The Torah metes out punishment mida keneged mida. Not only the type of punishment but the ordering of how it passed thru the body.
A sota's thigh is first smitten by the water, since she first sinned with her thigh and only afterward her belly is smitten.
For punishing someone who didn't take off Maasar by declaring it Maasr with his mouth/throat and then consuming it where it descends to his intestines, one would expect the order of the punishment to first affect the throat and then the intestines.
Why then does croup, the punishment for not taking off Maasar begin with the intestines and end with the mouth, versus the opposite order?
DANIEL GRAY, Toronto Canada
Very interesting point. I would have asked it a bit differently: Why should the punishment start in the intestines, since one first enjoys the Ma'aser with one's mouth and only afterwards consumes it in one's body?
The answer may be that the Aveirah is the actual consumption of Tevel, meaning that theoretically if a person were eating Tevel and spitting it out he would not be held accountable for what was in his mouth. Only when he actually swallows the Tevel is it considered an Aveirah, similar to the Mitzvah of Matzah which one would not fulfill by simply chewing the Matzah in the mouth.
Therefore, the stomach is the first to be punished since it was the first place where the Aveirah was completed, but since the food went through the throat on its way, the throat is also punished.
Yoel Domb
Thanks, nice answer and Rashi does indeed stress using the mouth for eating tevel, vs not using his mouth to separate maasar.
You however do realize you concede the avera begins in the mouth and is merely retroactively activates by the later contact with the intestines. You're pegging the significance of the point of time of it solidifying as an avera to the first place/time punishment sb meted out, when ordering is a timing mechanism and sb pegged to time not to solidification. You're saying the aveirah does indeed begin in the mouth, albeit its status as an aveira is only retroactively achieved once processed in the intestines.
You're saying the avera punishment should begin in the intestines because that's where the avera status began.
For the mida keneged mida purpose of meting our punishment in chronological order, would it not be logical to primarily focus on the chronology and no matter how you slice or dice it, the avera started in the mouth. Hadra kushya leduchtan. True, its status as an avera was only solidified in the intestines, but why let that impact the order of meting our punishment when order is what trumps and is of the topic significance.
Do you have a source that mida kneged mida can work that way? If the mouth were punished first that would be the very definition and seeming default of mida kneged mida and would not seem to need a source support for default operation. You're shaking up the definition, can you support that from a source or example? doing so would be fascinating to see and then you could tie it in with this gmara and Rashi.
should not we say the same logic with the thigh of the soteh? She didnt have to keep her thigh open, rather closed it.
I think Sotah is the proof for what I'm saying. In most cases of intimate relations, the man touches the woman in many other places before her thighs, so why is she punished first in her thighs? Why not her face where she was gazed at or touched by her adulterer? The answer is that even if she was touched in many other places but there was no intimate contact b'Oso Makom, she would not be forbidden to her husband and the water would not cause the desired effect despite the fact that she had started the sin in other ways. Thus it is not the first limb to commit the crime but the place where the actual crime takes effect "and a man slept with her carnally," as the verse states, and therefore it is the first to be punished. Similarly, with Ma'aser the food may go through the gullet but the Aveirah is the Hana'as Me'ayim, the pleasure that a person gets from consuming the food, and this is why the punishment begins from there.
Yoel Domb