The verb used is darash. But in two texts of the Persian (or early Hellenistic) period, the object of the verb no longer is God. “For Ezra had set his heart to study [lidrosh] the Torah of the LORD” (Ezra 7:10). “Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek your statutes” (Ps. 119:155). Ezra seeks not God but the Torah of God. The wicked are accused not of failing to seek God (Isa. 9:13 [12]; Jer. 10:21), but of failing to seek his statutes. With the canonization of the Torah, Jews no longer seek God directly. They seek God through the Torah.
