Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (12 page)

1. Israelites in wilderness: blame ()
   

   1. Story of Moses driving them with stick
      

   2. Nehemiah verse
      

   3. Return: rebellion ()
      

In the first case, what happened here (at the leaving of the sea) is revealed as a moment of great faith and trust on the part of Israel, via its association with what happened at the beginning of the people's very journey from Egypt, and this is woven into a whole narrative, as an introduction, as it were, to a positive reading of the entire wilderness period. The phrase, "Of them it is interpreted in the tradition," a topos of midrash, is crucially important for my reading, for I take it quite literally, as a statement that the tradition [
qabbalah
], which in this context always means the Prophets and Writings, contains
interpretations
of the Torah. The import of this tradition, which even positivist philology would understand as an interpretation, is that the going through the desert was a following of the young bride after her beloved and trusted groom. This reading will serve as an introduction to a positive interpretation of the wilderness period. The second version is based on an even more prevalent tradition in the Bible that the period of desert wanderings was one of constant faithlessness on the part of Israel. It serves as an introduction to a negative reading of the wilderness time. It follows that this text bears out the claim that the quotations in the midrash are not prooftexts but a major generating force in the production of the interpretive work of the midrash. The double reweaving,
both times in the name of the same tanna
, is thus a powerful evocation of the double reading within the biblical text itself of the story of Israel in the wilderness, which we will be encountering in the next chapter. The heterogeneity of the biblical text is revealed in the heterogeneity of the intertextual web of the midrash. The voices in the midrash are a literary representation and doubling of the antithetical voices to which the Author Himself has given speech within the Torah.

We accordingly see here how the gap in the Torah's narrative, the lack of motivation for the unusual formulation, "And Moses removed" is filled in in two incompatible ways by the midrash. It is the incompleteness in the Torah's explanation of itself which provides the space within which these antithetical readings can be created.

However, the material for filling the gaps is not a subjective creation of the reader but rather a strong production of the intertext, which itself provides the antithetical possibilities for this reading. Unless the double invocation of the same tanna as presenting two diametrically opposed interpretations is a mere mistake (and at some level it certainly cannot be that), then it itself is a refutation of the concept of "creative historiography" as a production of the personal ideological stance or psychological bent of the midrashist.

In summary, the biblical narrative here encompasses within itself two antithetical evaluations of the same event. How axe we to respond? The solution of

source criticism is simple. We do not have before us a single text but a combination of texts, and it is not surprising, therefore, to find contradictions between them. For the midrash, as for anyone who wishes to read the Torah as a synchronic unity, such a solution is impossible. If we regard the text under the rubric of prose narrative, however, we can see that a divine author (the implied divine author of a supposed reading practice) could encode in His story the same kind of ambivalent evaluations that any author can encode in his novel.
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The point of it,
ex hypothesi
, would be to signify some very real ambivalence in the events themselves.
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In my view, this is the sort of reading that our midrashic text presupposes, although its authors would certainly not have recognized our critical terminology and concepts. The idea of innertextual dialogue thus enables us to read both the text and its commentary in a stronger mode—not as the arbitrary and awkward combination of documents, but as the representation of ambivalence and equivocation. Whether we adopt a secular approach and consider these voices to be the voices of different groupings within Israelite society or whether we remain within the sacral world of the midrash itself which would assert that "both these and these are the words of the Living God,"
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reading in the gaps of the Torah is a significant challenge to the reductions of socalled Higher Critical interpretations of the text.

Another important type of textual gapping is caused by apparent repetition or redundancy in a narrative text.
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This type of gap is even more cavernous when a story seems to be told twice and there is, moreover, contradiction between the two tellings. Again, the solution of source criticism will be the diachronic one of assuming two separate documents. The midrash provides us with a synchronic reading of the repetition. The Mekilta has an anonymous reading of the manna story which seems at first glance to be merely a series of homiletical remarks, related perhaps to the broad context of rabbinic theology, but only very thinly to the biblical narrative. I shall try to show that it is, in fact, a profound interpretation of the biblical text. The text is a reading of Exod. 16: 3–8:

And Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites: Evening, and you shall know. They said to them: While you are sleeping in your beds, God is feeding you.
You shall know that the Lord took you out from the land of Egypt
: Hence you learn that the Exodus is equal in value to all of the miracles and mighty deeds that God did for Israel.
Morning, you will see the glory of the Lord
. Hence you learn that He gave the manna to Israel with a bright countenance. The quail, which they asked for with full bellies, He gave them with a dark countenance, but the manna, which they asked for appropriately, He gave them with a bright countenance. [Lauterbach, II, p. 105]

Now midrash is, by definition, a text on a text. We must begin, therefore, by looking at the explicit intertext, the passage upon which our midrash is directly commenting:

(3). And the Israelites said to them, "Would that we had died by the hand of God in Egypt, sitting around pots of flesh, eating bread to satiety, for you have taken us out into this desert to kill us with hunger." (4). And God said to Moses, "Behold, I will cause bread to rain down for you from heaven, and let the people go out and collect daily enough for that day, that I may test them, whether they will go in my Torah or not." . . . (6). And Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, "Evening, and you shall know that the Lord brought you out from Egypt. (7). And morning, and you shall see the glory of the Lord, when He heeds your complaints about Him. And, as for us, what are we that you complain of us?" (8). And Moses said, "By God's giving you meat to eat in the evening and bread to satiate you in the morning, by God's hearing of your complaints—your complaints are against Him. What are we that you complain against us?''

A first reading of this passage would suggest that the events detailed in verse eight—the giving of meat at evening and bread at morning—are precisely those hinted at in verses six and seven: "Evening you shall know—by God's giving you meat to eat in the evening" and "Morning you shall see—by God's giving you bread to satiate you in the morning." The reason that this reading is natural is that it is
literal
: the reporting of events means just what it says; and
iconic
: the order of signifiers in the text is homologous with the order of events signified. This is, for example, the reading of the great champion of plain sense, R. Abraham Ibn Ezra:

(6).
And [Moses] said
: The meaning of, "that the Lord took you out" is, since you have said [in v. 3], "You took us out," behold two miracles [signs] are done for you that you should know that it is He who took you out, one this very evening and the second on its morrow. . . . (8)
And he said
. Now he explicated to them the two miracles.

The Mekilta rejects this reading in toto. Not only is the text not iconic in the succession of signifiers according to the order of the occurrence of signifieds, but even the explicit temporal expressions are not literal but figurative. Let us go back now to the text of the Mekilta, observing how its reading of the text turns from the "natural" reading, as of Ibn Ezra.

"Evening and you shall know that the Lord brought you out from Egypt" is not read as, "In the evening [when God sends the quail] you shall know [by this sign] . . .", as in Ibn Ezra's reading, but as "Know ye—in the evening God is feeding you [i.e., raining down the Manna], while you are sleeping." The "feeding" here must refer to the manna, because were it to refer to quail, the statement, "while you are sleeping on your beds'' would be meaningless.

Therefore, we must understand that this remark specifically
denies
that there will be a sign in the evening.

It follows that "that the Lord took you out" is not read as "in answer to your charge that we took you out, in the evening God will make you a sign, and you will know that He took you out," but as a figurative assertion of the value of the miracle of the Exodus itself. The text continues in verse six, ''Evening, and you shall know.''

Since, as we have just said, there will be no sign in the evening, therefore the text cannot mean "This evening you will see something that will cause you to know." Since nothing is to happen in the evening but the preparation of manna for the morning, this invisible event must be the object of the "knowing." Ergo, this cannot be an indicative verb, "you will know" (how would they perceive that which is not given to perception?), but must be an imperative, "Know ye that while you are sleeping God is sustaining you," But now, since the preparation of food, the object of knowing, is denoted by "that God hath taken you out from Egypt," by this metaphor it is made known that the Exodus is equal to all other miracles.

Finally, "evening" and "morning" themselves are read as signifiers not of the order of the events but of their value. Their simple mimetic and iconic signification is interrupted and a more complex figurativesymbolic signification is substituted. "Evening" no longer means "this evening, before tomorrow morning" but "unwillingly"; "morning" no longer means "tomorrow" but "willingly." We shall explore below the means by which this substitution is achieved.

How can this deeply troped reading be accounted for? Is it a reading at all or a homily attached mechanically, playfully, or in bad faith to the text? The key to understanding this midrash will be revealed via exposure of a deep anomaly within it, namely the assertion that the meat was asked for with full bellies. How is such a statement possible on a simple reading of the Torah's narrative? The people are starving and are given meat and then bread. How can the midrash claim that the meat was asked for with full bellies? The rabbis must have read the story differently indeed! Their story is that the manna was given first and the people were sated, their need for food met willingly by God. Greedily, however, they did not appreciate the gift and complained of not having meat. They were given meat, but since their request for meat was inappropriate, the meat was given with ill will. If this is the plot, the discourse must have a much more complex structure than we thought. Once we have made this assumption, then it follows that no quail was given in the evening
before
the giving of the manna, and all the swervings of the midrash from Ibn Ezra's natural reading are accounted for, and in the process, important value statements are made.

What, however, is the source of the assumption that the manna was given before the quail, an assumption that violates the simple meaning of our text? Is

it the desire to articulate particular values, as per the regnant descriptions of midrash as homily? I believe that this assumption, this fabula, is itself generated by reading, for I suggest that the midrash has before it another implicit intertext, namely the story of the manna and quaff in Numbers 11. The fabula set out there is the following: The Israelites sit and cry for meat, remembering the good victuals of Egypt. They complain, "Now our throats are dry; there is nothing but this manna!" God declares that He will give them meat, but eloquently shows His displeasure: "Not one day will you eat, and not two days, not five days and not ten days. For a month you will eat meat, until it is coming out of your noses, and it will be disgusting to you. . . ." And then God provides the quails—and a horrifying punishment.

There are logically two exegetical options available to solve the question of the relation of these two texts: either they are telling two different stories or they are telling the same story twice. Either way presents serious difficulties, produces gaps which must be filled. If we assume that the same events are being related, it becomes clear that we are faced with a sharp contradiction. While in Exodus, manna and quail are asked for at the same time, in Numbers it is explicitly stated that the people have been eating manna for quite some time before requesting the quail. It follows that if this is the same story as that told in Exodus, we know very well why the rabbis troped that discourse so thoroughly. By interpreting in such a way that in the Exodus account no quail is given, this seemingly intractable contradiction is resolved.

Nearly all traditional commentators on the relation of these two texts have assumed, however, that accounts of two different events are preserved here. But this way is fraught with obstacles as well. To make this point, we need only examine the difficulties run into by a sophisticated commentator, Nahmanides, who wishes to read these as accounts of two different sets of events:

It is the opinion of our rabbis
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that the quail was with them from that day and henceforth like the manna, and so it appears to me, for they complained about two matters, and in regard to both of them He heard them and fulfilled their desire. For what would He have given them or what would He have added for them by giving them meat for one day or two? The [reason] that the text explains at length the matter of the manna is because all of its details are wonderful, and is short in the matter of the quail—"And it was at even and the quail went up"—because it is a natural happening. And as for the matter of the second quail at Qivrot Hata'avah, this is owing to the fact that now it did not come to them to satiety, as it says several times, "bread to eat and meat to satiety." Or perhaps, it is because only the mighty ones were collecting it [the meat] or perhaps it was only available to the saints, and the lowly were desirous and hungry for it. . . . But the simple meaning is that the quail was intermittent, and the manna constant.
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