The Earliest Biblical Exegesis is in the Bible Itself

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We usually think of exegesis as the external interpretation of a text, and of biblical exegesis as interpretation external to the Bible. Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible began, however, long before the canon closed and the text became fixed. And this exegesis, or interpretation, can be identified within the sacred text itself. I call this kind of textual interpretation inner biblical exegesis.

In short, the Hebrew Bible not only sponsored a monumental culture of textual exegesis (the rabbinic corpus) but the Bible itself was its own first product. Without any attempt to be comprehensive, I would like to explore a few examples illustrating the ways the Hebrew Bible was exegetically revised and even reauthorized during the course of many centuries, and how older traditions fostered new insights which, in turn, thickened the intertextual matrix of the culture and conditioned its imagination.

In the beginning, the ancient Hebrew composers theologically adapted and historicized ancient Near Eastern myths; nomadic recollections were revised in order to promote the prestige and claims of tribal ancestors; and repeated narrative themes were reworked with new moral or theological considerations in mind.

By the first millennium B.C., the ancient oral culture was subsumed into a developing text, but the process described above continued, although often in a more narrowly circumscribed way. As before, the culture determined, and reflected, its values by what it chose to receive and transmit as authoritative. However, revision of these materials was increasingly more affected by the discriminating eye of the trained scribe, as he patiently copied out a text and reacted to its ambiguities and oddities.

One of the plainest examples involves place names. We find numerous instances in which old place names are retained but supplemented by their newer names. Thus, in Joshua 18:13 we read “Luz: it is Bethel.”

Other examples involve foreign terms, which are often translated. Thus, in Esther 3:7, we read “pur: that is the lot”

Such scribal intrusions should not be minimized, for they open a window upon the regard ancient Israelite scribes had for authoritative texts, whose obliquities were retained alongside their explication. It would certainly have been easier and more economical for scribes to have removed or reformulated the disturbing words. On the other hand, even this meager evidence makes clear that the authoritative text being explicated was not considered inviolable, but rather was subjected to the invasion of a tradition of interpretation that rendered it more comprehensible.

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Here is another example: Ezra 3:10–12 describes the ceremony at the laying of the cornerstone of the Second Temple in the fifth century B.C.: “Many priests, Levites, heads of patriarchal clans, and elders who had seen the First Temple when it was founded [400 years earlier!]—it is [that is, refers to] the [Second] Temple—cried loudly” at the ceremony consecrating the Second Temple.

Obviously, without the phrase set off by dashes, there is an unintended ambiguity here. Without this phrase, the italicized “it” seems to refer to the First Temple; yet it is obvious that no one at the laying of the cornerstone of the Second Temple in the fifth century B.C. was also at the founding of the Solomonic Temple in the tenth century B.C. The phrase “when it was founded” must be intended to refer to the founding of the Second Temple. What the writer meant is that when the Second Temple was founded, some dignitaries at the ceremony who had seen the First Temple in all its glory cried loudly. The original text did not have the phrase set off by dashes. Upon noting the ambiguity, the ancient transmitter(s) of the text could have either deleted the phrase “when it was founded” or rearranged the sentence so that this claim clearly referred to the Second Temple, not the First. But the explicator of the text chose neither of these alternatives. Instead, he inserted a syntactically disruptive phrase after the words “when it was founded.” The phrase, “it is [that is, refers to] the [Second] Temple,” clearly was added, later to remove the ambiguity; it directs the reader to the proper historical reference, namely, to the founding of the Second Temple, not the First. Since this explicatory comment pokes disruptingly out of the sentence, the latter-day reader is still constrained to pause and notice the original reading. Paradoxically then, by retaining the old together with the new, the scribes have forced future readers to a realization not far removed from their own: that they are latecomers to the text, who must read it with the guidance of an oral—now written—exegetical tradition.

Even in the language of the prophets, speaking under divine revelation, we can detect inner biblical exegesis. In Isaiah 29, the prophet is denouncing the people of Judah; they have been the object of his scorn throughout the preceding oracles and no new subject has been introduced. In Isaiah 29:9–11 we would expect to find that it is the people of Judah who are referred to as drunk and who totter and who cannot fathom the prophetic visions given to them. But by the addition of a few words the oracle becomes—by inner biblical exegesis—a rebuke of false prophets. The passage is not easy and requires a close reading; the inner biblical exegesis—the words added by an interpreter—are italicized in the following quotation from Isaiah 29:9–11:

“9. Be astonished and dazed, revel and be, blinded: you have drunk, but not from wine; totter, but not from drink;

10. For YHWH^a has poured over you a spirit of stupefaction: He has closed your eyes—namely, the prophets—and your heads he has cloaked—the seers;

11. All prophetic visions shall be sealed from you ….”

Without inclusion of the italicized words it is YHWH who has closed your eyes and cloaked your heads. The object of the denunciation is unspecified. Because of what preceded, however, it would seem that the object was the people of Judah. By the addition of the italicized words—“namely, the prophets” and “the seers”—the object of Isaiah’s scorn has shifted from the people to (false) prophets and seers who do not speak with the true word of God.

Moreover, by the addition of the italicized words, a common biblical literary construction called chiasmus has been disrupted. Here is another clue that we are in the presence of inner biblical exegesis. Chiasmus derives etymologically from the Greek letter chi, which looks like an x; chiasmus refers to a rhetorical construction of an a, b; b’, a’ type. In such a construction, the linguistic features of a second line invert (usually by means of synonyms) those of the preceding one.

In Isaiah 29, without the words added by inner biblical exegesis, we have a perfect chiasmus in which a second line is inversely parallel to a first line, literally:

“He has closed your eyes;

Your heads he has cloaked.”

This chiasm may be diagrammed as follows:

Here—in the original—it is the people who do not see. In this quotation of Isaiah 29:10, without the inner biblical exegesis, we can identify the preserved original oracle. By the explicatory addition “the (false) prophets” and “the seers,” they—the false prophets and the seers—become the cause of the people’s blindness. The result is that an oracle condemning the people is transformed into a rebuke of false prophets.

Without going into further detail (but relating to this same example), we simply observe that in the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Bible, 044parts of which may date from the third century B.C., this process of exegesis within the text of Isaiah was taken further, for there the abruptness of the intrusion was smoothed over. And a later Greek version, known as the Lucianic recension, went still further in an effort to improve on the Septuagint version without (apparently) ever consulting the Masoretic Hebrew version.

From the viewpoint of the exegetical process, the textual strata represented by the Masoretic text and by the Septuagint and its Lucianic recension reflect continuous rereadings of the original oracle. Moreover, this example represents the most invasive exegetical procedure, which, in the final Hebrew text, transforms the meaning of the passage and disturbs its syntactic balance—a matter later translators into Greek tried to rectify.

Moreover, this striking transformation of an oracle against the people into one against false prophets shows the extent to which the interpretive tradition might introduce a new authority into a received tradition, so that these human comments compete with and ultimately transform the focus of the ancient, divine words. The privileged voice of divine revelation and the human voice of instruction have become one. That this paradox not always perceived is a measure of the scribes’ success in subordinating their voice to that of the tradition. Even more paradoxically, in the end it is their interpretations that have become the received tradition; their oral traditions are the written text given to the community.

These same dynamics are present in legal and theological exegesis. Indeed, legal and theological texts most frequently require interpretation for comprehension. Their ambiguity catalyzes commentary, and the scribal textual supplements reflect the cultural dynamics of transmission.

By way of example, let us look at the legislation relating to the sabbatical year. Already in its earliest statement in Exodus 23:10–11, we can detect some inner biblical exegesis; in the restatement of the law of the sabbatical year in Leviticus 25:3–5, we can see how this exegesis has been expanded.

When the sabbatical law was formulated, referred only to fields (agriculture); no provision was made for vineyards or olive groves. Even in the earliest biblical formulation, in Exodus 23:11b, however, the latter (vineyards and olive groves) are covered, but almost as an afterthought. Here is the sabbatical year legislation as expressed in Exodus 23:10–11:

“10. ‘You shall sow your land for six years and reap its yield,

11a. but [during] the seventh year you shall let it lie fallow and abandon it; let the poor of your nation eat thereof, and let the beast of the field eat what they leave over.

11b. You shall do likewise (ken ta’aseh) to your vineyard and your olive grove.”

Verse 11b, the afterthought, is introduced by a technical formula (ken ta’aseh) frequently used in biblical regulations when a rule is extended. Verse 11b is essentially an addendum to cover the case of vineyards and olive groves.

But the extension of the rule is not exactly analogous to the rule itself. With respect to planted fields we are forbidden to sow. But how does this apply to vineyards and olive groves that are not sown annually? Could one prune in the seventh year, though not reap? Could one eat from the vine if one did not prune it? The application of the rule of the sabbatical year to vineyards and olive groves is not clear.

Undoubtedly these and similar ambiguities were resolved by oral exegesis. But when the rule repeated in written form in a later text, in Leviticus 25:3–5, the matter is clarified in the text itself:

“Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines; it shall be a year of complete rest for the land.”

Note that the passage in Leviticus, italicized in the preceding citation, is not presented as a Mosaic repetition of an earlier dictum but as an original divine prescription.

But the most striking feature of this legal explication in Leviticus is the way it obscures the innovation—the addition of the application of the rule to vineyards and olive groves—by syntactically incorporating it into the provision relating agriculture. In Exodus 23:11b, it will be recalled, the provision for viticulture was added as a kind of syntactically awkward addendum. In the repetition in Leviticus, however, the provision for viticulture has been incorporated into the principal rule; it is smooth syntactically; and its application is clear. The original addendum has been normalized. The technical formula “you shall do likewise” that was used in Exodus is no longer needed, so it is dropped.

In the process of this exegetical revision, the interpretive voice has been obscured, or redignified as a divine voice. Indeed, it is largely by means of such intrusions of living legal commentary into preexistent written rules that we can see how human innovations were reauthorized and 045given the prestige of divine authority in the literary traditions of ancient Israel.

In the cases we have examined, exegesis arises out of a practical crisis of some sort—the incomprehensibility of a word or a rule, or the failure of the covenantal tradition to engage its audience. There is, then, something of the dynamic of “tradition and individual talent” here—where the tradition sets the agenda of problems that must be creatively resolved or determines the received language that is then imaginatively reworked.¹ In all cases the “tradition” maintains its generative power; often the “tradition” also maintains a certain determinative hierarchical preeminence. But there is still room for “individual talent” (either an individual or a school representative) who clarifies or transforms tradition in the light of present-day ignorance or other exigencies. And finally “individual talent” is particularly predominant in those many other cases of inner biblical exegesis in which the transmitter is not initially beset by textual queries, but where he imaginatively transforms topics, traditions and formulations of the past in new moral or theological directions.

The entire corpus of Scripture remained open to these invasive, strategic and creative reworkings of traditions up to the close of the canon in the early rabbinic period, and so our received text is complexly compacted of teachings and their subversion, of rules and their extension, of literary images and their revision. Within ancient Israel, as long as the textual corpus remained open, revelation and tradition were thickly interwoven and interdependent, and the received Hebrew Bible is itself, therefore, the product of creative and sophisticated interpretive tradition.²

We usually think of exegesis as the external interpretation of a text, and of biblical exegesis as interpretation external to the Bible. Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible began, however, long before the canon closed and the text became fixed. And this exegesis, or interpretation, can be identified within the sacred text itself. I call this kind of textual interpretation inner biblical exegesis. In short, the Hebrew Bible not only sponsored a monumental culture of textual exegesis (the rabbinic corpus) but the Bible itself was its own first product. Without any attempt to be comprehensive, I would like to explore […]