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CHAPTER FOUR

MIDRASHIC INTERPRETATION OF THE BOOK AND THE MESSAGE OF PROPHET JONAH.

The book of Jonah consists of midrashic story made up to teach important lesson. Therefore, in this section, we shall attempt a midrashic interpretation of the book of Jonah and his message.

This will help us appreciate more the message God intends for all.

Midrash is found in two main forms namely the Haggadah and the Halakah. Haggadah is mainly an exposition of the meaning of the biblical narratives while Halakah is the exposition of the legal texts and the requirements set forth in Scripture. Pelaia (2014) holds that midrah ‗aggada‘

can best be described as a form of storytelling that explores ethics and values in biblical texts. It can take any biblical word or verse and interpret it to answer a question or explain something in the text. For Hermann (1959) the activity which has for its object the regulation of life through the law is called halakic; the fixed norm resulting therefrom as well as a single proposition is called Halakah. He explains Haggadah as form of Midrash saying –

It is again through Midrash that Holy Writ was made to do this service; but this midrahic activity is now ordinarily expressed by the word haggadah. The Haggadah in part followed closely the biblical text; frequently, however, the latter served as a peg upon which to hang expositions of most divergent sort. The Haggadah, which is to bring heaven nearer to the congregation and then to lift man heavenward, approves itself in this profession on the one side as glorification of God and on the other as consolation to Israel. Hence the chief contents of the addresses are made up of religious truths, maxims of morality, colloquies on just retribution, inculcation of the laws which mark off national coherence, descriptions of Israel‘s greatness in past and future, scenes and legends from Jewish history, parallels drawn between the institutions of God and those of Israel, praises of the Holy Land, edifying accounts and all kinds of consolation.

These addresses used to be delivered in synagogue or academy, feasibly also in private dwellings or in the open, principally on the Sabbaths and festivals, but

also on important public or private occasions (war, famine; circumcision, weddings, funerals and so on (p. 202).

From the above therefore, it follows that midrash were told from religious truths, maxims of morality, lessons from Israelites past mistakes with the aim to live harmoniously with one another and with God. It was after the return from Babylon that it developed gradually. After the return from Babylon, the Torah became more and more the norm in accordance with which the entire life of Israel was regulated in its externalities and the center of all spiritual life. It is to be wondered at that the written Law, the only sacred possession of the nation which remained from pre-exilic times was now to the Jews their one and all. The entire spiritual activity of the Jews assumed the character of searching and studying the Scripture.

The written ―Torah of Moses‖ was not a complete code of laws. Thus, it was not intended for the conditions in the first centuries after Babylonian captivity much less for the time when the Jewish state had ceased to exist wholly. Therefore, there was the need to accommodate the Torah to later times. This was done partly by a continuous process of lawmaking, partly by Midrash exposition (Hermann, 1959). The book and the message of Jonah should be seen within this setting of post exilic prophetic message and Jewish religion.

Midrash is a Hebrew word as we said earlier referring to a method of interpreting Biblical text.

The term can be used in one of three interrelated ways: as a verb, noun and as a book. Firstly,

―midrash‖ can be used as a verb as a way of interpreting a biblical verse. A common way of doing this is by juxtaposing Biblical verses. Actually the point may not appear in any one of the verses by themselves, but taken together the point is implicit. Secondly, ―midrash‖ can be used as a noun. In this sense it can refer to a particular verse and its interpretation. Thus one can say that ―The Midrash on the verse Genesis 1:1 really means that …‖ (and some midrashic

interpretation can go here). Thirdly, the term ―midrash‖ also can refer to a book, a compilation of Midrashic teachings, in the form of legal, exegetical or homiletical commentaries on the Tanakh.

In this sense, Genesis Rabbah is a book that compiles midrashim on the book of Genesis.

Elman (2016) is of the opinion that though midrash is the specific name for the activity of the biblical interpretation as practiced by the Rabbis of the land of Israel in the first five centuries of the common era, its understanding and use developed with time in history. The Hebrew word derives from the root, ש ַר ׇד , which literally means ―to inquire‖ or ―to search after.‖ In the earlier books of the Bible, the root is used to refer to the act of seeking out God‘s will, particularly through consulting a figure like Moses or a prophet or another type of oracular authority (Genesis 25:22; Exodus 18:15).

For Neusner (1987), midrash corresponds to the English word ―exegesis‖ and carries the same generic sense. So far as the writers of the Yerushalmi or the Bavli read and interpreted the Mishnah, they engaged in a process of midrash, and so too for Scripture. However, for him the word ―midrash‖ bears a more limited meaning, namely, interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, for the purpose of discovering a pertinent rule or theological truth in the Scripture.

Fruchtenbaum (2009) quotes Porton‘s definition of midrash as the best definition for him. From the definition he brings out three most important elements in midrash. He states:

Midrash is ―a type of literature, oral or written, which has its starting point in a fixed, canonical text, considered as the revealed word of God by the Midrashist and his audience, and in which the original verse is explicitly cited or clearly alluded to…‖For something to be considered Midrash it must have a clear relationship to the accepted canonical text of Revelation. Midrash is a term given to a Jewish activity which finds its locus in the religious life of the Jewish

community. While others exegete their revelatory canons and while Jews exegete other texts, only Jews who explicitly tie their comments to the Bible engage in Midrash (p. 6).

Three elements are important from the above definition of Porton namely: exegesis, starting with Scripture, and ending in the community. This is actually very significant and interesting. The understanding starts with the real meaning of the Scripture and ends in the community.

Fruchtenbaum (2009) goes further to explain Porton‘s stand saying:

The first point is that all details of a given verse of Scripture lay open for explanation. Every letter, every verse, and phrase contained in the Bible was important and written as it was for a specific reason. The Bible contained no needless expressions, no ―mere‖ repetitions and superfluous words or phrases.

The assumption that every element of the biblical text was written in a specific way in order to teach something underlines the midrashic activity of the rabbis.

The advantage of relating one‘s comment on a verse to the character of that verse is simple. It bears the implication that what the exegete says now is the particular and inevitable message of the verse itself. Hence, this kind of Midrash, however fanciful, bears the claim of expressing the original meaning of Scripture that is, God‘s meaning…Furthermore, rabbis believed that everything contained in Scriptures was interrelated. Often one verse is explained by reference to another verse (p. 7).

The noun midrash appears two times in the Old Testament: 2 Chronicles 13:22 states that ―the rest of the acts of Abijah, his ways and his sayings are written in the story of the prophet Iddo‖;

and 2 Chronicles 24:27 notes that ―Accounts of his sons, and of the many oracles against him,

and of the rebuilding of the house of God are written in the commentary on the Books of the Kings‖.

In Judaism therefore, Midrash is the body of the exegesis of Torah texts along with homiletic stories as taught by the Rabbinical Jewish sages of the post- Temple era that provide an intrinsic analysis to passages in the TaNakh. Thus Midrash is a method of interpreting biblical stories that goes beyond simple distillation of religious, legal, or moral teachings. As such it fills in the gaps left in the biblical narrative regarding events and personalities that are only mentioned. The purpose of midrash was to resolve problems in the interpretation of difficult passages of the text of the Hebrew Bible by using Rabbinic principles of hermeneutics and philology to align them with the religious and ethical values of religious teachers. It will be necessarily to see the importance of midrashim to help us appreciate its application in the book of Jonah.