The Forbidden Fruit

D'rash

Pronounced as: deh-rahsh' also called "Midrash"

Meaning - Concept

D'rash is the third level of scripture interpretation. It is deeper than the first two mentioned – at this point we must have noticed a progression in the complexity of the levels. As these levels are listed from the simplest to complex.

The D'rash interpretation gives a text an allegorical, homiletic or typological meaning. How? Evidently, this is not literal like the P'shat reading. However, a comparison is made between the themes of the bible verse or passage in consideration and another which has its homiletic, or allegorical application.

A basic example is as follows –

Text in consideration reads "Sam loves apples and eats one daily." (Sentence 1)

The homiletical application reads "Apples are great sources of vitamins; one a day keeps the doctor away." (Sentence 2)

Using D'rash interpretation, we will apply sentence 1 into 2 and vice versa since they both seem to have the same theme. We can say that Sam is not vitamin-deficient, why? He eats apples. Although this is not stated in sentence 1, we discovered from sentence 2 that apples contain vitamins.

More like –

Sam eats Apples (sentence 1)

Apples = Vitamins (sentence 2),

So eating Apples (which Sam did in sentence 1) = having Vitamins (as said in sentence 2).

D'rash scripture interpretation using bible examples:

a. Hosea 11:1 - When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

Remember that the P'shat meaning was literally that God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt. However, when compared with an allegorical text, we see Hosea's text as a fore-knowledge or foreshadowing about the messiah who is Christ.

Let's see Matthew 2:13-15 in this respect,

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

Comparing both texts, although Hosea spoke about a literal movement of the nation Israel out of Egypt, the same words are a prophecy about the Christ being called out of Egypt in the book of Matthew

b. Genesis 3:6 - When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

An homiletic meaning