Bava Kamma 2b - Keren

A b'raisa learns out that the word N'gicha, goring, refers to damage caused by an animal's horn from two pesukim. The first is a passuk from Melachim in which the false prophet Tzidkiyah ben K'na'anah makes for Achav a set of iron horns and tells him, "With these shall you gore Aram". The second is a passuk from Moshe's bracha to shevet Yosef, in which he says that he has the "horns of a re'em", which he shall use to gore nations.

The gemara says that the reason why we need the second passuk is to tell us that the classical damage of n'gicha is even with an animal's own horns, as we might have said that the dichotomy between shor tam and shor mu'ad only applies to a case where an ox "gores" by holding a detached horn in its mouth (similar to the detached horns of Tzidkiyah ben K'na'anah), while for an ox's own horns, it's mu'ad from the onset, as this would be considered normal. Hence, the second passuk tells us that the parsha of n'gicha and the included dichotomy applies even by an animal's own horns.

However, this being the case, why do we need the passuk of Tzidkiya ben K'na'anah if the b'raissa would bring down the passuk from Yosef, anyway?

Update, 10/19/07: A few months after this post, I finally purchased a Kovetz.

Tos' Talmid Rabbeinu Peretz answers that if we didn't have the passuk of keren t'lusha, we might think that keren t'lusha is patur l'gamrei.

Tos' Talmid R' Tam vR' Eliezer provides the same answer, and also suggests that the gemara often brings down a set of pesukim of which only one is essential to a drash "k'dei l'hagdil Torah".

The Shittah Mekubetzes b'shem Mahari Kohen Tzedek answers that if we only had the pasuk of Mechubar, from Yosef, we might have thought that only a keren mechubar has a din of ha'ada'ah, but that a kered t'lusha is tam even after doing it 3 times - hence, we have two pesukim to tell us that both types of keren fall under the category of keren tam that can become mu'ad.

The Chasam Sofer writes that based on Rashi on the passuk by Yosef, which states that an ox is strong while a re'em is not, we might say that negicha applies only to the horns of a re'em, but applies to even the body of an ox. In the passuk from Melachim, Tzidkiyah ben K'na'anah tells Ach'av that "With these shall you gore Aram"; mi-kan that negicha is strictly with the horns (while with the body is called negifa - maybe otherwise we'd think that negicha of the horns and negicha of the body can be combined into one set of ha'ada'ah.)6