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Midrash and Midrashic Interpretation

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Midrash and Midrashic Interpretation ESSAYS MIDRASH AND MIDRASHIC INTERPRETATION i. Makkot Middot i Shevu<ot Kinnim ' <Eduyyot Teharot ("Purifications") 'Avodah Zarah Kelim 'Avot 'Ohalot Horayot Nega'im Kodoshim ("Sacred Things"): Parah Zevaf:zim Teharot Menaf:zot Mikva'ot J:Iullin Niddah Bekhorot Makhshirin 'Arakhin Zavim Temurah Tevul Yom Keri tot Yadayim Me'ilah 'Uktzin Tam id [ YAAKOV ELMAN) Midrash and Midrashic Interpretation It is often remarked that what is Jewish about by his name, "had dedicated himself to study the Bible is not the Bible itself, not even the the Teaching (torah) of the LORD so as to ob­ Hebrew text of the Bible, but the Jewish inter­ serve it" (Ezra 7.10). The Hebrew word for pretation of the Bible. And of all the types of "study" used in the verse, lidrosh, has the Jewish biblical interpretation, none have been same root as midrash. By late antiquity, identified so closely with the Jewish Bible as midrash had come to designate Bible study in midrash. Indeed, the two have been so closely general. The Rabbis called their academy a bet identified that for some, midrash has become midrash, literally "a house of study," and from a virtual trope for Judaism, a figure for all that such usage, midrash came to be the term the is distinctive and different about the Jews, Rabbis themselves employed to designate the their religion, and culture. way they studied Scripture and interpreted its Midrash is the specific name for the activity meaning. of biblical interpretation as practiced by the In its primary sense, then, midrash refers to Rabbis of the land of Israel in the first five cen­ an activity, a mode of study. Somewhat con­ turies of the common era. The Hebrew word fusingly, the same word is also applied to the derives from the root, d-r-sh, which literally products of that activity, namely, individual means "to inquire" or "to search after." In the interpretations-a specific midrash of a verse earlier books of the Bible, the root is used to or word, for example. These midrashic inter­ refer to the act of seeking out God's will (e.g., pretations originally circulated and were Gen. 25.22; Exod. 18.15), particularly through transmitted orally, both in rabbinic schools consulting a figure like Moses or a prophet and through synagogue sermons. Around the or another type of oracular authority. By the 3rd or 4th century CE, the oral traditions of the t end of the biblical period, the locus for that Rabbis began to be collected in literary an­ i t search appears to have settled on the text of thologies, and these collections also came to the Torah where, it was now believed, God's be known as midrashim, as in Midrash Rab­ will for the present moment was to be found. bah, the folio-sized collection of homiletical Thus the scribe Ezra, we are told in the book midrashim on the Torah which was first pub- JEWISH INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE ESSAYS lished in Constantinople in 1512. For the past to study (lidrosfl) its meaning properly" (Gen. hundred years, however, some scholars have Rab. 1:14). The imperative facing every Bible appropriated the word "midrash" as a collec­ interpreter is, to paraphrase E. M. Forster, to tive term to describe ancient biblical interpre­ connect, to find the text's significance for the tation in general. For example, the French present moment, to make it speak to us now. scholar Renee Bloch used the term "midrash" Nothing in the Bible is without such signifi­ to describe any ancient "meditation on the sa­ cance. If the interpreter can't find it, the fault cred texts," an activity that could be found is his or her own, not the Bible's. Akiva's elab­ equally in the Aramaic translations of the oration might be called the credo of Jewish Bible, in many of the books of the Apocrypha biblical interpretation. and Pseudepigrapha, and in the New Testa­ In fact, the precise relation of midrash to ment, as well as in later rabbinic texts. And other types of Jewish biblical interpretation still more recently, the term has passed into and to Jewish tradition at large involves a popular circulation as a name for all "cre­ truly complex set of questions, and these be­ ative" interpretations of the Bible that seek to come even more complicated if the relation­ move beyond the historical, "original" sense ship of midrash is considered in connection of the biblical text. In this usage, the word with the competing traditions of Christian "midrash" stands for everything from novel­ and Islamic interpretation. Ultimately, these istic retellings of biblical episodes to post­ questions boil down to some of the most fun­ modernist essayistic explorations of Genesis damental issues that involve the study of bib­ and Exodus, New Age homilies, and contem­ lical interpretation in general, and Jewish in­ porary poems that re-imagine the biblical text. terpretation in particular. What does it mean Language, of course, follows usage, not the to call a type of interpretation like midrash strictures of scholars. Even if the latter (in­ "Jewish"? Is there a distinctively or uniquely cluding myself) would prefer to restrict the "Jewish" way of reading the Bible? Is a Jewish use of the word "midrash" to the ancient bib­ reading of the Bible distinguished merely by lical interpretations of the Rabbis-who, if its content and by the theological beliefs it they did not invent the term, nonetheless brings to its reading, or is there something in­ were the first ones to use it extensively­ trinsically different about the very procedures scholars do not control the fates of words. On of interpretation that Jews employ as opposed the other hand, while contemporary efforts at to those of, say, Christian readers of the Bible? "neo-midrash" are not direct descendants of Within the context of this Jewish Study Bible, the classical midrashic tradition of the Rabbis, it would seem especially opportune to con­ it is also not entirely inappropriate to call sider these questions even if there are no de­ these latter-day compositions living examples finitive answers to them. We may begin with a of the midrashic "spirit," motivated by some historical sketch of midrash's development. of the same desires that inspired the Rabbis to The origins of midrash lie in biblical tradition interpret the Bible. Yet precisely how to define itself where many biblical passages self­ that "spirit" is not an easy task. Perhaps the consciously look back upon earlier passages closest thing to a definition might be the clas­ and, in one way or another, reinterpret their sical midrashic statement attributed to the meaning. The book of Chronicles, for exam­ early sage Akiva (died ca. 135 CE), a comment ple, consciously recasts the history of the ear­ on Deut. 32.47, "[This law] is no empty thing lier books of Samuel and Kings, adding some for you (lo' davar reik mekem)." Exploiting the episodes and omitting others, and generally fact that the preposition mekem literally means spinning the earlier narrative in the course of "from," not "for," you, Akiva explained: "If it retelling it in a politically tendentious .iirec· seems empty, it is from you-on account of tion amenable to its author. Elsewhere, many your own failure--for you do not know how "later" verses in the Bible recycle allusions ESSAYS M I DRASH AND MIDRASHIC INTERPRETATION and imagery from "earlier" biblical texts in implying that the meat should be boiled (as in order to apply them to new contexts and situ­ a stew). 2 Chron. 35.13, ob\·iously troubled bv ations. The laws of marital divorce become the discrepanc>· between the h\ro Torah verses, the·imagery to describe God's punishment of "solved" the textual problem (if not the culi­ the people of lsrael (cf., e.g., Deut. 2.ip-4 and nary one) by maintaining both locutions: The Jer. 3.1); the exodus from Egypt (Exod. chs Jews "cooked the paschal sacrifice in fire" (vny­ l-15), the paradigm for all future redemp­ vasll/11 hnpesnb bn'esll)-"they boiled the pas­ tions (see, for e),.ample, Isa. 43.16-20; 51.9-11; chal sacrifice in fire" (which probably means Ezek. ch 20). that they braised it). In a ,·ery few cases it is possible even to see The scholar Michael Fishbane, who has ex­ how certain textual ''problems" are solved haustively studied these and similar cases in within the Bible itself. For example, in the year the Bible, has described them as part of a 605 BCE, some twenty years before the destruc­ larger phenomenon which he calls inner­ tion of the First Temple and the exile of the Ju­ biblical exegesis (see "Inner-biblical Interpre­ deans to Babylonia, the prophet Jeremiah tation," pp. 1829-35). Although most of these prophesied that Judea "shall be a desolate examples are not, strictly speaking, exegeses ruin, and those nations shall serve the king of (insofar as they do not explain or clarify any­ Babylon se\'enty years" (Jer. 25.11 ). Ln a sec­ thing about the earlier verse), they nonethe­ ond prophecy, somewhat later, he went on to less exhibit certain tendencies-inner dynam­ prophesy that ''when Babylon's seventy years ics, as it were-that are, at the least, exegetical are O\·er, I will fulfill to you My promise of reflexes. These include the tendencies (as we favor-to bring you back to this place" (29.10). have seen) to harmonize conflicting or discor­ And some se,·enty years later, in 538 BCE, dant verses; to reemploy and reapply biblical when the Judean exiles did indeed return to paradigms and imagery to new cases; to rein­ Judea from Babylonia, they must doubtless vest "old" historical references with "new" have behe\'ed that Jeremiah's prophecy had historical contexts; and to integrate nonhistor­ been fulfilled.
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