How Midrash Tehillim Saw Abraham and Messiah Before the World Began

Midrash Tehillim, the rabbinic midrash on the book of Psalms compiled in stages across many centuries, is unusually willing to talk about what existed before the world began.

Four passages from the midrash trace the divine economy's pre-creation activity. Abraham is named as one of ten things precious in the eyes of the Holy One. The Messiah is described as already prepared at the dawn of creation. Amalek is identified as a force that, while it exists, prevents the throne itself from being whole. And the stranger, the ger, is loved by the Holy One the way a king loves a gazelle that joined his flock.

The Ten Precious Things

Midrash Tehillim 18 opens with a list. Ten things, the midrash teaches, are called precious in the Hebrew Bible. Wealth (Proverbs 10:15). The Torah (Proverbs 3:15). Israel (Jeremiah 31:20). Knowledge (Proverbs 21:20). Prophecy (1 Samuel 3:1). Understanding (Proverbs 20:27). And several more.

The midrash treats this list as a divine valuation. The Holy One has, by His own scriptural usage, marked these ten categories as carrying particular value. Each category, the rabbis teach, was on the divine mind before the world was created. The world was structured, in part, to allow these ten precious things to come into existence and to be recognized.

The teaching has a quiet weight. Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, is implicitly named in the list through the Israel reference. The patriarch was, by Midrash Tehillim's reading, on the original list of things the Holy One determined to bring into being. The patriarch was not produced by chance.

The Messiah at the Dawn of Creation

Midrash Tehillim 92 takes the principle further. The son of David, the midrash teaches, was beautiful in his appearance at the dawn of creation. His actions were sweet and good before the Lord even before history began.

The midrash compares the Messiah to a palm tree. Just as a palm's shade falls far from its trunk, so the Messiah's reward arrives far from his own time. The Messianic figure, in this reading, was prepared in the pre-creation light. The full reception of that figure would come only in the world to come.

The teaching has eschatological precision. The Messiah is not a future improvisation. He is a pre-creation reality whose appearance in history is the unfolding of a structure that was already in place when the Holy One first considered the design of the world.

The Memory of Amalek Holding the Throne Incomplete

The cluster's hardest passage is at Midrash Tehillim 9. Rabbi Levi, citing Rabbi Hama, teaches that as long as the seed of Amalek exists in the world, the divine Name is not whole and the divine throne is not whole.

The proof text is Exodus 17:16. The Hebrew of the verse describes a hand on the throne, and the rabbis read the phrasing as evidence that the throne is not yet sitting in its complete form. Some structural integrity is missing. The missing piece will be restored only when Amalek's memory is finally erased.

The teaching has cosmic weight. The Holy One's throne, in this reading, is not yet whole. The persistence of Amalek-energy in the world is an active interference with the divine architecture. The eventual erasure of that memory is, in this reading, a structural repair of the upper world that the lower world's history has the responsibility to complete.

The Stranger Loved Like a Gazelle

The cluster closes with the tenderest of the four images. Midrash Tehillim 146 reads Psalm 146:9. The Lord guards the strangers.

The midrash offers the parable. A king has a flock. The shepherd leads the flock out to pasture and back at evening. One day a gazelle wanders into the flock and grazes with the goats and ewes. The king, when he comes out to inspect the flock, loves the gazelle the most. He instructs the shepherd to be careful with the gazelle. He gives the shepherd specific instructions about food and drink for the gazelle.

The midrash spells out the meaning. The gazelle is the stranger, the convert, the person who has joined Israel by choice rather than by birth. The Holy One, in this reading, holds a special tenderness for the stranger that even the native-born do not receive in the same form. The teaching is that the divine love for the convert is itself a pre-creation valuation expressed in the historical care the Holy One extends.

Why the Pre-Creation Mattered

Stack the four passages and Midrash Tehillim's reading of the divine pre-history becomes legible. Abraham was on the original precious-list. The Messiah was beautiful at the dawn of creation. Amalek's persistence holds the throne incomplete. The stranger is loved with the specificity of a king's love for a gazelle. The world's history, in this reading, is the working-out of structures that were already named before the first day.