Hebrew word · H4097
מִדְרָשׁ
midrash
story
A noun from darash, 'to seek, inquire, investigate, study'. In biblical Hebrew it occurs only twice, here and in 2 Chronicles 13:22 ('the midrash of the prophet Iddo'). It probably means a written inquiry, study or account: a work that looked into and set out the history.
Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) study, exposition, midrash, record, story
1a) writings of a didactic nature
1b) midrash-transliteration of the Hebrew word
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of 2 Chronicles 24:27
- Range of meaning
A noun from darash, 'to seek, inquire, investigate, study'. In biblical Hebrew it occurs only twice, here and in 2 Chronicles 13:22 ('the midrash of the prophet Iddo'). It probably means a written inquiry, study or account: a work that looked into and set out the history.
- Against the English
KJV has 'story', which in 1611 meant 'history'. YLT has 'Inquiry', close to the root. WEB has 'commentary' and NIV 'annotations', which imply comment on an existing text. BSB and NASB have 'Treatise', and ESV 'Story'.
- How it drifted
In later Judaism (from roughly the 1st–2nd century AD onward), midrash became the name for a rabbinic method and literature of interpreting scripture, often creative and full of stories. Readers who know that later sense may picture the Chronicler's source as legendary embellishment. That later meaning is not in the word itself in Chronicles.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Dead Sea Scrolls use midrash for study or interpretation of the Torah (e.g. 1QS 8:15, 'the study of the Law'; 4Q174 'Florilegium' opens 'midrash of…'). Ben Sira 51:23 speaks of a 'house of study' (bêt midrāš). These show the word sliding toward 'study, interpretation' in the centuries after Chronicles.
Where it appears
2 Chronicles · 2
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2 Chronicles 13:22 בְּמִדְרַ֖שׁ in [the] record of
Now the rest of the acts of Abijah, along with his ways and his words, are written in the Treatise of the Prophet Iddo.
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2 Chronicles 24:27 מִדְרַ֖שׁ [the] record of
The accounts of the sons of Joash and the many pronouncements about him, and of the restoration of the house of God, are indeed written in the Treatise of the Book of the Kings. And his son Amaziah reigned in his place.
Here: From darash, 'to seek, inquire, investigate'. It names a written work that researched or expounded the history of the kings. It does not yet mean the later rabbinic genre of scripture interpretation.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.