BEMA 208: Midrash — Iscah, Sarai, and Birth Orders

Transcription Status

18 Jul 24 — Initial public release

14 May 24 — Transcript approved for release

Midrash — Iscah, Sarai, and Birth Orders

Brent Billings: This is The BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon, I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we take a deeper dive into one of the topics we hear about from listeners the most—Midrash—and we’ll answer the most commonly asked question from our entire run of the podcast. What is that question, Marty?

Marty Solomon: I have gotten this question so much. It’s not even close.

Brent: Is it really the most asked question of all the emails you get?

Marty: Yes, without question. It is the most commonly received email in my inbox. Averaging these days, I don’t know, 7–12 emails a day, I get it probably once a week. This is how often we see this.

Brent: That’s a lot. This episode first aired—or the episode that we’re talking about first aired—in September 2016.

Marty: Indeed. You feel like I could’ve saved me a whole lot of time by recording something like this in the last five years, right?

Brent: Yes, probably, four and a half years. September 2016 to February 2021. That’s a lot of emails.

Marty: Yes. Well, better late than never, but yeah, I have responded, and I don’t have anything like a cool keystroke or anything set up to just do an auto-response. I type out my response every time, like a good dutiful teacher.

Brent: The authentic Marty Solomon experience.

Marty: Alright. We’ve held them in suspense long enough. What is the most commonly asked question in all of the BEMA email inbox? It is this, “Marty, you said that the Midrash taught that Iscah and Sarai were the same person. They were the same woman by two different names, but talking about the same person, how can this be? Because when you do the math using later details in the Book of Genesis, Abraham being the firstborn, you end up with Haran, and the math just—there’s no question, the math comes out—Haran would be 10 years old at the oldest. Haran would have to be 10 years old when Iscah, his daughter, was born—and that’s weird.”

Brent: He has two other children.

Marty: Yes. “So, how could this be, Marty?” For anybody that needs the reference point, Brent, we’re talking about episode 8, is that right? Buried in a Genealogy.

Brent: Correct. The link will be in the show notes if you need it, but episode 8.

Marty: Episode 8, you can go back, and review that for anybody that’s been with us in real-time. That was 2016. That was a long time ago. One of our first episodes and one of our first real exposures to the power of Midrash.

A really cool episode, but definitely obviously raised a major question, but that links in the show notes. If you want to go review that episode, but first of all, let me just say this. I’m amazed. I’m literally amazed at how many astute listeners we have. The biblical awareness that obviously so many people have to pull details together. I mean, Brent, you know me—I like Bible. I like details. I like making sure that things make sense and work. I like to study. Yes, you know this about me?

Brent: Of course.

Marty: Okay. I haven’t dug, like I wasn’t necessarily, I remember the very first time I got that email. If I would’ve only known back then how many times I would say, but I remember the very first time I got that email just a week or two after we published that episode, and I went, “Oh, goodness.”

I had just never even thought about those details, I had assumed—and so one of the things that I would also say about this is that, even in that moment, I was still learning. I was trusting the Midrash. I have been around the Midrash enough, even at that point in 2016, I was trusting the Midrash. I know the Midrash, after a couple of thousand years of rabbinic conversation, after thousands of years of studying the Bible, the Midrash doesn’t make stupid mistakes.

I have yet to find the Midrash making some dumb mistake because they aren’t paying attention to the Text. I was just trusting the Midrash and hadn’t really thought that part through, and the moment somebody asked it, I was like, “Oh, goodness. Yes. How do you answer that question?” I’ll pause here just long enough to make a point, which is that I’m constantly in learning mode as well. I’m constantly learning new things. I’m constantly evolving. I’m learning. I’m just learning.

I’m not a teacher that knows everything. I’m a teacher who’s also a student. I’m a teacher, who’s a student, which by the way, that’s the only kind of teacher that’s out there, is a teacher who is a student. I think our pride often gets in the way, and we posture ourselves as this authority voice, and we feel like we can’t ever let people see the cracks in that vessel, and yet the truth of the matter is, we only know what we know and that’s not everything, so we’re always learning things.

Brent: I’m assuming a lot of listeners will be aware of these concepts from experience, or at least just hearing from other people, but being a teacher, or teaching anything makes you a better person at that thing.

You can dabble around in your shop, doing some woodwork, but then if you bring someone in, and they’re like, “Okay, what does that do?” And you’re like, “Oh, well…” and that motivates you to go and learn more how that thing works. The more we talk about this, the more we’re motivated to go learn more about it. Of course, we’re going to be learning.

Marty: Absolutely. That’s a great point because it does—this stuff pokes at my insecurities all the time. Oh, man, you wouldn’t believe—yet I hope that, especially as I’m getting older, I’m getting better and better and better at shelving those insecurities and just embracing what I don’t know.

Embracing my shortcomings, embracing my finite abilities and limitations. That’s just a part of this, and it reminds us that all we are—I get some of these emails too. Brent, all we are, you and I, we’re just hacks with an Internet connection and podcast microphones. I don’t have a bunch of letters after my name. Do you have a bunch of letters after your name?

Brent: I mean, no. No.

Marty: [laughs] Marty Solomon, BA. That’s all we can put after my name. I’ve got a good old undergrad bachelor’s degree. I have a passion for studying. I love to study. I’m sure that if I had dedicated myself to education and academia, I’d have all kinds of letters after my name, but I don’t.

I have a podcast microphone. I have an internet connection. I have libraries full of books. I even said libraries because I have so many of them. I can’t even call it one library with a straight face. I love to study, but all I am is just a person who’s learning and trying to pass on the things I’m learning to everybody else. We pause there for quite a bit. That was a good substantial rabbit trail right there, Brent Billings. We haven’t even gotten back to the question yet, but it’s good just to pause and say, all we’re doing is just learning along the way. That’s all it is. That’s what it looks like.

Let’s deal with this question. The problem that leads to this question, that I was going to say, is the fact that my language in the episode, and you just listened to the episode to review, Brent. I believe my language—maybe you can give comment to this—I insinuated that Abraham is the firstborn in that episode. Didn’t I?

Brent: Maybe.

Marty: I feel like my language insinuated it. I know my mind was there. I don’t think I said it explicitly, but I feel like my language insinuated that Abraham shows up first and Abraham is the firstborn.

Brent: I was listening to it fairly passively. I probably should have asked you ahead of time. I don’t see these questions that you’re getting. You’ve had the question once a week for the last four and a half years. I am not privy to these questions or your answers.

I don’t know what the conversation is around it. I’m not as familiar with the surrounding issues. I just threw it on while I was getting stuff ready for the episode. I wasn’t listening very closely to your language to be able to answer that question, but sure.

Marty: Right. Yes. That’s where the problem starts, because if Abraham is the firstborn, that’s how you can do the math and you can hold the math against, “Well, Haran has to be this old,” it takes a really astute Bible reader. I’m still impressed, but if Abraham is not the firstborn, that changes everything. I got this question years ago, and I had to go digging.

This actually shows up in the middle of Session 1, who’s we get to the end of the Book of Genesis, Brent. I think you and I have a conversation in one of those later episodes about Joseph, Jacob. I think we have a conversation about the genealogy of Noah and his sons, and about the firstborn motif that shows up, but I start digging in the Midrash, and I find out that there’s actually two traditions.

One tradition that is less popular says that Haran does—that Abram is the firstborn, and Haran does in fact father Iscah. I don’t know if it says miraculously, it implies miraculously at the age of eight. That tradition says Iscah was conceived when Haran is eight years old, and that’s how it works out.

Brent: That’s the less popular theory?

Marty: That’s the less popular theory. Now, what I wanted to do is go, “Oh, good. I wasn’t crazy. That’s what I meant to say!” But it wasn’t. I really didn’t even know about these traditions. I didn’t misspeak, but I did that completely out of ignorance. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t misspeaking when I didn’t misspeak. Isn’t that fun?

The more popular Midrash points out that Abraham is not actually the firstborn. That Haran is the firstborn. Which explains how the ages can be where they’re at, because Iscah-Sarai is only going to be 10 years, nine years younger than Abraham. That explains how that can be true because she is the daughter of the firstborn son, Haran.

It also explains why Haran is married with children, which we pointed out in the episode. We’re like, “That’s weird. Why isn’t Avram married?” Haran, if he’s not the firstborn, why is he married with kids? Why is that true? That explains that because Haran was the firstborn.

There’s actually details in the Text that would lead us to believe that, but then it also fits the Genesis motif. There is a motif in Genesis, which I believe you, and I point out later towards the end of Genesis, beginning of Exodus, where Noah’s sons operate out of order. Shem, the star character, he’s going to be the great father of the Jewish people in that genealogy.

Shem is not the firstborn of Noah. Abraham is not going to be the firstborn of Terah. Isaac is not the firstborn of Abraham. Jacob is not the firstborn of Isaac. Joseph is not the firstborn of Jacob. Actually, if you want a consistent motif all the way through the line of Genesis, one of the things that end up showing up is that none of them are actually the firstborn. They’re all not firstborns who are being called into, or maybe we should say stepping into the role of firstborn.

Brent: We get the idea that Abraham is the firstborn because of the line in Genesis 11, “Terah became the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran”, and under normal circumstances, you would list that in order of birth every time.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: Because that’s the hierarchy.

Marty: Yes. The reason we would question that as the same thing happened to Noah because the genealogy, the Table of Nations that follows a different order than what’s listed in the Noah narrative, which gives the order as Shem, Cam, Yaphet, but then the Table of Nations changes it and the order is different. If we had caught that in the Noah story, our antennas would already be up when we heard this one going, “Okay, is that the right birth order?” And we might’ve picked up on this in ways that Marty missed when I first did this back in 2016.

That’s the actual answer to that. One tradition says you’re right, Haran was eight years old when he fathered Iscah. I don’t like that tradition, most like the majority of the Jewish conversation doesn’t necessarily like that tradition. You can even put the two traditions together if you have to, but that’s the least popular. I definitely like this not-firstborn-motif taking place in the Midrash there. That’s the tradition that I would cling to and how I would answer that question, which will now appear in the show notes of that episode, and I won’t get that email anymore [laughs].

Brent: Right. I’ll probably record a little stinger or something to throw at the beginning of the episode.

Marty: There you go. I love that.

Brent: “Hey, when you’re done with this, be sure to check out episode 208”—or whatever this is.

Marty: Yes, exactly. That’s beautiful.

Brent: I think I have a related question. There’s two traditions, two Midrash traditions. The Midrash isn’t this singular thing, it’s two separate things?

Marty: That’s a great question. The Midrash is the ongoing commentary, and Midrash is really tricky because some of it’s literally canonized. Some of it has a sense of authority in the Jewish world, and the Orthodox Jewish world. There’s some of it that’s just tradition, and in the same way, we would think about church history, and church tradition in the Jewish world—or excuse me, in the Christian world. In our Christian world, we talk about church history, and we talk about church tradition. If we talk about those things well, and intentionally, those are two separate things.

Church history isn’t inspired, or it doesn’t have, I’m not saying it’s inspired, but church history is history. It’s written by historians. You read about it with Eusebius. I don’t know if we would call Josephus church history, but there are historians and historians write church history for the purpose of cataloging history, but then there is church tradition, and the tradition says that this apostle died here and is buried there, but there’s another tradition over there that says this is buried over there.

We can understand the concept of tradition. I would say the Jews, maybe take this conversation a little bit more seriously when it comes to the diversity of those traditions, but Midrash—really it’s commentary. It’s elevated commentary. It’s not just any theory that anybody ever had is a part of the Midrash. It’s those recognized, authorized, sometimes canonized conversations from a Jewish perspective by those rabbis that had, what was the word that we used, Brent, in Session 3? Rabbis have to have…?

Brent: S’micha.

Marty: Semikhah. They have to have authority. Now, once the temple is destroyed in AD 70, which we needed to talk about in Session 6, at some point we had talked about the destruction of, and a little bit of Jewish history. That’ll be fun. We’ll do that sometime. When the temple is destroyed, semikhah becomes Jewish ordination. If you are ordained as a Jewish rabbi, that’s why Marty says, “Never call me a Rabbi with a capital R.” I am not a Rabbi. Please don’t call me a Rabbi.

If you want to call me rabbi with a small r—like nudge, nudge, wink, wink—as a way to honor me, that’s cool, whatever. My students always called me Rabz. I said, “Hey, make it a little r.” I’m okay, but never call me a capital R rabbi. Because a capital R comes from a person that has given their whole life to study all this stuff, being ordained in the Jewish, and back in ancient Judaism, post-second temple Judaism, that ordination was semikhah. It was the ability to speak into this commentary. Yes, that was a good question, and that’s really what we’re looking at here.

That’s why there’s different—there’s not one Midrash. There’s not one stream of tradition. There’s multiple streams, and those streams weave and intersect, and good rabbis that are trained and ordained know their Midrash well, they’re weaving with all these different traditions, this beautiful tapestry, because they have to use the tradition. They’re not allowed to come up with something new. They have to use what’s old, but they use what’s old to weave something beautiful. In certain respects, new. They’re using old to make something, the next piece of the commentary, the next piece of the conversation. That’s how it functions.

Brent: Of these two traditions that we’re looking at for the story of Abraham, are either of them in that authoritative canonized category, or where do they fall?

Marty: That’s a great question. I believe both of those traditions are going to be in what they would consider authoritative Midrash, I believe. I would have to go find the sources. I know one of them should be right in Genesis Rabbah, I believe, I think. All the different pieces of the Midrash are different.

Some of our listeners, Brent, honestly, are better at the Midrash already than I am. I give the Midrash—I’m always in it, in this passing sense. Marty has a lot of things I got to do. I got to do a lot of things for my job. I’m not going to study all day. Wish I could. I’ll interact with the Midrash when I’m passing through it, when it’s relevant to what I’m studying, what I’m teaching, I don’t get to spend a whole bunch of time there. Some of our listeners because of our podcast have really gotten into it, and they’re already.

I’ve been interacting with the Midrash for 12, going on 13, 14 years. Some of our listeners have been at this for less—but they’ve been really concentrated for the last two or three years, and they’re better with the Midrash at this point than I am, which is awesome. Go, guys, go. One of the coolest things is to watch some of my former students get to take some of the ideas that I live in and just take them way further than me.

In the Jewish world that would hopefully be a testament to who we are as teachers and what we’ve been able to do with the podcast, not to toot our own horn, but that’s how you would expect it to work. Those that come behind should do this better than we do.

There’s a lot of people out there that do this better. There could be listeners that actually could answer your question here better than I’m going to today. I believe both of those are going to be what’s going to be considered authorized Midrash. Now, what’s relevant for us is that we want to make sure that we distinguish as whatever you want to call us, Christians, as followers of Jesus. Coming from the world view that we come from, I plant my feet firmly in the evangelical world even though I’m probably one of their frustrating children. They’re my family.

Brent: Somebody’s got to stir the pot.

Marty: Somebody’s got to stir the pot. I think it was Martin Luther back in the reformation that said, “The church may be a whore but that whore is my mother.” That’s always been one of my favorite quotes. It’s my family. It’s my family. As weird and dysfunctional as they might be, as screwed up as they might be, that’s who I am. My feet are kind of firmly planted in that camp. It’s important for me, and for I think a lot of our listeners, to make sure that we’re always reaffirming. We don’t use Midrash in an authoritative, inspired sense. I don’t hold the Midrash on the same level that I hold Torah or the scripture.

I’m going to come at this from a pretty, I think what we’re going to call evangelical Orthodox, understanding of the inspiration of the scriptures. I do believe, Brent Billings, that if I have to pick a commentary, if I’m going to pick a commentary, the Midrash is by far the best commentary I can pick. I could go to this library that I have sitting behind me and I could grab commentary that was by some really brilliant people and honestly, some really brilliant people. I also have a few commentaries written by a couple of nudniks but nevertheless. None of those commentaries would be as good as a few thousand years, a couple of thousand years’ worth of conversation.

Systematic conversation, peer-reviewed, held accountable through a system of tradition and authority. That is a pretty darn good commentary. If I have to pick a commentary, it’s not inspired, but I will pick that one. Honestly, again, it’s not inspired, but I hold myself pretty-- You know this about me, Brent. I hold myself pretty accountable to the Midrash. I’m not going to teach something that is outside the bounds of what Jewish tradition has decided, “After centuries and centuries of talking about this, we’ve decided this is ________ .” I don’t feel like—how much hubris? Did I say that right? Did I say that word right, hubris?

Brent: Sure. Yes.

Marty: Excellent. How much arrogance do I have to have to go, “Well, Brent, I read the Bible and it seems obvious to me”? To think that after centuries, those Jewish rabbis who have this thing memorized, who soak and immerse themselves in this text together as a unit throughout generations have simply missed something that I see so clearly. That would be the height of hubris to me. I hold myself pretty—if I have some idea that I don’t have in Jewish tradition, I’m usually going to qualify it and be like, “I don’t know. I’ve wondered about this, but I’m probably not going to teach it.” Does that answer that question?

Brent: Yes. I think what we were talking about a little bit ago was about there being multiple traditions within the Midrash. The Midrash is not this unified thing. It’s not, “Here’s the only way you can think.” There are options and as you said, the one idea is significantly more popular than the other in this case. We have room to work. The Midrash is not this constrictive thing, but it is built on thousands of years of conversation and wrestling in community with people who know their text extremely well.

I’m sure we’ve talked about this at some point, but the Midrash is rooted in the Text. The ideas in the Midrash are built off of something that’s in the Text. It’s not some random thought coming in from the side. There’s some element of scripture somewhere that they’re rooting every idea in the Midrash off of.

Marty: Absolutely. That’s a really good point. I will often say, “There’s a midrash for that.” There’s an app for that. There’s a midrash for that. Whatever case you want to make, if you know your Midrash, you’re going to be able to find a midrash to support. The Midrash can be deeply patriarchal—destructively patriarchal, in my mind. The Midrash can also be unbelievably liberating for women. Whatever worldview you want to hold, if you know your Midrash, you can find the midrash that goes that direction for you.

Brent: No different than how most—well, not most—no different than how many people use the Bible.

Marty: No, most. You had it right the first time. Absolutely.

Brent: Alright. I was trying to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Marty: [laughs] You’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. Which makes me think of—if we were to circle back to this Sarah and Iscah conversation, go dive in and learn things that even Marty hasn’t uncovered yet. I’ll give you a really good source. We’re going to put this in the show notes. By the way, there’s also a YouTube video I made just about the Midrash in general. Another frequently asked question I get is, “Hey, help me understand the Midrash.” There’s a YouTube video that I made about the Midrash. It’ll give you lots of tools in engaging the Midrash. We’re going to put that in the show notes. Please watch that before emailing me any additional questions.

Make sure you watch that video because it may answer them. We’ll link another source here, which is the Jewish Women’s Archive. Jewish women’s archive, J-W-A. jwa.org, Jewish Women’s Archive. It is one of my favorite resources for interacting with the Midrash. Predominantly when it deals with female characters, women characters, but I find it actually has all kinds of Midrash about all kinds of things. It focuses on women characters, but it is so good. Just go to jwa.org and just search for Iscah, Sarai. Do Sarah and just see the plethora of Midrash that surrounds—it’ll give you a synopsis. You don’t have to read all the Midrash.

It’ll give you a blog post, like an article, like an abstract of who Sarah is according to the Midrash. Some traditions say this and some traditions say that. It’s this beautiful, beautiful resource. There’s others out there and we’ll talk about that in the YouTube video that I talked about. Just a great resource. Learn how to lean into that and use that and you’re going to go crazy and just being able to access some of those conversations—it’s going to be great.

Brent: I’m a little disappointed you didn’t title that video a little bit more for the YouTube algorithm, Everything you need to know about the Midrash in less than 30 minutes.

Marty: [chuckles] That would be smart of me, and yet here I am being concise and normal.

Brent: You cannot spend 30 minutes and know everything you need to know about the Midrash. The other thing I wanted to ask you about. The text that we’re talking about is pretty old, but when did the midrash commenting on that text come about?

Marty: Right. Different pieces of the Midrash are going to fall underneath dates as far as when they’re gathered together. We really want to unpack this question and why it’s relevant to using the Midrash as an interpretive tool, because like the Midrash, as far as a canonized, authoritative piece of literature—it’s not really a piece of literature—a library of literature that you can use and go to does not show up until well after Jesus. Early second century is where we finally have it written down and canonized. Then later on in that century. The first piece that we end up having is the Mishnah, which ends up getting expanded later on just under a century later to the Talmud.

You have the Mishnah and then The Talmud and then all kinds of other pieces. Now, before it’s canonized as the Mishnah, you have a bunch of these pieces that are out and about. Every now and then we’ll have a midrash—really not every now and then—often you’ll have pieces of the Mishnah and pieces of the Midrash that predate Jesus by decades. Stories that are out there and some of the things we shared in Session 3 like the story of the transfiguration. One of my favorites. In that episode we talked about a midrash that predates Jesus by, I believe, it was 80 years.

There are definitely pieces, but those pieces get pulled together and then put together in the Mishnah and that Mishnah doesn’t happen until after Jesus. One of the common critiques is that, “Marty, how can you use the Midrash? You shouldn’t be using it as an interpretive tool because it wasn’t a part of the world of the Bible, the world of Jesus.” I actually want to echo that concern because if we’re not careful, we’ll start pulling things that we really shouldn’t be using as interpretive tools because it’s way too late. That part of the Jewish conversation, that development of Jewish consciousness didn’t happen for 800 years, so we shouldn’t be using that piece.

There are pieces of the Midrash that are early enough. Even when the Mishnah doesn’t—when we don’t have evidence that it existed in the days of Jesus—what the Mishnah does for us is it tells us what the Jewish conversation was doing in the days of Jesus. I even like to assume it had to have been written down somewhere or been official somewhere, but I can’t say that academically. I don’t get to make that leap. I assume it, but at least the one thing I can say is that if I can get it to the Mishnah or earlier, and at least represents the conversation that is swirling about, we would say in the Twitterverse, in the social media world.

This is the conversation that’s taking place around Jesus. It’s evolving. Maybe it hasn’t taken shape, but this is where the Jewish consciousness is, this is what they’re thinking, this is how they’re thinking. That’s why it’s relevant, but we always want to be aware of dates. I think it will be easy to throw stones at this if we have some seminarians out there, it’ll be easy to throw stones at this. I think, Brent, we’ve done a pretty good job. I’m going to use the royal we there, even though it’s probably me 99% of the time.

I think we’ve done a pretty good job of trying to make sure that the Midrash we talk about is early Midrash that is more relevant to the conversation we’re wanting to have as New Testament people, followers of Jesus. We’re not just pulling any midrash that makes sense to us out of that. We’re trying to pull early Midrash, second temple Judaism conversation and commentary. That’s what we’re trying to pull. I’m sure I’ve made a mistake about a hundred times with that, but that’s our intent and it’s a really good thing to keep in front of us. Did that make sense? Did that make sense, Brent?

Brent: I think so.

Marty: Okay.

Brent: Let’s put to rest the Abraham situation. What’s the final word on how the Abraham thing checks out?

Marty: Well, we don’t get to give the final word. We just get to wade into the commentary, but if you want my final word, a non-semikhah-ed—I have a non-semikhah-ed position. It lacks all authority. This is meaningless—what I think. I’m going to say Abraham is not the firstborn son, Haran’s the firstborn son, which leads us—let’s close with this idea, Brent, the why of the Midrash, and how to relate to it.

When you are reading, when you have these two traditions, well, was Haran eight years old? Or is Abram not the firstborn? Which one is it? Ask yourself the question, why? Why is the Midrash trying to make Haran eight years old? And why is the Midrash trying to say Abram—because it’s not about what literally happened. This is not about literal history. Although the more I spend time in the Midrash, the more I’m like, “Man, this explains so much historically.” I don’t know where you draw the line.

I believe it was Maimonides, one of my favorite quotes that says, “Any man who believes everything in the Midrash is a fool. Any man who believes nothing in the Midrash is a heretic.” Somewhere in the middle, it’s somewhere between all and nothing. Isn’t that helpful? I don’t know exactly how much of this is historical, but the question you start to ask is, why? Why did that tradition want to say that? And why did this tradition want to say this? Brent, let me ask you, why do you think the tradition would say, this is not an obvious question. I’m putting you on the spot here. Why would the tradition say Haran’s eight years old? Why that?

Brent: To emphasize the miracle of what God is doing?

Marty: Okay. Absolutely. Could be.

Brent: A miraculous origin for God’s family.

Marty: Could be. Absolutely.

Brent: If you’re looking at it that way.

Marty: Any other thoughts?

Brent: I don’t know.

Marty: Here’s one of the things that I hope to talk about in the next episode. I get to be like—it is so amazing. For any fantasy novel nerds out there, I know I’m not known as a big fiction reader, but I do love Middle-earth, J. R. R. Tolkien. I do love a good fantasy setting. For anybody that’s into—

Brent: You’re going to get so many like, “Oh, if you like Lord of the Rings, you gotta check out—”

Marty: Don’t do that to me. For anybody that loves backstory, and what I’m going to call lore, boy, when you start to get into the Midrash, it gets crazy because you realize how many of these traditions are all interweaving and they have to make the details. They have to make the backstory. They have to make the lore work. Brent, back in Session 3, we chatted about a—do you remember the Midrash about Haran? Do you remember the Midrash about Abram and the furnace? Do you remember that?

Brent: Session 3?

Marty: Yes.

Brent: No.

Marty: We talked about the fiery furnace and we talked about Abram and how there’s that ancient Midrash that Daniel was playing off—

Brent: Oh yes, it is the Daniel thing. Okay.

Marty: —Nimrod, but we talked about, I think in Session 3, later, but we have Nimrod and he’s coming to the family of Terah, the sons of Terah. He’s telling them, “I need you to renounce your God.” If you remember, Haran was like, “Well, I’m going to wait to see what happens to Abram here.” Abram survives the furnace. Then Haran was like, “Okay, yes. I’m going to do the same thing”, but he dies in the furnace. That’s how the Midrash says Haran dies. That’s the death of Haran.

If the Midrash is trying to weave—and I don’t know this, I’m speculating, I’m totally speculating right along with Brent—but the kind of thing that you see the Midrash doing is this: What if it needs Sarah to be alive to see that story? She has to be alive when Haran dies in the furnace in order for that to play a part in her. Now, when you go to the Jewish Women’s Archive and you read about Sarah and how Sarah is one of the seven prophetesses, I never know how to say prophetess in plural, she’s one of seven prophetesses in the Hebrew scripture. She’s the first and most prominent Hebrew prophetess in Tanakh, in Torah, especially. Well, what’s the backstory to that?

You’re always asking the question, why is the Midrash trying to do that? Why would the Midrash be trying to make Abram not the firstborn? Because it’s trying to point out that motif we spoke of earlier. It’s trying to get us to realize that the invitation is to you as well. You might be a firstborn, but how many people are not firstborns? How many people feel they’re not the one who’s supposed to be running in the lead? They’re not the one who’s supposed to be out in front? They’re not the one who’s supposed to carry the mission of God? They’re not the one?

Genesis says the seat is open to anyone who wants it, anyone who wants to partner with God, anyone who wants to answer the call, anyone who wants to lay their life down on behalf of other people. It doesn’t matter if it’s your role. It doesn’t matter if you’re the firstborn, the second-born, the last born, the 14th born, it doesn’t matter. Do you want to be a part of what God’s doing? Show up. God’s ready to partner with you. That’s the why. That also explains the how.

How are we supposed to relate to the Midrash? We relate to the Midrash by asking those questions. Why is the Midrash—what is the Midrash trying to show me? The Midrash is trying to not explain history. It’s not trying to explain history. Midrash is stinking crazy half the time. The Midrash is trying to get me to see something. What is the Midrash trying to get me to see? That’s how we’re to relate to the Midrash. Boy, this has been a long conversation, Brent.

Brent: Well, four and a half years of emails will do that for you.

Marty: Yes, apparently. It’s not quite a record yet, but dang, good stuff. I look forward to the next one. We’re going to do some more Midrash.

Brent: Yes. We have a few more episodes of Midrash coming up. Well, we’ll get into it a little bit.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: That’ll do it for this episode. If you have any questions, you can go to bemadiscipleship.com, check out the show notes. Be sure to check out the Jewish Women’s Archive. Sounds like a great afternoon of digging into that. Check out Marty’s YouTube video on Midrash. That’ll help give you some tools as well to dig in. If you have any other questions outside of what we’re studying in the Midrash, you can get a hold of Marty on Twitter at @martysolomon, I’m at @eibcb, and we will talk to you again soon with more Midrash.