Midrash

Midrash (Hebrew, from a root meaning 'to seek out' or 'inquire') is the vast body of rabbinic interpretation that reads the Hebrew Bible for meanings beyond its plain sense. The term names both a method — the imaginative, close, often story-based re-reading of scripture — and the specific collections in which such readings were preserved, such as Midrash Rabbah, the Mekhilta, and the Sifre.

Two broad modes are traditionally distinguished. Midrash halakhah derives legal rulings from biblical verses, tracing rabbinic law back to scriptural warrant. Midrash aggadah works with narrative, poetry, and prophecy, filling silences in the text with parables, dialogues, and expansions — what did Abraham say to Isaac on the way up the mountain? what did the angels sing at the Sea? — that were never in the biblical account itself.

In quotation, midrashic passages are cited by their collection and location (for example, 'Bereshit Rabbah 55:7') and, when possible, alongside the biblical verse they interpret. Readers unfamiliar with the tradition sometimes take a midrashic expansion for a biblical text; careful writers keep the two distinct, so that the interpretive layer is honoured rather than confused with the source.

Common mistake: quoting a midrashic story as if it were scripture. A midrash on Genesis is not Genesis; it is a rabbinic reader answering the question Genesis raised. The distinction matters for both textual honesty and theological accuracy.