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Rechem and Rachamim: Does Mercy Require Birth?
three theories of mercy
Our daf asks what looks like a question of animal husbandry and turns out to be a question about the nature of compassion. A nursing animal has been bought from a gentile. Is the creature at her udder her own?
The verb the Gemara uses for nursing another's young is merachemet, "she shows mercy." The word is built on rechem, womb. The sugya is asking whether that etymology is a fact of nature.Three positions emerge.
1. Mercy without birth. The tanna kamma of the baraita holds that an animal "might be merciful and nurse another animal even though it has not given birth at all." The next offspring is therefore a doubtful firstborn.
2. Birth as the gate. דְּאֵינָהּ מְרַחֶמֶת אֶלָּא אִם כֵּן יוֹלֶדֶת: she does not show mercy unless she has given birth. On this reading of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, birth opens the capacity and once open it may flow to a stranger's young.
3. Birth as the bond. On the second reading, she is merciful only toward her own. Mercy is not a capacity that birth releases but a tie that birth creates, and it reaches no further than the one who was born.