דוד אלטשולר

Rav David Altschuler (5447/1687–5530/1769), the Baal Metzudot, was one of the most important mefarshei Nach of all time: his pirush, the Metzudot, has been printed with the Nach ever since it was written and stands on the page of nearly every Mikraot Gedolot. He was born in Yavoriv (Jaworow) in western Galicia to Rav Aryeh Leib Altschuler, of the famed Altschuler family — called, so the tradition goes, after the Altschul, the old shul of Prague, which the family’s ancestors, exiles from Portugal, are said to have built from the stones of the shuls they left behind. The family’s yichus ran through Rav Menachem Manish Chayes, rav of Vilna — Rav David’s grandfather — and was linked as well to the Shach. By 5486/1726 Rav David appears as a dayan or rav in Yavoriv, and it seems he later served as rav of Prague.

Rav David saw that the learning of Tanach had grown weak among the Jews of Europe, even among talmidei chachamim, and judged that the cause was the lack of a pirush clear and simple enough for every reader. To this need he gave his life’s work: a pirush on all of Nach — except the megillot Rut, Eichah, and Esther — built principally on the Radak and gathering the pirushim of Rashi, the Ibn Ezra, the Ralbag, Rav Saadiah Gaon, the Ramban, and the Alshich, all recast in a Hebrew plain and bright, to serve the talmid chacham, sparing him the search through the Rishonim, and the simple Jew alike. He called it Metzudot David — after the pasuk “and David captured the metzudat Tzion,” and, as he wrote, because “I have hunted (tzadeti) pirushim from many sefarim of wisdom.”

He printed the first volumes — on Iyov, Mishlei, and Tehillim, apparently the sefarim he held hardest to learn — in Zhovkva in 5513/1753, already an old man; the edition sold out, and a second appeared in his lifetime about ten years later. He was niftar in 5530/1769, and his son Rav Yechiel Hillel Altschuler, who also served as rav of Yavoriv, completed the work from his father’s writings and gave his years to spreading it: he printed the full pirush in Berlin in 5532/1772 with the haskamot of gedolei Ashkenaz, among them the Shaagat Aryeh of Metz; in The Hague that same year with the haskamot of the rabbanim of Holland; and finally in a polished, final edition in Livorno in 5540–5542, crowned with the haskamah of the Chida.

It was Rav Yechiel Hillel who divided the pirush into the two ranks it carries today: Metzudat David, explaining the flow and meaning of the pesukim, and Metzudat Tzion, explaining the individual words — together, the Metzudot. Already in that generation the rav of The Hague wrote that the pirushim had spread through all Israel; from then to this day the Metzudot have been printed in nearly every edition of Mikraot Gedolot on Nevi’im and Ketuvim.