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32* Sammaries

in the later comprehensive commentaries of R. Natan Av Ha-Yeshiva and
Maimonides, appear for the first time in this fragment.

The Impaling of Saul’s Descendants by
the Gibeonites
Values of Divine Justice Versus Peshat in Early Karaite
Commentaries

Yoram Erder

This article examines the fundamental differences between Karaite
interpretations of legal sections of the Pentateuch and of Biblical narratives by
studying the discussions of two tenth-century Karaite sages, Japheth ben Eli
and Ya'akov al-Qirqasani, on the story of the impaling of Saul’s descendants,
in light of the commandment: “Parents shall not be put to death for children,
nor children be put to death for parents: A person shall be put to death only
for his own crime” (Deut 24:16). Although the Karaites, unlike Midrashic
halakha, understood this commandment literally, they interpreted the story of
the impaling against its plain meaning.

During their discussion of the commandment, the Karaite sages attempted
to reconcile it with the story of David’s delivery of seven of Shaul’s
descendents to the Gibeonites as a blood vengeance for Saul’s killing of their
people. Midrashic sources, in a fairly straight-forward reading of the text,
acknowledged the dissonance between the narrative and the commandment,
admitting that David handed over Saul’s descendants despite the fact that
they had not sinned, and that he left their bodies unburied in violation of
the commandment to bury a hanged person on the same day. The Karaites,
on the other h and, abandoned the plain meaning of the text in order to