What more than this can be expected?
Nor need we think of him as the unwilling prisoner of rules and a
victim of their tyranny. On the contrary, he adapted himself to
them perfectly, and believed that the Midrash could be made to
conform to its meaning without violence to the text. That he
always had reason to believe so was denied by so early a
successor as his grandson Samuel ben Meir. Samuel insisted that
one stand face to face with the Scriptures and interpret them
without paying heed and having recourse to any other work. This
effort at intellectual independence in which the grandson nearly
always succeeded, the grandfather was often incapable of making.
In commenting upon the Talmud Rashi preserved his entire liberty,
unrestrained by the weight of any absolute authority; but in
commenting on the Bible he felt himself bound by the Talmud and
the Midrash. Especially in regard to the Pentateuch, the
Talmudic interpretation was unavoidable, because the Pentateuch
either explicitly or implicitly contains all legal prescriptions.
In point of fact, in leaving the Pentateuch and proceeding to
other parts of the Bible, he gains in force because he gains in
independence. He no longer fears to confront "our sages" with
the true explanation. For example, there is little Derash in the
following commentary on Psalm xxiii:
A Psalm of David]. Our rabbis say: The formula "Psalm
of David" indicates that David at first played the instrument,
then was favored by Divine inspiration.
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