52 Azzan Yadin-Israel
model. Th is function is most evident in passages that employ the phrase
“Just as Scripture [ha-katuv] specifi es . . . so too I specify.”
“An oath of YHWH shall be between the two of them” [Exod. 22:10]: An
oath by the Tetragrammaton [the four-letter personal name of God]. From
this you can conclude with regard to all the oaths in the Torah. Since all the
oaths in the Torah were stated without specifi cation and Scripture specifi es
for you with regard to one that it must be by the Tetragrammaton, so too
I specify with regard to all the oaths in the Torah that they must be by the
Tetragrammaton. (Mekhilta Neziqin 16, p. 303; Lauter bach 3:122 – 23)Exodus 22:10 deals with a man who entrusts his possessions to another
and they go inexplicably missing. Th ough the guardian claims that they
were stolen, no thief is found, and so both must take an “oath of YHWH.”
Th is is the only verse that specifi es the name of God employed in oaths,
or, in the Mekhilta’s description, all oaths are unspecifi ed except for the
single example at hand, a structure that is itself imbued with interpretive
meaning. Namely, it allows the reader to extend the legal conclusion of the
derashah — that the oath in Exodus 22:10 invokes the Tetragrammaton — to
the other, unspecifi ed oaths. Th e justifi cation for this move is Scripture’s
precedent: “Scripture specifi es . . . so too I specify.”
Examining the interpretive practices of the Rabbi Ishmael midrashim,
we fi nd them determined by Scripture on both sides of the process. First, it
is Scripture that determines whether a verse may be interpreted. It is only
once Scripture signals to the reader that there is a diffi culty to be resolved
or misinterpretation to be avoided that it becomes legitimate to interpret.9
Second, the rabbinic reader takes cues from Scripture throughout the in-
terpretive process. Scripture provides specifi c legal conclusions (it “comes
to teach” regarding various matters), as well as general hermeneutic prin-
ciples, and serves as a model and a precedent for the attentive reader. Th e
overall thrust of these midrashim, then, is to cast Scripture as orchestrating
its own interpretation: providing clues and rules for the reader, who, like
the reader of a detective novel, identifi es the signs left for him or her by the
author and ultimately reaches the correct solution.
Before turning to the Rabbi Akiva midrashim, it is worth noting that
the Scripture-centered hermeneutic of the Rabbi Ishmael midrashim dove-
tails with a marginalization of extrascriptural traditions (the “Oral Law”).
Legal rulings are not transmitted “in the name of ” this or that sage; Rabbi