The Birth of a Doe

Peace and blessing,

It is necessary to understand that many Midrashim were not intended to describe reality in a straightforward sense, but rather to teach profound inner ideas that stand behind reality. This is especially true in words of mussar and Kabbalah, where the matters are deep, and even stories that seem simple contain great and hidden depth concerning higher worlds and the correction of character traits.

Only regarding the Written Torah did the Sages say explicitly: "No verse departs from its plain meaning" (Shabbat 63a), but the Midrashim were often not meant literally.
 
To what may this be compared? To someone telling us a parable about a fox speaking with a fish, and another person suddenly objecting: "But foxes cannot speak!" It is clear that the intent is not the animal called a fox, but the abstract idea that the fox represents in the parable. Many Midrashim of the Sages were meant to represent profound and hidden ideas through parables and imagery. Without the commentators, we cannot know when the intent of a Midrash was literal and when it was stated metaphorically.
The Maharal of Prague interpreted many Midrashim in the Gemara non-literally. For example, the Midrash stating that Moshe Rabbeinu was five meters tall is, according to many commentators, not meant literally. They explained that the intention of the Sages was Moshe's spiritual stature before the people, and how every person felt when standing before him in the generation of the wilderness (Maharal, Chiddushei Aggadot on Bava Metzia, ch. 4). And so on in similar cases.

There is a Gemara that expounds the verse "Yaakov Avinu did not die" (Ta'anit 5b), and there they ask, since it is stated explicitly in Scripture that they mourned Yaakov and buried him, and it answers: "I expound from Scripture! ...Just as his descendants are alive, so too he is alive." Similarly, it is stated in the Zohar: "David, king of Israel, lives and endures."
 
And so too regarding other Midrashim, such as the doe that needs a snake to bite it in order to give birth, and then gives birth to its young above a cliff, and an eagle comes and catches it in the air. This parable appears in the Gemara within derashot on the Book of Iyov (Bava Batra 16b), and there it describes many moral ideas in imagery and illustration. And it is understood that the Sages were familiar with deer and many animals, and saw that they give birth like any other beast. The Ralbag writes on this: "The intent here is, according to what I think, that this living creature is born only with great difficulty, and for this reason the newborn will be in extreme danger, yet nevertheless it will be saved through the providence of Hashem over all existences." In Yaarot Devash (Part One - Derush 3), it is explained that the people of Israel are compared to a doe, which requires the snake's bite, namely wicked kings who threaten them so that they will do teshuvah, and thereby merit the birth of redemption. 

With blessings,
Daniel Bels