27:5: Went and hanged himself.
The ancient synagogue found the prohibition of suicide in Gen 9:5.
Genesis Rabbah 34 (21B): “Yet אַךְ
your blood, that of your souls לְנַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם,
I will require” (Gen 9:5). אַךְ,
this intends to include the one who strangles himself החונק עצמו (by hanging).—In this case, Gen 9:5 was
interpreted as “Yet your own blood I will require of you yourself,” if you put
a hand on yourselves as suicides.—In b. B. Qam. 91B, this interpretation is
found in the mouth of R. Eleazar b. Azariah (ca. 100): “Yet your blood I will
require לנפשתיכם” (Gen 9:5); R. Eleazar (b. Azariah) said,
“From the hand of your souls (i.e., from yourselves) I will require your
blood.”
The average opinion about the reprehensibility of suicide is expressed
most clearly by Josephus, J. W.
3.8.5:
“Suicide, ἡ
αὐτοχειρία, is both
foreign to the general nature of all living beings and a godlessness towards
the God who created us.… Do you not think that God will be angry if a person
impiously scorns his (God’s) gift? For we both have received existence from him
and must leave our no-longer-existing to him.… Additionally, if someone allows
a person’s deposit to be lost or spends it badly, he appears to be evil and
unfaithful; but if someone expels the deposit of God (the soul) from his own
body, does he suppose that he will remain hidden from the one he has offended?…
Their hands have raged against their own life, their souls will be received by
the darkest Hades, and God their father will visit the guilt of evildoers on
their descendants. Therefore, this (the offense of suicide) is hated by God,
and by the wisest lawgiver it has been assigned a penalty. Among us at least it
has been found to be good to leave suicides unburied until the sun sets,
although it is considered just to bury one’s own enemies. With other nations, though,
it has even been commanded to cut off the right hands of such dead people with
which they went to battle against themselves, since it is supposed that, as the
body must be separated from the soul, so too the hand from the body.…”
Mourning suicides is regulated as follows in tractate Semaḥot 2
(beginning):
Whoever consciously takes his life המאבד עצמו לדעת, with him one undertakes nothing in respect to him (to mourn
him publicly). R. Ishmael († ca. 135) said, “One calls out over him, ‘Woe
because of this severity, woe because of this severity!’ ” (We read נַטְלָא instead of the incomprehensible נטלה.) R. Aqiba († ca. 135) said to him, “Leave
aside any remark about him; do not honor him and do not curse him. One does not
tear one’s garment for him, one does not expose one’s shoulder for him and one
does not mourn him publicly; but one may stand in the line because of him
(through which the mourners go with comforting statements from the retinue) and
say the blessing of mourners (see the excursus “Works of Love”), because this
serves to honor the living. The general rule about this is as follows: in everything
that serves to honor the living, one may occupy himself with him (the suicide);
but in everything that does not serve to honor the living, the multitude may
not occupy itself with him. Who is someone who consciously takes his life? Not
someone who climbs to the top of a tree and falls down and dies, or someone who
climbs to the top of a roof and falls down and dies. Rather the one who says,
‘Behold, I will climb to the top of the roof to the top of the tree and cast
myself down to die’; and then he was seen as he climbed up to the top of the
tree and fell down and died—behold, in his case, the assumption stands that he
consciously took his life, and whoever consciously takes his life, with him one
occupies himself (with respect to mourning) in no regard. If he was found
strangled חנוק and hanging on a tree תלוי באילן, slain הרוג
(with the sword) and laid out with the sword, behold, in his case, the
assumption stands that he unconsciously שלא בדעת took his life and nothing (with respect to mourning) is
withheld from him.” ‖ In closing, reference may also be made to a later saying.
TanḥumaB ויצא § 6 (74B): Let our teacher teach us: What
is the difference between the death of the righteous and that of the godless?
R. Justa b. Shunam (ca. 400) said in the name of R. Joshua of Sikhnin (ca.
330), “The death of the godless is neither on earth nor in heaven, for so it is
written of Ahithophel: ‘He arranged his house and hanged himself’ (2 Sam
17:23). And likewise Haman was neither on earth nor in heaven; see Esth 7:10:
‘Then they hanged Haman on the tree trunk,’ and similarly his sons: ‘He and his
sons had been hanged on the tree’ (Esth 9:25). Yet with the death of the
righteous, there is something in heaven and on earth; see 1 Sam 25:29: ‘The
soul of my lord will be bound in the bundle of the living.’ And whence do we
know that it is also on earth? See 2 Chr 32:33: ‘He (Hezekiah) was buried on
the steep road to the graves of the house of David, and all Judah and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem showed him honor at his death.’ ” (Hermann
L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, A Commentary on the New Testament from the
Talmud and Midrash, ed. Jacob N. Cerone, 4 vols. [trans. Andrew Bowden and
Joseph Longarino; Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2022], 1:1181-83)
