Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (8 page)

Syntagmatic reconstruction, in which narratives are constructed around a verse or concatenation of verses, provides an even more striking example of the way biblical references may be used to generate new/old meaning. The case at hand in the Mekilta is remarkable in that its speaker, R. Yehuda, uses precisely the same formula to introduce his interpretive discourse as above:

And the angel of God, going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them. And the pillar of cloud moved from before them and went behind them
[Exod. 14:19]. R. Yehuda said: Here is a verse made rich in meaning by many passages. He made of it a mashal;
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to what is the matter similar? To a king who was going on the way, and his son went before him. Brigands came to kidnap him from

in front. He took him from in front and placed him behind him. A wolf came behind him. He took him from behind and placed him in front.
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Brigands in front and the wolf in back he [He] took him and placed him in his [His]
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arms, for it says, "I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them on My arms" [Hos. 11:3].

The son began to suffer; he [He] took him on his shoulders, for it is said, "in the desert which you saw, where the Lord, your God carried you" [Deut. 1:31]. The son began to suffer from the sun; he [He] spread on him His cloak, for it is said, "He has spread a cloud as a curtain'' [Ps. 105:39].

He became hungry; he [He] fed him, for it is said, "Behold I send bread, like rain, from the sky'' [Exod. 16:4].

He became thirsty, he [He] gave him drink, for it is said, "He brought streams out of the rock" [Ps. 78:16].
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[Lauterbach, I, pp. 224–225]

R. Yehuda's stated purpose is to comment on the verse, "And the angel of God, etc." The reading is accomplished by bringing together other texts which relate to the same subject, the behavior of God toward Israel in the wilderness. These texts, which form a semantic field or paradigm, are reinscribed in a new narrative, in a new syntagmatic structure, by the midrashist. The new narrative specifies and concretizes the contexts in which the metaphorical statements distributed throughout the canon function.

My thrust here is not to set up a taxonomy of syntagmatic versus paradigmatic midrash, so much as to unsettle this distinction. That is to say, by identifying these two structures as realizations of the same underlying hermeneutic idea where previous scholars have not seen a structural connection between these different subgenres of midrash, I believe that I draw nearer to an adequate characterization of the category "midrash" as a method of intertextual reading. The specifications or concretizations are essentially the same, whether the verses are organized into a story as in the second example, or into a paradigm as in the first. The essential hermeneutic moment is in both cases, "This is a verse made rich in meaning from many places," whether the enriching is by syntagmatic or paradigmatic means, and for me this is a synecdoche of midrash as a whole. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures are both used to accomplish the same task of quoting other verses in the context of the verse to be interpreted.

The verses of the Bible function for the rabbis much as do words in ordinary speech. They are a repertoire of semiotic elements that can be recombined into new discourse, just as words are recombined constantly into new discourse. Just as in a lexicon words are placed into juxtaposition revealing semantic similarities and differences, so in the midrashic text, semantic similarities and differences between texts are revealed via new juxtapositions. Just as the words of any language can be placed into new syntagmatic relations, so can the verses of the Bible.

Such use of higher levels of discourse as elements of further discourse has been discussed with regard to the use of the proverb in narrative by Galit HasanRokem:

It seems that the main difference between the quotation and the proverb consists of the difference in the systems to which the speaker relates when he interjects the text into the new context. All of the proverbs of one ethnic group comprise the proverb repertoire of that group. Each single proverb exists in the Saussurian
langue
aspect, that is, as a paradigmatic unit with the potential of being applied in
parole
, of being put to actual use. In quoting, on the other hand, the speaker refers to an already existing specific
parole
, which he applies to a new, intertextual
parole
. It is not possible to speak of a repertoire of quotations, since any text, poetic or nonpoetic, regardless of formal, contextual, or structural characteristics, may become a quotation.
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HasanRokem speaks of the ambiguous status of the proverb in language. It belongs to
langue
in its aspect as a unit in a paradigm of proverbial units in the culture; however, it also belongs to an already existing
parole
in that it is quoted from a previous discourse. While she expressly distinguishes between proverbs and quotations, claiming that quotations do not form a repertoire, it seems that in midrash the Bible can be understood precisely as a repertoire of quotations in this sense. The opposition between the Bible as
parole
and as
langue
is therefore unsettled. On the one hand, obviously, the Bible is a
parole
, and quotation from it appears as the injecting of one
parole
into another. On the other hand, the Bible as virtually the only source of quotations in the midrash, and a closed and wellknown corpus, does take on the aspect of
langue
, in the sense that HasanRokem uses the term. Quoting from the Bible resembles an act of selecting from a repertoire. The
langue
like nature of the biblical text for the rabbis is revealed in their paradigmatic midrash, which collects verses into sets of similarities and differences, structured like the lexicon of a language. The tension between the
parole
like nature of the verse as an element in an existing discourse and the
langue
like nature of its possibility of being selected and combined into new discourse provides much of the fascination and power of midrash. It is in this semiotic duality that the ability of midrash to both breach and continue the Torah can be theorized.

The full meaning of a sign (never realizable, of course) is the exposure of all of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations into which it enters and into which it can enter. Accordingly, the reciting of the sentences of the Bible in ever new paradigms and syntagms is interpretation. There is, therefore, no ultimate difference between these two texts of R. Yehuda's,
a point which is made explicit by the use of the same opening formula in both of them
. This enables us to perceive a generalization about midrash which has not been remarked before, namely, that the fundamental moment of all of these midrashic forms is precisely the very cocitation of several verses.
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Both employ set structures to

frame the readingtogether of verses. Both understand the verses through their interaction within the frame, and both are completely new readings and yet also already existent in the Torah.

I have compared the paradigmatic midrash to a lexicon and the syntagmatic to a narrative. At first glance, the comparability of these two kinds of structure may seem very questionable. However, semiotic studies of literature have in fact revealed the commensurability of paradigm and syntagm in the making of meaning. One of the most important theoreticians of this commensurability is Michael Riffaterre. Riffaterre has shown that a narrative repeats, varies, and expands the elements of a paradigm.
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Narrative is accordingly paradigmatic. It is related to the lexicon, in our case not a lexicon of words, but a lexicon of paradigmatic value statements. The value of narrative over a mere paradigm of values and judgments is in the rhetorical and psychological power over the reader that it retains through its development and varied repetitions. In Riffaterre's words, "narrative is interesting before it is exemplary. There is no narrative without change; no fiction without
exemplary
change.''
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It is not surprising, therefore, to find in midrash a mode of interpretation of narrative which sometimes sets up the paradigm itself
qua
paradigm, and at other times expands on the paradigmatic nature of the repetition and expansion by inscribing them in a paradigmatic story (the mashal or "parable" which will be discussed in chapters 5 and 6 below).

We can see the way these two categories interact by reading a text from the Mekilta, discussed by W. S. Towner in his book on the "enumeration of scriptural examples."
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The type of text that Towner studied there is midrash which has the form "There are
n
who/which did so and so," or ''There are
n
cases of such and such." A classic example of this form of midrash from our corpus follows:

And lift thou up thy rod
, etc. [Exod. 14:16]. Ten miracles were performed for Israel at the sea. The sea was broken through and made like a vault, as it is said: "Thou didst pierce with his shafts," etc. [Hab. 3:14]. It was divided into two parts, as it is said: "Stretch out thy hand over the sea and divide it." Dry land was formed in it, as it is said: "But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea" [Exod. 14:29]. It became a sort of day, as it is said: "Thou hast trodden the sea with Thy horses, the day of mighty waters'' [Hab. 3:15]. It crumbled into pieces, as it is said: "Thou didst break the sea in pieces by Thy strength" [Ps. 74:13]. It turned into rocks, as it is said: "Thou didst shatter the heads of the seamonsters upon the water" [Ps. 74:18]. It was cut into several parts, as it is said: "To Him who divided the Red Sea into parts" [Ps. 136:13]. It was piled up into stacks, as it is said: "And with the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were pried up" [Exod. 15:8]. It formed a sort of heap, as it is said: "The floods stood upright as a heap" [Exod. 15:8]. He extracted for them sweet water from the salt, as it is said: "He brought streams also out of the rock and caused waters to nm down like rivers [Ps. 78:16]. The sea congealed on both sides and became a sort of glass crystal, as it is said: "The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea" [Exod. 15:8].
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Each of the verses cited here comes from a poetic text that treats the splitting of the Red Sea. The midrashist has gathered all of these verses together, so that they may make the maximum impression on the hearer/reader. When each verse is encountered in its own place, as it were, its impact is relatively weak, but when all are encountered together, as a list of the ten miracles which God performed for the Israelites on this one occasion, the dramatic and pictorial effect is enhanced greatly. In the words of Towner himself, this is a "device for 'setting up' the scripture so that it can be seen and heard."
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On the one hand, we might say we have a list of all of the verses which treat a certain subject in the salvation history, a kind of archive of traditions and interpretations, but it is the melding of these different texts into a

single quasinarrative that makes this passage work as midrash and ultimately that gives each of the quoted verses its maximum power. In this example of the enumeration paradigm, we can detect the synchronic transition between narrative paradigm and paradigmatic narrative. The enumeration form is not, however, the only form which has this hermeneutic function of exposing the relations of similarity and difference between verses dealing with a similar event or subject. As we have seen above, the mashal has this function; there are other such structures as well. Indeed, I would argue that
all
of the generic patterns of midrash have this function of exposing and creating intertextual hermeneutic relations between different biblical texts.

One of the most dramatic forms of paradigmatic intertextual dialogue is the realization of meanings through the confrontation of texts:

Rabbi Shim'on ben Gamliel says, Come and see how beloved is Israel before HimWhoSpokeandtheWorldWas, for as they are beloved, He reversed the act of creation. He made the low into the high and the high into the low. Formerly, bread came up from the land, and dew came down from heaven, as it says, "A land of grain and wine, and His heavens drip dew" [Deut. 33:28]. But now the state of affairs is reversed. Bread began to come down from heaven and dew to go up from the land, as it says, "Behold I rain down for you bread from heaven [Exod. 16:4]—And the layer of dew went up" [Exod. 16:14].
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[Lauterbach, II, pp. 102–103]

R. Shim'on's move here is to place these "two utterances in juxtaposition," so that they "enter into a particular kind of semantic relation which we call dialogical"
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or intertextual. Meaning is released in this interaction of texts which neither text had on its own, in its own context. What is in Deuteronomy a poetic statement concerning the richness of the land becomes background for a high drama of cosmic intervention. What in Exodus reads as physical description of the events of the miracle comes to have an axiological significance only latent in the original context. This miracle was so great that it involved nothing less than a restructuring of the universe. Now, this point could have been made

without the quotation of the verse from Deuteronomy; we all know that normally rain falls from the heaven and bread grows from the earth. What is so striking here, therefore (and so characteristic), is not the "meaning" of the statement, but rather the way its meaning is produced. That meaning resides there already in the verses, or rather between them, that is, in the potential interaction between them. It is neither imposed on the verses "from outside," nor does it lie behind them as ''intention", but is revealed/created in their coming together—in the bringing together performed by the midrashist, R. Shim'on.

What is the function, however, of R. Shim'on's "Come and see how beloved is Israel before HimWhoSpokeandtheWorldWas"? This is clearly an assertion that is not "literally" there in the verses as they stand in their biblical contexts. However, at the same time, this meaning emerges so powerfully from the interaction of this set of resituated signifiers that it does seem to have been always there. The invitation to come and see is a rhetorical figure through which the meanings of the verses may be read in association. It is a kind of generic pattern which enabled the midrashist, R. Shim'on, to came the verses to speak with each other, and a kind of axiological code by which we can read the juxtaposition. It has precisely the same function,
mutatis mutandis
, as the mashal or the enumeration formula.