Head Trip
And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13 NASB
Seek/search – “The modern scholar thinks that he must find religious answers to his critical questions by means of peshat exegesis. In contrast, the sages believed that answers to critical questions should be proposed by means of derash. Like the Karaites, critical biblical exegetes since Spinoza based their faith on peshat, while the critical exegetes among the sages based their faith on a tradition that is not dependent on the plain meaning of the biblical texts, and interpreted the texts in accordance with their accepted beliefs and opinions.”[1]
Maybe you should read that comment from Yehuda Brandes again. I’ll wait. . . . ah, now do you see how important this is? The sages performed biblical exegesis via derash. They based their understanding of the text on the transmission of tradition, not on the plain meaning of the text. They came to conclusions about the God of the Bible based on their paradigm (“accepted beliefs and opinions”). That is a far cry from what we demand of biblical passages. We want clarity, consistency, and most of all, certainty. If the Bible says that Joshua attacked the Canaanite king in Ai, we don’t want to hear that Ai wasn’t even a Canaanite town in the days of Joshua. And if it wasn’t Canaanite, then we will have to do something to make it Canaanite if we’re going to save the Bible’s integrity. Our faith is a head trip. All the ducks have to line up. All the claims have to be event-true. What was the great line from the movie, The International? Oh, yes, “The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.” Wham!
Jeremiah uses two terms for looking. The first is bāqaš. It’s about “a person’s earnest seeking of something or someone which exists or is thought to exist. Its intention is that its object be found (māṣāʾ) or acquired (Ex 4:19).”[2] I wrote about this long ago (CLICK HERE). The second term is dāraš. There is an important distinction. “Unlike dāraš (q.v.) its nearest synonym, the activity of bāqaš is seldom cognitive.”[3] But dāraš is much more intense—and cognitive. dāraš “is distinguished from its frequent parallel and equivalent bāqaš (q.v.) (dāraš-bāqaš, Ps 38:12 [H 13]; Ezk 34:6; bāqaš-dāraš, Jud 6:29; Deut 4:29) inasmuch as it 1. means ‘to seek with care’ (I Sam 28:7), 2. is often cognitive (its end is ‘to know’), and 3. seldom governs an infinitive.”[4] I wrote about this too (CLICK HERE). According to Brandes, the rabbis were far more interested in dāraš searching than in bāqaš. Why? Because dāraš isn’t about acquiring the object desired (i.e. God). dāraš isn’t about “acquiring” God. It’s about understanding Man. It’s about creative imagination developed through tradition and opinion that provides insight into the ways God interacts with men. It doesn’t have to be “true” to be true, that is, it doesn’t have to align perfectly with the “facts” in order to help us draw closer in faith. It’s cognitive, but not constrictive. dāraš allows your mind to wander and wonder about God, to be free to feel it all without having to come to conclusions. dāraš is the mental equivalent of experiencing awe.
And that’s a very good thing.
Western theology isn’t quite dāraš despite the claims that it is cognitive, rational, and focused on the truth. Why? Because it is first and foremost systematic. It thinks inside the box. There really isn’t any room for divine encounter. Divine encounter can’t be quantified, can’t be force-fit into a prearranged system, can’t be predicted, can’t be controlled. Control is a good thing. God does a lot of that. But controlling God, even if it’s with “rational” principles, might just be on the edge of idolatry. God doesn’t “fit” into our boxes, no matter how religious they may seem.
Topical Index: dāraš, bāqaš, seek, search, find, awe, exegesis, Yehuda Brandes, Jeremiah 29:13
[1] Yehuda Brandes, “The Sages as Bible Critics,” in The Believer and the Modern Study of the Bible (Academic Series Press, 2019), p. 210.
[2] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 276 בָּקַשׁ. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 126). Chicago: Moody Press.
[3] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 276 בָּקַשׁ. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 126). Chicago: Moody Press.
[4] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 455 דָּרַשׁ. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 198). Chicago: Moody Press.
