Midrash is the way the Christians and the Jewish people of the first century interpreted the bible. This article is a simple introduction to midrash, simplified for distribution in Asia.
The Pharisees had the keys.
When we read the gospels, we see that often the Pharisees understood Jesus’ words clearly, whereas the disciples and common people didn’t.
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them.
Matthew 21:45
When the chief priests and Pharisees heard Jesus teachings, they quickly understood.
Now on the next day, the day after the preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate and said, "Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said, 'After three days I am to rise again.'
Matthew 27:62-63
The disciples did not understand about the resurrection at that point, yet the Pharisees seen to have understood Jesus' words and parables clearly.
After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, "Hear and understand. "It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man." Then the disciples came and said to Him, "Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?" ...Peter said to Him, "Explain the parable to us." Jesus said, "Are you still lacking in understanding also?"
Matthew 15:10-12, 15-16
Notice here that the Pharisees were offended, yet the disciples were ‘without understanding’. Why?
The Jewish teachers knew midrash. They had ‘the keys’ of knowledge.
"Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who were entering."
Luke 11:52
The teachers had the keys but they withheld them from the people. The keys refers to understanding the bible. Unlocking, in a sense, the mysteries of scripture. Jesus’ parables were to be unlocked to discover hidden things, as Isaiah had prophesied.
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and He did not speak to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: "I WILL OPEN MY MOUTH IN PARABLES; I WILL UTTER THINGS HIDDEN SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD."
Matthew 13:34-35
This truth applies to the whole of scripture, especially the Old Testament. Notice the Pharisees’ attitude toward the common people. One Pharisee said,
"But this crowd which does not know the Law is accursed."
John 7:49
The people who did not know the law truly were accursed. Yet the guilt lay with the teachers who used their knowledge to enjoy and maintain their power and influence in society as ‘great’ religious leaders, rather than give the people understanding of the bible.
"Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to those shepherds, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock?
Ezekiel 34:2
This of course angered God greatly and he took the keys away from them and gave them to others.
"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."
Matthew 16:9
Jesus gives the keys to the disciples. The keys are not some power to grant or deny people access to heaven at their own will, or to lock up the devil in some way; ‘the keys’, in the context of the gospels, refers to the understanding of scripture, which, through living faith and obedience, grants anyone access to heaven and a Spirit filled life. Through their teaching and the New Testament writings, the apostles passed on the keys to us. But where are the keys today? The church has largely forgotten how to interpret scripture again.
Genres.
You must read (interpret) any writing according to its genre. In Japan, they have Haiku poetry. There are three lines to each poem with 5, 7 and 5 syllables in each line respectively. If you were to read an English translation, or not recognize the pattern, it would lose its beauty and it may simply be confusing. When you read Aesop’s fables (ancient Greek moral fables) about the fox and the stork etc, you don’t read it the same way you would read the weather report. Filipino literature would have to be understood in a certain way to make sense. The bible was given in the culture and language of the Jews, so we have to understand a little about Jewish literature to fully appreciate it. The Pharisees and Jewish clergy knew it, but the (relatively) uneducated disciples and truth starved common people of Jesus’ day didn’t.
Midrash: A "looking into"...
Jesus was a rabbi and taught the way other rabbis taught. He used midrash. Midrash can be defined as a ‘looking into’ something. Looking past the surface and finding the deeper truths. We find the Hebrew word מדרש ‘midrash’ in 2 Chr 13:22 and 2 Chr 24:27. It is translated as 'treatise'. Midrash looks for relationships between various texts in order to interpret them in light of each other. Here is a list of some of the key points about midrash:
- Midrash emphasizes allegory (typology) to illuminate doctrine
- The parable, called a ‘mashal’, is much more important and common in scripture than most Christians realize.
- The principle called ‘light to heavy’.
- When different events occur at the same place, the same season or day, in the same circumstance and when the same phrases or Hebrew/Greek words are used there is a spiritual / theological connection between them.
Let’s look at some examples to show how we can use these different kinds of midrash methods to understand the bible:
Creation/New Creation.
When you have the same circumstance or the
same phrases used in different places in scripture, you should expect there to be a spiritual
relationship between them.
This happens with the creation in Genesis 1-3. (Also Job and Proverbs 8),
the new creation in John 1-3 and the
re-creation in Revelation. If a first century Jewish Christian were reading John 1-3, he would say it
was a midrash on the creation in Genesis 1-3. The same themes occur in each place.
-
i) In the creation in Genesis, God created all things.
(Gen 1:1)
In the new creation in John, the ‘logos’ created all things. (John 1:1-3) -
ii) There was the small light and the
great light in Genesis. (Gen 1:16)
Now, in the new creation there is John the Baptist, the small light, and Jesus Christ, the great light. (John 1:6-9) . -
iii) In the creation, God Separated the
light and darkness. (Gen 1:4)
In the new creation, the true light shines in the world but the darkness does not comprehend it. Hence a separation. (1 John 1:5) -
vi) In Genesis, God does a Miracle with water on the
third day. (Gen 1:9,10).
In John, Jesus does a miracle with water on the third day. (John 2:1) -
v) In Genesis, man is made on the
6th day and God puts His Spirit within him. Thus man is
created.
In John, Jesus takes six water pots and fills them with water and changes them to wine (a type of the spirit). A picture of the new creation. -
vi) God begins his plan for man with a
marital union of Adam and Eve.
In John, Jesus does his first public miracle at a wedding. -
vii) In Genesis, the Spirit blows on the water and brings forth the
creation.
And in John we are born of water and the spirit, which is the new creation. - ..And the list goes on...
- viii) In Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden from the presence of God. But in John Chapter 2, the money changers are cast out of the temple from the presence of God. One is a picture of the other.
-
ix) The tree of life. The tree of life appears in the Garden of Eden, Ezekiel and Revelation. In Jewish
metaphor it is represented by the fig tree.
Nathanael said to Him, "How do You know me?" Jesus answered and said to him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."
John 1:48
Mini-Parables.
Another principle of midrash is the mashal/nimshal relationship. As Solomon puts it, “To understand a proverb (Hebrew- ‘mashal’) and an enigma (a hidden thing). The words of the wise and their riddles.” The book of Proverbs is called, in Hebrew, ‘Mishle’: the Book of Mashals.
A mashal is a kind of parable with a simple everyday meaning, the ‘nimshal’ is the corresponding deeper truth. What we usually miss, is that all the events of the bible can be interpreted in this way, while not neglecting the literal understanding (which must come first):
- Proverbs 25:14
Like clouds and wind without rain...that is the Mashal... -
So is a man who boasts of his gifts falsely... Here is the Nimshal.
The deeper truth. Jude draws on this midrash in Jude 12:
These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted;
Clouds without rain look wet, but they give no water. They look like they are filled with the Spirit, but they aren’t. Jude says these people are in the church. Proverbs gives us more insight: They look like they have gifts, but they don’t.
Another example:
- Deuteronomy 25:4
Don't muzzle and ox while it treads out the grain...the Mashal - 1 Corinthians 9:9-10
The minister ought to receive wages...the nimshal
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Matthew 11:29
Parables are simply long mashals. This is how the Rabbis taught. They knew how to interpret them.
Events in the same location.
When two events happen in the same location there is usually a connection between them.
-
a) Elijah’s ministry ended on the banks of the Jordan,
Elisha’s ministry began there and
John the Baptist ministered there also. There is a deep theological connection between these
three prophets. Elisha received Elijah’s mantle of authority (anointing) and John came ‘in the spirit
and power of Elijah’ (Luke 1:17). They had the same anointing, the same ministry and therefore the
same kind of experiences and challenges in their lives.
Elijah confronted the wicked king, Ahab, when he coveted the vineyard of Naboth. But it was Jezebel, Ahab’s wicked wife, that tried to have Elijah killed. Likewise, John confronted the wicked King Herod who coveted God’s vineyard (Israel), and Herodius, Herod’s wicked wife, had John killed. It is the same pattern.
This teaches us about the two witnesses in the book of Revelation and their ministry. One lesson we may learn from this is that the church’s greater enemy is not the persecuting state or government, represented by the king, but false religion, represented throughout the bible by Jezebel (Rev 2:20). In other words, deception is a greater threat than persecution. Persecution tends to strengthen the church, deception destroys it. The spirit of Elijah is the anointing to stand up and confront the sins of a wicked society in a time of gross idolatry. Persecution will follow. Elijah and Elisha fed God’s people in a time of famine. Likewise all Jerusalem (those people who were not being fed by the Pharisees and priests) went out to hear the Word of God through John. John came after 400 years of prophetic silence, a famine. There many other relationships between John, Elijah and Elisha, also the prophet Samuel. When we read their stories together and see the patterns, then we find the deeper truths and lessons. -
b) Events occurring at Shechem.
Try reading about the events which took place at Shechem in Genesis 12:6, Deuteronomy 11:29-32, and Judges 9. Can you see the relationship between them? I will leave this as an exercise for you. Remember to look up the meaning of the word Shechem. That is always important. Using an exhaustive concordance is a great help with midrash.
The same time of the year.
We often find a relationship between events which happened at the same time of the year. Especially on the same calendar day. It sheds great light on Jesus' teaching to know that when He gave the parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25, the Jews were all reading the Song of Solomon in their synagogues in the same week. The allegory and images Jesus used in John chapter 7 and 8 (at the feast of Tabernacles) comes straight from Leviticus chapters 23 and 24 (ordinances regarding the Feast of Tabernacles). The yearly ritual of pouring out of the water on the temple mount from the pool of Shiloam (meaning 'sent', or APOSTLE), at the time of Tabernacles, is the background for Jesus' words,
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, " If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'"
John 7:37
Also the regular lighting of the candle at the Feast of Tabernacles and the typology of Leviticus 24:1-4 immediately following the law of Tabernacles (Lev 23) is the background for Jesus’ statements in John 8:12:
Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.
The Jews would bring olives from the mount of olives and use the oil to light a great candle in the temple which would have been burning at that time. In John 8:12 Jesus was speaking in the temple, having just come from the Mount of Olives (John 8:1) and was declaring himself as the fulfillment of all the Old Testament laws. The gospels shed light on the law, and we understand the actions and words of Jesus in light of the law. The gospels are a ‘midrash’ on the law. The gospel of John particularly, is a midrash on the festival laws.
Let’s consider the Book of Ruth. The book of Ruth takes place at the festival of Pentecost, the feats of weeks. It is the story of an old, bitter Jewish woman (Naomi) and her faithful, gentile daughter in law (Ruth). Ruth marries the ‘kinsman redeemer’ from Bethlehem and the bitter woman who felt that God was against her finally finds comfort in the baby born in Bethlehem. It is easy to see that this relates directly to the New Testament. In fact it perfectly displays the real meaning of the feast of Pentecost. The Gentiles are led to the Jewish ‘Kinsman redeemer’. That is Christ, the baby born in Bethlehem, who saved both Jew and Gentile in the time of harvest. There is a whole background to understanding the feast of Pentecost through the book of Ruth. Here I am only giving you an idea of where to look. When events happen at the same time, holiday or season, there is a spiritual and theological link between them.
So if you are reading in scripture that something happened at a particular time, search to see what else happened at that time, or festival, or place etc. Look for the patterns and the Holy Spirit will reveal to you the hidden things, as spoken by Isaiah. (Matthew 13:35)
Light to Heavy
'Light to Heavy' is another principle of midrash. Paul used this extensively. Simply put, it says that whatever is true in a light situation, becomes particularly true in a heavy situation.
There have always been false prophets, but the way they multiplied in number and influence in the last days of Judah and Israel, as recorded in Jeremiah etc, and historically at the first coming of Christ, is significant to understanding the many prophecies of Christ regarding false prophets and teachers in the last days. Mat 24. 2 Pet 2:1. The last days of Judah, the last days of Israel, the last days of the Jews up until 70AD are all a midrash of the last days of the church. What happened then will happen again. It always does, with each recurrence teaching about the ultimate one to come.
not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near
Hebrews 10:25
Fellowship is always important (light situation) but even more so as you see the day approaching (heavy situation).Jesus used "light-to-heavy" when He was on the cross:
And following Him was a large crowd of the people, and of women who were mourning and lamenting Him. But Jesus turning to them said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.' Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, 'FALL ON US,' AND TO THE HILLS, 'COVER US.' For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?"
Luke 23:27-31
What happened to Jesus, the injustice, the wild crowds, the murder, was light compared to what happened in the Siege of Jersusalem a generation later. Then a million people were killed. But even that will be light compared to what will happen in the great tribulation, when they say to the mountians and the hills “Fall on us and hide us from the One who sits upon the throne and the Lamb.” That will happen in the last days, as recorded in Revelation chapter 6 verse 16. (See also Hosea 10:8).
That is ‘Light to Heavy’. The same kinds of things that happened at Jesus death, happened in the same way when Jerusalem was judged, and will happen again in the last days.
Forgetting the root.
The problem in the protestant church is that we have lost sight of the Jewish root of our faith. As Naomi showed Ruth how to find Boaz and where to glean the grain, so the Jews showed the gentiles how to find Christ and how to get the Word. Later, the church fathers redefined Christianity as a western Greek religion. They applied Greek ideas to biblical topics and themes. In doing so the church lost sight of the original cultural and literary context of the bible. As an example, to the Jewish mind, the flesh (sarx) was fallen but not evil. To the Greek mind the flesh is evil and the spirit is good. This dualism led to all the error of Roman Catholicism regarding the body of Christ, the communion, marital sex, suffering, pleasure, etc. Anything physical was regarded as evil. And so the church, for hundreds of years, lay under these Greek dualistic ideas. In the Hebrew world view, these physical things were not evil, but simply fallen, and in the born again life may be redeemed.
Also, like the Greek writers, western Christians spiritualized everything. Rome became the New Jerusalem, the Pope is the vicar of Christ, etc. Then came the reformation and Humanist scholars like Calvin, who, reacting to this, began to look at the bible in a literal sense. But the reformers mostly still interpreted scripture from a Greek mind. They said, “If the plain reading makes sense, seek no further sense.” In other words, don‘t look for another meaning. They also said, “A parable can have many applications, but only one correct interpretation.”
Jesus disagreed. The sign of Jonah, Jesus explained in one place, was that as Jonah was three days and nights
in the belly of the fish, so the Son of Man would be three days in the grave. But in another place it was how
the Gentiles repented but the Jews wouldn’t.
In midrash, a parable can have multiple interpretations, but each one must be in line with the whole revelation
of scripture.
Solomon, as the son of David, is a type of Christ. Yet he is also a major type of the Antichrist. (See 1 Kings 10). Adam was a type of Christ, yet he is also used as a type of this world and the fallen nature.
Prophecy.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of midrash is prophecy. To the western mind, prophecy is a prediction and a fulfillment. To the Jewish mind this is far too simplistic. In midrash, prophecy is a pattern which repeats itself many times before the ultimate fulfillment.
Abraham, in a famine, goes down into Egypt. He gets into trouble. God judges the king Pharaoh and then Abraham comes out of Egypt brining the treasures of Egypt with him.
Abraham’s descendants, the children of Israel, go down into Egypt in a famine. They end up in trouble and in the Exodus they plunder Egypt and God Judges Pharaoh, the wicked king.
In 1 Corinthians 10, we come out of Egypt (a type of the world) and God judges Satan (the wicked king). The church is the treasure buried in a field (the world). We come through baptism (the red sea), spirit baptism (through the cloud) and into the promised land. As Moses went to a mountain, made a covenant with blood and sprinkled it upon the people, so Christ went to Calvary, and a covenant with his own blood and sprinkled it upon the people.
The ultimate fulfillment is the rapture of the church. We literally come out of this world and Antichrist (the wicked king) is defeated. The way that Pharaoh and his armies are drowned in the Red Sea is the way that Antichrist (the rider on the white horse) and his armies are cast into the lake of fire. One is a type of the other. In Exodus the Hebrews stood by the Red Sea and say the bodies of the Egyptians floating and they sang a song of praise led by Miriam. That is why they sing the song of Moses in the book of Revelation Chapter 15 while standing on a sea of glass (no more waves). ‘The horse and rider are cast into the sea’. As Jannes and Jambres counterfeited the miracles of Moses and Aaron, so the Antichrist and false prophet counterfeit the miracles of Jesus and his witnesses. They took the bones of Joseph with them in the exodus to bury in the promised land. So the dead in Christ shall rise first. The plagues of the Exodus come again in Revelation. Frogs, hail, darkness etc.
To understand revelation we need to see prophecy as the Jews did. Not as a prediction and a fulfillment, but as a pattern. In that sense, the whole of the bible is prophecy. Every event is part of a pattern. Through midrash we have the keys to recognize the pattern. It is not a great secret. Remember Jesus gave the keys to the apostles and they have given them to us in the New Testament, the problem is our western, protestant theology and interpretation methods which cloud the issues.
Points to remember.
The bible was given to the Jews in their own cultural setting. Even the epistles include midrash, although Paul generally explains it when he is writing to gentiles. The ‘Jewish epistles’: 1 and 2 Peter, James, and Jude contain lots of midrash and cannot be well understood without considering it.
Look for patterns. The same time, place, circumstance, etc. Old Age pregnancies, a woman at a well, etc... these kind of things appear throughout the bible and these passages must be read in light of each other.
As more and more Jewish people have come to Christ worldwide in recent years they are bringing fresh insight into the bible. Midrash does not give us any new doctrine. It only illuminates what we already know and makes it clearer. A doctrine must never be based on typology, doctrine must be based on clear scripture. Typology is then used to illustrate it.
(Originally written as an overview of ‘midrash’ by J. Prasch)
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