Yalkut haMachiri


Yalkut haMachiri is a work of midrash. Its author was Machir ben Abba Mari, but his country and the period in which he lived are not definitively known. Moritz Steinschneider says that Machir lived in Provence; but his date remains a subject of discussion among modern scholars. say that the work was most probably composed in the late 13th or 14th century.

Contents

Yalkut haMachiri is similar in its contents to Yalkut Shimoni, with the difference that while the latter covers the whole Bible, haMachiri covers only the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the twelve Minor Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job.
In the introductions to these books Machir said he composed the work to gather the scattered aggadic teachings into one group.

Significance

Moses Gaster attached great importance to Yalkut haMachiri, thinking that it was older than Yalkut Shimoni, the second part of which at least Gaster concluded was a bad adaptation from Yalkut haMachiri. Gaster's conclusions, however, were contested by A. Epstein, who declares that Yalkut haMachiri is both inferior to and later than "Yalkut Shimoni." Buber conclusively proved that the two works are independent of each other, that Machir lived later than the author of the "Yalkut Shimoni," and that he had not seen Yalkut Shimoni. Samuel Poznanski thinks that Machir lived in the fourteenth century.