132 James A. Diamond
a previous revelation at the waters of Marah that Maimonides designates
as free of secondary intentions, citing the midrashic identifi cation of the
statute and judgment (Exod. 15: 25) prescribed there as the Sabbath (incul-
cating belief in creation of the world in time) and the civil laws (to promote
social cohesion and political stability) (III:32, p. 531).23 Th is elusive image
of a pristine revelation composed of pure “fi rst intentions” is orchestrated
to loom over all future encounters with the biblical text’s fi nal draft. Th e
Torah, the end product of Moses’s legacy, is always in danger of being read
and interpreted oblivious of the message of Marah, in a way that confuses
means with ends. In fact, prophetic anger and censure of national conduct
is commonly provoked by behavior that is “ignorant of the fi rst intention
and not distinguishing between it and the second intention” (ibid.). Jew-
ish religious history can be charted by the caliber of biblical interpreta-
tion: properly focused reading induces progress, while misreading impels
decline. Maimonides has not only reinvented the text; he has transformed
prophetic rebukes originally aimed at perverse conduct (such as Samuel’s
rebuke of King Saul’s sanctimoniously hypocritical religiosity listening is
preferable to sacrifi ce [1 Sam. 15: 22]) into a hermeneutical guide for dis-
criminating secondary from primary intentions so as not to pervert the
text. Th ough listening (shamoa) can metaphorically signify acceptance or
obedience, it can also express “the sense of science and knowledge” (GP,
I:45, p. 96). Ritual recedes into the background when the Torah speaks
and is submerged in the overwhelming mandate to read, interpret, and
understand its language. When applied to God, biblical listening expresses
thought exclusively. Consequently, a Jew listens to his or her sacred text to
stimulate thought and speculation, and not merely to determine behavior.
Reading Scripture is then transformed into a genuine act of imitatio dei. At
the very core of what “Abraham our father taught his children” is the way
of God in order to emulate it.24 By correctly interpreting the actions and
characteristics of God, who is the central character in Maimonides’s Torah,
one also retrieves the Abrahamic legacy and reinvigorates his intellectual/
spiritual revolution.
When Maimonides halakhically mandates that one allocate one’s time
evenly among the Jewish intellectual disciplines of written Torah, oral To-
rah, and Talmud,25 he reconfi gures these disciplines from their traditional
molds. Subsumed under Talmud is the art of reasoning (logic, deduction,
drawing analogies) and, more important, the subject matter of the “gar-
den” ( pardes), or physics and metaphysics. Once one attains intellectual