Rachel Weeping for Her Children (Part 4)

Rachel and the Spirit of God

In Part 3 of this series, I posted about a midrash in which the Eternal One hears Rachel weeping for her children as the weeping of all Israel. In this week's midrash, the Spirit of God weeps for the lost children of Israel. 

 

     This is the fourth post in a series about the afterlife of A voice is heard in Ramah . . . Rachel weeping for her children (Jer 31:15f.) in the New Testament and midrash. Links to all the posts in this series can be found here. 

Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 28.2

Thus says the Eternal One, "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. etc." Do not read (al tiqri) Rachel weeping over her children but the Spirit of God (Ruach El) weeping over her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. Thus says the Eternal One, "Withhold your voice from weeping [,and your eyes from tears . . .] And there is hope for your future," says the Eternal One " says the Eternal One, "[and your children will return to their own border"] (Jer 31:15-17).

     In this midrash, the Eternal One says, "Do not read Rachel but the Spirit of God weeping over her children." Despite first impressions, this is not meant to substitute one reading for the other but to associate the two. On the surface, the connection is based on the fact that "Rachel" and "Ruach El" (the Spirit of God) sound similar. "Do not read . . . but [read] . . ." is a common type of midrashic wordplay¹ that highlights the surface similarity in order to bring out a deeper connection.

     Rachel is part of Israel and, as one who is immersed in Israel's mourning over the lost children, she is well-qualified to represent them in their grief. Thus, the voice of Rachel becomes the voice of Israel. But how are Rachel and the Spirit of God so closely linked that the Eternal One uses the same words (Jer 31:14-17) to describe the Spirit weeping over the lost children of Israel?

     The midrash itself does not give many clues. This may be due to loss of information during the transmission of the midrash in oral and/or written form. As Aharon Agus notes, ". . . these very concise texts are mostly fragmentary, that is, they give us only a fragment of the information originally contained in the author's exposition. . . we must always reckon with a serious shrinkage of content" (Agus 1996, 1). This textual loss could have taken place at any point or points in the line of oral and written tradition. Since midrash was not originally intended for mere reading, but for teaching in the Beit Midrash, the tradents of midrash may have assumed that the larger context of the passage would be taught orally. 

     Still, there are a few things that can be said about this midrash. The Spirit of God so fully shares Rachel's torment, even her refusal to be comforted, that there is a definite kinship between the two sufferers. On the one hand, this honors Rachel, who's actions are considered so pure that they can also be assigned to the Spirit of God. On the other hand, the midrash anthropomorphizes the Spirit of God, who is depicted with Rachel's very human emotions. Rachel's children are also the children of God's Spirit. When the Eternal One promises hope for your future,² that hope is offered to both Rachel and the Spirit of God.

     In the second post in this series, I referred to what Jacob Neusner calls "paradigmatic thinking." In rabbinic texts, particularly in midrash, certain events and persons of Israel's history are seen "in the forever of here and now—not a return to a perfect time but a recapitulation of a model forever present" (Neusner 1997, 372). Rachel weeping is one of those "forever present" models or paradigms.

     In the rabbinic view of history, these who recapitulate these models do more than repeat a set of external actions. Not all lamentation or even the bitterest weeping is necessarily like Rachel's. It must arise from the same inward state of abject grief over the loss of Israel's children. When Rachel rose from the grave to lament, she had somehow become the mother of all Israel, not only her own physical descendants. Anyone who would follow in her footsteps would have to mourn the loss of all the children, not only their own. Those who lose their own children may not share her nobility. And even those who are childless may join her lamentation.

Footnotes

¹ "Do not read [the word as] "A" but [as] "B." Because the rabbis had limitless respect for the holiness of Scripture as they received it, we can be certain that they had no intention of altering the text with the use of this common midrashic move. In fact, this reading strategy arises from a very high view of the inspiration of Scripture. The rabbis believed that everything in Scripture is connected deeply and in multiple ways to everything else in Scripture. Verses, phrases, words, and even the letters of Scripture are profoundly interconnected in thick web of meaning and significance. Changing even one word would change everything. 

In our midrash, "Rachel" and "Ruach El" (Spirit of God) share three consonants and two vowel sounds in Hebrew. So the darshan (the maker of the midrash) feels authorized to link the two with the "Do not read . . ." formula. The rabbis believed that these connections are inherent in the text. They are not "reading into" the text (eisegesis), but drawing out of it (exegesis) what God has prepared.

So, given a theory of language that is so far from ours, how can we take these interpretations seriously? The tradition could seemingly manipulate the text to say anything it chose! Well, yes and no. The rabbis were operating within an elaborate  theological framework when they broke down words into syllables and played with their pronunciation. On a simple level, compare it to "Where's Waldo" cartoons. In the midst of all the visual information in the cartoon, you already know what to look for, even though Waldo is dressed and posed differently in every cartoon. The rabbis approached Scripture in the same way, looking to discover new insights that related to the Torah they already knew. These insights had to look like Torah just as the cartoon character has to look like Waldo. In the midrash, one could not say "Do not read 'Rachel' but 'Ruach chol" ("spirit of sand") because that would make no sense in the context of Jer 31:15-17 or in any of the midrashim where Rachel weeping is cited.

If you are interested in learning more about the rabbis' theory of language, and specifically of the Hebrew text of the Bible, read Eilberg-Schwartz (1987). Eilberg-Schwartz effectively explains how the rabbis viewed the particularities of the text—its words, spellings, syllables, and letters. Several of the rabbinic strategies for interpreting these linguistic particularities are explained in different terms by James Kugel (1986).

² There are numerous occasions in rabbinic literature when the Eternal One addresses or speaks of the Spirit of God, the Shekhinah, or the Word of God as if they were separate entities.

Bibliography

Agus, Aharon. Hermeneutic Biography in Rabbinic Midrash. Berlin: deGruyter, 1996. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard. "Who's Kidding Whom?: A Serious Reading of Rabbinic Word Plays." Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter, 1987): 765-788. Kugel, James. "Two Introductions to Midrash." Pages 77-103 in Midrash and Literature. Edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Neusner, Jacob. "Paradigmatic versus Historical Thinking: The Case of Rabbinic Judaism" in History and Theory,Vol. 36, No.3 (Oct.,1997), 353-377.

Comments

[Bob MacDonald]

Zebulun gets the blessing of the sand - the silicon chip - will the computer ever be able to weep? (Deut 33:18-19)

The connection between Rachel and Ruach El reminds me of the play in the Song on hart and hosts. It is a lovely word about Rachel and definitely 'makes' sense. Thank-you.