Arakhin

The following question was asked: Do libations offered1 up by themselves require a song or not? Since R. Samuel b. Nahmani had said: Whence do we know that one does not sing the [Sanctuary] song except over wine, etc.?2 Do we say it [over wine alone], or do we say it only when [the sacrifice] includes food and drink, but not over drink alone? — Come and hear: R. Jose said, Good things are brought about on an auspicious day. etc. Now what need was there for song? Would you say it was on account of an obligatory burnt-offering? But that could not be for on the seventeenth of Tammuz the continual offering was abolished! And if it was on account of a voluntary burnt-offering! Did not R. Mari the son of R. Kahana teach that such did not require a song?3 — Hence it must have been the song on account of libations?4 Said Raba, or as some say. R. Ashi: But how could you think so? The song of the day was ‘The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof’, whereas the verse, ‘And He brought upon them their iniquity’ belongs to the song due on the fourth day of the week? Rather [say]: It was a verse of lamentation that came to their mouth! But it says: ‘And they were standing on their platform’? — [Rather say,] That is in accord with Resh Lakish; for Resh Lakish said: The song may be sung even without any [attending] sacrifice. Then let the same be said for libations, too? — That might lead to an offence. [To turn to] the [above] text: R.Jose said, Good things are brought about on an auspicious day, etc. ‘At the first time it was at the end of the seventh year’. How could that have been? Is it not written: In the five and twentieth year of our captivity. in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten.5 Now which is the year the beginning of which falls on the tenth of Tishri? Say: This is the jubilee year.6 And if you should think that [the Sanctuary] was destroyed in the first year [of the seven years’ cycle], [consider] there are from the first year of one seven years’ cycle to the first year of another seven years’ cycle eight years, and to the first of the next seven years cycle fifteen years? — Said Rabina: It was in the fourteenth year after the year in which the city was smitten. But how, then, in ‘the twenty-fifth year’? It was, really in the twenty-sixth year, for a Master said: They were exiled in the seventh year, they were exiled in the eighth year, they were exiled in the eighteenth year, they were exiled in the nineteenth year. Now from the seventh to the eighteenth are eleven years, add fifteen and that makes it twenty-six years!7 — Rabina will answer you: But even according to your own reckoning is it right? Since they were exiled also in the nineteenth year, [you have] from the seventh to the nineteenth twelve years, add fourteen years and you have twenty-six years? What you must therefore say8 is that [the counting] excludes the year in which they were exiled. So is it with me: [the counting] excludes the year in which they were exiled. But, at any rate, the number nineteen remains a difficulty according to Rabina?9 Do you think three exiles are involved? [No, rather:] they were exiled in the seventh year after the subjection of Jehoiakim,10 which happened to be the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar; they were exiled in the eighteenth year11 after the conquest of Jehoiakim. which was the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, for a Master has taught: In the first year he [Nebuchadnezzar] conquered Nineveh Jehoiakim in 597. are set free, and the fields are restored to their original owners. V. R.H. 8b.