RaLBa”G). Pirush Chamesh Megiloth [commentary to the Five Scrolls]

LEVI BEN GERSHOM (GERSONIDES/

Jacob Marcaria the Physician

Riva di Trento

1560

FIRST EDITION . Title letters within decorative woodcut vignettes

Vinograd, Riva di Trento 23; not in Adams.

In these commentaries to the Five Scrolls, Gersonides continues the particular methodology developed in his commentary to the Pentateuch. Thus, in the Book of Ruth, he provides sixteen “to’aliyoth” or morals to be learned from the story, and in Ecclesiastes are “Bi’ur ha-Miloth,” painstaking linguistic analysis of the words in each verse. In his commentary to Koheleth, seeking the main Aristotelian theories of practical ethics, Gersonides finds that the work deals with the application of the principles of conduct and the particular means for obtaining the aims involved in them. He explains the contradictions in the work, by the fact that the author includes views with which he does not agree in order to afford one a choice of action. He interprets the Song of Songs entirely as an allegory of the soul. In the publisher’s note, Jacob Marcario apologizes for not issuing Gersonides’s commentary to Lamentations, he speculates that perhaps Ralba”g never composed this commentary at all. See M. Waxman, A History of Jewish Literature (1933), Vol. II, pp. 39-43.