The grammatical work of Rabbi Jonah extended, moreover, to the domain of rhetoric and biblical hermeneutics, and his lexicon contains many exegetical excursuses.
At the same time he seems unconscious of any inconsistency between the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible as usually received and his principles of hermeneutics.
He laid down seven rules for the interpretation of the Scriptures, and these became the foundation of rabbinical hermeneutics; and the ordering of the traditional doctrines into a whole, effected in the Mishna by his successor Judah I., two hundred years after Hillel's death, was probably likewise due to his instigation.
In 1784 he was appointed professor of Oriental languages and hermeneutics in the university of Lemberg, when he took the degree of doctor of divinity; and shortly afterwards he was released from his monastic vows on the intervention of the emperor.
And they all, of course, used hermeneutics in doing so.