Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (31 page)

and not God's response. Moses has no difficulty in complaining or being complained to. Since the first seems incoherent, if only because it seems obvious that everyone has the right to cry out to God, only the latter seems acceptable. Thus: Hence, the righteous are not difficult of receiving. Gloss: Receiving Israel's plea and praying for them immediately [Naftaly Berlin,
Birkat Hanatziv
[Jerusalem, 1970], ad loc.). Or: They readily listen to complaint and seek to help, for Moses did not get angry, but rather listened to their complaint and prayed for them to God (Lauterbach).

1. I am led to some perhaps wild speculation as to whether this privileging of an oral phenomenon in the text is not consistent with R. Yehoshua's formulation of his literalist demands as reading the text, "in accordance with its sound (
   kishmu'o
   )".
   

2. Cassuto,
   Commentary
   , p. 127.
   

3. Tanhuma Exodus
   , par. 24. I have translated the text from the Yemenite manuscript of the Columbia University Library. I presume that this is the text which Chemus cites as
   Exodus Rabba
   23.3, for this language is not found in
   Exodus Rabba
   . I shall have occasion to cite the
   Exodus Rabba
   passage immediately see n. 25 below. Such midrashim as
   Tanhuma
   are very often best read as commentaries on the earlier midrashic texts. As such, while not definitive, they can be taken to represent the understanding of the earlier texts which their earliest extant readings provide.
   

4. It is worth noting that the term for law,
   hoq
   , is traditionally understood to mean a law which is counter to reason.
   

5. See Childs, pp. 269–270 for discussion of such views.
   

6. The "others" interpret the verse figuratively. It doesn't say, "And [Moses] threw [it] into the water," but "And he threw in the water." The "others" read thus: And [Israel] threw [himself] down in [the matter of] the water. Not a miracle but a prayer sweetened the water.
   

   The distribution of divine attributions is a nice stylistic feature. They pleaded and prostrated themselves like a son pleads with his
   father
   and a disciple with his
   

   master
   , so did they plead and prostrate themselves before their
   Father
   , saying,
   Master
   .
   

7. The motivation for this controversy is not clear to me. R. El'azar is, at any rate, explicit. Since it says, "And he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet," the second, unnecessary use of "water" must somehow imply that the original water was bitter and that water became now sweet, i.e., that it is new water. None of the commentaries gives a satisfactory explanation of R. Yehoshua's view.
   Perhaps
   R. Yehoshua's interpretation of the whole pericope led him hither. The people have traveled at the behest of Moses, not of God (according to R. Yehoshua); they did not find water (without divine intervention to prevent them from doing so, "according to its sound," i.e., the literal meaning of the words with nothing added). If upon coming to Mara, they found water which had always been bitter, where is God's plan, where is HIS instruction in all this? But if the water was naturally sweet and God made it bitter for a moment, there is the moment of divine plan and instruction.
   

An attractive, but by no means probable, interpretation is given by R. Meir Simcha, in his Pentateuch Commentary,
Meshekh Hokhma
(Jerusalem: n.d.). He suggests that the controversy here is directly related to the one above on the nature of the complaint. R. Yehoshua, who holds that this was a temporary and unusual behavior, maintains that the water was only bitter for a moment. R. El'azar, who maintained above that the complaining was habitual, holds also that the water was habitually bitter, as it were.

1. As various commentators have noted, R. Yehoshua's remark is explicable in the light of a tradition cited several times in the Talmud, and in
   Seder Olam
   , chapter 5 (see also Chaim Milikovsky, "The Red Heifer before Sinai: Ancient Tradition or Scribal Error," in
   Studies in Rabbinic Literature, Bible and Jewish History
   [Hebrew], ed. Y. Gilat et al. [Ramat Gan, 1982], pp. 268–277), that when it says in the Ten Commandments, "as God hath commanded you" [Deut. 5:12 and 16], with reference to the commandments of the Sabbath and honoring one's parents, it means, "as God hath commanded you—at Mara." It is then entirely appropriate
   

   that those two items mentioned here are (cf. TB Sanh. 66b, Shabb. 87b). Moreover, as IshShalom points out, precisely these two items are associated as the bases of the holiness of Israel in Lev. 19:3.
   

   R. El'azar seems to focus rather on the meaning of the words "statute" and "law." The use of "statute" to refer to forbidden sexual relations is supported by him via the quotation of Lev. 18:30 (and see vv. 3 and 5), while his interpretation of "law" as civil law requires no prooftext. This tradition is also partly preserved in the Talmud (Sanh., loc. cit.), where it is asserted that the civil laws were given at Mara, and our very verse is cited as prooftext. Also cf. Mekilta, beginning of
   Neziqin
   , where a similar tradition is preserved. R. Meir Simcha has noted that for both tannaim, ''statute'' refers to the conduct of man toward his Maker, while "law" is conduct between man and man.
   

2. The midrash plays on the feature of the Hebrew language by which a finite verb is emphasized by a preceding infinitive, reading the two verb forms as two clauses. The use of the rubric, "hence they said," indicates that this text was circulated in mishnaic form, and is being
   quoted
   in our midrash. In the mishnaic form, the abstract principle is stated, and then the prooftext is cited (or not, as the case may be), as opposed to the midrashic form, in which the verse is cited and then its commentary. The quotation of a mishnaic statement in the midrash results in a double citation of the verse as here, both as lemma and as prooftext.
   

3. R. Yehoshua understands, "Hearing the voice of the Lord" very literally, as opposed to its idiomatic sense, "obey." Since the only place in which Israel heard the actual voice of the Lord was the Ten Commandments, this verse is taken to refer to that occasion. "From the heavens He caused you to hear His voice" [Deut. 4:36].
   

The next two identifications are more difficult to understand.
Haggadot
usually means legends or stories, so how does one "do" them? The Natziv understands the "doing" here to be the act of telling the legends: "It is taught in
The Fathers of Rabbi Nathan
that "the keys of the fear of the Lord rest in the
haggadot
." And this is the [meaning of], "And you shall do what is straight": You will cause the hearts of Israel to come closer by means of the voice of God which you have heard." The Natziv takes "decrees" to mean the additions which the rabbis make to the Law to guarantee its maintenance. "Hearken" means literally "give ear to," and these decrees are often called "ears of the Torah" (meaning something like handles to the Torah, i.e., that which helps it be "carried." [This use of "ear" is also of course found in English: "Little pitchers have big ears."] Cf. the text cited in this chapter, below, where the same midrashic pun is found.)
Halakot
means the unwritten laws, passed down by oral tradition. R. Meir Simcha has nicely explained R. Yehoshua's identification of "statutes" with these laws. R. Yehoshua above explained "statute" as the laws of the Sabbath. Now the laws of the Sabbath are described in the Mishna as "few Scriptures, many
halakot
[Hagiga 2:6]," ergo "statutes are
halokot
." This last point, which seems very well taken, may afford us a clue to a better appreciation of the others. "Decrees" may also mean the commandments
written
in the Torah; these are "the decrees of the King." Now, if we assume

haggadot
to mean here not legends or stories, but simple interpretations or applications of verses, then we can give a very nice reading. If you will do [follow] the simple applications, which anyone can understand, and moreover hearken unto the decrees written in the Torah, and not only that but also keep all of the oral laws, then. . . . The progression is from that which is rationally understood to that which is at least explicitly written, to that which must be taken on faith.

Haggadot
certainly can mean applications of Scripture. Cf. W. Bacher, "The Origin of the Word Haggada (Aggada),"
JQR OS
, vol. 4 (1892), p. 429, and esp. pp. 410 and 418ff. Bacher could well have cited our passage in support of his thesis.

1. Cf. n. 18 above.
   

2. R. El'azar begins his exposition of the verse also by explaining the repetition of the verb "hear." He says that since it is a conditional sentence, "If you will hear, I will not inflict," one could have understood that God is giving a choice here, as in ''If you don't smoke, you won't get sick. But it's up to you." It therefore says, ''you will hear," to emphasize that this is no condition or choice but a command. If you do that which you
   must
   do, then it will be well with you—"If you don't steal, you won't be imprisoned. But you don't really have the moral or legal choice."
   

   An interpretation of the double verb form from another source is then inserted parenthetically. If you will hear this verse, you will hear everything, for this is a principle which includes the whole Torah.
   

   We return now to R. El'azar, who, unlike R. Yehoshua, does not take this "hearing" the voice as literal and physical, but as obeying. Why then is it expressed as "hearing the voice"? Because one who obeys the word of God is as if standing in God's presence and hearing His living voice. The image is that of a "student, who stands and serves before his teacher," a common expression for disciplehood. Just as one who serves the disciples of the wise hears Torah from their very mouths, in their voices, so one who obeys and serves the Master of the Universe hears the Torah in His voice.
   

   No special argument is required to support the reading of "that which is straight" in the eyes of the Lord as honest dealing. Since this is mentioned here as a sort of synecdoche for the Torah as a whole, "it is accounted. . . ." The next identifications seem clear as well. One "hears" the
   halakot
   , precisely because they are the unwritten oral component of the law. "Statute" as sexual morality is a repeat of R. El'azar's own identification as given above.
   

3. Lee Patterson,
   Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature
   (Madison, 1987), pp. 150–151. 23. Ibid., p. 151.
   

1. Saint Augustine,
   On Christian Doctrine
   , trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. (Indianapolis, 1958), p. 30. For a reading of Augustine somewhat different from Patterson's, see David Stem, "Midrash and Indeterminacy,"
   Critical Inquiry
   15:1 (1988), p. 145.
   

2. Ira Chernus, "History and Paradox in Rabbinic Midrash," in his
   Mysticism in Rabbinic Judaism
   , Studia Judaica, Band XI (Berlin, 1982). pp. 130–131.
   

3. An issue with which I am
   not
   dealing here is the question of the historical accuracy of the attribution of views to particular tannaim (the early rabbis). This is an extremely thorny issue, and not relevant, in any case, to the argument of this chapter. Whether it be the actual views of the actual tannaim or a later redactional construct with which we
   

are dealing would only be relevant if we were anxious to posit a specific real historical context for these texts, which I am not.

1. R. El'azar breaks up the word "of starvation" into two, "comes starvation". This is a move typical of his approach to language as I have shown in the paper cited in the previous chapter, ''Analogy vs. Anomaly in Midrashic Hermeneutic," pp. 659–667.
   

2. The term "anomalist," taken from Harold Bloom, indicates a linguistic philosophy which does not suppose a stable connection between signifiers and signifieds. See n. 27 above.
   

3. For "joy" as volition, see Yohanan Muffs, "Joy and Love as Metaphorical Expressions of Willingness and Spontaneity in Cuneiform, Ancient Hebrew, and Related Literatures," in
   Christianity, Judaism and Other GrecoRoman Cults
   , ed., Jacob Neusner, (Leiden, 1975), part 3, pp. 1–37.
   

4. Yohanan Muffs, "The Joy of Giving,"
   JANES 11
   (
   The Bravmann Memorial Volume
   ), p. 97 and passim.
   

5. See n. 27 above.
   

6. The cited gloss is Rashi's based on midrash.
   

7. The text here is very difficult in fact. It reads in all manuscripts, "
   not
   coming to you," which is incoherent, because there seems no way that the words "to you" could have been interpreted by R. Yehoshua to mean their opposite. Hoffman [
   Mekilta dR. Shim'on
   ] deletes the "not," and his emendation is accepted by all modem commentators. It must be admitted that if the text is not emended, it represents a serious difficulty for my reading of the whole passage, for then R. Yehoshua would be saying: even though you are not worthy, I have given you the manna out of My own free will. Ephraim Urbach in his monumental work,
   The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs
   , trans. Israel Abrahams, (Jerusalem, 1975), p. 497, accepts the emendation as necessary, despite the fact that his reading of this text is otherwise diametrically opposed to mine. (He takes it as a battle over the issue of the ''merit of the fathers," see below.)
   

8. See Childs, pp. 287–88.
   

9. Urbach, p. 497.
   

10. This is not to deny, of course, that some psychological or other factors have led the two tannaim (if, indeed, it is their real historical views represented here, and not a construct of the midrash itself) to adopt their respective positions. However, if each position can be shown to be well founded in the biblical text, these personal tendencies become no more relevant or determinable, in my opinion, than whatever personal tendencies lead one physicist to see light as particles and another as waves.
    

11. Cf. also Michael Fishbane,
    Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel
    , (Oxford, 1985) p. 304.
    

12. Childs, p. 256.
    

13. See Childs, p. 259.
    

14. Meir Sternberg comments, "not
    necessarily
    : equally possible—'synchronically'—is confusion, irresolution, etc. So why deduce the one and not the other." Sternberg is, of course, completely right. The only answer is an appeal to the wellknown principle of charity, namely that we choose to read a text in a way that gives it maximum credit for making some kind of sense. Or to put it another way, if we assume "confusion" and