Gad were exiled, the Yovel years ceased,” until Yirmeyahu brought them back? And although we resolve there that they counted Yovel cycles to sanctify the shemittah years, that is only for the Rabbis; but according to Rabbi Yehudah we establish there that they did not count Yovel cycles at all. Further, how is it possible to remove three years by themselves? If, when Sancheriv came up against them, they had already counted ten or twelve years of the Yovel cycle, and he came up against them for three years – how is it possible to interrupt those three years and return to their original count, counting thirteen, fourteen, to sanctify the Yovel in the fifty-third year? Perforce they then began to count one, two, three, four. And from all these considerations it appears to me that this “three” written in the books is an error, and a mistaken explanation was written into the books. And this is the reading: “Those years from when Sancheriv exiled them until Yirmeyahu came and brought them back – he does not count,” and it is precise: all those years in which they were in exile Rabbi Yehudah does not count in the reckoning of shemittah and Yovel, as we say in the last chapter; rather, in the very year that they returned, in the days of Yoshiyahu, they began to count for the Yovel. Go and reckon from that year to the year four hundred and ten, the destruction, and you will find your reckoning set out like clay [in a mould]: in the thirty-sixth year of the Yovel cycle the Temple was destroyed, which is the year after shemittah, and you find that fourteen years after the city was struck was the Yovel year. For they returned in the eighteenth year of Yoshiyahu, as it is written (in Melachim II 22) that in the eighteenth year of Yoshiyahu the book was found in the Temple, and on account of the words of the book the king sent to Chuldah the prophetess. And we say in Megillah (14b): “How could he pass over Yirmeyahu and send to Chuldah?” and we answer that Yirmeyah was not there, for he had gone to bring back the ten tribes. And from where do we know that they returned? For it is written: “What is this marker?” etc. And this, that Yoshiyah cleared out the idolatry, was in that year. And so I found in Seder Olam: “In the eighteenth year of Yoshiyahu was the beginning of the Yovel.” Yoshiyahu reigned thirty-one years; from eighteen to thirty-one is how many? Fourteen. And eleven for Yehoyakim and Yehoyachin, and eleven for Tzidkiyahu, as it is written (in Melachim II 25) – that is thirty-six, and then the Temple was destroyed; and it stands well according to Rabbi Yehudah. So I understood on my own, and it was right in my eyes, but I had not heard it [from my teachers]. Afterwards I found an old corrected book in which it was written so, and I told it to my teachers, and it was right in their eyes.

Or if you wish, say: it is really the Rabbis, and when it teaches “and so at the second,” it refers to the rest.^[13]

איבעית אימא לעולם אליבא דרבנן - Rabbi Yosi said his statement [according to the Rabbis], and as for what was difficult for you above – “it comes to the sixth year of the cycle”…

כי קתני וכן בשניה אשארא - To Tishah b’Av and Motzaei Shabbos.

So too it is reasonable, for if you do not say so – was there a watch of Yehoyariv at the second [Temple]?^[14]

But it was taught: “Four watches came up from the exile: Yedayah, Charim, Pashchur and Immer.^[15]

עלו מן הגולה - In the days of Ezra.

ידעיה חרים פשחור ואימר - For in the First Temple the watch of Yedayah came before Charim, the watch of Charim before Pashchur, and that of Pashchur before Immer.

The prophets among them arose and divided them into twenty-four watches;

חלקום לארבע ועשרים משמרות - And they did not know how to arrange them – who would serve after whom.

they mixed them and put them into an urn;

בללום - They wrote the names of the twenty-four watches on twenty-four slips.

ונתנום בקלפי - And Yedayah aimed by holy spirit, and his own slip came up in his hand; and he put his hand in again and took a slip, and so on up to six times. And in the order in which the slips came up in his hand, so they set after him those written on the slips, one after the other.

Yedayah came and took his portion and the portion of his fellows – six…^[16]

Tosfos

הוה ליה בשיתא בשבוע - Explanation: the count of four hundred and twenty years was completed in the sixth year of the cycle, and the destruction was in the twenty-first year; for so the sugya shows, that the [Second] Temple was not destroyed until the twenty-first year [of a Yovel cycle]. And the First Temple, which stood four hundred and ten years, was destroyed in the tenth year itself – so the whole sugya shows. “The Temple turns out to have been destroyed at the beginning of a Yovel” – that is, in the Yovel year itself, since the destruction was in the year four hundred and ten. [So] Rashi.

אלא צא מהם שבע שכיבשו וז' שחילקו - And thirty-six remain, and in that year the city was destroyed, which was the year after shemittah. “And if it is Rabbi Yehudah, bring seventeen from the seventeen Yovel cycles” – that makes fifty-three years, so it comes to the third year of the cycle. And the same applies: he could have challenged Rabbi Yehudah [further]: if so, how do you find the verse in Yechezkel, that [the Yovel] was in the fourteenth year after the destruction?

הנך שנים דאגלינהו סנחריב - We do not read “three years,” for they were many; from the sixth [year] of Chizkiyahu until the seventeenth of Yoshiyahu, when Yirmeyahu brought them back, is close to a hundred years. And Rashi raised further objections to this reading, and it is an error.

הנך שני דאגלינהו סנחריב עד דאתא ירמיהו ואהדרינהו לא קחשיב - He brought them back in the eighteenth year of Yoshiyahu, and [from then] he counts fourteen of Yoshiyahu, who reigned thirty-one [years], and twenty-two of Yehoyakim and Tzidkiyahu – that is thirty-six years, and in the thirty-sixth year it was destroyed. And if you ask: if so, what does the beraisa mean, “if you say that they counted from when they entered, the Temple turns out to have been destroyed at the beginning of a Yovel”? That is not so, for when they were exiled they stopped counting Yovel cycles, and when they were brought back they resumed counting and sanctifying, and there were only thirty-six years until the destruction! And Rabbi says: that beraisa follows the Rabbis, who say that the fiftieth year is not part of the count of the shemittah years; and for them, when they were exiled, [granted] they did not count Yovel years, yet they did count and sanctify the shemittah years, and they would count Yovel cycles in order to sanctify the shemittah years by them – for so it is stated at the end of our masechta: “They counted Yovel cycles only to sanctify the shemittah years.” If so, when Yirmeyahu brought them back, they did not begin counting from the beginning of a Yovel, but continued that same count they had been counting; therefore it says that if they counted from when they entered, the Temple was destroyed in a Yovel year. But according to Rabbi Yehudah, who says the fiftieth year itself is part of the count of the shemittah years, in the years when the ten tribes were exiled they counted neither shemittah nor Yovel at all; and so when Yirmeyah brought them back and the Yovel was in force, they had to begin their count afresh.^[17]

משמרתו של יהויריב בשניה מי הואי - Rabbeinu Elchanan asked: but we say in Bava Kamma (110a): “If he gave the money to Yedayah and the asham to Yehoyariv” – evidently [Yehoyariv] existed in the Second Temple! One may answer that this Mishnah was taught close to [the time of] the First Temple. Alternatively, not Yehoyariv precisely, but the watch [that served] in place of Yehoyariv.^[18]

Notes

1. 1. Continues from the previous amud [Arachin 12a]: “As the master said: in the first year he conquered Nineveh; in the second he went up and subdued Yehoyakim.” So the count by Nevuchadnezzar’s reign runs one year ahead of the count by the subjugation of Yehoyakim.
2. 2. The end of Rashi’s comment ד"ה כיבש יהויקים, which begins on the previous amud [Arachin 12a].
3. 3. The words of Rabbi Yosi in the beraisa: the Second Temple too was destroyed on Tishah b’Av, on Motzaei Shabbos, in the year after shemittah, and during the watch of Yehoyariv. The Gemara now tests whether the Second Temple’s destruction also fell in the year after shemittah.
4. 4. By tradition, the Second Temple stood for four hundred and twenty years.
5. 5. For the Rabbis a Yovel cycle is fifty years, and the fiftieth year is not part of the shemittah count. 420 = eight Yovel cycles plus 20; 20 = two shemittah cycles plus 6. So the destruction fell in the sixth year of a shemittah cycle, not the year after shemittah.
6. 6. For Rabbi Yehudah the Yovel year is also the first year of the next shemittah cycle, so each Yovel cycle is only forty-nine years; for the Rabbis it stands on its own.
7. 7. For Rabbi Yehudah each Yovel cycle is one year shorter, so eight years are added to the six – fourteen, two complete shemittah cycles; the destruction falls in the first year of a cycle, the year after shemittah.
8. 8. That is, according to Rabbi Yehudah the First Temple’s destruction does not fall in the year after shemittah, as the beraisa will show.
9. 9. Yechezkel 40:1: “in the fourteenth year after the city was struck… at the beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month”; Chazal understood this as a Yovel year, which begins on Yom Kippur. Had the count begun on entering the Land, the year of the destruction itself would have been the Yovel, not fourteen years later.
10. 10. Under Yehoshua they conquered for seven years and divided the Land for seven, and only then began counting shemittah and Yovel. 850 − 14 = 836 = sixteen Yovel cycles plus 36; year 36 is the year after shemittah, and the Yovel comes fourteen years later.
11. 11. For Rabbi Yehudah each Yovel cycle is forty-nine years, adding seventeen years; less the fourteen, three remain, so the destruction falls in the third year of a shemittah cycle.
12. 12. Sancheriv exiled the ten tribes in the days of Chizkiyahu, and Yirmeyahu brought some of them back in the eighteenth year of Yoshiyahu. For Rabbi Yehudah those years were not counted, and a new count began at the return. Our printed Gemara has no “three,” following Rashi’s reading.
13. 13. That is, Rabbi Yosi follows the Rabbis, and “and so at the second” refers only to the other details – Tishah b’Av and Motzaei Shabbos – not to the year after shemittah.
14. 14. The kohanim were divided into twenty-four watches, each serving in the Temple for one week in turn; the watch of Yehoyariv was the first [Divrei Hayamim I 24:7].
15. 15. Of the twenty-four watches only four came up in the days of Ezra, and Yehoyariv was not among them; this supports reading “and so at the second” as referring to the rest.
16. 16. The beraisa continues on the next amud [Arachin 13a]: “Charim came and took his portion and the portion of his fellows – six; and so Pashchur, and so Immer.”
17. 17. Tosfos: for the Rabbis, even in exile Yovel cycles were counted in order to sanctify the shemittah years, so the count runs on from the entry into the Land; for Rabbi Yehudah nothing was counted, and a new count began on the return.
18. 18. Tosfos: the Gemara [Bava Kamma 110a] shows the watch of Yehoyariv serving in the Second Temple. The answers: that Mishnah was taught close to the First Temple, or it means the watch that took Yehoyariv’s place. Vilna prints this Tosfos on 13a.