Midrashic forms defy categorization. As study of midrash gained popularity in university departments of literature in the 1970s and 1980s, a great deal of energy and effort was expended on applying existing literary form conventions to midrash so as the to be able to classify passages on the bases of pre-existing literary forms. With the exception of some insights on the structure of so-called homiletical midrash, this effort essentially came to naught because the fluidity of midrash made it impossible to apply fixed categories to it[1]. At the same time it cannot be denied that there do exist certain common structures that one tends to encounter repeatedly. It seems to me that the reason for the academicians' failure to make proper sense of them is that they attempted to find in them literary conventions rather than a religious-moral function.
Mekhilta on our parsha contains several examples of a common Midrashic structure. In it, a tanna, often identified by name, provides a measurement or size of something in the verse. This measurement tends to be quite reasonable and realistic. It is followed by several anonymous logarithmic expansions, until we end up with a number that is clearly more in the realm of derash than pshat. Let us look at two examples from our parsha.
And Chamushim did the Children of Israel go out of Egypt (Exodus 13,18).
Chamushim is naught but a language of armed (with weapons)…
Another interpretation: one out of five.
Another interpretation: one out of fifty
Another interpretation: one out of five hundred[2].
R. Nehorai said: By Divine Service - not one out of five hundred as it says, "You were numerous like sprouts of the field (Yechezkel 16)", and it says, "The Children of Isreal grew numerous and swarmed and mighty" - that a single woman gave birth to six in one pregnancy - and you say that one in five hundred came out?! By Divine Service, not even one in five hundred came out and not even one in five thousand[3]. Rather many Jews died during the three days of darkness….
It goes without saying that if only one of five thousand Jews left Egypt and considering that there were 600.000.00 males, the total number of Jews who had lived in Egypt before the Exodus would have to be in tens of trillions.
Another passage.
And he took 600 selected chariots and all chariots of Egypt and threes over all of it (Exodus 14,7).
R. Shimon Ben Gamilel said: This is the third horse. In the past only two horses drove a chariot but Pharaoh added one more in order to be faster to chase after the Children of Israel.
R. Antoninus said : There were three and he added one more so that there were four horses.
Another interpretation: There were three horses for each one[4].
Another interpretation: Three hundred horses for each one.
So what we have is a resonable interpetation followed by wilder and wilder exaggerations that are clearly not tenable in realisttic terms.
Here is another passage, not form this week's parsha, that nicely illustrates this Midrashic form. When Esther entered Achashuerosh's presence he extended a staff to her as retroactive authorization to come inisde without an appointment. The staff miraculously elongated.
(How much did it extend?) R. Yirmiah said: It was two cubits and He made it twelve cubits long. Some say - sixteeen. Some say - twenty four. In the Masnisa it was taught: sixty. Similarly you find the case with the hand of the servant girl (who pulled Moshe out of the Nile) and so you find with the teeth of the wicked (of the giant Og whose teeth elongated so that he could not take off the mountain that he put on his shoulders in order to throw it on the camp of the Jews) (Megilah 15b).
The fantastic numbers that are often found in Aggadah have already been noted by various Rishonim. Rashba, for example, when discussing the story about Og in Brochos 54b, says "at times Sages expounded in public…and people would fall asleep. To awaken them they said to them things that were strange and would wake them up. 'Rebbi expounded and the public slumbered. He sought to awaken them and said: one woman in Egypt gave birth to 600.000.00 in one womb. There was one student there by the name of R. Ishmael b.r. Yosi. He saked; "Who was she?" He said to him: "Yocheved who gave birth to Moshe who was valued like 600.000.00 (of Israel)" (Canticles Rabbah 1,15,3. See also Z.C. Chajes, Student's Guide through the Talmud, p. 196)[5].
That Chazal often exaggerated measurements and numbers[6] for pedagogical reasons is well accepted and attested to in Talmud itself[7]. We are, however, interested in the form that it often takes in Midrash - a realistic measurement, followed by one expansion after another until the numbers are clearly in the realm of fantastic. Why this order of presentation and what motivates these expansions?
It seems to me that Chazal were very aware of the limitations of pshat as a tool for understanding the Bible. Pshat, by definition, is based on our everyday experiences; it tends to the common sense and is naturalistic. We attempt to explain the meaning of verses in a way that makes the most sense based on our experience and other facts that we know that can bring to bear on the verses that we ponder. From many perspectives, everyday experience is an inadequate tool with which to approach miraculous and out of ordinary[8]. In addition, peshat is weak as a motivational tool to greater religious commitment. Our imagination is not stimulated by what is close to our experience; on the contrary, the quest for the Divine seeks to transgress the boundaries of reason and to escape into an altogether different and extraordinary sphere of imagination. It may be that Chazal felt this limitation or reason when speaking of the miraculous events and times in history. The scholars that came later could not be content with merely recording the comments of the previous Sages, when they felt that the miraculous that was portrayed there was not miraculous enough. It is not that they were interested in the actual length or size, it was the essential inadequacy in how reason relates to miracles. They wished the audience to feel and palpably sense the miraculous and not be content with the reasonable and commonplace. They wanted the people to experience and sense Divine intervention and increasing and enlarging the magnitudes and sizes served that pedagogical purpose.
[1] For a review of the rise and fall of academic study of midrash see D. Stern, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish exegesis and contemporary literary studies, Northwestern University Press, 1996, introduction.
[2] See notes to Torah Shelema who quotes opinions that this view is "da'as yechida'ah", a one person's opinion and that we do not follow it, as well as a lament cited there that "we in Islamic lands already have great problems with the Moslems who argue against the number of 600.000.00 Jews arising out of 70 individuals within 210 years".
[3] Following Vilna Gaon's emendation
[4] Of Israel (Zeis Ra'anan).. Torah Shelema quotes some versions that also have "thirty for each one"
[5] Feldheim, 1960. A new edition was recently published by Yashar Press.
[6] The Talmudic examples of exaggeration all relate to size or measurement. It is not clear that this Talmudic form can be extended beyond these parameters into the realm of character qualities, punishments for sins, or Divine attributes.
[7] From the Talmudic discussion in Tamid 27b it appears that only the specific examples quoted there are subject to this principle, "The Sages spoke in an exaggerated language", as it also appears from Tosafot Chullin 90b, s.v Bshlosha Makomot. See Mateh Dan of R. David Nieto (III, 116) who appears to understand it contrarily as a general principle that can be widely applied to aggadic staements. In this he follows Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed II, 47 and Shiltei Giborim Avodah Zara, p. 6 (in Alfasi). Others explained that even the examples given in the Talmud are to be understood as literal and the only exaggeration is that they described them as always being in a certain way when they were that way only occasionally. Thus, the example of Paroches which was washed by 300 priests is to be understood as saying that it was of a size that maximum 300 priests could handle, not that that number of priests always did (See M. Kornfeld, Torah from the Internet, Judaica Press, 1998, p.88, who makes this claim based on comments of Vilna Gaon). For those who do not have access to the book, here is a link
http://dafyomi.shemayisrael.co.il/chulin/insites/ch-dt-090.htm
[8] U. Simon makes this point eloquently in U. Simon, “The Religious Significance of the Peshat,” Tradition 23 (1988), n.2, 41-63, http://www.ericlevy.com/Revel/Revel.htm
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