Jewish Concepts of Scripture

Concepts of Scriptural Language in Midrash 73

why does the text tell us that Joshua referred to Moses as “My lord” before
asking that Moses put a stop to the prophesying? An answer to this ques-
tion seemed clear to the rabbis, who diff er from modern readers in view-
ing hierarchy as a given and the opportunity to serve an exalted master
as an honor rather than a humiliation: Eldad and Medad must have said
something that impugned Moses. Even more likely, given the verse’s em-
phasis on the master-disciple relationship between Moses and Joshua, the
two elders must have said something that cast doubt on that relationship
or reversed its hierarchy. And whatever that prediction was, it must have
been a true prediction, since Eldad and Medad were true prophets.18 From
these assumptions, it is a short, almost inevitable step to the reading that
what angered Joshua was a prediction that his master would die and that
he himself would inherit (or, from the disciple’s point of view, usurp) the
job of leading the nation into the Promised Land — an honor which rightly
belonged, in the eyes of the disciple, to the master.
Our midrash in Numbers Rabbah §15.15 goes on to examine Numbers
11:27: “A lad ran to tell Moses and said, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying
in the camp!’ ” To this, the midrash adds, “Who was this? It was Gershom,
Moses’s son.” Th at the midrash is unsatisfi ed with having an unidentifi ed
character refl ects a frequent tendency of rabbinic exegesis: however in-
nocuous some lack of specifi city seems to modern eyes, for the rabbis, a
divinely authored text cannot have any loose ends. Th us, this lad must have
a specifi c identity (because a perfect scripture leaves nobody anonymous),
and it is the interpreters’ job to fi nd it.19 But how do the rabbis know the
lad is Gershom? Here again, a text from elsewhere in the Bible provides the
answer. In Judges 17 – 18, there is a story about various travels and tribula-
tions of a particular Levite. Since a story as a whole has little interest to the
rabbis, we can pass over the plot of this narrative and simply cite the verses
that begin and end these chapters:

Judges 17:7: Th ere was a lad from Bethlehem in Judah, from a family living

in Judah, a Levite, and he dwelt there temporarily [v e hu gar-sham].

Judges 18:30: Th e Danides set up the cultic statue for themselves. Jonathan,

the son of Gershom, the son of Ma na sseh, and his descendants were priests

for the tribe of Dan until the time of the exile.

A scribal oddity in the second of the verses most likely attracted the atten-
tion of the midrashist. In the Hebrew text, the name “Manasseh” is written