Commentary for Avodah Zarah 39:19

Yose b. Hanina reads the verse from Deuteronomy as prohibiting giving or even selling land to non-Jews in Israel.

The word “tehonem” in Hebrew is written without the vav. According to the rabbis this lets it mean two things. It is pronounced “lo tehunem” to refer to the prohibition of giving them grace, but it can also mean “lo tehonem” which here is understood to mean do not give them land.

Evidently, the word can also mean not to give them a free gift. Powerful word it is!

This baraita encompasses all of the meanings we saw above.

This verse refers to what a Jew may do with meat that was not properly slaughtered. According to R. Meir, it may be given or sold either to a “ger”—the stranger, which here probably refers to someone who has accepted upon himself to observe some of the commandments, or to an idolater. But R. Yehudah says it must be given to the stranger, but can only be sold to the idolater. Thus we can see that there is a tannaitic dispute over whether one can give a gift to an idolater—R. Meir permits and R. Judah does not.

Judah says that if R. Meir was correct, the verse should have read “and” instead of “or.”

Meir argues that the verse is phrased in that way to suggest that it is preferable to give the food to the stranger rather than sell it to a non-Jew. But R. Judah says that we do not need a verse to do this—since Jews are commanded to maintain strangers, it is obvious that it would be preferable to give the food to the stranger.

According to Rav, one cannot “give them grace” by saying how beautiful a gentile woman is.

The objection comes from the action of R. Shimon b. Gamaliel who indeed praised God for creating such a beautiful gentile woman. R. Akiva does not really offer such praise for Turnus Rufus’s wife. The story is here because he does recognize her beauty. Turnus Rufus is the evil Roman emperor who decrees that R. Akiva should be tortured to death. I am not sure if the idea that he would marry his wife appears elsewhere.

Rav says that these rabbis were not praising these beautiful gentile women. They were praising God for creating such beings in His world. This is not only permitted, it is mandated.

This baraita seems to say that one cannot look at anything that might be sexually enticing. This includes any woman and even at animals (and even ugly ones) when they are mating. One should guard oneself constantly against stirring up desire. This would obviously be a very hard rule to observe in the modern age. The angel of death evidently has eyes everywhere. Even if a human had this many eyes and could not help seeing everything, he still should make sure he does not look at anything improper.