“and Moses and the People of Israel sang this song” (Exodus. 15:1) - The Value of Human Life

The Mishnah in Sanhedrin addresses the witness that hesitates to give testimony against a murderer because of his reluctance to be responsible for taking a life.   

Perhaps you might say, “Should we be guilty of this man's blood?” - and was it not already said," When the wicked perish there is joy (רינה)” ? (Prov. XI, 10) (Sanhedrin 4:14)

The Mishnah’s response to the reluctant witness is that there is an imperative, intimated in the Scriptures to execute a murderer. The Mishnah’s proof-text, a Proverb reads superficially as an observation of the way humans behave when evil-doers perish. Nevertheless, the Rabbis who generally tend to see in the Scriptures a more exalted message extrapolated from it an absolute and universal truth, namely that  the elimination of evil is a positive and favorable affair.

Talmud of the Land of Israel

The Proverb’s plain and straightforward message is that the demise of evil-doers is an occasion for celebration. This message, charged with moral and ethical implications not surprisingly triggered a discursive reaction in the two Talmudim; The Talmud of the Land of Israel and the Talmud of Babylonia. 

The celebration of the demise of human evil-doers seems to have been at odds with the moral and ethical sensitivities of at least some of the Rabbis of the Talmud of the Land of Israel. In its comments on the section of the Mishnah addressing the reluctant witness, the Talmud of the Land of Israel cites an anonymous interpretation of a passage bearing linguistic and ideological similarity to the proof-text of the Mishnah.

1. Maybe you will say, why should we go to all this trouble," etc. It is written: הרינה erupted in the camp. What is הרינה ? -Calm ? 

These passages refer to the death of Ahab, the evil and oppressive king of Israel who was mortally wounded by an un-aimed arrow in his attempt to take back Ramoth-Gilead (1 Kings 22). The conventional reading of the passage, at least the one targeted by the Rabbis of the Talmud of the Land of Israel understands the word הרינה as ‘rejoicing’, i.e. the Jewish People rejoiced at the death of the evil Ahab. This reading purports a clear celebratory ideology.  

In opposition to the celebratory ideology implied in the Ahab passage, the Talmud of the Land of Israel interprets the Hebrew word ‘הרינה’ in this passage not in its conventional sense of “joy” or “clamor”, but on the basis of the Greek word eirene which means “calm”. This exegesis of the passage re-interprets the general sense of the Scripture from a celebratory reading according to which the Jewish People rejoiced at the demise of Ahab with a humanistic reading according to which the Jewish People were simply calmed and relieved by his death. Its further effect is that dissociates any concept of joy from the demise of human beings no matter how evil or iniquitous.  

This humanistic interpretation of the word, הרינה, at which the Talmud of the Land of Israel arrives, when now applied to the proof-text of the Mishnah yields the following reading of the Proverb: “When the wicked perish there is calm” rather than Joy. This re-interpretation does serve to tone down the potentially barbaric overtones of joy at death potentially implied by the Mishnah. However, it does not alter very much the general meaning of the Mishnah that the elimination of murderers is a necessary act.

In addition to injecting humanistic ideology into the Ahab passage which describes Israel’s behavior when the demise of the evil Ahab comes about, the Talmud also relates this very same ideology to the Divine realm. 

2. And so it says, when they went in front of the armed forces, to teach that even the downfall of the evildoers is no joy before the Omnipresent (ySanhedrin 4:14).

Much of the background to the Midrashic interpretation can be supplied from the parallel passage in the Babylonian Talmud (see below). God’s abstinence from rejoicing at the downfall of the evil Egyptians despite that it was the very cause of Israel’s savior from death is meant to be a lesson for humans that the death of mortals no matter how evil is not an occasion for celebration. 

The Talmud of the Land of Israel clearly opposes the celebratory ideology which could be projected in the simple reading of the Mishnah and certain passages in the Scriptures. 

Notwithstanding this, as we will later see, celebratory ideology is in fact attested elsewhere in the Talmud of the Land of Israel within Aggadic material. Nevertheless, it could be argued that the Talmud’s final thesis on the matter would be found here where it is triggered by the ideologically incompatible content of Mishnah rather than a tangential Aggadic discussion.

Babylonian Talmud

While the Talmud of the Land of Israel embraces a humanistic attitude towards the demise of the wicked, the attitude of the Babylonian Talmud is more nuanced and leans towards the celebratory ideology.

The Babylonian Talmud launches its discourse with the citation of Rabbi Aha b. Hanina, a Palestinian(!) Amora who espouses the celebratory reading of the Mishnah’s Proverb as an analogy for the celebration held by the Jewish People at the death of Ahab at Ramoth in Gilead. 

And there went out the song  (rinnah) throughout the camp” (I Kings XXII, 36, R. Aha b. Hanina  said: [When the wicked perish, there is song; (Prov. XI, 10) [thus] when Ahab b. Omri perished there was ‘song’.

Rabbi Aha b. Hanina upholds the celebratory reading of the same passage that the Talmud of the Land of Israel interprets in a humanistic fashion. The need for Rabbi Aha b. Hanina to supply the Proverb as an explanation of the celebration held by the Jewish People may suggest that celebration at the demise of humans may have been curious to his audience. 

This celebratory reading immediately elicits an objection from an anonymous passage drawing from the Babylonian Rabbi Jonathan:

But does the Holy One, blessed be He, rejoice over the downfall of the wicked? Is it not written, [That they should praise] as they went out before the army, and say, Give thanks unto the Lord for His mercy endureth for ever; (II. Chron. XX, 21,  concerning which R. Jonathan  asked: Why are the words, He is good (as in Ps. CVII, 1) omitted from this expression of thanks? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not rejoice in the downfall of the wicked.( ki tov) can also be rendered ‘it is good’)