Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (25 page)

Israelites at that moment, the sea forming a bar and the enemy pursuing. Immediately they set their mind upon prayer. Of them it is
interpreted
in the tradition:
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"O my dove that art in the clefts of the rock, let me hear thy voice."
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Now we can see clearly what I would claim is probably the original context of this mashal. The interpreter, in order to render the situation of the children of Israel with the sea at their front and the enemy at their back sharp and tangible, adopted the figure of a dove fleeing from an eagle and a snake, a figure which brings the pathos of the situation home very poignantly. However, that figure is not drawn from the imagination of the midrashist but taken from the stock of figures given in the tradition, in the sacred writings, i.e., in the mashal which was "formulated" by Solomon to enable us to understand the words of Torah. Note well that in neither case (neither as interpretation of the verse of Song of Songs nor as interpretation of the verse in Exodus), do we have a translation of the verse to another level of signification, a pairing of a signifier with a signified. We have rather the establishment of an intertextual connection between two signifiers which mutually read each other. The narrative mashal here is not a literary form but a hermeneutic figure (to use Bruns's apt formulation); it is a
dugma
, pattern or figure, which is used by the midrashist to enable the two verses to speak to each other.

Now, admittedly, there is nothing in the verse of Song of songs here which explicitly directs our attention to the situation and the verse of Exodus, although there is a hint in the verse, "I have compared thee to a horse in the cavalry of Pharoah." Hence, we might feel that the midrashist has gone beyond what we would call reading in "chaining the words of Torah to the Writings." It will be instructive, therefore, to see cases in which precisely the same technique is used, where, I submit, we would freely grant that the Writings are indeed interpreting a verse from the Torah. We do not have far to look. In the previous chapter, I have shown how one of the Psalms has been used by the Mekilta in precisely the same way that we find Song of Songs being used here. That text in Psalms
does
indicate explicitly that it refers to the narrative situation of the Exodus: "When Israel went out of Egypt." In other words, there we have a case where the surface form of the later poetic text is manifestly a reference to the earlier prose narrative—a situation which is, of course, very common in the Bible and particularly in Psalms. In fact, many critics consider the psalm titles which place the poems into specific narrative contexts in the life of David to be a kind of protomidrash.
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They perform the same kind of hermeneutic activity which the midrash is doing on the psalm and also on the Song, namely, to place the poetic text into a specific historical narrative context. The hermeneutic move which the midrash makes in order to relate the text of song of Songs to Exodus is the same as the one used in the mashal analyzed in the previous chapter to relate the psalm to Exodus. In both instances, a figurative dialogue,

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a poetic personification of somewhat vague reference, is given a historical context which illumines and sharpens the motivations and events of the prose text. The vehicle of the narrative creation in both cases is the mashal, which fulfills a formal function ancillary to the hermeneutic coreading of the two texts.
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I claim that this method of reading the Song of Songs, placing its dialogues into the historical context of the Exodus (which is the primary approach of
Song of Songs Rabba
), was inspired by such textual situations as the explicit relationship of Psalm 114 and Exodus 14. Essentially, then, the midrashic reading of Song of Songs manifests what Fishbane has called ''the widespread tendency in early rabbinic midrash to 'historicize the nonhistorical,' that is, to correlate the psalms of the MT with events known from the sacred history—in line with the dictum that 'everything which David said in his book was said of himself, of all Israel, and of the past and future of Israel.' "
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This is what the rabbis meant when they said that Song of Songs is a mashal.

For another example of this hermeneutic principle, we turn to the midrash on the Song of Songs, where again we find the above verse being related to Exodus:

R. Eliezer decoded [
patar
] the verse in the hour that Israel stood at the sea.
My dove in the cleft of the rock in the hiding place of the steep
[Song 2:14], that they were hidden in the hiding place of the sea—
Show me your visage
; this is what is written. "Stand forth and see the salvation of the Lord" [Exod. 14:13]—
Let me hear your voice
; this is the singing, as it says, "Then Moses sang" [Exod. 15:1]—
For your voice is lovely
; this is the Song—
And your visage is beautiful
; for Israel were pointing with their fingers and saying "This is my God and I will beautify Him" [Exod. 15:2]. [Dunansky, p. 73]

In this text, as in the previous one, the verse is interpreted as referring to the crossing of the Red Sea, albeit to a different moment in that passage. The earlier reading placed it in the moment of desolation before God showed His saving hand, as it were, while here it is read at the very moment of salvation. The verse of Exodus, where it says, "stand forth," is tallied with the verse of Song of Songs where the speaker appealing to his beloved who is hidden calls to her to come out from hiding and show him her face. The rest follows from this. The last clause requires explanation, however. The word which I have translated "visage" is generally glossed

"countenance." However, its root is from the verb ''to see." Moreover, it can be understood as a participal of the causative form of that verb, thus meaning "showing or pointing out." R. Eliezer, accordingly, takes it as if to mean, "And your pointing is beautiful," that is, when you pointed to Me with your fingers and said (in the song at the sea), "
This
is my God and I will ascribe beauty to Him."
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R. Akiva interprets the verse of the Song of Songs using the same hermeneutic principles but applying the text to a different context in Exodus, namely the revelation at Sinai:

R. Akiva decoded the verse in the hour that they stood before Mt. Sinai.
My dove in the cleft of the rock in the hiding place of the steep
[Song 2:14], for they were hidden in the hiding places of Sinai.
Show me your visage
, as it says, "And all of the people saw the voices" [Exod. 20:14]—
Let me hear your voice
, this is the voice from before the commandments, for it says "All that you say we will do and we will hear" [Exod. 24:7]—
For your voice is pleasant
; this is the voice after the commandments, as it says, "God has heard the voice of your speaking; that which you have said is goodly'' [Deut. 5:25].

For R. Akiva as for R. Eliezer, the verse from the Song of Songs is a figurative description of the Jewish people, though not at the Red Sea but at Sinai. However, R. Akiva's reading in this version that "Let me see your visage" means the "seeing" of the voices is somewhat difficult, as the speaker of the verse seems to be God all through, and of course it was the people who saw the voices, not God. There is, to be sure, a lovely irony in the idea that both seeing and hearing refer to voice; the people saw God's voice, as it were, and God heard their voice.

These interpretations are to be explained by the tannaitic claim that the Song of Songs was actually said with reference to either the events at Sinai or the crossing of the sea. As my late teacher, the great talmudist Saul Lieberman, has shown, each of the tannaim of the midrash reads the Song of Songs
consistently
as referring to one or the other of these moments in the saving history.
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The verses of the Song of Songs are accordingly interpreted by identifying not their signifieds but their cotexts, not that to which they refer in the world, but the texts of the Torah which decode them—and which they decode in turn. Once again, we find in the Mekilta a parallel to our passage which neatly reverses the relationship of verse to verse; the interpreter becoming the interpreted:

Under the mountain
[Exod. 19:16]. This teaches that the mountain was uprooted from its place and they drew near and stood underneath it, just as it says, "For you drew near and stood under the mountain" [Deut. 4:11].
Of them it is interpreted in the tradition
: "O my dove who art in the clefts of the rock" [Song 2:14]. "Let me see thy appearance," that is, the twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. "And let me hear they voice,'' these are the ten commandments, "For thy voice is lovely," after the ten commandments, "And thy appearance is beautiful—And all of the congregation drew near and stood before God" [Lev. 9:5].

Again we have a text from the Song of Songs which is explicitly marked as interpretation of the Torah's narrative discourse—"Of them it is interpreted in the tradition."
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This parallel interprets the text of
Song of Songs Rabba
, and in its turn, also is interpreted by it. First of all we learn from here what R. Akiva meant when he said that the Jews were hidden in the clefts of Sinai. In the context of the general disruption of nature which is described at the time of the

revelation at Sinai, it is perhaps not too extravagant on the part of the rabbis to interpret the verses of standing under the mountain concretely, i.e., that the mountain was flying in the air and the people quite literally stood under it. Once this move has been made, at any rate, the tally between this verse and the verse from Song of Songs is appropriate. God addresses the people of Israel, the dove, calling out to them from their hiding place under the mountain—in the clefts of the rock—with great poignancy, "Let me see your face." Moreover, we now have a clue to the reading of the difficult passage in the version of the
Song of Songs Rabba
. Notice that the same difficulty occurs in this version as well but displaced slightly. To be sure, the verse "Let me see your face" is no longer read as being in the context of God's showing of His voice to the people, but is now read as the people's showing of themselves to Him by building monuments.
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But, the verse "Let me hear thy voice" is now Israel's speech, meaning ''Let me hear the ten commandments." The key is that the verse is read as dialogue. "Let me hear thy voice'' is indeed the people speaking to God, and His response is, "Indeed thy voice is lovely," since you accepted the ten commandments so willingly and "God has heard the voice of your speaking; that which you have said is goodly." Similarly we can understand now the "Let me see your visage" of the version above as part of a dialogue. The people ask to see the voice, and God answers, Indeed since even before the commandments were given you have expressed with your voice trust and faithfulness. Finally, the very mashal of Song of Songs applied to the Sinai hierophany has transformed the midrashic imagery of that moment entirely. Thus we read in the Mekilta:

And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God
. R. Yose said, Yehuda used to interpret "The Lord came from Sinai" [Deut. 33:2]—Do not read it literally, but read: "The Lord came to Sinai," to give the Torah to Israel. I, on the other hand, do not say that, but indeed "God came
from
Sinai," to receive Israel as the bridegroom comes forth (from the bridal canopy) to meet the bride. [Lauterbach, p. 218]

I can now suggest answers to the questions with which I began this chapter. The rabbis of the midrash who understood that the Writings as a whole are a reading of the Torah did not perceive the Song of Songs as being at all like a lock to which the key has been lost. They understood it rather as a hermeneutic key to the interpretation of Torah. The way in which the Writings were comprehended as interpretation was by relating the more or less vague situations of various poetic texts to specific parts of the Torah. The reading method was accordingly not allegorical—relating signifier to signified—but intertextual—relating signifier to signifier. But it is indeed possible for midrashicintertextual readings to be substantially the same thematically as allegorical readings (e.g., to relate to the love of God for Israel), since the Torahtexts to which the Song

of Songs was understood to refer describe the relationship of Israel to God. Thus the very same thematic material could be transposed, as it were, from the midrashic mode of the earlier rabbis to the allegorical mode of the later ones. This should not obscure for us, however, the fundamental differences between the two types of reading. For the rabbis of the midrash, the highest reality, other than God Himself, of course, is the Torah—that is, a text, not an abstract idea. No wonder, then, that reading on the highest level in midrash is intertextual reading, the connecting of texts to the ultimate Text, and not allegoresis, the connecting of texts to abstract ideas. Only in certain rabbinic circles—the Hellenistic Judaism of Philo in the midrashic period, or the later Platonically influenced Judaism which became dominant from the time of R. Saadya Gaon on—could allegorical reading methods replace the earlier midrash of the rabbis.

In the next and final chapter, we will read closely a particular instance of the reading of the Song of Songs as a mashal and examine its consequences in history.

Indeed the problem becomes one of rethinking the concepts of 'inside' and 'outside' in relation to processes of interaction between language and the world.

Dominick LaCapra
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The relation between "textuality" and "history" has often been presented as if they were mutually exclusive ways of understanding the literary text. One extreme model, which has sometimes been called the formalist model, sees literature as occupying an autonomous ontological realm, divorced from and "above" the material and social conditions of its production. The other extreme, the historicist one, understands the text to be wholly determined by and to be a reflection of its historical circumstances.
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Theorists have been struggling toward a more nuanced view of this relation than either of the above positions would allow.
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