Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (15 page)

The motivation for this interpretation of the tree, as well as its justification, can be found in the continuation of the Mekilta's discourse:

Rabban Shim'on ben Gamliel says: Come and see how different are the ways of the Place from the ways of flesh and blood. Flesh and blood uses sweet to cure the bitter. Not so HeWhoSpokeandtheWorldWas. He uses bitter to

cure the bitter. How so? He puts something which spoils into something spoilt, in order to perform therewith a miracle.

Similarly you will say, "And Isaiah said, let them take a cake of figs and spread it on the boils" [Isa. 38:21]. But is it not so that when you place a cake of figs on raw flesh, it spoils immediately? How so then? He puts something which spoils into something spoilt, to perform therewith a miracle.

Similarly, "And he went out to the watersource and threw in salt, and said, Thus saith" [2 Kings 2:21], but is it not so that if you put salt into sweet water, it goes bad immediately? How so then? He puts something which spoils into something spoilt, in order to perform therewith a miracle.

R. Shim'on cites two cases motivating his interpretation. Whatever we make of the story of Hezeqia and the cake of figs, in the case of Elisha and the waters of Jericho the explicit meaning of the biblical text is that Elisha is to "cure" the salty waters with salt. R. Shim'on has adopted a classic formula of paradigmatic midrash. In this form, a series of incidents or texts are cited under the rubric "similarly" or a variant thereof with a view to exposing the similar features of each case, thus establishing,

as it were, a theosophical truth—in this case, God's paradoxical, supernatural behavior emphasizing His ability to perform miracles. In the passage from Isaiah, we find Hezeqia sick with boils. The prophet tells him to place figs on his eruptions, and he will be well. The rest is clear. In the passage from Kings, the verse continues explicitly, ''And he threw therein salt saying, 'Thus saith the Lord: I have healed these waters.''' I rather suspect that the third case is the keystone of the whole construction, thus showing the value for exegesis of "paradigmatic" midrash. In other words, we learn to interpret the incident of the figs and our incident at Mara from the case where the paradoxical "cure" is explicit. Moreover, as Cassuto acutely points out, there is a series of verbal echoes in the Elisha episode which suggest that it is intended as an imitation (or interpretation, from the hermeneutic perspective) precisely of the Mara incident. "The passage dealing with the healing of the water by Elisha draws upon our narrative (see ii Kings ii 19–22); there, too, we find
and he threw
, as well as the verb
heal
."
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If Cassuto is correct, and it seems that he is, R. Shim'on's exegesis, as well as that of the other tannaim who argued for a bitter tree, was already current at the time of the Prophet. We have here an elegant demonstration of how what appears to be homily is really exegesis of Scripture by Scripture. Even more to the point, this reading via the story in Kings solves the several interpretive problems that we have exposed in the Mara narrative. The "law and ordinance" are taken on this view to be the law of God that He cures the bitter with the bitter. I suggest also that R. Shim'on ben Gamliel's reading solves as well the puzzle of the unusual form
wayyorehu
. It is attractive to interpret the lexical ungrammaticality of
wayyorehu
"and He taught" as precisely a reference to the teaching, "Come and see how different are the ways of God from the ways of man." This interpretation of R.

Shim'on's midrash has already been offered by a very early interpreter of our passage, the author of the somewhat later midrash,
Tanhuma
:

You find that flesh and blood smites with a knife and cures with a poultice, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is not so, rather, that which He smites with, with that He cures. And so you find that when they came to Mara they could not drink water from Mara, and Moses believed that the Holy One, blessed be He, would tell him to throw there honey or figs and the water would become sweet. But see what is written there, "And he cried out unto the Lord, and the Lord taught him a tree." It does not say, He showed him, but He taught him, He taught him His ways.
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R. Shim'on's reading is thus an elegant solution to the problems of coherence within the Mara narrative. All of the ungrammaticalities are accounted for. The form
wayyorehu
is explained precisely by the paradox of God's act; this is what God teaches here: His ways which are different from those of man. Moreover, this provides a solution to the question of the "law"; it is God's unnatural law to which reference is made.
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Finally, the strange reference to God as healer is explained by the echo in the Kings passage where the waters are "healed."

R. Shim'on's interpretation of the story, together with that of the other tannaim who insist on the bitterness of the actual tree, thus chooses and activates the meaning "bitter" for
marim
. The contextual choice made by these readers is to interpret the story in the light of its nearly explicit intertext in Kings. This interpretation resolves several other ambiguities in the text as well, by providing a narrative coherence which the bare biblical narrative lacks. (This coherence is so clearly lacking that modem biblical scholars of the Higher Critical school split the text at the caesura of verse 25 into two allegedly incompatible documents.)
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The other interpreters, that is, R. Shim'on ben Yohai and the
dorshe reshumot
, interpret the tree metaphorically as the "tree of life," the Torah. Let us see how their reading works on the ambiguity of the text. As we have read above, the Torah line of interpretation begins by taking the "water" of the Torah's narrative not as literal physical water but as a symbol for Torah. This interpretation certainly looks on the face of it like an allegory, that is, an interpretation founded on the assumption that the text is about some ''idea" (in the Platonic sense) external to the text itself. The outside idea would be, in this case, the idea of Torah. However, it seems to me that closer reading will show that this is not the only, nor indeed the most attractive, analysis of what is going on here. A crucial clue is that the several statements which make up the metaphorical reading of the narrative all cite verses from a single passage of Proverbs as their "prooftexts." That is, the
dorshe reshumot
cite the explicit metaphor about Torah: ''It is a tree of life to those who grasp it" [Prov. 3:18], and Rabbi Shim'on ben Yohai cites "And He taught me and said to me" [Prov. 4:4].

Moreover, in a

further interpretation of the "healing" as words of Torah, Rabbi El'azar of Modi'in cites, "They [words of Torah] are life for those who find them, and to all of his flesh a curative. It [the Torah] will be a cure for your flesh" [Prov. 4:21 and 3:8]. The claim that I am making is that these several citations of verses from the same passage of the Proverbs are not accidental, and amount, in effect, to a tradition that the difficulties and ungrammaticalities of the Mara account are to be resolved by reading them in the light of the figurative usages of Solomon's texts, which, as I will argue below (chapter 7 ), were taken by the rabbis as hermeneutic keys to the Torah.

This semiotic process can be described quite precisely. The entire interpretation is generated by the lexical ambiguity of
marim
and
wayyorehu
. Syntactically, the first reading of verse 24 takes the adjective as referring to the water. However, it is also quite plausible to read it as referring back one more clause to the "they" of the beginning of the sentence. Since "water" is a plural noun in Hebrew, the adjective agrees either with "they" or with "water." This secondary reading sets up a whole set of intertextual resonances. First of all, this adjective is almost identical in sound to one commonly reed to describe the rebelliousness of Israel in the wilderness. Thus we read, ''And they
rebelled
against me and did not want to hear" [Ezek. 20:8], ''And they
rebelled
at the sea, at the Red Sea" [Ps. 107:7], and "How much have they
rebelled
against Him in the desert" [Ps. 78:40]. In all of these verses, forms of the verb
mry
, paronomastically related to
marim
, are used. Even more pointedly, in a parallel narrative of a rebellion concerning lack of water, Moses addresses the people in the following language, "Hear O you rebels (
hamorim
)" [Num. 20:10], using a word almost identical to our
marim
. Moreover, in other cases of etiologies for names of places in the desert, it is the historical event and not the natural condition that provides the naming; specifically, the name carries with it a memory of the rebellion of the people at that place. Thus, for instance, in the very similar story of a rebellion concerning water at Exod. 17:1–7, the place is renamed "Strife and Contention" became of the rebellious behavior of Israel. Accordingly, all of these subtexts provide strong motivation for reading the verse as, "They could not drink water from Mara, because they were rebellious, and that is why it is called Mara."

As I have indicated above, the verb
wayyorehu
also has two meanings, "to show" and "to teach," but the latter meaning is by far the more common one in the Hebrew lexicon. It is, moreover, the culturally dominant one, by virtue of its being the root of Torah. On the other hand, it is the unusual sense of the verb, namely, "to show," which is initially mobilized by the narrative context in the Mara story. We have, therefore, a kind of syllepsis in the Riffaterrian sense of a special kind of pun which calls up an intertext by the very awkwardness of its form. Following Riffaterre's description, we can see that the use of
wayyorehu
here is so unusual, in fact, as to form a dual sign. The dual sign is dual precisely

because, by way of referring to two intertexts, it generates two meanings for the text being read. What happens in our text conforms precisely to Riffaterre's description. We begin to read the text by mobilizing the sense of the verb which the context calls for, that is, as a story of physical thirst in the desert, but the power of the other sense intrudes. The unusual usage of the verb
wayyorehu
comes to be read as an intertextual signpost to the passage in Proverbs, which then provides the rest of the solution to the mystery of Mara by supplying us with the metaphor of "tree" for Torah, as well as the explicit statement that the words of Torah are "healing"—that is, precisely the further difficult elements of the Mara narrative. These gaps and the success of the intertextual reading in filling them become a convincing authorization for taking the whole story in accord with the double reading of the verb
wayyorehu
itself. In effect we have two stories—one derived from the meaning "to show" and the other from ''to teach''. The second story is then to be read in the following fashion: They went three days in the desert and they did not find water=Torah (as in the Isaiah verse), and they came to Mara, but they could not drink water (study Torah) in Mara, because they were rebellious. Moses prayed and God taught him a word of Torah, which is a "tree of life," and the bitter waters (rebellious, Torahless people) became sweet. There indeed, He gave them law and ordinance, and there He tested them, saying, "If you keep the Torah which I have, this day, given you, then I will not place upon you any more plagues like the plagues of Egypt, for the words of Torah that I give you are healing for you and prevent you from being rebellious and requiring such chastisement." All of the ungrammaticalities and infelicities of the Torah narrative are thus elegantly resolved when it is read as a series of metaphors, decoded through their intertextuality.

Again, it seems to me that while there is a choice for the reader of
what
context to animate in order to provide some resolution of the ambiguities of the text, the requirement that
some
such activity must be undertaken is given by the text itself. The ambiguity is, therefore, in the discourse. Moreover, the particular choices of contextualization involved, while they are not necessary ones (quite obviously in the narrative at hand, since there are two of them), neither are they arbitrary, but rather seem to be actualizations of genuine interpretive possibilities that the canon offers.

The Mekilta continues its interpretation through to the end of the story. (Commentary to this section not strictly relevant to the argument of the chapter will be found in the notes).

And the threw into the water
. Others say, the Israelites were pleading and prostrating themselves before their Father in heaven at that time, like a son who pleads before his father and like a disciple who prostrates himself before his master, so did Israel plead and prostrate himself before his Father in heaven, saying, Master of the Universe, we sinned before you when we murmured about the water.
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And the water became sweet
. R. Yehoshua says, It became bitter for a time and then sweet. R. El'azar of Modi'in says, It was bitter from the start, for it says, "the water, the water," twice.
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There He gave them a statute and a law
. "Statute" is the Sabbath, and "a law" is honoring one's parents; the words of R. Yehoshua. R. El'azar of Modi'in says, ''Statute'' is forbidden sexual relations, as it is said, "Not to behave according to these abominable statutes" [Lev. 18:30]; "and a law," these are the laws of robbery, the laws of fines and the laws of torts.
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[Here follows the controversy on the meaning of "And there He proved them," which I have discussed above.]

And He said, if hearing you will hear
. Hence, they said, If a man hear one commandment, he is given to hear many commandments, as it is said, "If hearing, you will hear." If a man has forgotten one commandment, he is made to forget many commandments, as it is said "If forgetting, you will forget" [Deut. 8:19].
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The voice of the Lord, your God
. These are the ten words which were given mouth to mouth in ten voices [sounds].
And do what is straight in His eyes
. These are the praiseworthy interpretations which everyman can understand.
And you will hearken unto His commandments
. These are the decrees.
And keep all of His statutes
. These are the
halakot
.
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