fleeing

"And David fled and escaped" (Shmuel I 19:18), "for he was fleeing" (Bereishis 31:20), "and Yaakov fled" (Hoshea 12:13), "and they fled into hiding" (Daniel 10:7). The causative drives another away: "they drove out the inhabitants of Gas" (Divrei HaYamim I 8:13), "one who despoils his father and drives off his mother" (Mishlei 19:26), "and I drove him from me" (Nechemyah 13:28), "an arrow will not put him to flight" (Iyov 41:20). The nouns: בְּרִיחֶהָ עַד־צֹעַר (Yeshayahu 15:5), her fugitives, as far as Tzoar; וְהֽוֹרַדְתִּי בָֽרִיחִים כֻּלָּם (Yeshayahu 43:14), and I will bring down all of them as fugitives; and וְאֵת כָּל־מִבְרָחָו (Yechezkel 17:21), and all his fugitives.

His father held that "Yonah rose to flee to Tarshish" (Yonah 1:3) and "for he was fleeing from before Hashem" (Yonah 1:10) are not flight proper, since flight proper is only from danger to life; he read the fleeing here as hastening the errand. His father explained why Yonah hastened: so that Hashem should not give him a sign and a wonder, which would cause the people of Nineveh to repent, and their repentance would bring destruction on Israel. So too, his father adds, Yonah said "therefore I hastened to flee to Tarshish" (Yonah 4:2).

His father goes on: Hashem, blessed be He, who knew his intent, gave him a sign in the sea, and none is greater: they cast him into the sea, the men of the ship were on their way to Nineveh, and when they saw him there they recognised him; the matter reached the king of Nineveh, and they believed at once, since the men of the ship testified that it was they who had thrown him in.

His father read "from before" as meaning at the command of the one who sends, as in "messengers shall go out from before Me in ships" (Yechezkel 30:9); and David said "where shall I flee from You" (Tehillim 139:7) and not "from before You". So too Radak's father read וְעַתָּה בְּרַח ־לְךָ אֶל־מְקוֹמֶךָ (Bamidbar 24:11), and now flee to your place, as hurry to go. On his father's reading, Radak says, "go out from Bavel, flee from the Kasdim" (Yeshayahu 48:20) and "and the Leviim and the singers fled each to his field" (Nechemyah 13:10) can be taken the same way, as haste.

Another sense is passing through: "to pass through in the midst of the boards" (Shemos 36:33), and in the heavy form "passing through from end to end" (Shemos 26:28). The noun is the bar: the middle bar, and the five bars. עַל לִוְיָתָן נָחָשׁ בָּרִחַ (Yeshayahu 27:1), upon Livyasan the serpent that passes through, is a description in this sense, since it passes through the sea from end to end, and it is a mashal for the powerful kings. Some read וְהֽוֹרַדְתִּי בָֽרִיחִים כֻּלָּם (Yeshayahu 43:14) from this sense rather than from the fleeing: I will bring them all down bound with an iron bar.

"And he fled outside" (Bereishis 39:13), "and we shall flee before them" (Yehoshua 8:5), "if we indeed flee they will not set their heart upon us" (Shmuel II 18:3), "when they fled from before Israel" (Yehoshua 10:11).

"And you shall take no ransom for fleeing to his city of refuge" (Bamidbar 35:32): from one who has cause to flee no ransom is taken in place of fleeing, but he flees to his city of refuge as the law requires; and once he has fled there, no ransom is taken from him to let him come back and settle in the land before the Kohen Gadol dies. The Sifri on parshas Masei reads the pasuk of one who killed deliberately: one might think he could pay money and go into exile, and the pasuk teaches that no ransom is taken for fleeing. Rabbeinu Shlomo took לָנוּס as a describing word, as though לְנָס, one who has fled; that is, as Radak puts it, from the man who has fled to his city of refuge no ransom is taken to let him come back and settle. Radak says Rabbeinu Shlomo explained it well, and adds that לָנוּס is then a describing word on the pattern of סוּג לֵב (Mishlei 14:14), the backslider in heart.

"Nor had his moisture fled" (Devarim 34:7) is borrowed speech, that his moisture had not gone. His father in Sefer HaGaluy read it "his moisture had not dried", from the Arabic used of bread drying out, and Radak says he explained it well, for what sense is there in flight said of moisture?

"And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains" (Zecharyah 14:5) is read on the pattern of "and you shall return", "and you shall arise". Yonasan rendered it as though the valley of the mountains were stopped up, which looks as though he read it as a passive of the root meaning to stop up. Some say it is found so in a few precise books, but Radak says he has not seen it; Ibn Ezra wrote that the people of the East read it that way.

"We will flee on horses" (Yeshayahu 30:16) was taken by Rabbi Yonah in the sense of height and elevation, as in "lifted up high upon His land" (Zecharyah 9:16). Radak holds there is no need to take it from its plain sense, as Rabbi Yehudah also wrote; and though Rabbi Yonah thought to catch him out here, as he did in most places, Rabbi Yehudah was not taken in his pits. Hashem had said they would be saved in their own land "in stillness and quiet" (Yeshayahu 30:15); they refused, and said they would flee to Ashur and Mitzrayim for help, so they will flee as they said, here and there, and not be saved by that flight.

The causative is "he made his servants and his cattle flee" (Shemos 9:20), "to make it flee from before Midian" (Shoftim 6:11). The nouns all mean flight: "in flight they fled and did not turn" (Yirmiyahu 46:5), "and flight is lost to them" (Iyov 11:20), "and my flight in the day of trouble" (Yirmiyahu 16:19), "and in flight you shall not go" (Yeshayahu 52:12), "and they shall flee the flight of the sword" (Vayikra 26:36).

"For he had set out from Lachish" (Yeshayahu 37:8), "and a wind went forth from Hashem" (Bamidbar 11:31), "and Avram set out" (Bereishis 12:9), "and behold, Mitzrayim setting out after them" (Shemos 14:10), "and they set out from Sukkos" (Bamidbar 33:6), "let us set out and go" (Bereishis 33:12), "and we set out from the river Ahava" (Ezra 8:31), "arise, set out" (Devarim 2:24), "and it was when the aron set out" (Bamidbar 10:35). Some hold that "let us set out and go" is an imperative with an added heh.

The transitive is "and he pulled out the pin of the loom" (Shoftim 16:14) and "and he pulled them up together with the bar" (Shoftim 16:3), though these too can be read as intransitive: the second then means he set out with them, that is with the doors, and the pin the same way. The passive: "my dwelling is pulled up and carried off" (Yeshayahu 38:12), "is not their cord pulled up" (Iyov 4:21).

The causative: "and Moshe made Israel set out" (Shemos 15:22), "and the full one you shall set aside" (Melachim II 4:4), "and they moved great stones" (Melachim I 5:31), "one who moves stones" (Koheles 10:9). "Whole stone moved" (Melachim I 6:7) means that they moved the stones whole from the mountain: they did not build with those they found flawed, but moved them from the mountain.

"And he went on his marches" (Bereishis 13:3), "their goings out by their marches" (Bamidbar 33:2), "these are the marches of Bnei Yisrael" (Bamidbar 33:1). Used as an infinitive: "and for the setting out of the camps" (Bamidbar 10:2), as if to say to set the camps moving, and "arise, go on the march before the people" (Devarim 10:11).

In "the spear, the massa and the coat of mail" (Iyov 41:18), massa is the name of a weapon of war, as the commentators explained it, and the Mesorah says the word occurs twice in two senses. Rabbi Yonah explained it from the sense of moving, like "whole stone moved" (Melachim I 6:7), meaning the spear that is moved in the hand rather than the one girded on like a sword.

"Those who flee to the parched land" (Iyov 30:3) are the ones fleeing. The Targum of "and he fled" (Bereishis 39:12) uses this word.

וְעֹֽרְקַי לֹא יִשְׁכָּבֽוּן, and my sinews do not rest: עֹרְקַי is גידי, my sinews. The Targum renders בַּרְזֶל עָשׁוֹת (Yechezkel 27:19), wrought iron, as בְּעַרְקִין דְבַרְזֶל, that is, sinews of iron, as is said elsewhere, וְגִיד בַּרְזֶל עָרְפֶּךָ (Yeshayahu 48:4), and your neck an iron sinew. In Arabic the sinews are called by this word.

"The lad ran" (Shmuel I 20:36), "if I run after him" (Melachim II 5:20), "I did not send the prophets, yet they ran" (Yirmiyahu 23:21), "runner runs to meet runner" (Yirmiyahu 51:31), "and Esav ran" (Bereishis 33:4). The nouns: "the race is not to the swift" (Koheles 9:11), כִּמְרֻצַת אֲחִימַעַץ (Shmuel II 18:27), like the running of Achimaatz, and "and their course is evil" (Yirmiyahu 23:10).

"For by You I run at a troop" (Shmuel II 22:30) he explains as running at the troop of his enemies and pursuing them. Rabbi Yonah took it from the sense of breaking, and Radak holds the first sense nearer.

"Fifty men running before him" (Melachim I 1:5). With a nun in place of a mem, הָרָצִין in קוֹל הָרָצִין הָעָם (Melachim II 11:13), the sound of the runners, the people, is like הרצים, as הַיָּמִין in לְקֵץ הַיָּמִין (Daniel 12:13), to the end of the days, is like הימים. The sound of the runners is the sound of rejoicing, for they were rejoicing and saying, long live the king.

The causative: "Kush shall make his hands run to Hashem" (Tehillim 68:32), "in a moment I will make him run from her" (Yirmiyahu 49:19), "and they rushed him from the pit" (Bereishis 41:14), "and run this to the camp for your brothers" (Shmuel I 17:17), "and they brought it quickly to all the people" (Divrei HaYamim II 35:13). The intensive: "like the lightnings they dart" (Nachum 2:5).

"He shall not grow dim nor be broken" (Yeshayahu 42:4), which he explained at the root כָּהָה, and "and the golden bowl is broken" (Koheles 12:6), both of them intransitive. "And she broke his skull" (Shoftim 9:53) has chirik under the resh. The noun is "and upon oppression and upon breaking, to do them" (Yirmiyahu 22:17). Also "and they shattered and broke" (Shoftim 10:8), "and the children broke against one another within her" (Bereishis 25:22), "and the wheel is broken at the pit" (Koheles 12:6), "when they grasped you by the hand you broke" (Yechezkel 29:7). Their sense, he says, is breaking.

"The king pulled down and broke from there" (Melachim II 23:12) is transitive, that is, he overcame them and broke them from there. Yonasan rendered it "and removed from there", and on his view it belongs with "and Esav ran" (Bereishis 33:4), except that this one is transitive and means he made them run from there. It may be that "and the wheel is broken at the pit" (Koheles 12:6) belongs to the first sense, running.