As the long historical narrative of the Five Books of Moses moves from the patriarchs to the Hebrew nation in Egypt, it switches gears. The narrative conventions deployed, from type-scenes and thematic key words to the treatment of dialogue, remain the same, but the angle from which events are seen and the handling of characters are notably different. Genesis ended with the death, and the distinctly Egyptian mummification, of Joseph. Exodus begins with a listing of the sons of Jacob who came down to Egypt, thus establishing a formal link with the concluding chapters of Genesis in which a more detailed list of the emigrants from Canaan (46:8–27) is provided. The rapid enumeration here of the sons of Jacob is concluded by a notation of the formulaic number of seventy said to constitute the Hebrew migration from Canaan to Egypt, and this is followed by a restatement of the death of Joseph—a device that biblical scholars call “resumptive repetition,” whereby, after an interruption of narrative continuity, a phrase is repeated from the point at which the narrative broke off (the phrase here is “And Joseph died”) in order to mark the resumption of the story. In this second report of Joseph’s death, however, the focus is not on the mummy in the coffin but on the dying out of a whole generation, which thus propels us forward in historical time (four centuries, according to God’s prophetic revelation to Abraham in Genesis 15) to a moment when beney yisraʾa el, the sons of Israel (or Jacob), have swelled to a people, the Israelites, which is the meaning of that Hebrew phrase from now on in the narrative. Instead of the sharply etched individuals who constituted a family in all its explosive dynamics in Genesis, we now have teeming multitudes of Israelites whose spectacular prolificness introduces to the story the perspective of the whole wide world of creation announced at the beginning of Genesis: “And the sons of Israel were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied and grew very vast, and the land [the Hebrew word also means “earth,” as in Genesis] was filled with them” (Exodus 1:7).
In keeping with this new wide-angle lens through which the characters and the events are seen, the narrative moves from the domestic, moral, and psychological realism of the Patriarchal Tales to a more stylized, sometimes deliberately schematic, mode of storytelling that in a number of respects, especially in the early chapters of the book, has the feel of a folktale. At the beginning of the story, Pharaoh is referred to several times as “the king of Egypt” rather than by his Egyptian title, which was used in Genesis and will become his set designation as the story goes on. This has the effect of casting him as the archetypal evil king (one who kills babies) in a folktale confrontation between the forces of good and of evil. Other folktale elements are evident: the many thousands of childbearing Hebrew women are attended to, in the charming schematic simplicity of a folktale, by just two virtuous midwives; in a folkloric motif that has been profusely documented in many traditions of the ancient Near East and elsewhere, the future hero is threatened with death by the evil king and is saved by being hidden and then rescued. The betrothal type-scene of the young woman encountered at the well in a foreign land, which in the instances of Rebekah and (the absent) Isaac and of Rachel and Jacob was pregnant with intimations of the character and the future relationship of the two people involved, here has undergone a certain stylization. Aspects of Moses’s subsequent career as national leader are adumbrated, but there are no indications about his future relationship with Zipporah, and her character is not in the least at issue. Indeed, it is only here that the young woman at the well is multiplied into seven young women, Zipporah and her six sisters, a move that diminishes her individuality while recasting the encounter between the future spouses as a meeting between one man and seven maidens, according to the sanctified formulaic number.
The general rule in Exodus, and again in Numbers when the story continues, is that what is of interest about the character of Moses is what bears on his qualities as a leader—his impassioned sense of justice, his easily ignited temper, his selfless compassion, his feelings of personal inadequacy. Alone among biblical characters, he is assigned an oddly generic epithet, “the man Moses.” There may be some theological motive for this designation, in order to remind us of his plainly human status, to ward off any inclination to deify the founding leader of the Israelite people, but it also suggests more concretely that Moses as forger of the nation and prince of prophets is, after all, not an absolutely unique figure but a man like other men, bringing to the soul-trying tasks of leadership both the moral and temperamental resources and the all-too-human weaknesses that many men may possess. In regard to our experience of the character and the story, all this means that “the man Moses” remains somewhat distanced from us, that we never get the sense of intimate acquaintance with his inner life and his distinctive traits of personality that we are so memorably afforded in the stories of Jacob and Joseph.
There is a certain correlation between the distancing of the central character and the distancing of the figure of God in Exodus (a procedure that, again, is continued into Numbers). God in Genesis, as one detects in a glimpse of Him in the Garden story and as one can see quite clearly in His encounter with Abraham in Genesis 18, walks about the earth looking very much like a man—indeed, being easily mistaken for a man until He chooses to reveal His identity—and at some points engaging a human being in what is clearly represented as face-to-face conversation. God in Exodus has become essentially unseeable, overpowering, and awesomely refulgent. Barriers to access accompany Him everywhere, just as they will be instituted architecturally in the tripartite structure of the sanctuary that He orders the Israelites to build. The first manifestation of God’s presence to Moses is in the anomaly of the fire burning in a bush without consuming it, and then the divine voice enjoins Moses, “Come no closer here,” and proceeds to speak to him without being in any way visible to him. Fire, which betokens potent energy and which is something one cannot touch without being hurt or destroyed, is the protective perimeter out of which God addresses Moses and the Israelites throughout the story: all of Mount Sinai will be smoking like a firebrand, with celestial fireworks of lightning and thunder crackling round its peak, when God reveals the Ten Commandments to Moses. Later, as we shall see, Deuteronomy, for its own theological reasons, will pick up and dramatically amplify this image of a barrier of fire around God at the defining moment of revelation. God in Exodus has become more of an ungraspable mystery than He seems in Genesis; and as He moves here from the sphere of the clan that is the context of the Patriarchal Tales to the arena of history, His sheer power as supreme deity and His implacability against those who would thwart His purposes emerge as the most salient aspects of the divine character.
Exodus, like Genesis, is made up of two large panels, though they are notably different in nature from the two panels that constitute Genesis. The first unit, running from chapter 1 through chapter 20, is a grand narrative sweep that culminates in what is, at least in national-historical and theological terms, the great climax and point of reference of all biblical literature—the revelation through Moses to Israel of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. There are, one should note, legal passages along the way in chapters 12 and 13 regarding the spring rituals of the paschal offering and the Festival of Flatbread as well as the dedication of the firstborn, but these are to a large degree integrated into the general narrative, coming as they do when the first Passover rite is observed in Egypt and when the Israelite firstborn have been spared while Egypt’s are stricken. This narrative is one of national triumph after the most painful abjection, although the triumph is complicated by the fact that it concludes with the imposition of a set of imperatives that for the Israelites will prove to be a great challenge to obey.
The narrative is organized around three thematically defined spaces: Egypt, the place of bondage; the wilderness, a liminal space where freedom will be realized and new obligations incurred, where a tense struggle between leader and people will play out as part of the initiatory experience of nationhood; and the promised destination of the Exodus from Egypt, the land that remains beyond the horizon of this book. Egypt is associated with water, almost everything there being linked with its central waterway, the Nile, where baby Moses is saved from drowning and where the Ten Plagues begin; and a barrier of water must be crossed to effect the escape of the Israelites, with that very water then drowning the pursuing Egyptian hosts as they had sought to drown the Israelite infant boys. The wilderness is, antithetically, a zone of parched dryness—arid sand and rugged rock formations, where the people more than once desperately thirst for water and are dependent on its miraculous discovery. The shepherd Moses first encounters God in the wilderness on a mountain later called Sinai (a name perhaps meant to recall seneh, the Hebrew word for “bush”) but in this episode referred to as Horeb, which as the twelfth-century Hebrew exegete Abraham ibn Ezra shrewdly saw, means “dryness” or “parched place.” God appears to Moses through a token of supernatural burning on the mountain of the parched place. He will then lead the Israelites through the wilderness with a pillar of fire by night that banks down to a pillar of cloud by day. The culmination of this narrative in the Sinai epiphany, as we have already noted, will make the mountain itself incandescent and rake the sky around its summit with divine fire. The climax of this whole story is a set of lapidary legal injunctions, but they are in no way anticlimactic for being that. Framed as a series of imperatives in the second-person singular and thus addressing every man and woman of the Israelite nation, they express the keenest sense of urgency, much like the urgency in dialogue between human characters that marks many of the dramatic high points of biblical narrative elsewhere. Later, in the episode of the Golden Calf, we learn that God has incised the ten imperative utterances on two tablets of stone (32:15–16), but here no mention is made of writing. The omission is dictated, I think, by a desire to convey the potent immediacy of God’s speech to Israel through Moses: “And God spoke these words, saying” is the formula pointedly used to introduce the Decalogue.
Finally, beyond well-watered Egypt and the burning desert where uncanny fires flare, the new Israelite nation is repeatedly told of a third space, a land flowing not with water but, hyperbolically, with milk and honey. This utopian space will be beyond reach for forty years, and in a sense it can never be fully attained. When the twelve spies enter it on a reconnaissance mission in Numbers, they confirm its fabulous fecundity, but ten of the twelve also deem it unconquerable, calling it “a land that consumes its inhabitants.” As the biblical story continues through Numbers and Deuteronomy and ultimately on to the history of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, the land flowing with milk and honey will begin to seem something like the Land of Cockaigne of medieval European folklore, a dream of delighted, unimpeded fulfillment beyond the grating actualities of real historical time. Treated with poetic hyperbole by the Prophets, it will eventually generate eschatological visions not within the purview of these early books of the Bible.
It is the second large panel of Exodus that is likely to cause perplexity for a good many modern readers. After the riveting narrative of liberation and revelation, the second half of the book, with the exception of the Golden Calf story (chapters 32–34), is devoted to legal material—first a code of criminal and tort law, with some ritual injunctions at the end (chapters 21–23), which is often referred to by scholars as the Book of the Covenant, and then the elaborate instructions for the building of the Tabernacle (chapters 25–31), instructions that will be carried out, more or less word for word, just as one would expect, after the resolution of the confrontation over the Golden Calf (chapters 35–40). Readers attached to the notion of story are bound to find these seventeen chapters of laws and architectural instructions something of a letdown, but one must assume that the ancient writers and their audience had different ideas about literary unity and about how story related to law.
The Book of the Covenant could be understood as a detailed extension of the Decalogue, but the Tabernacle passages pose more of a problem. The easiest explanation for this lavishing of attention on the construction of the Tabernacle is that it reflects the professional interests of the Priestly writers who were responsible for the bulk of this material. That explanation seems plausible enough, but it is too simple a way of stating the case. An analogy between the two-panel structure of Exodus and the complementary interaction between the two versions of the Creation story in Genesis may be helpful. The Priestly editors of Genesis had inherited J’s old story (beginning in chapter 2, the middle of the fourth verse) full of dynamism and danger, in which the acts of creation are represented in powerfully concrete anthropomorphic terms. This story, one may infer, represented a strong set of traditional truths for the editors, but truths that had to be complemented by a different perspective on the same events. And so, before the first human male shaped out of clay and Eve built from his rib and the seduction by the serpent, the Priestly writer placed his own magisterial version of creation, in which the world is called into being through a succession of divine speech-acts and in which everything proceeds in harmonious order, registered in the balanced cadences of the stately prose, from the first day to the seventh, coming to a formal conclusion in the primordial sabbath. The first half of Exodus is a compelling story, punctuated, as some scholars have proposed, by certain epic gestures, that moves from enslavement to liberation to epiphany. It is also a story marked by danger, doubt, and what looks like a national destiny of endless trouble. Moses the future leader barely escapes being murdered as an infant; kills a man, an act that compels him to flee Egypt; harbors grave doubts about his capacity for the daunting mission God imposes on him; and on occasion is angry, impatient, almost despairing in his leadership. The Israelites on their part can scarcely bring themselves to trust Moses and Aaron when the two brothers come to lead them out of slavery, and once in the wilderness, the people will repeatedly prove to be recalcitrant in a long series of backslidings or “murmurings,” both in Exodus and in Numbers. The crowning instance of these episodes of rebellion is the incident of the Golden Calf, carefully introduced between the instructions for the building of the Tabernacle and the carrying out of the instructions.
The Tabernacle, I would suggest, was imagined by these writers as a vision of perfectly orchestrated harmony, enacted through the meticulous crafts of architecture, weaving, dyeing, wood carving, and metalwork—an implementation by human artisans, following divine directives, of the sort of comprehensive harmony figured in the Priestly account of creation. After the tense story of rupture and recrimination of national experience in history, the Priestly writers, themselves intimately associated with a realm of ordered ritual, provide an elaborately imagined representation of the beautiful ordering of sacred space, a zone of choreographed repetition set off against the unsettled peregrinations of the Wilderness generation. The satisfaction this material gives its audience is not story but pageantry: the splendor of the many-colored textiles displayed along the walls of the Tabernacle, the bronze loops on which they are hung, the wrought precious metals and inlaid gems of the various ritual implements. When at the end of all the building we are told, “And Moses completed the task” (40:33), we hear a significant echo of “And God completed on the seventh day the task He had done” (Genesis 2:2). Human labor, scrupulously following a divine plan, creates an ordered space that mirrors the harmony of God’s creation. But the concluding image of the book is the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night that leads the Israelites on their march through the wilderness. On that long way, more trouble awaits them, as readers will discover when the narrative resumes in Numbers.
1And these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each man with his household they came. 2Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. 3Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin. 4Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5And all these persons springing from the loins of Jacob were seventy persons, but Joseph was in Egypt. 6And Joseph died, and all his brothers with him, and all that generation. 7And the sons of Israel were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied and grew very vast, and the land was filled with them.
8And a new king arose over Egypt who knew not Joseph. 9And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the sons of Israel is more numerous and vaster than we. 10Come, let us be shrewd with them lest they multiply and then, should war occur, they will actually join our enemies and fight against us and go up from the land.” 11And they set over them forced-labor foremen so as to abuse them with their burdens, and they built store-cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Rameses. 12And as they abused them, so did they multiply and so did they spread, and they came to loathe the Israelites. 13And the Egyptians put the Israelites to work at crushing labor, 14and they made their lives bitter with hard work with mortar and bricks and every work in the field—all their crushing work that they performed. 15And the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other was named Puah. 16And he said, “When you deliver the Hebrew women and look on the birth-stool, if it is a boy, you shall put him to death, and if it is a girl, she may live.” 17And the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, and they let the children live. 18And the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why did you do this thing and let the children live?” 19And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “For not like the Egyptian women are the Hebrew women, for they are hardy. Before the midwife comes to them they give birth.” 20And God made it go well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very vast. 21And inasmuch as the midwives feared God, He made households for them. 22And Pharaoh charged his whole people, saying, “Every boy that is born you shall fling into the Nile, and every girl you shall let live.”
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. And these are the names. The initial “and” (the particle waw) serves an important thematic end, as several of the medieval Hebrew commentators have noticed. It announces that the narrative that follows is a direct continuation of the Book of Genesis, which ended with Joseph’s death. The list of Jacob’s sons harks back to the longer list of sons and grandsons at the moment of the descent into Egypt in Genesis 46:8–27. It should be noted that the dominant Hebrew tradition assigns names to each of the Five Books of Moses based on the first significant word in the text, and so this book is called Shemot, “Names.” The English tradition of titles follows the Greek practice, which is to use topical names, hence Exodus.
the sons of Israel. Although the masculine plural form of the Hebrew ben could also mean “children,” it is clear here and in Genesis 46 that only the male offspring are used to make up the count of seventy, and only the names of sons are given.
2–4. Reuben, Simeon … Asher. In order to endow the list of eleven with formal symmetry, the writer arranges them in two groups of four with a group of three in the middle.
5. the loins. The Hebrew yarekh means “thigh” and is probably a euphemistic metonymy for testicles, as in Genesis 24:2.
seventy persons. Some ingenuity is required to come up with an exact total of seventy, but the Bible uses numbers as symbolic approximations: after seven and ten, one moves to forty (which is used for units of time rather than people), then ten times seven, or seventy—here indicating a substantial clan, the nucleus of a people. (See the comment on Genesis 46:27.)
but Joseph was in Egypt. The particle waw, which usually means “and,” either is the indication of a pluperfect or, as here, has an adversative sense when it is followed by the subject and then a perfective verb (instead of the normal imperfective verb in initial position and then the subject).
7. the sons of Israel. Though the phrase is identical with the one used at the beginning of verse 1, historical time has been telescoped and so the meaning of the phrase has shifted: now it signifies not the actual sons of Israel/Jacob but Israelites, the members of the nation to which the first Israel gave his name. In subsequent occurrences this translation will use “Israelites.”
were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied. These terms are all of course pointed verbal allusions to the Creation story, as is the final clause of the verse since the Hebrew for “land,” ʾarets, can also mean “earth.” Despite exile and impending slavery, the dynamic of the first creation is resumed by the Israelites in Egypt. In fact, the thematic grounds of the Patriarchal Tales have notably shifted: instead of the constantly perilous struggle for procreation of the patriarchs, the Hebrews now exhibit the teeming fecundity of the natural world. It is for this reason that the verb “swarm” (sharats), which in the Creation story is attached to creeping things, is assigned to the Israelites. The verbal root for becoming vast (King James Version, “mighty”) does not figure at the beginning of Genesis, but it is part of God’s covenantal promise—“For Abraham will surely be a great and mighty nation” (Genesis 18:18).
9. the people of the sons of Israel. This oddly redundant phrase—it should be either “sons of Israel” or “people of Israel”—is explained by Pharaoh’s alarmed recognition that the sons, the lineal descendants, of Israel have swelled to a people.
10. be shrewd with them. The Hebrew says “it,” i.e., the people, but later switches to the plural.
they will actually join our enemies. The adverb gam, which generally means “also,” here has an emphatic sense. Compare Genesis 37:7.
go up from the land. The most plausible meaning, as the consensus of medieval Hebrew commentators understood, is that after joining the enemy, the Israelites would leave Egypt—probably to return to their country of origin in the north, as the verb “go up” may suggest. The notion that the phrase could mean “rise up from the ground” (New Jewish Publication Society) or “become masters of the land” (Revised English Bible) seems far-fetched.
12. as they abused them, so did they multiply. Like a force of nature (compare verse 7), the Israelites respond to oppression by redoubling their procreative surge. Compare Rashi: “The Divine Spirit says, ‘So—you say, “lest they multiply,” and I say, “so did they multiply.”’”
and they came to loathe the Israelites. William H. C. Propp has made the ingenious suggestion that the loathing is a response to the reptilian “swarming” of reproductive activity exhibited by the Israelites.
13. at crushing labor. The Hebrew is an adverbial form derived from a root that means “to break into pieces,” “to pulverize.”
14. work … work … work. Following a prevalent stylistic practice of Hebrew narrative, the writer underscores his main topic, the harshness of slavery, by repeating a central thematic key word. Indeed, the Hebrew literally says, “their crushing work that they worked,” but in English that cognate accusative form sounds awkward except for a limited number of idioms (e.g., “sing a song”).
15. the Hebrew midwives. “Hebrew” is regularly the designation of Israelites from a foreign perspective.
Shiphrah … Puah. The first name suggests “beauty”; the second name, as the Ugaritic texts indicate, might originally have meant “fragrant blossom” and hence “girl.” But since the root paʿah can also mean “to murmur” or “to gurgle,” Rashi inventively suggests it is the sound a nurturing woman makes to soothe an infant. In any case, the introduction of just two heroic midwives reflects the way this entire narrative, in contrast to Genesis, has been stylized and simplified. Abraham ibn Ezra appears to grasp this principle of schematization when he proposes that Shiphrah and Puah in fact would have had to be supervisors of whole battalions of midwives.
16. birth-stool. Literally, “double stones.” Although there is some debate about the meaning of the term, there are persuasive grounds to understand it as the double stone or brick structure that the childbearing woman gripped as she kneeled, the standard position to give birth. There is an Egyptian magical papyrus that announces it is to be recited “over the two bricks of birthing.”
19. for they are hardy. “Hardy,” ḥayot, is derived from the verb “to live,” which has just been used twice in connection with the newborn. (Hence the King James Version’s “lively,” though in modern English that unfortunately suggests vivaciousness or bounciness.) The fact that ḥayot as a noun means “animals” may reinforce the strong connection between the Israelites and the procreative forces of the natural world: like animals, the Hebrew women need no midwife.
21. He made households for them. Although some have seen Pharaoh as the antecedent of “he,” God seems considerably more likely. The sense would then be that they were rewarded for their virtue with social standing, establishing their own families, or something of the sort.
22. Pharaoh charged his whole people. Despairing of cooperation from the Hebrew midwives in his genocidal project, Pharaoh now enlists the entire Egyptian population in a search-and-destroy operation.
Every boy … you shall fling into the Nile, and every girl you shall let live. The schematic—as against historical or even historylike—character of the narrative is evident in this folktale antithetical symmetry. The idea is presumably that the people would be eradicated by cutting off all male progeny while the girls could be raised for the sexual exploitation and domestic service of the Egyptians, by whom they would of course be rapidly assimilated. Pharaoh’s scheme will again be frustrated, as the future liberator of the Hebrews will be placed (not flung) in the Nile and emerge eventually to cause grief to Egypt. There is also an echo here of Abram’s words to Sarai when they come down to Egypt, adumbrating the destiny of their descendants, during a famine: “they will kill me while you they will let live” (Genesis 12:12).
1And a man from the house of Levi went and took a Levite daughter, 2and the woman conceived and bore a son, and she saw that he was goodly, and she hid him three months. 3And when she could no longer hide him, she took a wicker ark for him and caulked it with resin and pitch and placed the child in it and placed it in the reeds by the banks of the Nile. 4And his sister stationed herself at a distance to see what would be done to him. 5And Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the Nile, her maidens walking along the Nile. And she saw the ark amidst the reeds and sent her slavegirl and took it. 6And she opened it up and saw the child, and, look, it was a lad weeping. And she pitied him and said, “This is one of the children of the Hebrews.” 7And his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and summon a nursing woman from the Hebrews that she may suckle the child for you?” 8And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” And the girl went and summoned the child’s mother. 9And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Carry away this child and suckle him for me, and I myself will pay your wages.” And the woman took the child and suckled him. 10And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became a son to her, and she called his name Moses, “For from the water I drew him out.”
11And it happened at that time that Moses grew up and went out to his brothers and saw their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man of his brothers. 12And he turned this way and that and saw that there was no man about, and he struck down the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. 13And he went out the next day, and, look, two Hebrew men were brawling, and he said to the one in the wrong, “Why should you strike your fellow?” 14And he said, “Who set you as a man prince and judge over us? Is it to kill me that you mean as you killed the Egyptian?” And Moses was afraid and he thought, “Surely, the thing has become known.” 15And Pharaoh heard of this thing and he sought to kill Moses, and Moses fled from Pharaoh’s presence and dwelled in the land of Midian, and he sat down by the well. 16And the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17And the shepherds came and drove them off, and Moses rose and saved them and watered their flock. 18And they came to Reuel their father, and he said, “Why have you hurried back today?” 19And they said, “An Egyptian man rescued us from the hands of the shepherds, and, what’s more, he even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20And he said to his daughters, “And where is he? Why did you leave the man? Call him that he may eat bread.” 21And Moses agreed to dwell with the man, and he gave Zipporah his daughter to Moses. 22And she bore a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “A sojourner have I been in a foreign land.”
23And it happened when a long time had passed that the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned from the bondage and cried out, and their plea from the bondage went up to God. 24And God heard their moaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25And God saw the Israelites, and God knew.
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. took. This verb is commonly used in biblical Hebrew for taking a wife, even when “wife” is elided, as here. It is worth translating literally because the verb is echoed in the woman’s taking the wicker ark (verse 3) and in the Egyptian slavegirl’s taking the ark (verse 5).
3. she took a wicker ark … and caulked it with resin and pitch. The basket in which the infant is placed is called a tevah, “ark,” the same word used for Noah’s ark. (It may be an Egyptian loanword. Such borrowed terms abound in the story, giving it local color. The most prominent is the word for “Nile,” yeʾor.) As numerous commentators have observed, the story of Moses begins with a pointed allusion to the Flood story. In Genesis, a universal deluge nearly destroys the whole human race. Here, Pharaoh’s decree to drown every Hebrew male infant threatens to destroy the people of Israel. As the ark in Genesis bears on the water the saving remnant of humankind, the child borne on the waters here will save his imperiled people. This narrative recapitulates the Flood story, itself a quasi-epic narrative of global scope, in the transposed key of a folktale: the story of a future ruler who is hidden in a basket floating on a river has parallels in Hittite, Assyrian, and Egyptian literature, and approximate analogues in many other cultures. Otto Rank sees the basket as a womb image and the river water as an externalization of the amniotic fluid. Psychoanalytic speculation apart, it is clear from the story that water plays a decisive thematic role in Moses’s career. He is borne safely on the water, which Pharaoh had imagined would be the very means to destroy all the Hebrew male children. His floating among the reeds (suf) foreshadows the miraculous triumph over the Egyptians that he will lead in the parting of the Sea of Reeds (yam suf). His obtaining water for the thirsting people will figure prominently in the Wilderness stories.
6. and saw the child. The Masoretic Text has “she saw him, the child,” but other ancient versions show “saw” without the accusative masculine suffix.
and, look, it was a lad weeping. “Lad,” naʿar, is more typically used for an older child or a young man, but it may be employed here to emphasize the discovery—“and look,” wehineh—that this is a male child. (It might also be relevant that naʿar occurs elsewhere as a term of parental tenderness referring to a vulnerable child.) The fact that this is a male child left hidden in a basket would be the clue to the princess and her entourage that he belongs to the Hebrews against whom the decree of infanticide has been issued. Nahum Sarna notes that this is the sole instance in the Bible in which the verb “to weep” is used for an infant, not an adult.
10. And the child grew. The verb clearly indicates his reaching the age of weaning, which would have been around three. This might have been long enough for the child to have acquired Hebrew as his first language. The same verb “grew” in verse 11 refers to attaining adulthood.
became a son to her. The phrase indicates adoption, not just an emotional attachment.
Moses. This is an authentic Egyptian name meaning “the one who is born,” and hence “son.” The folk etymology relates it to the Hebrew verb mashah, “to draw out from water.” Perhaps the active form of the verb used for the name mosheh, “he who draws out,” is meant to align the naming with Moses’s future destiny of rescuing his people from the water of the Sea of Reeds.
12. and saw that there was no man about. Although the obvious meaning is that he wanted to be sure the violent intervention he intended would go unobserved, some interpreters have proposed, a little apologetically, that he first looked around to see if there was anyone else to step forward and help the beaten Hebrew slave. “About” is merely implied in the Hebrew. In any case, there is a pointed echoing of “man” (ʾish)—an Egyptian man, a Hebrew man, and no man—that invites one to ponder the role and obligations of a man as one man victimizes another. When the fugitive Moses shows up in Midian, he will be identified, presumably because of his attire and speech, as “an Egyptian man.”
13. Why should you strike your fellow? The first dialogue assigned to a character in biblical narrative typically defines the character. Moses’s first speech is a reproof to a fellow Hebrew and an attempt to impose a standard of justice (rashaʿ, “the one in the wrong,” is a legal term).
14. Who set you as a man prince and judge over us? These words of the brawler in the wrong not only preface the revelation that Moses’s killing of the Egyptian is no secret but also adumbrate a long series of later incidents in which the Israelites will express resentment or rebelliousness toward Moses. Again, “man” is stressed. Later, “the man Moses” will become a kind of epithet for Israel’s first leader.
thing. The Hebrew davar variously means “word,” “thing,” “matter,” “affair,” and much else.
15. Midian. The geographical location of this land in different biblical references does not seem entirely fixed, perhaps because the Midianites were seminomads. Moses’s country of refuge would appear to be a semidesert region bordering Egypt on the east, to the west by northwest of present-day Eilat.
sat down by the well. The verb yashav, “sat down,” is identical with the previous verb in this sentence, where it reflects its other meaning, “to dwell” or “to settle.” It makes sense for the wayfarer to pause to rest and refresh himself at an oasis as Moses does here. “The well” has the idiomatic force of “a certain well.”
16. seven daughters … came and drew water. By this point, the ancient audience would have sufficient signals to recognize the narrative convention of the betrothal type-scene (compare Abraham’s servant and Rebekah, Genesis 24, and Jacob and Rachel, Genesis 29): the future bridegroom, or his surrogate, encounters a nubile young woman, or women, at a well in a foreign land; water is drawn; the woman hurries to bring home news of the stranger’s arrival; he is invited to a meal; the betrothal is agreed on. In keeping with the folktale stylization of the Moses story, the usual young woman is multiplied by the formulaic number seven.
17. the shepherds came and drove them off. Only in this version of the betrothal scene is there an actual struggle between hostile sides at the well. Moses’s intervention to “save” (hoshiʿa) the girls accords perfectly with his future role as commander of the Israelite forces in the wilderness and the liberator, moshiʿa, of his people.
18. Why have you hurried back today? With great narrative economy, the expected betrothal-scene verb, “to hurry,” miher, occurs not in the narrator’s report but in Reuel’s expression of surprise to his daughters.
19. he even drew water for us and watered the flock. Their report highlights the act of drawing water, the Hebrew stressing the verb by stating it in the infinitive before the conjugated form—daloh dalah (in this translation, “even drew”). The verb is different from mashah, the term associated with Moses’s name, because it is the proper verb for drawing water, whereas mashah is used for drawing something out of water. In any case, this version of the scene at the well underscores the story of a hero whose infancy and future career are intimately associated with water.
20. Call him that he may eat bread. “Call” here has its social sense of “invite,” and “bread” is the common biblical synecdoche for food. Reuel’s eagerness to show hospitality indicates that he is a civilized person, and in the logic of the type-scene, the feast offered the stranger will lead to the betrothal.
21. Zipporah. The name means “bird.”
22. Gershom … A sojourner have I been. In keeping with biblical practice, the naming-speech reflects folk etymology, breaking the name into ger, “sojourner,” and sham, “there,” though the verbal root of the name g-r-sh would appear to refer to banishment.
23. bondage. The Hebrew ʿavodah is the same term rendered as “work” in chapter 1.
24. moaning. The Hebrew naʾaqah is a phonetic cousin (through metathesis) to the word for groaning, ʾanaḥah, reflected in the previous verse, an effect this translation tries to simulate through rhyme.
24–25. Until this point, God has not been evident in the story. Now He is the subject of a string of significant verbs—hear, remember (which in the Hebrew has the strong force of “take to heart”), see, and know. The last of these terms marks the end of the narrative segment with a certain mystifying note—sufficiently mystifying that the ancient Greek translators sought to “correct” it—because it has no object. “God knew,” but what did He know? Presumably, the suffering of the Israelites, the cruel oppression of history in which they are now implicated, the obligations of the covenant with the patriarchs, and the plan He must undertake to liberate the enslaved people. And so the objectless verb prepares us for the divine address from the burning bush and the beginning of Moses’s mission.
1And Moses was herding the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, priest of Midian, and he drove the flock into the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. 2And the LORD’s messenger appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush, and he saw, and look, the bush was burning with fire and the bush was not consumed. 3And Moses thought, “Let me, pray, turn aside that I may see this great sight, why the bush does not burn up.” 4And the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, and God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5And He said, “Come no closer here. Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place you are standing on is holy ground.” 6And He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. 7And the LORD said, “I indeed have seen the abuse of My people that is in Egypt and its outcry because of its taskmasters. I have heard, for I know its pain. 8And I have come down to rescue it from the hand of Egypt and to bring it up from that land to a goodly and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivvite and the Jebusite. 9And now, look, the outcry of the Israelites has come to Me and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10And now, go that I may send you to Pharaoh, and bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt.” 11And Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” 12And He said, “For I will be with you. And this is the sign for you that I Myself have sent you. When you bring the people out from Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” 13And Moses said to God, “Look, when I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?,’ what shall I say to them?” 14And God said to Moses, “ʾEhyeh-ʾAsher-’Ehyeh, I-Will-Be-Who-I-Will-Be.” And He said, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘ʾEhyeh has sent me to you.’” 15And God said further to Moses, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites: ‘The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, sent me to you.
That is My name forever
and thus am I invoked in all ages.’
16Go and gather the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The LORD God of your fathers has appeared to me, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, “I have surely marked what is done to you in Egypt, 17and I have said, I will bring you up from the abuse of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivvite and the Jebusite, to a land flowing with milk and honey.”’ 18And they will heed your voice, and you shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt, and together you shall say to him: ‘The LORD, God of the Hebrews, happened upon us, and so, let us go, pray, three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.’ 19And I on My part know that the king of Egypt will not let you go except through a strong hand. 20And I will send out My hand and strike Egypt with all My wonders that I shall do in his midst, and afterward will he send you out. 21And I will grant this people favor in the eyes of Egypt, and so when you go, you will not go empty-handed. 22But each woman will ask of her neighbor and of the sojourner in her house ornaments of silver and ornaments of gold and robes, and you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters and you shall despoil Egypt.”
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. Jethro. In the previous episode he was Reuel. Modern critics generally attribute the difference in names to different literary sources.
into the wilderness. The Hebrew preposition ʾaḥar is odd. Because it usually means “behind,” the King James Version bizarrely translated this phrase as “the back side of the desert.” The claim that here it means “to the west” is rather strained. Perhaps it may suggest something like “deep into.”
Horeb. This appears to be a synonym for Sinai—it is the name used in the E document, whereas Sinai is J’s term. The name is transparently derived from a root signifying dryness and so means something like “Parched Mountain.” Abraham ibn Ezra acutely notes that this parched desert location is a full three days’ journey (verse 18) from the Nile, the great source of water. That contrast points to a spatial-thematic antithesis: Moses, the man associated with water from infancy on, now encounters the God of all creation in the dry desert, and in flame.
2. the LORD’s messenger. In what follows, it is God Himself reported as speaking to Moses from the burning bush. Either God first assigns a divine emissary to initiate the pyrotechnic display that will get Moses’s attention, or the piety of early scribal tradition introduced an intermediary into the original text in order to avoid the uncomfortable image of the LORD’s revealing Himself in a lowly bush.
the bush. The Hebrew seneh, a relatively rare word, intimates Horeb’s other name, Sinai, by way of a pun. Some have conjectured that the name Sinai is actually derived from Seneh. In the ancient Near East, deities were often associated with sacred trees, but not with bushes. Rashi construes this epiphany in the humble bush as an expression of God’s identification with the abasement of Israel enslaved.
and the bush was not consumed. The epiphanies to the patriarchs did not involve supernatural events, but Moses is destined to lead Israel out of slavery through great signs and wonders. If one recalls the later image in Jeremiah of God’s word as fire in the bones of the prophet (chapter 20), one might see in the divine fire that does not consume the bush a reassuring portent for Moses of the daunting prophetic role to which he is called, for the bush invested with divinity is not destroyed. Rashi makes a similar inference here. In much of the Exodus story, one senses strong symbolic implications in the concrete images, but the symbolism is never explicit.
3. Let me … turn aside that I may see. Moses is initially drawn by curiosity about the anomalous sight, scarcely imagining what he is getting into.
6. Moses hid his face. The gesture reflects the reiterated belief of biblical figures that man cannot look on God’s face and live. What should be noted is how God’s manifestation has shifted from Genesis. God spoke to Abraham face-to-face in implicitly human form. Here He speaks from fire, and even that Moses is afraid to look on.
7. I … have seen … I have heard, for I know its pain. The three verbs in this sequence pick up three of the four highlighted verbs used at the end of the previous chapter. As Rashi notes, the objectless “knew” of 2:25 here is given its object—pain.
8. I have come down to rescue … to bring it up. Ibn Ezra neatly observes that the coming down is directly followed by the antithetical bringing up.
flowing with milk and honey. The honey in question is probably not bee’s honey, for apiculture was not practiced in this early period, but rather a sweet syrup extracted from dates. The milk would most likely have been goat’s milk and not cow’s milk. In any case, these two synecdoches for agriculture and animal husbandry respectively become a fixed epithet for the bounty of the promised land.
the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite … and the Jebusite. This imposing and repeated list of the peoples of the land of Canaan serves as a notice that this is far from an uninhabited country, that it contains resident peoples who will need to be confronted militarily.
11. Who am I. Moses’s profession of unworthiness is the first instance of a recurring scene in which the future prophet responds to the divine call by an initial unwillingness to undertake the mission (compare Isaiah 6 and Jeremiah 1). Moses has particular cause to feel unworthy. Having been reared as an Egyptian prince, he has become an outlaw, an exile, and a simple shepherd. His one intervention, moreover, with his Hebrew brothers elicited only a resentful denunciation of him as a murderer.
12. For I will be with you. And this is the sign. Rashi proposes that God “answered the first question first and the second question second.” That is, to the question “Who am I?,” God responds that He will be with Moses, so Moses will have divine authority invested in him. To the question about bringing out the Israelites from Egypt, God responds that the fire in the bush is the concrete token of the miraculous power Moses will exert as God’s agent in rescuing his people. It should be observed, however, that the reference of “this is the sign” is quite ambiguous, and perhaps was intended to be so. It could refer simply to the previous clause: “I will be with you” and that will be the sign you require. It could refer to the very burning bush out of which God speaks, as Rashi infers. Or, it could refer to the following clause: the sign that it is God Who has sent Moses will be realized when Moses succeeds in the extraordinary undertaking of bringing the Hebrews out of Egypt and leads them all the way to the mountain on which he now stands.
13. What is His name? The name of course implies identity, distinctive essence, and in the case of someone giving orders, official authorization (the emissary can claim to be carrying out his mission in the name of So-and-so).
14. ʾEhyeh-ʾAsher-ʾEhyeh. God’s response perhaps gives Moses more than he bargained for—not just an identifying divine name (the implication of offering one such name might be that there are other divinities) but an ontological divine mystery of the most daunting character. Rivers of ink have since flowed in theological reflection on and philological analysis of this name. The following brief remarks will be confined to the latter consideration, which in any case must provide the grounding for the former. “I-Will-Be-Who-I-Will-Be” is the most plausible construction of the Hebrew, though the middle word, ʾasher, could easily mean “what” rather than “who,” and the common rendering of “I-Am-That-I-Am” cannot be excluded. (“Will” is used here rather than “shall” because the Hebrew sounds like an affirmation with emphasis, not just a declaration.) Since the tense system of biblical Hebrew by no means corresponds to that of modern English, it is also perfectly possible to construe this as “I Am He Who Endures.” The strong consensus of biblical scholarship is that the original pronunciation of the name YHWH that God goes on to use in verse 15 was “Yahweh.” There are several good arguments for that conclusion. There is an independent name for the deity, Yah, which also appears as a suffix to proper names, and that designation could very well be a shortened form of this name. Greek transcriptions reflect a pronunciation close to “Yahweh.” In that form, the name would be the causative, or hiphʿil, form of the verb “to be” and thus would have the theologically attractive sense of “He Who Brings Things into Being.” All this is plausible, but it is worth registering at least a note of doubt about the form of the divine name. Here God instructs Moses to tell Israel ʾEhyeh, “I-Will-Be,” has sent him. The deity, if the Masoretic vocalization is to be trusted, refers to Himself not with a causative but with the qal (“simple”) conjugation. This could conceivably imply that others refer to him in the qal third person as Yihyeh, “He-Will-Be.” (The medial y sound in this conjugated form would have had considerable phonetic interchange with the w consonant in YHWH.) This in turn would make the name fit a common pattern for male names in the third-person masculine singular, qal conjugation, imperfective form: Yitsḥaq (Isaac), “he will laugh”; Yaʿaqov (Jacob), “he will protect,” or “he will grab the heel”; Yiftaḥ (Jephthah), “he will open”; and many others. If this were the case, then the name “Yah” could have been assimilated to YHWH by folk etymology and then perhaps even affected its pronunciation. Whether the pronunciaton of this name later in the Hellenistic period, by then restricted to the high priest on the Day of Atonement, Yahweh, as indicated in Greek transcriptions, reflects its original sound is at least open to question. The logic of Yihyeh as the essential divine name would be that whereas particular actions may be attributed to humans through the verbal names chosen for them, to God alone belongs unlimited, unconditional being. This conjecture, inspired by the use here by God of the qal conjugation rather than the causative conjugation in naming Himself, is far from certain, but it might introduce at least some margin of doubt about the consensus opinion regarding the divine name.
15. and thus am I invoked. The Hebrew of this brief poetic inset preserves strict grammatical-syntactical parallelism with the preceding verset: “and that is my appellation in all ages,” but English synonyms for “name” (Hebrew zekher), such as “appellation” and “designation,” are too ponderously polysyllabic for the little poem.
18. they will heed your voice. God is responding to Moses’s understandable concern that the Hebrews will simply dismiss him with his crazy-sounding claims.
and together you shall say. “Together” has been added to make clear what is evident in the Hebrew through the plural form of “say,” that the elders will be speaking together with Moses to Pharaoh.
happened. They use a verb that elsewhere suggests chance encounter, rather than the more definite “appeared.” This might imply that they want to intimate to Pharaoh that they did not seek this meeting with the divinity.
let us go … three days’ journey. They do not say that they intend to return, though these words bear the obvious implication that they are requesting only a furlough (week-long furloughs were actually sometimes extended to Egyptian slaves). To ask for absolute manumission would have been outrageous.
20. send out My hand. A more idiomatic rendering would be “stretch out,” but it is important to preserve the symmetry of God’s sending at the beginning of the verse and Pharaoh’s sending at the end.
22. each woman will ask of her neighbor and of the sojourner. Both “neighbor” and “sojourner” are feminine nouns. The verse reflects a frequent social phenomenon—also registered in the rabbinic literature of Late Antiquity—in which women constitute the porous boundary between adjacent ethnic communities: borrowers of the proverbial cup of sugar, sharers of gossip and women’s lore. It must be said that this situation, in which Egyptian women are lodgers in Israelite houses, does not jibe with the Plagues narrative, in which the Israelites live in a segregated region. Some readers have felt discomfort at the act of exploitation recorded here. The most common line of defense is that this is restitution for the unpaid labor exacted from the Hebrew slaves. In any case, it seems wise not to view the story in terms of intergroup ethics. From beginning to end, it is a tale of Israelite triumphalism. The denizens of the simple farms and the relatively crude towns of Judah would have known about imperial Egypt’s fabulous luxuries, its exquisite jewelry, and the affluent among them would have enjoyed imported Egyptian linens and papyrus. It is easy to imagine how this tale of despoiling or stripping bare Egypt would have given pleasure to its early audiences. In each of the three sister-wife stories in Genesis that adumbrate the Exodus narrative, the patriarch and his wife depart loaded with gifts: the presence of that motif suggests that the despoiling of Egypt was an essential part of the story of liberation from bondage in the early national traditions.
1And Moses answered and said, “But, look, they will not believe me nor will they heed my voice, for they will say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you.’” 2And the LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?” And he said, “A staff.” 3And He said, “Fling it to the ground.” And he flung it to the ground and it became a snake and Moses fled from it. 4And the LORD said to Moses, “Reach out your hand and grasp its tail.” And he reached out his hand and held it and it became a staff in his grip. 5“So that they will believe that the LORD God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6And the LORD said further to him, “Bring, pray, your hand into your bosom.” And he put his hand back into his bosom and brought it out and, look, his hand was blanched like snow. 7And He said, “Put your hand back into your bosom.” And he put his hand back into his bosom and brought it out and, look, it came back like his own flesh. 8“And so, should they not believe you and should they not heed the voice of the first sign, they will believe the voice of the second sign. 9And should it be that they do not believe even both these signs and do not heed your voice, you shall take of the water of the Nile and pour it on the dry land, and the water that you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry land.” 10And Moses said, “Please, my LORD, no man of words am I, not at any time in the past nor now since You have spoken to Your servant, for I am heavy-mouthed and heavy-tongued.” 11And the LORD said to him, “Who gave man a mouth, or who makes him mute or deaf or sighted or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12And now, go, and I Myself will be with your mouth and will instruct you what to say.” 13And he said, “Please, my LORD, send, pray, by the hand of him You would send.” 14And the wrath of the LORD flared up against Moses, and He said, “Is there not Aaron the Levite, your brother? I know that he can indeed speak, and, what’s more, look, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, his heart will rejoice. 15And you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I Myself will be with your mouth and with his mouth and I will instruct you both what you should do, 16and he will speak for you to the people, and so he, he will be a mouth for you, and you, you will be for him like a god. 17And this staff you shall take in your hand, with which you will do the signs.”
18And Moses went and returned to Jether his father-in-law, and he said to him, “Let me go, pray, and return to my brothers who are in Egypt that I may see whether they still live.” And Jethro said, “Go in peace.” 19And the LORD said to Moses in Midian, “Go, return to Egypt, for all the men who sought your life are dead.” 20And Moses took his wife and his sons and mounted them on the donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt, and Moses took God’s staff in his hand. 21And the LORD said to Moses, “When you set out to return to Egypt, see all the portents that I have put in your hand and do them before Pharaoh. But I on my part shall toughen his heart and he will not send the people away. 22And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus said the LORD: My son, my firstborn, is Israel. 23And I said to you, Send off my son that he may worship Me, and you refused to send him off, and, look, I am about to kill your son, your firstborn.’”
24And it happened on the way at the night camp that the LORD encountered him and sought to put him to death. 25And Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched it to his feet, and she said, “Yes, a bridegroom of blood you are to me.” 26And He let him go. Then did she say, “A bridegroom of blood by the circumcising.”
27And the LORD said to Aaron, “Go to the wilderness to meet Moses.” And he went and encountered him on the mountain of God and he kissed him. 28And Moses told Aaron all the LORD’s words with which He sent him and all the signs with which He charged him. 29And Moses, and Aaron with him, went, and they gathered the elders of the Israelites. 30And Aaron spoke all the words that the LORD had spoken to Moses, and he did the signs before the people’s eyes. 31And the people believed and heeded, that the LORD had singled out the Israelites and that He had seen their abuse. And they did obeisance and bowed down.
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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2. What is that in your hand? The shepherd’s staff is his familiar possession and constant practical tool. Its sudden metamorphosis into a reptile is thus a dramatic demonstration to Moses of God’s power to intervene in the order of nature that will be repeatedly manifested in the Plagues narrative. The staff itself will be wielded by Moses as a magician’s wand, and Moses’s mission to Egypt, an international capital of the technology of magic, will be implemented through the exercise of divinely enabled magic. In verse 20, the staff will be called “God’s staff,” not because it is a staff belonging to God that was given to Moses, as some scholars have contended, but because from this moment of the Horeb epiphany, the simple shepherd’s staff has been transmuted into both the theater and the conduit of divine power.
3. Fling it to the ground. There is an odd semantic “rhyming” in the recycling for the staff of the violent verb that Pharaoh used for the Hebrew male infants (1:22).
it became a snake and Moses fled. The trusty support turns into something dangerous and alien, triggering a primal fear in Moses—the very fear that is figured in the primordial reptile of the Garden story (Genesis 3:15). Although this particular transformation has the look of a conjuror’s trick (and Pharaoh’s soothsayers will replicate it), it is an intimation of the fearsome power to unleash the zoological and meteorological realms that God will manifest in Egypt.
4. grasp its tail. As has often been noted, this is the most dangerous place to seize a venomous snake, and thus requires Moses to trust implicitly that God will keep him from harm.
6. his hand was blanched like snow. The Hebrew metsoraʿat, here represented as “blanched,” is rendered as “leprous” in many older translations, but the modern scholarly consensus is that what is involved is some disfiguring skin disease other than leprosy. The comparison with snow would not refer to flaking, as some have claimed, because “like snow” is a known biblical simile for total whiteness—in the case of skin, loss of all pigmentation. A skin disease will figure among the plagues with which God will strike the Egyptians, and so is the second of the two metamorphic “signs” here. God appropriately is both a sudden bringer of disease and a healer.
8. heed the voice of the first sign. Signs don’t have voices, but the formulation is determined by the momentum of the idiom “heed the voice.” It is a case, as Abraham ibn Ezra observes, when “Torah speaks like the language of humankind.”
9. the water that you take from the Nile will become blood. Thus, the enactment of this third sign coincides with the implementation of the first plague. If the metamorphoses of Moses’s own staff and hand do not convince the Hebrews, the spectacular transformation of the Nile—an Egyptian deity, as Rashi notes, and the very source of life in Egypt—will eliminate any lingering skepticism. The predominance of blood in this entire narrative should be observed. Moses has already spilled Egyptian blood (the phrase is not used, but it is a fixed biblical idiom for both manslaughter and murder). The Ten Plagues will begin with a plague of blood and end with one in which blood is heavily involved. On the way to Egypt (verses 24–26), Moses’s life will be saved by a rite carried out through blood. The story of liberation from Egyptian bondage is consistently imagined as a process of violent oppression to be broken only by violent counterstrokes. The portent here seems to be to turn the Nile water into blood when it is scooped up and scattered on dry land. In the event, a more cataclysmic turning of the water of the river in its channel into blood will take place. “Dry land” and “water” prefigure the Sea of Reeds miracle.
10. heavy-mouthed and heavy-tongued. It seems futile to speculate, as so many commentators have, whether Moses suffered from an actual speech impediment or merely was unaccustomed to public speaking. The point is that he invokes these Hebrew idioms for impeded speech—whether as hyperbole or as physiological fact scarcely matters—to express his feeling of incapacity for the mission, which is his new reason for refusal now that God has settled the question of the skepticism of the Israelites. In the subsequent narrative, Moses actually appears to be capable of considerable eloquence.
12. I Myself will be with your mouth. This rather unusual idiom is a way of focusing in on God’s initial promise that He will be with Moses. Since Moses has now made an issue of his mouth and tongue, God assures him that the promised divine sustaining aid will be specifically palpable in the organ of speech.
13. send, pray, by the hand of him You would send. The implication, of course, is: but not me. Moses resorts to this vague and slightly cryptic phrase because he doesn’t dare to say in so many words that he is still unwilling. But God immediately recognizes this as a refusal—hence the flare-up of anger in His immediate response.
14. Is there not Aaron the Levite, your brother? The innocent reader might be impelled to ask, “Is there?”, since no previous report of Aaron’s existence had been made. The account of Moses’s conception and birth in 2:2 is elliptic because it is made to sound as though they directly followed the marriage of his parents, whereas Moses is actually the youngest of three siblings, Miriam being the oldest.
his heart will rejoice. Are we to infer that the brothers had secret contact and hence an established fraternal bond during the years that Moses was growing up as the Egyptian princess’s adopted son? The narrative data provided in chapter 2 at least allow the possibility that Moses’s family could have found ways to stay in touch with him, and this in turn would explain why he felt a sense of identification with his Hebrew “brothers” when he witnessed the beating of the Hebrew slave by the Egyptian taskmaster. In any case, Aaron’s joy at the brothers’ reunion after Moses’s years as a fugitive suggests that the two will work together in fraternal unison.
16. you will be for him like a god. Moses will convey “oracular” messages to Aaron who will transmit them as official spokesman to the people. This rather audacious way of stating the communications relay is enabled by the fact that ʾelohim, which has the primary meaning of “god,” extends to merely angelic divine beings and even to human eminences.
18. Jether. This is a variant form of Jethro, which is more often used in the narrative.
return to my brothers who are in Egypt that I may see whether they still live. Moses does not mention that he had fled Egypt for having committed a capital crime, and perhaps one may infer that he never divulged that part of his Egyptian past to his father-in-law. In the very next verse, God will give Moses assurance that he no longer is in danger of execution for the act of manslaughter. The last clause here is a pointed allusion to Joseph’s anxious question to his brothers (Genesis 45:3) about whether his father is still alive: the familial bond that induced Joseph to bring his father and brothers down to Egypt will now be manifested in Moses’s actions as he sets out to reverse the process, bringing his “brothers” up out of Egypt and back to Canaan. His wondering whether his brothers still live is more than a way of saying that he wants to find out how they are faring because he is aware that they have been the target of a genocidal plan.
20. his sons. Only one son was previously mentioned, and only one son figures in verses 24–26. Some textual critics, noting an ambiguity in early Hebrew orthography, propose “his son” as the original reading.
21. But I on My part shall toughen his heart. This phrase, which with two synonymous variants punctuates the Plagues narrative, has been the source of endless theological debate over whether Pharaoh is exercising free will or whether God is playing him as a puppet and then punishing him for his puppet’s performance. The latter alternative surely states matters too crudely. The heart in biblical idiom is the seat of understanding, feeling, and intention. The verb rendered here as “toughen” (King James Version, “harden”) has the primary meaning of “strengthen,” and the most frequent synonym of this idiom as it occurs later in the story means literally “to make heavy.” God needs Pharaoh’s recalcitrance in order that He may deploy the plagues, one after another, thus humiliating the great imperial power of Egypt—the burden of the triumphalist narrative we have already noted—and demonstrating the impotence of all the gods of Egypt. But Pharaoh is presumably manifesting his own character: callousness, resistance to instruction, and arrogance would all be implied by the toughening of the heart. God is not so much pulling a marionette’s strings as allowing, or perhaps encouraging, the oppressor-king to persist in his habitual harsh willfulness and presumption.
22. My son, my firstborn is Israel. Framing the relationship in these terms lays the ground in measure-for-measure justice for the lethal tenth plague predicted at the end of the next verse, since Pharaoh has sought to destroy Israel.
23. to kill your son, your firstborn. This dire threat, to be fulfilled in the tenth plague, also inducts us to the narrative episode that follows in the next three verses, in which the LORD seeks to kill Moses, and the blood of the firstborn intercedes.
24. on the way at the night camp that the LORD … sought to put him to death. This elliptic story is the most enigmatic episode in all of Exodus. It seems unlikely that we will ever resolve the enigmas it poses, but it nevertheless plays a pivotal role in the larger narrative, and it is worth pondering why such a haunting and bewildering story should have been introduced at this juncture. There is something starkly archaic about the whole episode. The LORD here is not a voice from an incandescent bush announcing that this is holy ground but an uncanny silent stranger who “encounters” Moses, like the mysterious stranger who confronts Jacob at the Jabbok ford, in the dark of the night (the Hebrew for “place of encampment” is phonetically linked to laylah, “night”). One may infer that both the deity here and the rite of circumcision carried out by Zipporah belong to an archaic—perhaps even premonotheistic—stratum of Hebrew culture, though both are brought into telling alignment with the story that follows. The potently anthropomorphic and mythic character of the episode generates a crabbed style, as though the writer were afraid to spell out its real content, and thus even the referents of pronominal forms are ambiguous. Traditional Jewish commentators seek to naturalize the story to a more normative monotheism by claiming that Moses has neglected the commandment to circumcise his son (sons?), and that is why the LORD threatens his life. What seems more plausible is that Zipporah’s act reflects an older rationale for circumcision among the West Semitic peoples than the covenantal one enunciated in Genesis 17. Here circumcision serves as an apotropaic device, to ward off the hostility of a dangerous deity by offering him a bloody scrap of the son’s flesh, a kind of symbolic synecdoche of human sacrifice. The circumciser, moreover, is the mother, and not the father, as enjoined in Genesis. The story is an archaic cousin of the repeated biblical stories of life-threatening trial in the wilderness, and, as modern critics have often noted, it corresponds to the folktale pattern of a perilous rite of passage that the hero must undergo before embarking on his mission proper. The more domesticated God of verse 19 has just assured Moses that he can return to Egypt “for all the men who sought your life are dead.” The fierce uncanny YHWH of this episode promptly seeks to kill Moses (the same verb “seek”), just as in the previous verse He had promised to kill Pharaoh’s firstborn. (Here, the more judicial verb, himit, “to put to death,” is used instead of the blunt harag, “kill.”) The ambiguity of reference has led some commentators to see the son as the object of this lethal intention, though that seems unlikely because the (unspecified) object of the first verb “encountered” is almost certainly Moses. Confusions then multiply in the nocturnal murk of the language. Whose feet are touched with the bloody foreskin? Perhaps Moses’s, but it could be the boy’s, or even the LORD’s. The scholarly claim, moreover, that “feet” is a euphemism for the genitals cannot be dismissed. There are again three male candidates in the scene for the obscure epithet “bridegroom of blood,” though Moses strikes me as the most probable. William H. C. Propp correctly recognizes that the plural form for blood used here, damim, generally means “bloodshed” or “violence” (though in the archaic language of this text it may merely reflect intensification or poetic heightening). He proposes that the deity assaults Moses because he still bears the bloodguilt for the act of involuntary manslaughter he has committed, and it is for this that the circumcision must serve as expiation. All this may leave us in a dark thicket of bewildering possibilities, yet the story is strikingly apt as a tonal and motivic introduction to the Exodus narrative. The deity that appears here on the threshold of the return to Egypt is dark and dangerous, a potential killer of father or son. Blood in the same double function it will serve in the Plagues narrative is set starkly in the foreground: the blood of violent death, and blood as the apotropaic stuff that wards off death—the bloody foreskin of the son will be matched in the tenth plague by the blood smeared on the lintel to ward off the epidemic of death visiting the firstborn sons. With this troubling mythic encounter, we are ready for the descent into Egypt.
27. And the LORD said to Aaron. We return to the welcome sphere of a God Who speaks, and directs men to act through speech. After the reunion of the brothers, they will promptly implement God’s instructions as Moses imparts the words to Aaron and Aaron then speaks the words to the people.
31. And the people believed and heeded. In the event, the two signs of the staff and the hand are sufficient to win their trust (“believe” does not have any doctrinal sense here), and the third sign, of water turned to blood, can be reserved for the first plague.
1And afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, “Thus said the LORD, God of Israel: ‘Send off My people that they may celebrate to Me in the wilderness.’” 2And Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should heed His voice to send off Israel? I do not know the LORD, nor will I send off Israel.” 3And they said, “The God of the Hebrews happened upon us. Let us go, pray, a three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God, lest He hit us with pestilence or sword.” 4And the king of Egypt said to them, “Why, Moses and Aaron, do you disturb the people from its tasks? Go to your burdens!” 5And Pharaoh said, “Look, the people of the land are now many, and you would make them cease from their burdens!” 6And Pharaoh on that day charged the people’s taskmasters and its overseers, saying, 7“You shall no longer give the people straw to make the bricks as in time past. They themselves will go and scrabble for straw. 8And the quota of bricks that they were making in the past you shall impose upon them, you shall not deduct from it, for they are idlers. Therefore do they cry out, saying, ‘Let us go sacrifice to our god.’ 9Let the work be heavy on the men and let them do it and not look to lying words!” 10And the people’s taskmasters and its overseers went out and said to the people, saying, “Thus said Pharaoh: ‘I give you no straw. 11As for you, fetch yourselves straw wherever you find it, because not a thing is to be deducted from your work.’” 12And the people spread out through all the land of Egypt to scrabble for stubble for straw. 13And the taskmasters were urging them, saying, “Finish your tasks at the same daily rate as when there was straw.” 14And the overseers of the Israelites, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, saying, “Why have you not completed your tally for making bricks as in time past, neither yesterday nor today?” 15And the Israelite overseers came and cried out to Pharaoh, saying, “Why should you do this to your servants? 16Straw is not given to your servants, and bricks they tell us, make, and, look, your servants are beaten and the fault is your people’s.” 17And he said, “Idlers, you are idlers! Therefore you say, ‘Let us go sacrifice to the LORD.’ 18And now, go work, and no straw will be given to you, but the quota of bricks you will give.” 19And the Israelite overseers saw themselves coming to harm, saying, “You shall not deduct from your bricks, from the same daily rate.” 20And they encountered Moses and Aaron poised to meet them as they came out from Pharaoh. 21And they said to them, “Let the LORD look upon you and judge, for you have made us repugnant in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his servants, putting a sword in their hand to kill us.” 22And Moses went back to the LORD, and said, “My lord, why have you done harm to this people, why have you sent me? 23Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people and You surely have not rescued Your people.” 6:1And the LORD said to Moses, “Now will you see what I shall do to Pharaoh, for through a strong hand will he send them off and through a strong hand will he drive them from his land.”
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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1. Thus said the LORD. This is the so-called messenger formula, the conventional form for introducing the text, oral or written, of a message. The conveyor of the message may be divine, as here and repeatedly in the Prophets, or human, as in verse 10, where the message comes from Pharaoh. The phrase was regularly used at the beginning of letters.
Send off. The Hebrew verb shileaḥ has a range of meanings: “to let go or dismiss,” “to divorce,” “to send guests decorously on their way,” “to grant manumission to a slave.” There is probably some ironic tension in this narrative between the positive and the negative senses of the verb, and since it is repeatedly played off against God’s “sending” out His hand or sending ministers of destruction, this translation represents the reiterated request to Pharaoh as “send off.”
The abruptness of Moses and Aaron’s address to the king of Egypt is noteworthy. They use none of the deferential forms of speech, none of the third-person bowing and scraping, which are conventional in biblical Hebrew for addressing a monarch. Instead, they immediately announce, “Thus said the LORD,” and proceed to the text of the message, which begins with an imperative verb, without the polite particle of entreaty, naʾ. William H. C. Propp observes that in doing this, Moses is not following God’s orders: he was to have spoken together with the elders, who appear to be absent; he was to have performed his two portents; he was to have threatened Pharaoh’s firstborn in God’s name. As to the absence of the elders, Rashi, following the Midrash, suggests that they slipped away in fear one by one as Moses and Aaron approached the palace.
2. Who is the LORD, that I should heed His voice. The very name, YHWH, of this Semitic deity may be news to Pharaoh, and even if he grants that there is such a god, there is no reason that he, as an Egyptian polytheist and as a figure thought to have divine status himself, should recognize the authority of this Hebrew deity. (“I do not know the LORD” has the sense of “I refuse to recognize his divine authority.”) Pharaoh speaks here in quasipoetic parallel clauses, and D. N. Friedman has proposed that this may be coded as an aristocratic style of speech, a token of his regal stature.
3. Let us go, pray, a three days’ journey into the wilderness. Speaking in God’s name, they had made the request unconditionally, without stipulation of time limits. Now answering Pharaoh’s indignation in their own voice, they use the cohortative verb form (“let us go”) with the particle of entreaty (“pray”) and mention the three days, which they presumably should have done at the outset.
lest He hit us with pestilence or sword. The proposal of some scholars that “us” be emended to “you” (because of the impending plagues) should be resisted. It was a perfectly understandable religious concept for peoples of the ancient Near East that a national deity might need to be propitiated through sacrifice. By couching their request for a furlough for the slaves in these terms, Moses and Aaron are saying to Pharaoh that the cultic expedition into the wilderness is no mere whim but a necessary means to avert the punishing wrath of the god of the Hebrews. In this fashion, they are pitching their argument to Pharaoh’s self-interest, for dead slaves would be of no use to him.
5. the people of the land are now many. This phrase remains a little obscure. Because of the end of the sentence, it has to refer to the Hebrews. The most likely sense is that the Hebrew workforce has become vast (compare all the references to their proliferation in chapter 1), and so the Egyptian economy has come to depend on this multitude of slave laborers and can scarcely afford an interruption of their work.
6. taskmasters … overseers. As becomes clear in what follows (e.g., verse 14), the taskmasters are Egyptian slave drivers, the overseers are Hebrew foremen. The former term, noges, derives from a root that means “to oppress” the latter term, shoter, is associated with a root meaning to “record in writing.”
7. as in time past. The literal meaning of this common Hebrew idiom is “as yesterday [or] the day before.” At the end of verse 14, these two components of the idiom are broken out from the fixed formula, each being prefaced by the emphatic gam (“even,” “also”).
scrabble for straw. The verb qosheshu is linked with its usual cognate-accusative object qash, “stubble” (see verse 12). “Straw” (teven) and “stubble” (qash) appear to be the same substance, with the latter in the condition of not having been picked from the ground. Crushed straw was used to give cohesiveness to the bricks before baking.
8. for they are idlers. The contemptuous term invoked here by Egypt’s head slave owner, nirpim, is derived from a verbal root that means “to relax,” “to loosen one’s grip,” “to let go.” It is the very verb that is used in 4:26, when the threatening deity of the Bridegroom of Blood episode “let him go.”
12. And the people spread out through all the land of Egypt to scrabble for stubble. Even in this measure of aggravated oppression, the language of the story picks up the initial imagery of animal-like proliferation, which in turn harks back to the injunction in the Creation story to fill the land/earth.
14. the overseers of the Israelites … were beaten. The Egyptians have instituted an effective chain of command for forced labor. It would not be feasible to beat all the teeming thousands of Hebrew slaves, so when they fail to produce their daily quota, the Israelite overseers are made personally responsible and are beaten by the Egyptian slave drivers. The overseers then turn in protest to Pharaoh, “crying out” (or “screaming”), which is the predictable reaction to a beating.
16. Straw is not given … bricks they tell us, make, and, look, your servants are beaten. There is a colloquial immediacy in the language with which the overseers express their outrage to Pharaoh, positioning “straw” and “bricks” at the beginning of the first and second clauses.
the fault is your people’s. Presumably, the fault for the failure to fulfill the quota of bricks is the Egyptians’ because they are not providing the straw.
17. Idlers, you are idlers! Therefore you say, “Let us go sacrifice to the LORD.” In keeping with a common procedure of Hebrew narrative, phrases of previous dialogue are pointedly recycled. Pharaoh sarcastically quotes the phrase from Moses and Aaron’s request about sacrificing to the LORD, and in a kind of incremental repetition, he picks up his own term, “idlers,” and expands it to “Idlers, you are idlers!” These repetitions nicely convey a sense of inflexibly opposed sides in the conflict.
18. no straw will be given … but the quota of bricks you will give. By this point, “give” (natan) has emerged as a thematic key word of the episode. Pharaoh had announced in his message brought by the taskmasters, “I give you no straw.” The Hebrew overseers then complained, “Straw is not given,” and Pharaoh, picking up their very words, lashes back at them, “no straw will be given,” again stipulating that the slaves have the same obligation as before to “give” their quota of bricks.
19. saw themselves coming to harm. This is the understanding of the somewhat cryptic Hebrew wayirʾu … ʾotam beraʿ proposed by Abraham ibn Ezra and many other commentators. Still smarting from their recent whipping, they are acutely aware that they will be the first to suffer for the inability of the Hebrew slaves to maintain their usual quota of bricks.
20. And they encountered Moses and Aaron poised to meet them. Moses and Aaron, who previously had acted as bold spokesmen, now wait awkwardly, perhaps nervously, outside the palace while the delegation of overseers brings its petition before Pharaoh. The verb for “encounter,” pagaʿ, has both a neutral and a violent meaning. It indicates the meeting of persons or substances—including the “meeting” of forged iron with flesh, when it has the sense of “stab” or “hit,” as at the end of verse 3, above.
21. made us repugnant. The literal meaning of this common Hebrew idiom is “made our odor stink,” but the fact that the idiom is twice linked here with “eyes” suggests that the writer is not much thinking of its olfactory force.
putting a sword in their hand to kill us. Moses and Aaron, we should recall, had expressed the fear to Pharaoh that, without due sacrifice, the LORD would hit the people with pestilence or sword.
22. why have you sent me? Moses’s initial hesitancy to accept the mission imposed on him at Horeb seems to him perfectly confirmed now by the events. God has only made things worse for the Hebrew slaves (Moses, as it were, passes the buck he has received from the accusing overseers), and the whole plan of liberation shows no sign of implementation.
6:1. And the LORD said. Although the conventional division puts this verse at the beginning of a new chapter, it actually sums up the preceding speech, whereas 6.2 marks the beginning of a new speech in which God offers a quasihistorical summary of His relationship with Israel and His future intentions toward Israel.
through a strong hand will he send them off and through a strong hand will he drive them from his land. The “strong hand”—that is, violent force—becomes a refrain in the story, here repeated in quasipoetic parallelism. The phrase refers to the violent coercion that God will need to exert on Pharaoh. It is noteworthy that the semantically double-edged “send” (to send away ceremoniously, to release, to banish) is here paired with the unambiguous “drive them from his land.” In the event, God’s strong hand will compel Pharaoh to expel the Hebrews precipitously, so that “let my people go” is reinterpreted as something like “banish my people.” The Exodus, in other words, extorted from a recalcitrant Egyptian monarch by an overpowering God, will prove to be a continuation of hostility, a fearful and angry expulsion of the slaves rather than a conciliatory act of liberation.
2And God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD. 3And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but in My name the LORD I was not known to them. 4And I also established My covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings in which they sojourned. 5And also I Myself have heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians enslave, and I do remember My covenant. 6Therefore say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD. I will take you out from under the burdens of Egypt and I will rescue you from their bondage and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great retributions. 7And I will take you to Me as a people and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God Who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt. 8And I will bring you to the land that I raised My hand in pledge to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you as an inheritance. I am the LORD!’” 9And Moses spoke thus to the Israelites, but they did not heed Moses out of shortness of breath and hard bondage.
10And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 11“Come, speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt, that he send off the Israelites from his land.” 12And Moses spoke before the LORD, saying, “Look, the Israelites did not heed me, and how will Pharaoh heed me, and I am uncircumcised of lips?” 13And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron and He charged them regarding the Israelites and regarding Pharaoh king of Egypt to bring out the Israelites from the land of Egypt.
14These are the heads of their fathers’ houses: The sons of Reuben, Israel’s firstborn—Enoch and Pallu, Hezron and Carmi, these are the clans of Reuben. 15And the sons of Simeon—Jemuel and Jamin and Ohad and Jachin and Zohar and Saul, son of the Canaanite woman, these are the clans of Simeon. 16And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their lineage—Gershon and Kohath and Merari. And the years of the life of Levi were a hundred and thirty-seven years. 17The sons of Gershon—Libni and Shimei, according to their clans. 18And the sons of Kohath—Amram and Izhar and Hebron and Uzziel. And the years of the life of Kohath were one hundred and thirty-three years. 19And the sons of Merari—Mahli and Mushi. These are the clans of the Levite according to their lineage. 20And Amram took him as wife Jochebed his aunt, and she bore him Aaron and Moses. And the years of the life of Amram were a hundred and thirty-seven years. 21And the sons of Izhar—Korah and Nepheg and Zichri. 22And the sons of Uzziel—Mishael and Elzaphan and Sithri. 23And Aaron took him Elisheba daughter of Amminadab sister of Nahshon as wife, and she bore him Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. 24The sons of Korah—Assir and Elkanah and Abiasaph, these are the clans of the Korahite. 25And Eleazar son of Aaron had taken him a wife from the daughters of Putiel, and she bore him Phinehas. These are the heads of the fathers of the Levites according to their clans. 26It was the very Aaron and Moses to whom the LORD said, “Bring out the Israelites from the land of Egypt in their battalions.” 27It was they who were speaking to Pharaoh king of Egypt to bring out the Israelites from Egypt, the very Moses and Aaron.
28And it happened on the day the LORD spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, 29that the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “I am the LORD. Speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I speak to you.” 30And Moses said before the LORD, “Look, I am uncircumcised of lips, and how will Pharaoh heed me?”
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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2. I am the LORD. This formula—“I am X”—has been found in a variety of ancient Near Eastern documents, both royal proclamations and pronouncements attributed to sundry deities. The force of the words is something like “By the authority invested in me as X, I make the following solemn declaration.” The content of this particular declaration is a rehearsal of the binding covenant in which God entered with the patriarchs and an expression of His determination now to fulfill the covenantal promise by freeing the Israelites from slavery and bringing them up to the land of Canaan. In terms of the narrative rhythm of the Exodus story, this grand proclamation by the deity is inserted after the frustration of Moses and Aaron’s initial effort, suspending the action while providing depth of historical background before the unleashing of the first of the plagues.
3. as El Shaddai, but in My name the LORD I was not known to them. The designation El Shaddai, which is in fact used a total of five times in the Patriarchal Tales, is an archaic, evidently Canaanite combination of divine names. El was the high god of the Canaanite pantheon, though the Hebrew term is also a common noun meaning “god.” No satisfactory explanation for the meaning or origin of the name Shaddai has been made, but some scholars link it with a term for “mountain,” and others associate it with fertility. The usage of “in My name” is a little odd because there is no equivalent here for “in” (bE) in the Hebrew. Willam H. C. Propp has proposed that the ellipsis implies a distinction of meaning, but the grounds for such an inference seem rather tenuous. Were the patriarchs in fact ignorant of the name YHWH? It is true that Genesis has no special episode involving the revelation of the syllables and mystery of this divine name, as we have here in 3:13–16; but there is also no indication that the name was withheld from the patriarchs, and the Primeval History reports that the invocation of this name goes back to the time of Enosh son of Seth (Genesis 4:26). Source critics see this passage as striking evidence for the original autonomy of the Priestly source, which does not share J’s assumption that the name YHWH was known to the patriarchs. All the sources drawn together in the Exodus narrative assume that it was only on the threshold of God’s intervention in history to liberate Israel that He revealed His unique name to the whole people.
4. sojournings in which they sojourned. God’s language stresses the character of temporary residence of the nomadic forefathers in the land. Now temporary residence, megurim, will be transformed into fixed settlement, yeshivah.
6. I am the LORD. The repetition of this initiating formula is dictated by its marking the beginning of a declaration within a declaration—the divine proclamation that Moses is to carry to the people. In this instance, “I am the LORD” will be repeated at the end of the proclamation (verse 8) in an envelope structure.
7. you shall know that I am the LORD your God Who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt. This idea is emphasized again and again, in the Torah as well as in later books of the Bible. It is the cornerstone of Israelite faith—that God has proven His divinity and His special attachment to Israel by the dramatic act of liberating the people from Egyptian slavery. Some modern scholars, arguing from the silence of Egyptian sources on any Hebrew slave population, not to speak of any mention of an exodus, have raised doubts about whether the Hebrews were ever in Egypt. The story is surely a schematization and simplification of complex historical processes. There is no intimation of the quite likely existence of a sizable segment of the Hebrew people in the high country of eastern Canaan that never was in Egypt. Yet it is also hard to imagine that the nation would have invented a story of national origins involving the humiliation of slavery without some kernel of historical memory. Virgil in the Aeneid may invent a tale of Rome rising from the ruins of a defeated Troy, but the defenders of Troy are heroic warriors foiled by trickery, which is scarcely the same as abject slavery.
8. I raised My hand in pledge. The Hebrew has only “raised My hand,” which by idiomatic usage implies a pledge or vow.
9. out of shortness of breath. The Hebrew ruaḥ can mean “breath,” “wind,” or “spirit.” This translation follows Rashi’s understanding of the phrase, a construction that is attractive because of its concreteness: the slaves, groaning under hard bondage—a condition made all the harder by Moses’s bungled intervention—can scarcely catch their breath and so are in no mood to listen to Moses. Others render this term as “impatience” or “crushed spirit.”
12. And Moses spoke before the LORD. The preposition “before,” instead of “to,” is sometimes used in addressing a superior (it can also mean “in the presence of”).
I am uncircumcised of lips. The phrase is an approximate parallel (the documentary critics would say: in P’s vocabulary as against J’s) of the “heavy-mouthed and heavy-tongued” we encountered in chapter 4. It is a mistake, however, to represent this upward displacement of a genital image simply as “impeded of speech” because the metaphor of lack of circumcision suggests not merely incapacity of speech but a kind of ritual lack of fitness for the sacred task (like Isaiah’s “impure lips” in his dedication scene, Isaiah 6). The idiom is clearly intended to resonate with the Bridegroom of Blood story, in which Moses is not permitted to launch on his mission until an act of circumcision is performed. Syntactically, this last clause of the verse dangles ambiguously: Moses’s thought was already complete in the a fortiori relation between the first and second clauses (if the Israelites wouldn’t listen to me, how much more so Pharaoh …), and now Moses offers a kind of reinforcing afterthought—and anyway, I am uncircumcised of lips.
13. and the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron. God offers no explicit response to Moses’s reiteration of his sense of unfitness as spokesman, but, as Rashi notes, God’s joint address at this point to Moses and Aaron may suggest Aaron’s previously indicated role as mouthpiece for Moses.
14. These are the heads of their fathers’ houses. Genealogical lists, as one can see repeatedly in Genesis, serve an important compositional role to mark the borders between different narrative segments. The story of Moses’s early history and the prelude to the plagues is now completed, and before the unleashing of the first of the ten fearful divine blows against Egypt, the genealogical list constitutes a long narrative caesura. Although this list begins with the sons of Reuben and Simeon, because they are the two firstborn in the order of Jacob’s sons, it is not a complete roll call of the tribes but is meant only to take us to the tribe of Levi, and then to culminate in the two sons of the tribe of Levi, Moses and Aaron, who are poised to carry out their fateful mission to Pharaoh. Other Levites appear to be singled out because they are to play roles in the subsequent narrative. “Father’s house” (beyt ʾav) in this list, as elsewhere in biblical Hebrew, refers to the social unit of the extended family presided over by the father.
16. a hundred and thirty-seven years. The life spans are schematized (either 133 or 137) and, as in Genesis, rather hyperbolic. Propp notes that the figures mentioned are approximately a third of the total period of four hundred years supposed to be the duration of the sojourn in Egypt.
20. Amram took him as wife Jochebed his aunt. Such a marriage was banned as incestuous by the Priestly writers, to whom scholarship attributes this passage. This is not the only instance in which a union prohibited by later legislation is recorded without comment (compare Jacob’s marrying two sisters), and might well reflect an authentic memory of a period when the prohibition was not in force. Only now is the anonymous “Levite daughter” of 2:1 given a name.
she bore him Aaron and Moses. Her sons are listed by order of birth. Three ancient versions add “Miriam their sister,” but the list, like the one in chapter 1, is interested only in sons.
25. Putiel … Phinehas. These are the two names in the list of Egyptian origin (though Putiel has the Semitic theophoric suffix -el). One might infer that taking a wife “from the daughters of Putiel” suggests that Eleazar’s marriage is exogamous—another indication that the Hebrews were not altogether segregated from the Egyptians—and thus the wife might understandably give an Egyptian name to their son. Later, this possible product of intermarriage will show himself to be a fierce zealot on behalf of Israelite purity.
26–27. It was the very Aaron and Moses … It was they … the very Moses and Aaron. As we move from the end of the list back to the narrative, the writer emphasizes the focus on Moses and Aaron with a triple structure of rhetorical highlighting, putting an indicative pronoun at the head of each clause: huʾ aharon umosheh, hem hamedabrim, huʾ mosheh weʾaharon.
29. I am the LORD. See the comment on verse 2.
30. Look, I am uncircumcised of lips, and how will Pharaoh heed me? This sentence repeats verbatim Moses’s demurral in verse 12, reversing the order of the two clauses and omitting the first clause about Israel’s failure to heed Moses. The recurrent language is a clear-cut instance of a compositional technique that biblical scholars call “resumptive repetition”: when a narrative is interrupted by a unit of disparate material—like the genealogical list here—the point at which the story resumes is marked by the repetition of phrases or clauses from the point where the story was interrupted. Moses’s report of Israelite resistance to his message is not repeated because the focus now is on the impending confrontation between him and Pharaoh. For the same reason, “how will Pharaoh heed me?” is repositioned at the end of Moses’s speech because it will be directly followed by God’s enjoining Moses and Aaron to execute the first portent intended to compel Pharaoh’s attention.
1And the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have set you as a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother will be your prophet. 2You it is who will speak all that I charge you and Aaron your brother will speak to Pharaoh, and he will send off the Israelites from his land. 3And I on My part shall harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply My signs and My portents in the land of Egypt. 4And Pharaoh will not heed you, and I shall set My hand against Egypt and I shall bring out My battalions, My people the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with great retributions, 5that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand over Egypt and bring out the Israelites from their midst.” 6And Moses, and Aaron with him, did as the LORD had charged, thus did they do. 7And Moses was eighty years old and Aaron was eighty-three years old when they spoke to Pharaoh.
8And the LORD said to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 9“Should Pharaoh speak to you, saying, ‘Give you a portent,’ you shall say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and fling it down before Pharaoh, let it become a serpent.’” 10And Moses, and Aaron with him, came to Pharaoh, and they did as the LORD had charged, and Aaron flung down his staff before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent. 11And Pharaoh, too, called for the sages and sorcerers and they, too, the soothsayers of Egypt, did thus with their spells. 12And each flung down his staff and they became serpents, and Aaron’s staff swallowed their staffs. 13And Pharaoh’s heart toughened, and he did not heed them, just as the LORD had spoken.
14And the LORD said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hard. He refuses to send off the people. 15Go to Pharaoh in the morning. Look, he will be going out to the water, and you shall be poised to meet him on the bank of the Nile, and the staff that turned into a snake you shall take in your hand. 16And you shall say to him, ‘The LORD god of the Hebrews sent me to you, saying, Send off my people, that they may worship Me in the wilderness, and look, you have not heeded as yet. 17Thus said the LORD, By this shall you know that I am the LORD: Look, I am about to strike with the staff in my hand on the water that is in the Nile and it will turn into blood. 18And the fish that are in the Nile will die and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will not be able to drink water from the Nile.’” 19And the LORD said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers and over their Nile channels and over their ponds and over all the gathering of their waters, that they become blood. And there shall be blood in all the land of Egypt, and in the trees and in the stones.’” 20And Moses and Aaron did thus as the LORD had charged. And he raised the staff and struck the water that was in the Nile before the eyes of Pharaoh and the eyes of his servants, and all the water that was in the Nile turned to blood. 21And the fish that were in the Nile died and the Nile stunk, and the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile, and the blood was in all the land of Egypt. 22And the soothsayers of Egypt did thus with their spells, and Pharaoh’s heart toughened and he did not heed them, just as the LORD had spoken. 23And Pharaoh turned and came into his house, and this, too, he did not take to heart. 24And all of Egypt dug round the Nile for water to drink, for they could not drink the water of the Nile.
25And seven full days passed after the LORD struck the Nile. 26And the LORD said to Moses, “Come to Pharaoh, and you shall say to him, ‘Thus said the LORD: Send off My people that they may worship Me. 27And if you refuse to send them off, look, I am about to scourge all your region with frogs. 28And the Nile will swarm with frogs and they will come up and come into your house and into your bedchamber and onto your couch and into your servants’ house and upon your people and into your ovens and into your kneading pans. 29And upon you and upon your people and upon all your slaves the frogs will come up.’”
CHAPTER 7 NOTES
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1. I have set you as a god to Pharaoh. The reiteration of this bold comparison may have a polemic motivation: Pharaoh imagines himself a god, but I have made you a god to Pharaoh.
3. I … shall harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply My signs and My portents. Whatever the theological difficulties, the general aim of God’s allowing, or here causing, Pharaoh to persist in his harshness is made clear: without Pharaoh’s resistance, God would not have the opportunity to deploy His great wonders and so demonstrate His insuperable power in history and the emptiness of the power attributed to the gods of Egypt. It should be noted that three different verbs are used in the story for the action on or in Pharaoh’s heart: hiqshah, “to harden” (the verb here), ḥizeq, “to toughen,” or in other contexts, “to strengthen” (the verb used in earlier passages), and kaved, literally, “to be heavy,” which in English unfortunately suggests sorrow when linked with the heart, and so has been rendered “harden” in this translation (as in verse 14). The force of all three idioms is to be stubborn, unfeeling, arrogantly inflexible, and there doesn’t seem to be much differentiation of meaning among the terms, though elsewhere ḥizeq linked with heart has a positive meaning—“to show firm resolve.”
4. I shall bring out My battalions, My people the Israelites. The opposition expresses a wry and surprising identification. God bears the epithet “LORD of Battalions” (“LORD of Hosts,” “LORD of Armies,” YHWH tsevaʾot), but here the “battalions” God calls His own turn out to be the people of Israel—in fact, a mass of wretched slaves who will be fleeing from their taskmasters.
9. let it become a serpent. The noun used here, tanin, is not the ordinary naḥash, “snake,” of the Burning Bush story. (When God in verse 15 refers to the staff that turned into a snake [naḥash], He may be alluding to the Burning Bush episode.) The tanin is usually a larger threatening reptile, as William H. C. Propp correctly observes, and is sometimes used for the Egyptian crocodile, or for a mythological dragon. The Hebrew zoological reference is clearly slippery, allowing a couple of commentators to see a Nilotic cobra in the transformed shepherd’s staff.
11. and they, too, the soothsayers of Egypt, did thus with their spells. The Hebrew word for “soothsayers,” ḥartumim, is a direct borrowing from the Egyptian designation for priest-magicians. The term translated as “spells,” lehatim, either is related to the root l-ʾ-t that means “to conceal” or, if one follows a proposal of Abraham ibn Ezra, is derived from the root l-h-t, “to flame out,” which he links with the fire-and-flash technique of the illusionist. Ibn Ezra, a rationalist, thus implies that the soothsayers’ success in transforming their staffs into serpents was an act of legerdemain. The ancient writer, however, seems to have assumed the efficacy of magic as a kind of technology: the point of the story is that the capacity of this technology was limited, and hence the authentically miraculous serpent into which Aaron’s staff has turned swallows up the other serpents.
13. Pharaoh’s heart toughened. In any case, Pharaoh is not impressed. Moses and Aaron, after all, have done no more than trump his sorcerers at their own game. What is called for in order to shake him is a series of truly cataclysmic miraculous events.
15. Look, he will be going out to the water. This narrative presupposes, at least on the information about Egypt available to the Hebrew writers, that Egyptian royalty regularly went down to the Nile to bathe, unless the purpose was, as ibn Ezra proposes, to check the level of the Nile. Pharaoh’s encounter with Moses by the riverside looks back to the discovery of Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter when she went down to the Nile.
16. Send off my people, that they may worship Me … you have not heeded. It should be observed that this prose narrative, in a style not evident in most other biblical stories, proceeds through the solemn, emphatic reiteration of refrainlike phrases and entire clauses, both in the language of the narrator and in the dialogue.
17. water … blood. For Egypt as a nation dependent on irrigation, the Nile with its fresh water is literally a lifeline. Blood in the Bible is imagined in radically ambiguous terms—the source and substance of life, an apotropaic and redemptive agent, the token of violence and death. It is manifestly the third of these meanings that is brought into play here, as the first plague symbolically anticipates the last one and deprives Egypt of life-sustaining water.
19. Nile channels. The Hebrew here converts the Egyptian loanword, yeʾor, “Nile,” into a plural. Elsewhere, in occasional poetic usage, this plural form is simply an elegant synonym for “streams” or “rivers.” In this Egyptian context, it seems more likely that it designates both the Nile itself and the system of irrigation canals built out from the Nile.
in the trees and in the stones. Many construe this as a reference to wooden and stone vessels or receptacles, but the plural form ʿetsim suggests trees rather than wood. In any case, trees and stones as objects in nature accord better with the catalogue of bodies of water that precedes than would household utensils. It has also been noted that the Hebrew pairing here, ʿetsim waʾavanim, is often used to refer to the material out of which idols are made.
20. he raised the staff. This would have to be Aaron.
before the eyes of Pharaoh and the eyes of his servants. The first spectacular cataclysm is devised so that they will be eyewitnesses to the fearful event. In most of these contexts, “servants” (it can also mean “slaves”) refers to Pharaoh’s courtiers.
21. and the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. One of the most frequently employed conventions of biblical narrative is the verbatim repetition of whole clauses, or even sequences of clauses, of narrative material—often, as here, once in dialogue and once in the narrator’s report. But the characteristic handling of this convention is to introduce small but quite revelatory divergences from verbatim replication as the material is repeated (see the comments on the elaborate near verbatim repetitions in Genesis 24 as a textbook illustration of this technique). Here, however, the point of the repetition seems to be that every term of God’s dire prediction (verse 18) is implemented as an accomplished event (verse 21), only the temporal aspects of the verbs shifting, with one minor substitution of a synonym—instead of “will not be able” (nilʾu), “could not” (loʾ-yakhlu). The summary clause at the end of the verse here, “and the blood was in all the land of Egypt,” is not part of the prediction in verse 18 but appears to be a digest of the panorama of sites to be struck in God’s instructions for Aaron in verse 19.
22. the soothsayers of Egypt did thus with their spells. Ibn Ezra wonders where they got water to turn into blood if Moses and Aaron had already done the trick for the Nile and all the rivers and ponds. His answer is that they performed their magic on water dug up from subterranean sources (verse 24), a conjuror’s act of transmutation that is not to be compared with the miraculous conversion of streams of flowing water into blood. Again, the reality of a technology of magic is not called into question but it is noteworthy that the soothsayers can do no more than effect a pale imitation of the destructive act of the God of the Hebrews; what they are powerless to do is to reverse the process of destruction.
25. And seven full days passed. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “and seven days were filled.” Many commentators infer that during this period the waters of the Nile returned to their original state; otherwise, the first plague alone would have been sufficient to make things utterly intolerable for Pharaoh.
26. Although the King James Version begins chapter 8 at this point, the Masoretic Text continues chapter 7 for four more verses, as here.
28. the Nile will swarm with frogs. The verb in the Hebrew is transitive (“will swarm frogs”). Several commentators have noticed that this word choice echoes the “swarming” of the proliferating Hebrews in chapter 1. There, the orgy of propagation seems to have struck the Egyptians as repellently reptilian; here, they are assaulted with a nauseating plague of amphibians. In this, as in other details of the Plagues narrative, the allusions to the Creation story, initially sounded in the first chapter of Exodus, turn into a network of reversals of the original creation. It would be excessive to insist that every detail of the narrative, or even every plague, confirms this pattern. Nevertheless, the allusions to early Genesis that are detectable trace a possibility that much exercised the imaginations of the biblical writers: if creation emerged at a particular moment in a process with discriminated stages, one could imagine an undoing of this event and this process, apocalypse being the other side of the coin of creation. The benign swarming of life in Genesis turns into a threatening swarm of odious creatures, just as the penultimate plague of darkness, prelude to mass death, is a reversal of the first “let there be light.” Alexander Pope, at the end of his great anticreation poem, The Dunciad, writes thoroughly in the spirit of these reversals when he announces of the new reign of anarchy, “Light dies before thy uncreating word.”
into your house … your bedchamber … your couch … your servants’ house. The all-powerful Pharaoh should be invulnerable to such violation and should be able to protect his people. Instead, what this fearful catalogue of penetrations conveys is the absolute, helpless exposure of all Egypt, from king to slave, from the intimate place of sleep and procreation to the places where food is prepared, in the face of God’s onslaught.
29. upon you. The Hebrew preposition would normally mean “into you,” which led the Talmud (Sanhedrin 80) to amplify the idea of grotesque penetration by saying that the frogs would croak from inside the guts of the Egyptians.
1And the LORD said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, over the Nile channels and over the ponds, and bring up the frogs over the land of Egypt.” 2And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. 3And the soothsayers did thus with their spells and brought up frogs over the land of Egypt. 4And Pharaoh called to Moses and to Aaron and said, “Entreat the LORD that He take away the frogs from me and from my people, and I shall send off the people, that they may sacrifice to the LORD.” 5And Moses said to Pharaoh, “You may vaunt over me as for when I should entreat for you and for your servants and for your people to cut off the frogs from you and from your houses—only in the Nile will they remain.” 6And he said, “For tomorrow.” And he said, “As you have spoken, so that you may know there is none like the LORD our God. 7And the frogs will turn away from you and from your houses and from your servants and from your people—only in the Nile will they remain.” 8And Moses, and Aaron with him, went out from Pharaoh’s presence, and Moses cried out to the LORD concerning the frogs that He had put upon Pharaoh. 9And the LORD did according to Moses’s word, and the frogs died, out of the houses and out of the courtyards and out of the fields, 10and they piled them up heap upon heap, and the land stank. 11And Pharaoh saw that there was relief and he hardened his heart and did not heed them, just as the LORD had spoken.
12And the LORD said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the land and there will be lice in all the land of Egypt.” 13And thus they did, and Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the land, and there were lice in man and in beast, all the dust of the land became lice in all the land of Egypt. 14And thus the soothsayers of Egypt did with their spells, to take out the lice, but they were unable, and the lice were in man and in beast. 15And the soothsayers said to Pharaoh, “God’s finger it is!” And Pharaoh’s heart toughened, and he did not heed them, just as the LORD had spoken.
16And the LORD said to Moses, “Rise early in the morning and station yourself before Pharaoh—look, he will be going out to the water—and say to him, ‘Thus said the LORD: send off My people, that they may worship Me. 17For if you do not send off My people, I am about to send against you and against you servants and against your people and against your houses the horde, and the houses of Egypt will be filled with the horde and the soil, too, on which they stand. 18But I shall set apart on that day the land of Goshen upon which My people stands so that no horde will be there, that you may know that I am the LORD in the midst of the land. 19And I shall set a ransom between My people and your people. Tomorrow this sign will be.’” 20And thus the LORD did, and a heavy horde came into the house of Pharaoh and the house of his servants, and in all the land of Egypt the land was ravaged in the face of the horde. 21And Pharaoh called to Moses and to Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your god in the land.” 22And Moses said, “It is not right to do thus, for the abomination of Egypt we shall sacrifice to the LORD our God. If we sacrifice the abomination of Egypt before their eyes, will they not stone us? 23A three days’ journey into the wilderness we shall go, and we shall sacrifice to the LORD our God as He has said to us.” 24And Pharaoh said, “I myself will send you off, that you may sacrifice to the LORD your god in the wilderness, only you must not go far away. Entreat on my behalf.” 25And Moses said, “Look, I am going out from your presence and I shall entreat the LORD, that the horde may turn away from Pharaoh and from his servants and from his people tomorrow. Only let not Pharaoh continue to mock by not sending the people off to sacrifice to the LORD.” 26And Moses went out from Pharaoh’s presence and entreated the LORD. 27And the LORD did according to Moses’s word, and the horde turned away from Pharaoh and from his servants and from his people, not one remained. 28And Pharaoh hardened his heart this time, too, and he did not send off the people.
CHAPTER 8 NOTES
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1. Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers. The explicit repetition of language and gestures from the first plague has the emphatic effect of a formal refrain, with an overlap between the first two plagues in the location of the Nile as source of the catastrophe. The report of the Ten Plagues—other biblical traditions appear to have known a smaller number—exhibits a high degree of literary shaping and symmetry. Umberto Cassuto offers a good early synthesis of the scholarly literature that has been devoted to following these formal patterns, and subsequent discussions by Moshe Greenberg and William H. C. Propp are also noteworthy. The plagues are organized in three triads, followed by the climactic and most devastating tenth plague. Only in the first triad is Aaron with his outstretched staff the executor of the plagues. In each triad, in the first plague of the series Moses encounters Pharaoh going out early in the morning; in the second plague of the series, Moses comes into Pharaoh’s palace; and in the third plague of the series, the disaster is unleashed without warning. Cassuto also observes that the plagues are equally arranged in pairs: two involving the Nile, two plagues of insects, two epidemics affecting beasts and humans respectively, two plagues devastating the crops, and the final darkness paired with the death of the firstborn.
4. take away the frogs from me. Unlike the water turned to blood, the frogs actually invade the homes of Pharaoh and his subjects, thus impelling him to his first offer of terms to Moses.
5. You may vaunt over me as for when. The Hebrew “vaunt over me” (hitpaʾer ʿalai) is a little odd. The construction of the consensus of commentators, medieval and modern, which seems plausible, is that Moses is offering Pharaoh the limited “triumph” of choosing the moment when the plague will cease. This choice, of course, in fact demonstrates God’s absolute power and Moses’s perfect efficacy as intercessor. “When” refers not to the time of entreaty but to the time of cessation of the plague, a distinction indicated in the Hebrew, as Rashi nicely observes, by affixing the prefix le (“for”) to matay (“when”). It is a bit surprising that Pharaoh does not choose to have the plague ended at once. Perhaps he is trying Moses’s powers: Can Moses really stipulate a given moment of cessation in the near future and make it come about?
cut off the frogs. In Moses’s proposal to Pharaoh, he uses a word that suggests abrupt extirpation of the frogs. In the prediction that he goes on to spell out (verse 7), he uses a less violent verb of evacuation or retreat (“turn away”). Finally, the narrator in his report of the event (verse 9) says, with plain descriptive accuracy, “die” because his account includes a discomfiting idea not mentioned by Moses to Pharaoh—the piles of dead frogs throughout the country.
10. and the land stank. The stench of the putrefying dead frogs provides another link with the preceding plague, in which the stench was produced by the dead fish from the Nile.
12. lice. At least in postbiblical Hebrew, the terms kinam (a collective noun) and kinim (a plural) mean “lice,” though some have suggested that in this text they might mean “gnats” or “mosquitoes.” The plagues began with a profoundly ominous, symbolically portentous, and life-threatening transformation of water into blood. The next three plagues are afflictions of maddening or disgusting discomfort rather than actual threats to survival. The tone of the Plagues narrative is that of harsh (indeed, gloating) monotheistic satire against the pagan imperial power, and so pains are taken to show the Egyptians squirming before they are exposed to destruction.
14. And thus the soothsayers of Egypt did … to take out the lice. The syntax directs us to a kind of comic discovery: at first we imagine that still again the soothsayers are engaged in their own pathetic imitation of Moses and Aaron’s destructive act, bringing forth their own lice; then we realize that this time they are attempting to get rid of the plague, but to no avail.
15. God’s finger it is. Now that they have tried futilely to get rid of a plague instead of replicating it, they have been forced to recognize that they are contending with a greater power. As Rashi neatly paraphrases their perception, “This plague is not through magic but from the Deity.” It is noteworthy that the preceding narrative repeatedly spoke of God’s hand or arm; the soothsayers appear to concede a lesser trace of divine action in mentioning God’s finger.
And Pharaoh’s heart toughened. The repeated formula for Pharaoh’s obduracy takes on added meaning here because he willfully ignores the testimony of his soothsayers. The narrative provides no indication as to whether the plague of lice comes to an end, like the previous two, or whether the Egyptians simply continue to live with the infestation as God proceeds to launch the next blow.
17. if you do not send off … I am about to send. Although the two verbs are in different conjugations, the pun, with its measure-for-measure emphasis, is quite explicit in the Hebrew.
the horde. The Hebrew term ʿarov occurs only here, and the only plausible derivation is from the verbal root that means “to mix.” Some medieval Hebrew commentators imagined this as a mingling of sundry beasts of prey, but this seems unlikely because, as verse 27 makes clear, the ʿarov has infested the Egyptians rather than torn them limb from limb, and “not one remained” probably suggests minuscule constituents of the horde. A plague of maddeningly noxious insects also makes a much better pair with the preceding plague. The King James Version’s “swarm of flies” is as good a guess as any, though it seems wise to avoid “swarm” in order not to introduce a misleading echo of the verb “swarm” in Exodus 1:7 and 7:28.
18. But I shall set apart on that day the land of Goshen. Goshen is the region of northeastern Egypt that, according to the account in Genesis (46:34), was set aside for Hebrew settlement. This is the first clear indication in Exodus that the Hebrews lived in a segregated area in Egypt. That geographical segregation will play a crucial role in the climactic ninth and tenth plagues.
19. I shall set a ransom. Most interpreters understand the Hebrew pedut to mean something like “separation” or “distinction.” Everywhere else, however, this root means “to ransom,” “to redeem,” “to rescue from danger,” including the three other occurrences in the biblical corpus in this form of a verbal noun. It seems wise to retain the semantic force of “ransom” and assign the indication of separation to the preposition “between” that follows—that is, God will grant ransom or rescue from the horde to the Israelites, and that saving act will set them apart from the afflicted Egyptians.
20. the land was ravaged. This indication of general devastation suggests that the second of the two plagues of insects is somehow more intense than the first.
22. for the abomination of Egypt we shall sacrifice. The most likely meaning is that the Hebrews will sacrifice cattle or other beasts considered taboo by the Egyptians and so infuriate them. There is some evidence that Egypt in the late Bronze Age was in fact quite tolerant about different kinds of sacrifice. The Hebrew writer could well be reflecting the awareness of a later age, when Egyptian attitudes may have shifted. By the time of Herodotus, the Egyptians had developed a reputation for rigid sacrificial restrictions.
24. I myself will send you off. The desperate Pharaoh now uses a new turn of urgent speech, prefacing the first-person imperfective verb with an emphatic ʾanokhi, “I myself.”
only you must not go far away. Having yielded to Moses’s argument on the three days’ journey, he still stipulates that the Hebrews should go no farther, for he is unwilling to contemplate the permanent loss of this population of slave workers.
25. Look, I am going out from your presence. There is temporal urgency in Moses’s response, as he uses a participial verbal form to indicate that he is already on his way to entreat the LORD. The coy game of asking Pharaoh to stipulate a time of deliverance that marked the previous plague is set aside as Pharaoh’s own sense of desperation grows.
Only let not Pharaoh continue to mock. Moses’s “only” clause is a clearly marked formal rejoinder to Pharaoh’s “only” clause in the previous verse. The verb here, hatel, is rendered as “deal deceitfully” by the King James Version and some modern versions, but elsewhere it means “to mock,” “to toy with,” and, from Moses’s point of view, that would be a reasonable representation of Pharaoh’s repeated reflex of seeming to yield and then reasserting his intransigence.
1And the LORD said to Moses, “Come into Pharaoh and you shall speak to him, ‘Thus said the LORD, God of the Hebrews: send off My people, that they may worship Me. 2But if you refuse to send them off and you still hold on to them, 3look, the hand of the LORD is about to be against your livestock which is in the field, against the horses, against the donkeys, against the camels, against the cattle, and against the sheep—a very heavy pestilence. 4And the LORD will set apart the livestock of Israel from the livestock of Egypt, and nothing of the Israelites’ will die.’” 5And the LORD set a fixed time, saying, “Tomorrow the LORD will do this thing in the land.” 6And the LORD did this thing on the next day, and all the livestock of Egypt died, but of the livestock of Israel not one died. 7And Pharaoh sent and, look, not a single one had died of the livestock of Israel, and Pharaoh’s heart hardened, and he did not send off the people.
8And the LORD said to Moses and to Aaron, “Take you handfuls of soot from the kiln and let Moses throw it toward the heavens before Pharaoh’s eyes, 9and it shall become a fine dust over all the land of Egypt and it shall become on man and on beast a burning rash erupting in boils in all the land of Egypt.” 10And they took the soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh, and Moses threw it toward the heavens and it became a burning rash with boils erupting on man and on beast. 11And the soothsayers could not stand before Moses because of the burning rash, for the burning rash was on the soothsayers and in all of Egypt. 12And the LORD toughened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not heed them, just as the LORD had spoken to Moses.
13And the LORD said to Moses, “Rise early in the morning and station yourself before Pharaoh, and you shall say to him, ‘Thus said the LORD, God of the Hebrews: send off my people, that they may worship me. 14For this time I am about to send all My scourges to your heart and against your servants and against your people, so that you may know that there is none like Me in all the earth. 15For by now I could have sent forth My hand and I could have struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been wiped off the face of the earth. 16And yet, for this I have let you stand—so as to show you My power, and so that My name will be told through all the earth. 17You still block the way to My people, not sending them off. 18Look, I am about to rain down very heavy hail at this time tomorrow, the like of which there has not been in Egypt from the day of its founding until now. 19And now, send, gather in your livestock and everything you have in the field. Every man and the beasts that will be in the field and that are not taken indoors, the hail shall come down on them and they shall die.’” 20Whoever feared the LORD’s word among Pharaoh’s servants sheltered his slaves and his livestock indoors. 21And whoever paid no mind to the LORD’s word left his slaves and his livestock in the field. 22And the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the heavens, that there be hail in all the land of Egypt, upon man and upon beast and upon all the grass of the field in the land of Egypt.” 23And Moses stretched out his staff over the heavens, and the LORD let loose thunder and hail, and fire went along earthward, and the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt. 24And there was very heavy hail, with fire flashing in the midst of the hail, the like of which there had not been in all the land of Egypt from the time it became a nation. 25And the hail struck through all the land of Egypt whatever was in the field, from man to beast, and all the grass of the field did the hail strike, and every tree of the field did it smash. 26Only in the land of Goshen, in which the Israelites were, was there no hail.
27And Pharaoh sent and called to Moses and to Aaron and said to them, “I have offended this time. The LORD is in the right and I and my people are in the wrong. 28Entreat the LORD, and no more of God’s thunder and hail! And let me send you off, and you shall not continue to stay.” 29And Moses said to him, “As I go out of the city, I shall spread out my hands to the LORD. The thunder will stop, and the hail will be no more, so that you may know that the earth is the LORD’s. 30And as for you and your servants, I know that you still do not fear the LORD God.” 31And the flax and the barley were struck, for the barley was in bud and the flax was in ear. 32But the wheat and the emmer were unripened. 33And Moses went out from Pharaoh’s presence out of the city and spread out his hands to the LORD, and the thunder stopped and the hail and the rain were not sluiced earthward. 34And Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had stopped, and he continued to offend, and he hardened his heart, both he and his servants. 35And Pharaoh’s heart toughened, and he did not send off the Israelites, just as the LORD had spoken through Moses.
CHAPTER 9 NOTES
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2. and you still hold on to them. As we move to the end of the first half of the Ten Plagues, a note of impatience is introduced into God’s words through Moses to Pharaoh as this clause is added to the formulaically repeated language. Perhaps this new emphasis on Pharaoh’s continuing torment of Israel is the reason that Rashi surprisingly glosses the transparent verb “hold on to,” maḥaziq, by citing a bizarre parallel from Deuteronomy 25: “should … she reach out her hand and seize [or hold on to] his pudenda.”
3. the hand of the LORD is about to be against your livestock. The Hebrew verb here has a spine-tingling effect for which there is no obvious English equivalent. The verb “to be” in Hebrew is not supposed to have a participial, or present, tense. At this ominous and supernatural juncture, however, that verbal stem h-y-h yields an anomalous hoyah, rendered in this translation as “about to be.” This strange usage involves a kind of fearsome pun on the divine name YHWH that was mysteriously highlighted in the Burning Bush episode. God’s intrinsic and unique capacity for being, we are made to see, is not just a matter of static condition but an awesome power of action—the hand that is “about to be” against all the livestock of Egypt.
camels. As in Genesis, the reference is anachronistic. Although camels were widely introduced to Mesopotamia and the land of Israel by early in the first millennium B.C.E., they were not used in Egypt until several centuries later; and in any case, the actual setting of the Exodus story would be some time in the thirteenth century B.C.E.
4. the LORD will set apart. The theme of the setting apart of the Hebrews from the Egyptians, first introduced in the previous plague, is again stressed.
7. Pharaoh’s heart hardened. This is one of many instances in which the literal meaning of the verb is “became heavy.” That usage in turn echoes ironically against the qualifying adjective of “a very heavy pestilence” (verse 3).
8. Take you handfuls of soot from the kiln and let Moses throw it toward the heavens. The beginning of the second half of the Ten Plagues is marked by a switch from the set formula for launching the plague with an outstretched staff. This scooping up of soot and casting it skyward intensifies the ominousness of the moment and has the look of an act of sympathetic magic. The black dust from the kiln turns into broadcast contamination, a plague clearly paired with the preceding plague of livestock pestilence but affecting man as well as beast.
9. burning rash. The Hebrew sheḥin obviously refers to a painful skin disease, but no definitive identification of the malady has been made. The noun is probably related to a root that means “to be hot”—Rashi cites the rabbinic idiom shanah sheḥunah, “a torrid year”—and hence this translation represents it as “burning rash.” The fact that the plague is inaugurated with soot taken from a kiln may reinforce an association between burning heat and the skin disease in question.
11. the soothsayers could not stand before Moses because of the burning rash. Their repeated gesture in the earlier plagues of a weak imitation of Moses vanishes. After “could not,” on the basis of 8:14, we might have expected something like “cure the burning rash.” In fact, the soothsayers, themselves painfully smitten by the maddening skin disease, are in no condition to make any effort of the sort but instead flee from Moses’s presence. There is added irony in the idiom used, for “to stand before” elsewhere has the sense of “stand in attendance upon.” In any case, what was noxious in the earlier plagues has now become physically unbearable.
12. And the LORD toughened Pharaoh’s heart. For the first time, it is not Pharaoh, or his heart, that is the subject of the verb of obduracy but God. However, in the biblical perspective this may amount to the same thing because God is presumed to be the ultimate cause of human actions, and Pharaoh’s stubborn arrogance can still be understood as the efficient cause. It is striking that Pharaoh persists in his resistance even as his afflicted soothsayers, the experts upon whom he has been depending, flee the scene.
14. I am about to send. The Hebrew writer cannot resist any opportunity to confront the two senses of “send”—the sending off or dismissal that Pharaoh is unwilling to implement and the dire sending by God of plague after plague.
16. so as to show you My power, and so that My name will be told through all the earth. Here we are given an emphatic summary of the theological rationale for the elaborate and excruciating sequence of plagues. The God of Israel is above all a God of history. His unrivaled supremacy as God is manifested for the Hebrew writers by His powerful acts in the arena of history. The Exodus story is conceived as an establishing of the credentials of the God of Israel for all humankind. Hence his awesome power has to be demonstrated in one plague after another, and Pharaoh’s repeated resistance is a required condition of the demonstration. The scope of the demonstration is also noteworthy. The elastic Hebrew term ʾerets, which until this point in the Plagues narrative had meant “land” (as in “the land of Egypt”), clearly here means “earth”: YHWH’s mighty acts in Egypt are to confirm his reputation as omnipotent deity throughout the world.
17. You still block the way to My people. The meaning of the Hebrew verb here, mistolel, has long been in dispute. This translation presumes a connection with the military term soleleh, “siege-ramp,” which might imply that Pharaoh is keeping the Hebrews penned in as a besieging army would do to the population trapped within a city.
18. from the day of its founding until now. As the plagues are intensified, rhetorical drum-rolls such as this punctuate the report of the catastrophes. Compare verse 24, “the like of which there had not been in all the land of Egypt from the time it became a nation.”
19. Every man and the beasts. The beasts are a little puzzling because verse 6 clearly reports a total destruction of Egyptian livestock. Perhaps all the reports of general destruction are meant to be taken as hyperboles; in any case, it seems unwise to look for absolute logical consistency in this narrative, which is chiefly focused on conveying a sense of grand cumulative catastrophe.
indoors. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “in the house.” The house/field antonyms in biblical Hebrew (bayit/sadeh) also have the idiomatic sense in some contexts of inside and outside.
20. Whoever feared the LORD’s word. Elsewhere, this is an idiom that indicates piety (as in “God-fearing”), but here the idiom has been stripped down to its literal meaning: whoever was struck with terror by this grim threat of God’s took the necessary steps to protect his slaves and livestock. The existence of a contingent of Egyptians now genuinely terrified by the dire predictions of the Hebrews is an indication of developing cracks in the pharaonic front.
23. the LORD let loose thunder and hail, and fire went along earthward. The dramatic nature of this plague is another manifestation of the pattern of intensification. Instead of disaster welling up from the Nile or somehow coming through the air, it appears here as a direct and violent assault from above against the land of Egypt. In biblical poetry, as in its Canaanite antecedents, thunder and lightning are the characteristic weapons of the sky god. The raining down of celestial fire also sets up an allusive correspondence with the story of the destruction of Sodom.
went along earthward. Instead of the standard form for the Hebrew verb “to go” (telekh), the writer uses a dialectic variant form (tihalakh) rarely employed in the Bible and perhaps felt to be archaic, as a kind of epic gesture. “Went along earthward” seeks to produce an equivalent strangeness of effect while replicating the rhythm of the Hebrew.
26. Only in the land of Goshen … was there no hail. The setting apart of Israelite Goshen from the rest of Egypt is extended here into an implicit image of a kind of protective canopy—we would say, umbrella—shielding the Hebrews from the destructive wrath pouring down from the sky.
27. I have offended this time. The terrifying display of celestial violence for the first time triggers a confession of wrongdoing from Pharaoh (and the terms “in the right,” tsadiq, and “in the wrong,” reshaʿim, reflect legal usage). But “this time” is restrictive, as though Pharaoh were suggesting: I did nothing to offend before now, but I admit, in the face of the destruction hurled from the heavens, that this time I have done wrong.
28. no more. Literally, “enough” or “much.”
29. spread out my hands. Spreading out the hands (literally, “palms”) is a gesture of prayer or supplication.
the earth is the LORD’s. Again, the scope of the theological argument reaches beyond the confines of the land of Egypt: the God Who has wreaked such inconceivable destruction on the great empire of Egypt is surely the God of all the earth.
30. And as for you and your servants, I know that you still do not fear the LORD God. Moses appears to be shrewdly reading the grudging nature of Pharaoh’s admission, “I have offended this time.” And Pharaoh’s reversal of direction after each of the previous plagues scarcely inspires confidence that he has now undergone a change of heart. The phrase “you still do not fear the LORD God” neatly straddles both senses of the idiom (see the comment on verse 20); Pharaoh is far from fearing the LORD, as Moses recognizes, in the sense of pious submission to divine authority. He does fear the LORD’s destructive power—that is why he is pleading with Moses—but probably not sufficiently to prevent him from renewing his obduracy.
31. flax and barley. Umberto Cassuto reminds us that flax was used to make linen, a principal Egyptian fabric for clothing (and also an important Egyptian export item), and goes on to suggest that the barley would have been used for cheap bread to feed slaves.
34. and he continued to offend. This phrase was not used in the earlier reports of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. It is directly motivated by the language of his confession: after saying “I have offended this time” as the thunder and hail rattle down, he finds himself once more under blue skies and directly proceeds to offend again by reneging on his promise to send off the Hebrews.
1And the LORD said to Moses, “Come into Pharaoh, for I Myself have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, so that I may set these signs of Mine in his midst, 2and so that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son’s son how I toyed with Egypt, and My signs that I set upon them, and you shall know that I am the LORD.” 3And Moses, and Aaron with him, came into Pharaoh, and they said to him, “Thus said the LORD, God of the Hebrews: ‘How long can you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Send off My people, that they may worship Me. 4For if you refuse to send off My people, look, I am about to bring tomorrow locust in all your territory. 5And it will cover the eye of the land, and one will not be able to see the land. And it will consume the rest of the remnant left you from the hail, and it will consume every tree you have growing in the field. 6And they will fill your houses and the houses of all your servants and the houses of all of Egypt, the like of which your fathers did not see nor your fathers’ fathers from the day they were on the soil until this day.’” And he turned and went out from Pharaoh’s presence. 7And Pharaoh’s servants said to him, “How long will this fellow be a snare to us? Send off the men, that they may worship the LORD their god. Do you not yet know that Egypt is lost?” 8And Moses, and Aaron with him, were brought back to Pharaoh, and he said to them, “Go, worship the LORD your god. Just who is going?” 9And Moses said, “With our lads and with our old men we will go. With our sons and with our daughters, with our sheep and with our cattle we will go, for it is a festival of the LORD for us.” 10And he said to them, “May the LORD be with you the way I would send you off with your little ones! For evil is before your faces. 11Not so. Go, pray, the men, and worship the LORD, for that is what you seek.” And he drove them out from Pharaoh’s presence.
12And the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt for the locust, that it may come up over the land of Egypt and consume all the grass of the land that the hail left behind.” 13And Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the LORD drove an east wind into the land all that day and all the night. When it was morning, the east wind bore the locust. 14And the locust went up over all the land of Egypt, and settled, very heavy, over all the territory of Egypt. Before it there had never been locust like it and after it there never would be. 15And it covered the eye of the land, and the land went dark. And it consumed all the grass of the land and every fruit of the tree that the hail had left, and nothing green in tree or in grass of the field was left in all the land of Egypt. 16And Pharaoh hastened to call to Moses and to Aaron, and he said, “I have offended before the LORD your god and before you. 17And now, forgive, pray, my offense, just this time, and entreat the LORD your god, that He but take away from me this death.” 18And he went out from Pharaoh’s presence and entreated the LORD. 19And the LORD turned round a very strong west wind, and it bore off the locust and thrust it into the Sea of Reeds, not a locust remained in all the territory of Egypt. 20And the LORD toughened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not send the Israelites off.
21And the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the heavens, that there be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness one can feel.” 22And Moses stretched out his hand over the heavens and there was pitch-dark in all the land of Egypt three days. 23No one saw his fellow and no one rose from where he was three days, but all the Israelites had light in their dwelling places. 24And Pharaoh called to Moses and said, “Go, worship the LORD. Only your sheep and your cattle will be set aside. Your little ones, too, may go with you.” 25And Moses said, “You yourself too shall provide us sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may do them to the LORD our God. 26And our livestock, too, shall go with us, not a hoof shall remain. For from it we shall take to worship the LORD our God, and we ourselves cannot know with what we shall worship the LORD our God until we come there.” 27And the LORD toughened Pharaoh’s heart and he did not want to send them off. 28And Pharaoh said to him, “Go away from me. Watch yourself. Do not again see my face, for on the day you see my face, you shall die.” 29And Moses said, “Rightly have you spoken—I will not see your face again.”
CHAPTER 10 NOTES
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1. for I Myself have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants. This is the first time that God informs Moses before his audience with Pharaoh that He has hardened (once again, the literal sense is “made heavy”) the heart of the Egyptian monarch. This is a signal that the elaborate toying (verse 2) with Egypt is approaching endgame: Pharaoh is showing himself ever more fiercely recalcitrant, and the plagues are becoming more fearful as we draw near the last plague which will break Pharaoh’s will.
2. so that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son’s son. The rationale of establishing God’s enduring fame shifts here from the global scope of Exodus 9:16 (“that My name will be told through all the earth”) to a consideration of educating the future nation. Confirming the LORD’s supremacy throughout the world might be viewed as a kind of monotheistic ideal, though not a very realistic one. The particular importance of the Exodus story is that it served as the foundational narrative for the nation.
3. How long can you refuse to humble yourself before Me? These words are a translation into other terms of the just announced hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by God, and thus constitute a strong indication that events caused by God and events flowing from human will, or willfulness, are merely different biblical ways of accounting for the same phenomenon. It should be noted that the language God directs to Pharaoh through Moses and Aaron has become more confrontational: now Pharaoh is inveighed against not only for blocking Israel from fulfilling its obligations to God but for failing to humble himself before God—humble submission being the last thing the supreme monarch of Egypt would imagine he would ever have to do.
4. locust. The Hebrew, like this translation, uses a collective noun. In verse 6, when the narrator wants to emphasize the multiplicity of the locusts invading every nook and cranny of Egypt, he switches to a plural verb.
5. it will cover the eye of the land. This striking Hebrew metaphor seems worth preserving in English. The Hebrew ʿayin, which has the primary meaning of “eye,” obviously suggests something like “surface,” “aspect,” or “look” in this context. It is a linguistic usage common to many languages in which the object of the organ of perception shares a designation with the organ of perception. The cloud of locusts is so thick (“very heavy,” as in verse 14, still another instance of heavy disaster answering the heaviness/hardness of Pharaoh’s heart) that it covers the whole surface, or eye, of the land, in effect, blinding Egypt. This image, of course, makes the plague of locusts adumbrate the next plague, darkness, a link that becomes explicit in verse 15, “and the land went dark.”
6. the like of which your fathers did not see nor your fathers’ fathers. Several commentators have noticed that this is a neat antithesis to “your son and your son’s son” of verse 2. More important, however, is that this sentence, like the one in verse 14, amplifies the grand drumroll of pronouncements begun in the previous chapter that declare that the catastrophe about to descend is unequaled in all the long annals of Egyptian history.
7. How long will this fellow be a snare to us? The impatient “how long” of Pharaoh’s courtiers, in the elegant symmetry of the narrative, echoes God’s words in verse 3, “How long can you refuse to humble yourself before Me?” Pharaoh persists in his arrogance, but the Egyptian united front against Israel is visibly coming apart at the seams as the courtiers, who have ample reason to believe the direness of Moses’s latest threat, try to tell their king that Egypt is on the brink of total disaster. “This fellow” reflects the indicative pronoun zeh, “this one,” which is often used in biblical Hebrew to express contempt.
8. And Moses, and Aaron with him, were brought back to Pharaoh. Moses, after concluding his annunciation of the impending plague of locusts, had turned on his heels and left—the clear implication being that he was rebuffed by Pharaoh, or did not for a moment expect a positive response from Pharaoh. Now, after the courtiers conclude their rebuke to Pharaoh with “Do you not yet know that Egypt is lost?,” the Egyptian king appears to concede the justice of their argument and has Moses and Aaron brought back into his presence. It is noteworthy, however, that Pharaoh’s agency, coerced and grudging, is left rather vague by the passive construction (“were brought back”)—presumably, Pharaoh issued the order, but perhaps he merely acquiesced as his courtiers sent after Moses and Aaron.
Go, worship the LORD your god. His acceptance of their petition expresses itself in an impatient imperative, quite in keeping with the “How long will this fellow be a snare” of his courtiers.
Just who is going? The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “Who and who are going?” Pharaoh’s agreement to Moses’s request is immediately followed by this question that clearly implies he is not prepared to have the entire people leave.
9. With our lads and with our old men … with our cattle we will go. Moses, at this point fully confident that God has dealt him the stronger hand, responds to Pharaoh’s implied reservation uncompromisingly. In a reversal of their initial speech postures, it is now Pharaoh who speaks in brief, unadorned sentences, and it is Moses who deploys quasipoetic parallelism—lads and old men, sons and daughters, sheep and cattle—in a rhetorical flourish that makes it plain he will yield in nothing.
10. May the LORD be with you the way I would send you off with your little ones. The effect is sarcasm: that is, as much as I am prepared to send off your little ones may the LORD be with you—which is not at all.
For evil is before your faces. These words are ambiguous. The most likely meaning is “You are headed for mischief”—i.e., embarked on a scheme to escape with all the Hebrew slaves—but it could also mean something like “Harm is going to befall you.” Some commentators have detected in the word for mischief/harm/evil, raʿah, a pun on the name of the Egyptian deity Re or Ra.
11. the men. The word used here, gevarim, is a different one from ʾanashim, the one used by the courtiers in verse 7. It has a stronger connotation of maleness (ʾanashim can also mean “people”), but “males” will not do as an English equivalent because the Hebrew term means adult males, definitely excluding the “little ones.”
he drove them out from Pharaoh’s presence. Some critics, in an effort to serve logic, emend the Hebrew text to read “they were driven out.” But it is not out of keeping with biblical usage to have “Pharaoh’s presence” spelled out as the place from which they were driven even though Pharaoh is also the antecedent of the “he” who does the driving. Moses and Aaron were brought back into the court in a passive construction, but now Pharaoh actively and unambiguously drives them out.
13. an east wind. The Hebrew idioms were coined in the geography of Canaan, not of Egypt. In Canaan, locusts and parching winds come from the deserts to the east. In Egypt, such winds and blights would typically come from the Sudan, to the south.
15. it consumed all the grass of the land and every fruit of the tree. In this instance, the account of total devastation would have sounded neither hyperbolic nor miraculous to the ancient audience, who would have had some familiarity with the comprehensive destruction of all growing things that a vast infestation of locusts could effect.
16–17. I have offended … forgive, pray, my offense just this time … take away from me this death. The mastery of dialogue so often manifested in biblical narrative is striking here. Pharaoh’s confident, imperious, aristocratic speech has now broken down into contrite confession and short urgent pleas. The dense layer of consuming locusts, blinding the eye of the land and penetrating every crevice, is given no name by Pharaoh except its palpable meaning for him and his people: “this death.” That choice of name for it, of course, is an unwitting anticipation of the last of the plagues, which will soon come.
19. west wind. The literal meaning is “sea wind,” but because of the geographical situation of ancient Israel, “sea” (that is, the Mediterranean) is often used to designate the west. Again, the wind reference reflects the geography of Canaan.
21. the LORD said to Moses. As in each third plague in the three triads that make up the sequence of nine, this plague is implemented without warning: the ominousness of three days of total darkness, suddenly enveloping Egypt without advance notice, prepares the ground psychologically for the climactic tenth plague.
a darkness one can feel. The force of the hyperbole, which beautifully conveys the claustrophobic palpability of absolute darkness, is diminished by those who try to provide a naturalistic explanation for this plague (or indeed, for any of the others)—i.e., a desert wind bearing particles of sand and dust darkens the land and makes the darkness palpable. Nor would solar eclipse work as an explanation, since the darkness persists for three days. Although elements of nature are used in all of the plagues—except, perhaps, this one and the next—they are all emphatically presented as extraordinary interventions by God in the order of nature, “signs and portents” that demonstrate His power over the created world.
23. No one saw … no one rose. Abraham Ibn Ezra and Nahmanides both shrewdly infer that this total incapacity through darkness would logically have had to include the disabling of candlelight as well as sunlight—another manifestation of the miraculous character of the event.
but all the Israelites had light in their dwelling places. This previously reiterated opposition between the Israelites and the Egyptians is here made boldly schematic, as the dramatic manifestation of God’s miraculous intervention. The contrast between light in Goshen and terrifying darkness in the rest of Egypt then sets the stage for the distinction between life for the Israelites and death for the Egyptians in the tenth plague.
24. Only your sheep and your cattle will be set aside. Pharaoh now concedes that the children and, implicitly the womenfolk (which some claim are included in the Hebrew term taf) may go, but he still wants to keep back the livestock as a material guarantee for the return of the slaves.
25. You yourself too shall provide. Moses is at least as uncompromising as in his previous encounter with Pharaoh. His immediate rejoinder to Pharaoh’s stipulation about the livestock is that the Egyptian monarch himself will provide the sacrifices. This pugnacious response might nevertheless have allowed Pharaoh momentarily to infer that Moses was agreeing to the condition about leaving the livestock behind. But in his next sentence, Moses vigorously disabuses Pharaoh of this illusion (“not a hoof shall remain”).
28–29. Do not again see my face … I will not see your face again. This is the final squaring-off between these adversaries. No further negotiations are possible, and the scene has now been set for the unleashing of the terrible last plague.
1And the LORD said to Moses, “Yet one more plague shall I bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward he will send you off from here; when he sends you off altogether, he will surely drive you out from here. 2Speak, pray, in the hearing of the people, that every man borrow from his fellow man and every woman from her fellow woman, ornaments of silver and ornaments of gold. 3And the LORD will grant the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians.” The man Moses, too, was very great in the land of Egypt in the eyes of Pharaoh’s servants and in the eyes of the people.
4And Moses said, “Thus said the LORD: ‘Around midnight I am going out in the midst of Egypt. 5And every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne to the firstborn of the slavegirl who is behind the millstones, and every firstborn of the beasts. 6And there shall be a great outcry in all the land of Egypt, the like of which there has not been and the like of which there will not be again. 7But against all the Israelites no dog will snarl, from man to beast, so that you may know how the LORD sets apart Egypt and Israel. 8And all these servants of yours shall come down to me and bow to me, saying, Go out, you and all the people that is at your feet. And afterward I will go out.’” And he went out from Pharaoh’s presence in a flare of anger.
9And the LORD said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not heed you, so that My portents may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” 10And Moses and Aaron had done these portents before Pharaoh, and the LORD toughened Pharaoh’s heart and he did not send off the Israelites from his land.
CHAPTER 11 NOTES
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1. And the LORD said to Moses. There is a problem about where to locate this speech temporally and spatially. In the immediately preceding verses, Pharaoh had warned Moses on pain of death never to see him again, and Moses had grimly concurred that he would never again see the Egyptian king. Verse 8, however, makes it clear that Moses is standing in Pharaoh’s presence and announcing the tenth plague to Pharaoh. This speech to Pharaoh (verses 4–8), then, would have to be the continuation and conclusion of the angry confrontation reported at the end of the previous chapter. God’s words to Moses (verses 1–3) do not seem smoothly integrated into the narrative progress, at any rate, not according to modern expectations of narrative continuity. Abraham ibn Ezra points out that most of this material is a restatement of God’s predictions to Moses in the Burning Bush episode. The passage thus may be understood as a summarizing recapitulation—Umberto Cassuto sees it as a kind of flashback in Moses’s mind—of God’s initial promise to confound Egypt and to liberate Israel before the annunciation of the last plague.
send you off … drive you out. Again, the semantically multiple “send” (“to dismiss,” “to free,” “to divorce,” “to take ceremonious leave of”) is interpreted as brutal expulsion.
3. The man Moses, too, was very great. The logical connection with the preceding sentence seems to run along the following lines: just as the rank-and-file Israelites have made the sort of appealing or superior impression on the Egyptians that encourages the bestowal of gifts, the leader of the Hebrews exerts a powerful charisma that confirms or enhances the standing of his followers in Egyptian eyes.
5. from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne to the firstborn of the slavegirl … behind the millstones. Of all the catalogues to indicate the comprehensiveness of the plague about to be enacted, this is of course the scariest. Cassuto locates the phrase “the slavegirl behind the millstones” in an Egyptian document and suggests it may have been proverbial in Egypt for the lowest of the low; this would be another instance of an authentic touch of Egyptian local color in this narrative.
6. outcry. The Hebrew tseʿaqah, which has also been used for the cries of anguish of the Israelites in their oppression, has a semantic range that goes between “cry” and “scream.”
7. But against all the Israelites no dog will snarl. That is, not even a menacing gesture toward them will be made. The literal meaning of the idiom used here is “no dog will sharpen its tongue.” Dogs, which were not kept as pets in ancient Israel, have a consistently negative valence in biblical literature as images of malefic hostility or of abasement.
8. And all these servants of yours. Since the beginning of Moses’s speech, “And Moses said,” lacks the usual “to Pharaoh” (perhaps because this piece of dialogue is a direct continuation of their previous exchange), it is only now that we can be certain that these words are addressed to Pharaoh, “your servants” referring to Pharaoh’s courtiers.
Go out … I will go out … And he went out. The Hebrew for the Exodus from Egypt is yetsiʾat mitsrayim, “the going-out from Egypt.” Here that crucial verbal stem becomes the thematic key word of Moses’s “last confrontation” with Pharaoh before the actual exodus. The first two occurrences of the verb in this verse refer to the Hebrews’ leaving Egypt; the third occurrence indicates Moses’s angry departure from the court, which through the very repetition of the verb also is made a kind of foreshadowing of the Israelite departure from Egypt. All three of these uses of the verb play against God’s “going out in the midst of Egypt” (verse 4), where the same verb appears to have a military sense—“to go out on a sortie,” or, as elsewhere in this translation, “to sally forth.”
in a flare of anger. Both Rashi and ibn Ezra link this causally to Pharaoh’s “Do not again see my face.” Since Pharaoh has offered no response to Moses’s terrifying announcement of the death of the firstborn, he clearly remains implacable, and hence Moses’s anger—the first explicit indication of such a reaction by him in all his clashes with Pharaoh.
9–10. Pharaoh will not heed you … Moses and Aaron had done these portents … the LORD toughened Pharaoh’s heart. All this material in virtually the same verbal formulation appears earlier in the narrative—indeed, as early as the initiating episode of the Burning Bush, like the material enunciated here in verses 1–3. Its function at this point before the last night in Egypt is, as Cassuto suggests, a summarizing recapitulation. The first three verses of the chapter and these last two thus form a kind of recapitulative framework for Moses’s final confrontation with Pharaoh, reminding us that it is the prelude to the climactic fulfillment of the divine promise given to Moses at Horeb. The function of recapitulation is grammatically indicated by the use of a pluperfect verb: “Moses and Aaron had done these portents.” The portents, of course, have proved unavailing, and so the stage is set for carrying out God’s grim pledge to Moses at Horeb to kill the firstborn of Egypt.
1And the LORD said to Moses and to Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, 2“This month is for you head of months, it is the first for you of the months of the year. 3Speak to all the community of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month, let every man take a lamb for a father’s house, a lamb for a household. 4And should a household be too small to have a lamb, it must take together with its neighbor who is close to its house, in proportion to the persons, each man according to what he eats shall take his portion of the lamb. 5An unblemished lamb, a yearling male you shall have, from the sheep or from the goats you may take it. 6And it shall be a thing to be kept by you until the fourteenth day of this month, and the whole congregation of the community of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7And they shall take from the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel, on the houses in which they will eat it. 8And they shall eat the meat on this night fire-roasted, with flatbread on bitter herbs shall they eat it. 9Do not eat from it raw, nor in any way cooked in water, but fire-roasted, its head with its shanks and with its entrails. 10And you shall leave nothing from it by morning, and what is left of it by morning in fire you shall burn. 11And thus shall you eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It is a passover offering to the LORD. 12And I will cross through the land of Egypt on this night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt from man to beast, and from all the gods of Egypt I will exact retributions. I am the LORD. 13And the blood will be a sign for you upon the houses in which you are, and I will see the blood and I will pass over you, and no scourge shall become a Destroyer amongst you when I strike in the land of Egypt. 14And this day shall be a remembrance for you, and you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD through your generations, an everlasting statute you shall celebrate it. 15Seven days shall you eat flat-bread. The very first day you shall expunge leaven from your houses, for whosoever eats leavened bread, that person shall be cut off from Israel, from the first day to the seventh day. 16And on the first day a sacred convocation and on the seventh day a sacred convocation you shall have, no task shall be done on them, only what each person is to eat, that alone will be prepared for you. 17And you shall observe the Flatbread, for on this very day I brought out your battalions from the land of Egypt, and you shall observe this day through your generations, an everlasting statute. 18In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening you shall eat flatbread, until the twenty-first day in the evening. 19Seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, for whosoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the community of Israel, sojourner and native of the land alike. 20Nothing that is leavened shall you eat, in all your dwelling places you shall eat flatbread.’”
21And Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Draw out and take yourselves sheep according to your clans and slaughter the Passover offering. 22And you shall take a bundle of hyssop and you shall dip it in the blood that is in the basin and you shall touch the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts, and as for you, none of you shall go out from the entrance of his house till morning. 23And the LORD shall cross through to scourge Egypt, and He shall see the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, and the LORD shall pass over the entrance, and He shall not allow the Destroyer to come into your houses to scourge. 24And you shall keep this thing as a statute for you and your sons, everlasting. 25And so when you come to the land that the LORD will give you as He has spoken, you shall keep this service. 26And so should your sons ask you, ‘What is this service to you?,’ 27you shall say, ‘A Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he scourged Egypt and our households He rescued.’” And the people bowed and did obeisance. 28And the Israelites went and did as the LORD had charged Moses and Aaron, thus did they do.
29And it happened at midnight that the LORD struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and every firstborn of the beasts. 30And Pharaoh rose at night, he and all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great outcry in Egypt, for there was no household in which there was no dead. 31And he called to Moses and to Aaron at night and said, “Rise, go out from the midst of my people, both you and the Israelites, and go worship the LORD as you have spoken. 32Both your sheep and your cattle take as you have spoken, and go, and you shall bless me as well.” 33And Egypt bore down on the people to hurry to send them off from the land, for they said, “We are all dead men.” 34And the people carried off their dough before it rose, their kneading pans wrapped in their cloaks on their shoulders. 35And the Israelites had done according to Moses’s word, and they had asked of the Egyptians ornaments of silver and ornaments of gold and cloaks. 36And the LORD had granted the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, who lent to them, and they despoiled Egypt. 37And the Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, some six hundred thousand men on foot, besides the little ones. 38And a motley throng also went up with them, and sheep and cattle, very heavy livestock. 39And they baked the dough that they had brought out of Egypt in rounds of flatbread, for it had not leavened, since they had been driven out of Egypt and could not tarry, and provisions, too, they could not make for themselves. 40And the settlement of the Israelites which they had settled in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. 41And it happened at the end of four hundred and thirty years and it happened on that very day, all the battalions of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt. 42It is a night of watch for the LORD, for His taking them out of the land of Egypt, this night is the LORD’s, a watch for all the Israelites through their generations.
43And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute of the Passover offering: no foreigner shall eat of it. 44And every man’s slave, purchased with silver, you shall circumcise, then shall he eat of it. 45A settler or hired worker shall not eat of it. 46In one house shall it be eaten, you shall not take out any meat from the house, and no bone shall you break in it. 47All the community of Israel thus shall do. 48And should a sojouner sojourn with you and make the Passover offering to the LORD, he must circumcise every male of his, then may he draw near to do it and he shall be like a native of the land, but no uncircumcised man shall eat of it. 49One law shall there be for the native and for the sojourner who sojourns in your midst.” 50And all the Israelites did as the LORD had charged Moses and Aaron, thus did they do. 51And it happened on that very day that the LORD brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt in their battalions.
CHAPTER 12 NOTES
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1. in the land of Egypt. This phrase is usually explained (by Nahmanides and others) as an indication of the unusual setting for the annunciation of this set of legal regulations in contradistinction to the body of Hebrew law that is given in the wilderness. But the phrase also serves to position this passage in the narrative sequence: as the Israelites are poised for the great escape, in the penultimate moment of their 430-year sojourn in Egypt (verse 40), God directs Moses and Aaron to deliver to them, while they are still on Egyptian soil, this law that will be binding on all their descendants.
2. This month is for you head of months. The reasonable inference of many scholars is that this calendric announcement reflects a moment in early Israelite history when there was at least one other competing system that designated a different month as the beginning of the year. (The Talmud later would speak of four different new years, and subsequent Jewish practice sets the beginning of the year in the early fall month of Tishrei, evidently making the calendar correspond to the agricultural cycle rather than to a historical event.) The point of beginning the annual sequence of months with the one in which the Exodus occurred is to coordinate the annual cycle with the event of liberation that is construed as the foundational act for the nation.
3. a lamb. Though the Hebrew seh can refer to both lamb and mature sheep, the indication that the animal should be in its first year—this is Rashi’s plausible construction of the term ben shanah—makes “lamb” the appropriate translation. It is a slightly peculiar lamb, however, because in verse 5 we learn that it also includes “kid.”
6. a thing to be kept. The Hebrew mishmeret is an abstract noun derived from the verbal stem sh-m-r, which has meanings that range from “keep” to “watch” to “observe” (in the ritual sense); all these meanings come into play as the root is repeated through the passage.
8. flatbread. The etymology of the Hebrew matsot remains uncertain. The conventional translation of “unleavened bread” is less than felicitous not only because of its excess of syllables but because it explicitly defines the bread by negation, the lack of leavening, whereas the Hebrew is a positive term. In Genesis 19 Lot serves matsot to the two anonymous guests who were to his house at nightfall, and the implication is that this is a kind of bread that can be baked hastily, with no need to wait for the dough to rise before putting it in the oven.
9. Do not eat from it raw, nor in any way cooked in water, but fire-roasted. Eating raw meat, still suffused with blood, would in any case have been prohibited, but elsewhere there is no restriction on boiled meat (here that would be lamb stew), whether for sacrificial or profane purposes. William H. C. Propp offers what may be the best explanation for this insistence on fire-roasting by observing that it is a more archaic method of cooking meat, without the use of a pot, cooking utensils being the instruments of a more complex culinary technology. In this fashion, he goes on to suggest, fire-roasting would be associated with a kind of purity in the preparation of the meal, just as flatbread (probably baked over an open fire, nomad-style) without any admixture of leaven, might be associated with purity. One could add that these archaically prepared foods enhance the sense of ritual reenactment of what amounts to an archaic moment of national history, when the nation itself was awaiting its foundational liberation as a destroying angel stalked through the Egyptian night and passed over the houses of the Israelites.
10. in fire you shall burn. This seemingly redundant idiom has the force of “burn till utterly consumed” and so when applied to buildings means something like “burned to the ground.”
12. I will cross through the land. The Hebrew verb ʿavarti means to “pass” (over, through, or by) or to “cross.” The usual translation of “pass through” or “pass over” has been avoided in order to obviate the misleading impression that it is the same word as “Passover,” which in the Hebrew reflects an entirely unrelated root, p-s-ḥ.
from all the gods of Egypt I will exact retributions. The least strained construction of this clause is that the absolute impotence of the supposed, or perhaps merely petty, gods of Egypt to protect their adherents will expose their nullity as gods. The idea of some commentators, that the Egyptian idols were smashed in the course of this fateful night, seems fanciful: and the exposure of the inefficacy of the Egyptian gods is in keeping with the preceding plagues.
13. And the blood will be a sign. Much anthropologically informed commentary has been made on the smearing of blood at the entrance of the house to ward off evil spirits, the “Destroyer” (mashḥit) of our narrative being a particularly scary instance of such a spirit. It is equally important, however, to keep in mind the deployment of blood as a recurrent motif in the literary structure of the larger narrative. Moses is thrust from Egypt, and set on the road toward his vocation as prophet, after he sheds the blood of the Egyptian taskmaster. On the way back to Egypt, it is the blood of circumcision that saves his life—a strong foreshadowing of the tenth plague that evidently interprets circumcision as a kind of substitute for the sacrifice of the firstborn. Then the plagues begin with the turning of the water of the Nile into blood.
I will pass over you. The primary meaning of the Hebrew verb pasaḥ is to “skip,” “hop,” “step over.” (There is one occurrence in the biblical corpus where it might mean “defend,” which is scant basis for the claim of some scholars that this is what it means here.) “Pass over” is used in this translation to preserve the pun on the time-honored English name for the festival. It is quite possible that the Hebrew pesaḥ was the independent name for this particular lamb sacrifice and for a spring festival, and that the narrative links that name with the Exodus story through folk etymology.
15. that person shall be cut off from Israel. This punishment (the Hebrew term is karet) will be invoked for a whole series of infractions as the Mosaic law is promulgated. Perhaps the most likely reference is to some form of ostracism, though both medieval and modern commentators have speculated about whether premature death or childlessness might be suggested by the phrase.
17. the Flatbread. Here the term matsot is the name of the festival, which is also called pesaḥ. Some have plausibly conjectured that these were originally two different holidays—matsot agricultural and pesaḥ pastoral—that were drawn together in the literary formulation of this text and hence in Israelite practice.
19. sojourner. As elsewhere, the Hebrew ger refers to a resident alien.
native of the land. The Hebrew reflected in “native,” ʾezraḥ, probably refers to a plant (many think, a grapevine), and so would be a metaphor for the autochthonous character of the native, springing from the soil in purity.
21. Draw out and take. The precise nuance of the first of these two verbs is elusive. It has been proposed that “draw” (mashakh) preceding another verb may have the idiomatic force of “hasten,” “perform urgently.”
22. touch the blood … to the lintel. This is precisely the same verb that is used in 4:25 for Zipporah’s placing or smearing the blood of circumcision at someone’s feet. The usage is unusual enough to suggest the possibility of an explicit allusion here to the earlier episode.
25. And so when you come to the land. This is a pointed rupture of the time frame of the story. In the midst of the breathless moment that is the last evening of the Israelites in Egypt, as Moses enjoins them to smear their entranceways with protective blood, the narrative briefly leaps forward to a time when the Israelites, long ago liberated from Egyptian servitude, dwell in their land, and when a generation arises that scarcely knows the meaning of the commemorative Passover ritual, so that telling has to supplement the ritualistic showing.
29. dungeon. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “house of the pit.”
32. and you shall bless me as well. As both Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra note, the desperate Pharaoh appears to feel in need of intercession: when you propitiate your god in the wilderness, he is saying, remember to put in a good word for me.
33. Egypt bore down on the people. The literal meaning of the verb is “was strong.” This same verb, ḥazaq, was repeatedly used for the “toughening” of Pharaoh’s heart, and the redeployment here in a different context, with a different grammatical object, is a virtually ironic echo.
We are all dead men. Coupled with the wrenching grief over the death of the firstborn is a note of panic: “the disasters are becoming more and more intolerable, and after the loss of our sons, the next thing that will happen is that we shall all be killed.”
35. and cloaks. The cloaks were not included in the preceding instructions about this event. The mention here is evidently triggered by the report of the cloaks in which the kneading pans were wrapped, as an explanation of where the Hebrews got them. Perhaps it is assumed that as a matter of course abject slaves would possess no more than simple work-tunics, and not the cloaks they would need for a journey. (In Egyptian paintings slaves are often depicted wearing only a short skirt and naked from the waist up.)
37. six hundred thousand men on foot, besides the little ones. “On foot” (ragli), which functions adverbially here, is a military term with the usual meaning as a noun of foot soldier and thus reinforces the idea that the fleeing Hebrews are “the LORD’s battalions.” “The little ones” in this instance would logically have to imply or include the women who nurtured them. The total figure of Israelites thus would be considerably more than two million. This is scarcely credible as a historical datum, but ancient literature (Greek as well as Hebrew) has little notion of numerical accuracy in the way it conjures with numbers.
38. motley throng. Umberto Cassuto plausibly suggests that the Hebrew ʿerev rav has no component that means “multitude” (King James Version, “mixed multitude”) but rather that the last syllable is not an independent word but a duplication of the ultimate syllable of the main word—thus, ʿerevrav—which is a Hebrew formation for pejoratives. (The English “riffraff” comes close.)
very heavy livestock. “Heavy” is a word that shuttles back and forth through the themes of the story, from Pharaoh’s heavy/hard heart to the sundry heavy plagues to the heaviness of the Israelite possessions.
42. a night of watch. The Hebrew leyl shimurim may suggest a vigil or simply a night on which this complex of commemorative rituals is scrupulously kept or observed. In any case, the last phrase of the verse, “through their generations” (or “through their eras”) serves as a transition from the preceding narration of the event of Exodus to the passage of legislation that frames it (verses 43–51), which will be followed by a second unit of legislative material (13:1–16).
43. no foreigner shall eat of it. The Exodus story defines the nation. The Passover ritual, which commemorates that story, is the cultic enactment of membership in the nation.
44. purchased with silver. Literally, the Hebrew is “purchase of silver.”
45. A settler. The Hebrew toshav appears to mean the same thing as ger, that is, “resident alien.” The two words are often coupled in a hendiadys, ger wetoshav, which plainly means resident alien.
hired worker. The obvious implication is a non-Israelite hired worker.
46. no bone shall you break in it. This is often linked to the haste of the eating: there is no time to break bones and suck out the marrow. It may be more likely, however, that the prohibition is meant to preserve the idea of the wholeness of the sacrificial meal. The lamb is fire-roasted whole, after which only the meat that can be cut away is consumed.
48. he must circumcise every male. Circumcision is the mark of belonging to the covenantal community, as God announced to Abraham when He enjoined the practice (Genesis 17); and so circumcision is a prerequisite to participation in the community-defining Passover ritual. But the mention of circumcision also ties in this law with the Bridegroom of Blood episode that was the prelude to Moses’s mission in Egypt: there is a symbolic overlap between the apotropaic blood of circumcision, the apotropaic blood of the lamb on the doorposts, and God’s saving Israel from the bloodbath of Egypt to make them His people.
then may he draw near. In ritual contexts, this verb is often an ellipsis for “draw near to the altar” (to offer sacrifice). The Hebrew for “sacrifice,” qorban, is cognate with the verb “draw near,” qarav.
49. One law. The Hebrew term here is torah, which has the primary meaning of “teaching” or “instruction.”
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Consecrate unto Me each firstborn, breach of each womb among the Israelites in man and in beast—it is Mine.”
3And Moses said to the people, “Remember this day on which you went out of Egypt, from the house of slaves, for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out from here, and unleavened stuff shall not be eaten. 4Today you are going out, in the month of the New Grain. 5And so when the LORD brings you to the land of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Hivvite and the Jebusite which He swore to your fathers to give to you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall perform this service in this month. 6Seven days shall you eat flatbread and on the seventh day a festival to the LORD. 7Flatbread shall be eaten through the seven days and no leavened stuff of yours shall be seen and no leavening of yours shall be seen in all your territory. 8And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘For the sake of what the LORD did for me when I went out of Egypt.’ 9And it shall be a sign for you on your hand and a remembrance between your eyes, so that the LORD’s teaching will be in your mouth, for with a strong hand the LORD brought you out of Egypt. 10And you shall keep this statute at its fixed time year after year. 11And so when the LORD brings you to the land of the Canaanite as He swore to you and to your fathers and gives it to you, 12you shall pass every womb-breach to the LORD and every breach of spawn of beast that you will have—the males to the LORD. 13And every donkey’s breach you shall redeem with a lamb, and should you not redeem it, you shall break its neck, and every human firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. 14And so should your son ask you tomorrow, saying, ‘What is this?,’ you shall say to him, ‘By strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slaves. 15And it happened, when Pharaoh was hard about sending us off, that the LORD killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt from the firstborn of man to the firstborn of beast. Therefore do I sacrifice to the LORD every womb-breach of the male and every firstborn of my sons I must redeem. 16And it shall be a sign on your hand and circlets between your eyes, that through strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt.’”
17And it happened when Pharaoh sent the people off that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines though it was close, for God thought, “Lest the people regret when they see battle and go back to Egypt.” 18And God turned the people round by way of the wilderness of the Sea of Reeds, and the Israelites went up armed from the land of Egypt. 19And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had solemnly made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely single you out, and you shall take up my bones with you from here.” 20And they journeyed from Succoth and encamped at Etham at the edge of the wilderness. 21And the LORD was going before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them on the way and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light to go by day and by night. 22The pillar of cloud would not budge by day nor the pillar of fire by night from before the people.
CHAPTER 13 NOTES
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2. Consecrate unto Me each firstborn. As Nahum Sarna notes, there are indications elsewhere—e.g., Numbers 3:12—that the firstborn originally served as priests, until they were replaced by the members of the tribe of Levi, and so consecration here has a double meaning: the human firstborn are to be dedicated to God’s cult and the animal firstborn are to be sacrificed to God. These first two verses of the chapter appear to be a separate unit, editorially inserted because of the connection with the instructions about the redemption of the firstborn and the sacrifice of firstborn animals in the next unit (verses 12–13, 15).
breach of each womb. The Hebrew peter means “opening” and is related, by metathesis, to perets, “bursting.” It is a vivid idiom for the firstborn.
3. Remember this day. The Hebrew verb zakhar suggests both the cognitive act of remembering and the ritual act of commemoration. This entire projection into the future in the promised land of the Passover observance clearly duplicates some of the material in 12:14–28, though it stresses even more centrally the function of memory/commemoration.
unleavened stuff. This rendering of ḥamets is preferable to “unleavened bread” used by some translations because the term probably includes grain-based foods other than bread, as later Jewish tradition would extravagantly stipulate in its Passover regulations.
5. this service. The reference is to the Passover ritual. As has often been noted, the Hebrew ʿavodah, the term for service or worship, is also the word repeatedly used for the labor or slavery in Egypt; so the narrative traces a move from coerced manual service to service of the deity.
6. on the seventh day a festival to the LORD. Surprisingly, there is no indication here, as in the previous chapter, of a festival on the first day. Either this is an ellipsis, which would be untypical for legal injunctions, or it reflects a variant tradition.
9. a sign for you on your hand and a remembrance between your eyes. The concrete reference of these famous words remains in doubt. The original intention could conceivably be metaphorical: the story of the Exodus is to be forever present on the hand (or arm), the idiomatic agent of power and action, and between the eyes, the place of perception and observation. Here the key word for our passage, “remembrance” (zikaron), is used for what should be between the eyes. In verse 16 the term used is totafot, “circlets” or “frontlets,” a word of obscure origin and not entirely certain meaning: many imagine it as a headband, although a headband would be worn above, not between, the eyes, whereas there are Egyptian ornaments, as some scholars have noted, that were worn between the eyes. Subsequent Jewish tradition construed this phrase to enjoin the wearing of small leather boxes containing scriptural passages written on parchment (tefillin, conventionally translated as “phylacteries”).
the LORD’s teaching. Here torah has the clear meaning of “teaching” because it is said to be in the mouth (learning in the ancient world would have involved recitation out loud).
12. pass … to the LORD. The verb, which is the causative form of the verb used for God’s crossing or passing through Egypt, means in this context “to transfer possession.”
13. every donkey’s breach. Since the donkey was an impure animal for both dietary and ritual purposes, it could not be sacrificed, and a lamb (or sheep) had to be sacrificed in its stead. As William H. C. Propp observes, a donkey was worth several times the value of a sheep, so the sheep substitution would almost certainly be embraced rather than the alternative of destroying the donkey that is put forth in the next clause.
you shall break its neck. The Hebrew verb ʿaraf clearly derives from ʿoref, the nape. It could conceivably refer to slaughter with a knife at the back of the neck rather than at the front, as is ritually prescribed. In postbiblical Hebrew, the verb means “to behead.” In any case, the idea is that if a person should refuse to perform the substitute sacrifice for the donkey, he should be deprived of its use—which no sane owner of this ubiquitous and valuable beast of burden and means of transportation would do.
14. What is this? Again and again, these texts emphasize the educational and commemorative function of the Exodus story and of the Passover ritual embedded in it. The story encodes the very matrix and rationale of Israelite national existence, and it becomes a sustained exercise in collective remembering. The educational formulas here reiterate the verbal motif of “a strong hand” or “strength of hand” that punctuates the Exodus narrative proper.
15. every firstborn of my sons I must redeem. The permanent “redemption” of every firstborn son, in remembrance of all the firstborn Hebrew sons rescued from death on that dire night in Egypt, is evidently a payment in silver or goods to the priests. The notion that this is a substitute for human sacrifice of the firstborn, as Sir James Frazer contended, is at best part of the shadowy archaic antecedents of this practice, here firmly anchored in historical commemoration.
17. And it happened when Pharaoh sent the people off. We now return to the story, with an indication of the escape route that will be important as we approach the dramatic event at the Sea of Reeds.
by way of the land of the Philistines. This would have been the most direct route to Canaan, along what amounted to a coastal highway up through the area that is the present-day Gaza Strip. This route was in fact heavily fortified by the Egyptians as the principal avenue for their varying imperial enterprises to the north, and so would have immediately confronted the fleeing slaves with the prospect of “battle.” The Philistines in this period are an anachronistic reference, for they arrived from the Aegean region (and thus are known as the Sea Peoples) in this coastal strip during the twelfth century B.C.E., perhaps as much as a hundred years after the conjectured date of the Exodus in the later thirteenth century.
18. the Sea of Reeds. This is not the Red Sea, as older translations have it, but most likely a marshland in the northeastern part of Egypt. (Marshes might provide some realistic kernel for the tale of a waterway that is at one moment passable and in the next flooded.) But it must be conceded that elsewhere yam suf refers to the Red Sea, and some scholars have recently argued that the story means to heighten the miraculous character of the event through the parting of a real sea. Even if the setting is a marsh, the event is reported in strongly supernatural terms.
19. he had solemnly made the sons of Israel swear. Here the reference of beney yisraʾel would have to be Joseph’s brothers, the actual sons of Israel/Jacob. But the double sense of the term works nicely by stressing the continuity of obligation between the original sons of Israel who swore to bring Joseph’s bones up out of Egypt and these “sons of Israel” who are the Israelites, the Hebrew nation.
21. And the LORD was going before them. The participial form of the verb in the Hebrew suggests constant action. This effect is complemented by the verb at the very beginning of (in the Hebrew) the next verse, loʾ yamish, which has an iterative force, “would not budge.” The twin images of a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire going before the people extend the representation of the Israelites as “the LORD’s battalions” because in biblical idiom the commander of an army is said to “go out and come in” before it, that is, lead it in battle.
a pillar of cloud … a pillar of fire. This spectacular panoramic picture of the Israelite throngs following these miraculous guides through the wilderness nicely counterpoints the plagues that preceded. Several of the plagues involved destruction descending from the sky. Here a great mass of cloud descends from the sky to lead Israel. The penultimate plague plunged Egypt into terrifying darkness, and now a column of divine fire serves as a huge beacon to show Israel the way through the dark of the wilderness.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, that they turn back and encamp before Pi-Hahiroth between Migdol and the sea, before Baal-Zephon, opposite it you shall camp, by the sea. 3And Pharaoh had said of the Israelites,
‘They are confounded in the land,
The wilderness has closed round them.’
4And I shall toughen Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, that I may gain glory through Pharaoh and through all his force, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD.” And thus they did do.
5And it was told to the king of Egypt that the people had fled, and Pharaoh and his servants had a change of heart about the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we sent off Israel from our service?” 6And he harnessed his chariot, and his troops he took with him. 7And he took six hundred picked chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains he harnessed his chariot, and his troops over it all. 8And the LORD toughened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the Israelites, the Israelites going out with a high hand. 9And the Egyptians pursued them and overtook them encamped by the sea—all the horses of Pharaoh’s chariots and his riders and his force—at Pi-Hahiroth before Baal-Zephon. 10And Pharaoh drew near, and the Israelites raised their eyes and, look, Egypt was advancing toward them, and they were very afraid, and the Israelites cried out to the LORD. 11And they said to Moses, “Was it for lack of graves in Egypt that you took us to die in the wilderness? What is this you have done to us to bring us out of Egypt? 12Isn’t this the thing we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone, that we may serve Egypt, for it is better for us to serve Egypt than for us to die in the wilderness’?” 13And Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Take your station and see the LORD’s deliverance that He will do for you today, for as you see the Egyptians today, you shall not see them again for all time. 14The LORD shall do battle for you, and you, you shall keep still.”
15And the LORD said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Speak to the Israelites, that they journey onward. 16As for you, raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and split it apart, that the Israelites may come into the midst of the sea on dry land. 17As for me, look, I am about to toughen the heart of the Egyptians, that they come after them, and I shall gain glory through Pharaoh and through all his force, through his chariots and through his riders. 18And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh, through his chariots and through his riders. 19And the messenger of God that was going before the camp of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. 20And it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel, and there was the cloud and the dark, and it lit up the night, and they did not draw near each other all night. 21And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD led the sea with a mighty east wind all night, and He made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split apart. 22And the Israelites came into the sea on dry land, the waters a wall to them on their right and on their left. 23And the Egyptians pursued and came after them, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his riders, into the sea. 24And it happened in the morning watch that the LORD looked out over the camp of Egypt in a pillar of fire and cloud and He panicked the camp of Egypt. 25And He took off the wheels of their chariots and drove them heavily, and Egypt said, “Let me flee before Israel, for the LORD does battle for them against Egypt.” 26And the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the waters go back over the Egyptians, over their chariots and over their riders.” 27And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea went back toward morning to its full flow, with the Egyptians fleeing toward it, and the LORD shook out the Egyptians into the sea. 28And the waters came back and covered the chariots and the riders of all Pharaoh’s force who were coming after them in the sea, not a single one of them remained. 29And the Israelites went on dry land in the midst of the sea, the waters a wall to them on their right and on their left. 30And the LORD on that day delivered Israel from the hand of Egypt, and Israel saw Egypt dead on the shore of the sea, 31and Israel saw the great hand that the LORD had performed against Egypt, and the people feared the LORD, and they trusted in the LORD and in Moses His servant.
CHAPTER 14 NOTES
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3. They are confounded in the land, / The wilderness has closed round them. Since God has just given the most precise instructions as to where the Israelites should establish their camp, this quotation of what Pharaoh says when he hears of the Israelites’ movements is a strong indication that God has set up what amounts in military terms to an ambush. Pharaoh, seeing that the Hebrews have not followed the short and obvious coastal route to get out of Egypt northward, concludes that they have lost their way (“they are confounded in the land”) and have inadvertently allowed themselves to be pinned down on the shore of the Sea of Reeds (“The wilderness has closed round them”), where the pursuing troops will easily surround them and recapture the whole mass of runaway slaves. Note that Pharaoh, in his regal confidence, speaks in verse—two semantically complementary clauses with three nicely scanning beats in each, nevukhím hém baʾárets / sagár ʾaleihém hamidbár. What the Egyptian leader can scarcely foresee is that the Hebrews will be able to flee into the sea, which then will turn into a death trap for the pursuing Egyptian troops. The place-names stipulated in God’s instructions to Moses have not been identified, though it might be noted that they are all Hebrew names, with the exception of Pi-Hahiroth, which appears to have an Egyptian prefix.
4. that I may gain glory. The Hebrew verb ʾikavdah, as anyone reading the story in the original would notice, plays on the same word kaved, “heavy,” that has been repeatedly used for the severity of the plagues, the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart, and the density of the Israelites’ livestock.
5. about the people. It is noteworthy that through this section the Israelites are several times referred to simply as “the people,” the perspective of the narrative, the audience, and of God having become thoroughly an Israelite national perspective.
from our service. Literally, “from serving us.” The multivalent “send” is now given its explicit legal sense of manumission.
6. his troops. The literal meaning of ʿamo is “his people,” but ʿam in military contexts regularly refers to troops, and Pharaoh clearly has not taken the entire people with him, only his army.
7. and all the chariots of Egypt. That is, Pharaoh took not only the elite chariotry, but in fact the entire Egyptian chariot corps.
captains. The Hebrew shalishim has never been definitively explained. It appears to be derived from sheloshah, “three,” and may refer to the division of the army into command units of three and thirty (compare 2 Samuel 23:9–23). Some have conjectured that the shalish would be the third man or commander in a war chariot, but Egyptian chariots appear to have had crews of only two men. A few scholars have suggested a Ugaritic cognate meaning “bronze,” as in bronze armor, the term by metonymy referring to a warrior or officer.
8. with a high hand. Nahum Sarna proposes that the idiom is drawn from depictions of ancient Near Eastern gods brandishing a weapon in the upraised right hand. The English “high-handed” has some kinship with the notion of defiance conveyed by the Hebrew expression. “Hand” has figured centrally in the entire Exodus narrative both in God’s powerful hand against Egypt and Moses’s outstretched hand (or arm, the Hebrew yad often covering both) unleashing the plagues, as here it will split the sea.
11. Was it for lack of graves in Egypt. After the initial complaints of the Israelites against Moses, we have been given no information about their collective mental state. Now we see them as fearful and as recalcitrant as they were at the beginning. This moment becomes the first of a whole series of “murmurings” that will punctuate the Wilderness narrative.
What is this you have done to us …? These words are a pointed echo of the words of Pharaoh’s courtiers, “What is this we have done?” (verse 5).
12. Isn’t this the thing we spoke to you in Egypt. These words amount to delayed narrative exposition since, before this revelation in the people’s dialogue, there was no report of their having said they would perish in the wilderness and so should stay in slavery. Alternately, they may be inventing words that they never said, but now imagine what they may never actually have said.
13. Do not be afraid. Moses has already proven himself an irascible figure, and he will be quick to anger in subsequent episodes. Here, however, he recognizes that the complaint of the newly freed slaves stems from fear, and so he reassures them.
for as you see the Egyptians today, you shall not see them again for all time. The defeat will be so crushing that Egypt will never again attain this zenith of imperial power. This ringing statement is not the least of the exercises in gratifying historical fantasy in the story. Egypt in fact continued to be an intermittent military threat to Israel throughout the First Commonwealth period.
15. Why do you cry out to me? This is a little puzzling because there has been no report of Moses’s crying out to the LORD. The least strained solution is that of Abraham ibn Ezra, who argues that since Moses is the spokesman of the people, if the people cry out, God can readily attribute the crying out to Moses.
19. the messenger of God that was going before the camp. In the initial report of the pillars of cloud and of fire, God Himself was going before the Israelite camp. The introduction of an agent of the deity here is either an explanation in the original narrative of what God’s presence before the people actually meant or an interpolation of later tradition in order to mitigate the anthropomorphism.
20. and it lit up the night. This clause is ambiguous, especially because the antecedent would have to be the pillar of cloud, which does not give off light. Perhaps one might view these words as a telescoping of a temporal shift: the Egyptians approach the Israelites, who are clearly in full view, in daylight, perhaps, one may infer, in the late afternoon. The pillar of cloud swings around from Israelite front to rear in order to form a barrier between the Hebrews and the Egyptians. As night falls, the pillar of cloud (“and there was the cloud”) in response to the gathering darkness (“and the dark”) turns into fire (“and it lit up the night”).
21. wind … sea dry ground. The key terms here hark back to the first creation (God’s breath-spirit-wind, ruaḥ; the dividing between sea and dry land). His power over the physical elements of the world He created is again manifested, this time in a defining event in the theater of history.
split apart. Not merely “divided,” for the Hebrew verb baqaʿ is a violent one, the word that would be used for splitting wood with an axe.
22. the waters a wall to them on their right and on their left. Ilana Pardes persuasively identifies birth imagery in this whole story. The passage through waters—led by a man who has been saved from water, after a genocidal decree in which water was to be the means of killing the babies—is the beginning of the birth of the nation, and Pardes aptly sees the large narrative from Exodus to Numbers as the “biography of a nation.”
24. in the morning watch. By Israelite reckoning, the last third of the night, from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. The Hebrews, then, would have marched through the Sea of Reeds during the night, literally plunging into the dark, for the pillar of fire would have been behind them rather than leading them on their way.
the LORD looked out. The Hebrew verb hishqif is generally reserved for looking down or out from a high vantage point.
in a pillar of fire and cloud. The double identification is presumably because of the moment of transition toward daybreak when the fire becomes cloud. The narrative sequence at this point is not entirely clear, but it might be sorted out as follows: during the night, the Israelites make their way across the sea, with the protective pillar of fire following after them. The Egyptians, seeing their movement, which would be joined with the receding pillar of fire, begin pursuit. As day breaks, God looks down on them from the pillar of fire just as it turns back into a pillar of cloud. As the water begins to seep back, the Egyptians turn round and flee.
25. He took off the wheels of their chariots. There is some dispute about the sense of the verb, which usually means to “take away,” “take off,” “remove.” The simplest explanation is that as the water begins to seep back and before it becomes a flood that engulfs the Egyptians, it turns the dry ground into muck. The chariot wheels rapidly become stuck in the mud (“He … drove them heavily”) and break off from the axles. In all this tale of the utter destruction of the Egyptian chariots, there is a kind of allaying of a recurrent Israelite fear. From a number of references in the Book of Judges, we can infer that the highland-based Hebrews were poorly equipped with chariots and vulnerable, at least when they fought on level terrain, to the chariots of the Canaanites, which would have been a rough ancient equivalent of armored corps in a modern army. The heavy chariots must have often appeared terrifying to the lightly armed Israelites. In the story of the victory at the Sea of Reeds, the mighty Egyptian chariot corps is rendered helpless, and this particular aspect of the Egyptian defeat is made a focal point of the narrative.
27. the Egyptians fleeing toward it. The Hebrew preposition used here clearly means “toward.” What is suggested is the following sequence: the Egyptian troops are struck with panic, perhaps at the sight of the pillar of cloud and fire, surely by the fact that their chariots have lost traction on what had briefly been dry land in the sea; they flee, presumably in the direction from which they had come, but the flood of water comes down on them from that very direction. The male warriors of the nation that had sought to drown every Hebrew male child now meet a fate of death by drowning.
29. the waters a wall to them. This key phrase serves as a formal refrain, and will be picked up in the Song of the Sea.
31. the great hand. “Hand” here obviously means something like “demonstration of power,” but it picks up all the previous uses of “hand,” both literal and figurative, in this story of liberation from bondage.
they trusted in the LORD and in Moses His servant. The whole story had begun with Moses’s understandable doubt as to whether the people would trust, or believe, him. Now all doubt is banished (for the moment) in the great triumph at the Sea of Reeds.
1Then did Moses sing, and all the Israelites with him, this song to the LORD, and they said, saying:
“Let me sing unto the LORD for He surged, O surged—
horse and its rider He hurled into the sea.
2My strength and my power
is Yah, and He became my deliverance.
This is my God—I extol Him,
God of my fathers—I exalt Him.
3The LORD is a man of war,
the LORD is His name.
4Pharaoh’s chariots and his force
and the pick of his captains
were drowned in the Reed Sea.
5The depths did cover them over,
down they went in the deep like a stone.
6Your right hand, O LORD, is mighty in power.
Your right hand, O LORD, smashes the enemy.
7In Your great surging You wreck those against You,
You send forth Your wrath, it consumes them like straw.
8And with the breath of Your nostrils waters heaped up,
streams stood up like a mound,
the depths congealed in the heart of the sea.
9The enemy said:
‘I’ll pursue, overtake, divide up the loot,
my gullet will fill with them, I’ll bare my sword, my hand despoil them.’
10You blew with Your breath—the sea covered them over.
They sank like lead in the mighty waters:
11Who is like You among the gods, O LORD,
who is like You, mighty in holiness?
Fearsome in praise, worker of wonders.
12You stretched out Your hand—
earth swallowed them up.
13You led forth in Your kindness
this people that You redeemed.
You guided them in Your strength to Your holy abode.
14Peoples heard, they quaked,
trembling seized Philistia’s dwellers.
15Then were the chieftains of Edom dismayed,
the dukes of Moab, shuddering seized them,
all the dwellers of Canaan quailed.
16Terror and fear did fall upon them,
as Your arm loomed big they were like a stone.
Till Your people crossed over, O LORD,
till the people You made Yours crossed over.
17You’ll bring them, you’ll plant them, on the mount of Your estate,
a firm place for Your dwelling You wrought, O LORD,
the sanctum, O Sovereign, Your hands firmly founded.
18The LORD shall be king for all time!”
19For Pharaoh had come with his chariots and his riders into the sea, and the LORD turned the waters of the sea back upon them, but the Israelites went on dry land in the midst of the sea. 20And Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took the timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dances. 21And Miriam sang out to them:
“Sing to the LORD for He has surged, O surged,
Horse and its rider He hurled into the sea!”
22And Moses made the Israelites journey onward from the Sea of Reeds, and they went out to the Wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness and did not find water. 23And they came to Marah and could not drink water from Marah, for it was bitter. Therefore is its name called Marah. 24And the people murmured against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25And he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree, and he flung it into the water, and the water turned sweet. There did He set him a statute and law, and there did He test him. 26And He said, “If you really heed the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and hearken to His commands and keep all His statutes, all the sickness that I put upon Egypt I will not put upon you, for I am the LORD your healer.”
27And they came to Elim where there were twelve springs of water and seventy date palms, and they encamped there by the water.
CHAPTER 15 NOTES
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1. Then did Moses sing. The conclusion of many large narrative units in the Bible is marked with a relatively long poem (shirah). After the destruction of Pharaoh’s army, the Egyptian phase of the Exodus story is completed, and the sequence of Wilderness tales (the very first is the Marah story, verses 22–26) that is the narrative skeleton of the rest of the Torah begins.
Let me sing unto the LORD. This poetic beginning reflects an ancient Near Eastern literary convention of announcing the topic and the act of song at the beginning of the poem, roughly parallel to the Greek and Latin convention for beginning an epic (as in Virgil’s “Of arms and the man I sing”).
for He surged, O surged. The poem begins with a vivid pun. The Hebrew verb gaʾah means something like “to triumph,” “to be exalted,” “to be proud,” but it is also the verb used for the rising tide of the sea, a concrete image that is especially apt for representing God’s overwhelming the Egyptians with the waters of the Sea of Reeds.
horse and its rider. Perhaps, as many scholars have argued, rider (rokhev) should be translated as “driver” because chariots are stressed, and the evidence appears to indicate that in the late second millennium B.C.E. the Egyptians did not make much use of cavalry. Nevertheless, the plain meaning of the Hebrew word is “rider,” and only with some strain can it be made to mean “chariot driver.” Anachronism about such details is familiar enough in the Bible—witness the ubiquity of camels in Genesis in a historical period before they were generally domesticated.
2. power. Scholarly consensus is that this is the most likely sense here of the Hebrew zimrah, but it is probably a pun on the more common meaning of the word “song”—God, Who is the source of the speaker’s power, is for that very reason the theme of his song.
3. The LORD is a man of war. The representation of God as a fierce warrior is recurrent in biblical poetry and draws on a literary background of Ugaritic/Canaanite mythological poetry.
4. He pitched into the sea. The vivid hyperbolic image of God’s “pitching” or “hurling” the Egyptian troops into the sea provides a hint to the representation in the preceding prose narrative (which is later in composition) of God’s “shaking out” the Egyptians into the sea.
5–6. down they went in the deep like a stone. / Your right hand … mighty in power. The Song of the Sea is a rare instance in the Bible of a poem that has clearly marked strophic divisions, as Umberto Cassuto and others have noted. Near the end of each strophe one encounters the simile “like a stone” or “like lead.” The simile is followed by lines that celebrate the LORD’s triumphal supremacy. The first strophe (verses 1–6) offers a kind of summary version of the victory at the sea. The second strophe (verses 7–11) goes over the event in more concrete terms, providing some dialogue for the pursuing Egyptians as well as a more particular account of how God’s breath or wind (the same word in the Hebrew) first heaped up the waters in a mound or wall and then sent them back to engulf the Egyptians. The right hand smashing the enemy derives from the martial imagery used for representing battling deities in ancient Near Eastern poetry, but it also resonates with all the references to God’s powerful hand in the preceding narrative.
7. In Your great surging. Or, “in Your great triumph.” The use of the noun derived from the verb gaʾah aligns the beginning of the second strophe with the beginning of the first.
it consumes them like straw. The straw simile might appear to conflict with the stone simile, but it is generated, almost formulaically, by the language of “wrath” and, in the next line, “breath of Your nostrils,” because in Hebrew poetic idiom, wrath is represented as a kind of fiery emanation from the nostrils. The Hebrew ʾaf thus means both “nose” and, by metonymy, “flaring anger.”
8. waters … streams … depths. The Hebrew word for water is always plural. The various synonyms used by the poet for the depths or the bottom of the sea are all in the plural as well—possibly a poetic plural of intensification but in any case a form that imparts a sense of grandeur or epic sublimity.
11. Who is like You among the gods. This line has inspired a good deal of rather nervous commentary. The most unapologetic way of explaining it is that in the early part of the first millennium B.C.E., or possibly even earlier, to which the composition of this poem may plausibly be assigned, Hebrew writers had no difficulty in conceding the existence of other deities, though always stipulating, as here, their absolute inferiority to the God of Israel.
Fearsome in praise. The Hebrew uses a plural, “praises.” The word may refer in a kind of ellipsis to the tremendous acts performed by God that make Him the object of praise.
12. You stretched out Your hand—/earth swallowed them up. The hand that smashes the foe here works like Moses’s hand, signaling to the sea to engulf the Egyptians. Since it is the sea, not the land, that does the swallowing, there is probably a play on the secondary meaning of the Hebrew ’arets, “underworld.” But in a doubling of the pun, ʾarets, which also means “land,” points forward to the prospect of the promised land to which the people will be brought that is the topic of this third strophe.
13. You led forth … You guided. The Hebrew exhibits a sequence of three phonetically overlapping verbs—natita, “You stretched out,” naḥita, “You led forth,” neihalta, “You guided.” This sound pattern helps to effect the temporal and spatial transition as the beginning of the third strophe moves from the Sea of Reeds to Canaan and, in the space of a single line, from this event in the thirteenth century B.C.E. to the establishment of God’s temple on Mount Zion in the tenth century.
14. Peoples heard, they quaked, / trembling seized Philistia’s dwellers. The national triumphalism of the whole Exodus story comes to a climax here as the victory at the Sea of Reeds is imagined to reverberate throughout the region, panicking the peoples of Canaan who will face a Hebrew invasion led by the unconquerable LORD of Israel. (These lines will be echoed in the speech of Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, in Joshua 2 as a kind of on-the-ground “confirmation” of the terrific impact in Canaan of the event at the Sea of Reeds.) The reference to Philistia is an anachronism because the Philistines did not arrive on the coastal strip of Canaan from the Aegean until about a century after the Exodus.
15. quailed. The literal meaning of the Hebrew verb is “melted.”
16. they were like a stone. It is also possible to construe the verb to yield “they were still as a stone.” However, the image of the Canaanites petrified with fear seems stronger, and plays against the (literal) “melting” of the previous line.
Till Your people crossed over … / till the people You made Yours crossed over. The use of this sort of incremental repetition is particularly characteristic of the older strata of biblical poetry. (The Song of Deborah, which is older still than this poem, abounds in such patterns.) The Hebrew for “You made Yours,” qanita, means “to acquire,” “to purchase,” and occasionally “to create.” The liberation from Egyptian slavery is taken as the great historical demonstration that God has adopted Israel as His special people.
17. a firm place for Your dwelling … / Your hands firmly founded. The Hebrew noun makhon and the related verb konen are regularly associated in biblical idiom with the solid establishment of a throne or dynasty. Since a mountain is also referred to here, and a sanctum, miqdash, is mentioned at the end of the verse, it is highly likely that what the poet has in mind is the temple on Mount Zion, which is imagined as God’s earthly throne or dwelling place.
18. The LORD shall be king for all time. Although some construe this line as a kind of epilogue to the poem (it lacks the parallelistic structure of a complete line of poetry), its celebration of God’s supremacy corresponds to the endings of the two previous strophes (verses 6 and 11). God’s regal dominion is confirmed both by the victory over the Egyptians and the establishing of a terrestrial throne in Jerusalem.
20. And Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took the timbrel in her hand. One surmises that she is called “prophetess” (neviʾah) because the singing and dancing are an ecstatic activity, and one of the established meanings of the Hebrew term for “prophet” is an ecstatic who typically employed dance and musical instruments to induce the prophetic frenzy. Miriam is designated as Aaron’s sister in accordance with a practice of identifying a woman in relation to her oldest brother. The custom of women’s going out in song and dance to celebrate a military victory was common in ancient Israel and the surrounding peoples and figures significantly in the David story. The women here sing out the opening lines of the song we have just heard as a kind of antiphonal refrain. Everett Fox notes that Miriam is a witness by the water both at the beginning of the Moses story and now.
22. the Wilderness of Shur. The name means “wall” in Hebrew and evidently refers to a fortified region on the northern border of Egypt. (The Egyptian Hagar flees toward this region, Genesis 16:7.)
23. Marah. The name means “bitter,” as the story goes on to explain.
could not drink water from Marah. The desperate need for water in the desert, which is a recurrent feature of the stories that follow, is of course a realistic aspect of the Wilderness narrative. At the same time, it links the tribulations of the Hebrews in the wilderness with the Plagues narrative. Here there is an explicit echo of the first plague when the Egyptians “could not drink water from the Nile.” Moses, who as an infant was “drawn from the water,” and who has just led the people between walls of water, is now called upon to provide them water to drink in the wilderness.
25. There did He set him a statute and law, and there did He test him. Nearly everything about this gnomic sentence is uncertain. Since the only plausible candidate for setting statutes and laws is God, He would logically be the subject of the verb in the parallel clause, though some have claimed it could be Moses. “Him” might be Moses or a collective reference to Israel. The meaning of “statute and law” is obscure because, at least in this episode, no legislation is stipulated. The phrase might merely refer to the idea that it became a set practice in the wilderness that, as in this incident, Israel’s urgent needs would be filled by God, if only Israel trusted in Him. The “testing,” then, would be the testing of Moses’s, or Israel’s, trust in God’s power to provide for the people’s needs, though that is far from clear. In the famous parallel incident in Numbers 20, Moses will fail the test by angrily striking the rock in order to bring forth water.
26. If you really heed … and do what is right in His eyes. The language sounds like Deuteronomy, but William H. C. Propp is prudent in calling this “quasi-Deuteronomic diction,” and associating it with the Wisdom overtones of the episode. Wisdom literature, as he goes on to observe, is much concerned with medicine. Here, God concludes by promising He will shield Israel from all the sicknesses that visited the Egyptians. The allusion to the first plague at the beginning of the episode associatively points to the others.
27. twelve springs of water and seventy date palms. After the scary incident at Marah, in which it seemed there was only brackish water, the next stage of the journey is more encouraging, for the Israelites arrive at a real oasis, with an abundance of springs and fruit-bearing trees. Twelve and seventy are, of course, formulaic numbers, perhaps here particularly echoing the twelve tribes and the seventy elders of Israel.
1And they journeyed onward from Elim, and all the community of Israelites came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month of their going out from Egypt. 2And all the community of Israelites murmured against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness. 3And the Israelites said to them, “Would that we had died by the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out to this wilderness to bring death by famine on all this assembly.” 4And the LORD said to Moses, “Look, I am about to rain down bread for you from the heavens, and the people shall go out and gather each day’s share on that day, so that I may test them whether they will go by My teaching or not. 5And it will happen, on the sixth day, that they will prepare what they bring in, and it will be double what they gather each day.” 6And Moses, and Aaron with him, said to the Israelites, “At evening, you shall know that it was the LORD Who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 7And in the morning you shall see the LORD’s glory as He hears your murmurings against the LORD, and as for us, what are we that you should murmur against us?” 8And Moses said, “When the LORD gives you meat in the evening to eat and your fill of bread in the morning, when the LORD hears your murmurings that you murmur against him—and what are we?—not against us are your murmurings but against the LORD.” 9And Moses said to Aaron, “Say to all the community of Israelites, ‘Draw near before the LORD, for He has heard your murmurings.’” 10And it happened as Aaron was speaking to all the community of Israelites, that they turned toward the wilderness, and, look, the LORD’s glory appeared in the cloud. 11And the LORD said to Moses, saying, 12“I have heard the murmurings of the Israelites. Speak to them, saying ‘At twilight you shall eat meat and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’” 13And it happened in the evening that the quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14And the layer of dew lifted, and, look, on the surface of the wilderness—stuff fine, flaky, fine as frost on the ground. 15And the Israelites saw, and they said to each other, “Man hu, What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you as food. 16This is the thing that the LORD charged: ‘Gather from it each man according to what he must eat, an omer to a head, the number of persons among you, each man for those in his tent you shall take.’” 17And the Israelites did thus, and they gathered, some more and some less.
18And they measured it by the omer, he who took more had no extra and he who took less had no lack, each according to what he must eat did they gather. 19And Moses said to them, “Let no man leave over from it till morning.” 20But they did not heed Moses, and some men left over from it till morning, and it bred worms and stank, and Moses was furious with them. 21And they gathered it morning after morning every man according to what he must eat, and when the sun grew hot, it melted. 22And it happened on the sixth day, that they gathered a double portion of bread, two omers for each, and all the chiefs of the community came and told Moses. 23And he said to them, “That is what the LORD has spoken. A day of rest, a holy sabbath to the LORD is tomorrow. What you bake, bake, and what you cook, cook, and whatever is left over leave for yourselves to be kept until morning.” 24And they left it until morning as Moses had charged, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. 25And Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a sabbath to the LORD, today you will not find it in the field. 26Six days you shall gather it, and on the seventh day, the sabbath, there will be none then.” 27And it happened on the seventh day that some of the people went out to gather and they found nothing. 28And the LORD said to Moses, “How long do you refuse to keep My commands and My teachings? 29See, for the LORD has given you the sabbath. Therefore does He give you on the sixth day bread for two days. Sit each of you where he is, let no one go out from his place on the seventh day.” 30And the people ceased from work on the seventh day. 31And the house of Israel called its name manna, and it was like coriander seed, white, and its taste was like a wafer in honey. 32And Moses said, “This is the thing that the LORD commanded: a full omer of it to be kept for your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.” 33And Moses said to Aaron, “Take one jar and put in it a full omer of manna and set it before the LORD to be kept for your generations.” 34As the LORD had charged Moses, Aaron set it before the Covenant to be kept. 35And the Israelites ate manna forty years until they came to settled land, the manna did they eat until they came to the edge of the land of Canaan. 36And the omer is one-tenth of an ephah.
CHAPTER 16 NOTES
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2. murmured. The Hebrew verb wayilonu is distinctive of the Wilderness narrative. The various contexts in which it occurs suggest it means something like “complain” (its meaning in modern Hebrew) or “express resentment.” Some modern translations opt for “grumble,” which may be too low as diction, and there is no good reason to relinquish the time-honored “murmur.”
3. Would that we had died by the LORD’s hand in … Egypt. In the admirable efficiency of the dialogue, their formulation suggests that the LORD is about to kill them in the wilderness, so He might as well have done the job back in Egypt, where at least they would have died on a full stomach.
fleshpots. The Hebrew indicates something like a cauldron in which meat is cooked, but the King James Version’s rendering of “fleshpots” (“flesh” of course meaning “meat” in seventeenth-century English) has become proverbial in the language and deserves to be retained.
when we ate our fill of bread. Bread and meat here are the two staples. God will provide both—quail in the evening and manna in the morning. By this point, in the second month of the departure from Egypt, the supply of unleavened bread that the Israelites brought with them in their precipitous flight might well have been exhausted. Commentators have puzzled over the nostalgia for meat because the Israelites have taken large flocks with them. Perhaps, as a people whose principal wealth is their flocks, they are loath to make heavy inroads into their livestock for the purpose of food on the journey. In any case, there seems to be a note of panic in the claim that they are on the point of death from starvation. That note would be plausible for a population of newly freed slaves who had been accustomed to having all meals provided by their masters and who now find themselves in the arid moonscape of the Sinai desert.
4. I am about to rain down. This promise of divine benefaction may have a double edge because previous uses of this verb, mamtir, have been associated with God’s showering destruction on humanity—in the Flood story, the Sodom story, and the Plagues narrative.
so that I may test them. The most plausible construction of this phrase is the one proposed by Rashi—that Israel will have to observe the restrictions regarding leaving over manna for the next day and not attempting to gather it on the sabbath. The underlying conception of the deity in ancient Israel, beginning with the Garden story, is of a God who offers humankind a great abundance of gifts but always stipulates restrictions to be observed in their enjoyment.
6. it was the LORD Who brought you out. The people in their murmuring had directed their complaint against Moses and Aaron, saying it was the two brothers who brought them out from the land of Egypt (verse 2), while in the same breath accusing God of intending to kill them all. Now, the miraculous provision of meat at evening will make it clear to the people that all these events are directed by God.
7. in the morning you shall see the LORD’s glory. There has been some puzzlement among interpreters about the evening and morning clauses and what actually is referred to in the latter. The evening-morning sequence may be a reminiscence of the first Creation story: in both, an omnipotent God providentially conducts the progress of events, though here, in contrast to the poised harmony of the Creation story, there is palpable tension between the celestial and the terrestrial realms. Seeing the LORD’s glory may well be a threat as well as a promise because the manifestation of God’s numinous presence in the pillar of cloud (verse 10) might easily be rather terrifying to the people.
8. and what are we?—not against us are your murmurings. The Hebrew syntax, which is reproduced in this translation, has a jagged and discontinuous look, and may be intended, as Benno Jacob suggests, to mimic Moses’s sense of perturbation in responding to the people’s accusation directed at him and Aaron.
9. Draw near before the LORD. Since the preposition used here implies “presence,” the location indicated is most probably the cloud that will be mentioned in verse 10 which is invested with God’s glory.
12. I have heard the murmurings of the Israelites. This statement cuts two ways: “to hear” in biblical idiom can mean “to heed” (i.e., “to obey”), but God may at the same time be expressing annoyance with the people, for He has heard their unreasonable complaint and their accusation that all along He meant to destroy them.
13. quail. As with the plagues, generations of commentators have exerted considerable effort to explain all these events in naturalistic terms. Large flocks of migratory quail, it is contended, are sometimes found in the Sinai, and the manna is identified as a sugarlike secretion of desert aphids. One may concede that some kernels of actual memories of improvised sustenance during the Wilderness wanderings might be preserved in these stories, but the point that the narrative makes is to convert them into miraculous occurrences. No migration of quail, after all, would repeat itself every evening, and no edible granules secreted by aphids would mysteriously cease every seventh day.
14. flaky. The Hebrew meḥuspas is in dispute (in later Hebrew it means “rough”). Umberto Cassuto links it to the root ḥ-s-f “to lay bare,” and to a Ugaritic cognate and proposes that it means “revealed.”
15. Man hu, What is it? The scholarly consensus is that this is still another instance of folk etymology. The general assumption is that there was a non-Hebrew term, man, for this particular food-substance, perhaps related to an Arabic root that means “to feed.” Man, in this bit of dialogue, is an archaic form of mah, the Hebrew for “what.”
16. omer. This dry measure would have been a bit more than two quarts.
20. some men left over from it till morning, and it bred worms and stank. The refractory nature of the people—or perhaps one should say their anxiety and their greed—is manifested even in their response to this bounty from God that has come to answer their complaints. In this case, it turns out that the prohibition announced by Moses is actuated by a perfectly practical consideration: the manna will not keep overnight (except, miraculously, on the sabbath).
26. Six days you shall gather it, and on the seventh day, the sabbath. The sabbath—the word means “cessation time”—has not yet been enjoined in the Ten Commandments, but it is assumed by the story (with the Creation story behind it) to be part of the very structure of nature. Thus the double portion of manna gathered on the sixth day is preserved through the seventh, and no manna is to be found on the seventh day.
there will be none then. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is: “there will be none in it.”
28. How long do you refuse. “You” in the Hebrew is plural, so although God is addressing Moses, He is levying His accusation against the people for whom Moses serves as spokesman.
29. where he is. Literally, “under him,” that is, in his place.
31. the house of Israel. This locution (instead of “the people of Israel” or “the children of Israel [Israelites]”) is unusual. Cassuto proposes that it is meant to indicate that the Israelite posterity of the original desert-wanderers preserved this name of manna for the wilderness food.
32. for your generations. Here the translation of dorot as “ages” in several modern versions is a little misleading because the point is that the ʿomer of manna is to be kept in order to be seen by posterity. The miraculous, and surely unhistorical, character of the memorial device is patent, for the evanescent manna is the last thing one could imagine to survive through the centuries, however tightly sealed.
34. before the Covenant. This phrase is clearly an ellipsis for “before the Ark of the Covenant.” The problem is that the Ark of the Covenant, in which the two tables of the Law are kept, does not yet exist. The injunction here, then, must be read as an anticipation of the time when the Ark will be an established fact and a sacrosanct cultic focus.
1And all the community of Israelites journeyed onward from the Wilderness of Sin on their journeyings by the LORD’s direction, and they encamped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. 2And the people disputed with Moses and they said, “Give us water, that we may drink.” And Moses said to them,
and why do you test the LORD?”
3And the people thirsted for water there, and the people murmured against Moses and said, “Why is it you brought us up from Egypt to bring death on me and my children and my livestock by thirst?” 4And Moses called out to the LORD, saying,
“What shall I do with this people?
Yet a little more and they will stone me.”
5And the LORD said to Moses, “Pass before the people and take with you some of Israel’s elders, and the staff with which you struck the Nile take in your hand, and go. 6Look, I am about to stand before you there on the rock in Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out from it and the people will drink.” And thus did Moses do before the eyes of Israel’s elders. 7And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, Testing and Dispute, for the disputation of the Israelites, and for their testing the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?”
8And Amalek came and did battle with Israel at Rephidim. 9And Moses said to Joshua, “Choose men for us and go out, battle against Amalek tomorrow. I shall take my station on the hilltop, with the staff of God in my hand.” 10And Joshua did as Moses had said to him to battle against Amalek, and Moses, Aaron, and Hur had gone up to the hilltop. 11And so, when Moses would raise his hand, Israel prevailed, and when he would put down his hand, Amalek prevailed. 12And Moses’s hands grew heavy, and they took a stone and put it beneath him and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on each side, and it happened that his hands were steady till the sun came down. 13And Joshua disabled Amalek and its people by the edge of the sword. 14And the LORD said to Moses, “Write this down as a remembrance in a record, and put it in Joshua’s hearing, that I will surely wipe out the name of Amalek from under the heavens.” 15And Moses built an altar and he called its name YHWH Nissi, the LORD is My Banner. 16And he said, “For hand upon Yah’s throne: War for the LORD against Amalek from all time.”
CHAPTER 17 NOTES
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1. by the LORD’s direction. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “by the LORD’s mouth.” God sets the itinerary, not Moses.
there was no water for the people to drink. In an alternating structure (A B A), the sequence of three “murmuring” episodes exhibits respectively complaints about lack of water, lack of food, and again lack of water.
2. disputed. The Hebrew verb often appears in judicial contexts, where it means to bring a legal complaint or disputation (the cognate noun riv). Riv is the term used in verse 7 in the phrase translated as “the disputation of the Israelites”; the name given the place there, Meribah, derives from the same root and means something closer to “contention.”
Give us water. The Masoretic Text shows a plural form of the verb, which might suggest that Aaron is implicated with Moses in the complaint the people make. But several ancient manuscripts have a singular form for “give,” which seems more plausible, since the people have “disputed” or quarreled with Moses alone.
Why do you dispute with me / and why do you test the LORD? Moses gives weight and solemnity to his words by casting his reply in a neatly scannable line of parallelistic verse, as he does again in speaking to God a moment later. As in the episode at Elim, he identifies the complaint against him (first verset) as a complaint against God (second verset). Thus, the poetic parallelism becomes a vehicle for expressing the inseparability of Moses’s leadership from God’s.
3. brought us up … to bring death on me and my children. This sort of switch from first-person plural to first-person singular is good idiomatic usage in biblical Hebrew, especially in dialogue assigned to a collective entity. The switch allows the sharpness of the complaint to become more vivid as the prototypical individual speaker representing the people laments his own imminent death and that of his children.
4. Yet a little more and they will stone me. From the very beginning, at the burning bush, Moses had been doubtful that the people could trust him and accept his leadership. Now he feels something like desperate fear—that the people will actually kill him (an idea that Freud would understand as an accomplished fact).
5. Pass before the people. As both Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra note, this might well be a direct response to Moses’s expression of fear that the people will kill him: passing before the enraged people would be rather like running the gauntlet, and it is this that God compels him to do as the prelude to the demonstration of divine saving power.
the staff with which you struck the Nile. This staff was recognized by the people as the instrument Moses used to unleash awesome destruction against Egypt. Now, as Rashi observes, they will see that it can also be an instrument of benefaction.
7. Testing and Dispute … disputation … testing. The arrangement of the terms is neatly chiastic, just as the first pair of nouns here stand in a chiastic relation to the verbs “dispute” and “test” in verse 2. Ibn Ezra, who reads with the eye of an accomplished poet as well as that of a philologist, firmly identifies the pattern.
8. And Amalek came and did battle with Israel. Rashi comments astutely on the sequence of episodes, the attack by a fierce enemy following upon the provision of water to the thirsty people: “You say, ‘Is the LORD in our midst or not?’ By your life, the dog comes and bites you and you come and cry out to Me, and you will know where I am.”
9. tomorrow. The Masoretic cantillation marking places “tomorrow” at the beginning of the next clause, which makes the adverb a modifier of when Moses will take up his station, but it probably makes better sense as part of the instruction to Joshua about when he will be fighting.
11. when Moses would raise his hand. This gesture neatly cuts two ways. It could merely be the gesture of a general holding up a commander’s baton or a standard (compare the reference to a “banner” in verse 15) in order to encourage his troops to attack, or the hand holding the staff could be the conduit, as in the earlier portents, for an influx of divine power. Throughout the passage, the Hebrew noun yad characteristically slides between “hand” (verse 9) and “arm” (probably here and surely in verse 12). It is worth retaining “hand” in all instances to catch the sense of thematized repetition in the Hebrew: Umberto Cassuto, who has a certain fixation on the discovery of repeated terms exhibiting formulaic numbers, notes that yad recurs precisely seven times in this episode.
12. And Moses’s hands grew heavy. This could also be construed as “were heavy,” i.e., they were heavy to begin with because Moses was an old man. The plural suggests that he raised both hands simultaneously, the one with the staff and the empty one, in a kind of spread-eagle gesture.
his hands were steady. The Hebrew appears to use an abstract noun instead of an adjective—conceivably, an emphatic form: “his hands were steadiness.”
13. disabled. Several commentators have observed that the unusual verb here, ḥalash (evidently derived from a root that means “weak”) has a punning echo in Deuteronomy 25:18, where the Israelite stragglers attacked by Amalek are referred to as neḥeshalim (the same root with a reversal of the last two consonants). It should be noted that others, from Rashi to several twentieth-century scholars, think that this odd verb means “to decapitate.” In any case, this image of a sword-wielding Hebrew commander cutting down the enemy is the first representation of Israelites evincing martial prowess rather than watching as God performs wonders and does battle for them.
14. Write this down as a remembrance in a record. In Genesis, with a certain degree of historical verisimilitude, the patriarchs give no evidence of using writing. Here it is assumed that writing is a primary mode of commemoration in the culture. It must be said that literacy is an early phenomenon in ancient Israel, though it is difficult to determine how far it might have extended, or whether it extended, beyond a learned elite. (In Judges 8, Gideon appears to assume that any lad he would encounter on the road would be capable of writing things down.) “Record” here reflects Hebrew sefer, which is used for anything cast in writing—a parchment or papyrus scroll that might contain narrative, inventorial, or genealogical material; a letter; and also what we would call a book.
I will surely wipe out the name of Amalek. The noun zekher, though cognate with “remembrance,” zikaron, in the previous clause, here bears its usual meaning of “name,” as in 3:15. The written record will continue to memorialize odious Amalek, but the nation will lose its “name,” its posterity—an ultimate curse in the ancient Near East. In all this, as in the Plagues narrative, history is transformed into symbolic typology. Ancient Israel was surrounded by enemies—the Canaanite peoples with whom it fought for territory, marauders like the Midianites to the east and the Amalekites to the south, and the great empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Historical survival required nearly continual armed conflict. But distinctions are made among enemies, and Amalek here becomes the very type of the ruthless foe that seeks to annihilate Israel. (Hence much later, in the Book of Esther, Haman will be cast as a descendant of the Amalekite king Agag.) This nation, then, becomes the enemy of God Himself, Who pledges its utter destruction.
16. For hand upon Yah’s throne. The hand is most likely an image of vow taking in this obscure, and probably archaic, sentence. There has even been some speculation that these words could be a quotation from the lost “Book of the Battles of YHWH” mentioned elsewhere (see the note on Numbers 21:14). The meaning of kes, the word translated as “throne,” has been widely disputed, and the term has been sometimes emended. The interpretation that goes back to Late Antiquity that it is a variant—archaic form?—of kis’ei, “throne,” has the attraction of not exhibiting excessive ingenuity, and the idea of God’s taking a vow by placing His hand on the divine throne is plausible.
from all time. The Hebrew noticeably says “from,” mi, and not le, “for.” Perhaps the meaning is the same, though this formulation could suggest a kind of mythic recess of ages, God warring against Amalek as far back as anyone can conceive and until this foe is destroyed.
1And Jethro priest of Midian, Moses’s father-in-law, heard all that God had done for Moses and for Israel His people, that the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt. 2And Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses’s wife, after her being sent away, 3and her two sons, one of whom was named Gershom, for he said, “A sojourner I have been in a foreign land,” 4and the other was named Eliezer, “For the God of my fathers was my aid and rescued me from Pharaoh’s sword.” 5And Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, and his sons and his wife with him, came to Moses, to the wilderness in which he was encamped, the mountain of God. 6And he said to Moses, “I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you, and your wife and her two sons with her.” 7And Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, and he bowed down and kissed him, and each of them asked of the other’s well-being, and they went into the tent. 8And Moses recounted to his father-in-law all that the LORD had done to Pharaoh and to Egypt for the sake of Israel, all the hardship that had come upon them on the way, and the LORD had rescued them. 9And Jethro exulted over all the bounty that the LORD had done for Israel, that He had rescued them from the hand of Egypt. 10And Jethro said, “Blessed is the LORD, Who has rescued you from the hand of Egypt and from the hand of Pharaoh, Who rescued the people from under the hand of Egypt. 11Now I know that the LORD is greater than all the gods, for in this thing that they schemed against them—.” 12And Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God, and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel with him, to eat bread with Moses’s father-in-law before God.
13And it happened on the next day that Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood over Moses from the morning till the evening. 14And Moses’s father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, and he said, “What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why are you sitting alone while all the people are poised over you from morning till evening?” 15And Moses said to his father-in-law, “For the people come to me to inquire of God. 16When they have some matter, it comes to me and I judge between a man and his fellow and I make known God’s statutes and His teachings.” 17And Moses’s father-in-law said to him, “The thing that you are doing is not good. 18You will surely wear yourself out—both you and this people that is with you—for the thing is too heavy for you, you will not be able to do it alone. 19Now, heed my voice—I shall give you counsel, and may God be with you. Be you for the people over against God, and it shall be you who will bring the matters to God. 20And you shall warn them concerning the statutes and the teachings, and you shall make known to them the way in which they must go and the deed which they must do. 21As for you, you shall search out from all the people able, God-fearing men, truthful men, haters of bribes, and you shall put over them chiefs of thousands, chiefs of hundreds, chiefs of fifties, and chiefs of tens. 22And they shall judge the people at all times, and so, every great matter they shall bring to you, and every small matter they themselves shall judge, and it will lighten from upon you and they will bear it with you. 23If you will do this thing, God will charge you and you will be able to stand, and also all this people will come to its place in peace.” 24And Moses heeded the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had said. 25And Moses chose able men from all Israel and he set them as heads over the people, chiefs of thousands, chiefs of hundreds, chiefs of fifties, and chiefs of tens. 26And they judged the people at all times. The hard matters they would bring to Moses, and every small matter they themselves would judge. 27And Moses sent off his father-in-law, and he went away to his land.
CHAPTER 18 NOTES
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1. Jethro. As Umberto Cassuto and others have noticed, this episode stands in neat thematic antithesis to the preceding one. After a fierce armed struggle with a hostile nation that Israel is enjoined to destroy, we have an encounter with a representative of another people, Midian, that is marked by harmonious understanding, mutual respect, and the giving of sage counsel. Cassuto points out that this antithesis is underscored through thematic key words: the Amalek episode begins and ends with a repetition of “battle” (or “war”). The Jethro episode begins with inquiries of “well-being” or “peace” (shalom) and near the end, “this people will come to its place in peace.” Moses “chooses” men for war in the first episode and men for justice in the second. He sits on a stone at the battle and then sits in judgment. His hands are “heavy” in the battle scene and the judicial burden is “heavy” in the judgment scene. As for Midian, the later biblical record shows them acting as marauders crossing the Jordan to attack Israelite farms, but Jethro belongs to the Kenite clan of Midianites that had a particular relationship of loyal alliance with Israel.
2. after her being sent away. What this phrase refers to is uncertain. As we saw repeatedly in the Exodus narrative, “send” (the verbal stem sh-l-ḥ) has multiple meanings. The verbal noun used here, shiluḥim, sometimes means “divorce,” but that is an unlikely scenario for Moses and Zipporah. The rare use of the term as “marriage gift” makes even less sense in this context. The most reasonable inference is that Moses, though he had started out for Egypt with his wife and sons, at some point thought better of it and sent her and the boys home to stay in safety with her father. The Midrash HaGadol (seventh century) vividly dramatizes such a reading: When Aaron first comes out to the wilderness to meet Moses, he sees his brother’s wife and sons and says: “‘Where are you taking them?’ He said to him, ‘To Egypt.’ He said to him, ‘For the previous ones we are sorrow-stricken and now you are bringing us still others?’ Immediately Moses said to her, ‘Return to your father’s house.’”
3. Gershom. In this poetic etymology, ger, “sojourner,” is broken out from the rest of the name, which in fact appears to derive from the root g-r-sh, “to banish.”
4. was my aid and rescued me from Pharaoh’s sword. The name Eliezer means “my God is aid.” The rescue from Pharaoh’s sword probably refers, as Nahmanides proposes, to Moses’s flight from Pharaoh’s executioners after his killing of the Egyptian taskmaster. It could not refer to the victory at the Sea of Reeds because Eliezer had been born earlier, and it does not comfortably refer to the rescue of the infant Moses because swords were not involved in the decree of infanticide by drowning.
5. the mountain of God. There is a patent disruption of chronology here, as Abraham ibn Ezra and many others have noted, because in the immediately preceding episode the Israelites were at Rephidim, and it is only in the next chapter that they are reported to have arrived at Mount Sinai. This entire passage is thus a perfect illustration of the rabbinic dictum that “there is neither early nor late in the Torah,” that is, that chronology may be violated in order to bring out certain thematic emphases (here, the antithesis between war/Amalek and peace/Jethro).
6. And he said to Moses. It is in the next verse that the two men meet, embrace, and inquire of each other’s well-being. This has led Nahmanides and many others after him to infer that “said” here actually means something like “sent word.”
7. and they went into the tent. After Moses’s respectful and affectionate public greeting of his father-in-law, the two men withdraw to the privacy of Moses’s tent, where the leader of the Hebrews will give Jethro a full account of the extraordinary events that occurred in Egypt and afterward.
11. Now I know that the LORD is greater than all the gods. Jethro’s response to Moses’s narrative is a perfect confirmation of the reiterated theme in the Exodus story that the LORD’s great acts against Egypt will demonstrate His supremacy over all other imagined gods. Jethro, as a Midianite priest, appears to speak here as a henotheist rather than a monotheist, conceding the reality of other gods but affirming YHWH’s unrivaled greatness.
for in this thing that they schemed against them. These words are quite obscure, and may well reflect a textual corruption. The chief problem is that the syntax breaks off, and an expected clause to complete it appears to be missing. The Targum Onkelos, in its explanatory Aramaic paraphrase, ingeniously proposes that “in this thing” refers to water—the Egyptians plotted to destroy the Hebrews by drowning and they themselves were then drowned.
12. to eat bread. Here “bread” is clearly a synecdoche for food (as in the English expression, “to eat the king’s bread”), since the ceremonial meal after a sacrifice would have included meat saved from the zevaḥim, “sacrifices” (the burnt offering, by contrast, would have been entirely consumed by fire on the altar).
15. to inquire of God. Frequently, this is the phrase used for inquiry of an oracle, though here it obviously refers to obtaining a different sort of revelation of recalcitrant truth—a judge’s determination of what is right according to the law.
18. You will surely wear yourself out. The literal meaning of the Hebrew verb is “to wither”—an appropriate idiom in an agricultural society for exhaustion from work as “burnout” is in a modern technological society.
19. Be you for the people over against God, and it shall be you who will bring the matters to God. Jethro, a priest by profession, assumes that the ultimate source of judicial insight for the chief justice is from God, and so Moses is to serve as a kind of intercessor between the people and God.
21. search out. The Hebrew is literally “envision.”
able, God-fearing men, truthful men, haters of bribes. Quite similar language for the recruitment of judges occurs in both Hittite and Egyptian documents dating from the late second millennium B.C.E.
put over them. That is, over the people as a whole.
chiefs of thousands. The Hebrew for “chief,” sar, is usually a military term (“commander”), and this neat, numerically divided judicial organization has the look of a military command structure. Scholars have noted that it is far better suited to the royal bureaucracy of the First Commonwealth period than to the rough-and-ready conditions of nomadic life in the wilderness.
22. every great matter. Throughout, “matter” is the polyvalent Hebrew davar, which means “word,” “thing,” “matter,” “affair,” “mission,” and more. Cassuto observes that davar in the singular occurs exactly ten times in this episode and that it might be a kind of coded prelude to the immediately following episode of the Ten Commandments, which in the Hebrew are called the Ten Words, ʿAseret haDibrot.
it will lighten … they will bear it. Both “it”s are supplied for purposes of clarity in the translation. The language of course reflects the image of judicial responsibility as a heavy burden.
23. will come to its place in peace. Evidently: will go home at the end of the day in a state of well-being or mental contentment. But some have proposed that the clause could refer to coming into the promised land.
26. The hard matters. The replacement of “great” by “hard” is a kind of explanatory gloss. Lest we think that “great” meant “important”—let us say, involving large issues of wealth—this substitution informs us that it is the legal cases that are difficult to resolve which would be given to Moses.
27. And Moses sent off his father-in-law. The “sending off” is obviously a ceremonious and amicable leave-taking, though it is precisely the verb used repeatedly in the Exodus narrative for what Pharaoh is implored to do for Israel. The verb also neatly closes the episode in a ring structure, picking up the “being sent away” of verse 2.
he went away. The Hebrew uses an ethical dative, literally “he went him” (as in “Go forth [go you] from your land,” Genesis 12:1). Its effect seems to be something like “away” or “on his way.”
1On the third new moon of the Israelites’ going out from Egypt, on this day did they come to the Wilderness of Sinai. 2And they journeyed onward from Rephidim and they came to the Wilderness of Sinai, and Israel camped there over against the mountain. 3And Moses had gone up to God, and the LORD called out to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and shall you tell to the Israelites: 4‘You yourselves saw what I did to Egypt, and I bore you on the wings of eagles and I brought you to Me. 5And now, if you will truly heed My voice and keep My covenant, you will become for Me a treasure among all the peoples, for Mine is all the earth. 6And as for you, you will become for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”
7And Moses came and he called to the elders of the people, and he set before them all these words that the LORD had charged him. 8And all the people answered together and said, “Everything that the LORD has spoken we shall do.” And Moses brought back the people’s words to the LORD. 9And the LORD said to Moses, “Look, I am about to come to you in the utmost cloud, so that the people may hear as I speak to you, and you as well they will trust for all time.” And Moses told the people’s words to the LORD. 10And the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and they shall wash their cloaks. 11And they shall ready themselves for the third day, for on the third day the LORD will come down before the eyes of all the people on Mount Sinai. 12And you shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, ‘Watch yourselves not to go up on the mountain or to touch its edge. Whosoever touches the mountain is doomed to die. 13No hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or be shot, whether beast or man, he shall not live. When the ram’s horn blasts long, they it is who will go up the mountain.’” 14And Moses came down from the mountain to the people, and he consecrated the people, and they washed their cloaks. 15And he said to the people, “Ready yourselves for three days. Do not go near a woman.” 16And it happened on the third day as it turned morning, that there was thunder and lightning and a heavy cloud on the mountain and the sound of the ram’s horn, very strong, and all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17And Moses brought out the people toward God from the camp and they stationed themselves at the bottom of the mountain. 18And Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD had come down on it in fire, and its smoke went up like the smoke from a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. 19And the sound of the ram’s horn grew stronger and stronger. Moses would speak, and God would answer him with voice. 20And the LORD came down on Mount Sinai, to the mountaintop, and the LORD called Moses to the mountaintop, and Moses went up. 21And the LORD said to Moses, “Go down, warn the people, lest they break through to the LORD to see and many of them perish. 22And the priests, too, who come near to the LORD, shall consecrate themselves, lest the LORD burst forth against them.” 23And Moses said to the LORD, “The people will not be able to come up to Mount Sinai, for You Yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set bounds to the mountain and consecrate it.’” 24And the LORD said to him, “Go down, and you shall come up, you and Aaron with you, and the priests and the people shall not break through to go up to the LORD, lest He burst forth against them.” 25And Moses went down to the people and said it to them.
CHAPTER 19 NOTES
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1. On the third new moon … did they come. Umberto Cassuto aptly observes that instead of the usual “and it happened” (wayehi) that marks the beginning of narrative units, this portentous moment—the pivotal one in the whole Torah—begins abruptly (using the perfective instead of the expected imperfective verb form), “as though to notify us that here begins a theme that stands alone, that is unique.”
new moon. This is the common biblical meaning of ḥodesh, though it can also mean “month,” its usual meaning in later Hebrew. The fact that the phrase in apposition, “on this day,” refers to one particular day makes the sense of “new moon” inevitable, and this is also the consensus of medieval Hebrew commentators.
2. And they journeyed onward from Rephidim. After the stark statement of the crucial narrative datum in the preceding verse that the Israelites had arrived in the Wilderness of Sinai, we get a report that picks up the itinerary of wanderings, tracing the trajectory from the previous stage, Rephidim, to Sinai, and now specifying that the place of encampment is not just the Wilderness of Sinai but over against the mountain.
3. And Moses had gone up to God. The Hebrew, like this translation, has an indication of pluperfect tense, suggesting that even as the people were pitching their tents opposite the mountain, Moses, who after his epiphany at the burning bush knew this place as “the mountain of God,” had made his way to the heights to speak with God.
Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and shall you tell to the Israelites. The perfect poetic parallelism, both semantic and rhythmic, of this sentence signals the lofty, strongly cadenced language, akin to epic in its grandeur, of the entire episode.
4. I bore you on the wings of eagles. Although no one has succeeded in squaring this grand image with ornithological behavior, the soaring eagle’s supremacy among birds is meant to suggest the majestic divine power that miraculously swept up the Hebrews and bore them off from the house of bondage. The metaphorical implication is that the Hebrews themselves are helpless fledglings, unable to fly on their own. (Compare Deuteronomy 32:11.)
5. you will become for Me a treasure among all the peoples, for Mine is all the earth. “Treasure” (segulah), as Yitzhak Avishur has pointed out, is paired in a Ugaritic document with “vassal” (Hebrew, ʿeved), and seems to be a term borrowed from the realm of precious objects for contexts of covenants: the faithful vassal becomes the cherished treasure of his sovereign. Because the LORD is, as He declares here, sovereign of all the earth, it is His prerogative to privilege one people among the many as His special treasure.
6. a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The implementation of the divine promise that Israel will become God’s treasure is conditional on Israel’s upholding the terms of the Covenant. In the covenantal passages in Genesis, it was stipulated that Abraham’s seed must do justice and righteousness. The aspiration here is wound to a still higher pitch, envisaging an Israel that will earn its special status before the deity by becoming a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Should this be construed as divine hyperbole? In any case, the chasm between that ideal and the actual behavior of the people will continue to preoccupy the biblical writers, through to the Prophets.
7. he set before them all these words. Words (devarim) are imagined in biblical Hebrew to be virtually palpable entities, which can be put before people, which have powerful consequences from the moment they are spoken. It may well be, as Cassuto proposes, that the highlighting of devarim in this episode is a kind of prelude to the giving of the Ten Words that immediately follows.
8. Moses brought back the people’s words to the LORD. Presumably, God would have had no trouble hearing what the people said without Moses’s help. This formulation, however, stresses Moses’s crucial role as intermediary in this episode: God is up on the mountain, the people are down below, and Moses shuttles up and down between the two. Herein lies a principal justification for the recurrence of “go up” and “come down” as thematic key words, a feature of the chapter noted by Everett Fox.
9. in the utmost cloud. The Hebrew ʿav heʿanan brackets together two words that mean the same thing and that elsewhere are paired in poetic parallelism. The effect would seem to be a kind of epic intensification. (Compare 10:22, “pitch-dark,” which similarly puts together two synonyms, ḥoshekh ʾafelah.) It should be noted that ʿav means “cloud” and is not the same as ʿaveh, “thick,” as most translations have assumed.
10. their cloaks. The Hebrew semalot means “cloaks” or some sort of outer wrap, and is not the general word for garments, begadim, though it may well be a synecdoche for garments here. The choice of this term is probably dictated by the fact that it is semalot that the Hebrews borrow from their Egyptian neighbors as they flee. It thus makes particular sense that they are enjoined now as part of the process of consecration to launder these cloaks they took off the backs of Egyptian idolators.
13. No hand shall touch him. Some construe the Hebrew masculine pronoun bo as “it,” referring to Mount Sinai, because the previous verse has pronounced a ban on touching even the edge of the mountain. The clear syntactical connection of this clause, however, as Abraham ibn Ezra sees, is with the two clauses that follow: the transgressor is to be killed from a distance, by stoning or arrows—perhaps because by violating this taboo he has set himself irrevocably apart from the community.
they it is who will go up the mountain. The pronoun hemah, “they,” is placed in an emphatic position. The most plausible referent is Moses and Aaron, in contradistinction to the rest of the people.
16. there was thunder and lightning and a heavy cloud on the mountain and the sound of the ram’s horn. It trivializes the grand solemnity and the epic sweep of this narrative moment to “explain” it through the purported origins of YHWH as a desert-storm god. In the Syro-Palestinian tradition of mythological poetry upon which the Hebrew writer drew for his imagery, thunder and lightning were the martial accoutrements of the sky god, as they are often in biblical poetry. Literature being an essentially conservative and self-recapitulative medium, a continuity of poetic tropes does not necessarily mean a continuity of theology—the pagan epic apparatus of Milton’s Paradise Lost is a central case in point. The Sinai encounter is imagined as the decisive moment in human history when the celestial and terrestrial realms are brought into panoramic engagement, and as God comes down on the mountain, every sort of natural fireworks is let loose, so that trembling seizes not only the people but the mountain itself. The word for “thunder,” qolot, is not the usual raʿam but the word that generally means “voices” or “sounds,” and so it is orchestrated with “the sound of the ram’s horn” (qol hashofar) that reverberates so strongly against the ground-base of the thunder. (The word for “ram’s horn” here is different from yovel, the term used in verse 13, but there does not seem to be any important difference in meaning.) It is something of a mystery as to where this ram’s horn comes from and who is blowing it. Since ram’s horns were used both in calls to arms and in coronation ceremonies, one may assume this blast is of celestial origin, probably blown by a member of God’s angelic entourage, to announce the awe-inspiring descent of the King of all the earth to deliver the Ten Words to His people.
19. with voice. The same multivalent Hebrew word qol has encouraged some interpreters to render this as “in thunder.” That translation may sound more impressive, but it is unlikely for two reasons. Qol in the singular, as against qolot in the plural, means “voice” or “sound,” not “thunder.” And the heart of the whole story of the Sinai epiphany is that God addresses Moses with words (devarim), not with son et lumière, which are merely the atmospheric prelude to divine speech. The sense, then, of “Moses would speak, and God would answer him with voice” is that Moses and God actually exchange speech on the mountain, as a man would speak with his fellow man. This speech evidently is endowed with miraculous audibility, since it takes place against the most intense background noise of thunder and the constantly mounting blast of the ram’s horn.
21. Go down, warn the people, lest they break through. God is repeating instructions that have already been carried out, a fact registered by Moses in his response (verse 23: “You Yourself warned us …”). The point of the repetition is to underscore the absolute inviolability of the boundary between the mountain where the deity is so awesomely manifested and the people, and to dramatize Moses’s necessary role as intermediary going down to the people and up to the mountaintop.
perish. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “fall.” The deity is imagined as setting up a sort of terrific force field that, when violated, “bursts forth”—the same verb is used elsewhere as a response to violation of sancta—to destroy the trespasser.
22. And the priests. This reference is a little puzzling because as yet there has been no report of the establishment of a priestly caste. Perhaps the priesthood was so fundamental to the constitution of the people for the later writer that he assumed it must always have existed. Perhaps Moses already designated priests from the tribe of Levi, for sacrifices were offered after the victory over Amalek. Ibn Ezra solves the problem by identifying “priests” here with the firstborn—a proposal that may have some historical merit, presupposing an archaic period in which priestly functions were performed by the firstborn.
who come near to the LORD. Even though their priestly role allows them to approach the LORD by offering sacrifices to Him, in this overwhelming manifestation of God’s presence, they are to consecrate themselves like the rest of the people and remain within the boundary Moses has marked at the bottom of the mountain.
25. And Moses went down to the people and said it to them. The object of “said” (“it”) is supplied by the translation, which follows the decisive consensus of traditional Hebrew commentators that assumes the content of the saying is the warning about not crossing the boundary which God has just asked Moses to convey to the people. Normally, the verb “to say” would be followed by quoted speech, whereas the verb “to speak” (diber) does not typically require quoted speech after it. Perhaps “to say” is used here for Moses in order to avoid any overlap with God’s speech-act in the very next verse: “And God spoke (wayedaber) these words (devarim).” It should be kept in mind that the chapter breaks are medieval, so the original text moved directly from Moses’s saying to God’s speaking.
1And God spoke all these words, saying: 2“I am the LORD your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slaves. 3You shall have no other gods beside Me. 4You shall make you no carved likeness and no image of what is in the heavens above or what is on the earth below or what is in the waters beneath the earth. 5You shall not bow to them and you shall not worship them, for I am the LORD your God, a jealous god, reckoning the crime of fathers with sons, with the third generation and with the fourth, for My foes, 6and doing kindness to the thousandth generation for My friends and for those who keep My commands. 7You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not acquit whosoever takes His name in vain. 8Remember the sabbath day to hallow it. 9Six days you shall work and you shall do all your tasks, 10but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. You shall do no task, you and your son and your daughter, your male slave and your slavegirl and your beast and your sojourner who is within your gates. 11For six days did the LORD make the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in it, and He rested on the seventh day. Therefore did the LORD bless the sabbath day and hallow it. 12Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long on the soil that the LORD your God has given you. 13You shall not murder. 14You shall not commit adultery. 15You shall not steal. 16You shall not bear false witness against your fellow man. 17You shall not covet your fellow man’s house. You shall not covet your fellow man’s wife, or his male slave, or his slavegirl, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that your fellow man has.”
18And all the people were seeing the thunder and the flashes and the sound of the ram’s horn and the mountain in smoke, and the people saw and they drew back and stood at a distance. 19And they said to Moses, “Speak you with us that we may hear, and let not God speak with us lest we die.” 20And Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for in order to test you God has come and in order that His fear be upon you, so that you do not offend.” 21And the people stood at a distance, and Moses drew near the thick cloud where God was.
22And the LORD said to Moses, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites: ‘You yourselves saw that from the heavens I spoke with you. 23You shall not make with Me gods of silver and gods of gold, you shall not make them for yourselves. 24An earthen altar shall you make for Me, and you shall sacrifice upon it your burnt offerings and your communion sacrifices, your sheep and your cattle. In every place that I make My name invoked, I shall come to you and bless you. 25And should you make Me an altar of stones, you shall not build them of hewn stones, for your sword you would brandish over it and profane it. 26And you shall not go up by steps upon My altar, that you may not expose your nakedness upon it.’”
CHAPTER 20 NOTES
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1. all these words. The number ten is not stipulated, but the formulaic number ten, despite other ancient numerations of the commandments, exerted a powerful force. Jewish and Christian traditions have different ways of dividing the “words,” here called devarim but in later Hebrew usage usually referred to as dibrot (singular, diber), which means something like “utterance” or perhaps even “inspired speech.” The formulation of the ten injunctions is, in the most literal sense, lapidary—terse enough to be carved in stone. There is a good deal of plausibility, then, in the inference of some scholars that the wordier commandments here embody explanatory glosses on or elaborations of the original succinct formulations. Moshe Weinfeld proposes that the original version might have looked something like this:
1. I am the LORD your God; you shall have no other gods beside Me.
2. You shall make you no carved likeness.
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day to hallow it.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your fellow man.
10. You shall not covet.
The Hebrew, it should be said, is even more compact: commandments 6, 7, and 8, for example, are each only two words, three syllables. Other ancient Near Eastern cultures customarily used tablets—as a rule, clay and not stone—for writing, whereas the Hebrews adopted the speedier and more efficient writing technology of ink on parchment or papyrus scrolls, which made detailed verbal elaboration easier. The Hebrews did, however, use stone tablets for monumental inscriptions, as a few recovered fragments indicate. The use of stone tablets (the medium will be mentioned later) is most probably dictated by the fact that these Ten Words amount to the text of a pact between God and Israel, and such covenantal texts were typically recorded on tablets of metal or stone.
But writing on stone is also an archaic medium of communication and as such lines up with the archaic cooking (fire-roasting) and the archaic baking (unleavened bread) earlier in the story.
2. I am the LORD. As we had occasion to note in earlier passages, this formal announcement of the identity of the sovereign whose authority underwrites what is to follow is a convention of ancient Near Eastern royal proclamations.
3. You shall have no other gods. Throughout the Ten Words the commands are cast in the second-person singular (elsewhere in Hebrew law, plurals or third-person singulars are often used): the commandments are addressed to each person in Israel.
beside Me. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “upon my face.” As Abraham ibn Ezra acutely observes, this same idiom, ʿal peney, is used in Genesis 11:28 in “Haran died in the lifetime of [ʿal peney] Terah his father.” The sense here, then, may be something like this: I am eternally, and so you must have no other god alongside Me, instead of Me, infringing on My eternal presence that brooks no successors.
4. the heavens above … the earth below … the waters beneath the earth. These are the three realms of the biblical world-picture, each duly registered in the first Creation story. If the LORD in His initial proclamation announces himself as the God of history, “Who brought you out of the land of Egypt,” here the language implies that He is equally the God of the cosmos, not limited to one of its realms (in contrast, for example, to Aton, elevated by Akhenaten over all other gods of Egypt but still a solar deity). In Canaanite mythology, as in the corresponding mythologies of other ancient peoples, different gods presided over the different realms of creation: Baal over the land, Yamm over the sea, Mot over the underworld. The invocation here of pagan pantheons argues strongly that the ban against fashioning images is a ban against cultic icons (verse 5, “You shall not bow to them …”) and not, as some currents of later tradition concluded, a comprehensive prohibition of image-making.
5. a jealous god. The Hebrew qanaʾ can mean either “jealous” (including the sexual sense) or “zealous,” “ardent.” The appearance of the term in connection with God’s banning all cultic rivals suggests that the leading edge of the word here may in fact be jealousy. The revolutionary idea of a single God uniting all the realms of creation may be a noble and philosophically bold idea, but it is imagined in ancient Israel in powerfully anthropomorphic terms: God does not tolerate rivals to the hearts of His people. The word “god” here is not capitalized because the Hebrew employs the generic term ʾel: this, the LORD is saying, is the kind of god I am, and you had better take that to heart.
reckoning the crime of fathers with sons … for My foes. This troubling statement is explained by many Hebrew exegetes through reference to “my foes” (or, “those who hate Me”) at the end of the clause—it is often the way of the world for sons to follow the path of their fathers, and as long as the offspring of the original offenders qualify as God’s foes, they will be subject to retribution. But the ancient view may well have been that God’s mercy was manifest in demanding retribution from only three or four generations while granting kindness for a thousand generations. The word “foes” here is antithetically paired with “for My friends,” (or “those who love Me”) in verse 6.
6. doing kindness to. This could also be rendered as “keeping faith with”—ḥesed is an act of kindness and also the loyal performance of an obligation in an alliance or treaty.
the thousandth generation. The Hebrew ʾalafim would ordinarily mean “thousands,” but the parallel passage in Deuteronomy 7:9 plausibly glosses this as a reference to generations, in parallel to the previous verse.
7. take the name of the LORD your God in vain. The Hebrew verb literally means “bear” and indicates the taking of a vow or oath. The reference is to the use of the potent divine name in adjuration and perhaps also in magical conjuration, not to the mentioning of the name in casual speech. “In vain” has the sense of “falsely.”
8. Remember the sabbath day. This sole ritual—or at least calendric—injunction among the Ten Commandments is a hinge that connects the two principal aspects of the deity already invoked: the God of creation and the God of history. The observance of the sabbath is a commemoration or reenactment of God’s creation of the world, as verse 11 explains. At the same time, the liberation from labor, especially with the stipulation that one’s male and female slaves should equally be freed of labor on the seventh day, surely would have brought to the mind of these newly freed slaves the blessings of freedom, of cessation from labor. Jewish liturgy would pick up this clue by designating the sabbath “a remembrance of the going out from Egypt.”
9. tasks. In the Hebrew a collective noun in the singular.
12. Honor your father and your mother. This fifth commandment (according to the numeration of Jewish tradition) effects a transition, as Nahmanides nicely observes, from obligations vis-à-vis God to obligations vis-à-vis human beings, beginning with the human pair through whom each of us comes into the world. It is also the only commandment in which “no” or “not” (Hebrew loʾ) does not appear, though some have argued that prohibitions—e.g., not showing disrespect—are implicit. (In any event, the assumption of these Ten Words is that the way to monotheistic loyalty and ethical behavior is paved with prohibitions, that human nature is fraught with impulses that must be resisted.) It is hard to square the causal link between honoring parents and longevity with empirical observation, and one probably has to regard this as part of the traditional wisdom of the ancient Near East, the sort of hopeful moral calculus reflected in the Book of Proverbs.
on the soil. The Hebrew ʾadamah could also mean “land” or “earth,” but an emphasis on soil (the same stuff of which the altar in verse 24 is fashioned) sounds right for a people who will chiefly make their living from farming.
13. You shall not murder. Readers thoroughly conditioned by the King James Version’s “Thou shalt not kill” need to be reminded that the Hebrew verb ratsaḥ clearly means “murder,” not “kill,” and so that ban is specifically on criminal acts of taking of life.
17. You shall not covet. The Hebrew verb ḥamad exhibits a range of meaning from “yearn for,” “desire,” even “lust after” (the usual sense in postbiblical Hebrew), to simply “want.” But here, as in 34:24, it clearly suggests wanting to possess something that belongs to someone else, and so the King James Version rendering of “covet” still seems the best English equivalent. The attempted legislation of desire is problematic enough for Abraham ibn Ezra to devote what is almost a miniature essay to the subject in his commentary. His solution is along the following lines: Desire itself cannot be absolutely legislated but we all learn to condition ourselves as to what is realistic desire and what has to be confined to the realm of mere fantasy—for both moral and practical reasons. A peasant, ibn Ezra argues (perhaps a little too confidently), may be struck by the beauty of a princess, but knowing that she is inconceivably beyond his reach, “he will not covet her [or, lust after her] in his heart to go to bed with her.”
18. seeing the thunder and the flashes and the sound of the ram’s horn. Logically, of course, the objects of seeing would be only the lightning and the smoking mountain, but the writer presents the Sinai epiphany as one tremendous synesthetic experience that overwhelms the people while—the temporal force of the participial “seeing”—the Ten Words are enunciated. Just as qolot, “sounds” or “voices,” is not the usual word for thunder, lapidim, “flashes,” is not the usual designation for lightning but rather a term that generally means “torches,” here conveying the visual immediacy of the lightning flashes.
drew back. Literally “swayed,” suggesting a motion of involuntary recoil.
23. with Me. The preposition ʾiti appears to have approximately the same meaning as ʿal panai, “beside Me,” in the first commandment, and this prohibition of idol-making is a reiteration of the first of the Ten Words.
make them. The accusative pronoun is merely implied in the Hebrew.
24. An earthen altar. These instructions have the effect of orienting the people toward a temporal horizon when they will be planted on the soil (ʾadamah, the material for building this altar). As Umberto Cassuto notes, this injunction dissipates any sense the people might have that Sinai alone is God’s dwelling place and that the worship of the deity is a one-time event. The earthen material of the altar is also in stark antithesis to the silver and gold of the idols.
In every place that I make My name invoked. As scholarship has abundantly observed, the presumption here of a multiplicity of valid places for sacrifice contrasts with the later insistence of Deuteronomy on a centralized cult “in the place that I choose.”
25. your sword. English translations from Tyndale in the early sixteenth century to a spectrum of translations at the end of the twentieth century have rendered this as “tool” because the context obviously requires an implement for hewing stone. But the Hebrew ḥerev patently means “sword,” here a kind of metaphoric stand-in for “chisel,” and pointedly used because of its association with killing. Rashi succinctly catches the implication of the term: “The altar was created to lengthen a man’s days and iron was created to shorten a man’s days; it is not fit that the means of shortening should be brandished over the means of lengthening.”
26. that you may not expose your nakedness. The priests in fact wore linen breeches and so would not have had this problem, though this text probably antedates the introduction of trousers that the Priestly writers adopted. The prohibition, then, as Nahum Sarna notes, may envision a local altar where sacrifice is offered by laymen, who would have been wearing loose tunics without undergarments (like the dancing David in 2 Samuel 6). There is some evidence of ritual nudity in the ancient Near East, to which this injunction might be a response.
1“‘And these are the laws that you shall set before them. 2Should you buy a Hebrew slave, six years he shall serve and in the seventh he shall go free, with no payment. 3If he came by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he was husband to a wife, his wife shall go out with him. 4If his master should give him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. 5And if the slave should solemnly say, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go free,” 6his master shall make him approach the gods and make him approach the door or the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him perpetually. 7And should a man sell his daughter as a slavegirl, she shall not go free as the male slaves go free. 8If she seem bad in the eyes of her master, for whom she was intended, he shall let her be redeemed; to an outsider he shall have no power to sell her since he has broken faith with her. 9And if for his son he intended her, according to the practice of daughters he shall do for her. 10If another woman he should take for himself, he must not stint for this one her meals, her wardrobe, and her conjugal rights. 11And if he does not do these three for her, she shall go free without payment, with no money. 12He who strikes a man and he dies is doomed to die. 13And he who did not plot it but God made it befall him, I shall set apart for you a place to which he may flee. 14And should a man scheme against his fellow man to kill him by cunning, from My altar you shall take him to die. 15And he who strikes his father or his mother is doomed to die. 16And he who kidnaps a man and sells him or he is found in his hands, is doomed to die. 17And he who vilifies his father or his mother is doomed to die. 18And should men quarrel and a man strike his fellow man with stone or with fist and he does not die but falls ill, 19if he gets up and goes about outside on his cane, the striker shall be clear, only he shall pay for his loss of time, and he shall surely stand good for his cure. 20And should a man strike his male slave or his slavegirl with a rod and they die under his hand, they shall surely be avenged. 21But if a day or two they should survive, they are not to be avenged for they are his money. 22And should men brawl and collide with a pregnant woman and her fetus come out but there be no other mishap, he shall surely be punished according to what the woman’s husband imposes upon him, he shall pay by the reckoning. 23And if there is a mishap, you shall pay a life for a life, 24an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, 25a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise. 26And should a man strike the eye of his male slave or the eye of his slavegirl and ruin it, he shall send them off free for their eye. 27And if he should knock out the tooth of his male slave or the tooth of his slavegirl, he shall send them off free for the tooth. 28And should an ox gore a man or a woman and they die, the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten, and the ox’s owner is clear. 29And if the ox is a gorer from time past and was warned against to his owner, who did not keep it in, and it caused the death of a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner, too, shall be put to death. 30If restitution be set for him, he shall pay for the redemption of his life whatever will be set for him. 31Whether a son it gore or a daughter it gore, according to this practice it shall be done to him. 32If the ox should gore a male slave or a slavegirl, thirty shekels of silver he shall give to their master and the ox shall be stoned. 33And should a man open a pit or should a man dig a pit and not cover it and an ox or donkey fall in, 34the owner of the pit shall pay silver, shall make good to its owner, and the carcass shall be his. 35And should a man’s ox collide with his fellow man’s ox and it die, they shall sell the live ox and divide the money for it equally, and the carcass, too, they shall divide equally. 36Or if it is known that the ox is a gorer from time past and its owner did not keep it in, he shall surely pay an ox for the ox, and the carcass shall be his. 37Should a man steal an ox or a sheep and slaughter it or sell it, five cattle he shall pay for the ox and four sheep for the sheep.’”
CHAPTER 21 NOTES
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1. And these are the laws. After the ten divine imperatives, couched in absolute terms and addressed to each Israelite in the second-person singular, we have a series of miscellaneous laws formulated casuistically (i.e., according to hypothetical case: “Should a man do X, …”). This collection of laws, which make up chapter 21 through chapter 23, is conventionally called the Book of the Covenant, in accordance with the phrase used in 24:7 (“And he [Moses] took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people”), though some scholars have questioned whether the text referred to that Moses reads to the people is really the same as this legal miscellany. It is probably one of the oldest collections of law in the Bible; it exhibits numerous parallels with (as well as divergences from) the Code of Hammurabi, with sundry other Sumerian and Akkadian codes, and with Hittite law, all of which have been abundantly studied in the scholarly literature.
you shall set before them. The “you” (singular) is Moses.
2. Should you buy a Hebrew slave. Pointedly, the first laws in the group deal with the regulation of slavery, addressed in the narrative situation to an audience of newly freed slaves. That situation may dictate the somewhat unexpected designation, “Hebrew slave” (rather than “a slave from your people” or “a slave from your brothers”) because that was the identity of the Israelites in the eyes of their Egyptian masters, “Hebrew” generally being a foreigner’s label for an Israelite.
and in the seventh he shall go free. What is clearly involved is not chattel slavery but what amounts to a kind of indentured servitude. The Bible does not question this institution but sets certain limits on it, and, as one can see in the subsequent laws, the slave retains basic human rights.
3. by himself. The unusual Hebrew term, begapo, might mean, according to Umberto Cassuto, “the corner, or wing [of a garment].” If this is the case, it would have the idiomatic force of “with the shirt on his back” (and nothing else).
4. the wife and her children shall be her master’s. The evident implication is that the master gave this slavegirl to the male slave for breeding purposes, not for sentimental reasons. The next verse, however, reflects a recognition that even in such brutally economic circumstances the man may develop an emotional attachment to the woman and to their children.
5. if the slave should solemnly say. The emphatic force here of the infinitive followed by the conjugated verb ʾamor yoʾmar is to indicate a performative speech-act, a binding public declaration.
6. make him approach the gods and make him approach the door or the doorpost. The word translated here as “gods” (ʾelohim) is a famous crux. Though plural in form, when it is treated grammatically as a singular it usually means “God.” When it is treated as a plural it usually means “gods,” although occasionally it appears to designate some sort of celestial beings who are less than God. In this sequence one cannot tell whether it is singular or plural. Rabbinic tradition sought to avert any possible scandal in the verse by interpreting ʾelohim as “judges,” but the philological evidence for that understanding is slim. The most plausible proposal that has been made is that the reference is to household gods: there are several ancient Near Eastern documents indicating that these were placed by the doorposts, and that certain legal declarations regarding a person’s relation to the household were made in their presence, at the doorway. This premonotheistic detail may reflect the very old age of the law, and the repetitive phrase “and make him approach the door or doorpost” may well be a somewhat later gloss intended to explain what “made him approach the ʾelohim” meant. It certainly makes more sense that the door in question should be the door of the household to which the slave is perpetually committing himself and not, as others have claimed, the door of a sanctuary or of a judicial court.
pierce his ear with an awl. There is no consensus on the symbolism, though it is not implausible that the ear might be thought of as the organ of obedience. Perhaps no symbolism is intended, and piercing the ear is a way of permanently marking the perpetual slave without serious mutilation, or perhaps the pierced ear might have been used to wear a ring bearing the master’s mark or initial.
7. And should a man sell his daughter as a slavegirl. From what follows, it is clear that the impoverished father is selling her not to perform labor, as is the case of the male slave, but as some sort of concubine. It is for this reason that the conditions of her manumission differ from those of the male slave.
8. If she seem bad in the eyes of her master. That is, if he finds anything about her that disinclines him to keep her as a sexual partner.
an outsider. The Hebrew ʿam nokhri (elsewhere, it would mean “a foreign people”) is probably an archaic social term—another reflection of the ancient character of the document—with ʿam meaning “kin.”
broken faith with her. Literally, “betrayed her.” He has not honored his commitment to keep her as concubine.
10. meals. The Hebrew uses a relatively rare term for “meat,” clearly a synecdoche for food.
wardrobe. Literally, “covering.”
conjugal rights. Although this translation reflects the strong consensus of Hebrew commentators, the term ʿonah is much in dispute. Since the master has rejected the woman as a bedmate, it does seem odd to require him to make conjugal visits. Some have interpreted the term as “housing” by relating it to maʿon, “habitation.” Others, noting a husband’s threefold obligation in other ancient Near Eastern documents to provide his wife food, clothing, and oil or unguents, propose that ʿonah refers to such cosmetic necessities, although the philological grounds for that claim are uncertain.
12. He who strikes a man. Cassuto notes a general structural parallel to the Decalogue. The list of laws begins with regulations about slavery, just as the first commandment begins by mentioning the liberation from slavery. The next group of laws begins with murder, just as the second half of the Decalogue does.
13. I shall set apart for you a place to which he may flee. The presupposition of this institution of places of sanctuary for people who have committed involuntary manslaughter is vendetta justice: the members of the family bent on “redeeming the blood” (geʾulat hadam) of their dead kinsman, even if the killing was unintended, would not be permitted to penetrate these towns of refuge. Eventually, the state took over all functions of executing justice and these provisions became anachronistic.
14. from My altar you shall take him. As in other cultures, the altar was a place of sanctuary, and someone accused of bloodguilt could flee to the altar and cling to one of the carved horns at its corners in a plea to be held free of harm. This is what Joab does in 1 Kings 2 in an effort to escape Solomon’s henchmen. Solomon orders him to be taken from the altar and executed—perhaps in accordance with this law, for Joab has killed two commanders of Israel in cold blood.
17. vilifies. The Hebrew qilel is the precise antithesis of “honor” (kabed) in “honor your father and your mother,” the word for “honor” being derived from a root that means “heavy” or “important” and the word for “vilify” or “treat with contempt” (King James Version, “curse”) being derived from a root that means “light” or “worthless.”
18. falls ill. Literally, “falls to bed.”
19. he shall surely stand good for his cure. Literally, “he shall surely cure him.”
20. they die … they shall surely be avenged. The Hebrew says “he” in each instance because the masculine form has grammatical precedence, referring to him or her. Since both the female and the male slave are mentioned as possible objects of the violence, the translation, in order to avoid the awkward “he or she,” switches to the plural. The same procedure is followed in several subsequent verses.
21. But if a day or two they should survive. The sad implication of this stipulation is that vigorous beating of slaves, male and female alike, was assumed to be an acceptable practice. If the slave lasted a couple of days and then died, the inference would be that the master had not intended the death but had merely overdone the beating. If the slave died on the spot, this would be evidence that the master had meant to kill him, or at least was guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
for they are his money. That is, it would be counter to the master’s own interest to take the life of a slave after having purchased him to perform service, so the presumption is that unless the slave dies during the beating, there was no clear intention on the part of the master to kill him.
22. and her fetus come out. The Masoretic Text reads weyatsʾu yeladeha, “and her children came out,” which amounts to the same thing but seems a little odd, especially because of the plural “children.” The Samaritan text and the Septuagint both have weyatsaʾ weladah, “and her fetus came out.”
no other mishap. The reference would have to be to the death, or at least grave impairment, of the pregnant woman. “Other” is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.
by the reckoning. The meaning of the Hebrew biflilim is uncertain. Some interpreters link the terms to judicial authority. The Code of Hammurabi is equally concerned about liability for induced miscarriages but, unlike this law, makes discriminations according to the social standing of the injured party.
23–25. a life for a life, an eye for an eye … a bruise for a bruise. The pitiless punishment by equivalent injury of this famous lex talionis—again, with a parallel in the Code of Hammurabi—has created much discomfort and elicited tracts of commentary. It should be observed that the connection with the pregnant woman injured by brawlers is highly tenuous: burning, or even the loss of tooth or eye, in that situation seems far-fetched; and in any case, someone who has committed involuntary manslaughter would not be subject to the death penalty. The notion, therefore, that this is a fragment of an archaic law code stitched into this text seems plausible. The preponderant view of Jewish commentators in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages is that in each of the cases stipulated here, the intention is for the liable party to pay monetary compensation for the loss incurred. The possibility should not be excluded that this was the original intention: monetary compensation for such losses was a widespread practice in ancient Near Eastern codes, and as some of the medieval commentators point out, it would have been unfeasible to implement the lex talionis literally with equity (e.g., how does one punish someone who has caused a man a partial loss of eyesight in one eye?).
26. should a man strike the eye of his male slave. There is an obvious associative link with the “eye for an eye” of the previous unit. Here it is perfectly clear that the loss of a bodily faculty is assigned monetary value.
28. an ox. The ox is the exemplary instance of liability for one’s animals in ancient Near Eastern law (and afterward in the Talmud).
the ox shall surely be stoned. This punishment in effect falls on the owner, who loses the whole value of his animal. But there is also a sense that the ox itself has been tainted by destroying a human life and so it is killed, not slaughtered, as a murderer would be killed, and it is unfit to be eaten.
the ox’s owner is clear. He has no further liability in the death because this is a case in which there was no precedent for the ox’s action and hence, given the usually pacific nature of oxen, the owner could not be expected to anticipate the goring.
29. a gorer from time past. In the case of an ox known to be habitually violent, the owner’s failure to keep it safely penned in is an act of criminal negligence resulting in death.
30. If restitution be set for him. There remains a loophole of monetary compensation for the negligent owner of the goring ox because even criminal negligence is not the same as malicious intention to kill.
37. Should a man steal an ox or a sheep. We now move on from torts to laws of theft. The reason for a distinction in penalty between ox and sheep has been debated, but the simplest explanation is that the ox, a draft animal as well as an animal that can be slaughtered for its meat, is more valuable than the sheep.
1“‘If while tunneling, a thief should be found and is struck down and dies, there is no bloodguilt for him. 2If the sun rises upon him, there is bloodguilt for him. He shall surely pay. If he has not the means, he shall be sold for his theft. 3If what is stolen should indeed be found alive in his hands, from ox to donkey to sheep, he shall pay double.
4“‘Should a man let his beast graze in a field or vineyard, and he send his beast to graze in another’s field, from the best of his field and the best of his vineyard he shall pay. 5Should a fire go forth and catch in thorns, and stacked or standing grain or the field be consumed, he who set the fire shall surely pay. 6Should a man give his fellow man money or goods for safekeeping and they are stolen from the man’s house, if the thief is found, he shall pay double. 7If the thief is not found, the owner of the house shall approach the gods to swear that he has not laid hands on his fellow man’s effects. 8In every matter of breach of trust, for an ox, for a donkey, for a sheep, for a cloak, for every loss about which one may say, “This is it,” the matter of both shall come before the gods. He whom the gods find guilty shall pay double to his fellow man. 9Should a man give to his fellow man a donkey or an ox or a sheep or any beast for safekeeping and it die or be maimed or carried off, with no witness, 10there shall be an oath by the LORD between the two of them, that he has not laid hands on his fellow man’s effects, and the owner shall accept and he shall not pay. 11If it indeed be stolen from him, he shall pay its owner. 12If it be torn up by beasts, he shall bring it in evidence, he shall not pay for what was torn up by beasts. 13And should a man borrow it from his fellow man and it be hurt or die, its owner not being with it, he shall surely pay. 14If its owner is with it, he shall not pay. If he is hired, he gets his hire. 15And should a man seduce a virgin who has not been betrothed and lie with her, he shall surely pay a bride-price for her as his wife. 16If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall weigh out silver according to the bride-price for virgins.
17“‘No witch shall you let live. 18Whosoever lies with a beast is doomed to die. 19Whosoever sacrifices to a god, except to the LORD alone, shall be put under the ban. 20You shall not cheat a sojourner and you shall not oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 21No widow nor orphan shall you abuse. 22If you indeed abuse them, when they cry out to Me, I will surely hear their outcry. 23And My wrath shall flare up and I will kill you by the sword, and your wives shall be widows and your children orphans. 24If you should lend money to My people, to the pauper among you, you shall not be to him like a creditor, you shall not impose interest on him. 25If you should indeed take in pledge your fellow man’s cloak, before the sun comes down you shall return it to him. 26For it is his sole covering, it is his cloak for his skin—in what can he lie? And so, when he cries out to Me, I will hear him, for I am compassionate. 27You shall not vilify God, nor shall you curse a chief among your people. 28The first yield of your vats and the first yield of your grain you shall not delay to give. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me. 29Thus you shall do with your ox and your sheep: seven days it shall be with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to Me. 30And consecrated men you shall be to Me: flesh in the field torn by beasts you shall not eat; to the dog you shall fling it.’”
CHAPTER 22 NOTES
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1. If while tunneling. This form of housebreaking by tunneling into the house is clearly imagined as a nocturnal operation (the tunneler would surely risk detection outside the house in daylight). If such a thief encountered a resident of the house in the dark, there would be considerable danger that the thief would try to kill him. Hence Rashi cites the rabbinic dictum “He who comes to kill you, kill him first” to explain “there is no bloodguilt for him.” But if this encounter takes place in daylight, it would be much more likely that the intruder would flee or surrender, depending on the balance of forces, and so the householder cannot kill him with impunity.
2. He shall surely pay. Abraham ibn Ezra makes the plausible suggestion that this and the following clauses refer not to the housebreaker but to the livestock thief of 21:37. If the stolen animal has already been sold, the thief must pay fourfold or fivefold. If he still has the animal to restore to its owner, he is nevertheless subject to a penalty of twofold payment for the theft. A thief without the means to pay the penalty must be sold as a slave in order to make good what he owes (in the Code of Hammurabi, a thief in such a case is to be executed).
4. Should a man let his beast graze. The arrangement of laws in this more or less miscellaneous list is largely determined either by thematic association or by recurring key words. In the latter instance, one detects a convention that is often used to link two adjacent units in biblical narrative: the same word is used twice in succession in two different meanings. Thus the verb hivʿir, “to cause to graze,” recurs in the next law in its other sense, “to set a fire.” As to thematic association, this law is connected, as Abraham ibn Ezra notes, with the cluster of laws at the end of chapter 21 that also deal with damages caused by one’s beast.
send his beast. The relatively rare Hebrew term for beast, beʿir, is a cognate accusative of the verb for grazing. In the opening clause of this verse, the word “beast” does not appear in the Hebrew but is implied by the verb hivʿir.
5. Should a fire go forth. There is a thematic link (again noted by ibn Ezra) as well as a verbal one with the preceding law because this is another instance in which a person’s negligence in supervising an activity in his own field—evidently, some sort of controlled burning—results in damage to someone else’s field.
the field. Rashi plausibly suggests that this third category of damage is scorching a plowed field, which would then have to be plowed out again.
7. shall approach the gods. Again, traditional commentators, and some modern ones as well, interpret ʾelohim as a reference to judges, though if this is the case, it would be a usage unique to the Book of the Covenant. This translation presumes that this is a vestige of premonotheistic verbal usage preserved in this relatively archaic legal code. Here it would refer not to household gods, as in 21:6, but would seem to be a loose indication of deities at a local sanctuary. It is noteworthy that when ʾelohim is the subject of a verb in the next verse, that verb is conjugated in the plural. One should not make too much of this usage theologically. Linguistic practice can often be more conservative than changing perceptions of reality, and it is quite conceivable that an older stratum of biblical language should have preserved the polytheistic idiom for divine presence at oracle or sanctuary without actually affirming a multiplicity of gods.
to swear. The verb is not stated in the Hebrew but implied by the oath-formula that follows.
effects. The Hebrew melaʾkhah (a collective noun) usually means “task” or “labor,” but in this legal context the clear meaning is the material possessions that are the product of labor.
9. maimed or carried off. The word for “maimed,” nishbar, usually means “broken” and hence is a little odd to apply to an animal. The choice of term is evidently dictated by the strong assonance with the next word, “carried off,” nishbah.
10. an oath by the LORD. Literally, “an oath of the LORD”—not an oath taken in the LORD’s presence but rather an oath that invokes the LORD’s name. At this point, the legislator reverts to solid monotheistic language, and from his point of view, there would have been no necessary contradiction with the preceding use of ʾelohim in the plural.
laid hands. The literal meaning is “sent out his hand.”
accept. Literally, “take.”
12. he shall bring it in evidence. There are other indications in the Bible that this was a common practice. A hired shepherd would bring some part of the torn carcass of the beast to prove to the owner that he had not stolen and sold the missing animal.
14. If he is hired. The term “hired” (sakhir) here has lent itself to different interpretations. The immediate context suggests that the most likely reference is to the person to whom the animal has been entrusted. If he has been hired to perform this task, and the loss of the beast occurs while its owner happens to be present to keep an eye on it, the person hired to do the safekeeping is still entitled to his fee.
15. he shall surely pay a bride-price for her as his wife. The seducer is obliged to make an honest woman of his victim, including the material benefit—the bride-price was a fund reserved for the use of the woman—accompanying marriage to a virgin. The penalty for raping rather than seducing an unbetrothed virgin is payment of a fine to the father and compulsory marriage without possibility of divorce (Deuteronomy 22:28–29).
17. No witch shall you let live. This verse marks the beginning of a second group of laws, no longer formulated casuistically but as absolute imperatives. The witch or sorceress is feminine because, as ibn Ezra and many others after him note, female practitioners predominated, though it may be inferred that male sorcerers are also implied. Ibn Ezra also proposes, somewhat fancifully, a thematic link with the previous law: a seducer might well resort to sorcery in order to have his way with a young woman. The practice of witchcraft had an understandable persistence in ancient Israel, as the tale of the necromancer of Endor (1 Samuel 28) illustrates. The monotheistic objection to the institution, whose efficacy was not necessarily denied, was to an occult technology that could manipulate the spirit realm which was reserved to God alone.
21. No widow nor orphan. Throughout biblical literature, and particularly in the Prophets, these are the paradigmatic cases of powerless members of society who are vulnerable to exploitation.
22. abuse … cry out … hear their outcry. The terms used here pointedly echo the language used at the beginning of Exodus to describe the oppression of Israel in Egypt and God’s response to that suffering. This law, then, like the previous one that explicitly invokes the Hebrews’ condition of sojourners in Egypt, touches on the experience of slavery as an enduring prod to social conscience.
24. you shall not impose interest. The obvious presupposition of this law is an agrarian economy with social groupings on the soil in extended families and clans. Ancient Near Eastern societies with large urban populations in fact have left records of sums regularly lent on interest at extortionate rates.
26. For it is his sole covering, it is his cloak for his skin. The anchorage of this regulation in social reality is vividly illustrated in a fragmentary Hebrew inscription from the seventh century B.C.E. uncovered at Yavneh-Yam. The person dictating the inscription, a formal complaint against his foreman, would appear to be a corvée laborer doing agricultural work. Here are the most relevant lines (my translation): “And Hoshiahu son of Shobi came and took your servant’s garment when I had finished my harvesting. A full day he has taken my garment, and all my brothers will answer for me, who harvest with me in the heat [of the sun], my brothers will answer for me amen. I am guiltless… .” One can make out in the highly fragmented two lines that follow a plea for the garment to be returned.
28. The first yield of your vats and the first yield of your grain. The meaning of the two Hebrew terms, meleiʾah and demaʿ, is not entirely certain, although most interpreters agree that they refer to two categories of agricultural produce from which the farmer must offer the first yield as a sacrifice. (A word that would make the idea of first yield explicit, such as reiʾshit or bikurey, does not appear in the text.) It has also been suggested that meleiʾah and demaʿ are a single agricultural concept, a hendiadys.
to give. The verb is merely implied in the Hebrew.
The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me. This could not be a command to perform child sacrifice. In the archaic period of Hebrew culture, the firstborn officiated as priests. The standard practice then became to “redeem” the firstborn by paying a fixed amount to the priests (compare Exodus 13:15).
30. consecrated men. Literally, “men of holiness” (qodesh). The root q-d-sh is the same one used for the act of consecration just enjoined on the people before the giving of the Law on Sinai. To eat carrion is seen as an act of self-defilement.
flesh in the field torn by beasts. It is chiefly out in the field, as Rashi notes, not in pen or barn, that a cow, sheep, or goat would be attacked by ravening animals, though anthropologically inclined critics have also stressed the character of the field in the biblical imagination as a place beyond the pale of human habitation, where wild beasts and impure spirits dwell.
to the dog you shall fling it. The biblical contempt for canines is again detectable: the dog is an unseemly scavenger, an appropriately base receptacle for carrion.
1“‘You shall not bear a false rumor. You shall not put your hand with the guilty to be a harmful witness. 2You shall not follow the many for evil, and you shall not bear witness in a dispute to go askew, to skew it in support of the many. 3Nor a poor man shall you favor in his dispute. 4Should you encounter your enemy’s ox or his donkey straying, you must surely return it to him. 5Should you see your adversary’s donkey sprawling under its load and would hold back from assisting him, you shall surely assist him. 6You shall not skew the case of your indigent in his dispute. 7From a lying word stay far away, and the guiltless and innocent do not kill, for I will not acquit the guilty. 8No bribe shall you take, for a bribe blinds the sighted and perverts the words of the innocent. 9No sojourner shall you oppress, for you know the sojourner’s heart, since you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 10And six years you shall sow your land and gather its produce. 11But in the seventh you shall let it go and let it lie fallow, and your people’s indigent may eat of it, and what is left, the beast of the field will eat. Thus shall you do for your vineyard and your olive grove. 12Six days shall you do your deeds and on the seventh day you shall cease, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and your bondman and the sojourner catch their breath. 13And in all that I have said to you, you shall watch yourselves, and the name of other gods you shall not invoke nor shall it be heard on your lips.
14“‘Three times in the year shall you hold Me a festival. 15The Festival of Flatbread you shall keep seven days; you shall eat flatbread as I have charged you, at the fixed time of the month of the New Grain, for in it you came out of Egypt, and they shall not appear in My presence empty-handed. 16And the Festival of the Harvest, first fruits of your labor that you sow in the field, and the Festival of Ingathering, as the year goes out, when you gather in your labor from the field. 17Three times in the year all your males shall appear in the presence of the Master, the LORD. 18You shall not offer up the blood of My sacrifice with leavened stuff, nor shall the fat of My festival offering be left till the morning. 19The best of the first fruit of your soil you shall bring to the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
20Look, I am about to send a messenger before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I made ready. 21Watch yourself with him and heed his voice, do not defy him, for he will not pardon your trespass, for My name is within him. 22But if you truly heed his voice and do all that I speak, I shall be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. 23For My messenger will go before you and will bring you to the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Canaanite, the Hivvite and the Jebusite, and I shall obliterate them. 24You shall not bow to their gods and you shall not worship them, and you shall not do as they do, but you shall utterly tear them down and you shall utterly smash their pillars. 25And you shall worship the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I shall take away sickness from your midst. 26There shall be no woman miscarrying or barren in your land. The count of your days I will fill. 27My terror I shall send before you and I shall panic the whole people among whom you will come, and I shall make all your enemies turn tail to you. 28And I shall send the hornet before you and it will drive out the Hivvite and the Canaanite and the Hittite before you. 29I shall not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field multiply against you. 30Little by little shall I drive them out before you until you are fruitful and inherit the land. 31And I shall fix its borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I shall give into your hand the inhabitants of the land and you will drive them out before you. 32You shall not make a pact with them or with their gods. 33They shall not dwell in your land, lest they cause you to offend Me, for should you worship their gods, it will be a snare for you.’”
CHAPTER 23 NOTES
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1. You shall not bear a false rumor. This injunction begins a group of laws intended to enforce the concept of equality before the law and equity in social behavior, regardless of social standing or condition of enmity or amity. The prohibition on bearing false rumor is reminiscent in formulation of the third of the Ten Commandments, but instead of pertaining to solemn oaths, it addresses the capacity of ordinary speech to do harm.
You shall not put your hand with the guilty. The Hebrew idiom, here literally translated, transparently means to be in league with someone. This injunction stands in a relation of intensifying parallelism (a typical pattern in biblical poetry) with the immediately preceding one. Distortion of the truth is involved in both, but there is an intensification from rumormongering to perjury.
2. You shall not follow the many for evil. The last word here could also be rendered “harm.” The most straightforward way to construe this verse is as an injunction to cling to one’s own sense of what is right despite the temptation to follow popular opinion, including when popular opinion is bent on the perversion of justice.
to go askew, to skew it in support of the many. The Hebrew, as the translation may suggest, seems a little awkward because “to go askew” (lintot) appears to be unnecessary and perhaps a little confusing when followed by the same verb in the causative form, lehatot, “to skew.” It is conceivable that the repetition was introduced to underline formally the notion of skewing or tilting justice, which every person is enjoined to avoid.
3. Nor a poor person shall you favor in his dispute. Throughout these laws, “dispute” (riv) refers to contention in a court of law. The principle of equality before the law requires the avoidance of any juridical “affirmative action”—one must give no preferential treatment in court either to the poor man because of his afflictions or to the rich man because of his power.
5. your adversary’s donkey sprawling under its load. This is the first, but by no means the only, expression of humanitarian concern for animals in the Torah. The suffering of the beast must take precedence over a person’s hostility toward the beast’s owner.
you shall surely assist him. The rare Hebrew verb ʿ-z-b is the homonym of a common verb that means “to abandon.” It occurs twice elsewhere in the Bible in the sense of “to perform,” “to arrange,” “to assist,” and it has cognates with this meaning in both Ugaritic and Arabic. The object of the verb (“him”) could be either the master or the donkey, but the former seems more likely: a heavily loaded donkey would not be wandering around by itself; the person would know to whom it belongs by seeing the owner; and the moral imperative would be all the more pressing because he is enjoined to give a hand to a man he hates.
6–9. Whereas verses 1–3 address the obligation of adherence to justice for all citizens, this related subgroup of injunctions is directed to judges.
6. You shall not skew the case of your indigent in his dispute. This formulation is the complement of verse 3. No one should grant preferential treatment to the poor man in justice, but here the judge is reminded that the poor should not be prejudicially mistreated in court. “Case,” mishpat, can also mean “justice.”
7. I will not acquit the guilty. The judge is implicitly thought of as a surrogate of God, obliged to enact only what is right, as God does.
8. blinds … perverts. The aphoristic parallelism sounds rather like the Book of Proverbs.
the sighted. The Hebrew adjective designates both those who have the faculty of sight and, by metaphorical extension, those who are keen-sighted. As a kind of gloss on the term, a parallel law in Deuteronomy substitutes for “sighted” the explicit “wise” (the sense of the term in modern Hebrew).
9. the sojourner’s heart. The Hebrew is nefesh, “life,” “inner nature,” “essential being,” “breath.”
11. let it go. The Hebrew verb shamat means “to release,” “to allow to slip out of one’s grip.” The noun derived from this verb, shemitah, is the general term for sabbatical year.
and your people’s indigent may eat of it. The motive for the sabbatical year is a partial redressing of social inequity, thus linking it with the immediately preceding laws. The ecological advantage of allowing fields to lie fallow is not mentioned.
12. so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and your bondman and the sojourner catch their breath. Unlike the Decalogue, but entirely in keeping with the context of the present code of laws, the rationale for the sabbath offered here is neither theological (God’s resting after creation) nor historical (the liberation from Egyptian slavery) but humanitarian. “Catch their breath” (wayinafesh) is represented in most translations as “be refreshed.” It is cognate with nefesh, most probably in the sense of “breath,” and is related to the verb nashaf, “to breathe hard or pant.” The idea of catching one’s breath is consonant with the representation in Job and elsewhere in the Bible of the laborer panting from his work and longing to draw a long breath of relief after labor.
13. And in all that I have said to you, you shall watch yourselves. This summarizing command reintroduces, in the next clause, the obligation of loyalty to the single God and thus serves as a transition from the group of laws bearing on justice and social equity to the laws of the pilgrim festivals, which are national, seasonal expressions of fealty to God.
14. Three times. The word for “times” here, regalim, is different from peʿamim, the word used at the beginning of verse 17. Both terms mean “foot,” the apparent connection with “time” being the counting of times with the tap of a foot.
15. appear in My presence. The original form of the Hebrew indicated “see My face [or presence],” but the Masoretes revocalized the verb as a passive, “to be seen” or “to appear,” in order to avoid what looked like excessive anthropomorphism.
16. Harvest … Ingathering. The Festival of Flatbread (“Passover” is not used here) would be in April. The harvest (Shavuoth) of first fruits would occur in late May or early June, and Ingathering (Succoth) the harvest of most later crops, in late September or early October.
19. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. This famous prohibition would become the basis in rabbinic dietary regulations for the absolute separation of meat and dairy foods. Two different kinds of justification have been proposed for the prohibition. Maimonides and many after him suggest that the law is a response to a pagan cultic practice known to the ancients of eating a kid prepared in its mother’s milk. There is no clear-cut archaeological evidence of such a practice—Maimonides merely inferred it interpretively. One fragmentary mythological text in Ugaritic may in fact refer to this culinary item, though that reconstruction of the text has been disputed. The other approach, espoused by Abraham ibn Ezra (a little tentatively) and many others, is to explain the prohibition on humanitarian grounds. The sensitivity toward animals previously evinced in this group of laws gives some plausibility to the humanitarian possibility. Since no actual aggravation of the animals’ suffering is involved, the recoil from this commingling would be on the symbolic level: the mixture of the mother animal’s nurturing milk with the slaughtered flesh of her offspring, a promiscuous joining of life and death.
20. I am about to send a messenger before you. Although modern rationalist commentators have sought to explain this as a metaphor for providential guidance, the frankly mythological terms of the preceding narrative—the pillars of cloud and fire, the Destroyer in Egypt—invite us to imagine the messenger as a fearsome agent of God, perhaps human in form like the divine messengers in Genesis, leading the people through the wilderness.
21. he will not pardon your trespass, for My name is within him. The messenger is not only a guide for the Wilderness wanderings but an unblinking executor of divine surveillance. The mention of the divine name is the earliest of a scattering of biblical references to a quasimythological notion of God’s name as a potent agency in its own right. This idea would be elaborately developed in later Jewish mysticism.
22. I shall be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. The perfect parallelism of this statement recalls the symmetry of a line of biblical poetry, and several verses in this concluding section of the Book of the Covenant approximate the formal balance and high solemnity of poetry.
24. tear them down. The verb here, haras, indicates that the object is the idols, not the idolators.
pillars. The reference is to cultic pillars, or steles.
27. turn tail. The Hebrew refers to the nape of the neck, which the fleeing enemy shows to his pursuer.
28. I shall send the hornet before you. There is some question about what is sent: the noun tsirʿah appears in the Bible only three times, all in the context of the conquest of Canaan. The strong consensus of later Hebrew tradition—there is some dissent—is that it refers to a noxious stinging insect. In that case, the word functions here as a collective noun (rather common biblical usage for animals) and refers to dense swarms of hornets. An alternative I would like to propose is that the root is related (with consonants reversed) to the verb raʿats, “to smash,” and that this is a mythological rather than a zoological entity, the Smasher (or Smashing), which would be strictly parallel or equivalent to “My terror” at the beginning of verse 27.
29. lest the land become desolate. The Hebrew writer, faced with the discomfiting report of the tradition available to him that the conquest of the land, underwritten by solemn divine promise, took more than two centuries, is driven to find some explanation for the delay. (The Book of Judges will propose three rather different explanations.) The prospect sketched here of a suddenly depopulated land overrun by wild beasts and too big for the Hebrews seems intrinsically implausible, and it is hard to square the notion of Israel awaiting its own natural increase (“until you are fruitful”) with the figure offered earlier of 600,000 adult males, which implied a total population of well over two million.
31. I shall fix its borders. These grandiose borders, which would make biblical Israel seem a bit like Texas, do not correspond to any actual historical reality but are rather a kind of imaginative nationalist fantasy of what a “spacious land” (Exodus 3:8) might look like. Different, equally ideal borders are mentioned elsewhere.
the Red Sea. In this context, this is the more plausible geographical reference of yam suf, rather than Sea of Reeds, which would probably be a marshland in northeastern Egypt.
32. You shall not make a pact with them or with their gods. Ibn Ezra, with his keen eye for connections, relates the previous verse to this one: even though God will give Israel this vast expanse of territory (presumably, filled with subject peoples), the temptation of embracing the gods of the native population must be resisted.
1And to Moses He had said, “Go up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel, and you shall bow down from afar. 2And Moses alone shall come near to the LORD but they shall not come near, and the people shall not go up with him.” 3And Moses came and recounted to the people all the LORD’s words and all the laws, and the people answered with a single voice and said, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.” 4And Moses wrote down all the LORD’s words, and he rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. 5And he sent the lads of the Israelites and they offered up burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices and communion sacrifices, bulls to the LORD. 6And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he threw upon the altar. 7And he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do and we will heed.” 8And Moses took the blood and threw it upon the people, and he said, “Look, the blood of the covenant that the LORD has sealed with you over all these words.” 9And Moses went up, and with him Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel. 10And they saw the God of Israel, and beneath His feet was like a fashioning of sapphire pavement and like the very heavens for pureness. 11But against the elect of the Israelites He did not send forth His hand, and they beheld God and ate and drank. 12And the LORD said to Moses, “Go up to Me to the mountain and be there, that I may give you the stone tablets and the teaching and the commandments that I have written to instruct them. 13And Moses arose, and Joshua his attendant with him, and Moses went up the mountain of God. 14And to the elders he had said, “Sit here for us until we return to you, and, look, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whosoever has matters to air may approach them.” 15And Moses went up, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16And the LORD’s glory abode on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day He called out to Moses from the midst of the cloud. 17And the sight of the LORD’s glory was like consuming fire at the mountaintop before the eyes of the Israelites. 18And Moses entered within the cloud and went up the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
CHAPTER 24 NOTES
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1. And to Moses He had said. As is often the case in sequences of episodes in the Bible, there is some ambiguity about the chronological location of this passage. The form of the verb (perfective instead of the usual imperfective prefixed by waw) may well indicate a pluperfect, and Rashi, no doubt noting that what Moses does here is to go up the mountain and bring back God’s words, claims, “This passage was said before the Ten Commandments.”
2. Moses … shall come near … they shall not come near … the people shall not go up. There is evidently a tripartite deployment: Moses alone goes up to the mountaintop; the seventy elders, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu remain at a stopping point partway up the mountain; and the people stay at the foot of the mountain, as they were instructed to do in chapter 19.
3. all the LORD’s words and all the laws. The two terms are strategically precise. “Words” (devarim) refers to the Ten Words, or Commandments; “laws” (mishpatim) is the term that announces (21:1) the catalogue of legal injunctions that constitutes the Book of the Covenant.
4. twelve pillars. These pillars (matsevot) are not structural elements in the altar but cultic pillars or steles, just like the ones that, when they are pagan, the Israelites have been enjoined to smash (23:24).
5. the lads. This term, neʿarim, has a multiplicity of meanings, but a common one, reflected here, is as a designation of anyone performing a subaltern or assisting function—in the cult, an acolyte.
7. the book of the covenant. There are differing opinions as to whether this phrase explicitly refers to the legal text of chapters 21–23, despite an established scholarly tradition for using it as a title for that literary unit. In any case, this entire ritual, including the sacred feast and the epiphany that follow the sacrifice, is a solemn confirmation of the covenant between God and Israel, and it is conceivable that the “book of the covenant” is a spelling out of the terms of that pact in language not necessarily incorporated in the preceding narrative.
8. And Moses took the blood and threw it upon the people. Although splashing blood on the altar is a standard sacrificial procedure, throwing blood on the people is unique to this episode. Some squeamish modern commentators have claimed that the blood is thrown on the pillars that represent the twelve tribes, but such a notion surely undercuts the primal archaic power of the rite. (Addressing the problem of how blood could be sprinkled over 600,000 adult males, or more than two million people, Abraham ibn Ezra plausibly suggests that the seventy elders served as ritual stand-ins for the whole people.) The idea of two parties to a solemn, binding agreement confirming the mutual obligation by dipping hands in the same blood, or exchanging blood smears, is attested in many cultures. In this covenant of ontologically disparate partners, the altar that is sprinkled with half the blood may serve as surrogate for the deity to whose service the altar has been erected. The covenantal rite of casting blood on the people is a climax of the sundry occurrences of blood in this narrative from the Bridegroom of Blood episode onward: the blood of circumcision (itself a covenantal act) that deflected the threat of death to Moses or his child and the blood of the lamb that warded off the Destroyer in Egypt reappear here as the blood of the sacrifice that confirms Israel’s everlasting bond with God.
9. and with him Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders. As often elsewhere in this translation, “with him” is added to reflect the focusing function of the Hebrew verb: the verb is in the singular, indicating that the primary or focused subject of the going up is Moses, and that the others join in, or are subsidiary to, Moses’s act of ascent. The indications of spatial deployment here are minimal, but it appears that after the covenantal sacrifice, Moses led his three followers and the elders to the mountaintop, or perhaps only near the mountaintop, where they were vouchsafed their epiphany. Then they went back down (verse 14), while Moses went back up the mountain, evidently accompanied part of the way by Joshua (verse 13). In any event, it is Moses alone who enters into the cloud at the mountaintop that conceals God’s glory or presence.
10. And they saw the God of Israel. The boldness with which this immediate vision is stated is startling, especially against a biblical background in which humans repeatedly fear that they cannot see God and live (compare the next verse, “But against the elect of the Israelites He did not send forth His hand”). Such collective vision is reserved for this unique event. A symptom of how shocking this frank anthropomorphism could be is Onkelos’s evasive substitution in his Aramaic translation: “And they saw their sacrifices that had been accepted favorably as though they had eaten and drunk.” Pace Onkelos, the eating and drinking after the beholding (verse 11 employs a verb of visionary experience) are a communion feast enjoyed by the elders at God’s feet.
and beneath His feet was like a fashioning of sapphire pavement. Mere flesh and blood cannot long sustain the vision of God, and so the visual focus immediately slides down to the celestial brilliance beneath God’s feet. Even for this zone touched by the divine, direct linguistic reference is not possible, and so the writer uses a doubled simile—“like a fashioning of …,” “like the very heavens… .”
sapphire. Many scholars think that the Hebrew sapir refers to lapis lazuli. If the Hebrew term is actually cognate with sapphire, the writer clearly has in mind a blue sapphire.
12. the stone tablets and the teaching and the commandments that I have written. Although the often repeated devarim, “words,” implies speech (dibur), this central event of the giving of the Law places a strong stress on the act of writing as the vehicle for endowing words with permanence. Moses writes down the words and the laws, presumably with ink on parchment or papyrus. God now declares He will do His own inscription—presumably of the Ten Words—in the perdurable medium of stone.
14. Whosoever has matters to air. The Hebrew, mi baʿal devarim, literally means, “whosoever has/is possessor of words,” but devarim here clearly means “legal matters,” “cases to bring before the law,” as the term is used in the Jethro episode (chapter 18). Since Moses seems to know he will be required to stay on the mountaintop a long time (the formulaic forty days), provision has to be made for the judicial needs of the people during his absence. The necessary implication is that the elders now have gone all the way down the mountain to where the people are waiting. Joshua will presumably stop somewhere short of the summit of the mountain.
17. And the sight of the LORD’s glory was like consuming fire … before the eyes of the Israelites. After the direct epiphany to the elders, we get a long-distance view of God’s presence from the perspective of the people at the foot of the mountain. There is more mystifying occlusion than revelation here: an enveloping cloud, flashes of fiery effulgence from within it. Even such distant glimpses of the deity must be qualified by simile—“like consuming fire.”
18. and Moses entered within the cloud. The terrifying gap between Moses and the people is beautifully registered. They quail down below, seeing pulses of consuming fire from within the cloud; on the mountaintop, Moses actually enters into the cloud. His entering the cloud was already implied in verse 16 (“He called out to Moses from the midst of the cloud”—perhaps what he called out was the Ten Words), but now we get a kind of recapitulative summarizing report, strongly colored by the viewpoint of the assembled people at the foot of the mountain who look up awestruck as Moses disappears into the cloud for forty days and forty nights. That seemingly interminable absence of the leader will in due course engender trouble down below.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2“Speak to the Israelites, that they take Me a donation from every man, as his heart may urge him you shall take My donation. 3And this is the donation that you shall take from them: gold and silver and bronze, 4and indigo and purple and crimson, and linen and goat hair, 5and reddened ram skins and ocher-dyed skins and acacia wood. 6Oil for the lamp, spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense. 7Carnelian stones and stones for setting in the ephod and in the breastplate. 8And they shall make Me a Tabernacle, that I may abide in their midst. 9As all that I show you, the form of the Tabernacle and the form of all its furnishings, thus shall you make it. 10And they shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits its length and a cubit and a half its width, and a cubit and a half its height. 11And you shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and outside you shall overlay it, and you shall make upon it a golden molding all around. 12And you shall cast for it four golden rings and set them on its four feet, and two rings on its one side and two rings on the other side. 13And you shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold, 14and you shall bring the poles through the rings on the side of the Ark to carry the Ark with them. 15In the rings of the Ark the poles must be, they shall not come out. 16And you shall set in the Ark the tablets of the Covenant that I shall give you. 17And you shall make a cover of pure gold, two and a half cubits its length, and a cubit and a half its width. 18And you shall make two cherubim of gold, hammered work you shall make them, at the two edges of the cover. 19And make one cherub at one edge and one cherub at the other edge, from the cover you shall make the cherubim at both its edges. 20And the cherubim shall spread wings above, shielding the cover with their wings, and their faces toward each other, toward the cover the faces of the cherubim shall be. 21And you shall set the covering upon the Ark from above, and in the Ark you shall set the tablets of the Covenant that I shall give you. 22And I shall meet with you there and speak with you, from above the covering between the two cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the Covenant, all that I shall charge you regarding the Israelites. 23And you shall make a table of acacia wood, two cubits its length and a cubit its width and a cubit and a half its height. 24And you shall overlay it with pure gold, and make for it a golden molding all around. 25And you shall make a frame for it, a handsbreadth all around, and you shall make a golden molding for its frame all around. 26And you shall make four gold rings for it and set the rings at the four corners which are at its four legs. 27Facing the frame the rings shall be, as housings for the poles to carry the table. 28And you shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold, and the table shall be carried with them. 29And you shall make its bowls and its shovels and its jars and its chalices, from which libation is done. Pure gold you shall make them. 30And you shall set on the table the bread of the Presence, before Me perpetually.
31“And you shall make a lamp stand of pure gold, hammered work it shall be made, its base and its shaft; its cups, its calyxes and its blossoms, shall be from that work. 32And six shafts going out from its sides, three shafts of the lamp stand from its one side and three shafts of the lamp stand from its other side. 33Three cups shaped like almond blossoms in the one shaft, calyx and blossom, and three cups shaped like almond blossoms in the other shaft, calyx and blossom, thus for the six shafts that go out from the lamp stand. 34And on the lamp stand four cups shaped like almond blossoms, their calyxes and their blossoms. 35And a calyx as part of it under every two shafts, a calyx as part of it under every two shafts, for the six shafts coming out from the lamp stand. 36Their calyxes and their shafts shall be part of it, all of it one hammered work, pure gold. 37And you shall make its seven lamps, and its lamps shall be mounted and give light in front of it, 38and its tongs and its fire-pans—pure gold. 39With a talent of pure gold shall it be made together with all these furnishings. 40And see, and make it by their pattern which you are shown on the mountain.”
CHAPTER 25 NOTES
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2. a donation. The Hebrew terumah is a noun derived from a verb that means “to elevate,” and, among several biblical terms for gift, it is the one that designates a donation for use in the cult or by the priests. This verse inaugurates an elaborate catalogue of instructions about the design of the Tabernacle and its furnishings that will take up the rest of the Book of Exodus, with the exception of the episode of the Golden Calf in chapters 32–34. Modern readers may well be perplexed as to why the compelling narrative of the liberation from Egypt and the revelation on Mount Sinai should be set aside for this lengthy account of cultic paraphernalia. The historical circumstances of the assembling of the Torah must surely be kept in mind. That editorial process in all likelihood took place in Priestly circles early in the period of the return from Babylonian exile (later sixth century B.C.E.). The strong scholarly consensus is that these chapters are the work of the Priestly writers (P), and the fascination with all the minute details of cultic paraphernalia seems a clear reflection of P’s special interests. One may nevertheless ask why the editors, however sacerdotal their concerns, chose to introduce this large block of material at the very moment when Moses has disappeared into the cloud on the mountaintop to commune with God. That moment in the story is marked by the people’s fearful distance from the fiery divine presence up above and the daring closeness of one man, Moses the intercessor, to the deity. Against this background, the architectural plan for the Tabernacle and its décor offers a reassuring antithesis. God will come down from above to dwell among His people within the securely designated sanctum of the Tabernacle, will sit enthroned on the cherubim carved above the Ark of the Covenant, from whence He will issue divine instruction (verse 22), and where He will be accessible through the cultic mediation of the priests. The divinely endorsed donations and cultic procedures, moreover, set up a contrast with the transgressive donations that enable the forbidden cult of the Golden Calf. For further comments on the role of this long section, see the introduction to Exodus.
4. indigo and purple and crimson. These, at any rate, are the ends of the spectrum reflected by these color words, there being some margin of doubt about the precise indication of chromatic terms and considerably more doubt about the identification of precious stones in these lists. The first two colors indicate dyes extracted from a species of murex, and of Phoenician manufacture; the third is a dye derived from the eggs of scale insects found on oak trees. Both processes of dye production were immensely laborious and costly, and hence these colors were used especially for royal garments throughout the eastern part of the Mediterranean (one may recall Agamemnon “treading on purple” in the great welcome-carpet scene Clytemnestra stages for him near the beginning of the Oresteia). It is hard to imagine that these precious dyes would have been accessible to the Hebrews in the wilderness—this is one of several indications that the picture of the Tabernacle is in many ways an ideal projection rather than a strictly historical account.
5. ocher-dyed skins. Many translations interpret the Hebrew teḥashim as “dolphins” or “dugongs,” but a more plausible connection has been made with an Akkadian term that indicates a yellow or orange dye. That would be in keeping with the focus on brilliantly dyed stuff in the previous verse.
8. Tabernacle. The Hebrew mishkan literally means “abode” (“that I shall abide in their midst”). It is, of course, a portable sanctuary, to be carried from encampment to encampment in the wilderness, and provisions are made for carrying the Ark, beginning in verse 12. The mishkan looks like an amalgam of recollections of an ancient portable sanctuary—Umberto Cassuto notes certain parallels in Ugaritic literature—and a retrojection to the Wilderness period of the Jerusalem temple. More recent scholars detect a resemblance to the bicameral design and proportions of Pharaoh Rameses II’s tent used in military campaigns.
12. its four feet. One may infer that there were actually small carved feet at the four bottom corners so that the Ark would not rest directly on the ground.
16. set in the Ark the tablets of the Covenant. “Tablets” is merely implied by ellipsis. The word for “covenant” here is ʿedut, a synonym for the more prevalent berit. The stone tablets of the Law are the document of the eternal contract between God and Israel, and their placement here reflects a common ancient Near Eastern practice of placing documents of solemn contracts within sacred precincts.
18. cherubim. The Hebrew keruvim is derived from a root that suggests “hybrid” or “composite” and perhaps also “steed.” These are fearsome winged beasts (compare the Egyptian sphinx) that figure in poetry as God’s celestial steeds and that here serve as His terrestrial throne, “enthroned upon cherubim” being an epithet for the deity. (See the comment on Genesis 3:24.)
22. And I shall meet with you there. The “you” (singular) is Moses. The verb translated as “meet” has the sense of appointing a fixed time and place.
29. chalices. Though the Hebrew menaqiot might seem to derive from the verb that means “to clean” and so mean something like “scrapers,” Cassuto argues persuasively that these would have to be receptacles for pouring libations, and he cites cognates in Akkadian and Ugaritic.
30. the Presence. Literally, “face,” a word often used to designate “presence” for royal, or divine figures.
31. from that work. Literally, “from it,” the antecedent being “hammered work.”
40. see, and make it by their pattern which you are shown on the mountain. Rashi comments here: “to tell us that Moses had difficulty with the fashioning of the lamp stand, until the Holy One showed him a lamp stand of fire.” It is in fact no easy task to reconstruct the actual design of the lamp stand from these verbal instructions. The Priestly writer himself may have been aware of this difficulty and thus emphasizes that Moses was vouchsafed a vision (“you are shown”) of the precise pattern of the lamp stand. In any case, this reference to Moses’s being shown the pattern on the mountain reflects an effort to anchor the instructions for the Tabernacle, which look like an independent literary unit, in the narrative context that in effect they disrupt.
1“And the Tabernacle you shall make with ten panels of twisted linen, and indigo and purple and crimson, with cherubim, designer’s work you shall make them. 2The length of the panel is twenty-eight cubits, and a width of four cubits to the one panel, a single measure for all the panels. 3Five of the panels shall be joined to each other and the other five joined to each other. 4And you shall make indigo loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the set, and thus shall you do on the edge of the outermost panel in the other set. 5Fifty loops you shall make in the one panel and fifty loops you shall make in the outermost panel which is in the other set, the loops opposite one another. 6And you shall make fifty golden clasps, and you shall join the panels to one another with the clasps, that the Tabernacle be one whole. 7And you shall make goat-hair panels for a tent over the Tabernacle, eleven panels you shall make them. 8The length of the one panel, thirty cubits, and a width of four cubits to the panel, a single measure for the eleven panels. 9And you shall join five of the panels by themselves and six of the panels by themselves, and you shall double over the sixth panel at the front of the tent. 10And you shall make fifty loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the one set, and fifty loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the other set. 11And you shall make fifty bronze clasps and bring the clasps through the loops, and you shall join the tent, that it become one whole. 12And the overhang left over in the tent panels, half of the leftover panel you shall let hang over the back of the Tabernacle. 13And the cubit on one side and the cubit on the other in what is left over in the length of the tent panels shall hang over both sides of the Tabernacle to cover it. 14And you shall make a covering for the tent of reddened ram skins and a covering of ocher-dyed skins above. 15And you shall make boards for the Tabernacle of acacia wood, upright. 16Ten cubits the length of the board, and a cubit and a half the width of the single board. 17Two tenons for the one board linked to each other, thus you shall do for all the boards of the Tabernacle. 18And you shall make the boards for the Tabernacle, twenty boards for the southern end. 19And forty silver sockets you shall make beneath the twenty boards, two sockets beneath the one board for its two tenons and two sockets beneath the other board for its two tenons. 20And on the other side of the Tabernacle at the northern end, twenty boards. 21And their forty silver sockets, two sockets beneath the one board and two sockets beneath the other board. 22And at the rear of the Tabernacle to the west you shall make six boards. 23And two boards you shall make for the corners of the Tabernacle at the rear. 24And they shall match below, and together they shall end at the top inside the one ring, thus it shall be for the two of them, at the two corners they shall be. 25And there shall be eight boards with their silver sockets, sixteen sockets, two sockets beneath the one board and two sockets beneath the next board. 26And you shall make crossbars of acacia wood, five for the boards of the one side of the Tabernacle. 27And five crossbars for the boards of the other side of the Tabernacle, and five crossbars for the side of the Tabernacle at the rear to the west. 28And the central crossbar in the middle board shall shoot through from end to end. 29And the boards you shall overlay with gold, and their rings you shall make of gold, housings for the crossbars, and you shall overlay the crossbars with gold. 30And you shall set up the Tabernacle according to the fashion of it that you were shown on the mountain.
31“And you shall make a curtain of indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen, designer’s work it shall be made, with cherubim. 32And you shall set it on the four acacia posts overlaid with gold, their hooks gold, upon four silver sockets. 33And you shall set the curtain under the clasps and you shall bring there, within the curtain, the Ark of the Covenant, and the curtain shall divide for you between the Holy and the Holy of Holies. 34And you shall set the cover over the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. 35And you shall put the table outside the curtain and the lamp stand facing the table on the side of the Tabernacle to the south, and the table you shall set on the northern side. 36And you shall make a screen for the entrance of the tent, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen, embroiderer’s work. 37And you shall make for the screen five acacia posts, and you shall overlay them with gold, their hooks gold, and you shall cast for them five bronze sockets.”
CHAPTER 26 NOTES
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1. panels of twisted linen. The cloth panels, yeriʿot, invoke a term generally used for tent coverings, and we are repeatedly reminded that this portable sanctuary, however splendid in gold and silver and bronze and acacia wood, is a tent, ʾohel. The twisting of linen evidently refers to a special technique in the weaving process devised to give the individual threads extra strength.
with cherubim, designer’s work. These cherubim are woven as a tapestry design into the cloth. The Hebrew for “designer,” ḥoshev, indicates a person with a special skill or someone who makes a purposeful plan (maḥashavah).
6. that the Tabernacle be one whole. More literally, “that the Tabernacle be one.” This phrase leads Abraham ibn Ezra to muse over how unity in the greater world is constituted by an interlocking of constituent parts that became a transcendent whole, as in the unity of microcosm and macrocosm. One need not read this section homiletically, as he does, in order to see the power of summation of this particular phrase. All the instructions for the design of the Tabernacle—however much the learned interpreters have differed in explaining the concrete architectural details—point to a perfect symmetry of nicely interlocking parts, posts fitting into sockets, clasps into loops, with crossbars shooting from end to end on both sides of the structure, and the dimensions of every component carefully measured.
7. goat-hair panels. Within the Tabernacle are splendid dyed hangings of twisted linen. Covering the structure on the outside is a coarser cloth made of woven goat hair, presumably black, a typical fabric for tents, with the capacity to keep out bad weather.
10. loops. It is noteworthy that the Tabernacle passages abound in architectural or structural terms such as this one (lulaʾot) that do not appear elsewhere. The plausible inference is that these passages reflect a specialized architectural (or sacerdotal-architectural) literature.
17. tenons. The Hebrew yadot (from yad, “hand”) is another technical architectural term, indicating a projection at the end of the board made to fit into another board in a kind of tongue-and-groove construction.
33. the Ark of the Covenant … divide … between the Holy and the Holy of Holies. If the tent structure of the Tabernacle looks backward to an early nomadic period, its dimensions—exactly half those of Solomon’s temple—and its divisions mirror the structure of the Jerusalem temple. Dividing—the same word that is central to P’s account of creation—between gradations of sanctity is fundamental to the conception of sacred space put forth here. The 100-cubit length (about 60 feet) of the Tabernacle is divided symmetrically between a western half, or outer court, where there is an altar for burnt offerings, and an eastern half, which constitutes the Holy Place (maqom qadosh), in which the lamp stand, the table, and the altar of incense are located, and a small inner zone, screened by a curtain, the Holy of Holies, in which the Ark of the Covenant is kept. The verbal construct “X of X” has the idiomatic sense in biblical Hebrew of “the supreme X” (compare “the song of songs, which is Solomon’s”).
1“And you shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits in length and five cubits in width, the altar shall be square, and three cubits its height. 2And you shall make its horns on its four corners, from the same piece its horns shall be, and you shall overlay it with bronze. 3And you shall make its pails for its ashes and its shovels and its basins and its flesh-hooks and its fire-pans, all its vessels you shall make of bronze. 4And you shall make for it a meshwork grating of bronze, and you shall make on the mesh four bronze rings at its four corners. 5And you shall set it beneath the ledge of the altar from below, and the mesh shall come halfway up the altar. 6And you shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood and overlay them with bronze. 7And its poles shall be brought through the rings, and the poles shall be on the two sides of the altar when it is carried. 8Hollow boarded you shall make it, as He showed you on the mountain, thus they shall do.
9“And you shall make the Tabernacle court on the southern side. There shall be hangings for the court of twisted linen, a hundred cubits in length for one side. 10And its posts shall be twenty and their sockets twenty, of bronze, the hooks for the posts and their bands shall be of silver. 11And thus for the northern side, in length the hangings shall be a hundred cubits, and its posts twenty and their sockets twenty, of bronze, and the hooks for the posts, of silver. 12And the width of the court on the western side, fifty cubits of hangings, their posts shall be ten and their sockets ten. 13And the width of the court on the side to the very east, fifty cubits. 14And fifteen cubits of hangings for the flank, their posts three and their sockets three. 15And for the other flank fifteen cubits of hangings, their posts three and their sockets three. 16And for the gate of the court a screen of twenty cubits, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen, embroiderer’s work, their posts four and their sockets four. 17All the posts around the court shall be banded in silver, their hooks silver and their sockets bronze. 18The length of the court, a hundred cubits, and the width fifty throughout, and the height five cubits, twisted linen, and their sockets bronze. 19So for all the vessels of the Tabernacle in all its service; and all its pegs and all the pegs of the court, shall be bronze.
20“As for you, you shall command the Israelites, that they take you clear oil of beaten olives for the light, to kindle a lamp perpetually. 21In the Tent of Meeting outside the curtain which is over the Ark of the Covenant, Aaron with his sons shall lay it out, from evening to morning before the LORD, an everlasting statute for your generations incumbent on the Israelites.”
CHAPTER 27 NOTES
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2. its horns. The horn-shaped projections at the four corners of the altar were, as archaeological investigation has established, a common feature of altars in the West Semitic world. One may surmise that the common Semitic association of horn (Hebrew qeren, the same word as Latin cornu and English “horn”) with strength may have led to this particular practice of cultic ornamentation, the horns somehow confirming or focusing the strength flowing down from the deity to the cultic site. Blood from the sacrifices was sprinkled on the horns of the altar, and so perhaps the horns might have been regarded as the most sacred places on the altar. On that basis, some scholars have reasoned that this is why a person seeking sanctuary would cling to the horns of the altar, although a simpler explanation might be that the horns were the only places on the altar where there was something to hold on to.
3. pails … shovels … basins … flesh-hooks … fire-pans. Biblical narrative is notoriously stingy in providing details of the paraphernalia of everyday life, in marked contrast to Homer. Oddly and instructively, the one genre of biblical literature in which such details, with the particularizing lexicon needed to indicate them, are abundantly displayed is in cultic legislation. (Again, the Priestly writer remains true to his own professional interests.) Every one of the utensils required for the elaborate procedure of catching the blood of an animal, shoveling up the ashes and residual fat (deshen), turning over the meat as it burns, raking off the coals from the fire, is patiently catalogued in this nonnarrative material.
8. as He showed you on the mountain, thus they shall do. This is a variation of the formula at the very end of chapter 25: God is now the subject of a transitive verb “to show” instead of the passive form used for Moses in 25:40. Here, moreover, there is a move from the singular “you” in the first clause to “they” in the second, the Israelites. This switch may reflect an ambiguity about the addressee of the laws of the Tabernacle. In narrative context, it would have to be Moses on the mountain. In rhetorical formulation, the laws sound as though they were addressed to an impersonal “you,” the representative Israelite who is obliged to perform all these instructions (and if this text was originally an independent unit of Priestly legislation, it could well have been directed to an impersonal Priestly “you”). This verse, then, appears to make an effort to anchor the cultic laws in the narrative setting by reminding us that everything is addressed to Moses, who will then pass on the orders to the Israelite people for implementation. The move from God as speaker to a third-person reference to the deity is in keeping with a general fluid usage in the Bible between first and third person.
14. flank. The Hebrew katef literally means “shoulder.” Several of the recurring architectural terms are transposed from anatomy to human constructions (e.g., tselaʿ, one of two words translated here as “side,” originally means “rib”).
18. fifty throughout. The literal meaning is “fifty in [by?] fifty,” evidently to stress that the width shall measure fifty cubits throughout.
19. So for all the vessels. The “so” is probably implied by the initial lE, which Umberto Cassuto, following Gesenius, characterizes as a “lamed of inclusion.”
20. clear oil of beaten olives. Olive oil would have been the most expensive kind of oil in the ancient Near East (sesame oil was cheaper and more common), and in contrast to ordinary practice, in which cloudy oil would be used for burning and clear oil for culinary purposes, only the best oil is to be burned in the lamps. The olives are to be beaten (katit) with mortar and pestle rather than crushed in a press, the latter being a less labor-intensive process. Egypt, it should be noted, did not typically cultivate olive trees, and it imported olive oil at a premium from Canaan and Phoenicia. It is thus extremely unlikely that the fleeing slaves would have been able to bring with them supplies of fine olive oil, or to obtain it in the wilderness, so this instruction is another clear instance in which a detail of the later Jerusalem cult is retrojected onto the Wilderness period.
to kindle a lamp perpetually. The Hebrew tamid means “perpetually,” or “regularly repeated.” Despite the attachment of later Jewish tradition to an “eternal light” (the conventional English rendering of the two words here, ner tamid), the clear indication of the next verse, confirmed by the sanctuary story of young Samuel and Eli in 1 Samuel 2, is that the lamp burned from evening until daybreak and was lit again each evening.
21. the Tent of Meeting. This is a synonym for the Tabernacle, stressing the notion that within this tent God “meets,” or has fixed occasions of encounter (moʿed) with the people through Moses and the high priest.
the Ark of the Covenant. As before, “Ark” is merely implied in the Hebrew.
1“And you, bring you forward Aaron your brother and his sons with him from the midst of the Israelites to be priests to Me—Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron. 2And you shall make sacred garments for Aaron your brother for glory and for splendor. 3And you, speak to every wise-hearted person whom I have filled with a spirit of wisdom, that they make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him, to be priest to Me. 4And these are the garments that they shall make: breastplate and ephod and robe and checkwork tunic, turban and sash. And they shall make sacred garments for Aaron your brother and for his sons to make him a priest to Me. 5And they, they shall take the gold and the indigo and the purple and the crimson and the linen. 6And they shall make the ephod gold, indigo, and purple, crimson and twisted linen, designer’s work. 7Two joining shoulder-pieces it shall have at its two edges, and attached. 8And the fastening band that is on it shall be of the same fashioning, of one piece with it, gold, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen. 9And you shall take two carnelian stones and engrave on them the names of Israel’s sons. 10Six of their names on the one stone and the six remaining names on the other stone in the order of their birth. 11Lapidary work, seal engravings you shall engrave on the two stones the names of Israel’s sons, encased in filigree of gold you shall make them. 12And you shall set the two stones on the shoulder-pieces of the ephod as remembrance stones for Israel’s sons, and Aaron shall carry their names before the LORD on his two shoulders as a remembrance. 13And you shall make a filigree of gold. 14And two chains of pure gold, intertwined you shall make them in cordwork, and you shall set the corded chains on the filigree. 15And you shall make a breastplate of judgment, designer’s work, like the work of the ephod you shall make it, gold, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen you shall make it. 16It shall be square and doubled, a hand span its length and a hand span its width. 17And you shall set in it a stone inset, four rows of stone, a row of ruby, topaz, and malachite, the first row. 18And the second row, turquoise, sapphire, and amethyst. 19And the third row jacinth, agate, and crystal. 20And the fourth row, beryl and carnelian and jasper, framed in gold in their settings. 21And the stones shall be according to the names of Israel’s sons, twelve according to their names, seal engravings, each with its name for the twelve tribes. 22And you shall make on the breastplate intertwined cordwork, chains of pure gold. 23And you shall make on the breastplate two golden rings, and you shall set the two rings on the two edges of the breastplate. 24And you shall set the two golden cords on the two rings at the edges of the breastplate. 25And the two ends of the two cords you shall set in the two frames and put them on the shoulder-pieces of the ephod at the front. 26And you shall make two golden rings and put them on the two edges of the breastplate, at its border which faces the ephod on the inside. 27And you shall make two golden rings and set them on the two shoulder-pieces of the ephod below in the front opposite its seam above the band of the ephod. 28And they shall fasten the breastplate from its rings to the rings of the ephod with an indigo strand to be upon the band of the ephod, that the breastplate not slip from the ephod. 29And Aaron shall carry the names of Israel’s sons in the breastplate of judgment over his heart when he comes into the sanctum as a remembrance before the LORD perpetually. 30And you shall place in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim, that they be over Aaron’s heart when he comes before the LORD, and Aaron shall carry the judgment for the Israelites over his heart before the LORD perpetually. 31And you shall make the robe for the ephod pure indigo. 32And the opening for the head shall be in the middle of it, its opening shall have a wovenwork border all around, like the opening of a coat of mail it shall be, it must not tear. 33And you shall make on its hem pomegranates of indigo and purple and crimson, on its hem all around, and golden bells within them all around. 34A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, on the hem of the robe all around. 35And it shall be upon Aaron when he serves, so that its sound be heard when he comes into the sanctum before the LORD and when he goes out, that he shall not die. 36And you shall make a diadem of pure gold and engrave upon it with seal engravings: Holy to the LORD. 37And you shall put on it an indigo strand, that it be on the turban, at the front of the turban it shall be. 38And it shall be on Aaron’s forehead, that Aaron may bear off any guilt from the holy things that the Israelites consecrate, from all their holy gifts, and it shall be on his forehead perpetually for their acceptance before the LORD. 39And you shall weave the tunic checkwork linen, and you shall make a linen turban, and a sash you shall make of embroiderer’s work. 40And for Aaron’s sons you shall make tunics, and you shall make sashes for them, and headgear you shall make them for glory and for splendor. 41And you shall dress them, Aaron your brother and his sons with him, and you shall anoint them, and you shall install them and consecrate them, that they serve Me as priests. 42And make them linen breeches to cover their naked flesh, from the hips to the thighs they shall be. 43And they shall be upon Aaron and upon his sons when they come into the Tent of Meeting or when they approach the altar to serve in the sanctum, that they do not bear guilt and die—a perpetual statute for him and for his seed after him.”
CHAPTER 28 NOTES
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1. to be priests to Me. Everywhere except perhaps in this chapter, the verb kihen is intransitive and means “to perform the functions of a priest (kohen).” Here, however, the infinitive has an accusative suffix and so might mean “to make him a priest.” In any case, the transformation of Moses’s brother and nephews into a distinctive sacerdotal caste is the burden of this passage, and it is the brilliant priestly costume—note the refrain in verse 2 and verse 40, “for glory and for splendor”—that most impressively effects this transformation.
3. wise-hearted … wisdom. The Hebrew for “wise/wisdom” suggests both a craftsman’s skill and insight or understanding.
4. breastplate and ephod and robe and checkwork tunic. The ancient audience of this text had an immense advantage over modern readers because it would have had some actual glimpses of all this splendid raiment and priestly ornamentation and thus would have had a concrete notion of what was being referred to. There have been endless latter-day efforts to reconstruct the wardrobe and to parse the technical sartorial terms that are used to represent it, but these can be no more than amalgams of guesses and approximations. Though the present translation assumes that “breastplate” is still plausible for the Hebrew ḥoshen (etymology uncertain), others contend it is a smaller “breastpiece” or even a “pouch.” The ephod (the Hebrew root suggests “binding” or “wrapping around”) evidently was a kind of apron, although opinions differ on this. It has a secondary meaning as an oracular device.
9. the names of Israel’s sons. Here the recurrent ethnic designation beney yisraʾel clearly refers to the twelve sons of Jacob who are the eponymous founders of the twelve tribes of Israel. This, too, reflects a momentous transformation, enshrined in the magic of the cult: the twelve sons of Jacob have become a consecrated people whose special status before the deity is evoked, “remembered,” ritually enacted and confirmed in the engravings on the two precious stones in the priest’s shoulder-pieces that he carries before the LORD.
15. a breastplate of judgment. The judgment (mishpat) function of the breastplate is executed through the Urim and Thummim (verse 30) that are set in it. Because the purpose of this device is oracular, some prefer to render mishpat as “decision,” although there is evidence elsewhere that the Urim and Thummim were often used to determine who was guilty of a particular trespass.
17–20. ruby, topaz, and malachite … jasper. For all the scholarly recourse to conjectured etymologies and comparative philology, it is virtually impossible to determine precisely what precious stones are referred to in this list of twelve terms. We can do little more than revel in the gorgeousness of the words, which is surely part of the intended response for the ancient audience.
21. according to the names of Israel’s sons. The stones offer a reduplication—reinforcing the ritual efficacy—of the device of incising the names of the twelve tribes: in the first instance, six names were listed on each of two stones; now every tribe has its own precious stone.
29. over his heart. “Heart” of course here means “chest,” but the resonance of the term as the organ of feeling and understanding should not be lost.
30. the Urim and the Thummim. The precise character of this oracular device has eluded identification. One common conjecture is that they were two stones with different letters or words engraved on them, but unless someone actually digs up a pair, there is no way of proving this conjecture. Traditional interpretation associates the two words with roots that mean “light” and “perfection,” but if they are opposites, they could be linked etymologically with terms suggesting “curse” and “innocence.” It is probably not coincidental that these two words begin respectively with the first and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In any case, most of the references to the Urim and Thummim in narrative passages invite the inference that the device generated a binary response to whatever question was posed: yes or no, guilty or innocent.
32. like the opening of a coat of mail. This is a prevalent traditional interpretation, but the crucial term in the phrase, taḥra, does not appear elsewhere and is of uncertain etymology and meaning.
34. A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate. The sheer splendor of the ornamentation is evoked in poetic incantation through the repetition of the phrase. Judah Halevi, the great medieval Hebrew poet, echoes these words in a delicate, richly sensual love poem, registering an imaginative responsiveness to the sumptuous sensuality of the language here.
35. so that its sound be heard … that he shall not die. In the ancient Near East, the inner sanctum was a dangerous place. Any misstep or involuntary trespass of the sacred paraphernalia could bring death. (Compare verse 38: the device with the divine name on Aaron’s golden diadem carries away any guilt that may be incurred in violating “the holy things that the Israelites consecrate.”) The sound of the ringing golden bells on Aaron’s hem goes before him as he enters the sanctum, serving an apotropaic function to shield him from harm in this zone of danger.
36. diadem. This is another term about which there is dispute. The primary meaning of the Hebrew tsits is “blossom,” and so this might be a blossom-shaped gold ornament bound upon the forehead, of the sort the Egyptians were known to use. In poetry, tsits appears in parallelism with nezer, “crown.”
38. any guilt. If, for example, an Israelite consecrated to the cult an animal marred by a blemish, “guilt” would be incurred.
41. install them. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “fill their hands.”
42. linen breeches to cover their naked flesh. Breeches were not worn except by the priestly officials. The need to avoid exposing nakedness in the cult was asserted earlier in 20:26. The Hebrew term here is literally “flesh of the nakedness,” the word for nakedness, ʿerwah, referring specifically to the genitalia and strongly associated with forbidden sexuality.
43. that they do not bear guilt and die. The phrase used pointedly puns on “bear off … guilt” in verse 38. In the first instance, the idiom means to remove guilt. Here, antithetically, it means to bear the onus of guilt. Even the golden diadem engraved with the divine name would not protect the priest from harm if he were to violate the sanctity of the Tabernacle by exposing his sexual parts as he performed his priestly functions.
1“And this is the thing you shall do for them to consecrate them to be priests to Me: take one bull of the herd and two unblemished rams, 2and flatbread and flatcakes mixed with oil and flatcake wafers brushed with oil, fine wheat flour you shall make them. 3And you shall place them in one basket and bring them forward in the basket, with the bull and with the two rams. 4And Aaron and his sons you shall bring forward at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, and you shall bathe them in water. 5And you shall take the garments and dress Aaron in the tunic and the robe of the ephod and the ephod and the breastplate, and you shall gird him with the band of the ephod. 6And you shall put the turban on his head and you shall set the holy diadem on the turban. 7And you shall take the anointing oil and pour it over his head and you shall anoint him. 8And his sons you shall bring forward and dress them in tunics. 9And you shall belt them with sashes, Aaron and his sons, and set headgear on them, and the priesthood shall be for them a perpetual statute, and you shall install Aaron and his sons. 10And you shall bring forward the bull before the Tent of Meeting, and Aaron, and his sons, shall lay their hands on the bull’s head. 11And you shall slaughter the bull before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 12And you shall take of the bull’s blood and place it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and all the blood you shall spill upon the base of the altar. 13And you shall take all the fats that cover the entrails and the lobe on the liver and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them and turn them to smoke on the altar. 14And the bull’s flesh and its hide and its dung you shall burn in fire outside the camp, it is an offense. 15And the one ram you shall take, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the ram’s head. 16And you shall slaughter the ram and take its blood and throw it upon the altar all around. 17And the ram you shall cut up by its parts and wash its entrails and its limbs and put them on its cut parts and its head. 18And you shall turn the ram to smoke on the altar, it is a burnt offering to the LORD, a pleasing fragrance, a fire offering to the LORD. 19And you shall take the second ram, and Aaron, and his sons, shall lay their hands on the ram’s head. 20And you shall slaughter the ram and take of its blood and put it on the right earlobe of Aaron and on the right earlobe of his sons and on their right thumb and on their right big toe, and you shall throw the blood on the altar all around. 21And you shall take of the blood that is on the altar and of the anointing oil and sprinkle them on Aaron and on his garments and on his sons’ garments and on his face together with them, and he shall be consecrated, he and his garments and his sons and his sons’ garments together with him. 22And you shall take from the ram the fat, and the broad tail and the fat that covers the entrails and the lobe on the liver and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, and the right thigh, for it is the installation ram, 23and one loaf of bread and one cake of bread made with oil and one wafer from the basket of flatbread that is before the LORD. 24And you shall put it all on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons and elevate it as an elevation offering before the LORD. 25And you shall take them from their hands and turn them to smoke on the altar, together with the burnt offering, as a pleasing fragrance before the LORD, it is a fire offering to the LORD. 26And you shall take the breast from the installation ram which is Aaron’s and elevate it as an elevation offering before the LORD, and it shall be your portion. 27And you shall consecrate the breast of the elevation offering and the thigh of the donation, which were elevated and which were donated, from the installation ram that is Aaron’s and that is his sons’. 28And it shall be a perpetual statute for Aaron and for his sons from the Israelites, for it is a donation, and a donation shall it be from the Israelites, from their communion sacrifices, their donation to the LORD.
29“And the sacral garments that are Aaron’s shall belong to his sons after him, to be anointed in them and to be installed in them. 30Seven days the priest in his stead among his sons shall wear them, who comes into the Tent of Meeting to serve in the sanctum. 31And the installation ram you shall take and you shall cook its flesh in a sacred place. 32And Aaron, and his sons with him, shall eat the ram’s flesh and the bread that is in the basket at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. 33And they for whom atonement is made shall eat them, to install them, to consecrate them, and no stranger shall eat them, for they are holy. 34And if something is left over from the flesh of installation and from the bread until morning, you shall burn what is left in fire, it shall not be eaten, for it is holy. 35And you shall do thus for Aaron and for his sons, as all that I have charged you, seven days you shall install them. 36And an offense-offering bull you shall prepare for each day, and you shall purge the altar as you atone over it, and you shall anoint it to consecrate it. 37Seven days you shall atone on the altar and consecrate it, and the altar shall be a holy of holies, whoever touches it shall be consecrated. 38And this shall you do on the altar: two yearling lambs each day, perpetually. 39The one lamb you shall do in the morning and the other lamb you shall do at twilight. 40And a tenth of a measure of fine flour mixed with a quarter-hin of beaten oil, and a quarter-hin libation of wine for the one lamb. 41And the other lamb you shall do at twilight, like the morning’s grain offering and its libation you shall do it, as a pleasing fragrance to the LORD, 42a perpetual burnt offering for your generations at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before the LORD, where I shall meet with you there to speak to you. 43And I shall meet there with the Israelites and it shall be consecrated through My glory. 44And I shall consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and Aaron and his sons I shall consecrate to be priests to Me. 45And I shall abide in the midst of the Israelites and I shall be God to them. 46And they shall know that I am the LORD their God Who brought them out from the land of Egypt for Me to abide in their midst. I am the LORD their God.”
CHAPTER 29 NOTES
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1. to consecrate them to be priests to Me. This whole series of cultic regulations is arranged in concentric circles: first the donation of the sumptuous materials of the Tabernacle and the instructions for assembling the elaborate portable structure; then the directions for constructing the inner sanctum and the altar; then the vestments and sacred ornaments of the priests; now the priests themselves—their installation rite and the precise instructions for the animal sacrifices, the sundry meal offerings, and the libations. For the Priestly writer, the representation of Aaron and his sons actually performing the sacred service on the altar, installed in their sacerdotal function, butchering the animals and splashing gore on the altar and on themselves, would have surely been the climax of this entire sequence.
4. you shall bring forward. The Hebrew verb hiqriv generally means “to bring near” or “to cause to approach.” Presumably what is implied is coming close to the sacred place of God’s presence. It is also the common verb that means “to sacrifice.”
7. anointing oil. Oil poured over the head—presumably pure olive oil—was the confirming act of consecration for both priests and kings. Hence in biblical idiom the monarch is not the crowned king (though they did sometimes wear crowns) but the anointed king (mashiaḥ).
9. a perpetual statute. The Hebrew ḥoq, which has the general meaning of “statute,” also sometimes suggests an allowance, a benefice that is regularly paid to someone. Since the tribe of Levi from which the priests came would have no lands, the priesthood was not only their spiritual inheritance but also their allowance or dole.
10. lay their hands on the bull’s head. The laying on of hands may simply have betokened an affirmation of possession of the animal, but some commentators suggest a kind of magical transfusion of properties from the person touching to the beast touched—perhaps, the sins for which the sacrificed animal is to atone.
12. And you shall take of the bull’s blood. Blood, which has been so prominent and so multivalent in the Exodus story, here serves a dedicatory and purgative function, making the altar holy. Similarly, in verse 20 Aaron and his sons are enjoined to daub the sacrificial blood symbolically on the organs of hearing and holding and locomotion in order to dedicate themselves wholly to their sacred task. (Presumably, the eye is omitted to avoid the danger of getting blood in the eye, and the mouth is omitted because of the taboo against tasting blood.)
all the blood. This obviously means all the rest of the blood.
14. burn in fire. As elsewhere, this seeming redundance indicates total burning, burning to ashes.
18. a pleasing fragrance. This recurrent idiom clearly derives from pagan usage, in which the fragrance of the sacrifices was imagined to ascend to the nostrils of the deity and cause the deity bodily pleasure. What residue of the pagan concreteness of the idiom may have been retained in its biblical usage is impossible to know.
21. blood … anointing oil. The spectacle of the priests splattered all over with blood and oil may be a repugnant one to the modern imagination, but for the ancients both the clear olive oil and the sacrificial blood were thought of as purifying agents.
29. to his sons after him. Here the priestly succession, from Aaron in the wilderness all the way to the Priestly writer in the sixth century B.C.E., is envisaged. The preposition “in his stead” (taḥtaw) in the next verse is another indication of a chain of succession to the office of high priest.
33. no stranger. The reference here is clearly not to an ethnic alien but, as in other ritual contexts, to anyone not belonging to the priestly caste and not consecrated to approach the sanctum.
36. purge. The Hebrew verb is cognate with the noun for “offense” (ḥataʾt) and is used in the piʿel conjugation, which sometimes can mean to expunge or remove the substance or quality indicated by the verbal root.
37. whoever touches it shall be consecrated. This is commonly explained to mean that whoever touches the altar becomes consecrated, in a kind of contagion of holiness. It could equally mean, however, that whoever touches the altar must first be consecrated, the verb being construed as an imperative. Although contagious impurity is a common biblical idea, there is less basis for a notion of contagious sanctity.
42. for your generations at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. The straddle of the Tabernacle laws between the Wilderness setting and the later cultic center in Jerusalem is especially evident here. The Tabernacle service, after all, was in effect just forty years, but the model it provides for the temple service would be for the generations.
43. it shall be consecrated through My glory. One detects a certain tension between a conception of the sacred inherited from pagan cult and a new, monotheistic conception. According to the former, there exists an intricate technology of the sacred that confers holiness on a place and on the human officiants—the elaborate regimen of construction and dress and sacrifice and sprinkling with blood that has just been detailed. But now God reminds Israel that it is only through His glory, His free decision as deity to make His presence “abide”—a nomad’s term of temporary residence—in this place, that the altar becomes consecrated. Without this divine initiative, all the choreography of the cult is unavailing. The manifestation of the “glory” of the deity has polytheistic antecedents, though the strong emphasis on God’s choice to abide in the midst of Israel is new.
46. I am the LORD their God. Just as the royal proclamation of the Decalogue began with this affirmation, the grand set of regulations for the creation of the Tabernacle and the dedication of the priests concludes with the royal declaration of God’s special relationship with Israel.
1“And you shall make an altar for burning incense, acacia wood you shall make it. 2A cubit its length and a cubit its width, it shall be square, and two cubits its height; from the same piece its horns. 3And you shall overlay it with pure gold—its roof and its walls all around and its horns, and you shall make for it a golden molding all around. 4And two golden rings you shall make for it beneath its molding on its two flanks, you shall make on its two opposite sides, and they shall be housings for the poles with which to carry it. 5And you shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. 6And you shall set it before the curtain that is near the Ark of the Covenant in front of the cover that is over the Ark of the Covenant where I shall meet you. 7And Aaron shall burn upon it the aromatic incense morning after morning, when he tends the lamps he shall burn it. 8And when Aaron lights the lamps at twilight he shall burn it, a perpetual incense before the LORD for your generations. 9You shall not offer up on it unfit incense, nor burnt offering nor grain offering, and no libation shall you pour upon it. 10And Aaron shall atone on its horns once a year with the blood of the offense offering of atonement, once a year he shall atone on it for your generations. It is holy of holies to the LORD.”
11And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 12“When you count heads for the Israelites according to their numbers, every man shall give ransom for his life to the LORD when they are counted, that there be no scourge among them when they are counted. 13This shall each who undergoes the count give: half a shekel by the shekel of the sanctuary—twenty gerahs to the shekel—half a shekel, a donation to the LORD. 14Whosoever undergoes the count from twenty years old and up shall give the LORD’s donation. 15The rich man shall not give more and the poor man shall not give less than half a shekel to atone for their lives. 16And you shall take the atonement money from the Israelites and set it for the service of the Tent of Meeting, and it shall be a remembrance for the Israelites before the LORD to atone for their lives.” 17And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 18“And you shall make a laver of bronze and a stand of bronze for washing and place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and place water there. 19And Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet from it. 20When they come into the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash with water, that they do not die, or when they approach the altar to serve, to burn a fire offering to the LORD. 21And they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they do not die, and it shall be for them a perpetual statute, for him and for his seed, for their generations.”
22And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 23“And you, take you choice spices: five hundred weight wild myrrh, and aromatic cinnamon, half of that, two hundred fifty weight, and aromatic cane, two hundred fifty weight. 24And cassia, five hundred weight by the shekel of the sanctuary, and olive oil, a hin. 25And you shall make of it oil for sacred anointing, a perfumer’s compound, perfumer’s work, sacred anointing oil it shall be. 26And you shall anoint with it the Tent of Meeting and its furnishings and the Ark of the Covenant, 27and the table and all its furnishings and the lamp stand and its furnishings and the altar for incense, 28and the altar for burnt offering and all its furnishings, and the laver and its stand. 29And you shall consecrate them, and they shall be holy of holies, whoever touches them shall be consecrated. 30And Aaron and his sons you shall anoint, and you shall consecrate them to be priests to Me. 31And to the Israelites you shall speak, saying, ‘Oil for sacred anointing this shall be to Me for your generations. 32On a person’s flesh it shall not be poured, and in its proportions you shall make nothing like it. It is holy, it shall be holy for you. 33The man who compounds its like and who puts it on an unfit person shall be cut off from his people.’” 34And the LORD said to Moses, “Take you the fragrances balsam and onycha and galbanum, fragrances, and clear frankincense, equal part for part it shall be. 35And you shall make of it incense, a perfume compound, perfumer’s work, tinctured with salt, pure, sacred. 36And you shall pound it to fine powder and place some of it before the Ark of the Covenant in the Tent of Meeting where I shall meet you. Holy of holies it shall be to you. 37And the incense that you will make, in its proportions you shall not make for yourselves, holy it shall be for you to the LORD. 38The man who makes its like to smell it shall be cut off from his people.”
CHAPTER 30 NOTES
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1. an altar for burning incense. Like so many other features of the Tabernacle, small altars of this sort—two cubits square would be on the order of a foot and a half square—for the special purpose of burning incense were common in Canaanite sanctuaries, as archaeological investigation has shown. Although the Hebrew word for “altar” is derived from the root that means “to slaughter” or “to sacrifice,” its use here for a little golden square on which no sacrifices could be offered indicates that the term was applied to any raised platform dedicated to cultic purposes. The sacrificial altar was located in the outer court of the Tabernacle, the incense altar in the inner precinct directly in front of the Ark of the Covenant (verse 6). The placement of these regulations after the body of Tabernacle laws is commonly explained by the fact that they had nothing to do with the rites of installation. In any case, this chapter seems to be an appendix of miscellaneous items to the Tabernacle section: first instructions about the incense altar, then census regulations, then directions about the laver, and finally the recipe for the incense.
9. unfit incense. Literally, “strange [zarah] incense.” In the cultic passages, as we have already seen, “strange” indicates not “alien” but either a person (layman) or, as here, a substance that is not proper for introduction into the sanctum.
10. once a year with the blood of the offense offering of atonement. That one day would be the Day of Atonement. Aaron would have to carry blood from the outer court, where the animal sacrifice was offered, to conduct this ritual of expiation or purgation in which the four horns of the incense altar were daubed with blood.
12. When you count heads. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “lift up the head.”
every man shall give ransom for his life … when they are counted. It was a belief common to Israel and to the Mesopotamian cultures that it was dangerous for humans to be counted. Perhaps it was felt that assigning individuals in a mass an exact number set them up as vulnerable targets for malefic forces. The story of David’s ill-fated census in 2 Samuel 24, which triggers a plague, turns on this belief. The danger of destruction inherent in census taking could be averted by the payment of a “ransom” for each threatened life as a donation to the sanctuary. The supposed danger of the census thus becomes the rationale for the institution of a poll tax, which in turn will be an important source of revenue for the maintenance of the sanctuary and its officiants.
13. half a shekel by the shekel of the sanctuary. “Shekel” means “weight” in Hebrew, and the stress on weights here is a clear indication that the reference is to a fixed weight of silver rather than to a coin. (Coins came into use fairly late in the biblical period.) It seems likely that the specified “shekel of the sanctuary” was a heavier weight than the “silver shekels at the merchants’ tried weight” (Genesis 23:16) that Abraham pays to Ephron the Hittite. The average weight of actual shekels that have been unearthed is something over eleven grams, which would make the gerah, its twentieth part, rather small change.
23–24. myrrh … cinnamon … cassia. As with the names for precious stones, the exact identification of the sundry spices is uncertain (the items listed in verse 34 are especially doubtful). The first two terms mentioned, however, happily have cognates in other languages—mor and qinamon. The presence of the latter term in biblical Hebrew demonstrates the vitality of ancient international trade: cinnamon was originally raised in Ceylon and elsewhere in South Asia, and the word appears to have arrived in ancient Israel with the luxury import from wherever the plant was grown.
32. On a person’s flesh it shall not be poured. The person (ʾadam) clearly means a layperson, in contradistinction to a consecrated priest.
33. unfit person. Again, the term is zar, literally, “stranger,” and serves as a definition of what is meant by “person” in the previous verse. There is a complementarity of notions of unfitness to the cult. An unfit person or substance may not come or be brought before the altar. The sanctified compound of fragrances used for the incense to be burned on the altar may not be used outside the sanctuary for secular purposes, for the mere pleasure of enjoying the aroma.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“See, I have called by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. 3And I have filled him with the spirit of God in wisdom and in understanding and in knowledge and in every task, 4to devise plans, to work in gold and in silver and in bronze, 5and in stonecutting for settings and in wood carving, to do every task. 6And I, look, I have set by him Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, and in the heart of every wise-hearted man I have set wisdom, that they make all that I have charged you: 7the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Covenant and the covering that is upon it and all the furnishings of the Tent, 8and the table and its furnishings and the pure lamp stand and all its furnishings and the incense altar, 9and the burnt-offering altar and all its furnishings and the laver and its stand, 10and the service garments and the sacred garments for Aaron the priest and the garments of his sons to be priests, 11and the anointing oil and the aromatic incense for the sanctum, as all that I have charged you they shall do.”
12And the LORD said to Moses, saying, 13“And you, speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘Yet My sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you for your generations to know that I am the LORD Who hallows you. 14And you shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Those who profane it are doomed to die, for whosoever does a task on it, that person shall be cut off from the midst of his people. 15Six days shall tasks be done, and on the seventh day, an absolute sabbath, holy to the LORD. 16Whosoever does a task on the sabbath day is doomed to die. And the Israelites shall keep the sabbath to do the sabbath for their generations, a perpetual covenant. 17Between Me and the Israelites it is a sign for all time that six days did the LORD make heaven and earth and on the seventh day He ceased and caught His breath.’”
18And He gave Moses when He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai the two tablets of the Covenant, tablets of stone written by the finger of God.
CHAPTER 31 NOTES
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1. called by name. The obvious sense of the idiom is to choose, to designate, or, as Rashi puts it, to summon “to perform a task.” After the formal blueprints for the Tabernacle, God enlists the actual craftsmen who are to execute the plans.
3. wisdom … understanding … knowledge. As before, “wisdom” and its synonyms suggest both mastery of a craft and something like insight.
task. The two most common biblical terms for “work” are melaʾkhah (the word used here) and ʿavodah (the word used to designate the activity of the slaves in Egypt). ʿAvodah usually implies subservience—in political contexts, it means to be subject or vassal to a superior power; in cultic contexts, divine service—and it also often suggests strenuous physical labor (it is, for example, the verbal root used when Adam is cursed “to work the soil”). Melaʾkhah derives from the verbal root l-ʾ-k found in Ugaritic but not used in the Bible as a verb, which means to carry out a designated task. Thus, a malaʾkh is a messenger or agent (when his sender is God, an angel). In this immediate context, melaʾkhah has a clear connotation of craft, coupled with the requisite manual skill. The term, however, is meant to interact with its pointed recurrence in the immediately following passage about the sabbath, and so the present translation represents it by “task” in both cases.
6. in the heart of every wise-hearted man I have set wisdom. The two master craftsmen just mentioned by name would of course have needed large crews of men with the requisite skills to work under them. Putting wisdom in the hearts of wise-hearted men is a kind of positive counterpart to hardening the heart of Pharaoh: the capacity for skillful artisanship is innate, one of the person’s attributes, but God is the ultimate source of all such capacities and the enabling force for their realization.
7–11. The list of everything that Bezalel and his workers are to execute follows the instructions for the Tabernacle and the priests (chapters 25–30) in the order they were given and thus serves as a recapitulative summary of the long section that it now concludes.
10. the service garments. There is debate over the precise meaning of the Hebrew bigdey haserad. Rashi—and many modern interpreters after him—prefers to relate it to an Aramaic verb s-r-d, which means “to weave” or “to braid.” Others, beginning with the Aramaic Targums in Late Antiquity, connect it with the Hebrew root sh-r-t, “to serve.” Because the term is bracketed here with bigdey qodesh, “sacred garments,” it is more likely that it indicates a particular function rather than the weave or fabric of the clothing. It would seem, then, that bigdey haserad are special garments worn while performing a less sacrosanct service than that of the cult performed by the high priest.
13–17. As is often the case in biblical passages of climactic thematic significance, the injunction about the sabbath is crafted with verbal symmetries that are at once elegant and emphatic. The word shabat (in one instance, shabaton) occurs precisely seven times and the verb “to keep” three times; and, as Yitzhak Avishur has noted, the whole short section is chiastically structured—for it is a sign (a), it is a sign for all time (b), between Me and you (c), Between Me and the Israelites (c'); for your generations (b') / for their generations (a').
13. Yet My sabbaths you shall keep. The force of the initial ʾakh, “yet” (or “only,” “just”) is to link this reiteration of the prohibition of work on the sabbath to the preceding section on the construction of the Tabernacle. The Israelites have been enjoined to undertake an elaborate set of labors in order to build God a fit sanctuary. Nevertheless, this idea of a sanctuary, inherited from pagan antecedents, for confirming the bond between man and God does not have precedence over the original Israelite idea of the sabbath as the supreme confirmation of that bond, Israel’s imitatio dei, “a sign between Me and you for your generations.”
14. whosoever does a task on it. All work, including even the “task” (melaʾkhah) of the Tabernacle, must cease on the sabbath. The talmudic sages thus showed themselves keen readers of these two adjacent passages in deriving the thirty-nine primary categories of labor (’avot melaʾkhah) forbidden on the sabbath from the sundry activities necessary for the assemblage of the Tabernacle and its furnishings.
doomed to die … cut off from the midst of his people. The vehemence of this formulation is predicated on the notion that the sabbath is the ultimate sign of the covenant between God and Israel, so that one who violates the sabbath violates the Covenant and renounces solidarity with the covenanted people.
15. tasks. The Hebrew uses a collective noun, singular in form.
17. caught His breath. For a justification of this physical rendering of the verb, see the comment on Exodus 23:12. The flagrant anthropomorphism would not have been a problem for the ancient audience.
18. when He had finished speaking. The concise summary statement of this verse brings us back from the long catalogue of divine instructions—all that Moses was “shown on the mountain” during his forty days there—to the narrative situation that we left in chapter 24. Moses is now ready to come down to the foot of the mountain, where trouble is already brewing.
written by the finger of God. The phrase “finger of God,” previously used by Pharaoh’s soothsayers, may suggest that God inscribed the stone tablets by tracing a finger over them, without chisel or stylus. Scholars have proposed that behind this image lie both mythological and political traditions of the ancient Near East: gods who inscribe human fate in stone and overlords who inscribe on tablets the conditions of vassalage for their vassals.
1And the people saw that Moses lagged in coming down from the mountain, and the people assembled against Aaron and said to him, “Rise up, make us gods that will go before us, for this man Moses who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.” 2And Aaron said to them, “Take off the golden rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3And all the people took off the golden rings that were on their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4And he took them from their hand and he fashioned it in a mold and made it into a molten calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” 5And Aaron saw, and he built an altar before it, and Aaron called out and said, “Tomorrow is a festival to the LORD.” 6And they rose early on the next day, and they offered up burnt offerings and brought forward communion sacrifices, and the people came back from eating and drinking and they rose up to play. 7And the LORD said to Moses, “Quick, go down, for your people that you brought up from Egypt has acted ruinously. 8They have swerved quickly from the way that I charged them. They have made them a molten calf and bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.’” 9And the LORD said to Moses, “I see this people and, look, it is a stiff-necked people. 10And now leave Me be, that My wrath may flare against them, and I will put an end to them and I will make you a great nation.” 11And Moses implored the presence of the LORD his God and said, “Why, O LORD, should your wrath flare against Your people that You brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand? 12Why should the Egyptians say, ‘For evil He brought them out, to kill them in the mountains, to put an end to them on the face of the earth’? Turn back from Your flaring wrath and relent from the evil against Your people. 13Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel Your servants, to whom You swore by Yourself and spoke to them, ‘I will multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens, and all this land that I said, I will give to your seed, and they will hold it in estate forever.’” 14And the LORD relented from the evil that He had spoken to do to His people. 15And Moses turned and came down the mountain, with the two tablets of the Covenant in his hand written on both their sides, on the one side and on the other they were written. 16And the tablets, God’s doing they were, and the writing, God’s writing it was, inscribed on the tablets. 17And Joshua heard the sound of the people as it shouted, and he said to Moses, “A sound of war in the camp!” 18And he said,
“Not the sound of crying out in triumph,
and not the sound of crying out in defeat.
A sound of crying out I hear.”
19And it happened when he drew near the camp that he saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses’s wrath flared, and he flung the tablets from his hand and smashed them at the bottom of the mountain. 20And he took the calf that they had made and burned it in fire and ground it fine and scattered it over the water and made the Israelites drink it. 21And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you should have brought upon it great offense?” 22And Aaron said, “Let not my lord’s wrath flare. You yourself know that this people is in an evil way. 23And they said to me, ‘Make us gods that will go before us, for this man Moses who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’ 24And I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off.’ And they gave it to me, and I flung it into the fire, and out came this calf.” 25And Moses saw the people, that it was let loose, for Aaron had let them loose as a shameful thing to their adversaries. 26And Moses stood at the gate of the camp and said, “Whoever is for the LORD, to me!” And the Levites gathered round him. 27And he said to them, “Thus said the LORD God of Israel, ‘Put every man his sword on his thigh, and cross over and back from gate to gate in the camp, and each man kill his brother and each man his fellow and each man his kin.’” 28And the Levites did according to the word of Moses, and about three thousand men of the people fell on that day. 29And Moses said, “Dedicate yourselves today to the LORD, for each man is against his son and against his brother, and so blessing may be given to you today.” 30And it happened on the next day that Moses said to the people, “You, you have committed a great offense. And now I shall go up to the LORD. Perhaps I may atone for your offense.” 31And Moses went back to the LORD and said, “I beg You! This people has committed a great offense, they have made themselves gods of gold. 32And now, if You would bear their offense …, and if not, wipe me out, pray, from Your book which You have written.” 33And the LORD said to Moses, “He who has offended against Me, I shall wipe him out from My book. 34And now, lead this people to where I have spoken to you. Look, My messenger shall go before you. And on the day I make a reckoning, I will make a reckoning with them for their offense.” 35And the LORD scourged the people for having made the calf that Aaron made.
CHAPTER 32 NOTES
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1. And the people saw that Moses lagged in coming down from the mountain. These words bring us back to the concrete narrative situation at the end of chapter 24, before the long interruption of cultic law: Moses had disappeared into the numinous cloud on the mountaintop; the people, awestruck, waited at the foot of the mountain, glimpsing the flashes of fire from the cloud above. It is understandable that after forty days they should wonder whether Moses would ever return, and that they should be terrified at the idea of being stranded in the wilderness without the leader on whom they had been entirely dependent.
make us gods that will go before us. Here, and repeatedly in the Golden Calf episode, ʾelohim, which regularly refers to God (in the singular) is used in the plural: despite all the spectacular demonstrations of the LORD’s supreme power, the people have not liberated themselves from polytheistic notions. “Go before us” points to the urgently felt need for a guide through the wilderness, which should have been Moses or, more pointedly, the divine messenger God designated to lead Israel. The phrase is also a military idiom suggesting leadership in battle.
this man Moses. It is noteworthy that the most ordinary of terms, “man,” becomes a kind of epithet for Moses, perhaps intimating the distance of puzzlement or wonder with which others regard him. Just before the tenth plague, we were told that “[t]he man Moses, too, is very great in the land of Egypt” (11:3). Now “this man Moses” is an object of exasperation and perplexity for the Israelites. The connection with the passage at the beginning of chapter 11 is reinforced by Aaron’s request for the golden earrings, since the “borrowing” of gold and silver ornaments is mentioned in the same section of chapter 11.
4. fashioned it in a mold. The word represented as “mold,” ḥeret, usually means “stylus,” but incising would not normally have been part of the process of making a molten image. Some scholars relate both the verb and the noun to entirely different roots that yield the sense “wrapped it in a bag,” but that reading is quite strained. Perhaps a term associated with a different image-making process was then applied idiomatically to all kinds of metalwork image-making. In any case, Aaron is pointedly represented as fashioning the image, an idea that may have been reinforced by the use of the term ḥeret, in blatant contradiction to the comically lame excuse he will make to Moses, “I flung it into the fire, and out came this calf” (verse 24).
These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. This is a provocative reversal of God’s proclamation at the beginning of the Decalogue and elsewhere that He is the LORD Who brought the people out of Egypt. The gods are plural while the calf is singular because ancient Near Eastern people were polytheists, not fetishists: the golden icon was conceived as the terrestrial throne or platform for the deity (singular or plural), having precisely the same function as the cherubim over the Ark. The Golden Calf is thus a kind of anti-Tabernacle or anti-Ark, meant for the same end of making the divine dwell among the people but doing it in a prohibited fashion. It should be noted that golden bulls or calves were often used as cultic seats for deities in the ancient Near East. Scholarship has duly registered an implicit polemic in this story against the northern kingdom of Israel, which set up golden calves at its sanctuaries in Bethel and Dan—evidently, not at all as images of pagan worship but as thrones for the God of Israel, in a competing iconography to the one used in Jerusalem.
5. a festival to the LORD. Aaron tries both to placate the people and yet to preserve a sense of loyalty to the LORD, YHWH. They have already twice said that they wanted him to make them “gods,” but, rather desperately, he clings to the notion that the Golden Calf should be seen as the LORD’s throne and that this celebration should be “a festival to the LORD.”
6. to play. The Hebrew letsaḥeq suggests revelry and in some contexts sexual play or license. The strong implication is a bacchanalian celebration (accompanied by food and drink) that involves shouting and song (verse 18) and dance (verse 19) and probably orgiastic activity as well.
7. your people that you brought up from Egypt. Like a disgruntled parent disavowing connection with a wayward child, God says to Moses that Israel is your people.
9. And the LORD said to Moses. The formula for introducing quoted speech is reiterated with no intervening response from Moses. According to this fixed convention of biblical narrative, this repetition of the formula after the lack of an answer points to Moses’s incapacity to respond, dumbfounded as he is by what God tells him.
10. leave Me be … and I will put an end to them. Either God, imagined in frankly human terms, is so thoroughly fed up with the refractory people that He really contemplates destroying them utterly and then starting from scratch with Moses, or these words are a kind of test of Moses, who firmly declines to be the progenitor of a new nation and shows himself a staunch advocate of Israel.
12. Why should the Egyptians say. Moses invokes what has been a leading motif of the Exodus story: God’s liberation of Israel from slavery and His triumph over Egypt established His “glory,” His unique status as supreme God of all the earth. To destroy Israel now would overturn all that has been achieved through the Exodus for God’s standing in the eyes of humankind at large.
13. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel Your servants. After the argument based on the preservation of God’s reputation, Moses invokes a contractual obligation: God has promised to the patriarchs a grand future for their descendants in the terms of the Covenant, and He surely cannot revoke that promise.
15. written on both their sides. Despite Christian and Jewish iconography, the stone tablets, as archaeology has discovered in remnants from the surrounding cultures, were thick enough to have inscriptions on both sides.
17. And Joshua heard the sound of the people as it shouted. Joshua, we should recall, was stationed partway up the mountain while Moses went on to the summit. Thus he hears the uproar of the Israelite revelry from a distance and is not close enough to see what is going on. Umberto Cassuto proposes that the single word for “as it shouted,” bereiʿoh, is a pun on beraʿah, “for evil,” which was used in verse 12.
A sound of war in the camp. Joshua is a military man and so jumps to the conclusion that the uproar means battle.
18. triumph … defeat … crying out. In the triadic line of poetry that Moses uses to respond to Joshua, “triumph” (literally, “might”) and “defeat” (literally, “weakness”) are antithetically bracketed, and then the third member of the line, as often happens in poetic triads, introduces a new, unstable element. The common claim that the Hebrew for “crying out,” ʿanot, means “singing” is dubious because the sound has just been described as shouting (though it might include singing). The same term, ʿanot, occurs in 2 Samuel 22:36, where it probably means “battle cry.” Moses’s response to Joshua, then, is that he hears an indiscriminate uproar which has nothing to do with military matters.
19. he saw the calf and the dancing … and he flung the tablets … and smashed them. Moses, of course, has already been informed about all this, but, as the Hebrew proverb has it, “hearing is not the same as seeing.” His wrath flares—precisely what he implored God not to allow to occur with divine wrath—and he responds in a paroxysm of anger, flinging and smashing. There is also a good deal of evidence that in the ancient Near East smashing the tablets on which a binding agreement was written was a legal act of abrogating the agreement.
20. scattered it over the water and made the Israelites drink it. Numerous commentators have noted the (approximate) analogy to the ordeal by drinking to which the woman suspected of adultery is submitted (Numbers 5:11–31). Richard Elliott Friedman asks, what water?, and then interestingly proposes that this would have to have been the water that Moses miraculously provided for the people, which would be a compounding of irony.
24. I flung it into the fire. Aaron in his feeble attempt at an alibi uses the same verb for violent or spasmodic throwing that was employed for Moses’s casting down the tablets.
25. let loose, for Aaron had let them loose. The basic meaning of the Hebrew paruʿa is “to unbind,” as in the unbinding or letting loose of long hair. The sense here is of a loosing of all inhibitions in orgiastic frenzy. Friedman sees in “let them loose,” peraʿoh, a pun on “Pharaoh,” while Cassuto detects in the same word a pun on beraʿah, “in evil.”
as a shameful thing to their adversaries. The word translated as “shameful thing,” shimtsah, appears only here and so its meaning is uncertain, though it seems to indicate something strongly negative. “To their adversaries” might conceivably be a euphemism for “to themselves,” as the more common word for enemies is sometimes used as a euphemistic substitution in curses.
27. Put every man his sword on his thigh. Typically, the short sword would have been strapped in a scabbard to the left thigh for quick unsheathing by the right hand. In rallying round him men of the tribe of Levi, his own tribe, Moses does something analogous to what David will do in creating a power base within the people through a kind of family militia recruited from his clan in Bethlehem. We can no longer recover the historical roots of the biblical traditions about Levi, later the sacerdotal tribe, as an implacably violent group. In the massacre of the males of Shechem (Genesis 35), that violence was negative; here it is represented in a positive light, supposedly exerting a necessary astringent effect on the people that has been “let loose,” that has surrendered to the orgiastic release of a pagan cult.
each man kill his brother … his fellow … his kin. This chilling command enjoins the sword-wielding Levites to show no mercy to friend or kin, since the very nature of a pagan orgy engulfing the masses is that at least some of those most deeply involved will be people close to the executors of retribution. The figure of three thousand dead in the next verse indicates that this is not an indiscriminate massacre but an assault on the ringleaders—or perhaps, those guilty of the most egregious excesses—among the orgiasts.
29. Dedicate yourselves. This is the same idiom for priestly dedication, “fill your hands,” that in the context of the Tabernacle cult was rendered as “install.”
so blessing may be given to you. The Hebrew syntax is a little obscure, but the evident sense is that the Levites, through their homicidal zealotry, confirm their “dedication” as a priestly caste and thus as worthy recipients of God’s blessing.
31. I beg You. The Hebrew, a single word, is neither pronoun nor verb but is an ejaculation, ʾana, which is used to begin an entreaty. “Please” in English seems matter-of-fact and merely polite, not sufficiently imploring.
32. if You would bear their offense. The thought stipulated after this conditional clause is left incomplete, perhaps because Moses is uncertain what to say and is in any case concentrating on the negative conditional clause: “if not, wipe me out, pray, from Your book.”
Your book. Although most modern translators prefer to represent sefer as “scroll” or “record,” the word also sometimes means “book” in biblical Hebrew (its regular sense in postbiblical Hebrew), and various ancient Near Eastern peoples registered belief in a celestial book in which the fates of humankind were inscribed. (The codex format of the book had not yet been invented, but a text written on a scroll could nevertheless be conceptualized as a book.) This entire exchange between Moses and God looks suspiciously like a duplication, in part contradictory, of verses 9–13. There God offered to make Moses the beginning of a new people after the destruction of all the Israelites. Here Moses asks for death if God will not forgive Israel, and God replies that He will exact retribution only from the offenders.
34. My messenger shall go before you. It is not the gods that the people wanted Aaron to make for them that will go before them but, as stipulated earlier in the story, God’s messenger. That messenger, we should recall, is not only a guide but also an inexorable and rather menacing monitor of the people’s behavior.
on the day I make a reckoning. The exact reference is obscure. Three thousand of the offenders have already been killed by the Levites, and, momentarily, there will be a further “scourge” by God. For this archetypal sin of the Golden Calf, a free-floating prospect of further retribution would seem to hover over the people like a dark shadow.
35. for having made the calf that Aaron made. The repetition of the verb conveys the complicity of both the people and Aaron in the making of the calf.
1And the LORD said to Moses, “Go, head up from here, you and the people that you brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land that I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘To your seed I will give it.’ 2And I shall send a messenger before you and I shall drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite and the Perizzite, the Hivvite and the Jebusite, 3to a land flowing with milk and honey. But I shall not go up in your midst, for you are a stiff-necked people, lest I put an end to you on the way.” 4And the people heard this evil thing, and they mourned, and none of them put on their jewelry. 5And the LORD said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. If but a single moment I were to go up in your midst, I would put an end to you. And now, put down your jewelry from upon you, and I shall know what I should do with you.’” 6And the Israelites stripped themselves of their jewelry from Mount Horeb onward.
7And Moses would take the Tent and pitch it for himself outside the camp, far from the camp, and he called it the Tent of Meeting. And so, whoever sought the LORD would go out to the Tent of Meeting which was outside the camp. 8And so, when Moses would go out to the Tent, all the people would rise and each man would station himself at the entrance of his tent, and they would look after Moses until he came to the Tent. 9And so, when Moses would come to the Tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stand at the entrance of the Tent and speak with Moses. 10And all the people would see the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the Tent, and all the people would rise and bow down each man at the entrance of his tent. 11And the LORD would speak to Moses face-to-face, as a man speaks to his fellow. And he would return to the camp, and his attendant Joshua son of Nun, a lad, would not budge from within the Tent.
12And Moses said to the LORD, “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ yet You, You have not made known to me whom You will send with me. And You, You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in My eyes.’ 13And now, if, pray, I have found favor in Your eyes, let me know, pray, Your ways, that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your eyes. And see, for this nation is Your people.” 14And He said, “My presence shall go, and I will grant you rest.” 15And he said to Him, “If Your presence does not go, do not take us up from here. 16And how, then, will it be known that I have found favor in Your eyes, I and Your people? Will it not be by Your going with us, that I and Your people may be distinguished from every people that is on the face of the earth?” 17And the LORD said to Moses, “This thing, too, which you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in My eyes and I have known you by name.” 18And he said, “Show me, pray, Your glory.” 19And He said, “I shall make all My goodness pass in front of you, and I shall invoke the name of the LORD before you. And I shall grant grace to whom I grant grace and have compassion for whom I have compassion.” 20And He said, “You shall not be able to see My face, for no human can see Me and live.” 21And the LORD said, “Look, there is a place with Me, and you shall take your stance on the crag. 22And so, when My glory passes over, I shall put you in the cleft of the crag and shield you with My palm until I have passed over. 23And I shall take away My palm and you will see My back, but My face will not be seen.”
CHAPTER 33 NOTES
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3. But I shall not go up. The initial Hebrew conjunction ki most often means “for” but also sometimes has an adversative sense, “though” or “but,” which seems probable here: go up, and My messenger will go before you, but don’t expect Me to go up with you.
lest I put an end to you on the way. These words seem to be dictated by a strongly anthropomorphic characterization of God: after the flaring of His anger over the Golden Calf, He prefers to keep a certain distance from this provoking people, whose behavior could easily push Him to destroy them entirely. Abraham ibn Ezra understands God’s refusal to dwell in the midst of Israel as a cancellation of the construction project for the Tabernacle—a not unreasonable reading, because all along the Tabernacle was conceived as an institutionalized focus for God’s presence in the midst of the people.
4. none of them put on their jewelry. Given the fact that they have just made a mass donation of gold earrings for the fashioning of the Golden Calf, one gets a sense that they have come out of Egypt bedecked with a rich abundance of precious ornaments.
5. You are a stiff-necked people. If but a single moment I were to go up in your midst. This entire verse duplicates verse 3 and has the look of an uneven editorial splicing of sources. One difference, however, is that in the first instance these words were addressed only to Moses, whereas now he is enjoined to report them to the people, and with a certain note of intensification (“If but a single moment …”). Another element of puzzling duplication is the injunction to remove the jewelry, an act that the Israelites have already executed. Richard Elliott Friedman explains the contradiction by proposing that the verb here, “put down from upon you,” is meant to indicate not just a temporary removal of the ornaments but a permanent renunciation of wearing them during the Wilderness period. This reading is supported by the odd prepositional use in the next verse of “stripped themselves of their jewelry from Mount Horeb,” where “from” probably has a temporal sense (which this translation reflects by adding the adverb “onward”).
7. would take. Biblical Hebrew has no specialized verbal form for the iterative tense (that is, habitually repeated actions), but the use here of the imperfective followed by the perfective form and the contextual clues make it clear that this whole passage is in the iterative.
and he called it the Tent of Meeting. Elsewhere, this designation was synonymous with the Tabernacle, but here there is no question of erecting that elaborate structure but rather of Moses’s pitching his own tent outside the camp and making it serve as a Tent of Meeting, a place where God meets or encounters Moses as Israel’s spokesman. Ibn Ezra proposes, with an eye to the iterative character of the passage, that Moses has placed the second set of tablets of the Law in this tent. The Tent itself is located outside the camp because Israel, after the Golden Calf, is deemed unworthy to have God’s meeting place with them inside the camp.
8. each man would station himself … they would look after Moses. This setup replicates horizontally the vertical setup in which Moses goes up on the mountain to encounter God and the people wait below, looking upward at the cloud on the summit. The refractory people now appears to have resumed the stance of obedient followers of Moses.
9. the pillar of cloud would come down … and speak with Moses. It is of course God speaking from within the pillar of cloud. The oddness of the formulation is dictated by the fact that it is a vividly faithful representation of the people’s visual perspective: as each man stands at the entrance of his tent looking after Moses, and as he sees the pillar of cloud (verse 10), it seems to him as though the pillar of cloud were speaking with Moses.
11. And the LORD would speak to Moses face-to-face, as a man speaks to his fellow. These two idioms for direct communication cannot be literally true because the burden of what follows in this chapter is that no man, not even Moses, can see God’s face. The hyperbole is in all likelihood a continuation of the visual perspective of the people so clearly marked in verses 8–10: as it appears to the Israelites from their vantage point in front of their tents, Moses conversing with the pillar of cloud is speaking to God as a man speaks to his fellow.
Joshua son of Nun, a lad. The preceding narrative conveys a strong impression that Joshua is a man of mature years. Ibn Ezra, who places him in his fifties at this juncture, plausibly infers that the Hebrew naʿar here reflects its not infrequent sense of someone in a subaltern position (it would thus be a synonym for “attendant”).
12. You have not made known to me whom You will send with me. The verb “to know,” both in the hiphʿil (causative) and qal (simple) conjugations, is the key word of this section, which turns on Moses’s urgent need to know both the nature of the guidance God will provide Israel through the wilderness and God’s intrinsic nature. Moses appears to balk at God’s previous declaration that He will not go up in the midst of the people to the promised land but instead will delegate a divine messenger for that task.
I know you by name. The Hebrew idiom suggests both special election and intimate relationship.
13. for this nation is Your people. Moses seeks to remind God of His covenantal attachment to Israel, bearing in mind that in the flare-up of divine anger when Israel made the Golden Calf, God had referred to the Israelites as “your people.”
14. My presence shall go, and I will grant you rest. The Hebrew is altogether cryptic—and so compact that the whole sentence is only four words—and this translation mirrors that cryptic effect. Presumably, what God is telling Moses is that He will indeed go before the people through the wilderness, and thus lighten Moses’s burden, “grant you rest” (alternately, that verb could refer, according to biblical idiom, to giving Moses, or the people, “rest” from their enemies when they enter the land). But God, scarcely willing to concede that He Himself will lead the people, words the response so laconically, suppressing the clarifying “before you” after “My presence shall go,” that Moses is by no means sure what God means, and so he goes on to say, “If Your presence does not go, do not take us up from here.” He then stipulates (verse 16) that it is only through God’s presence among the Israelites as they journey onward that his own favored status before God can be confirmed, and the election of Israel as well. In all this, it should be noted that “presence” and “face” are the same Hebrew word, panim.
18. Show me, pray, Your glory. We are not likely to recover precisely what the key term kavod—glory, honor, divine presence, and very literally, “weightiness”—conveyed to the ancient Hebrew imagination. In any case, Moses, who first fearfully encountered God in the fire in the bush, is now ready and eager to be granted a full-scale epiphany, a frontal revelation of the look and character of this divinity that has been speaking to him from within the pillar of cloud.
19. I shall make all My goodness pass in front of you. In response to the request that God show Moses His glory, He offers instead to show him His “goodness” (tuv), a manifestation of His moral attributes as divinity. But God’s goodness is not amenable to human prediction, calculation, or manipulation: it is God’s untrammeled choice to bestow grace and compassion on whom He sees fit, as He has done with Moses.
21. And the LORD said. Extraordinarily, there are three consecutive iterations of the formula for introducing speech (verses 19, 20, 21) with no response from Moses. Moses, having asked to see God face-to-face, is in a daunting situation where it is God Who will do all the talking and explain the limits of the revelation to be vouchsafed Moses.
22. shield you with My palm. The Hebrew kaf means the inside of the hand, the part that holds objects, and is not the general word for hand (yad). The conjunction of the verb “shield” (or “screen”) with kaf is unusual, and perhaps kaf is used here because it is the tender part of the hand. Another scholarly proposal is that kaf in this instance is an assimilative spelling of kanaf, “wing” (or “border,” of a garment), a noun elsewhere idiomatically associated with shielding or protection.
23. you will see My back, but My face will not be seen. Volumes of theology have been spun out of these enigmatic words. Imagining the deity in frankly physical terms was entirely natural for the ancient monotheists: this God had, or at least could assume, a concrete manifestation which had front and rear, face and back, and that face man was forbidden to see. But such concreteness does not imply conceptual naïveté. Through it the Hebrew writer suggests an idea that makes good sense from later theological perspectives: that God’s intrinsic nature is inaccessible, and perhaps also intolerable, to the finite mind of man, but that something of His attributes—His “goodness,” the directional pitch of His ethical intentions, the afterglow of the effulgence of His presence—can be glimpsed by humankind.
1And the LORD said to Moses, “Carve you two stone tablets like the first ones, and I shall write on the tablets the words which were on the first tablets that you smashed. 2And be ready by morning, and you shall go up in the morning to Mount Sinai and take your stance for Me there on the mountaintop. 3And no man shall go up with you, and also no man shall be seen in all the mountain. Neither shall the sheep nor the cattle graze opposite that mountain.” 4And he carved two stone tablets like the first ones, and Moses rose early in the morning and went up to Mount Sinai as the LORD had charged him, and he took in his hand the two stone tablets. 5And the LORD came down in the cloud and stationed Himself with him there, and He invoked the name of the LORD. 6And the LORD passed before him and He called out: “The LORD, the LORD! A compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in kindness and good faith, 7keeping kindness for the thousandth generation, bearing crime, trespass, and offense, yet He does not wholly acquit, reckoning the crime of fathers with sons and sons of sons, to the third generation and the fourth.” 8And Moses hastened and prostrated himself on the ground and bowed down. 9And he said, “If, pray, I have found favor in Your eyes, my Master, may my Master, pray, go in our midst, for it is a stiff-necked people, and you shall forgive our crime and our offense, and claim us as Yours.” 10And He said, “Look, I am about to seal a covenant. Before all your people I will do wonders that have not been created in all the earth and in all the nations, and all the people in whose midst you are shall see the LORD’s doing, for fearsome is that which I do with you. 11Watch you that which I charge you today. Look, I am about to drive out before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivvite and the Jebusite. 12Watch yourself, lest you seal a covenant with the inhabitant of the land against which you come, lest he become a snare in your midst. 13For their altars you shall shatter and their pillars you shall smash and their cultic poles you shall cut down. 14For you shall not bow to another god, for the LORD, His name is Jealous, a jealous God He is. 15Lest you seal a covenant with the inhabitant of the land, and they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and he call you, and you eat of his sacrifice, 16and you take from his daughters for your sons, and his daughters whore after their gods, and make your sons whore after their gods. 17No molten gods shall you make for yourselves. 18The Festival of Flatbread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat flatbread as I charged you, at the fixed time of the month of the New Grain, for in the month of the New Grain you came out of Egypt. 19Every womb-breach is Mine, and all your livestock in which you have a male womb-breach of ox or sheep. 20And a womb-breach of donkey you shall redeem with a sheep, and if you do not redeem it, you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of your sons you shall redeem, and they shall not appear in My presence empty-handed. 21Six days you shall work and on the seventh day you shall cease. In plow time and in harvest you shall cease. 22And a Festival of Weeks you shall make for yourself, first fruits of the harvest of wheat, and a Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. 23Three times in the year all your males shall appear in the presence of the Master, the LORD God of Israel. 24For I will dispossess nations before you, and I will widen your territory and no man will covet your land when you go up to appear in the presence of the LORD three times in the year. 25You shall not slaughter with leavened stuff the blood of My sacrifice, nor shall the sacrifice of the Festival of Passover be left till the morning. 26The best of the first fruit of your soil you shall bring to the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”
27And the LORD said to Moses, “Write you these words, for according to these words I have sealed a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights. Bread he did not eat, nor water did he drink. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Words. 29And it happened when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the Covenant in Moses’s hand when he came down from the mountain, that Moses did not know that the skin of his face had glowed when he spoke with Him. 30And Aaron, and all the Israelites, saw Moses, and, look, the skin of his face glowed, and they were afraid to come near him. 31And Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the chiefs in the community came back to him, and Moses spoke to them. 32And afterward all the Israelites drew near and he charged them with what the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33And Moses finished speaking with them, and he put a veil on his face. 34And when Moses came before the LORD to speak with Him, he would remove the veil until he came out, and he would come out and speak to the Israelites that which he had been charged. 35And the Israelites would see Moses’s face, that the skin of Moses’s face glowed, and Moses would put the veil back on his face until he came to speak with Him.
CHAPTER 34 NOTES
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1. Carve you two stone tablets. The first set of tablets had been given by God to Moses (31:18). Now, as Rashi aptly puts it, God says to Moses, “You smashed the first ones, you, carve you others.”
2. take your stance. The same verb, nitsavta, is used here as at the end of the immediately preceding section (33:21); so it is reasonable to assume that the revelation now on the mountaintop of God’s moral attributes is precisely the just promised revelation of God’s “goodness” to Moses when he is to stand in the cleft of the crag.
3. no man shall be seen in all the mountain. These instructions repeat the injunction in chapter 19 to separate the people from Moses before God gives the law to Moses on the summit of Sinai. Now, however, after the incident of the Golden Calf, the separation is total—this time there are no attendants stationed partway up the mountain.
5. stationed Himself with him there, and He invoked the name of the LORD. Given the propensity of biblical Hebrew to use verbs without making the grammatical subject explicit, either Moses or God could be doing the stationing and the invoking. God makes better sense as the subject of “stationed” (the same verb as the one used for Moses, “take your stance,” but in the reflexive conjugation, perhaps to distinguish God’s action) because it immediately follows “came down,” of which God is the unambiguous subject. It might seem more plausible that Moses would be the one to invoke (qaraʾ bE) God’s name, but this is precisely what God said He would do in the previous dialogue with Moses (33:19). The exclamation “The LORD, the LORD!” would then be that invocation.
6. The LORD, the LORD! The translation follows the traditional understanding of the two Hebrew words as an exclamatory repetition. It is also possible, as Maimonides and others have noted, to read the sequence of words as follows: “And the LORD called out, ‘The LORD!’”
7. keeping kindness for the thousandth generation … yet He does not wholly acquit. See the second comment on Exodus 20:5. “Wholly acquit” (which does not appear in the version in the Decalogue) clearly implies that in cases where the offenders persist in their offense they cannot expect to be acquitted, for all of God’s stated compassion.
9. may my Master, pray, go in our midst. Virtually every word Moses speaks here harks back to his exchange with God after the fiasco of the Golden Calf. God had said that He would not go in the midst of the people because it was stiff-necked and that He would instead send a messenger; Moses invokes the same attribute of being stiff-necked to argue that the people needs God’s intimate guiding presence. Moses had referred before to his finding favor in God’s eyes; now he requests as confirmation of that favored status that God go in the midst of the people.
10. Look, I am about to seal a covenant. Many scholars identify the verses that follow, through to verse 28, as the Small Book of the Covenant. It manifestly replicates material from the Book of the Covenant (chapters 21–23) as well as from the Decalogue. It has also been proposed that these injunctions reflect a variant set of Ten Commandments, but that interpretation seems strained because some of the laws here—e.g., the redemption of firstborn animals and the ban on the use of leavened stuff with sacrifices—are too secondary to be part of a list of ten defining demands that God makes of Israel.
12. lest you seal a covenant with the inhabitant of the land. Such a covenant with idolators would be a kind of anti-covenant to the one God is now making with Israel. As many commentators have observed, in the aftermath of the Golden Calf episode, this series of injunctions pointedly begins with a stern command to keep a distance from the pagans and to destroy their cultic objects.
13. pillars … cultic poles. The pillars, matsevot, are sacred steles, probably made of piled-up stones (hence the verb “smash”). The cultic poles, ʾasherim, were in all likelihood initially associated with the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah; their exact design and dimensions are not known, but it is clear that they were made of wood (hence the verb “cut down,” which also plays against the verb in Hebrew for sealing a covenant, which is literally to “cut” a covenant).
14. His name is Jealous. See the first comment on Exodus 20:5. The fact that the very next verses three times invoke the metaphor of whoring to represent idolatry strongly argues for a quasisexual sense of “jealous” (rather than “impassioned”): the God Who has chosen Israel implicitly represents Himself as Israel’s husband and lover (a metaphor that both Hosea and Jeremiah will make explicit), and when the Israelites betray Him by worshipping other gods, they go “whoring,” are unfaithful as an errant spouse is sexually unfaithful.
17. No molten gods. This reiterated prohibition has special resonance after what has just happened with the Golden Calf.
20. break its neck. See the second comment on Exodus 13:13.
21. In plow time and in harvest you shall cease. This clause does not occur in the earlier prohibitions of work on the seventh day. For the agriculturist, it is a vivid way of stressing that the obligation of the sabbath day is binding throughout the annual cycle, even when a farmer might feel the urgent temptation to go on with the plowing of his fields in the early spring or the harvesting of his crops in the fall.
23. the Master. The Hebrew ʾadon is an approximate synonym of baʿal, and there may be a polemic point to the use of the term here in a legal document that begins with a warning against the seductions of Canaanite cults: it is before the Master, the ʾadon, the God of Israel, and not before any Baal that Israel is to appear. For the double valence of “to appear in the presence of the LORD,” see the comment on 23:15.
24. I will widen your territory and no man will covet your land. As Abraham ibn Ezra plausibly suggests, the fact that Israel will have ample, and secure, borders means that when people leave their holdings to go up to the sanctuary for the pilgrim festivals, they will not have to fear incursions from marauders or invaders.
26. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. See the comment on Exodus 23:19.
28. Bread he did not eat, nor water did he drink. This parallelism is a kind of epic flourish, stressing the superhuman heroism of “the man Moses” as he undergoes his epiphany in a formulaic period of forty days.
the words of the covenant, the Ten Words. This is the first time that what is inscribed on the tablets is designated the Ten Words, or “Commandments.” (The Hebrew devarim means “words” or “things,” and has several additional senses.)
29. Moses came down … Moses’s hand … Moses did not know. The triple repetition of the name is stylistically odd. It may serve here to throw a kind of spotlight on Moses, who, after his forty days with God, is set off visibly from the rest of humankind.
the skin of his face had glowed. The sense of the verb would seem to be “had begun to glow” since the condition continues. There is some question about the precise meaning of the verb qaran, which occurs only here. The Greek translation of Aquila and the Latin Vulgate famously understood it to mean “sprouted horns” (from qeren, “horn”), a virtually impossible reading because horns would grow from the head, not from “the skin of the face.” Others have imagined that the verb could indicate a hornlike toughness of the skin, a kind of radiation burn after exposure to the divine effulgence. (Ibn Ezra indignantly dismisses the rationalists who claim Moses’s face had turned hornlike from the forty days’ fast.) It makes more sense to see something terrifyingly luminous—a reflection of the divine fire glimpsed by the people from the foot of the mountain—rather than a disfiguration in Moses’s face. The notion of divine radiance enveloping the head or face of a god, a king, or a priest appears in numerous Mesopotamian texts, and so would probably have been a familiar idea to the ancient Hebrew audience.
30. and they were afraid to come near him. If, as seems likely, Moses’s face is giving off some sort of supernatural radiance, the fear of drawing near him precisely parallels the people’s fear of drawing near the fiery presence of God on the mountaintop.
33. a veil. Richard Elliott Friedman interestingly connects this with the covering and curtain in the Tabernacle: the site of holiness, he proposes, has to be partitioned off, enveloped in layers, and yet it remains accessible to the people.
1And Moses assembled all the community of Israelites and said to them, “These are the things that the LORD has charged to do: 2Six days shall tasks be done and on the seventh day there shall be holiness for you, an absolute sabbath for the LORD. Whosoever does a task on it shall be put to death. 3You shall not kindle a fire in all your dwelling places on the sabbath day.”
4And Moses said to all the community of Israelites, saying, “This is the thing that the LORD has charged, saying, 5‘Take from what you have with you a donation to the LORD. Whose heart urges him, let him bring it, a donation of the LORD, gold and silver and bronze, 6and indigo and purple and crimson linen and goat hair, 7and reddened ram skins and ocher-dyed skins and acacia wood, 8and oil for the lamp and spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense, 9and carnelian stones and stones for setting in the ephod and in the breastplate. 10And every wise-hearted man among you shall come and do all that the LORD has charged: 11the Tabernacle and its tent and its cover and its clasps and its boards, its bolts, its posts, and its sockets; 12the Ark and its poles and all its furnishings and the curtain for the screen; 13the table and its poles and all its furnishings, and the bread of the Presence; 14and the lamp stand for the light and its furnishings, and its lamps and the oil for the light; 15and the incense altar and its poles and the anointing oil and the aromatic incense and the screen of the entrance to the Tabernacle; 16the altar of burnt offering and the bronze grating that belongs to it, its poles and all its vessels and the laver and its stand; 17the court hangings and its poles and its sockets, and the screen of the court-gate; 18the pegs of the Tabernacle and the pegs of the court and their cords; 19the service garments to serve in the sanctum, the sacred garments for Aaron the priest and the garments of his sons to be priests.”
20And all the community of Israelites went out from before Moses. 21And every man whose heart moved him and everyone whose spirit urged him came, they brought a donation of the LORD for the task of the Tent of Meeting and for all its work and for the sacred garments. 22And the men came, besides the women, all whose heart urged them, they brought brooches and earrings and rings and pendants, every ornament of gold, and every man who raised an elevation offering of gold to the LORD. 23Every man with whom was found indigo and purple and crimson and linen and goat hair and reddened ram skins and ocher-dyed skins brought it. 24Whoever donated a donation of silver and bronze brought a donation of the LORD, and with whomever was found acacia wood for all the tasks of the work, they brought it. 25And every woman wise-hearted with her hands spun and brought the threadwork of indigo and purple and crimson and linen. 26And all the women whose hearts moved them with wisdom spun the goat hair. 27And the chieftains brought carnelian stones and stones for setting in the ephod and in the breastplate, 28and the spice and the oil for the lamp and for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense. 29Every man and woman whose heart urged them to bring for all the task that the LORD had charged to do by the hand of Moses, the Israelites brought a freewill gift to the LORD.
30And Moses said to the Israelites, “See, the LORD has called by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur from the tribe of Judah. 31And He has filled him with a spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in every task, 32to devise plans, to work in gold and in silver and in bronze 33and in stonecutting for settings and in wood carving to do every task of devising, 34and He has given in his heart to instruct—he and Oholiab son of Ahisamach from the tribe of Dan. 35He has filled them with heart’s wisdom to do every task of carver and designer and embroiderer in indigo and in purple and in crimson and in linen, and of weaver, doers of every task and devisers of plans. 36:1And Bezalel, and Oholiab and every wise-hearted man in whom the LORD has given wisdom and understanding to know how to do the task of the holy work, shall do all that the LORD has charged.
CHAPTER 35 NOTES
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1. And Moses assembled all the community. This initial clause, which brings us back to the interrupted instructions regarding the Tabernacle, beginning with the law of the sabbath that concluded those instructions (31:12–17), is a neat reversal of the inception of the Golden Calf episode: “the people assembled against Aaron” (32:1). Instead of a rebellious assembling of the people, their leader now assembles them in order to rehearse before them all that God has enjoined them.
2. Six days. This very brief version of the law of the sabbath is a kind of digest of the earlier iteration of the sabbath obligation. There is a good deal of summarizing repetition of earlier material in all that follows.
3. You shall not kindle a fire. This prohibition is a new specification. The lighting of fires might well be associated with the “tasks” involved in constructing the Tabernacle because fire would have been required for all the metalwork, and in one Ugaritic text, fire is burned six days in order to erect a sanctuary for Baal. But the kindling of fire—as against merely making use of fire that has been set accidentally—is clearly a primary labor of civilization, as the Prometheus myth suggests, a kind of inauguration of technology, and so it is understandable that a special prohibition of it on the sabbath should be spelled out.
5. Take … a donation to the LORD. Whose heart urges him, let him bring it. The language here and in what follows takes us back to the beginning of the Tabernacle section, chapter 25, and then to passages from the subsequent chapters. The structure of command and implementation in mirroring language is common to the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literatures. The Priestly editor, now reverting to a Priestly text, seeks to make this a thematically purposeful structure (though the return to cultic regulations is not likely to please modern readers). That is, the design for a perfect earthly abode for God in the midst of the Israelites has been traumatically disrupted by the story of the Golden Calf and the shattering of the tablets of the Law. Now that divinely mandated order has been restored with the making of the second set of tablets, the text can return to the actual fashioning of the Tabernacle, once again relishing every resplendent detail of indigo and crimson, gold and silver and bronze.
gold and silver and bronze. It is worth noting that although the Torah is a product of the early Iron Age, the report of the metals used for the Tabernacle remains faithful to the late Bronze Age setting of the Wilderness narrative.
10. wise-hearted. As before, the wisdom (ḥokhmah) in question slides from the notion of insight or intelligence to skill in a craft—in part because intelligence itself was thought of as a kind of teachable craft for those who had the capacity. The craft valence of the collocation used here is especially pronounced in verse 25, which speaks of “every woman wise-hearted with her hands” in the skill of spinning.
19. the service garments to serve in the sanctum. In this instance, the writer puts together serad, “service,” and sharet, “to serve,” either because he considered them to reflect the same root or because he is punning on the phonetic similarity.
21. every man whose heart moved him and everyone whose spirit urged him. The impulse of generosity indicated in 25:2 is stated more emphatically here and in the verses that follow. One may detect in this new emphasis a response to the Golden Calf episode, in which the people were quick to offer their golden rings for the fashioning of the molten image. Now they outdo themselves in donations for the LORD’s sanctuary.
22. the men … besides the women. The Hebrew construction, haʾanashim ʿal hanashim, is unusual. It would appear to suggest that the women queued up first to offer their donations. Because of the gender-bound nature of impersonal constructions in Hebrew, all the preceding references to “everyone” were masculine. Now we are alerted to the fact that women played an important role in the outpouring of contributions for the Tabernacle—another way of highlighting the comprehensiveness of the new impetus of generosity. The women were also more likely to have possessed an abundance of ornaments than the men.
earrings. The item in question, nezem, was also worn on the nose.
25. spun. Spinning is of course the one craft particularly associated with women.
34. to instruct. God has endowed Bezalel, together with his chief assistant Oholiab, not only with the skill to execute all these sundry crafts but also with the capacity to instruct the crews of ordinary craftsmen how to carry out their work. Canaanite myth, like the Greek, had a craftsman god; here, instead, the LORD inspires a human being with the skill, or “wisdom,” of the craft as well as with the ability to administer the project.
36:1. This verse is a summary of the nature of the workforce for constructing the Tabernacle and therefore would seem to belong here rather than at the beginning of the next chapter.
2And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every wise-hearted man in whose heart the LORD had given wisdom, everyone whose heart moved him, to approach the task to do it. 3And they took from before Moses all the donation that the Israelites had brought for the task of the holy work to do it, and they on their part brought more freewill gifts morning after morning. 4And all the wise people who were doing the holy task came, each man from his task that he was doing. 5And they said to Moses, saying, “The people are bringing too much for the work of the task that the LORD charged to do.” 6And Moses charged, and they sent word through the camp, saying, “Let each man and woman do no further task for the holy donation,” and the people were held back from bringing. 7And the task was enough to do all the task, and more.
8And every wise-hearted man among the doers of the task made the Tabernacle—ten panels of twisted linen, and indigo and purple and crimson, two cherubim, designer’s work, they made them. 9The length of the one panel twenty-eight cubits and a width four cubits to the panel, a single measure for all the panels. 10And they joined the five panels one to another, five panels they joined one to another. 11And they made indigo loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the set, and thus they did on the outermost panel in the other set. 12Fifty loops they made in the one panel, and fifty loops they made in the outermost panel which was in the other set, the loops opposite one another. 13And they made fifty golden clasps and joined the panels to one another with the clasps, and the Tabernacle became one whole. 14And they made goat-hair panels for a tent over the Tabernacle, eleven panels they made them. 15The length of the one panel, thirty cubits, and a width of four cubits to the panel, a single measure for the eleven panels. 16And they joined five of the panels by themselves and six of the panels by themselves. 17And they made fifty loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the set, and fifty loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the other set. 18And they made fifty bronze clasps to join the tent to become one whole. 19And they made a covering for the tent of reddened ram skins and a covering of ocher-dyed skins above. 20And they made boards for the Tabernacle of acacia wood, upright. 21Ten cubits the length of the board, and a cubit and a half the width of the single board. 22Two tenons for the one board linked to each other, thus they did for all the boards of the Tabernacle. 23And they made the boards for the Tabernacle, twenty boards for the southern end. 24And forty silver sockets they made beneath the twenty boards, two sockets beneath the one board for its two tenons and two sockets beneath the one board for its two tenons. 25And in the other side of the Tabernacle at the northern end, twenty boards. 26And their forty silver sockets, two sockets beneath the one board and two sockets beneath the one board. 27And at the rear of the Tabernacle to the west they made six boards. 28And they made two boards for the corners of the Tabernacle at the rear. 29And they matched below, and together they ended at the top inside the one ring, thus they did for the two of them, at the two corners. 30And there were eight boards with their silver sockets, sixteen sockets, two sockets beneath the one board. 31And they made five crossbars of acacia wood for the boards of the one side of the Tabernacle. 32And five crossbars for the boards of the other side of the Tabernacle, and five crossbars for the boards of the Tabernacle at the rear to the west. 33And they made the central crossbar to shoot through the boards from end to end. 34And the boards they overlaid with gold, and their rings they made of gold, housings for the crossbars, and they overlaid the crossbars with gold. 35And they made the curtain of indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen, designer’s work they made it, with cherubim. 36And they made for it four acacia posts and overlaid them with gold, their hooks gold, and they cast for them four silver sockets. 37And they made a screen for the entrance of the tent, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen, embroiderer’s work, 38and its five posts and its hooks, and they overlaid their tops and their bands with gold, and their five sockets with bronze.
CHAPTER 36 NOTES
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3. freewill gifts. The Hebrew nedavah (here a collective noun), which was mentioned in the previous chapter, 35:29, is derived from the same verb nadav that occurs repeatedly in the references to each man’s heart “urging” him to offer a gift. In this passage, the theme of Israelite generosity for the construction of the Tabernacle as a resounding reversal of the ill-considered donations for the Golden Calf is given a climactic flourish: the donations go over the top (verse 5) and the people have to be “held back” (verse 6) from giving further.
6. do no further task. They are actually not “doing”—that is the responsibility of the craftsmen—but giving. “Task” (melaʾkhah) here is extended in meaning to refer to the materials necessary for the carrying out of the task that the people bring. That is clearly the meaning of the first occurrence of “task” in the next verse.
8–38. The text now launches upon one of its most extravagant deployments of verbatim repetition. This particular segment corresponds precisely to 26:1–32, the only notable difference being that the imperative verbs of the instruction passage are converted into past verbs for the implementation passage, with the obvious implication that God’s directions for the construction of the Tabernacle are now carried out with scrupulous fidelity to every single detail by Bezalel and his work crews. In biblical narrative—these lists scarcely qualify as that—virtually every small swerve from verbatim repetition in repeated passages is a node of new meaning, but here the variance between the two versions is quite marginal and is by no means a vehicle of signification: what really matters is the repetition itself, the fact that the Tabernacle is now faithfully assembled in all its prescribed splendid details. It should be noted that all of the verbs for making in this passage, beginning with “they made them” in verse 8, are in the singular in the Hebrew. The singular is presumably used because the writer has in mind “every wise-hearted man” who is engaged in the building. Hebrew usage slips back and forth easily from plural to singular in such cases. The initial “made” in verse 8 is in the plural, but the end of the verse uses a singular. English being more hidebound by logic, this translation continues with the plural.
1And Bezalel made the Ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits its length and a cubit and a half its width and a cubit and a half its height. 2And he overlaid it with pure gold, inside and outside, and he made for it a golden molding all around. 3And he cast for it four golden rings on its four feet and two rings on its one side and two rings on its other side. 4And he made poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with gold. 5And he brought the poles through the rings on the side of the Ark to carry the Ark. 6And he made a cover of pure gold, two and a half cubits its length and a cubit and a half its width. 7And he made two cherubim of gold, hammered work he made them, at the two edges of the cover. 8One cherub at one edge and one cherub at the other edge, from the cover he made the cherubim at both its edges. 9And the cherubim spread their wings above, shielding the cover with their wings, and their faces toward each other, toward the cover their faces were.
10And he made the table of acacia wood, two cubits its length and a cubit and a half its width and a cubit and a half its height. 11And he overlaid it with pure gold and made for it a golden molding all around. 12And he made a frame for it, a handsbreadth all around, and he made a golden molding for its frame all around. 13And he cast for it four golden rings and set the rings at the four corners which were at its four legs. 14Facing the frame the rings were, as housings for the poles to carry the table. 15And he made the poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with gold, to carry the table. 16And he made the vessels that were on the table, its bowls and its shovels and its chalices and its jars, from which libation is done, pure gold.
17And he made the lamp stand of pure gold, hammered work he made the lamp stand, its base and its shaft; its cups, its calyxes, and its blossoms, were from that work. 18And six shafts going out from its sides, three shafts of the lamp stand from its one side and three shafts of the lamp stand from its other side. 19Three cups shaped like almond blossoms in the one shaft, calyx and blossom, and three cups shaped like almond blossoms in the other shaft, and thus for the six shafts that go out from the lamp stand. 20And on the lamp stand were four cups shaped like almond blossoms, their calyxes and their blossoms. 21And a calyx under every two shafts as part of it, and a calyx under every two shafts as part of it, a calyx under every two shafts as part of it, for the six shafts coming out of the lamp stand. 22Their calyxes and their shafts were part of it, all of it one hammered work, pure gold. 23And he made its seven lamps, and its tongs and its fire-pans—pure gold. 24With a talent of pure gold he made it and all its furnishings.
25And he made the altar for burning incense of acacia wood, a cubit its length and a cubit its width, square, and two cubits its height; from the same piece its horns. 26And he overlaid it with pure gold—its roof and its walls all around and its horns, and he made for it a golden molding all around. 27And two golden rings he made for it beneath its molding on its two flanks, as housings for the poles with which to carry it. 28And he made the poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with gold. 29And he made the holy anointing oil and the pure aromatic incense, perfumer’s work.
CHAPTER 37 NOTES
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1–29. As before, the implementation of the Tabernacle project mirrors verbatim the instructions for the project, with only minuscule and insignificant variations in formulation (e.g., “cast four golden rings” instead of the earlier “make four golden rings”). The verses here correspond to 25:10–21, 25:23–39 and 30:1–10.
1. And Bezalel made. The instructions for the building were given in the second-person singular to Moses or in the third-person plural for the Israelites. Now Bezalel is represented executing all the details of design, though it is to be understood that he would have been supervising crews of craftsmen. Rashi explains the singling out of Bezalel by name by observing, “Since he devoted himself to the task more than the other artisans, it was linked with his name.” Bezalel continues to figure in Hebrew tradition as the archetypal dedicated artisan.
1And he made the burnt-offering altar of acacia wood, five cubits its length and five cubits its width, square, and three cubits its height. 2And he made its horns on its four corners, from the same piece were its horns, and he overlaid it with bronze. 3And he made all the vessels of the altar, and the pails and the shovels and the basins and the flesh-hooks and the fire-pans, all its vessels he made of bronze. 4And he made a meshwork bronze grating for the altar beneath its ledge from below halfway up. 5And he cast four rings at the four corners of the bronze grating as housings for the poles. 6And he made the poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with bronze. 7And he brought the poles through the rings on the sides of the altar to carry it, hollow boarded he made it.
8And he made the laver of bronze and its stand of bronze from the mirrors of the women who flocked to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.
9And he made the court for the southern side, the hangings of the court were twisted linen, a hundred cubits. 10Their posts twenty and their sockets twenty, of bronze. The hooks of the posts and their bands were silver. 11And for the northern side, a hundred cubits, their posts twenty and their sockets twenty, of bronze. The hooks of the posts and their bands were silver. 12And for the western side, hangings of fifty cubits. Their posts ten and their sockets ten, the hooks of the posts and their bands were silver. 13And to the very east, fifty cubits, 14hangings of fifteen cubits to the flank, their posts three and their sockets three. 15And for the other flank on each side of the gate of the court hangings of fifteen cubits, their posts three and their sockets three. 16All the hangings of the court all around were twisted linen. 17And the sockets for the posts were bronze, the hooks of the posts and their bands silver and the overlay of their tops silver, and they were banded with silver, all the posts of the court. 18And the screen of the gate of the court was embroiderer’s work, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen. And it was twenty cubits in length and a height in the width of five cubits over against the hangings of the court. 19And their posts four and their sockets four, of bronze. Their hooks were silver and the overlay of their tops and their bands silver. 20And all the pegs for the Tabernacle and for the court all around were bronze.
21These are the reckonings of the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle of the Covenant, that were reckoned by the word of Moses, the service of the Levites in the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest. 22And Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur from the tribe of Judah made all that the LORD had charged Moses. 23And with him was Oholiab son of Ahisamach from the tribe of Dan, wood carver and designer and embroiderer in indigo and in purple and in crimson and in linen. 24All the gold that was fashioned for the task in every task of the sanctuary, the elevation-offering gold was twenty-nine talents or seven hundred thirty shekels by the sancturary shekel. 25And the silver reckoned from the community was a hundred talents or one thousand seven hundred seventy-five shekels by the sanctuary shekel. 26A beqa to the head, half a shekel by the sanctuary shekel for each who underwent the reckoning from twenty years old and above, for six hundred thousand and three thousand five hundred and fifty. 27And the hundred talents of silver were for casting the sockets of the sanctuary and the sockets of the curtain, a hundred sockets for a hundred talents, a talent for a socket. 28And from the one thousand seven hundred seventy-five shekels he made hooks for the posts and overlaid their tops and banded them. 29And the elevation-offering bronze was seventy talents or two thousand four hundred shekels. 30And he made with it the sockets for the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and the bronze altar and the bronze grating that belongs to it and all the furnishings of the altar, 31and the sockets of the court all around and the sockets for the gate of the court, and all the pegs of the Tabernacle and all the pegs of the court all around.
CHAPTER 38 NOTES
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1–7. These verses correspond to Exodus 27:1–8 from the instruction passages.
8. the mirrors of the women who flocked to the entrance. The verb here, tsavʾu, can mean either “to perform service,” as in an army, tsavʾa, or “to make up a multitude or crowd,” as in the epithet for the stars, tsevʾa hashamayim, the “host,” or array, of the heavens. Although most modern interpreters opt for the sense of service, there are two difficulties with that construction. The cult was administered by males, and there is scant evidence of a quasisacerdotal function performed outside the sanctuary by women. And if there really were such a group of women doing some sort of sacred service, their numbers would have had to be relatively limited, whereas the sanctuary required large quantities of bronze (see verse 28) donated by the masses. It thus seems more plausible to imagine crowds of devoted women flocking to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, where they would not have been permitted to go in. (Compare 1 Samuel 2:22, in which the same verb is used.) Mirrors in the ancient world were made of polished bronze, not glass, and were an Egyptian luxury item. Several medieval commentators note that the very objects used by the women for the purposes of vanity, or in the cultivation of their sexual attractiveness, are here dedicated to sacred ends. This verse complements the emphasis on the prominent role of the women in the donations that was brought forth in Exodus 35:22.
9–20. These verses correspond to 27:9–19 with some variation in the wording.
18. and a height in the width of five cubits. This is an odd way of describing the height. One suspects that “in the width” (one word in the Hebrew) might be a scribal error, although there are no ancient versions without it.
21. These are the reckonings. The term pequdim, immediately followed by the cognate passive verb puqad, “reckoned,” is difficult to translate because the verbal stem p-q-d covers so many senses in biblical Hebrew. It means “to count,” “to inventory,” “to take a census,” “to single out,” “to pay special attention,” “to make a reckoning,” and more. The most relevant sense in the present context would be “inventory,” but Hebrew idiom prefers to use general terms for technical senses, and this translation honors that preference. When an inventory is transferred from objects to people (verse 26), it becomes a census. What is involved here are two categories of donation—freewill gifts and a poll tax of a silver beqaʿ to the head. The poll tax serves simultaneously as a means of extracting silver needed for the sanctuary and as an instrument for counting heads, or taking a census.
by the word of Moses. Literally, “by the mouth.”
24. twenty-nine talents or seven hundred thirty shekels. The conjunction waw here and in what follows does not have its usual sense of “and” but rather “or” since the weight in shekels is manifestly provided as an equivalent—presumably, more familiar to the audience—of the weight in talents. As earlier, it is stipulated that this is the heavier sanctuary-weight shekel and not the mercantile shekel.
26. for six hundred thousand and three thousand five hundred and fifty. The previously given round number of 600,000 males is now made more precise in an enhancement of the effect of exact census of the present context. The “for” (lE) that prefixes the number may be dictated by the beginning of the sentence: a silver beqaʿ is paid for each head of the 603,550 males.
1And from the indigo and the purple and the crimson they made service garments to serve in the sanctuary, and they made the sacred garments that were Aaron’s as the LORD had charged Moses. 2And he made the ephod of gold, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen. 3And they pounded out the sheets of gold and cut strands to work into the indigo and into the purple and into the crimson and into the linen, designer’s work. 4Joining shoulder-pieces they made for it, at its two edges they were joined. 5And the ornamented band that was on it was of a piece with it, fashioned like it, gold, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen, as the LORD had charged Moses. 6And they made the carnelian stones ringed with frames of gold, engraved with seal engravings with the names of Israel’s sons. 7And he set them on the shoulder-pieces of the ephod, stones of remembrance for the sons of Israel, as the LORD had charged Moses. 8And he made the breastplate, designer’s work, like the work of the ephod, gold, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen. 9It was square, they made the breastplate doubled, a span its length and a span its width, doubled. 10And they set in it four rows of stones, a row of ruby, topaz, and malachite, the first row. 11And the second row, turquoise, sapphire, and amethyst. 12And the third row, jacinth, agate, and crystal. 13And the fourth row, beryl, carnelian, and jasper, framed in gold in their settings. 14And the stones were according to the names of Israel’s sons, twelve according to their names, seal engravings, each with its name for the twelve tribes. 15And they made on the breastplate intertwined cordwork, chains of pure gold. 16And they made two golden frames and two golden rings, and they set the two rings on the two edges of the breastplate. 17And they set the two golden cords on the two rings on the edges of the breastplate. 18And the two ends of the two cords they set in the two frames, and they set them on the shoulder-pieces of the ephod at the front. 19And they made two golden rings and set them on the two edges of the breastplate, at its border which faces the ephod on the inside. 20And they made two golden rings and set them on the two shoulder-pieces of the ephod below in the front opposite its seam above the band of the ephod. 21And they fastened the breastplate from its rings to the rings of the ephod with an indigo strand to be upon the band of the ephod, that the breastplate not slip from the ephod, as the LORD had charged Moses. 22And he made a robe for the ephod, weaver’s work, through-and-through indigo. 23And the opening of the robe in the middle of it like the opening of a coat of mail, a border for its opening all around, so it should not tear. 24And they made on the hem of the robe pomegranates of indigo and purple and crimson, twisted linen. 25And they made bells of pure gold and set the bells within the pomegranates on the hem of the robe all around, within the pomegranates. 26A bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate on the hem of the robe all around, to serve, as the LORD had charged Moses. 27And they made tunics of twisted linen, weaver’s work, for Aaron and for his sons, 28and the turban, linen, and the ornaments of the headgear, linen, and the breeches of linen, twisted linen, 29and the sash, twisted linen and indigo and purple and crimson, embroiderer’s work, as the LORD had charged Moses. 30And they made a diadem, a sacred crown of pure gold, and wrote upon it in seal-engravings inscription: “Holy to the LORD.” 31And they put on it an indigo strand, to put on the turban above, as the LORD had charged Moses.
32And all the work of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting was completed, and the Israelites did as all that the LORD had charged Moses, thus they did. 33And they brought the Tabernacle to Moses, the Tent and all its furnishings, its clasps, its boards, its crossbars, and its posts and its sockets, 34and the covering of reddened ram skins and the covering of ocher-dyed skins and the curtain of the screen; 35the Ark of the Covenant and its poles and the cover; 36the table and all its furnishings and the bread of the Presence; 37the pure lamp stand, its lamps, lamps of the array, and all its furnishings and oil for the light, 38and the golden altar and the anointing oil and the aromatic incense and the screen of the entrance of the tent; 39the bronze altar and the bronze grating that belongs to it, its poles and all its furnishings, the laver and its stand; 40the hangings of the court and its posts and its sockets and the screen for the gate of the court and its pegs and all the furnishings of the service of the Tabernacle for the Tent of Meeting; 41the service garments to serve in the sanctuary and the sacred garments for Aaron the priest and the garments of his sons to be priests. 42As all that the LORD had charged Moses, thus the Israelites did all the work. 43And Moses saw all the tasks, and, look, they had done it as the LORD had charged, thus they had done it, and Moses blessed them.
CHAPTER 39 NOTES
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1–31. These verses, which constitute the concluding section of the account of implementing the building instructions, correspond to 28:5–42; again, the material is repeated verbatim with only minor variations and, here, some limited abridgement.
1. as the LORD had charged Moses. This refrain, repeated, as Nahum Sarna notes, seven times, is not part of the instruction passage in chapter 28.
3. they pounded out the sheets of gold and cut strands. This technical detail, absent from chapter 28, is a faithful representation of how gold thread was manufactured. The Egyptians were especially adept in this process, and the word for “sheets,” paḥim, which has a more common biblical homonym that means “traps,” may actually be an Egyptian loanword.
21. The Samaritan version and an Exodus text found at Qumran insert here: “and they made the Urim and the Thummim as the LORD had charged Moses.”
32. the work … was completed. As Umberto Cassuto and others have noted, this passage that summarizes the completion of the Tabernacle echoes the report of God’s completion of creation, Genesis 2:1–3, with completion of the work at the beginning and blessing at the end (verse 43). One should recall that the Hebrew for “Tabernacle,” mishkan, means “dwelling”—God’s dwelling place or abode in the midst of the people of Israel. Human effort, adhering to divine direction, emulates the Creator by applying human crafts to build God a harmonious, beautiful, and intricately constructed dwelling place on earth.
33–41. The report of the construction of the Tabernacle and the fashioning of all its furnishings as well as of the priestly garments now concludes, after all the abundance of architectural and sartorial detail, in a rapid catalogue that recapitulates in summary form the principal elements of the whole project. Throughout the Tabernacle passages, both in the directions and in the implementation, language has an incantatory or quasimusical function in addition to the instructional aim, evoking in gorgeous syllables the sheer splendor and artisanal perfection of the sanctuary. This concluding catalogue is rather like the recapitulation of themes at the end of the last movement of a classical symphony, pulling all the previously stated elements together as the piece moves toward satisfying closure.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“On the day of the first month, on the first of the month, you shall set up the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting. 3And you shall put there the Ark of the Covenant and screen the Ark with the curtain. 4And you shall bring the table and lay out its array, and you shall bring the lamp stand and light up its lamps. 5And you shall set the golden altar for the incense before the Ark of the Covenant and you shall set up the screen for the entrance of the Tabernacle. 6And you shall set the burnt-offering altar before the entrance of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting. 7And you shall set the laver between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and you shall set water there. 8And you shall put up the court all around and set up the screen of the court gate. 9And you shall take the anointing oil and anoint the Tabernacle and all that is in it, and you shall consecrate it and all its furnishings, that it be holy. 10And you shall anoint the burnt-offering altar and all its furnishings, and you shall consecrate the altar, that the altar be holy of holies. 11And you shall anoint the laver and its stand and consecrate it. 12And you shall bring Aaron and his sons forward to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and bathe them in water. 13And you shall dress Aaron in the sacred garments and anoint him and consecrate him, that he be a priest to Me. 14And his sons you shall bring forward and dress them in tunics. 15And you shall anoint them as you anointed their father, that they be priests to Me, and their anointing shall become for them an everlasting priesthood for their generations.” 16And Moses did as all that the LORD had charged him, thus he did.
17And it happened in the first month in the second year, on the first of the month, that the Tabernacle was set up. 18And Moses set up the Tabernacle and placed its sockets and put up its boards and fixed its crossbars and set up its posts. 19And he spread the tent over the Tabernacle and put the covering of the tent over it from above, as the LORD had charged Moses. 20And he took and set the Covenant in the Ark, and he put the poles on the Ark, and he set the cover over the Ark from above. 21And he brought the Ark into the Tabernacle and placed the curtain of the screen and screened the Ark of the Covenant, as the LORD had charged Moses. 22And he set the table in the Tent of Meeting on the northern side of the Tabernacle outside the curtain. 23And he laid out on it the array of bread before the LORD, as the LORD had charged Moses. 24And he placed the lamp stand in the Tent of Meeting opposite the table on the northern side of the Tabernacle. 25And he lit up the lamps before the LORD, as the LORD had charged Moses. 26And he placed the golden altar in the Tent of Meeting before the curtain. 27And he burned on it aromatic incense, as the LORD had charged Moses. 28And he put up the screen for the entrance of the Tabernacle. 29And he put up the burnt-offering altar there at the entrance to the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting, and offered up on it the burnt offering and the grain offering, as the LORD had charged Moses. 30And he placed the laver between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and he set water there for washing. 31And Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet with it. 32When they came into the Tent of Meeting and when they approached the altar, they would wash, as the LORD had charged Moses. 33And he set up the court around the Tabernacle and the altar, and he placed the screen of the court gate. And Moses completed the task.
34And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle. 35And Moses could not come into the Tent of Meeting, for the cloud abode upon it and the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle. 36And when the cloud went up from over the Tabernacle, the Israelites would journey onward in all their journeyings. 37And if the cloud did not go up, they would not journey onward until the day it went up. 38For the LORD’s cloud was over the Tabernacle by day, and fire by night was in it, before the eyes of all the house of Israel in all their journeyings.
CHAPTER 40 NOTES
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2. the first month, on the first of the month. Since the month of the New Grain (Abib, or in later Hebrew usage, Nissan) has been fixed as the first month (Exodus 12:2), one may infer that the Tabernacle was set up and consecrated one year, less two weeks, after the departure from Egypt. Thus verse 17 refers to “the first month in the second year,” that is, the second year of the Exodus.
you shall set up the Tabernacle. After all the instructions concerning the Tabernacle, followed, after the break of the Golden Calf episode, by the report of the fashioning of all the components of the structure, according to the divine instructions, God enjoins Moses to culminate all these labors by actually setting up the Tabernacle. These commands (verses 1–15) are followed by the account of their implementation (verses 16–34), the latter repeatedly punctuated by the refrain “as the LORD had charged Moses.” This perfect execution of God’s directions to make Him a dwelling place and a cultic center in the midst of the Israelites would have been conceived, at least by the Priestly writer, as a fitting conclusion to the Book of Exodus. The doubts as to whether God would dwell among the people as it journeyed through the wilderness are now settled, and that resolution is dramatically confirmed by the evocation of the divine cloud and fire (verses 34–38) with which the book concludes.
4. lay out its array. The reference is to the twelve loaves of the bread of Presence, which were changed daily. See verse 23.
15. their anointing shall become for them an everlasting priesthood for their generations. This rhetorical flourish makes clear that what the Priestly writer has in view is not merely a report of the archaic era of origins in the Wilderness wanderings but a model and permanent authorization of the privileged status of the priestly caste for all time.
20. set the Covenant in the Ark. The Covenant, ʿedut, is a synonym for berit, the other common biblical term for pact, treaty, or covenant, and it clearly refers to the two stone tablets on which the words of the Covenant were written by the finger of God. The Tabernacle, then, has a double function: it is the place where sacrifices are offered, as in all ancient Near Eastern cults, and it is the place where the material document of an eternal contract between God and Israel is preserved. Though the burnt-offering altar is called “holy of holies” (verse 10), the supreme locus of the sacrosanct, the concrete nexus between humanity and the divine, is the Ark within which the tablets of the Covenant are kept.
33. And Moses completed the task. Once again, both the verb and the noun that is its object hark back to the completion of creation in Genesis 2:1–3.
35. the cloud abode … the glory of the LORD filled. Throughout these four concluding verses, one hears the resonant cadences of a kind of epic narrative. As is the rule in most literatures, when prose seeks grand effects, it tends to approximate the formal shape of poetry (compare Melville’s repeated use of iambic cadences, coupled with Shakespearian diction in Moby-Dick): these two clauses almost scan (the Hebrew has a stress pattern of three beats in the first clause, four in the second), and they exhibit the semantic parallelism that is one of the most prominent features of biblical poetry. Analogous patterns are detectable in the next three verses. The cloud and the glory appear to be virtual synonyms, or at the very least, overlapping terms. The LORD’s glory, kavod, is clearly a palpably concrete manifestation of the deity, for all the metaphysical attributes that later theology would attach to it. It may have been imagined as a kind of mantle of light enveloping God, with the cloud giving off a luminosity by day parallel to the fire by night. (Thus the English word “glory,” which suggests a nimbus or halo, is an appropriate equivalent.) This cloudy effulgence is so daunting to behold that even Moses does not dare enter the Tent until the cloud lifts.
38. the LORD’s cloud … by day, and fire by night was in it. These words hark back to the initial report of the pillar of cloud and fire (13:21–22) that marked the very beginning of the Wilderness narrative, so this whole large segment of text is cinched in an envelope structure. In chapter 13, the cloud and the fire appear directly before the people to show them the way through the trackless desert. Now, the cloud and the fire have been given a constructed, cultic focal point—the Tabernacle that henceforth will be God’s dwelling place in the midst of the people.
in all their journeyings. Pointedly, “their journeyings,” masʿeyhem, is the last word of the Book of Exodus, just as this same verbal stem inaugurated the Wilderness narrative in 13:20, “And they journeyed from Succoth.” We have been left with a sense of harmonious consummation in the completion of the Tabernacle, likened by allusion to the completion of the tasks of creation; but the condition in which the Israelites find themselves remains unstable, uncertain, a destiny of wandering through arduous wasteland toward a promised land that is not yet visible on the horizon. The concluding words of Exodus point forward not to the priestly regulations of the Book of Leviticus, which immediately follows, but to the Book of Numbers, with its tales of Wilderness wanderings, near catastrophic defections, and dangerous tensions between the leader and the led.
The book of Leviticus, the shortest of the five books that make up the Torah, sits squarely in the middle of the structure of the whole in a way that may be discomfiting to many modern readers. Poised between the completion of the Tabernacle after the Sinai epiphany in Exodus and the Wilderness wanderings in Numbers, it seems like a long moment of stasis dwelling chiefly on matters of ritual. After the brilliantly realized narrative impetus manifested throughout Genesis and, in a somewhat transformed manner, in the first half of Exodus, narrative is entirely set aside, apart from the monitory tales of the deaths of Nadab and Abihu in chapter 10 and of the brawling Egyptian husband who vilifies the divine name in chapter 24. Both those brief episodes, in any event, are introduced as exemplary precedent-setting illustrations of general principles of law, so they scarcely alter the general legal character of the book as a whole.
Most of the laws, moreover, are focused on topics that may seem less than urgent to audiences not part of the ancient world in which they were framed. There are, to be sure, interesting pieces of legislation here that regulate judicial probity, the administration of charity in an agricultural economy, sexual unions, and dietary practices, but the central concern of the book is the conduct of the cult, with elaborate stipulation of how the sacrificial animals are to be butchered, what parts of them are to be burned on the altar, how their blood is to be ritually sprinkled on the altar or in certain instances daubed on various extremities of the celebrant of the rite. Purification is a paramount consideration in all of this, and the legislation lays out elaborate procedures for cleansing both persons and substances of a rich variety of impurities. Stylistically, the authors of this text convey these laws with careful specification and dry precision, showing no hint of the Deuteronomic flair for rhetoric (apart from the admonitions of the penultimate chapter, which in fact are paralleled in more elaborate form in the concluding chapters of Deuteronomy), and having no recourse to the grand stately cadences that the Priestly writers elsewhere—in the first version of creation and in the story of the Deluge—impressively display.
If the Torah was assembled from its sundry literary sources by Priestly writers, as scholarly consensus holds, sometime during the sixth century B.C.E., in the decades following the fall of Judah in 586, it is understandable that these editors should want to make the concerns of their own sacerdotal guild the keystone of the literary structure they were establishing. The emphasis, moreover, on the regimen of sacrifices must have had a kind of historical poignancy and an ideological urgency for them: the Temple with all its splendid furnishings and accoutrements had been reduced to rubble by the Babylonian invaders, with much of the Judahite population driven into exile, and these intricate legal instructions about ritual conduct within the sacred space of the Tabernacle were a means of reinstating the vanished temple as a fact of the imagination and a blueprint for future restoration. Precisely this message was strongly carried forward into post-biblical Judaism. Two whole tractates of the Talmud, based on Leviticus, would be devoted to the laws of the cult and would remain the object of intensive study; and at least by the later Middle Ages, small Jewish boys were introduced to the Torah not through the great story of creation and the absorbing tales of the patriarchs in Genesis but through Leviticus—in Rashi’s formulation of the pedagogic slogan, “Let the pure ones come and study laws of purity.”
Does Leviticus, in all its legalism and all its focus on sacrificial and purgative procedures, have some sort of literary coherence? The liveliest attempt to define such a coherence is Mary Douglas’s Leviticus as Literature (1999). As an anthropologist, she had long been fascinated by the system of laws in this book, addressing it in two long chapters of her celebrated book Purity and Danger. Eventually, she mastered an impressive body of the relevant biblical scholarship and even acquired some competence in biblical Hebrew in order to devote this full-length study to Leviticus. Her basic argument is that the book represents an extremely intricate and subtle deployment of a mode of thought that she calls “analogical,” which, she contends, should not be deemed more primitive than the analytic thinking on which modern Western culture is largely based but rather seen as a different way of conceptually ordering the world, one that is exhibited in many cultures and to which we should not condescend. Reality is conceived as an elaborate system of correspondences—correspondences between Sinai and the cosmos, on the one hand, and the Tabernacle, on the other, and between all three of these and the body segments of the sacrificial animal. In the scheme of analogical thought that she proposes, no detail is adventitious or devoid of meaning, and so the most minute stipulations about the butchering of beasts and the regimen of ritual manifest an overarching symbolic system that differentiates the realms of the Creator, the human creature, and the priestly caste that serves as intermediary between the two. With this general scheme in constant view, Douglas claims that Leviticus as a book displays a consistently purposeful literary structure, one that follows the contours of this tripartite division of the cosmos.
One may grant the validity of the idea of analogical thought as a shaping force in the book and yet be skeptical about the presence of these proposed formal coherences, which in specific instances seem more the product of interpretive ingenuity than of persuasive reading. I would like to suggest, however, that Leviticus, even as a somewhat miscellaneous assemblage of cultic and other laws, and even as a joining of two distinct documents (the Priestly source and the Holiness Code, chapters 17–26), possesses a certain thematic, though not formal, unity.
There is a single verb that focuses the major themes of Leviticus—“divide” (Hebrew, hivdil). That verb, of course, stands at the beginning of the Priestly story of creation: “And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness… . And God made the vault and it divided the water beneath the vault from the water above the vault, and so it was.” In this vision of cosmogony, the condition before the world was called into being was a chaotic interfusion of disparate elements, “welter and waste.” What enables existence and provides a framework for the development of human nature, conceived in God’s image, and of human civilization is a process of division and insulation—light from darkness, day from night, the upper waters from the lower waters, and dry land from the latter. That same process is repeatedly manifested in the ritual, sexual, and dietary laws of Leviticus. Thus, the summarizing statement at the end of the list of living creatures respectively permitted and prohibited for eating: “This is the teaching about beast and bird and every living creature that stirs in the water and every swarming thing that swarms on the earth [a whole string of phrases harking back to the Priestly story of Creation], to divide between the unclean and the clean and between the animal that is eaten and the animal that shall not be eaten” (11:46–47). Or again, right after the catalogue of forbidden sexual unions: “I am the LORD your God Who set you apart from all the peoples. And you shall set apart the clean from the unclean beast, and the unclean bird from the clean, and you shall not make yourselves despicable through beast and bird and all that crawls on the ground, which I set apart for you as unclean. And you shall be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy” (20:24–26). (The same key Hebrew verb, hivdil, is used here, but because “divided you from all the peoples” sounds a little awkward, and might actually introduce an unintended idea of divisiveness, I have reluctantly abandoned consistency in this instance and represented it in English as “set apart.”)
The verses just cited appear to straddle between the sexual prohibitions that precede them and the dietary prohibitions mentioned immediately afterward. Just as one has to set apart permissible sexual partners from forbidden ones—mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, daughters-in-law, and every kind of animal—one must set apart what may be eaten in the great pullulation of living creatures from what may not be eaten—reptiles, amphibians, birds of prey, pigs, bats, rats. Israel, in its turn, by accepting these categorical divisions in the realm of appetite, sets itself apart from other peoples and becomes holy, like God. This last element of imitatio dei suggests that God’s holiness, whatever else it may involve and however ultimately unfathomable the idea may be, implies an ontological division or chasm between the Creator and the created world, a concept that sets off biblical monotheism from the worldview of antecedent polytheisms, where at least the king could serve as mediator between human and divine.
Dividing, setting apart, the erection of barriers to access, are notions that suffuse all the regulations here about the Tabernacle (mishkan, more literally, God’s terrestrial “dwelling place”). Again and again, we are reminded that ordinary Israelites are to keep their distance from the sacred space of the sanctuary, that no unauthorized person may “come forward” (Hebrew qarav, which in these contexts, as scholarship has noted, has much the sense of “encroach”). Even the priests must follow a careful regimen of dress and ablution and abstention from alcohol before entering the sanctuary, and the inner sanctum, conceived as the material point of linkage between God and the world, can be entered only by the high priest on the Day of Atonement after meticulous ritual preparation. What goes along with this rigorous setting apart of sacred space is an anxious concern about contamination from the sphere of the profane. Various body fluids; discharges and deformations of the skin and body caused by disease; mildew and other blights in fabrics, utensils, and buildings; violations of moral as well as ritual prohibitions—all these are lumped together in one large general category, according to the hierarchical division of the cosmos imagined here, of profane pollutants. These are thought of as an invisible cloud of contamination, or as some have proposed, a kind of miasma, that has the capacity to infiltrate into sacred space and compromise its holy character, which by definition involves a careful insulation from the realm of the profane.
The two brief narrative incidents incorporated in the book speak in different ways precisely to the fear of encroachment of the holy. Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, bring forward “alien fire before the LORD, which He had not charged them” (10:1). Fire is a principal agency of the sacrificial cult, but even it may become a contaminant when it is unauthorized, when it is brought into the sacred zone from some secular source, and these two priests are punished for their invasive act by being consumed with an answering fire that comes out “from before the LORD.” The case of the blaspheming Egyptian, who is also put to death (judicially, by stoning), involves a different sort of violation of the sacred. God has a dedicated, delimited space in the sanctuary, which must be guarded, but He also has a sacred name, which like other names, is understood to hold within it an adumbration or emanation of the distinctive essence of its bearer. The name, of course, cannot be sequestered within spatial barriers as the sanctuary is sequestered; it is always potentially available for circulation in linguistic usage. The Egyptian’s vilification or profanation of the divine name is thus an act of encroachment, besmirching the holy with a vileness of the profane, and in the draconian terms of this division of realms, it is deemed a capital offense.
The chief instruments for protecting the separation of ontological spheres are fire, blood, oil, and water. These are all, of course, substances associated with the sacrificial cult that long antedate biblical monotheism, but one may follow Mary Douglas’s general line of thought in viewing them as reflections of an implicit symbolic order. Fire, as we have seen abundantly in Exodus and will see even more emphatically in Deuteronomy, is associated with the deity: God reveals His commandments in an awesome pyrotechnic display, manifests His presence before the people in a pillar of fire by night and of cloud by day, and is appropriately worshipped through burnt offerings, entirely consumed by fire, and by other sacrifices that are “turned to smoke” (hiqtir) by the officiant. The heart of the sacred zone is a dangerous place from which divine fire may leap forth to protect the holy from contamination. Blood, as Leviticus emphatically reminds us, is the very life (nefesh) of the living animal. As such, it categorically must not be consumed as food, but in ritual procedure it has a purgative virtue and is to be sprinkled, cast, or smeared in designated ways during the sanctuary rite in order to effect purgation. Oil (it is specifically olive oil) has, by contrast, an association with the quotidian and with the social and political realms in ancient culture. A traveler, for example, after washing away the dust of the road, would rub himself with oil; and, of course, oil is the substance of dedication, poured on the head, for kings as well as for priests. It is chiefly the dedicatory function of oil that is carried over into its various stipulated uses here in the cult. Finally, the efficacy of water as a purifying agent is self-evident and universal. One should note that these four substances are drawn from four different realms of existence: fire is linked, as we have seen, with the divine; blood courses through the veins of living creatures, animal and human; olive oil is a product of agriculture, of the land, which sets it over against water, a manifestation of nature without human intervention (it is fresh running water that must be used for purification), recalling the primordial realm that must be set apart from dry land so that the world may come into existence.
None of this, I suspect, really mitigates the sense of strangeness that people of our own era are likely to feel in reading Leviticus. The preoccupation with dermatological conditions, genital discharges, mildew, the recipes for fritters and breads used in the cult, and the dissection of animals and the distinctions among their various inner organs does not correspond to modern assumptions about the content of great sacred literature. Nevertheless, all these regulations are reflections of a pervasive spiritual seriousness grounded in a comprehensive, coherent conception of reality. This ritual implementation of the monotheistic vision was a battle against the inchoate. Holiness could be achieved, and had to be protected, only by a constant confirmation of hierarchical distinction, by laying out reality in distinct realms and categories separated by barricades of prohibitions. Thus, Aaron and his surviving sons, immediately after the death of Nadab and Abihu, are warned never to come into the sanctuary when they have drunk “[w]ine and strong drink,” for in the view of the Priestly writers, authorized ritual is in all respects the exact opposite of ecstatic orgy (another departure in principle from the pagan world as it was imagined by Israelite writers). This particular ban, like most of the injunctions of Leviticus, is framed to implement a general ideology of separation as “a perpetual statute for your generations, to divide between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, and to teach the Israelites all the statutes that the LORD spoke to them by the hand of Moses” (10:9–11).
1And He called to Moses and the LORD spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites and say to them, ‘Should any person from you bring forward to the LORD an offering, of beasts from herd and from flock you shall bring forward your offering. 3If his offering is a burnt offering, an unblemished male from the herd he shall bring it forward, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, to be accepted for him before the LORD. 4And he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted for him to atone for him. 5And he shall slaughter the male of the herd before the LORD, and the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall bring forward the blood and cast the blood round the altar which is at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 6And he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it up into its parts. 7And the sons of Aaron the priest shall place fire on the altar and lay out the wood on the fire. 8And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall lay out the parts, the head and the fat, on the wood that is on the fire which is on the altar. 9And its innards and its legs he shall wash in water, and the priest shall turn it all to smoke on the altar, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 10And if his offering is from the flock, from the sheep or from the goats, for a burnt offering, an unblemished male he shall bring it forward. 11And he shall slaughter it on the north side of the altar before the LORD, and the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall cast its blood round the altar. 12And he shall cut it up into its parts, its head and its fat, and the priest shall lay them out on the wood that is on the fire which is on the altar. 13And the innards and the legs he shall wash in water, and the priest shall bring it all forward and turn it to smoke on the altar. It is a burnt offering, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 14And if his burnt offering to the LORD is from the birds, he shall bring forward his offering from the turtledoves or from the young pigeons. 15And the priest shall bring it forward on the altar and pinch off its head and turn it to smoke on the altar, and its blood shall be drained on the wall of the altar. 16And he shall remove its crop with its feathers and fling it by the altar to the east, to the place of the ashes. 17And he shall tear it open by its wings, he shall not divide them, and the priest shall turn it to smoke on the altar, on the wood that is on the fire. It is a burnt offering, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD.’”
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. And He called to Moses and the LORD spoke to him. The translation reproduces the oddness of the Hebrew. According to normative usage, one would have expected “And the LORD called to Moses and He spoke to him.” Is the postponement of the subject a maneuver to isolate and emphasize the act of calling? Several medieval commentators argue that the calling, or summoning, is the necessary preceding stage before divine speech, and perhaps for that reason it needs to be placed in the syntactic foreground. This verb, the first word of the text (wayiqraʾ), is the prevalent Hebrew name for the book, although another ancient designation, torat kohanim, “teaching of the priests,” parallels the Greek topical title “Leviticus.” Rashbam, the twelfth-century French Hebrew exegete, notes that Exodus ends by reporting Moses’s being unable to enter the Tent of Meeting because it was filled with the LORD’s glory, and now the LORD must address Moses from that very place in order to speak to him.
2. any person. The Hebrew ʾadam can refer to either sex. See the comment on Genesis 1:27.
bring forward. The verb hiqriv throughout this text has the technical sense of “introduce,” or “present,” in the sacred space of the cult. The cognate noun, qorban, “offering,” is distinctive of Leviticus. Exodus concluded with a notice of God’s relationship with Israel in the wilderness, indicating how He led the people on its peregrinations with the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Now, the Tabernacle having been completed (Exodus 35–37), attention is turned to how Israel on its part is to pursue its relationship with God by offering sacrifices in the sanctuary that has been constructed.
5. he shall slaughter. The person presenting the offering butchers the animal, and then the priests take charge of laying out the parts on the altar and burning them.
7. the sons of Aaron the priest. Three ancient versions read here “The sons of Aaron, the priests,” in the plural, “priests” modifying the sons and not Aaron, as elsewhere in this chapter.
14. from the birds. The stipulation of this option appears to be, as several commentators have noted, an accommodation for the poor, who would have been hard put to sacrifice something as valuable as a bull or a sheep.
16. its crop with its feathers. There is some question about the meaning of each of these terms. Jacob Milgrom makes an elaborate argument that the first term, murʾah, means “crissum,” i.e., the area around the cloacal opening beneath the bird’s tail. He is the author of a three-volume, 3000-page commentary on Leviticus that in its sheer comprehensiveness will remain a central reference for philological and historical issues involved in this book. Consequently, his work will often be referred to here. He is an invaluable guide but of course not infallible, and in the present instance there remains a margin of conjecture in his identification of murʾah, and since few readers will understand what a crissum is without recourse to a dictionary, this translation retains the more familiar “crop.” The second term, notsah, has been linked with the word for “excrement” by some medieval and modern commentators, but it invariably means “feather” elsewhere in Hebrew usage. If the skin was stripped from a large animal and not made part of the sacrifice, it is logical that the feathers would be excluded in the sacrifice of a bird.
1“‘Should a person bring forward a grain offering to the LORD, fine semolina his offering shall be, and he shall pour oil over it and place frankincense upon it. 2And he shall bring it to the sons of Aaron, the priests, and a handful from there shall be scooped up, from its fine semolina and from its oil, together with all its frankincense, and the priest shall turn its token portion to smoke on the altar, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 3And what is left of the grain offering is for Aaron and for his sons, holy of holies from the fire offerings of the LORD. 4And when you bring forward a grain offering, baked in an oven, it is to be fine semolina, flatbread cakes mixed in oil or wafers of flatbread coated with oil. 5And if your offering is a grain offering on a griddle, mixed in oil, flatbread it shall be. 6Break it into bits, and you shall pour oil over it. It is a grain offering. 7And if your offering is a grain offering in a pan, with fine semolina in oil it shall be made. 8And you shall bring the grain offering that will be made from these to the LORD, and the priest shall bring it forward and put it out on the altar. 9And the priest shall set aside from the grain offering its token portion and turn it to smoke on the altar, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 10And what is left of the grain offering is for Aaron and for his sons, holy of holies from the fire offerings of the LORD. 11Any grain offering that you bring forward to the LORD shall not be made leavened, for you shall not turn to smoke any leaven nor any honey from it as a fire offering to the LORD. 12You may bring them forward to the LORD as an offering of first yield, but they shall not go up on the altar as a fragrant odor. 13And every offering of your grain you shall season with salt. You shall not leave out the salt of the covenant of your God from your grain offering. With each of your offerings you shall offer salt. 14And if you bring forward an offering of first fruits to the LORD, new ears of grain parched in fire, grits of fresh ears you shall bring forward the offering of your first fruits. 15And you shall put oil upon it and you shall place frankincense on it. It is a grain offering. 16And the priest shall turn its token portion to smoke, from its grits and from its oil together with all its frankincense, a fire offering to the LORD.’”
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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1. Should a person bring forward a grain offering. The early rabbis plausibly understood the grain offering as an accessible cultic vehicle for the common people, who might have been hard put to meet the expense of animal sacrifice. The term for grain offering, minḥah, is borrowed from the political realm, where its primary meaning is “tributary payment,” and thus it expresses Israel’s relationship of vassal to God.
2. a handful … shall be scooped. The Hebrew says literally “he shall scoop,” which could refer to a single priest. The third-person singular, however, without specified subject, is often used as an equivalent of the passive form of the verb.
its token portion. The general ancient Near Eastern practice, and perhaps the original Israelite one as well, was to burn the entire grain offering on the altar. Jacob Milgrom interestingly proposes that the limiting of the sacrificial fire to one small portion of the grain may have been a reaction to the widespread practice of burning cakes to Ishtar (denounced by Jeremiah [7:18]). The economic self-interest of the priests in preserving much of the offering for their own consumption may have also played a role in this prescription.
3. holy of holies. As elsewhere, this construction indicates a superlative: “most sacred.” The meaning in this context is: strictly reserved for the priests.
11. any leaven nor any honey. No really convincing explanation for this prohibition has been offered. Although it might seem that there is some sort of connection between the ban on leaven in the sacrifice and the ban on leaven in the Passover laws, honey—here, as elsewhere, the probable reference is to date honey—does not appear to belong to the same category.
12. but they shall not go up on the altar as a fragrant odor. Leavened stuff and honey are not intrinsically taboo substances, but they must be excluded from the kind of offering that is burned on the altar.
13. the salt of the covenant. The indispensable presence of salt may ultimately derive from the fact that the sacrifice was originally imagined as a divine meal, and that seasoning with salt was felt to be necessary in order to make food palatable (compare Job 6:6: “Is tasteless food eaten unsalted?”). But throughout the Mediterranean, salt was associated with covenants, and the phrase in Numbers 18:19, “a perpetual covenant of salt,” suggests that the link between salt and permanently binding covenants may have been reinforced by salt’s efficacy as a preservative.
1“‘And if his offering is a communion sacrifice, if he brings it forward from the herd, whether male or female, unblemished he shall bring it forward before the LORD. 2And he shall lay his hand on the head of his offering and slaughter it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, and the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall cast the blood round the altar. 3And he shall bring forward from the communion sacrifice a fire offering to the LORD, the fat covering the innards and all the fat that is on the innards, 4and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, which is on the sinews, and the lobe on the liver, together with the kidneys, he shall remove it. 5And the sons of Aaron shall turn it to smoke on the altar together with the burnt offering that is on the wood which is on the fire, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 6And if his offering is from the flock as a communion sacrifice to the LORD, male or female, unblemished he shall bring it forward. 7If a sheep he brings forward as his offering, he shall bring it forward before the LORD. 8And he shall lay his hand on the head of his offering and slaughter it before the Tent of Meeting, and the sons of Aaron shall cast its blood round the altar. 9And he shall bring forward from the communion sacrifice a fire offering to the LORD, its fat, the entire broad tail opposite the backbone, he shall remove it, and the fat covering the innards and all the fat that is on the innards. 10And the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, which is on the sinews, and the lobe on the liver, together with the kidneys, he shall remove it. 11And the priest shall turn it to smoke on the altar, fire-offering bread for the LORD. 12And if his offering is a goat, he shall bring it forward before the LORD. 13And he shall lay his hand on its head and slaughter it before the Tent of Meeting, and the sons of Aaron shall fling its blood round the altar. 14And he shall bring forward his offering from it, a fire offering to the LORD, the fat covering the innards and the fat that is on the innards. 15And the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, which is on the sinews, and the lobe on the liver, together with the kidneys, he shall remove it. 16And the priest shall turn them to smoke on the altar, fire-offering bread for the LORD, as a fragrant odor, all the fat to the LORD. 17An everlasting statute for your generations in all your dwelling places, no fat and no blood shall you eat.’”
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. communion sacrifice. There is some uncertainty as to precisely what category of sacrifice this is, especially since the second term of the Hebrew designation, zevaḥ shelamim, could be related to “whole,” shalem, “repay,” shilem, or “well-being,” “greeting,” or “peace,” all meanings of shalom. Jacob Milgrom understands this as a “well-being sacrifice,” but Baruch Levine argues plausibly, citing Ugaritic parallels, that it means “a sacred gift of greeting.” The translation used here, “communion sacrifice,” conveys that sense compactly and follows the rendering of the term in 1 Samuel by Kyle McCarter Jr.
3. the fat covering the innards. Modern readers may be perplexed as to why a sacred text should devote such attention to details of butchering and, in particular, why the suet covering the inner organs must be stripped from them (verse 4) and burned for the deity alone, taboo for human consumption (no suet pudding allowed in the Israelite diet). This is, of course, a Priestly text, and the officiants in the cult need to know precisely how to go about their business. But the anthropologist Mary Douglas proposes that all the details of sacrificial butchering are fraught with symbolic significance. For her, Leviticus is a prime instance of subtle and elaborate analogical thinking (in contradistinction to the analytic thinking with which we are more familiar). Thus, following Nahmanides, she sees a system of correspondences between the tripartite structure of the Tabernacle—Holy of Holies, sanctuary, and outer court—and Mount Sinai as it is represented in Exodus—the summit, where only Moses may go, the perimeter of dense cloud, restricted to Aaron, his sons, and the seventy elders, and the foot of the mountain, to which the people have access. She goes on to propose that the animal sacrifice is correspondingly divided in three—the entrails, intestines, and genitals at the summit of the butchered pile, the midriff area with the covering of fat, to be burned on the altar, and the head and meat sections, which may be consumed by the priests and the people. “The suet,” she contends, “that divides the body at the diaphragm below the lower ribs is not just a covering. It corresponds in the body to the boundary of a forbidden sacred space on the mountain.”
11. fire-offering bread. The Hebrew leḥem, which has the primary meaning of “bread,” is often a synecdoche for food, as here, where the sacrifice is meat, not cereal. In the pagan Near East, sacrifice was generally thought of as food provided by man for the gods. It is not clear whether the religious elite of monotheistic Israel preserved this belief—the idiom could be no more than a linguistic fossil—though one may suspect some persistence of the idea in the popular imagination.
17. no fat and no blood shall you eat. The prohibition on consuming blood is grounded in the idea of the sacredness of life (see Genesis 9:4). The prohibition on eating fat seems strictly related to the fact that it is reserved for the deity alone in the sacrificial rite—and, if one follows Douglas, because it marks a barrier of exclusion in a system of analogies between body and sacred cosmos. It is instructive that when the seventeenth-century antinomian messianic leader Sabbatai Zebi wanted to demonstrate to his followers that he was empowered to abrogate the Torah, he chose to demonstrate this by the public consumption of suet—the violation of a seemingly arbitrary prohibition, and a violation that could scarcely have given him much pleasure.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘Should a person offend errantly in regard to any of the LORD’s commands that should not be done and he do one of these, 3if the anointed priest should offend, incurring guilt for the people, he shall bring forward for his offense that he has committed an unblemished bull from the herd for the LORD as an offense offering. 4And he shall bring the bull to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the LORD and lay his hand on the head of the bull and slaughter the bull before the LORD. 5And the anointed priest shall take from the blood of the bull and bring it to the Tent of Meeting. 6And the priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle from the blood seven times before the LORD against the covering of the shrine. 7And the priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of aromatic incense before the LORD, which is in the Tent of Meeting, and all the blood of the bull he shall pour out at the base of the burnt-offering altar which is at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 8And all the fat of the bull of offense offering, he shall set aside from it the fat covering the innards and all the fat that is on the innards. 9The two kidneys and the fat that is on them, which is on the sinews, and the lobe on the liver, together with the kidneys, he shall take away, 10as it is set aside from the communion-sacrifice bull. And the priest shall turn them to smoke on the burnt-offering altar, 11and the hide of the bull together with its head and together with its shanks and its innards and its dung. 12And he shall take the whole bull out beyond the camp to a clean place, to the ash heap, and he shall burn it on wood with fire, on the ash heap it shall be burned. 13And if all the community of Israel should err, and the thing be hidden from the eyes of the assembly, and they do one of all the LORD’s commands that should not be done, and they bear guilt, 14and the offense that they committed become known, the assembly shall bring forward a bull from the herd as an offense offering, and they shall bring it before the Tent of Meeting. 15And the elders of the community shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the LORD, and the bull shall be slaughtered before the LORD. 16And the anointed priest shall bring from the blood of the bull to the Tent of Meeting. 17And the priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle from the blood seven times before the LORD against the covering of the shrine. 18And some of the blood he shall put on the horns of the altar that is before the LORD, which is in the Tent of Meeting, and all the blood he shall pour out at the base of the burnt-offering altar, which is at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. 19And he shall set aside all the fat from the bull and turn it to smoke on the altar. 20And he shall do to the bull as he did to the offense-offering bull, so shall it be done to it, and the priest shall atone for them and it shall be forgiven them. 21And he shall take the bull out beyond the camp and burn it as he burned the first bull. It is an offense offering of the assembly. 22When a chieftain offends and does one of all the commands of the LORD his God that should not be done, in errance, and he bears guilt, 23or his offense that he committed is made known to him, he shall bring his offering, an unblemished male goat. 24And he shall lay his hand on the head of the goat and slaughter it in the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered before the LORD. It is an offense offering. 25And the priest shall take from the blood of the offense offering on his finger and place it on the horns of the burnt-offering altar, and he shall pour out its blood at the base of the burnt-offering altar. 26And all its fat he shall turn to smoke on the altar like the fat of the communion sacrifice, and the priest shall atone for him for his offense, and it shall be forgiven him. 27And if a single person from the common people should offend errantly in doing one of the LORD’s commands that should not be done, and bear guilt, 28or his offense that he committed is made known to him, he shall bring his offering, an unblemished female goat, for his offense which he committed. 29And he shall lay his hand on the head of the offense offering and slaughter the offense offering in the place of the burnt offering. 30And the priest shall take from its blood on his finger and place it on the horns of the burnt-offering altar, and he shall pour out all its blood at the base of the altar. 31And all its fat he shall take away, as the fat was taken away from the communion sacrifice, and the priest shall turn it to smoke on the altar as a fragrant odor to the LORD, and the priest shall atone for him and it shall be forgiven him. 32And if he brings a sheep as his offering for an offense, an unblemished female he shall bring it. 33And he shall lay his hand on the head of the offense offering and slaughter it as an offense offering in the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered. 34And the priest shall take from the blood of the offense offering on his finger and place it on the horns of the altar, and all its blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar. 35And all its fat he shall take away as the fat of the sheep is taken away from the communion sacrifice, and the priest shall turn it to smoke together with the fire offerings of the LORD, and the priest shall atone for him, for his offense that he committed, and it shall be forgiven him.’”
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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1. And the LORD spoke to Moses. As Milgrom observes, this introductory formula marks the beginning of a new category of offerings, those offered to expunge the effects of an inadvertent offense.
2. offend errantly. The Hebrew adverb bishegagah has the sense of “unintentionally,” “by mistake.” The concern throughout this section is to preserve the purity of the place of the cult. The inadvertent “offense” does not at all imply an ethical transgression but rather the unwitting violation of a prohibition (“any of the LORD’s commands that should not be done”), which, in ancient Near Eastern terms, has the consequence of generating physical pollution that must be cleansed. The rabbis aptly explained that the errancy could result from either ignorance of the law or ignorance of the circumstances of the act committed.
3. the anointed priest. This is an alternate designation for the high priest.
as an offense offering. The traditional translation of this term is “sin offering.” Milgrom argues in elaborate detail that this is a misrepresentation of the Hebrew ḥataʾt and proposes “purification offering” as a precise English equivalent. The verb ḥata’ in the qal conjugation, as in verse 2 here, means “to commit an offense,” a term probably taken over from the political to the cultic realm (as when a vassal people commits an offense against its overlords by rebelling). The same root in the piʿel conjugation means to “remove” or “cancel” (one well-attested semantic function of this conjugation) the offense. The noun ḥataʾt is derived from the piʿel conjugation and hence the canceling-out effect (“purification”) is in fact implied. But something is lost by using a designation for this offering that is not cognate with the verb “to offend,” and the context makes clear enough that an offense offering is a sacrifice that removes the effects of the offense.
6. dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle from the blood seven times before the LORD against the covering of the shrine. This sanguinary business may strike the modern reader as an odd way to purify anything, but throughout the Bible blood has powerfully antithetical valences, alternately identified as the stuff of life and the manifestation of guilt. Perhaps because it was thought to be the very bearer of the life force in animate creatures, it was understood to have what Milgrom vividly calls a “detergent” effect. The sprinkling is of course performed seven times because of the sacredness of the number seven.
7. the horns of the altar. Ancient Near Eastern altars in fact have been uncovered that have stone horns carved at each of the four corners. Although no definitive explanation of this general practice has been offered, since the animal’s horn is a recurrent image in biblical poetry for power, the horned altar may be a way of defining this space as a zone of power. Fugitives seeking asylum in the sanctuary would cling to one of the horns of the altar.
all the blood. This phrase obviously means all of the remaining blood since a small amount of the blood has been sprinkled on the altar.
13. if all the community of Israel should err. As several commentators have noted, this could occur if, for example, the high priest inadvertently misguided them—say, about the day for observing a particular festival.
1“‘And should a person offend when he has heard a voice in adjuration, he being witness, or has seen or known, if he does not tell, he shall bear his punishment. 2Or a person who touches any unclean thing, whether the carcass of an unclean beast or the carcass of an unclean domestic animal, or the carcass of an unclean crawling thing, and it be hidden from him, and he is unclean and guilty, 3or should he touch human uncleanness, of any of the uncleannesses with which one may be defiled, and it be hidden from him, and he be guilty, 4or should a person swear to utter with the lips, whether for evil or for good, of all that a human utters in a vow, and it be hidden from him, and he know and be guilty of one of these, 5it shall be when he is guilty of any of these, he shall confess that concerning which he has offended. 6And he shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD for his offense that he has committed, a female from the flock, a ewe or a she-goat, as an offense offering, and the priest shall atone for him for his offense. 7And if his hand cannot attain as much as a sheep, he shall bring as his guilt offering for what he has committed two turtledoves or two young pigeons to the LORD, one for an offense offering and one for a burnt offering. 8And he shall bring them to the priest, who shall bring forward first the one for the offense offering and pinch its head at its nape but not sever it. 9And he shall sprinkle from the blood of the offense offering against the wall of the altar, and what is left of the blood shall be drained at the base of the altar. It is an offense offering. 10And the second one he shall make a burnt offering according to regulation, and the priest shall atone for him for his offense that he has committed, and it shall be forgiven him. 11And if his hand cannot attain two turtledoves or two young pigeons, he shall bring as his offering for what he has committed a tenth of an ephah of fine semolina as offense offering. He shall not put oil on it nor shall he place frankincense on it, for it is an offense offering. 12And he shall bring it to the priest, and the priest shall scoop up a fistful from it as its token and turn it to smoke on the altar together with the fire offerings of the LORD. It is an offense offering. 13And the priest shall atone for him for his offense that he has committed of any of these, and it shall be forgiven him, and it shall be for the priest like the grain offering.’”
14And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 15“Should a person betray trust and offend errantly in regard to any of the LORD’s sancta, he shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD, an unblemished ram from the flock, or its equivalent in silver shekels, according to the sanctuary shekel, as a guilt offering. 16And that concerning which he has offended from the sanctum he shall pay and a fifth part he shall add to it and give to the priest, and the priest shall atone for him with the ram of the guilt offering, and it shall be forgiven him. 17And if a person offends and does any one of all the commands of the LORD that should not be done and does not know and is guilty, he shall bear his punishment. 18And he shall bring an unblemished ram from the flock, or its equivalent, as a guilt offering, to the priest, and the priest shall atone for him for his errancy that he has committed without knowing, and it shall be forgiven him. 19It is a guilt offering. He has surely incurred guilt to the LORD.” 20And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 21“Should a person offend and betray the LORD’s trust and dissemble with his fellow about a deposit or pledge, or by theft, or defraud his fellow, 22or should he find something lost and dissemble about it and swear falsely about anything of what a person may do to offend, 23and it shall be, when he offends and is guilty, he shall return the theft that he stole or the fraud that he committed or the deposit that was placed with him or the lost thing that he found, 24or anything that he swore about falsely, and he shall pay back the principal and add a fifth, to him to whom it belongs he shall give it, when his guilt is confirmed. 25And his guilt offering he shall bring to the LORD, an unblemished ram from the flock, or its equivalent, as a guilt offering, to the priest. 26And the priest shall atone for him before the LORD, and it shall be forgiven him for whatever he may have done to incur guilt thereby.”
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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2. Or a person who touches. The language of this entire chapter is characteristic of the uncompromising legal style of Leviticus, which makes no concession to rhetorical gesture (in contrast to Deuteronomy), lays out regulations with dry technical precision, and tries to cover a whole range of legal instances—in the present case, the incurring of unwitting guilt, whether through ritual impurity or in vow taking (the catalogue of possibilities, and then the cultic redress required, does not come to the end of a sentence until the conclusion of verse 5).
3. any of the uncleannesses with which one may be defiled. These would include contact with a corpse, a menstruating woman, and a man who has just had a seminal emission.
and he be guilty. The Hebrew ʾashem (here, at the end of verse 2, and elsewhere in this chapter) primarily means to be in a state of guilt, to incur guilt. Because what is involved in these laws is unwitting infraction, many interpreters have understood the verb to indicate something like an acknowledgment of guilt, though it is not entirely clear that it bears that meaning.
7. if his hand cannot attain. The primary sense of the verb is “reach.” “Hand” in biblical idiom is often used, as here, metonymically to indicate power or capacity. The law that follows here is what the rabbis called “an ascending and descending offering” (qorban ʿoleh weyored), that is, a sliding-scale offering which is devised to accommodate people of limited means.
15. betray trust. The verb maʿal is used in Numbers 5 to indicate the betrayal of marital trust in cases of infidelity. (In modern Hebrew, it has come to mean embezzlement, reflecting a certain continuity with its ancient usage.) In this verse, the sense is committing sacrilege, and the use of the verb may be dictated by an assumption that preserving the sacred integrity of everything belonging to the sanctuary is a special obligation with which all Israelites are entrusted. In verse 21, betrayal of trust in its more obvious sense is at issue, although the deception of one person by another is conceived as a betrayal of God’s trust because it is God who insists on a standard of honesty from humanity.
or its equivalent. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “in your estimation.” The possessive pronominal component of this expression (“your”) reflects the fact that it is, as Baruch Levine rightly observes, a bound expression, a colloquial “you” becoming fixed as a part of an idiom that means monetary equivalences.
16. that concerning which he has offended from the sanctum he shall pay. A characteristic case that this law envisages is when someone eats food not realizing it has been consecrated for cultic use. He would thus pay the monetary cost of the food consumed plus a fine of 20 percent.
21. theft. Rabbinic interpretation distinguishes between gazeil (the term used here), “robbery” (taking another’s property by main force), and geneivah, “theft” (taking by stealth). However, the present context of fraud and dissembling encourages the idea that theft is meant.
23. is guilty. Again, many interpreters understand this to mean: acknowledges his guilt. The sense could also be: he is found guilty, after which he acknowledges his guilt.
24. when his guilt is confirmed. The literal sense of the two Hebrew words beyom ʾashmato is: the day of his guilt.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Charge Aaron and his sons, saying, ‘This is the teaching of the burnt offering. It is the very burnt offering over its flame on the altar all night till morning, and the fire of the altar shall keep burning on in it. 3And the priest shall wear his linen garb and linen breeches he shall wear on his body, and he shall take away the ashes that the fire consumes from the burnt offering on the altar and put them beside the altar. 4And he shall take off his clothes and wear other clothes and take out the ashes beyond the camp to a clean place. 5And the fire on the altar shall keep burning on it, it shall not go out, and the priest shall burn wood on it morning after morning and lay out on it the burnt offering and turn the fat part of the communion offerings to smoke. 6A perpetual fire shall keep burning on the altar. It shall not go out.
7“‘And this is the teaching of the grain offering. The sons of Aaron are to bring it forward before the LORD in front of the altar. 8And a handful of it shall be removed, from the semolina of the grain offering and from its oil, with all the frankincense that is on the grain offering, and it shall be turned to smoke on the altar, a fragrant odor, its token to the LORD. 9And what is left of it Aaron and his sons shall eat, as flatcakes it shall be eaten, in a holy place, in the court of the Tent of Meeting they shall eat it. 10It shall not be baked leavened. As their share I have given it from my fire offerings. It is holy of holies, like the offense offering and like the guilt offering. 11Every male among the sons of Aaron shall eat it, a perpetual portion for your generations from the fire offerings of the LORD. Whatever touches them shall become holy.’”
12And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 13“This is the offering of Aaron and his sons which they shall bring forward to the LORD on the day he is anointed: a tenth of an ephah of semolina as a perpetual grain offering, half of it in the morning and half of it in the evening. 14On a griddle in oil it shall be done, soaked through you shall bring it, as a grain offering of baked pieces you shall bring it forward, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 15And the anointed priest, successor among his sons, shall do it, a perpetual portion for the LORD, it shall be entirely turned to smoke. 16And every priest’s grain offering shall be entire, it shall not be eaten.”
17And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 18“Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘This is the teaching of the offense offering. In the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered, the offense offering shall be slaughtered before the LORD. It is holy of holies. 19The priest performing it as an offense offering shall eat it. In a holy place it shall be eaten, in the court of the Tent of Meeting. 20Whatever touches its flesh shall become holy, and when some of its blood is spattered on a garment, that which has been spattered shall be laundered in a holy place. 21And an earthen vessel in which it is boiled shall be broken, and if it was boiled in a copper vessel, it shall be scoured and rinsed with water. 22Every male among the priests shall eat it. It is holy of holies. 23And every offense offering from which blood is brought into the Tent of Meeting to atone in the sanctum shall not be eaten. In fire it shall be burned.’”
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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2. This is the teaching. Leviticus repeatedly introduces a particular set of regulations with the phrase “this is the teaching [torah],” this being the first occurrence. “Teaching” is, in fact, the primary meaning of torah, and this translation preserves that sense throughout, though in these contexts, “procedure,” “ritual,” “regulation,” and similar terms used in sundry modern English versions are all justified. In any case, the reiteration of the term is a strong verbal symptom of how Leviticus differs formally from other biblical books. This is primarily a book of instructions, and one of its Hebrew names, torat kohanim, could aptly be translated as “Priestly Instructions.”
It is the very burnt offering. The semantic force of the Hebrew phrase hiʾ haʿolah is to emphasize the noun (ʿolah) that follows the indicative pronoun (hiʾ).
flame. The literal sense is “place of burning” (though the translation “hearth” proposed by some modern scholars sounds altogether too domestic for a cultic setting). Stylistically, this entire passage about the burnt offering is dominated by terms related to burning, as if to focus the idea of a sacred fire that burns perpetually, coordinated with the sacrificial fire that entirely consumes the burnt offering. The word for burnt offering or holocaust, ʿolah, is not derived from a root that means “to burn” but rather from the verb “to go up,” which, however, is metonymically linked to burning by suggesting the idea that the whole sacrifice “goes up” in smoke. Fire and blood are the two substances that are the key to the sacrificial rites, but the present passage gives preeminence to the nexus between cult and fire—the element associated with God’s fiery epiphany at Sinai and with his first appearance to Moses in the burning bush. Hence an altar with a fire that “shall not go out.”
9. Aaron and his sons shall eat. It must be kept in mind that in this agrarian society, the landless members of the tribe of Levi needed the cult for the bread and butter (or, more literally, the bread and meat) of their physical sustenance. Throughout the sacrificial regulations, provisions are made for setting aside portions to be consumed by the priests.
10. It is holy of holies. As elsewhere, this structure is a way of indicating a superlative in biblical idiom, the sense being: supremely holy, sacrosanct.
11. Whatever touches them shall become holy. It is also possible to construe this sentence, as Baruch Levine does, to mean: whoever touches them shall be holy (i.e., no person is allowed to touch the flatcakes made from the grain offerings who is not “holy,” or a member of the priestly caste). Jacob Milgrom, however, makes a persuasive case on philological and other grounds that the reference is to objects rather than to persons. What is involved, then, is an idea some scholars have described as a “contagion” of holiness symmetrical with the more common idea of a contagion of impurity. Objects that come in contact with consecrated substances such as the grain offering themselves become consecrated and can no longer be used for profane purposes.
15. successor among his sons. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “in his stead among his sons,” but “in his stead” is regularly used in references to monarchy to indicate the successor to the throne, and that must be the meaning here.
a perpetual portion for the LORD. Although the use of the noun ḥoq, “portion,” may be a linguistic fossil harking back to a premonotheistic era when the sacrifice was conceived as a way of offering food to the gods, its introduction here is more probably dictated by the desire to use a complementary term: one part of the grain offering was reserved for the priests to be eaten as their portion, and so the remaining part burned on the altar is described as “a perpetual portion for the LORD.”
16. every priest’s grain offering shall be entire. That is, when a priest presents a grain offering on his own behalf rather than on behalf of a layperson, no part is to be reserved for his consumption, all of it must be burned on the altar.
1And this is the teaching of the guilt offering. It is holy of holies. 2In the place where they slaughter the burnt offering they shall slaughter the guilt offering and its blood shall be cast on the altar all around. 3And all of its fat shall be brought forward, the broad tail and the fat covering the innards, 4and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them which is over the loins and the lobe on the liver, together with the kidneys, it shall be removed. 5And the priest shall turn them to smoke on the altar, a fire offering to the LORD. It is a guilt offering. 6Any male among the priests may eat it; in a holy place it shall be eaten. It is holy of holies. 7The offense offering like the sin offering, a single teaching do they have: the priest who atones through it, his shall it be. 8And the priest bringing forward a man’s burnt offering, the hide of the burnt offering that the priest brought forward is the priest’s, his it shall be. 9And every grain offering that is baked in an oven and everything made in a pan and on a griddle is the priest’s who brings it forward, his it shall be. 10And every grain offering, mixed with oil or dry, shall be for all the sons of Aaron, each man of them alike.
11And this is the teaching of the communion sacrifice that is brought forward to the LORD. 12If in thanksgiving he brings it forward, he shall bring forward with the thanksgiving sacrifice flatcakes mixed in oil and flatcake wafers coated with oil and cakes of semolina soaked through, mixed in oil. 13With cakes of leavened bread he shall bring forward his offering with his thanksgiving communion sacrifice. 14And he shall bring forward from it one kind of each offering, a levy to the LORD; for the priest casting the blood of the communion sacrifice, his it shall be. 15And the flesh of his thanksgiving communion sacrifice shall be eaten on the day of its offering; he shall not leave anything of it till the morning. 16And if his offering is a votive or a freewill offering, on the day he brings forward his sacrifice it shall be eaten, and on the morrow what is left of it may be eaten. 17And what is left of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burned in fire. 18And if some of the flesh of his communion sacrifice should indeed be eaten on the third day, it will not be acceptable, he who brings it forth, it will not be reckoned for him, it is desecrated meat; and the person eating of it will bear his guilt. 19And the flesh that touches anything unclean shall not be eaten, in fire it shall be burned. And other flesh, whoever is clean may eat the flesh. 20And the person who eats flesh from the communion sacrifice which is the LORD’s and his uncleanness is upon him, that person shall be cut off from his kin. 21And should a person touch anything unclean through human uncleanness or an unclean beast or any unclean abominable creature and eat of the flesh of the communion sacrifice which is the LORD’s, that person shall be cut off from his kin.
22And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 23“Speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘No fat of ox or sheep or goat shall you eat, 24and the fat of a beast that has died and the fat of a beast torn by predators may be used for any task but it shall by no means be eaten. 25For whoever eats fat from the animal from which fire offering is brought forward to the LORD, the person eating shall be cut off from his kin. 26And no blood shall you consume in all your dwelling places, whether from fowl or beast. 27Any person who consumes any blood shall be cut off from his kin.’”
28And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 29“Speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘He who brings forward his communion sacrifice to the LORD shall bring his offering to the LORD from his communion sacrifice. 30His own hands shall bring the fire offerings of the LORD, the fat together with the breast he shall bring it, the breast to elevate as an elevation offering before the LORD. 31And the priest shall turn the breast into smoke on the altar, and the breast shall be Aaron’s and his sons’. 32And the right thigh you shall give as a levy to the priest from the communion sacrifices. 33He of the sons of Aaron who brings forward the blood of the communion sacrifices and the fat, his shall be the right thigh as a share. 34For the breast of the elevation offering and the thigh of the levy I have taken from the Israelites, from their communion sacrifices, and have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons as a perpetual portion from the Israelites. 35This is the allotment of Aaron and the allotment of his sons from the fire offerings of the LORD from the day they were brought forward to be priests to the LORD, 36which the LORD charged to give to them from the day they were anointed, from the Israelites, a perpetual statute for their generations. 37This is the teaching for the burnt offering, for the grain offering, and for the offense offering and for the guilt offering and for the installation offering and for the communion sacrifice 38which the LORD charged Moses on Mount Sinai on the day He charged the Israelites to bring forward their sacrifices to the LORD in the Wilderness of Sinai.’”
CHAPTER 7 NOTES
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18. desecrated meat. The Hebrew pigul is a rare term of uncertain etymology and without evident cognates in other Semitic languages. Most interpreters, ancient and modern, assume it means something like “abomination” or “abhorrent thing,” but Milgrom, carefully scrutinizing the other biblical occurrences with an eye to the present context, persuasively argues that the word has the technical sense of “desecrated meat.”
19. And other flesh. The Hebrew says, somewhat obscurely, only “the flesh.” The context compels one to infer that what is meant is the flesh of the communion sacrifice that has not been defiled by contact with something unclean.
21. any unclean abominable creature. The Hebrew noun is sheqets, which usually means “abomination.” Some manuscript versions read sherets, “creeping thing,” which would be the more expected term here.
24. a beast that has died. This is a single word in the Hebrew, neveilah. The basic meaning is “carcass,” but with the necessary implication that the animal has died from natural causes rather than violently.
a beast torn by predators. Again, this is one word in the Hebrew, tereifah, which means “something torn [by ravening beasts].” The taboo on eating torn carcass was felt so strongly that, much later, in Yiddish usage, the word would be adopted as the general term for forbidden foods.
26. in all your dwelling places. This introduction of this term is an indication that the ban on ingesting blood is in no way restricted to animals or even categories of animals sacrificed in the cult but is comprehensively binding on the Israelites wherever they dwell.
30. to elevate. This gesture was a public sign of conveying the part of the animal elevated to the LORD’s jurisdiction or possession.
34. the breast … and the thigh. The same two portions of the animal are reserved for the Aaronides in the installation sacrifice about which instructions are given in Exodus 29:26–27. It is a token of how keenly the concrete details of these seemingly dry cultic passages were reflected on by later generations that Moses ibn Ezra (c. 1055–c. 1135) should wittily invoke these body parts in an erotic poem, transposing them from animal to woman, and proclaiming that he will take his due portion as did the priests of old. The ingenious allusion registers a sound exegetical understanding that the breast and the thigh are the choice parts.
35. from the day they were brought forward. As elsewhere, the singular masculine verb (literally, “he brought them forward”) is the equivalent of a passive form. The verb hiqriv, “brought forward,” is equally used for the sundry sacrifices and for the priests. In cultic contexts, it has the sense of presenting or bringing forward into the sacred zone of the sanctuary, into the LORD’s presence (“before the LORD”). Its cognate accusative is qorban, the general term for “offering.” Thus the priests are dedicated to God, brought forward into the divine presence, just as the sacrifices are dedicated.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Take Aaron and his sons with him, and the garments and the anointing oil and the offense-offering bull and the two rams and the basket of flatbread. 3And assemble all the community at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.” 4And Moses did as the LORD had charged him, and the community assembled at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. 5And Moses said to the community, “This is the thing that the LORD charged to do.” 6And Moses brought forward Aaron and his sons and bathed them in water. 7And he placed the tunics on them and girded them with the sash and dressed them in the robe and put the ephod over it and girded it with the ornamental band of the ephod, and tied it to him with it. 8And he put the breastplate on him and placed in the breastplate the Urim and the Thummim. 9And he put the turban on his head, and he put upon the turban at the front the golden diadem, the holy crown, as the LORD had charged Moses. 10And Moses took the anointing oil and anointed the Tabernacle and everything in it and consecrated them. 11And he sprinkled from it on the altar seven times and anointed the altar and all its implements and the laver and its stand to consecrate them. 12And he poured from the anointing oil on Aaron’s head and anointed him to consecrate him. 13And Moses brought forward the sons of Aaron and dressed them in tunics and girded them with sashes and bound headdresses on them as the LORD had charged Moses. 14And he brought close the offense-offering bull, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the offense-offering bull, 15and it was slaughtered. And Moses took the blood and put it on the horns of the altar all around with his finger and rid the altar of offense, and the blood he poured out at the base of the altar and consecrated it to atone over it. 16And he took all the fat that was on the innards and the lobe on the liver and the two kidneys and their fat, and Moses turned them to smoke on the altar. 17And the bull and its hide and its flesh and its dung he burned in fire outside the camp, as the LORD had charged Moses. 18And he brought forward the burnt-offering ram, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram. 19And it was slaughtered, and Moses cast the blood on the altar all around. 20And the ram he cut up into its parts, and Moses turned the head and the cut parts and the fat into smoke. 21And the innards and the legs he washed in water. And Moses turned the whole ram to smoke on the altar—a burnt offering it was—as a fragrant odor to the LORD, a fire offering to the LORD it was, as the LORD had charged Moses. 22And he brought forward the second ram, the installation ram, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram. 23And it was slaughtered, and Moses took from its blood and put it on the right earlobe of Aaron and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. 24And he brought forward the sons of Aaron, and Moses put from the blood on their right earlobe and on the thumb of their right hand and on the big toe of their right foot, and Moses cast the blood on the altar all around. 25And he took the fat and the broad tail and all the fat that is on the innards and the lobe on the liver and the two kidneys and their fat and the right thigh. 26And from the basket of flatbread that is before the LORD he took one loaf of flatbread and one loaf of oil bread and one wafer and placed them on the fat and on the right thigh. 27And he put everything on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons, and elevated them as an elevation offering before the LORD. 28And Moses took them from their palms and turned them to smoke on the altar together with the burnt offering—they were an installation offering for a fragrant odor, a fire offering they were to the LORD. 29And Moses took the breast and elevated it as an elevation offering before the LORD from the ram of installation. For Moses it was for a portion, as the LORD had charged Moses. 30And Moses took from the anointing oil and from the blood that was on the altar and sprinkled it on Aaron, on his garments, and on his sons and on the garments of his sons, with him, and he consecrated Aaron with his garments and his sons and the garments of his sons, with him. 31And Moses said to Aaron and to his sons, “Boil the flesh at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, and there you shall eat it and the bread that is in the installation basket, as I have charged, saying ‘Aaron and his sons shall eat it.’ 32And what is left of the flesh and of the bread you shall burn in fire. 33And from the entrance of the Tent of Meeting you shall not go out seven days, until the day of completion of the days of your installation, for seven days shall your installation be. 34As was done on this day, the LORD charged to do to atone for you. 35And at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting you shall sit day and night seven days, and you shall keep the LORD’s watch and shall not die, for thus I have been charged.” 36And Aaron, and his sons with him, did all the things that the LORD had charged by the hand of Moses.
CHAPTER 8 NOTES
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4. And Moses did as the LORD had charged him. A variant of this clause recurs at the very end of the chapter, framing the whole in an envelope structure. What is noteworthy is that in this chapter the Book of Leviticus for the first time moves from lists of cultic regulations to narrative. It is, of course, a limited sort of narrative, strictly concentrating on the rite of consecration that makes both the altar and Aaron and his sons fit for the cult of YHWH. The details of this installation ceremony pick up Exodus 29.
7. the tunics … the sash … the robe … the ephod. The use of the definite article before each of these items of attire is an indication that the item in question has already been publicly stipulated (in Exodus) as part of the attire the priests are to wear when officiating in the cult.
to him. The Hebrew glides from the plural, used for all the sons of Aaron, to the singular, Aaron the high priest, upon whom the focus will be in the next verse.
8. the Urim and the Thummim. See the comment on Exodus 28:30.
10. Moses took the anointing oil and anointed the Tabernacle. Some scholars conjecture that anointment was the rite of consecration because, as some ancient Near Eastern parallels suggest, coating with oil was thought to have a prophylactic effect, warding off evil forces. There may, however, be a more quotidian explanation. Rubbing the body with oil after bathing was a way of both pleasuring the body and putting oneself in a festive state, as when David renounces his ritual of mourning, bathes, rubs himself with oil, changes his clothes, then comes to worship and finally to eat (2 Samuel 12:20). The same procedure might have seemed appropriate to ready the altar and the officiants for service. Anointing was also the ceremony for conferring kingship (rather than crowning), perhaps as an extension of its cultic use. The anointing oil was a special mix of olive oil and fragrant spices, with the latter predominating in quantity.
15. Moses took the blood and put it on the horns of the altar. The two substances upon which the dedication ritual turns are oil and blood. The function of the former is, at least in the view of this commentary, purely consecrational, whereas the blood is understood to have what Jacob Milgrom calls a “detergent” effect, ridding the altar of impurities.
23. Moses took from its blood and put it on the right earlobe of Aaron and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. Both the altar and the priests are smeared with anointing oil and with blood. As Baruch Levine notes of the high priest, “In effect, he was the human counterpart of the altar.” In fact, the ceremony as a whole is a strong instance of what Mary Douglas calls analogical thinking, in which sacerdotal body and altar are part of an intricate system of correspondences. The extremities daubed with blood correspond to the horns and the base of the altar on which blood is sprinkled. At the same time, the right hand and the right foot are the emblems of human agency as the right ear is the emblem of obedience or responsiveness.
33. until the day of completion of the days of your installation. The Hebrew phrasing incorporates an untranslatable pun. The word for “installation,” miluʾim, literally means “fillings” and is linked to the idiom “fill the hands” (the phrase at the end of the verse, “shall your installation be” is literally “your hands will be filled”—that is, you will be entrusted with the priestly functions, having been installed). “Completion” (meloʾt) is another form of this same verbal root, the idea being that a set period is completed when its days are filled out.
1And it happened, on the eighth day, that Moses called to Aaron and to his sons and to the elders of Israel. 2And he said to Aaron, “Take you a calf from the herd as an offense offering and a ram as a burnt offering, both unblemished, and bring them forward before the LORD. 3And to the Israelites you shall speak, saying, ‘Take a he-goat as an offense offering and a yearling unblemished calf and lamb as a burnt offering, 4and a bull and a ram as communion offerings to sacrifice before the LORD, and a grain offering mixed with oil, for today the LORD will appear before you.’” 5And they took that which Moses had charged in front of the Tent of Meeting, and all the community came forward and stood before the LORD. 6And Moses said, “This is the thing that the LORD charged, you shall do, that the glory of the LORD may appear to you.” 7And Moses said to Aaron, “Come forward to the altar and do your offense offering and your burnt offering and atone for yourself and for the people, and do the offering of the people and atone for them, as the LORD has charged.” 8And Aaron came forward to the altar and slaughtered the offense-offering calf which was his. 9And the sons of Aaron brought forward the blood to him, and he dipped his finger in the blood and put it on the horns of the altar, and the blood he poured out at the base of the altar. 10And the fat and the kidneys and the lobe from the liver from the offense offering he turned to smoke on the altar as the LORD had charged Moses. 11And the flesh and the hide he burned in fire outside the camp. 12And he slaughtered the burnt offering, and the sons of Aaron provided him with the blood, and he cast it on the altar all around. 13And they provided him with the burnt offering in its cut pieces and the head, and he turned it to smoke on the altar. 14And he washed the innards and the legs and he turned them to smoke together with the burnt offering on the altar. 15And he brought forward the offering of the people and took the offense-offering he-goat which was the people’s and slaughtered it and performed the offense offering with it as with the previous one. 16And he brought forward the burnt offering and did it according to the regulation. 17And he brought forward the grain offering and filled his palm with it and turned it to smoke on the altar, in addition to the morning’s burnt offering. 18And he slaughtered the bull and the ram of the communion sacrifice which was the people’s, and the sons of Aaron provided him with the blood, and he cast it on the altar all around, 19and the fat from the bull and from the ram, the broad tail and the covering fat and the kidneys and the lobe on the liver. 20And they placed the fat on the breasts, and he turned the fat to smoke on the altar. 21The breasts and the right thigh Aaron elevated in an elevation offering before the LORD, as He had charged Moses. 22And Aaron raised his hands toward the people and blessed them and came down from having done the offense offering and the burnt offering and the communion sacrifice. 23And Moses, and Aaron with him, came into the Tent of Meeting, and they came out and blessed the people, and the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people. 24And a fire came out from before the LORD and consumed on the altar the burnt offering and the fat, and all the people saw and shouted with joy and fell on their faces.
CHAPTER 9 NOTES
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1. And it happened. This formula (wayehi) is characteristically used to mark the beginning of a unit of narrative. The present chapter completes the cultic narration inaugurated in chapter 7: after the rite of consecration of the altar and of Aaron and his sons and the prescribed seven days of the installation period, the priests are ritually fit to perform the sacrifices, which are reported here.
2. both unblemished. “Both” is added in the translation to indicate what is clear in the Hebrew from the plural form of “unblemished,” temimim, that the adjective refers equally to the calf and the ram.
4. for today the LORD will appear before you. As Jacob Milgrom observes, the revelation of God before all the people “renders the Tabernacle the equivalent of Mount Sinai.” Mary Douglas goes further, seeing a precise structural correspondence in the system of analogical thinking between Sinai and the Tabernacle: each is divided into three gradated zones of holiness—the Sinai summit, where only Moses may ascend; partway up the mountain, where the seventy elders come and are vouchsafed an epiphany; and the bottom of the mountain where the people remain; corresponding to these vertically deployed zones are the horizontal zones of the Tabernacle, from the Holy of Holies to inner court to outer court. What is striking is that in Exodus God’s manifestation of His fiery presence to the people comes from a divine initiative associated with the revelation of the Decalogue, whereas in this Priestly document it is ritual—the scrupulous performance of the sacrifices by Aaron and his sons—that brings about the grand epiphany.
6. the LORD charged, you shall do. Some commentators assume that ʾasher, “that,” between “charged” and “you shall do” has been inadvertently omitted.
9. brought forward the blood to him. This was obviously done by draining the blood of the slaughtered animal into some sort of bowl.
12. provided him. The verb in the hipʿil conjugation, himtsiʾ, is unique to this chapter. The sense is: to make something available (literally, “to cause it to be found”).
19. the covering fat. The received text has only the participle (“the covering”). This is probably a simple ellipsis, though the word for “fat” may have been accidentally dropped in scribal transmission.
20. the fat. Here and at a couple of other points in the chapter, “the fat” is in the plural (haḥalavim), indicating the fat stripped from the sundry inner organs. Milgrom consequently represents this in English as “pieces of fat.”
22. Aaron raised his hands toward the people and blessed them. A common view, from Late Antiquity (Sifra) onward, is that he pronounces the tripartite priestly blessing recorded in Numbers 6:24–26.
24. a fire came out from before the LORD. The cloud of the divine glory is luminescent, enveloping the fire into which it turns at night. Here, the emergence of the fire is a dramatic sign of God’s self-revelation and of divine favor in accepting the sacrifice. In the next episode, when cultic procedure is violated, this same fire from the LORD will be lethal.
1And the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, took each of them his fire-pan and put fire in it and placed incense upon it and brought forward alien fire before the LORD, which He had not charged them. 2And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. 3And Moses said to Aaron, “This is just what the LORD spoke, saying,
‘Through those close to Me shall I be hallowed
and in all the people’s presence shall I be honored.’”
And Aaron was silent. 4And Moses called to Mishael and to Elzaphan, sons of Uzziel, Aaron’s uncle, and he said to them, “Come forward. Bear off your brothers from the front of the sacred precinct to outside the camp.” 5And they came forward and they bore them off in their tunics outside the camp as Moses had spoken. 6And Moses said to Aaron and to Eleazar and to Ithamar his sons, “Your heads you shall not dishevel nor your garments rend, lest you die and the fury come upon the whole community. And your brothers, the whole house of Israel, may keen for the burning that the LORD inflicted. 7And you shall not go out from the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, lest you die, for the oil of the LORD’s anointing is upon you.” And they did according to the word of Moses. 8And the LORD spoke to Aaron, saying, 9“Wine and strong drink you shall not drink, you and your sons with you, when you come into the Tent of Meeting, lest you die—a perpetual statute for your generations, 10to divide between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, 11and to teach the Israelites all the statutes that the LORD spoke to them by the hand of Moses.” 12And Moses spoke to Aaron and to Eleazar and to Ithamar, his remaining sons, “Take the grain offering left from the fire offerings of the LORD and eat it as flatcakes by the altar, for it is holy of holies. 13And you shall eat it in a holy place, for it is your portion and your sons’ portion from the fire offerings of the LORD, for thus I have been charged. 14And the breast of the elevation offering and the thigh of the levy you shall eat in a clean place, you and your sons and your daughters with you, for it has been given as your portion and your sons’ portion from the communion sacrifices of the Israelites. 15The thigh of the levy and the breast of the elevation offering together with the fire offerings of fat they shall bring to lift up as an elevation offering before the LORD. And it shall be for you and for your sons with you a perpetual portion, as the LORD has charged. 16And the offense-offering goat Moses had insistently sought but, look, it had been burned, and he was furious with Eleazar and with Ithamar the remaining sons of Aaron, saying, 17“Why did you not eat the offense offering in a holy place? For it is holy of holies, and this did He give you to bear off the guilt of the community, to atone for them before the LORD. 18Look, its blood was not brought within the sacred precinct. You shall surely eat it in the sacred precinct as I have charged.” 19And Aaron spoke to Moses, “Look, today they brought forward their offense offering and their burnt offering before the LORD, and things of this sort befell me. Had I eaten an offense offering today, would it have seemed good in the eyes of the LORD?” 20And Moses heard, and it seemed good in his eyes.
CHAPTER 10 NOTES
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1. And the sons of Aaron. Now that the elaborate system of sacrificial regulations, capped by the rites of installation, is completed, we are reminded what a dangerous business the cult is by the catastrophe that befalls the two sons of Aaron when they violate cultic procedure. This is one of the two narrative episodes in Leviticus.
put fire in it. Practically, as many modern commentators have observed, they would have filled the fire-pans with glowing coals, not an actual fire. The literal sense of “fire” (ʾesh) is worth preserving because it makes evident the measure-for-measure enactment of divine justice: Nadab and Abihu introduce alien fire to the sacred precinct, and a fire from the LORD comes out to destroy them.
incense upon it. The feminine form of “upon it” in the Hebrew tells us that the incense is put on top of the coals since fire is feminine.
alien fire. The adjective zarah, “alien,” “strange” (as in “stranger”), or “unfit,” indicates in cultic contexts a substance or person not consecrated for entrance or use in the sacred precinct (hence Jacob Milgrom’s translation, “unauthorized”). The consensus of modern interpreters, with precedents in the classical Midrash, is that the fire is “alien” because it has been taken from a profane source—e.g., coals taken from an ordinary oven. Incense has been put on top of the coals, which leads Milgrom to conjecture that this story is a polemic against a practice of burning incense to the astral deities (for which actually there is scant archaeological evidence) in the Assyrian period, probably through Assyrian influence.
2. And fire came out from before the LORD. This is the same phrase used in 9:24 to report the act of divine acceptance by which a supernatural flame consumes the offerings on the altar. The zone of the holy, where the divine presence takes up its headquarters, is intrinsically dangerous and, from a certain point of view, radically ambiguous. When proper procedures are followed—a virtual obsession of these Priestly writers—miraculous signs of God’s favor are manifested. When procedures are violated, God becomes a consuming fire.
3. Through those close to Me. The reference is to the cultic inner circle of the designated priests, with an obvious pun on the verb from the same root involved in “brought forward alien fire.” The meaning of this cryptic one-line poem is not entirely transparent, but the reference to being honored in all the people’s presence lends some support to the view of several medieval Hebrew commentators that the spectacular punishment of Nadab and Abihu (who as sons of Aaron would be “close to” God), evident to all the people, is what is intended. God is “hallowed” by manifesting His power against transgressors.
4. your brothers. The term is used in its frequent extended sense of “kinsmen,” since Mishael and Elzaphan are actually the cousins of Nadab and Abihu.
5. in their tunics. Rashi proposes that the divine fire miraculously killed Nadab and Abihu without damaging their clothes. This interpretation may not be fanciful, for in an ordinary death by fire, the garments would surely have been burned.
6. Your heads you shall not dishevel nor your garments rend. That is, you are not to perform any of the conventional gestures of mourning, for your sons have perished in violating the very trust of the sanctuary that has been given to you and your descendants. Instead, you may allow the people as a whole to take up the burden of mourning (“your brothers, the whole house of Israel, may keen”).
the burning that the LORD inflicted. The Hebrew uses a cognate accusative: “the burning that the LORD has burned.”
9. strong drink. It is not clear whether this term refers here to a specific alcoholic beverage. It is transparently derived from the root sh-k-r, “to intoxicate.”
17. to bear off the guilt of the community. The verb here plays against the “bearing off” of the bodies of Nadab and Abihu.
19. and things of this sort befell me. The obvious reference of this vague phrase is to the sudden deaths of Nadab and Abihu. Aaron cannot bring himself to report that painful event in explicit terms, and so he uses this circumlocution.
Had I eaten an offense offering today, would it have seemed good in the eyes of the LORD? One common understanding of these words is that he is, after all, mourning for his sons, so how could the LORD expect him to eat his fixed portion of the offering, or to eat at all (fasting being a practice of mourning)? Milgrom rejects this possibility because he notes that Aaron has been enjoined not to mourn. He proposes instead that the deaths of the two sons have contaminated the altar, transforming the offense offering into its archaic manifestation in which its “detergent” function was too potent to allow for human consumption. That explanation seems unduly complicated, and it is entirely possible that Aaron has been forbidden to engage in any public gesture of mourning (disheveling one’s hair, tearing one’s garments) but is still permitted this mourner’s act of abstention. Such a reading makes the exchange here between Aaron and Moses more personally poignant: the grieving father asks his own brother whether God could really expect him to constrain himself to ingest meat in this moment of his grief, and Moses concedes that Aaron is right.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, 2“Speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘These are the beasts that you may eat of all the animals that are on the land: 3Everything that has hooves and that has split hooves, bringing up the cud, among beasts, this you may eat. 4But this you shall not eat from those that bring up the cud or have hooves, the camel for it brings up the cud but it has no hooves. It is unclean for you. 5And the hare, for it brings up the cud but it has no hooves. It is unclean for you. 6And the rock-badger, for it brings up the cud but it has no hooves. It is unclean for you. 7And the pig, for it has hooves and has split hooves, but it does not chew the cud. It is unclean for you. 8Of their flesh you shall not eat and their carcass you shall not touch. They are unclean for you. 9This you may eat of all that is in the water: All that is in the water, in the seas and in the brooks that have fins and scales, them you may eat. 10And all in the seas and in the brooks that have no fins or scales, of all the swarming creatues of the water and of all the living things that are in the water, they are an abomination for you. 11And they shall be an abomination for you. Of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcass you shall abominate. 12Whatever in the water has no fins and scales is an abomination for you. 13And these you shall abominate of the birds, they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle and the vulture and the black vulture, 14and the kite and the buzzard according to its kind, 15and every raven according to its kind, 16and the ostrich and the night hawk and the seagull and the hawk according to its kind, 17and the horned owl and the cormorant and the puff owl, 18and the hoot owl and the pelican and the fish hawk, 19and the stork and the heron according to its kind and the hoopoe and the bat. 20Every winged swarming thing that goes on all fours is an abomination for you. 21But this you may eat of all winged swarming things that go on all fours: that which has jointed legs above its feet on which to hop on the ground. 22Of them, these you may eat: the locust according to its kind and the bald locust according to its kind and the cricket according to its kind and the grasshopper according to its kind. 23And every winged swarming thing that has four feet is an abomination for you. 24And through these you would become unclean. Whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean till evening. 25And whoever bears off anything from their carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean till evening. 26Of all the beasts that have hooves but the hooves are not split and they do not bring up the cud, they are unclean for you. Whoever touches them becomes unclean. 27And whatever goes on its paws among all animals that go on all four is unclean for you. Whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean till evening. 28And he who bears off their carcass shall launder his clothes and be unclean till evening. They are unclean for you. 29This is unclean for you among the swarming creatures that swarm on the ground: the mole and the rat and the great lizard according to its kind, 30and the gecko and the spotted lizard and the lizard and the skink and the chameleon. 31These are the unclean for you among all swarming things. Whoever touches them when they are dead shall be unclean till evening. 32And whatever upon which something from them falls when they are dead shall be unclean. Of any vessel of wood or cloth or skin or sackcloth, any vessel in which a task may be done, shall be brought into water and be unclean till evening, and then be clean. 33And any earthen vessel into which something from them falls, whatever is in it shall be unclean, and you shall break it. 34Of any food that may be eaten, when water comes on it, shall be unclean, and any liquid that may be drunk in any vessel, shall be unclean. 35And whatever upon which something from their carcass falls shall be unclean. Oven and range shall be smashed. They are unclean, and they shall be unclean for you. 36But a spring or a cistern, a gathering of water, shall be clean. And he who touches their carcass shall be unclean. 37And should something from their carcass fall on any planted seed that may be planted, it is clean. 38And should water be put on seed and something from their carcass fall on it, it is unclean for you. 39And should one of the beasts die which are your food, he who touches their carcass shall be unclean till evening. 40And he who eats of its carcass shall launder his garments and be unclean till evening. And he who bears off its carcass shall launder his garments and be unclean till evening. 41And every swarming thing that creeps on the earth is an abomination. It shall not be eaten. 42Whatever goes on its belly and whatever goes on all fours including the many-legged ones of all swarming things that swarm on the earth, you shall not eat them, for they are an abomination. 43Do not make yourselves abominable through any swarming thing that swarms and do not become unclean through them and be unclean. 44For I am the LORD your God, and you shall hallow yourselves and become holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean through any swarming thing that swarms on the earth. 45For I am the LORD Who has brought you up from the land of Egypt to be for you a God, and you shall be holy, for I am holy. 46This is the teaching about beast and bird and every living creature that stirs in the water and every swarming thing that swarms on the earth, 47to divide between the unclean and the clean and between the animal that is eaten and the animal that shall not be eaten.’”
CHAPTER 11 NOTES
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2. of all the animals that are on the land. Although the last word in this chain, ʾerets, often means “earth,” the list that immediately follows makes clear that the category in question is land animals.
3. Everything that has hooves and that has split hooves. The inventory of permitted and prohibited creatures and much of the language in which it is cast are quite similar to what one finds in the dietary laws in Deuteronomy 14. Jacob Milgrom makes a plausible argument that the author of the laws in Deuteronomy was familiar with our text and offered what amounts to an abridgement of it. Absent from the parallel passage in Deuteronomy is the lengthy section here, beginning with verse 31, that is concerned not with dietary taboos but with impurity (“uncleanness”) imparted by contact with the bodies of the forbidden animals. Purity and impurity, of course, are a preoccupation of the Priestly writers.
5–6. the hare … the rock-badger. Already at this point in the list, there is some uncertainty about the identity of the animals named in the Hebrew, and this uncertainty grows as the text moves on to birds, amphibians, reptiles, and insects. See the comment on Deuteronomy 14:7–19. The use in translation of relatively rare zoological designations such as “gecko” and “skink” jibes with the puzzlement that many of the Hebrew terms elicit.
7. the pig. It is only later, in the Hellenistic period, that the pig becomes the prohibited animal par excellence, although the anonymous prophet of the Babylonian exile whose words are recorded in Isaiah 66:17 brackets eaters of pig and rat as participants in some unspeakable pagan rite. Pork was a common food among the Philistines and was also sometimes eaten by Canaanites, as archaeological inspection of the bones of animals consumed has determined. Interestingly, in the high country in the eastern part of Canaan, where Israelite population was concentrated toward the end of the second millennium B.C.E., the percentage of pig bones discovered is only a fraction of what it is in the Canaanite lowlands. This suggests that the taboo was already generally embraced by the Israelites at an early period (well before the composition of the Torah) and also that some Israelites chose to disregard it.
10. that have no fins or scales, of all the swarming creatures of the water. Mary Douglas has proposed that what underlies the dietary prohibitions is a general commitment of the Israelite mind-set to clear and distinct categories: forms of animal life that appear to be ambiguous instances of their particular zoological class may not be eaten. That proposal seems a little strained for the land animals because it is not self-evident that a nonruminant with hooves, such as the pig, is somehow a violation of the category “land animal.” Her argument is more plausible for sea creatures, and, perhaps also, for amphibians and reptiles. Fish, possessing fins and scales, are the exemplary category instance of denizens of the water. Yet the sea “swarms” or pullulates (Hebrew shorets) with polymorphous creatures in shells and plasmic blobs and tentacles that seem altogether unlike fish, and from this pullulation the Israelites are enjoined to distance themselves. It is noteworthy that terms from the Creation story abound here: “swarming creatures” (sherets), “according to its kind” (which is to say, “of every kind”), “gathering of water,” “stirs” (romeset, which in the different context of Genesis 1 was rendered as “crawling”). The dietary laws are framed to make a statement about the Israelites’ place in the created order of things that is a kind of qualifying addendum to the Priestly panorama of creation in Genesis 1. God’s fecund world calls all sorts of living creatures into existence, and man is one of these. But the Israelites are expected to set themselves apart from the natural world to which they belong just as they are required to set themselves apart from the nations with which, of necessity, they participate in political, economic, and cultural intercourse. Thus they are forbidden the flesh of whole classes of living creatures, especially when animal life seems to manifest its most intense, category-dissolving pullulation. One may wonder whether behind all this, at least for sea creatures, reptiles, insects, and amphibians, there is some sort of horror of the inchoate, the seemingly formless, a horror akin to the revulsion in the face of the primordial serpent.
21. that which has. The Masoretic Text reads “that which does not have,” ʾasher loʾ, almost certainly a scribal error for ʾasher lo, “that which has.”
24. Whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean. It is the dead unclean animal that conveys this impurity by touch, not the living one. (Abraham ibn Ezra expresses indignation against the Sadducees for imagining that living animals are included.) Dead bodies of any sort impart ritual impurity, but in the present case, because a dead animal is potential food, the “uncleanness” inhering in the prohibited creature assumes an especially dangerous potency. It is imagined as a source of contamination transmitted by physical contiguity, rather like a physical contagion.
25. whoever bears off anything from their carcass. As several medieval commentators note, the act of carrying off part of the carcass necessarily involves closer and more sustained contact with the source of impurity and so it requires laundering of the garments as well as bathing.
27. whatever goes on its paws. This category of prohibition is of course already implied in the earlier stipulation regarding split hooves, but the Priestly writers seek to make the classes of proscribed animals as clear and explicit as possible.
32. whatever upon which something from them falls. Here and in the subsequent verses the notion of contamination through contact is extended. Impurity is imparted not only to a person when he or she reaches out to touch or pick up the carcass of a forbidden creature but also when any part of the carcass—say, a piece of decaying bird whose body is lodged in a tree—comes in contact with any substance. Porous substances that can be suffused with water in immersion—wood, cloth, skin, sackcloth—can be purified of the contamination through immersion. Earthen vessels, which are porous but cannot be saturated, must be destroyed.
36. And he who touches their carcass shall be unclean. This clause looks suspiciously out of place—perhaps an inadvertent scribal repetition from above.
38. should water be put on seed. This stipulation is an especially vivid illustration of how impurity is imagined as a contagion in quasimedical terms. Dry planted seed in the ground is deemed part of the natural growing world and resistant to contamination. Wet, softened seed becomes permeable to the contaminating substance.
39. one of the beasts die which are your food. Even the carcass of a permitted animal (which has died rather than been deliberately slaughtered) conveys impurity. Milgrom, noting the horror of the dead body and invoking the ban on consuming blood and on eating a kid boiled in its mother’s milk (neither of these mentioned here), argues that the dietary prohibitions are an affirmation of life over death. That claim seems apologetic, for it is not clear why, say, the prohibition on eating nonruminants is an affirmation of life.
42. Whatever goes on its belly. This phrase, of course, is another allusion to the Creation story, or rather, to the end of that story in the Garden of Eden, when an enmity between humankind and a representative of the animal kingdom (the serpent) is first introduced.
45. you shall be holy, for I am holy. This is a grand concluding generalization, but its precise application to the dietary prohibitions is not entirely clear. Imitatio dei is ringingly proclaimed. Perhaps because God is involved with creation yet loftily removed from it, Israelite man in his image in this cosmic hierarchy (compare Psalm 8) is enjoined to set himself at a certain distance from the natural world of which he is necessarily a part by restricting categories of animal food, by not ingesting all living creatures in the teeming polymorphous fullness of their pullulation. The reiterated verb “to divide” is a key to the Priestly account of creation in Genesis 1: the world comes into coherent being when God divides the chaotically interfused primal elements—light and darkness, the waters above and the waters below, the sea and dry land—from each other. Here the Israelites are commanded to emulate God by setting up a framework for daily life in which they are to “divide” (verse 47) between the unclean and the clean, between what is forbidden and permitted to be eaten.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘Should a woman quicken with seed and bear a male, she shall be unclean seven days, as in the days of her menstrual unwellness she shall be unclean. 3And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. 4And thirty days and three she shall stay in her blood purity. She shall touch no consecrated thing nor shall she come into the sanctuary till the days of her purity are completed. 5And if she bears a female, she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her menstruation, and sixty days and six she shall stay over her blood purity. 6And when the days of her purity are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring a yearling lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtledove for an offense offering to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, to the priest. 7And he shall bring it forward before the LORD and atone for her, and she shall be clean from the flow of her blood. This is the teaching about the childbearing woman, whether of a male or of a female. 8And if her hand cannot manage enough for a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and one for an offense offering, and the priest shall atone for her, and she shall be clean.’”
CHAPTER 12 NOTES
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2. she shall be unclean. The notion that the blood of childbirth rendered the parturient ritually impure was widespread in the ancient world, reflected in texts by the Hittites to the north of Israel and by the Greeks to the west. Jacob Milgrom notes that the ancients believed there was seed in the blood discharged by the childbearing woman, and so he proposes that this loss of blood was associated with death and hence conveyed impurity.
as in the days of her menstrual unwellness. The “in” is implied, for what is at issue is not the number of days but the nature of the condition of impurity.
4. thirty days and three she shall stay in her blood purity. The Hebrew, emphasizing the counting, says literally “in thirty days and three days.” When one adds the initial seven days, the total period during which the woman is to avoid contact with consecrated things (and also, evidently, refrain from marital relations) is the formulaic figure of forty days. The blood of the first seven days is considered impure. Afterward, her blood is deemed pure (“her blood purity”) but she must remain in this state for thirty-three days before she is free of the impurity contracted at childbirth.
5. if she bears a female … sixty days and six she shall stay. When one adds this number to the initial fourteen days, the total period of sequestration comes to eighty, or twice forty. No entirely satisfactory explanation has been offered for why a female child requires twice the length of time for the mother to be free of impurity, though one suspects a general predisposition of the culture to see the female as a potential source of impurity. Seminal emission also imparts ritual impurity, but the period for ridding oneself of the impurity imparted by menstrual discharge is much longer.
6. an offense offering. The present case is a strategic instance of why it is misleading to render the Hebrew ḥataʾt, as almost all English versions do, as “sin offering.” Surely the childbearing woman has done nothing that can be called a sin. The state of ritual impurity, however, imposed on her by biological circumstances makes her a potential source of violation of the sancta, which would be an offense to the cult and to its divine object, and so she is enjoined to present an offense offering that will mark the completion of her period of purification.
7. the flow of her blood. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “the source of her blood,” the idiom exhibiting a common linguistic pattern in which there is an interchange between cause (“source”) and effect (“flow”).
8. if her hand cannot manage. More literally, “her hand cannot find” (elsewhere, “her hand cannot attain”), with “hand” having its frequent biblical sense of capacity or power.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2“Should a person have on the skin of his body an inflammation or a rash or a shiny spot and it become the affliction of skin blanch on the skin of his body, he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons the priests. 3And the priest shall see the affliction on the skin of the body, and if the hair in the affliction has turned white and the affliction seems deeper than the skin of his body, it is skin blanch. When the priest sees it, he shall declare him unclean. 4And if it is a white shiny spot on the skin of his body and it does not seem deeper than the skin, and its hair has not turned white, the priest shall confine the person with the affliction seven days. 5And the priest shall see him on the seventh day, and, look, if the affliction has held its color, if the affliction has not spread in the skin, the priest shall confine him another seven days. 6And the priest shall see him again on the seventh day, and, look, if the affliction has faded, if the affliction has not spread on the skin, the priest shall declare him clean. It is a rash. And he shall launder his clothes and be clean. 7But if the rash in fact has spread in the skin after he has been seen by the priest and has been declared clean, he shall be seen again by the priest. 8And if the priest sees and, look, the rash has spread in the skin, the priest shall declare him unclean. It is skin blanch. 9Should a person have the affliction of skin blanch, he shall be brought to the priest. 10And if the priest sees, and, look, there is a white inflammation in the skin in which the hair has turned white and there is exposed flesh in the inflammation, 11it is chronic skin blanch in the skin of his body, and the priest shall declare him unclean. He shall not confine him, for he is unclean. 12And if the skin blanch in fact erupts in the skin, and the skin blanch covers all the skin of the person with the affliction from head to toe, wherever the priest’s eyes can see, 13the priest shall see and, look, if the skin blanch has covered his whole body, he shall declare the affliction clean. It has turned white; it is clean. 14On the day exposed flesh is seen in it, he shall be unclean. 15When the priest sees the exposed flesh, he shall declare him unclean. The exposed flesh is unclean; it is skin blanch. 16Or, should the exposed flesh recede and turn white, he shall come to the priest, 17and the priest shall see him, and, look, if the affliction has turned white, the priest shall declare the person with the affliction clean. He is clean. 18And a body in which there be burning rash on the skin that is healed, 19and there be in the place of the burning rash a white inflammation or a reddish white shiny spot, 20and it be seen by the priest, and the priest see, and, look, if it appears lower than the skin and its hair has turned white, the priest shall declare him unclean. It is the affliction of skin blanch. It has erupted in the burning rash. 21And if the priest sees it and, look, there is no white hair in it and it is not lower than the skin and it is faded, the priest shall confine him seven days. 22And if in fact it has spread in the skin, the priest shall confine him. It is an affliction. 23And if the shiny spot remains in its place, does not spread, it is the scar of the burning rash, and the priest shall declare him clean. 24Or, should there be a burn from fire in the skin of a body, and the exposed flesh of the burn be a reddish white or white shiny spot, 25the priest shall see it and, look, if the hair has turned white in the shiny spot and seems deeper than the skin, it is skin blanch, it has erupted in the burn, and the priest shall declare him unclean. It is the affliction of skin blanch. 26And if the priest sees him and, look, there is no white hair in the shiny spot and it is not lower than the skin and it is faded, the priest shall confine him seven days. 27And when the priest sees him on the seventh day, if in fact it has spread in the skin, the priest shall declare him unclean. It is the affliction of skin blanch. 28And if the shiny spot remains in its place, does not spread in the skin, and it is faded, it is the inflammation of the burn, and the priest shall declare him clean, for it is the scar of the burn. 29And should a man or a woman have an affliction in head or beard, 30and the priest see the affliction and, look, it seems deeper than the skin and there is thin yellow hair in it, the priest shall declare him unclean. It is scurf. It is blanch disease of the head or of the beard. 31And should the priest see the affliction and, look, it does not seem deeper than the skin but it has no black hair, the priest shall confine the person with the affliction of scurf another seven days. 32And the priest shall see the affliction on the seventh day and, look, if the scurf has not spread and there is no yellow hair in it and the scurf seems deeper than the skin, 33the person with the scurf shall shave himself but the scurf he shall not shave, and the priest shall confine the person with the scurf another seven days. 34And the priest shall see the scurf on the seventh day and, look, if the scurf has not spread in the skin and there is no yellow hair in it and it does not seem deeper than the skin, the priest shall declare him clean, and he shall launder his clothes and be clean. 35And if the scurf has in fact spread in the skin after his being declared clean, 36and the priest sees it and, look, the scurf has spread in the skin, the priest shall not examine for the yellow hair—he is unclean. 37And if the scurf has held its color and black hair has grown in it, the scurf is healed, he is clean, and the priest shall declare him clean. 38And should a man or a woman have on the skin of their body multiple white shiny spots, 39and the priest sees and, look, on the skin of their body there are multiple dull white spots, it is tetter. It has erupted in the skin. He is clean. 40And should a man’s hair fall out, he is bald on the pate. He is clean. 41And if the front part of his hair falls out, he is bald on the forehead. He is clean. 42And should there be on the bald pate or on the bald forehead a white affliction, it is erupting skin blanch on his bald pate or on his bald forehead. 43And the priest shall see him and, look, the inflammation of the affliction is reddish white on his bald pate or on his bald forehead, like skin blanch of the body in appearance, 44he is afflicted with skin blanch. He is unclean. The priest shall surely declare him unclean. His affliction is on his head. 45And the person afflicted with skin blanch, in whom the affliction is, his clothes shall be torn and his hair disheveled, and his moustache he shall cover, and he shall call out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ 46All the days that the affliction is on him he shall remain unclean. He is unclean. He shall dwell apart. Outside the camp shall his dwelling place be.
47“And should a garment have in it a scaly affliction, whether in a wool garment or a linen garment, 48whether in the warp or in the woof of the linen or the wool, or in a skin or anything made of skin, 49and the affliction be greenish or reddish in the garment or in the skin or in the warp or in the woof or in any article of skin, it is the scaly affliction, and it shall be shown to the priest. 50And the priest shall see the affliction and sequester the article with the affliction seven days. 51And if he sees the affliction on the seventh day, that the affliction has spread through the garment or through the warp or through the woof or through the skin for anything that the skin may serve for a task, the affliction is malignant scale disease. It is unclean. 52And the garment or the warp or the woof in wool or in linen or in any article of skin in which the affliction is shall be burned, for it is malignant scale disease. It shall be burned in fire. 53And if the priest sees and, look, the affliction has not spread through the garment or through the warp or through the woof or through any article of skin, 54the priest shall charge, and they shall launder that in which the affliction was and sequester it another seven days. 55And the priest shall see after the article with the affliction has been laundered, and, look, if the affliction has not changed color and the affliction has not spread, it is unclean. In fire you shall burn it. It is corrosion, whether on its inner side or its outer side. 56And if the priest sees, and, look, the affliction has become faded after being laundered, he shall tear it from the garment or from the skin or from the warp or from the woof. 57And if it shall still appear in the garment or in the warp or in the woof or in any article of skin, it is eruptive. In fire you shall burn it—that in which the affliction is. 58And the garment or the warp or the woof or any article of skin that you launder and from which the affliction disappears shall be laundered again and be clean. 59This is the teaching about the scaly affliction of a wool or linen garment or warp or woof or any article of skin, to declare it clean or unclean.”
CHAPTER 13 NOTES
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2. on the skin of his body. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “on the skin of his flesh.” Though that sounds close to a redundancy in English, the point, as Rashbam proposed, is probably to distinguish bare skin from the areas where the skin is covered by hair.
inflammation … rash … shiny spot. Throughout this long section on dermatological disorders, the precise identification of disease and even symptom remains uncertain, and the approximations afforded by translation are chiefly guided by etymology. (“Inflammation,” for example, represents the Hebrew seʾet, which appears to exhibit the verbal root that means “to raise”; “shiny spot” is proposed for baheret because the verbal stem on which that noun is formed means “to shine” or “to be bright.”) The fact of the matter is that the ancients perceived and described diseases and their symptoms differently than does modern Western medicine, and some conditions that they understood to be a single malady may actually have been a variety of diseases, not all of them intrinsically related. Scholarly attempts to equate the various conditions reported here with specific dermatological disorders have had only limited success. A certain lack of specificity in the translation of the quasimedical language of this section seems prudent and, indeed, appropriate.
3. the priest shall see the affliction. In most of its recurrences here, the verb “see” has the obvious force of “examine,” but this is still another instance in which an ordinary all-purpose term is enlisted for a technical use—a stylistic practice this translation emulates.
skin blanch. Although older English translations represent the Hebrew tsaraʿat (etymol ogy uncertain) as “leprosy,” modern scholars are virtually unanimous in rejecting this identification. The symptoms do not correspond, and there is scant evidence that leprosy was present in the Near East before the Hellenistic period. No positive identification with a disease known to modern medicine has been made. In most biblical occurrences, tsaraʿat is associated with a ghastly white loss of pigmentation, and hence this translation adopts the coined term “skin blanch” (see the comment on Exodus 4:6). Loss of pigmentation in hair and skin is prominent here as a determining symptom.
When the priest sees it, he shall declare him unclean. The examining priest determines the diagnosis, and perhaps one should think of him as performing at least one function of a physician. But these regulations for skin conditions reflect an ambiguous conception of disease that wavers between pathology and ritual impurity (the general sense of tamʾe, “unclean”). Thus the quarantining of the afflicted person might involve a fear of contagion in the medical sense or might be chiefly an avoidance of ritual contamination, and one suspects that the two were blurred in the Israelite imagination. Jacob Milgrom proposes that the wasting of the flesh involved in tsaraʿat is associated with death, and that these laws are an expression of the impulse in Leviticus to separate all deathlike phenomena from the living.
11. chronic skin blanch. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “old skin blanch,” with the implication of its persistence—hence “chronic.”
12. the person with the affliction. The Hebrew, as repeatedly elsewhere in this passage, simply says “the affliction,” but this is an obvious ellipsis or, as some prefer to call it, a metonymy.
from head to toe. The literal Hebrew idiom is “from his head to his feet.”
13. It has turned white; it is clean. The referent of the second clause might be either the affliction (negaʿ) or the person, in which case it should be translated “he is clean.” This criterion for being cured is a little confusing because white has been associated with the disease—compare the preceding clause, “the skin blanch has covered his whole body.” Here, however, as Baruch Levine explains, the whiteness is an indication of fresh skin that has grown instead of “exposed flesh” (as in the next verse).
17. the priest shall declare the person with the affliction clean. He is clean. This seeming redundancy probably reflects the attention to procedure of the law: first we have the instructions about what the attending priest must do, then a replication of the official, diagnostic declaration the priest is to make: “He is clean.”
24. burn from fire. The introduction of actual burns here reflects how little these regulations correspond to modern conceptions of disease. The previous verse had dealt with “burning rash” (others: “boils”), sheḥin, a skin disease which by etymology suggests heat or burning. This leads the Levitical legislator associatively to consider burns, which in his view have the potential to turn into tsaraʿat (perhaps how he perceives an infected burn).
29. a man or a woman … head or beard. “Head” of course refers to either and “beard” to the man alone.
30. thin yellow hair. This seems to indicate a loss of hair pigmentation that gives the hair a flat discolored look without turning it altogether white. Black hair was normative among ancient Israelites; Esau and David were said to have red hair, but there is no indication of blonds in the population.
33. shave himself. As Levine notes, the purpose of shaving all around the affected area would be to allow the priest to examine it more readily.
39. tetter. This all-purpose term for skin diseases (herpes, impetigo, eczema), adopted by many English translators, seems appropriate for the indeterminate Hebrew bohaq, indicating a dermatological condition that for some reason was not thought to impart uncleanness.
40. he is bald. As with the earlier association of burning rash and burns with infectious diseases, the law here goes against the grain of modern understanding by placing a hereditary condition such as baldness in the category of potentially contaminating skin diseases. Carefully taxonomic according to its own lights, the law distinguishes between baldness fore and aft.
45. his moustache he shall cover. This rather odd expression seems to indicate that the afflicted person is to pull some sort of scarf or head covering around his mouth—according to Abraham ibn Ezra, so that he will bring no harm to others from his contaminating breath. The law may stipulate moustache rather than mouth to mark the line up to which the covering is to be pulled. The tearing of the garment and the disheveled hair are ordinarily signs of mourning, but here their evident function is to set aside the afflicted person from the healthy, like the bell that was rung by lepers in medieval times, and like the cry of “Unclean! Unclean!” at the end of this verse.
46. he shall remain unclean. He is unclean. See the comment on verse 17.
47. a scaly affliction. The Hebrew is nega‘ tsara‘at. Here the disparity between ancient understanding and modern categories is most striking. This is the same term for the condition that, when it appears on a human body, has been rendered here as “skin blanch.” That translation obviously does not work for fabrics and leather, and the law seems to have in mind some sort of mold or mildew, which, however, is thought to exhibit the same pathology as the dermatological condition, perhaps because of a sickly whiteness manifested in both.
48. whether in the warp or in the woof. Milgrom, who has actually consulted weavers, notes that two kinds of threads of different textures and thicknesses are often used, a fact that makes it possible for certain forms of decay to spread through one set of threads and not the other.
50. sequester. The Hebrew verb is the same one used for “confining” an afflicted person, but strict English usage does not permit “confining” objects.
55. has not changed color and … has not spread. The crucial criterion is the color. Even if the blight has not spread, it is regarded as unclean because the color has not changed.
corrosion. The Hebrew peḥetet has not been identified but etymologically it is associated with either a term that means “diminution” or one that means “pit.”
59. This is the teaching about the scaly affliction of a wool or linen garment. This verse formally marks the conclusion of the passage dealing with tsaraʿat in fabrics and leather. The chapter that follows will return to people afflicted with the disease.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“This shall be the teaching concerning the one struck with skin blanch on the day he becomes clean. He shall be brought to the priest, 3and the priest shall go outside the camp, and the priest shall see, and, look, if the affliction of skin blanch is healed in the afflicted one, 4the priest shall charge that there be taken for him who is cleansing himself two live pure birds and cedar wood and crimson stuff and hyssop. 5And the priest shall charge that one bird be slaughtered in an earthen vessel over fresh water. 6The living bird—he shall take it, and the cedar wood and the crimson stuff and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the slaughtered bird over fresh water. 7And he shall sprinkle upon him who is cleansing himself of the skin blanch seven times, and cleanse him, and he shall send out the living bird over the open field. 8And he who is cleansing himself shall launder his garments and shave his hair and wash in water and be clean. And afterward he shall come into the camp and sit outside his tent seven days. 9And it shall be, on the seventh day, he shall shave all the hair of his head and his beard and his eyebrows, and all his hair he shall shave, and he shall launder his garments and wash his flesh in water, and become clean. 10And on the eighth day he shall take two unblemished sheep and one unblemished yearling ewe and three-tenths of semolina flour, a grain offering mixed with oil, and one log of oil. 11And the cleansing priest shall set the man cleansing himself, together with them, before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 12And the priest shall take the one sheep and bring it forward as a guilt offering, and the log of oil, and he shall elevate them as an elevation offering before the LORD. 13And he shall slaughter the sheep in the place where the offense offering is slaughtered, and the burnt offering in the place of the sacred zone, for offense offering and guilt offering alike are the priest’s. It is holy of holies. 14And the priest shall take from the blood of the guilt offering and the priest shall put it on the right earlobe of him who is cleansing himself and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. 15And the priest shall take from the log of oil and pour it into the left palm of the priest. 16And the priest shall dip his right finger into the oil that is in his palm and sprinkle from the oil with his finger seven times before the LORD. 17And from the rest of the oil that is in his palm the priest shall put on the right earlobe of the one who is cleansing himself and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, together with the blood of the guilt offering. 18And what remains of the oil that is in the palm of the priest he shall put on the head of the one who is cleansing himself, and the priest shall atone for him before the LORD. 19And the priest shall do the offense offering and atone for the one cleansing himself from his uncleanness, and afterward he shall slaughter the burnt offering. 20And the priest shall offer up the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar, and the priest shall atone for him, and he shall be clean. 21And if he is poor and his hand cannot attain, he shall take one sheep as guilt offering for an elevation offering to atone for himself, and one-tenth of semolina flour mixed with oil as a grain offering, and a log of oil, 22and two turtledoves or two young pigeons, as his hand may attain, and one shall be an offense offering and one a burnt offering. 23And he shall bring them on the eighth day of his cleansing to the priest at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the LORD. 24And the priest shall take the sheep of the guilt offering and the log of oil, and the priest shall elevate them as an elevation offering before the LORD. 25And he shall slaughter the sheep of the guilt offering, and the priest shall take from the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one who is cleansing himself and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. 26And from the oil the priest shall pour into the left palm of the priest. 27And the priest shall sprinkle with his right finger from the oil that is in his left palm seven times before the LORD. 28And the priest shall put from the oil that is in his palm on the right earlobe of the one who is cleansing himself and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, on the place of the blood of the guilt offering. 29And what remains of the oil that is in the palm of the priest he shall put on the head of the one who is cleansing himself to atone for him before the LORD. 30And he shall do one of the turtledoves or of the young pigeons, from which his hand attains, that which his hand attains, 31the one for an offense offering and the other for a burnt offering, together with the grain offering. And the priest shall atone for the one who is cleansing himself before the LORD. 32This is the teaching concerning him in whom there is an affliction of skin blanch whose hand cannot attain, when he is being cleansed.”
33And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 34“When you come into the land of Canaan which I am about to give you as a holding, and I put the scaly affliction in the house of the land of your holding, 35he whose house it is shall come and tell the priest, saying, ‘Something like an affliction has appeared to me in the house.’ 36And the priest shall charge that they clear the house so that nothing in the house is unclean before the priest comes to see the affliction, and afterward the priest shall come to see the house. 37And if he sees the affliction and, look, the affliction is in the walls of the house, greenish or reddish hollows that seem lower than the wall, 38the priest shall go out of the house to the entrance of the house and sequester the house seven days. 39And the priest shall come back on the seventh day and see and, look, if the affliction has spread in the walls of the house, 40the priest shall charge that they pull out the stones in which the affliction is and fling them outside the town into an unclean place. 41And the house shall be scraped from within all around, and they shall spill the earth that they scraped off outside the town into an unclean place. 42And they shall take different stones and bring them in place of the stones, and different earth shall be taken and the house plastered. 43And if the affliction comes back and erupts in the house after the pulling out of the stones and after the scraping of the house and after the plastering, 44the priest shall come and see and, look, if the affliction has spread, it is malignant scale disease in the house. It is unclean. 45And he shall raze the house, its stones, and its timbers and all the earth of the house, and he shall have it taken out beyond the town to an unclean place. 46And whoever comes into the house all the days it is sequestered shall be unclean until evening. 47And whoever lies in the house shall launder his garments, and whoever eats in the house shall launder his garments. 48And if the priest in fact comes and sees and, look, the affliction has not spread in the house after the plastering of the house, the priest shall declare the house clean, for the affliction has been healed. 49And he shall take to purge the house two birds and cedar wood and scarlet stuff and hyssop. 50And he shall slaughter the one bird into an earthen vessel over fresh water. 51And he shall take the cedar wood and the hyssop and the scarlet stuff and the living bird and dip them in the blood of the slaughtered bird and in the fresh water and sprinkle on the house seven times. 52And he shall purge the house with the blood of the bird and with the fresh water and with the living bird and with the cedar wood and with the hyssop and with the scarlet stuff. 53And he shall send out the living bird beyond the town to the open field and atone for the house, and it shall be clean. 54This is the teaching for every affliction of skin blanch and for scurf, 55and for scale disease of garment and of house, 56and for inflammation and for scab and for shiny spot, 57to teach on the day of the unclean and on the day of the clean—this is the teaching concerning scale disease.”
CHAPTER 14 NOTES
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2. on the day. This expression often has the sense of “when,” and it occurs twice at the very end of the chapter, enclosing the entire unit in an envelope structure. The phrase might, however, specifically indicate the actual day of the purification rite, as some of the early rabbis contended. What follows is a set of procedures to be performed on that day.
3. shall see. As in the preceding chapter, the sense is “examine” or “inspect.”
4. that there be taken. Here and repeatedly elsewhere in this chapter, the Hebrew third-person singular active verb without a specified subject is used as an equivalent of the passive.
cedar wood and crimson stuff. Jacob Milgrom proposes that both are used in this rite of purification because of their red color, linked with blood, which also functions here as a purifying agent. Hyssop appears elsewhere in biblical literature as an instrument of purification, although it remains uncertain why it was thought to have that efficacy.
5. fresh water. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “living water,” which creates a link with the “live” bird. The sense of the idiom is flowing water, whether from a spring or a river. Since the entire ritual is designed to carry off the impurities from the place inhabited by the community, one may infer that the fresh water is to carry off the overflow of the blood.
6. The living bird—he shall take it. The Hebrew syntax, reproduced in this translation, is a little odd because the accusative “it” is redundant after “The living bird” has already appeared as the object of the verb. The evident intention is to highlight the living bird in contrast to the slaughtered bird.
7. he shall send out the living bird over the open field. This rite of releasing the bird in open country suggests an obvious analogy with the ritual of the scapegoat. The living bird, having been dipped in the blood of the slaughtered bird that has also been sprinkled on the person to be cleansed, carries off any residual impurities to a place far from human habitation. There is something clearly archaic about this entire ritual, and scholarship has detected antecedents in Mesopotamian rites of magical purgation.
9. he shall shave all the hair of his head and his beard and his eyebrows, and all his hair. The last seemingly redundant phrase probably indicates that he is to shave all his body hair—the chest, the legs, and the pubic area. Such total removal of hair was otherwise abhorrent in ancient Israel, but in this instance it is enjoined as an expression of the encompassing thoroughness of the cleansing process.
10. three-tenths of semolina flour. The ellipsis is for three-tenths of an ephah, a dry measure roughly equivalent to 19 liters. A log is about 1¼ cups.
12. guilt offering. It may sound puzzling that a person who has suffered from a skin disease is thought to have incurred guilt. It may be that the ancients imagined this particular disease as a punishment for some transgressive act, as when Miriam is stricken with skin blanch for slandering her brother (Numbers 12:10–15).
14. earlobe … thumb … big toe. The ritual works by synecdoche: from the protrusion of the head of the earlobe to the protrusions of hand and foot (all on the “governing” right side), the person being cleansed is symbolically covered with the blood of the guilt offering from head to toe without actually immersing in it.
17. from the rest of the oil … the priest shall put on the right earlobe. The two purgative substances dominating the rite are blood and oil (to which one may add the fresh water of the preceding ritual of the two birds). Blood belongs to the animal kingdom, oil (olive oil) to the vegetable kingdom. Blood, as the life substance, has purgative force; oil, elsewhere used for anointing the sacralia, has both consecrating and purgative power. Here, both the blood and the oil are part of the sacrifice.
21. And if he is poor. As with other kinds of sacrifice, special provision for a less costly offering is made for the person of limited means whose “hand cannot attain” (or “reach out,” “manage”) to bring the stipulated sacrifice.
26. the priest shall pour into the left palm of the priest. This odd wording led some traditional commentators to conclude that two priests are involved in the ritual, but perhaps the noun is repeated simply to make clear that the oil is not poured into the palm of the person cleansing himself.
27. his right finger. The rabbis plausibly inferred this was the index finger.
34. I put the scaly affliction. The Hebrew verb used here is identical with the one just employed for God’s “giving” the land. A theological notion is adumbrated in the pun: God bestows (verbal stem n-t-n) both great bounty and also blight. The Midrash in Leviticus Rabba, seeking to rescue divine benevolence for Israel, fancifully imagines that the Canaanites have hidden gold in the walls of their houses which is discovered when the stones are pulled apart in the ritual of purgation.
35. Something like an affliction has appeared to me in the house. The vagueness of the phrasing reflects the uncertainty of the home owner’s diagnosis. We have already observed the peculiar extrapolation from scaly skin disease to blight or mildew in fabrics. Now the owner of the house contemplates what is evidently some sort of mold or mildew in the walls of his house and wonders whether it exhibits a certain similarity—which the diagnosing priest could establish as actually the very same pathology—to the skin disease called tsaraʿat.
40. fling them outside the town into an unclean place. As the emphatic language suggests, what is involved is not a neutral act of removing contaminants but a ridding the community of noxious impurities that are to be consigned, with vehement energy, to a place of impurity outside the pale of the community.
51. And he shall take … and dip them in the blood … and sprinkle on the house seven times. These linked rituals of purgation, from person to house, are motivated not medically but by a pervasive sense that the human community is constantly threatened by forces of impurity which must be warded off or, should they invade, which must be utterly purged through all the ritual gestures and detergent substances at the disposal of the priestly class. The shadowy antecedents of this vision of impurity lie in a pagan sense of a realm of contamination dominated by demonic spirits. Although the ritual apparatus, no doubt drawing on archaic precedents, remains in place, there is no indication here that impurity is associated with the demonic, though there appears to be an association with decay, deformity, and death.
54. This is the teaching for every affliction of skin blanch. The little catalogue that begins here and continues through the next two verses serves as a summary, enfolding the laws of this chapter with the preceding one (where scurf, scale disease of garment, and inflammation, scab, and shiny spot are all mentioned).
57. on the day of the unclean and on the day of the clean. Less literally, and adopting a minor shift in the vowel points proposed by Baruch Levine, this could mean: when they are cleansed and when they are unclean.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them, ‘Should any man have a flux from his member, he is unclean. 3And this shall be his uncleanness in his flux: his member running with its flux or his member stopped up with its flux—this is his uncleanness. 4Any bedding on which the man with flux lies is unclean and any object on which he sits is unclean. 5And a man who touches his bedding shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 6And he who sits on an object that the man with flux has sat on shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 7And he who touches the body of the man with flux shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 8And should a man with flux spit upon a clean person, he shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 9And any saddle upon which the man with flux rides shall be unclean. 10And whoever touches anything that has been under him shall be unclean until evening, and he who carries these things shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 11And anyone whom the man with flux touches, not having rinsed his hands in water, shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 12And an earthen vessel that the man with flux touches shall be broken, and any wooden vessel shall be rinsed with water. 13And when the man with flux becomes clean from his flux, he shall count him seven days for his being clean and launder his garments and bathe his body in fresh water, and he shall be clean. 14And on the eighth day he shall take him two turtledoves or two young pigeons and come before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and give them to the priest. 15And the priest shall do them, one an offense offering and one a burnt offering, and the priest shall atone for him before the LORD for his flux. 16And when a man has an emission of seed, he shall bathe his whole body in water and be unclean until evening. 17And any fabric or any leather upon which there has been an emission of seed shall be laundered in water and be unclean until evening. 18And a woman whom a man has bedded with emission of seed—they shall wash in water and be unclean until evening. 19And a woman who has a flux of blood, her flux being from her genitals, seven days she shall be in her menstruation, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. 20And whatever she lies upon in her menstruation shall be unclean, and whatever she sits upon shall be unclean. 21And whoever touches her bedding shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 22And whoever touches any object upon which she has sat shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 23And if it is on the bedding or on the object that she is sitting on when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening. 24And if a man in fact beds her, her menstruation shall be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days, and any bedding upon which he lies shall be unclean. 25And should a woman have a flux of blood many days, not in the time of her menstruation, or should she have a flux in addition to her menstruation, all the days of the flux of her uncleanness she shall be as in the days of her menstruation. She is unclean. 26Any bedding upon which she lies all the days of her flux shall be like the bedding of her menstruation, and any object on which she sits shall be unclean like the uncleanness of her menstruation. 27And whoever touches them shall be unclean, and shall launder his garments and bathe in water and shall be unclean until evening. 28And if she becomes clean from her flux, she shall count her seven days and after shall be clean. 29And on the eighth day she shall take her two turtledoves or two young pigeons and bring them to the priest at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 30And the priest shall do one an offense offering and one a burnt offering, and the priest shall atone for her before the LORD for the flux of her uncleanness. 31And you shall set apart the Israelites from their uncleanness lest they die through their uncleanness by making unclean My sanctuary which is in their midst. 32This is the teaching about the man with flux and about him who has an emission of seed by which he becomes unclean, 33and about her who is unwell in her menstruation, and about the person with flux, whether male or female, and about the man who lies with an unclean woman.’”
CHAPTER 15 NOTES
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2. from his member. The primary meaning of the noun basar is “flesh.” In the preceding chapter, it was used as a synecdoche for “body.” Here it is an obvious euphemism for the sexual organ.
3. running with its flux or … stopped up with its flux. Since the very term “flux” (zov, the same root manifested in “a land flowing with milk and honey”) suggests some sort of fluid discharge, there is a need to stipulate that this category of ailment also includes cases in which the discharge is scanty, slow, and viscous (“stopped up”).
4. Any bedding. As in the laws pertaining to skin disease and mildew, the concern is not a medical one of contagion but a ritual one of contamination (tumʾah, “impurity” or “uncleanness”). The condition of ritual uncleanness could be conveyed through secondary contact and, in some instances, even tertiary contact. Here, a substance merely touched by the man with a genital discharge does not contaminate, nor does he convey uncleanness if he touches someone after rinsing his hands, but contact with a substance that has been pressed against his genital area—bedding or a seat—does transmit the impurity. In all this, the overriding preoccupation of the Priestly writers is to protect the ritual purity of their special domain, the sanctuary, by instituting this system of sequestering and ablution in order to prevent the spread of the contamination. In the pagan world, such contamination was imagined to be imparted by demonic forces. Milgrom is certainly right in noting that the monotheistic perspective of Leviticus precludes the notion of the demonic from the conception of impurity. His contention, however, that the opposing forces of life and death manifested in purity and impurity are the consequence of man’s moral actions is apologetic, for it is clear that certain pathological conditions—not presented here as a punishment for sin—and even certain normal physiological processes were thought to be intrinsic sources of impurity.
5. bathe. The Hebrew verb raḥats can mean simply “to wash,” but in these laws it is evident that the whole body is to be immersed.
7. he who touches the body. Again, the noun used means “flesh,” but the case of touching the person’s genitals is an unlikely one, so the term should be construed here as a synecdoche for body. Abraham ibn Ezra succinctly observes, “Whatever member or limb it may be.”
9. saddle. The Hebrew merkav refers to anything a person mounted on an animal would sit on, and so includes saddlecloths, pillows, and the like.
10. these things. The Hebrew says, rather tersely, “them,” referring to anything that would have been under the mounted person.
12. earthen … wooden vessel. Milgrom suggests that the earthen vessel is to be broken because such implements were cheap, whereas the more costly carved wooden vessel was to be rescued for continued use through rinsing.
15. offense offering. As elsewhere, the context makes clear that the Hebrew ḥatʾat does not mean “sin offering,” for no sin has been committed. But being the bearer of a source of contamination that could defile the sanctuary is at least a potential offense, in a strictly mechanical sense, to the sacred zone of the deity.
16. an emission of seed. The Hebrew for “emission,” shikhvah, is linked to the verb for “lying down” shakhav, but may derive from what is “laid down” as the result of a spurt or shower of anything liquid, as in the expression shikhvat tal, “layer of dew” (Exodus 16:13).
18. And a woman whom a man has bedded with emission of seed. Sexual intercourse with ejaculation renders both parties temporarily impure in regard to participation in the cult—a widespread idea in the ancient world. Hence the Israelites are enjoined to refrain from sexual relations for three days before the Sinai epiphany.
19. her flux being from her genitals. Again, the noun used is basar. The translation follows ibn Ezra in understanding this as a euphemism for the vagina and uterus, which of course are the locus of the menstrual flow. The notion that the menstruant is a source of contamination to be strenuously avoided is shared by many ancient cultures. Even if the restrictions regarding menstruation are less extreme here than in some other cultures, the association of this natural female function with uncleanness is one that has had problematic social and perhaps psychological consequences continuing through post-biblical Judaism.
her menstruation. Though the noun nidah is conventionally derived from the verbal stem n-d-h, which means “to banish,” Levine proposes that it is cognate with n-z-h, “to sprinkle” or “to spatter,” thus referring explicitly to the menstrual flow.
24. her menstruation shall be upon him. Later, there will be a stipulation of punishment for this act. Here, the man cohabiting with the menstruant becomes a kind of male menstruant, conveying ritual impurity precisely as the menstruating woman does and subject to the same process of purification.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses after the death of Aaron’s two sons when they came forward before the LORD and died. 2And the LORD said to Moses, “Speak to Aaron your brother, that he not come at all times into the sacred zone within the curtain in front of the cover that is on the Ark, lest he die. For in the cloud I shall appear over the cover. 3With this shall Aaron come into the sacred zone, with a bull from the herd for an offense offering and a ram for a burnt offering. 4A sacral linen tunic he shall wear and linen breeches shall be on his body and with a linen sash he shall gird himself and a linen turban he shall don. They are sacral garments. And he shall bathe his body in water and put them on. 5And from the community of Israelites he shall take two he-goats for an offense offering and one ram for a burnt offering. 6And Aaron shall bring forward the offense-offering bull which is his and atone for himself and for his household. 7And he shall take the two goats and set them before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 8And he shall put lots on the two goats, one for the LORD and one for Azazel. 9And Aaron shall bring forward the goat for which the lot for the LORD comes up, and he shall make it an offense offering. 10And the goat for which the lot for Azazel comes up shall be set live before the LORD to atone upon it, to send it off to Azazel in the wilderness. 11And Aaron shall bring forward the offense-offering bull which is his, and he shall atone for himself and for his household, and he shall slaughter the offense-offering bull which is his. 12And he shall take a panful of fiery coals from the altar, from before the LORD, and a double handful of fine aromatic incense, and bring it within the curtain. 13And he shall put the incense on the fire before the LORD, and the cloud of incense shall envelope the covering that is over the Ark of the Covenant, lest he die. 14And he shall take from the blood of the bull and sprinkle with his finger over the surface of the cover on the east side, and before the curtain he shall sprinkle seven times from the blood with his finger. 15And he shall slaughter the offense-offering goat which is the people’s and bring its blood within the curtain, and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the cover and before the cover. 16And he shall atone over the sacred zone for the uncleannesses of the Israelites and for their sins, according to all their offenses, and thus he shall do for the Tent of Meeting that dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses. 17And no person shall be in the Tent of Meeting when he comes into the sacred zone to atone until he goes out, and he shall atone for himself and for his household and for the whole assembly of Israel. 18And he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD and atone for it, and he shall take from the blood of the bull and from the blood of the goat and put it on the horns of the altar all around. 19And he shall sprinkle over it from the blood with his finger seven times and cleanse it and consecrate it from the uncleannesses of the Israelites. 20And when he finishes atoning for the sacred zone and for the Tent of Meeting and for the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. 21And Aaron shall lay his two hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the transgressions of the Israelites and all their sins, according to all their offenses, and he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it off in the hand of a man for the hour to the wilderness. 22And the goat shall bear upon it all their transgressions to a remote region, and he shall send off the goat to the wilderness. 23And Aaron shall come into the Tent of Meeting and take off the linen garments that he wore when he came into the sacred zone and lay them down there. 24And he shall bathe his body in water in a holy place and put on his garments and come out and do his burnt offering and the people’s burnt offering, and he shall atone for himself and for the people. 25And the fat of the offense offering he shall turn to smoke on the altar. 26And he who sent off the goat to Azazel shall launder his garments and bathe his body in water, and after he may come into the camp. 27And the offense-offering bull and the offense-offering goat whose blood has been brought to atone in the sacred zone shall be taken out beyond the camp, and they shall burn their hides in fire and their flesh and their dung. 28And he who burns them shall launder his garments and bathe his body in water, and after he may come into the camp. 29And it shall be a perpetual statute for you: in the seventh month on the tenth of the month you shall afflict yourselves and no task shall you do, the native and the sojourner who sojourns in your midst. 30For on this day it will be atoned for you, to cleanse you of all your offenses, before the LORD you shall be cleansed. 31It is a sabbath of sabbaths for you, and you shall afflict yourselves, an everlasting statute. 32And the priest shall atone, who will be anointed and who will be installed to serve as priest in his father’s stead, and he shall put on the linen garments, the sacral garments. 33And he shall atone for the holy sanctuary and for the Tent of Meeting, and he shall atone for the altar, and for the priests and for all the assembled people he shall atone. 34And this shall be an everlasting statute for you to atone for the Israelites for all their offenses once in the year.” And he did as the LORD had charged Moses.
CHAPTER 16 NOTES
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1. after the death of Aaron’s two sons. As Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, and many traditional and modern commentators variously observe, the death of Aaron’s sons when they presumptuously entered sacred space is mentioned to alert Aaron to the mortal danger he and his successors run in entering the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement.
when they came forward. This is the verb regularly used for coming before the divine presence in the sanctuary. When the act is unauthorized, the implication of the verb is “to encroach.”
2. the sacred zone. In the present context, the meaning of haqodesh (“the holy”) is clearly the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant stands. Only on this most sacred day of the calendar is the high priest granted access to this dangerous space, and only when he follows a strict regimen of dress and action.
the cover. The exact nature of this item is not entirely certain, though it appears to have been some sort of carved lid to the Ark. Whatever the actual etymology of the Hebrew term kaporet, this chapter surely exploits a punning connection with kipur, “atonement” or “purgation.”
6. atone. The verb kiper, as Jacob Milgrom explains, seems to derive from a concrete notion of rubbing clean. In the cultic lexicon, it has the more abstract—indeed, theological—sense of effecting atonement or expiation. When it is applied to persons, it is followed by either the preposition beʿad (“for”) or ʿal (literally “on,” “over”). When it is applied to things (see verse 33), it is followed by the noun as direct object, which has led some interpreters to render it as “purge” in such cases.
8. one for the LORD and one for Azazel. As countless seals and other ancient inscriptions unearthed by archaeologists attest, the use of a proper name or title, prefixed by the letter lamed (“for”) as a lamed of possession, was a standard form for indicating that the object in question belonged to So-and-so (as in lamelekh, “the king’s”). These words, then (in the Hebrew, each is a single word, leYHWH and laʿazazʾel), are the actual texts written on the two lots. Much ink since Late Antiquity has been spilled over the identity of Azazel, but the most plausible understanding—it is a very old one—is that it is the name of a goatish demon or deity associated with the remote wilderness. The name appears to reflect ʿez, goat.
9. for which the lot for the LORD comes up. This translation renders the Hebrew verb literally. The use of that verb may be dictated by the fact that the lots were in all likelihood pulled up out of a box or urn.
10. to send it off to Azazel in the wilderness. Approximate analogues to the so-called scapegoat ritual, using different animals, appear in several different Mesopotamian texts. The origins of the practice are surely in an archaic idea—that the polluting substance generated by the transgressions of the people is physically carried away by the goat. Azazel is not represented as a competing deity (or demon) rivaling YHWH, but the ritual depends upon a polarity between YHWH/the pale of human civilization and Azazel/the remote wilderness, the realm of disorder and raw formlessness. An unapologetic reading might make out the trace of a mythological plot, even if it is no more than vestigial in this monotheistic context. It is as though the goat piled with impurities were being sent back to the primordial realm of “welter and waste” before the delineated world came into being, but that realm here is given an animal-or-demon tag. The early rabbis, extending the momentum of the ritual, imagined the goat as being pushed off a high cliff, but in our text it is merely sent out, or set free, in the wild wilderness that is the realm of Azazel.
12. double handful. Since one hand holds the fire-pan, this is an indication of dry measure rather than a direction that each of the priest’s two hands should be filled with incense.
16. he shall atone over the sacred zone. This clause is the conceptual heart of the entire atonement ritual. During the year, the accumulated sins and transgressions and physical pathologies and inadvertencies of the Israelites have built up a kind of smog of pollution that threatens the sanctity of the Tent of Meeting and the Holy of Holies within it—by implication for later times, the sanctity of the Temple. This elaborate rite of purgation scrubs everything clean of impurity, making the sacred zone cultically viable for another year. Again, evidence abounds of annual rites for cleansing the temple in Mesopotamian culture that may well have served as precedent for what we have here. Later Jewish tradition would transform this ritual for the purgation of a physical miasma of pollution into a process of spiritual repentance and atonement.
21. a man for the hour. The Hebrew ʾish ʿiti is a celebrated crux. The expression appears only here. The literal sense is “a timely man,” and it probably indicates a man chosen to serve for this time and task.
29. afflict yourselves. The evident meaning is fasting, though some have contended that the idiom is not restricted to fasting but could also represent other forms of self-denial.
34. And he did as the LORD had charged Moses. The only logical antecedent for “he” is Aaron, who as high priest is the person who has been enjoined to carry out this ritual. It is unclear why the name is omitted. With it, the chapter would be enclosed in a neatly chiastic envelope structure: “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Speak to Aaron’ … And Aaron did as the LORD had charged Moses.”
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to Aaron and to his sons and to all the Israelites, and you shall say to them, ‘This is the thing that the LORD has charged, saying: 3Every man of the house of Israel who slaughters a bull or a sheep or a goat in the camp or who slaughters outside the camp, 4and does not bring it to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting to bring it forward as an offering to the LORD before the LORD’s Tabernacle, it shall be counted as blood for that man—he has spilled blood—and that man shall be cut off from the midst of his people. 5So that the Israelites will bring their sacrifices which they sacrifice across the open field and bring them to the LORD, to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, to the priest, and they shall sacrifice them as communion sacrifices to the LORD. 6And the priest shall cast the blood on the LORD’s altar at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and turn the fat to smoke as a fragrant odor to the LORD. 7And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons after which they go whoring. An everlasting statute shall this be for them for their generations. 8And to them you shall say: every man of the house of Israel and of the sojourner who sojourns in their midst who offers up a burnt offering or a sacrifice, 9and does not bring it to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting to do it for the LORD, that man shall be cut off from his kin. 10And every man of the house of Israel and of the sojourner who sojourns in their midst who consumes any blood, I shall set My face against the living person who consumes blood and cut him off from the midst of his people. 11For the life of the flesh is in the blood. And as for Me, I have given it to you on the altar to ransom your lives, for it is the blood that ransoms in exchange for life. 12Therefore have I said to the Israelites: no living person among you shall consume blood, nor shall the sojourner who sojourns in your midst consume blood. 13And every man of the Israelites and of the sojourner who sojourns in their midst who hunts down prey, beast or fowl that may be eaten, he shall spill out its blood and cover it with earth. 14For the life of all flesh, its blood is in its life, and I say to the Israelites: the blood of all flesh you shall not consume, for the life of all flesh is its blood, all who consume it shall be cut off. 15And any living person who eats an animal that has died or been torn by predators, whether native or sojourner, shall launder his garments and bathe in water and be unclean until evening, and then be clean. 16And if he does not launder nor bathe his body, he shall bear his punishment.’”
CHAPTER 17 NOTES
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2. Speak to Aaron and to his sons and to all the Israelites. In contrast to the preceding chapters, God here enjoins Moses to address not merely Aaron and the priestly caste but the whole Israelite people. This pitching of the divine message to the entire populace is one of many signals that have led scholars since the nineteenth century to conclude that chapters 17–26 constitute a distinctive unit—conventionally designated the Holiness Code because of its concern with the idea that the entire people shall make itself holy—possessing certain distinctive theological features and certain distinctive elements of vocabulary.
3. Every man of the house of Israel. This phrase, ʾish ʾish mibeyt yisraʾel, is reiterated in this chapter and does not appear at all in chapters 1–16. It is a stylistic device for insisting on the comprehensiveness of the obligation for all Israelites with which the Holiness Code is concerned.
who slaughters. There has been debate since Late Antiquity about whether the verb refers to general slaughter for the purpose of eating or slaughter for the purpose of sacrifice. There are grounds to conclude that in the early biblical period there was no such thing as “secular” slaughter (sḥehitat ḥulin), for slaughter was regularly associated with offering some part of the animal as a sacrifice. That appears to be the assumption of this law. Slaughtering “outside the camp” entails the danger of sacrifice to the feral or vegetal deities of the open field, and so the animal must be brought to the sanctuary. This ban on secular slaughter, pointedly permitted by Deuteronomy, logically implies, as Milgrom argues at length, that local sanctuaries are envisaged by the law, where people living in the immediate region could bring the animals as offerings before consuming a large part of them.
4. it shall be counted as blood … he has spilled blood. The starkness of this formulation is quite startling, and very much in keeping with the emphasis throughout the chapter on the sacrosanct character of blood as the principal bearer and symbol of life. The person who slaughters an animal without having the priest cast some of its blood on the legitimate altar of YHWH is considered to have committed murder. The blood on the altar, then, offered up to the deity together with the burnt suet, is an expiation for the blood of the animal spilled in the slaughtering process, a ritual recognition that the taking of life, even for consumption as food, is a grave act that must be balanced by an act of expiation.
7. And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons. This clause provides persuasive evidence that the “slaughter” mentioned in verse 3 is not solely for eating but involves a cultic act. The “goat-demons” (seʿirim) are surely to be associated with Azazel in chapter 16. While our knowledge of their precise nature is limited, they are clearly archaic nature gods of the wild realm “beyond the camp,” outside the pale of monotheistic civilization that the sundry Priestly writers are laboring to create. Monogamy, of course, is a reiterated biblical metaphor for monotheism, and so worship of the goat-demons and other deities is an act of promiscuity, “whoring.”
10. the living person. In similar contexts elsewhere, the polyvalent Hebrew nefesh is rendered in this translation simply as “person,” but here it is important to add the notion it implies of life because the use of the term puns on nefesh in the sense of “life” as it appears in the next verse.
11. I have given it to you on the altar to ransom your lives. The conception of sacrifice as expiating substitution is made perfectly explicit here: the bloodshed, equivalent to murder, involved in slaughtering the animal is “made good” through divine provision by the sacrificial blood cast on the altar “to ransom [or, atone for] your lives.”
12. no living person. As in verse 10, the fraught term nefesh is pointedly used rather than ʾish, “man.”
13. he shall spill out its blood and cover it with earth. In the case of game, perhaps typically downed with an arrow, the beast or bird is not fit to be brought as an offering to the altar, so a different mechanism is employed to respect the sacrosanct nature of the lifeblood—spilling it out on the ground and covering it with earth.
14. For the life of all flesh, its blood is in its life. The syntax here, literally reproduced in the translation, is a little crabbed, leaving the relation of terms slightly uncertain. One suspects that the writer was impelled by the desire to insist repetitively on the equation of dam, “blood,” and nefesh, “life.”
15. any living person who eats … shall launder his garments and bathe. The clear implication of this verse, in contrast to other biblical legislation on this topic, is that it is not forbidden to eat an animal that has died of natural causes or has been killed by a beast of prey. The animal carcass does convey ritual impurity, so laundering of the garments and bathing are required of the person who eats its flesh. The permissiveness concerning this category of meat may be dictated by the consideration that an animal found dead would not be fit for sacrifice and so, unlike animals slaughtered in open country, would not lead a person into the danger of sacrificing to the feral deities.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them: ‘I am the LORD your God. 3Not like the deeds of the land of Egypt in which you dwelled shall you do, and not like the deeds of the land of Canaan into which I am about to bring you shall you do, and according to their statutes you shall not walk. 4My laws you shall do and My statutes you shall keep to walk by them. I am the LORD your God. 5And you shall keep My statutes and My laws which a person shall do and live through them. I am the LORD. 6No man of you shall come near any of his own flesh to lay bare nakedness. I am the LORD. 7Your father’s nakedness, which is your mother’s nakedness, you shall not lay bare. She is your mother; you shall not lay bare her nakedness. 8The nakedness of your father’s wife you shall not lay bare. It is your father’s nakedness. 9The nakedness of your sister, your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, born in the household or born outside—you shall not lay bare her nakedness. 10The nakedness of your son’s daughter or of your daughter’s daughter—you shall not lay bare her nakedness, for it is your nakedness. 11The nakedness of the daughter of your father’s wife, born in your father’s household—she is your sister; you shall not lay bare her nakedness. 12The nakedness of your father’s sister you shall not lay bare. It is your father’s flesh. 13The nakedness of your mother’s sister you shall not lay bare, for it is your mother’s flesh. 14The nakedness of your father’s brother you shall not lay bare, and you shall not come near his wife. She is your aunt. 15Your daughter-in-law’s nakedness you shall not lay bare. She is your son’s wife; you shall not lay bare her nakedness. 16The nakedness of your brother’s wife you shall not lay bare. It is your brother’s nakedness. 17The nakedness of a woman and her daughter you shall not lay bare. Her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter you shall not take to lay bare her nakedness. They are kin-flesh, it is depravity. 18And a woman with her sister you shall not take to become rivals, to lay bare her nakedness while her sister is still alive. 19And you shall not come near a woman in her menstrual uncleanness to lay bare her nakedness. 20And you shall not put your member into your fellow man’s wife to spill seed, to be defiled through her. 21And you shall not dedicate any of your seed to pass over to Molech, and you shall not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. 22And with a male you shall not lie as one lies with a woman. It is an abhorrence. 23And you shall not put your member into any beast to be defiled through it. And a woman shall not present herself to a beast to couple with it. It is a perversion. 24Do not be defiled through all of these, for through all of these were the nations that I am about to send away before you defiled. 25And the land was defiled, and I made a reckoning with it for its iniquity, and the land spewed out its inhabitants. 26And you on your part shall keep My statutes and My laws, and you shall not do any of these abhorrences, neither the native nor the sojourner who sojourns in your midst. 27For all these abhorrences did the men of the land who were before you do, and the land was defiled. 28And the land will not spew you out in your defiling it as it spewed out the nation that was before you. 29For whosoever does any of these abhorrences, the person who does it shall be cut off from the midst of his people. 30And you shall keep My watch not to do any of the abhorrent practices that were done before you, and you shall not be defiled through them. I am the LORD your God.’”
CHAPTER 18 NOTES
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2. I am the LORD your God. As elsewhere in the Torah, this declaration at the beginning, or the end, of a set of legal injunctions echoes the set form for royal proclamations in the ancient Near East, and has the sense: “By the authority invested in me as your sovereign I hereby enjoin you.”
3. the deeds of the land of Egypt … the deeds of the land of Canaan. Were such “deeds” (singular in the Hebrew) of incest and related forms of sexual license endemic in Egypt and Canaan, and not prevalent in Mesopotamia and Phoenicia, which go unmentioned here? Despite the presence of sister-brother marriages in the Egyptian royal house, and perhaps even beyond it, the association of both countries with unbridled sexuality surely cannot be grounded in historical observation. Egypt and Canaan are no doubt invoked because these are the two pagan countries in which Israel has collectively resided. Otherwise, the identification of both countries as theaters of sexual license may be attributed to a widespread reflex of projecting uncontrolled sexuality onto the cultural other (as Jews were sometimes thought of in Christian Europe, blacks in America). This reflex would have been reinforced by the tendency to see the polytheistic world as a realm lacking restraint, in contradistinction to the Israelite conception of one God and one clear-cut set of binding restrictions.
their statutes. Ḥuqot, as elsewhere, is translated as “statutes,” its etymological primary sense (“things inscribed”), in order to maintain the counterpoint with God’s statutes in the next verse. The meaning in context, however, by a kind of metonymic slide from law to action, is something like “habitual practice.” When the same term occurs in the last verse of this chapter, the context requires rendering it as “practices.”
6. No man. The male is singled out, one infers, because he is assumed to take the initiative in sexual acts. An exception here (verse 23) is the woman engaging in bestiality.
his own flesh. This phrase follows an idiomatic pattern of placing two synonyms together in construct state—here, sheʾer and basar, both of which mean “flesh”—in order to indicate emphasis or a superlative.
nakedness. The Hebrew noun ʿerwah transparently derives from a verbal root that means “to be naked,” but all its uses suggest either vulnerability (as in Joseph’s words to his brothers, “To see the land’s nakedness you have come,” Genesis 42:9) or shamefulness. Some characterize the term as a euphemism for the genitalia, but if that is the case, it constitutes one of those instances in which the euphemism itself becomes a potent and fraught term. When Saul denounces Jonathan for disloyalty “to … the shame of your mother’s nakedness” (1 Samuel 20:30), the term verges on an obscenity, as references to the mother’s pudenda are used in Arabic and other languages.
7. which is your mother’s nakedness. Although the Hebrew uses waw here (usually, “and”), it is in this case the equivalent of an explanatory subordinate clause, as the next sentence makes clear. A kind of contagion of nakedness is envisaged. Because the mother’s nakedness has been in contact with the father’s nakedness—and because in the patriarchal order her sexuality “belongs” to him—she is taboo.
8. your father’s wife. Especially given the circumstances of polygamy, one’s father’s wife would not necessarily be one’s mother.
10. your son’s daughter. Presumably, a prohibition on intercourse with one’s own daughter is also assumed, but no satisfactory explanation has been offered for why it is not explicitly stated.
18. a woman with her sister. As many interpreters have noted, this and several other prohibitions in the list are explicitly violated by figures in the national narrative of Israel: Jacob marries two sisters; Abraham claims that Sarah is his half sister; David’s daughter Tamar appears to think it possible that her father can arrange a marriage between her and her half brother Amnon. Either these laws represent a Priestly “reform” in sexual practice, as Milgrom proposes, or certain once acceptable sexual unions had come through evolving social consensus to be regarded as taboo.
to become rivals. This is the technical term, grounded in realism, for the condition of co-wives in polygamy. In the clause “while her sister is still alive” the words “her sister” are added for clarity.
20. to spill seed. “Spill” is merely implied by the compact lezaraʿ, “for seed.” The two defining elements for adultery, indicated here with legal precision, are penetration and ejaculation. The potential consequence, of course, is that the woman could produce a child of dubious paternity—a particularly problematic condition in this patrilinear society.
21. dedicate any of your seed to pass over to Molech. Molech is a Canaanite deity whose name suggests “king.” The authentic form of the name may have been Malik, revocalized by the Masoretes to make the word resemble boshet, “shame.” The most likely reference of the whole phrase is to child sacrifice, which in fact was widely practiced in the Syro-Palestinian sphere, as vividly attested by the vast number of children’s graves uncovered at the site of Carthage, the Phoenician colony in North Africa. The verb “pass over” would then be an ellipsis for “pass over through fire,” used in other texts for this pagan practice. Some scholars, however, maintain that what was involved was a dedication ceremony in which the child was passed over the fire but not burned as a sacrifice. The metonymy “seed” for “child” links this law with the preceding ones and those that follow in which seed in the sense of semen is deposited in a forbidden place.
22. with a male you shall not lie as one lies with a woman. The explicitness of this law—the Hebrew for “as one lies” is the plural construct noun mishkevei, “bedding,” used exclusively for sexual intercourse—suggests that it is a ban on anal intercourse and intercrural intercourse (the latter often practiced by the Greeks). Other forms of homosexual activity do not seem of urgent concern. The evident rationale for the prohibition is the wasting of seed in what the law appears to envisage as a kind of grotesque parody of heterosexual intercourse. (Lesbianism, which surely must have been known in the ancient Near East, is nowhere mentioned, perhaps because no wasting of seed is involved, although the reason for the omission remains unclear.) There is scant textual evidence to support the apologetic claim of some recent interpreters that the ban on homosexual congress is limited to the preceding list of incestuous unions. One may apply here the proposal of Mary Douglas that this is a culture that likes to keep lines of categorical distinction clear: no human-beast couplings are allowed (in contrast to the imaginative freedom on this topic of Greek myth), and any simulation of procreative heterosexual intercourse by the insertion of the male member in an orifice or fleshy crevice of another male is abhorrent.
23. a woman shall not present herself to a beast. The literal sense of the verb is “stand before” (which in other contexts can mean “to perform service”), but in fact she is crouching, with posterior toward the male beast, as the verb here for coupling, r-b-ʿ, indicates, since it is cognate (possibly via the Aramaic) with r-b-ts, the verb used for an animal’s crouching. It is puzzling that no mention is made in the present context of acts of bestiality by males, though in chapter 21 this is defined as a capital offense.
27. the men of the land. Perhaps the Hebrew ʾanshey also includes women, as the taboo in verse 23 suggests, but it is surely meant to pick up the initial “No man of you” in verse 6.
29. the person who does it. The Hebrew actually switches from the initial singular “whosoever does” to a plural “the persons who do it,” but the singular is used in the translation because of the requirement of consistency of English usage.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to all the community of Israelites, and you shall say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. 3Every man shall revere his mother and his father, and My sabbaths you shall keep. I am the LORD your God. 4Do not turn to the idols nor make molten gods for yourselves. I am the LORD your God. 5And when you sacrifice communion sacrifices to the LORD, you should sacrifice it so that it will be acceptable for you. 6On the day you sacrifice, it shall be eaten and on the morrow, and what is left till the third day shall be burned in fire. 7And if in fact it is eaten on the third day, it is desecrated meat, it shall not be acceptable. 8And he who eats it shall bear his guilt, for he has profaned the LORD’s holiness, and that person shall be cut off from his kin. 9And when you reap your land’s harvest, you shall not finish off the edge of your field, nor pick up the gleanings of your harvest. 10And your vineyard you shall not pluck bare, nor pick up the fallen fruit of your vineyard. For the poor and for the sojourner you shall leave them. I am the LORD your God. 11You shall not steal. You shall not dissemble and you shall not lie, no man to his fellow. 12You shall not swear falsely in My name, profaning the name of your God. I am the LORD. 13You shall not defraud your fellow man and you shall not rob. You shall not keep the hired man’s wages with you through the night till morning. 14You shall not vilify the deaf, and before the blind you shall not put a stumbling block, and you shall fear your God. I am the LORD. You shall do no wrong in justice. 15You shall not favor the wretched and you shall not defer to the rich. In righteousness you shall judge your fellow. 16You shall not go about slandering your kin. You shall not stand over the blood of your fellow man. I am the LORD. 17You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely reprove your fellow and not bear guilt because of him. 18You shall not take vengeance, and you shall not harbor a grudge against the members of your people. And you shall love your fellow man as yourself. I am the LORD. 19My statutes you shall keep. Your beasts you shall not mate with a different kind. Your field you shall not sow with different kinds. And a garment of different kinds of thread, shaʿatnez, shall not be donned by you. 20And should a man lie with a woman with emission of seed when she is a slave previously assigned to a man but has not been ransomed or given her freedom, there shall be an inquiry. They shall not be put to death for she has not been freed. 21And he shall bring his guilt offering to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, a guilt-offering ram. 22And the priest shall atone for him with the guilt-offering ram before the LORD for his offense that he committed, and it will be forgiven him for his offense that he committed. 23And when you come to the land and plant any fruit-bearing tree, you shall leave its fruit uncircumcised. Three years it shall be uncircumcised to you. It shall not be eaten. 24And in the fourth year all its fruit shall be sacred, a jubilation before the LORD. 25And in the fifth year you may eat its fruit, that its yield may be increased for you. I am the LORD your God. 26You shall not eat over the blood. You shall not divine nor interpret omens. 27You shall not round off the edge-growth of your head nor ruin the edge of your beard. 28No gash for the dead shall you make in your flesh, and no tattoo shall you make on yourselves. I am the LORD. 29Do not profane your daughter to make a whore of her, lest the land play the whore and the land be filled with depravity. 30My sabbath you shall keep and My sanctuary you shall revere. I am the LORD. 31Do not turn to the ghosts, and of the familiar spirits do not inquire to be defiled through them. I am the LORD. 32Before a gray head you shall rise, and you shall defer to an elder and fear your God. I am the LORD. 33And should a sojourner sojourn with you, you shall not wrong him. 34Like the native among you shall be the sojourner who sojourns with you, and you shall love him like yourself, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. 35You shall do no wrong in justice—in measure, whether in weight or liquid measure. 36Honest scales, honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin you shall have. I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37And you shall keep all My statutes and all My laws and do them. I am the LORD.’”
CHAPTER 19 NOTES
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2. You shall be holy, for I … am holy. Although the idea that the people of Israel is to make itself holy by emulating God’s intrinsic holiness is not unique to this group of texts in Leviticus, its enunciation as the supreme rationale and didactic rallying point for God’s commands is distinctive, and it is what has led scholars to designate the textual unit from chapter 17 through chapter 26 as the Holiness Code. When the sundry injunctions here conclude with the reiterated formula “I am the LORD,” the implication is “I am the LORD your God Who is holy.”
3. Every man shall revere his mother and his father, and My sabbaths you shall keep. It has been recognized since Late Antiquity that this section of laws, beginning with this verse, constitutes a kind of paraphrase and elaboration of the Ten Commandments, following a different order, using somewhat different turns of phrase, and introducing additional legal imperatives. Abraham ibn Ezra, as usual with an eye to compositional links, notes that the previous section was focused on prohibited sexual relations that could lead to the expulsion of people from its land. The variegated laws of the present chapter, he contends, came to remind Israel that there is a whole spectrum of commands which must be observed if it is to remain rooted in its land.
4. idols. The Hebrew ʾelilim refers not to the carved likenesses of divinities but to the nonentity of the pagan gods. Its most plausible derivation is from ʾal, “not,” and hence would suggest falsity or lack of being, but the term probably also puns on ʾel, “god,” using a diminutive and pejorative form that could mean something like “godlet.”
5. when you sacrifice. It is characteristic of the sacerdotal milieu that produced this paraphrase of the Decalogue that a sacrificial law is intertwined with the fundamental moral and theological imperatives. The LORD’s holiness is profaned no less by eating sacrificial meat on the third day than by dishonoring one’s parents or turning one’s daughter into a whore.
sacrifice it. The Hebrew thus switches to a distributive “it” after the plural “sacrifices.”
9. you shall not finish off the edge of your field, nor pick up the gleanings of your harvest. In an agricultural economy without coined money (weights of silver and gold could be used for exchange), the stipulation that an edge of the field be left unharvested and that what was dropped by the reapers should not be picked up amounted to a kind of poor tax. The indigent could follow the harvesters into the fields and pick up enough to sustain themselves, as we see dramatically in the Book of Ruth when the widowed Ruth, a newly arrived resident alien, goes out into Boaz’s fields.
10. sojourner. As elsewhere, the Hebrew term refers to a resident alien, who in this tribal agrarian society would have been without real property.
12. You shall not swear falsely in My name, profaning the name of your God. The main clause is a citation of the Decalogue. “Profaning the name of your God” adds a Holiness Code rationale—to swear falsely is to compromise God’s own reputation of holiness through the malfeasance of the people purported to be God’s special treasure.
13. You shall not keep the hired man’s wages with you through the night. The presumption is that the hired man is without reserves. Holding back his wages not only subjects him to a night of anxiety as to whether he will be paid but could impose actual hardship, for he may need the wages for his evening meal.
14. vilify the deaf, and before the blind … a stumbling block. There is both a common denominator and a logical discrepancy (the rhetorical figure of zeugma) between these two prohibitions. In both instances, the sensory impairment of the victim prevents him from perceiving that someone is exploiting his weakness in a nasty way. But abusing or verbally insulting a deaf man gratuitously humiliates him in a fashion that he himself, unhearing, may never become aware of, whereas placing a stumbling block before a blind man causes him hurt of which he will immediately become aware. A long exegetical tradition sees both these cases as figurative instances of a more general category of moral turpitude: placing a bottle of whiskey, for example, in front of a recovering alcoholic would fall under the rubric of putting a stumbling block before the blind.
15. You shall not favor the wretched and you shall not defer to the rich. Both Hebrew verbs involve idioms that make “face” the object of the verb—literally “lift up the face,” “glorify/honor the face.” The term for “rich” more generally means “great,” but in economic contexts (here as an antonym to “wretched” or “indigent”) it regularly has the meaning of “wealthy.”
16. You shall not go about slandering … You shall not stand over the blood. Jacob Milgrom neatly observes that the verbs are pointedly sequenced from going about to standing (and presumably doing nothing), both with the effect of complicity in doing harm. Although there is some dispute among interpreters about the meaning of “stand over the blood,” there is a degree of consensus among traditional commentators, supported by the bracketing of the two sentences in this verse, that it means to stand by without intervening while your fellow man’s blood—literally or figuratively—is spilled.
17. You shall surely reprove your fellow. The obligation to reprove someone you see engaged in a wrongful act may be linked psychologically with the immediately preceding injunction not to hate your brother in your heart: witnessing immoral behavior without attempting to intervene, the observer may feel resentment or contempt toward the perpetrator who in fact might conceivably have been dissuaded from the act by reproof.
19. shaʿatnez. This is evidently a loanword, and the etymology is uncertain. The way it is used here suggests it might have required some explanation for ordinary Hebrew speakers of the time of writing, and in Deuteronomy 22:11 (its only other biblical occurrence) it is explicitly glossed as a fabric made of interwoven threads of linen and wool (see the comment there). All the prohibitions in this verse appear to reflect that general Israelite aversion to the mingling of distinct categories on which Mary Douglas has written. It should be noted that, as with some other prohibitions, what is forbidden for profane use is permitted for cultic use—the high priest’s robe and the covering of the Ark were linsey-woolsey.
not be donned by you. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “not go up on you.”
20. put to death. A betrothed woman having sex with another man would be subject like her lover to capital punishment. A female slave, not being a free agent, would not receive the death penalty, and evidently this crime, too, is considered less grave. After an inquiry, a monetary penalty will be set to be paid to the man who betrothed her.
23. you shall leave its fruit uncircumcised. This analogy of fruit to foreskin, a little startling to the modern ear, includes both the idea of leaving a natural growth uncut and the notion, readily understandable in a society in which all male infants were circumcised, of something prohibited. These three verses reflect prudent arboricultural practice rather than any ethical imperative. Milgrom, who has consulted horticulturalists, reports that during the first three years a tree is generally not thinned or pruned or harvested but that the closed buds (from which the image of the foreskin would derive) are plucked before fruit emerges.
24. sacred, a jubilation before the LORD. What is envisaged is a festival of first fruit, to be offered in the sanctuary to God. Behind the term “jubilation,” some scholars have conjectured, may lie an old practice of festive celebrations at harvesttime, perhaps involving matchmaking or even orgies, in the vineyards.
26. You shall not eat over the blood. The meaning of this sentence, represented quite literally in this translation, has been disputed, but the most plausible explanation is the one proposed by the medieval Hebrew exegete Nahmanides and by Rashbam before him: what is involved is a pagan rite of divination—this would be the link with the second half of the verse—in which a ritual meal was consumed over a pit or large receptacle containing blood, perhaps with the idea that spirits of the dead could be conjured up from the blood.
27. round off the edge-growth of your head. The word for “edge-growth,” peʾah, is the same one used in verse 9 for the edge of the field, which is also not to be cut. This is an instance of what Mary Douglas characterizes as analogical thinking. This sort of bowl-shaped haircut does not appear to be the same thing as shaving the head, but it should be noted that shaving the head, tearing or mutilating the beard, and gashing one’s body are all pagan mourning practices.
28. for the dead. The polyvalent Hebrew noun nefesh often means “person,” but in some contexts it refers to a dead person or corpse, and the implication of mourning here points to that meaning.
32. defer to an elder. The idiom used is exactly the one that appears in verse 15 in the prohibition against deferring to the rich. Context is everything: in court proceedings, no special consideration can be given to anyone, regardless of status; in everyday interactions, an old person deserves deference. (Israeli buses used to carry a sign with the words “Before a gray head you shall rise” as a reminder that passengers should give up their seats to the elderly.)
35. in measure, whether in weight or liquid measure. The literal sequence of the Hebrew is: “in measure, in weight, in liquid measure.” Though some contend that the first word, midah, refers to measures of length and breadth, it is a general term introducing the category of measurement, which is then followed by different kinds of measure (hence “whether … or”).
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“And to the Israelites you shall say: ‘Every man of the Israelites and of the sojourners who sojourn in Israel who gives of his seed to Molech is doomed to die. The people of the land shall stone him. 3And as for Me, I shall set My face against that man and cut him off from the midst of his people, for he has given of his seed to Molech so as to defile My sanctuary and to profane My sacred name. 4And if the people of the land actually avert their eyes from that man when he gives of his seed to Molech, not putting him to death, 5I Myself shall turn My face against that man and his clan, and I shall cut him off and all who go whoring after him to whore after Molech, from the midst of their people. 6And the person who turns to the ghosts and to the familiar spirits to go whoring after them, I shall set My face against that person and cut him off from the midst of his people. 7And you shall sanctify yourselves and become holy, for I am the LORD your God. 8And you shall keep My statutes and do them. I am the LORD Who makes you holy. 9For every man who vilifies his father and his mother is doomed to die. He has vilified his father and his mother—his bloodguilt is upon him. 10And a man who commits adultery with a married woman, who commits adultery with his fellow man’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress are doomed to die. 11And a man who lies with his father’s wife, his father’s nakedness he has laid bare. The two of them are doomed to die. Their bloodguilt is upon them. 12And a man who lies with his daughter-in-law, the two of them are doomed to die. They have done a perversion. Their bloodguilt is on them. 13And a man who lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing. They are doomed to die. Their bloodguilt is upon them. 14And a man who takes a woman and her mother, it is depravity. In fire shall he and they be burned, so that there be no depravity in your midst. 15And a man who puts his member into a beast is doomed to die, and the beast you shall kill. 16And a woman who approaches any beast to couple with it, you shall kill the woman and the beast. They are doomed to die. Their bloodguilt is on them. 17And a man who takes his sister, his father’s daughter or his mother’s daughter, and sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is vileness, and they shall be cut off before the eyes of their kinfolk. His sister’s nakedness he has laid bare. He shall bear his punishment. 18And a man who lies with a woman while she is unwell and lays bare her nakedness, he has exposed her flow and she has laid bare the flow of her blood, and the two of them shall be cut off from the midst of their people. 19And the nakedness of your mother’s sister or your father’s sister you shall not lay bare, for his own flesh he has exposed. Their punishment they shall bear. 20And the man who lies with his aunt, his uncle’s nakedness he has laid bare. Their guilt they shall bear, barren they shall die. 21And the man who takes his brother’s wife, it is a repulsive thing. His brother’s nakedness he has laid bare. Barren they shall die. 22And you shall keep all My statutes and all My laws and do them, lest the land to which I bring you to dwell there spew you out. 23And you shall not go by the statutes of the nation which I am about to send away before you, for all these things they have done, and I loathed them. 24And I said to you, it is you who will take hold of their soil, and as for Me, I shall give it to you to take hold of it, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the LORD your God Who set you apart from all the peoples. 25And you shall set apart the clean from the unclean beast, and the unclean bird from the clean, and you shall not make yourselves despicable through beast and bird and all that crawls on the ground, which I set apart for you as unclean. 26And you shall be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy. 27And any man or woman who has a ghost or a familiar spirit is doomed to die. They shall be stoned, their bloodguilt is upon them.’”
CHAPTER 20 NOTES
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2. Every man of the Israelites … who gives of his seed to Molech. The list of prohibited acts that begins here mirrors the one that takes up chapter 18. That chapter and the present one are two panels separated by the paraphrase of the Decalogue in chapter 19. What is couched in chapter 18 as a series of imperatives is recast here in the language of case law (“casuistically”), with the punishment for each offense now stipulated. That addition gives a focusing or quasinarrative development to the relationship between the parallel lists of laws.
3. I shall set My face. The literal sense of the verb is “give,” thus making it a measure-for-measure response to “gives of his seed to Molech.”
so as to defile My sanctuary. Once more, we see the preoccupation of all the segments of Leviticus with preserving the sacred integrity of the sanctuary. A heinous act, such as child sacrifice, is not only intrinsically abhorrent, but also conveys pollution to the sanctuary of YHWH.
8. I am the LORD Who makes you holy. This refrainlike line, which is the ultimate rationale for all the prohibited acts with their stipulated punishments, is the thematic center of the chapter.
9. who vilifies his father and his mother. The verb qalel, “to treat with disrespect,” “to vilify,” or “to insult” (literally “to make light of”), is the antonym of “honor [literally, make heavy] your father and your mother” in the Decalogue.
10. a married woman. The Hebrew says literally “a man’s woman [or wife].”
the adulteress. Abraham ibn Ezra shrewdly observes of the Hebrew term hanoʾefet, which is an active verbal form, that had she been constrained by the man to submit to the sexual act, she would not have been so designated.
11. The two of them are doomed to die. As with the preceding law, the assumption is that the woman is a willing participant.
13. as one lies with a woman. This locution, literally “the lying with a woman” (as in 18:22, and see the comment there), plausibly leads the Talmud in Sanhedrin to characterize the act as “putting a brush into a tube”—that is, the particular homosexual act of anal penetration.
14. takes. The use of this verb here and several times in subsequent verses is an ellipsis for “takes as a wife,” but its choice of the term may be dictated by the way it stresses the male’s taking the initiative.
15. the beast you shall kill. Commentators have wrestled with the reason for executing the animal. As Rashi says, “If the person committed a wrong, what wrong has the beast done?” The most plausible explanation is that the beast, even without its volition, has been associated with a disgusting act and so must be destroyed as a contaminated thing.
17. and she sees his nakedness. Ibn Ezra is surely right that this unusual addition is to emphasize her full complicity in the act of incest.
18. he has exposed her flow. The Hebrew noun maqor generally means “source,” this being an instance of the common linguistic pattern in which there is an exchange between cause (the source) and effect (the flow). It is reductive to claim, as do Jacob Milgrom and others, that “source” is simply a euphemism for the female genitalia. The point is that the menses are conceived not merely as a contaminant but as some ultimate, intimate female mystery which the woman has to keep secret—hence the condemnation, “for she has laid bare her source/flow.”
21. a repulsive thing. The Hebrew nidah is the term elsewhere used for menstruation. One infers that here it is intended metaphorically.
24. it is you. The use of the plural pronoun ʾatem before the conjugated verb conveys this sense of emphasis.
24–25. set you apart … you shall set apart. There is a clear system of what one might well describe as cosmic analogies functioning here. Holiness depends upon distinction, upon being set apart and setting things apart. Israel has been set apart by God to be holy, to be different from other nations. Israel in its turn is enjoined to realize its distinctive character by relinquishing the indiscriminate consumption of all living things and setting apart the unclean from the clean.
25. you shall not make yourselves despicable. Milgrom chooses to render this as “you shall not defile your throats.” This is a distinctly possible interpretation, if not entirely compelling. The Hebrew nefesh means “life-breath,” and then synecdochically “person,” but also metonymically “throat” (the passage through which the breath is conducted). In the present context, however, which stresses the imperative for Israel to preserve its holiness as a people set apart, the defiling of the whole person rather than the throat seems more likely as the intended meaning.
1And the LORD said to Moses, “Say to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them, ‘For no dead person among his kin shall he be defiled, except for his own flesh that is close to him, 2for his mother and for his father and for his son and for his daughter and for his brother, 3and for his virgin sister who is close to him, as she has not become a man’s, for her he may be defiled. 4He shall not be defiled among his kin to profane himself. 5They shall not make a baldness on their head, and the edge of their beard they shall not shave, and in their flesh they shall cut no gash. 6They shall be holy to their God, and they shall not profane the name of their God, for the fire offerings of the LORD, their God’s bread, do they bring forward, and they shall be holy. 7A woman degraded as a whore they shall not take as wife, and a woman divorced from her husband they shall not take as wife, for he is holy to his God, 8and you shall deem him holy, for he brings forward God’s bread. He shall be holy for you, for I the LORD Who hallows you am holy. 9And should a priest’s daughter degrade herself in whoring, she has degraded her father, in fire she shall be burned. 10And the priest exalted over his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil has been poured and who has been installed to wear the garments, shall not dishevel his hair nor rip his garments. 11And near any dead person he shall not come in, for his father or for his mother he shall not be defiled. 12And from the sanctuary he shall not go out, and he shall not profane the sanctuary of his God, for the mark of his God’s anointing oil is upon him. I am the LORD. 13And as for him, he must take as wife a woman in her virginity. 14A widow or a divorced woman or a degraded whore, these he shall not take as wife, but a virgin from his kin he shall take as wife. 15And he shall not profane his seed among his kin, for I am the LORD Who hallows him.’”
16And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 17“Speak to Aaron, saying, ‘No man of your seed to their generations in whom there is a defect shall come forward to offer his God’s bread. 18For no man in whom there is a defect shall come forward, no blind man nor lame nor disfigured nor malformed, 19nor a man who has a broken leg or a broken arm, 20nor a hunchback nor a midget nor one with a cataract in his eye nor scab nor skin flake nor crushed testicle. 21No man from the seed of Aaron the priest in whom there is a defect shall draw near to bring forward the fire offerings of the LORD. There is a defect in him. He shall not draw near to bring forward his God’s bread. 22From the holy of holies and from the holy, he may eat his God’s bread. 23But he shall not come in by the curtain nor shall he draw near to the altar, for there is a defect in him, and he shall not profane My sanctuaries, for I am the LORD Who hallows you.’” 24And Moses spoke to Aaron and to his sons and to all the Israelites.
CHAPTER 21 NOTES
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1. dead person. The Hebrew nefesh, “person,” is an abundantly attested ellipsis for nefesh met, “dead person,” and the full phrase in fact is used in verse 11.
defiled. It is possible, as many scholars have proposed, that the notion of corpses as a source of defilement is linked with a polemic against the cult of the dead evidently widespread in Canaan among both Canaanites and Israelites. But given the repeated affirmation through ritual in Leviticus of life against death, it is quite possible that dead bodies were thought of as intrinsically contaminating, even without reference to a cult of the dead.
3. as she has not become a man’s. Once she is in the jurisdiction of her husband, it is his obligation in the case of her decease to see to her burial.
4. He shall not be defiled among his kin. The two Hebrew words baʿal beʿamaw are a well-known crux. Literally, they mean “a master/husband among his kin.” The various attempts to make this intelligible are strained, and it has been pointed out by several scholars that elsewhere baʿal is always used either as part of a collocation (Hebrew smikhut) or in a declined form. This translation adopts Meir Paran’s plausible proposal that the received text reflects a dittography, the initial bet and ayin of beʿamaw inadvertently repeated by a scribe and then a lamed added in order to turn the two letters into a known word.
5. baldness … the edge of their beard … shave … gash. All these acts are pagan rites of mourning that must be avoided. There are other pagan gestures of mourning (as attested, for example, in Ugaritic texts) that are permitted to the Israelites, such as putting ashes on the head and donning sackcloth. Presumably, the acts stipulated here are prohibited because they entail disfiguring some part of the body.
6. God’s bread. As elsewhere, leḥem is a synecdoche for “food.”
7. A woman degraded as a whore. This translation follows the proposal of many modern scholars that zonah waḥalalah (literally, “whore and degraded one”) is a hendiadys used to convey the idea of the intrinsically degraded condition of the whore. Milgrom’s proposal that ḥalalah means “raped woman” rests on rather flimsy philological evidence. Note that in verse 9 these same two roots are put together, this time as a verb and an infinitive, taḥel liznot, “degrade herself in whoring,” strongly suggesting that they are a fixed collocation rather than designating two different possibilities.
for he is holy. The Hebrew, like this translation, slips from the plural for all priests to the singular for the individual priest.
8. holy … hallows … holy. The verbal motif central to the Holiness Code is here redoubled as the text concentrates on the priests, the very heart of the holiness that is to extend to the entire people.
10. exalted over his brothers. More literally, “greater than his brothers.”
the garments. Though the Hebrew uses a general term for garments, the obvious reference is the priestly vestments worn in the cult.
dishevel his hair nor rip his garments. Gestures of mourning permitted to those who are not the high priest. The verb chosen for “rip,” param, neatly alliterates with paraʿ, “dishevel.”
11. he shall not come in. The contamination of the corpse would be conveyed to him if he were to enter any enclosed space in which the corpse was laid out.
for his father or for his mother he shall not be defiled. The syntactic positioning of the two nouns at the beginning of the clause suggests: not even for his father or for his mother.
12. mark. The Hebrew nezer can also mean “diadem,” but its etymology indicates “to be distinct, set apart,” and the anointing oil is the priestly mark of distinction.
14. virgin. On the basis of both the immediate context and usages elsewhere, one must categorically reject Milgrom’s claim that betulah simply means “young woman” and does not imply virginity. The priest has to marry a virgin to ensure the purity of the priestly line.
18. no man in whom there is a defect. The underlying notion, however objectionable to modern sensibilities, is one shared by many ancient religions: just as the animal offered in sacrifice must be unblemished, the officiant offering the sacrifice must be without physical blemish.
disfigured nor malformed. The two Hebrew terms, ḥarum and saruʿa, have long been the objects of philological speculation. Their exact meaning remains in doubt, though it is clear that they refer to some sort of physical deformity.
19. a broken leg or a broken arm. As Baruch Levine notes, given the limitations of ancient medicine, broken bones would usually have resulted in a permanent deformity.
22. he may eat his God’s bread. The physical deformity does not disqualify the man from his priestly perquisite of a share in the sacrifices. Otherwise, he would have no source of sustenance. But he is not permitted (verse 23) to approach the altar (“come in”) to offer the sacrifice.
24. And Moses spoke. For editorial reasons that remain obscure to us, this chapter concludes atypically, with a report of Moses speaking that is not followed by a speech and thus appears to refer retrospectively to the speech just delivered.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to Aaron and to his sons, that they keep apart from the sacred donations of the Israelites—lest they profane My holy name—which they consecrate to Me. I am the LORD. 3Say to them: ‘To your generations, any man of all your seed who draws near the sacred donations that the Israelites consecrate to the LORD with his uncleanness upon him, that person shall be cut off from before Me. I am the LORD. 4Any man whosoever from the seed of Aaron when he is smitten with skin blanch or discharge from his member shall not eat of the sacred donations until he becomes clean, nor he who touches anything unclean through a dead person nor a man who has had an emission of seed, 5nor a man who has touched any swarming thing by which one becomes unclean or a human being by which one becomes unclean with any uncleanness. 6A person who touches these shall be unclean till evening and shall not eat of the sacred donations until he bathes his body in water, 7and the sun sets and he becomes clean, and after he may eat of the sacred donations, for it is his bread. 8A beast that has died or one torn by predators he shall not eat to be defiled by it. I am the LORD. 9And they shall keep My watch and not bear offense for it and die through it when they profane it. I am the LORD Who hallows them. 10And no outsider shall eat a sacred donation. A priest’s resident hireling shall not eat the sacred donation. 11And should a priest buy a person as the purchase of his silver, that person may eat of it, and he who is born in his household—they may eat of his bread. 12And should a priest’s daughter be married to an outsider, she shall not eat of the levy of the sacred donations. 13And should a priest’s daughter become a widow or divorced, having no seed and she come back to her father’s house as in her youth, of her father’s bread she may eat, but no outsider shall eat of it. 14And should a man eat the sacred donation in errance, he shall add a fifth of its value to it and give the sacred donation to the priest. 15And they shall not profane the sacred donations of the Israelites that they set aside for the LORD, 16causing them to bear the punishment of the guilt for having eaten of their sacred donations, for I am the LORD Who hallows them.’”
17And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 18“Speak to Aaron and to his sons and to the Israelites, and you shall say to them: ‘Every man of the house of Israel and of the sojourner in Israel who brings forward his offering, for any of their votive offerings or their freewill offerings that they bring forward to the LORD as burnt offerings, 19to be acceptable for you, it shall be an unblemished male from the cattle, the sheep, or the goats. 20Whatever has a defect you shall not bring forward, for it will not be acceptable for you. 21And should a man bring forward a communion sacrifice to the LORD to set aside as a votive offering or freewill offering from the cattle or from the flock, it shall be unblemished to be acceptable, no defect shall there be in it. 22Anything blind or broken or lacerated or with a wen or scab or skin flake, these you shall not bring forward to the LORD, and no fire offering from them shall you put on the altar to the LORD. 23And a bull or sheep with a stretched or crimped limb you may make a freewill offering but it shall not be acceptable as a votive offering. 24And anything with crushed or smashed or torn-off or cut-off testes you shall not bring forward to the LORD, and in your land you shall not do it. 25And from the hand of a foreigner you shall not bring forward your God’s bread from any of these. Their deformity is in them, a defect is in them. They shall not be acceptable for you.’”
26And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 27“When a bull or a goat is born, it shall be seven days under its mother, and from the eighth day onward it is acceptable as a fire offering to the LORD. 28And a bull or sheep, you shall not sacrifice it with its young on the same day. 29And when you sacrifice a thanksgiving sacrifice to the LORD, you shall sacrifice it so as to be acceptable for you. 30On that day it shall be eaten, you shall leave nothing of it till morning. I am the LORD. 31And you shall keep My commands and do them. I am the LORD. 32And you shall not profane My holy name, and I shall be hallowed in the midst of the Israelites. I am the LORD Who hallows you, 33bringing you out of the land of Egypt to be God for you. I am the LORD.”
CHAPTER 22 NOTES
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2. that they keep apart. The syntactical interpolation of the clause after this one makes the sentence slightly unclear, but the evident motive is to effect a strong thematic juxtaposition of the antonyms, qodashim, “sacred donations,” and yeḥalelu, “profane,” with the verb’s direct object, shem qodshi, “My holy name,” reinforcing the link between divine sacredness and the sacred donations. It may at first seem puzzling that the priests should be enjoined to keep apart from the sacred donations of sacrificial animals that were, after all, their sustenance, but the next verse makes clear that this warning to the priests obtains in cases when they are in a state of ritual impurity (and so Rashi observes).
3. who draws near. As Jacob Milgrom repeatedly notes, this all-purpose verb in contexts of ritual prohibition means “to encroach,” though when the ritual act is permitted, it means, more neutrally, “to enter into the sacred zone.”
shall be cut off from before Me. The more common locution in Leviticus is “cut off from his kin.” This variation may suggest divestment from priestly privileges, being cut off from the sacerdotal line.
5. a human being. This noun is the object of the double-duty verb “touched.”
7. for it is his bread. As often elsewhere, “bread” is a synecdoche for food. In fact, the typical sacred donation would have been meat.
9. bear offense for it and die through it. Both of the pronouns here are masculine, though the only adjacent noun that might be a candidate for an antecedent, “watch,” is feminine. Various efforts to rescue grammatical consistency—e.g., that the antecedent is an elided shem qodshi, “My holy name”—seem strained. It is more likely that the requirements of gender consistency of modern Western languages did not altogether obtain for biblical grammar and that it seemed natural to use a masculine form for impersonal constructions such as “bear offense for it” regardless of the antecedents.
10. A priest’s resident hireling. Avraham Melamed, followed by Jacob Milgrom, argues persuasively that the phrase toshav kohen wesakhir—literally, “priest’s resident and hireling”—is a hendiadys, like the use of toshav in other combinations, and does not refer to two entities.
15. And they shall not profane. As the end of this sentence, in the next verse, makes clear, “they” refers to the priests, who would profane the sacred donations by allowing unfit laypersons to incur guilt by eating them (thus Rashi). This whole clause mirrors the language of the opening verse, thus forming an envelope structure to bring this entire unit of the chapter to a close.
19. to be acceptable for you. Literally, “for your favor”—i.e., for your finding favor, being acceptable, in the eyes of God.
20. Whatever has a defect you shall not bring forward. As many commentators have noted, the list of deformities for the animals unfit for the cult parallels the list of deformities for priests unfit for the cult in the previous chapter. The terms used, however, are different.
22. Anything blind. The Hebrew uses the term for the disease, “blindness,” but then switches to the male singular beast bearing the defect, “broken” (presumably, brokenlimbed), and “lacerated,” and then to symptoms of disease (“wen,” “scab,” “skin flake”). Category consistency does not appear to have been a requirement of ancient Hebrew idiomatic usage.
24. crushed or smashed or torn-off or cut-off. The list appears to be arranged in ascending order of the severity of mutilation.
and in your land you shall not do it. This sounds like a general ban on gelding, which, however, would have had a necessary role in animal husbandry. One may tentatively adopt Milgrom’s proposal that the reference is to regional sanctuaries beyond the principal one, since Leviticus does not assume that there is one exclusive sanctuary. “Do it,” then, would mean “perform the sacrifice.”
25. from the hand of a foreigner you shall not bring forward … from any of these. This warning is intended to preclude the notion that a maimed animal is permitted for sacrifice in cases where the maiming has not been done by an Israelite but by a foreigner from whom the animal is purchased.
27. it shall be seven days under its mother. A humanitarian rationale for this law is unconvincing because, after all, on the eighth day the suckling animal can be slaughtered and offered up on the altar. It is more likely that the newborn beast was not regarded as a viable living creature, and hence fit for sacrifice, until it had attained its eighth day of life (the day designated for the circumcision of Israelite males). This correspondence of eight days between man and beast may be another instance of analogical thinking.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them: ‘These are the fixed times of the LORD which you shall call sacred convocations. These are My fixed times. 3Six days shall tasks be done, and on the seventh day, an absolute sabbath, a sacred convocation. No task shall you do. It is a sabbath for the LORD in all your dwelling places. 4These are the fixed times of the LORD, sacred convocations which you shall call in their fixed time. 5In the first month on the fourteenth of the month at twilight a Passover offering to the LORD. 6And on the fifteenth day of this month, a Festival of Flatbread to the LORD. Seven days you shall eat flatbread. 7On the first day a sacred convocation you shall have. No task of work shall you do. 8And you shall bring forward a fire offering to the LORD seven days. On the seventh day a sacred convocation, no task of work shall you do.’”
9And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 10“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them: ‘When you come into the land that I am about to give you and you reap its harvest, you shall bring a sheaf, first of your harvest, to the priest. 11And he shall elevate the sheaf before the LORD to be acceptable for you, from the morrow of the sabbath the priest shall elevate it. 12And on the day you elevate the sheaf you shall do an unblemished yearling lamb as a burnt offering to the LORD, 13and its grain offering, two-tenths of an ephah of semolina mixed with oil, a fire offering to the LORD, a fragrant odor, and its wine libation, a quarter of a hin. 14And bread and roast grain and fresh ears you shall not eat until this very day, until you bring your God’s offering, an everlasting statute for your generations in all your dwelling places. 15And you shall count you from the morrow of the sabbath, from the day you bring the elevation sheaf, seven whole weeks shall they be. 16Until the morrow of the seventh sabbath you shall count fifty days, and you shall bring forward a new grain offering to the LORD. 17From your dwelling places you shall bring two loaves of elevation bread, two-tenths of an ephah of semolina they shall be, leavened they shall be baked, first fruits to the LORD. 18And you shall bring forward with the bread seven unblemished yearling lambs and one bull from the herd and two rams. They shall be a burnt offering to the LORD and their grain offering and their libations, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 19And you shall do one he-goat as an offense offering and two yearling lambs as a communion sacrifice. 20And the priest shall elevate them with the bread of first fruits as an elevation before the LORD with the two lambs. They shall be holy for the LORD, for the priest. 21And on this very day you shall call a sacred convocation—it will be for you—no task of work shall you do, an everlasting statute in all your dwelling places for your generations. 22And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not finish off the edge of your field in your reaping, nor gather the gleanings of your harvest. For the poor and for the sojourner you shall leave them. I am the LORD your God.’”
23And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 24“Speak to the Israelites, saying: ‘In the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a sabbath, a commemoration with horn blast, a sacred convocation. 25No task of work shall you do, and you shall bring forward a fire offering to the LORD.’” 26And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 27“Yet on the tenth of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement, a sacred convocation it shall be for you, and you shall afflict yourselves and bring forward a fire offering to the LORD. 28And no task shall you do on this very day, for it is a day of atonement to atone for you before the LORD your God. 29For every person who is not afflicted on this very day shall be cut off from his kin. 30And any person who does any task on this very day—I shall make that person perish from the midst of his people. 31No task shall you do, an everlasting statute for your generations in all your dwelling places. 32An absolute sabbath it is for you, and you shall afflict yourselves on the ninth of the month in the evening, from evening to evening you shall keep your sabbath.’”
33And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 34“Speak to the Israelites saying: ‘On the fifteenth day of this seventh month, a festival of huts, seven days, to the LORD. 35On the first day, a sacred convocation, no task of work shall you do. 36Seven days you shall bring forward a fire offering to the LORD. On the eighth day you shall have a sacred convocation and bring forward a fire offering to the LORD; it is a solemn gathering. No task of work shall you do. 37These are the fixed times of the LORD which you shall call sacred convocations to bring forward a fire offering to the LORD, burnt offering and grain offering, sacrifice and libation, each thing on its day, 38besides the LORD’s sabbaths and besides your gifts and besides all your votive offerings and besides all your freewill offerings that you give to the LORD. 39Yet on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you gather in the yield of the land, you shall celebrate the LORD’s festival seven days—on the first day a sabbath and on the eighth day a sabbath. 40And you shall take you on the first day the fruit of a stately tree, fronds of palm trees, and a branch of a leafy tree and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days. 41And you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD seven days in the year, an everlasting statute for your generations. In the seventh month you shall celebrate it. 42In huts you shall dwell seven days. All natives in Israel shall dwell in huts, 43so that your generations will know that I made the Israelites dwell in huts when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’” 44And Moses spoke the fixed times of the LORD to the Israelites.
CHAPTER 23 NOTES
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3. Six days shall tasks be done. It is somewhat surprising, as commentaries from the Middle Ages onward have reflected, that after announcing a calendar of the sundry annual festivals (moʿadim, “fixed times”), the text proceeds to spell out the weekly obligation of the sabbath day. Rashi tries to reconcile the contradiction by proposing that the mention of the sabbath is to indicate that violation of the sabbath and violation of the festivals are equivalent in seriousness; but the consensus of modern scholarship is that these verses on the sabbath were added, perhaps out of later historical considerations, such as the impossibility of observing the pilgrim festivals in the Babylonian exile. This addition would have been facilitated by a certain ambiguity in the word shabbat (literally, “cessation”), which can apply, as it does elsewhere in this chapter, not only to the weekly day of rest but to a festival, when most everyday tasks are also prohibited.
an absolute sabbath. The Hebrew uses a doubled construct form that generally indicates a superlative, shabbat shabbaton.
4. sacred convocations which you shall call. In this recurring phrase, the verb, tiqreʾu, and its object, miqraʾey qodesh, are cognates, something that the translation intimates at least etymologically because “convocation” is derived from a Latin term for calling. “Call” in this context obviously means to “proclaim,” “convene,” “invite.”
5. the first month. As elsewhere, the calendar begins with the spring month that Exodus calls Abib and that will later be called Nissan. The present list does not use names for the month, simply referring to them by ordinal numbers.
5–6. Passover offering … a Festival of Flatbread. The paschal offering (traditionally in English, “Passover offering”) is stipulated for the first evening and the flatbread for the seven days of the festival. On the historical relation between the two aspects of observance, see the comment on Exodus 12:17.
6. a Festival. The Hebrew ḥag is a term reserved in biblical usage for pilgrim festivals (evidently derived from a verb that means to “circle round” or “wend one’s way”), when the population of the countryside was enjoined to come to the sanctuary.
10. sheaf. The early rabbis understood the term ʿomer not as a reference to a bundle of grain (in this case of a late spring harvest, probably barley) but as a unit of dry measure.
11. from the morrow of the sabbath. This innocent-looking phrase is fraught with ambiguity that generated historical schism. The early rabbis understood “sabbath” to refer to the first day of the Passover celebration (see the comment on verse 3), and this has been the normative system in Judaism ever since for counting forward to the Festival of Weeks, Shavuoth. The Karaites, among others, understood shabbat here as a reference to the sabbath day, although the question was raised whether this applied to the sabbath occurring in the week of the Passover festival or to the first sabbath after that week. (As a rule, issues of calendar were often defining for schismatic divisions in Judaism.) Whatever the reasons of the rabbis, their construction of shabbat as referring to “festival” seems implausible. Baruch Levine and Jacob Milgrom have variously understood shabbat to mean “week” in the present context. In verse 16, the phrase “seventh sabbath” in fact seems to mean “seventh week.”
20. They shall be holy for the LORD, for the priest. The second phrase, which syntactically is in apposition with the first, is a kind of gloss on it: in the case of this offering of first fruits, the consecrated status of the foodstuffs (“holy for the LORD”) means not that they are to be consumed in fire on the altar but that they are reserved exclusively for the use of the priests.
21. a sacred convocation—it will be for you. The oddness of the syntax might conceivably reflect a scribal insertion here of a formula reiterated elsewhere. In independent clauses, we find the complete syntactic unit, “A sacred convocation it will be for you.” Here, however, “a sacred convocation” is already the object of the verb “you will call,” and so “it will be for you” seems not to belong.
24. a commemoration with horn blast. Although the instrument used is not specified here, the reasonable assumption is that it is the ram’s horn, or shofar. The “commemoration” in question is the act of making God remember, or take note of, Israel through the ritual of horn blasts. Some biblical scholars have detected a hint of an annual ceremony for the coronation of God, but the historical evidence for that vivid conjecture is scant.
27. Yet. The Hebrew ʾakh (“yet,” “however”) expresses opposition but also a focusing emphasis (“only”).
you shall afflict yourselves. In legal-cultic contexts, this idiom refers primarily to fasting, a meaning perhaps reinforced by the fact that the noun in question, the ubiquitous nefesh, can also mean both “throat” and “appetite,” though its most plausible sense in context is simply as an intensive form of the pronoun.
32. from evening to evening. Only here is this phrase attached to the observance of a sacred day. Levine’s reasonable inference is that the system of counting the day from sunset to sunset, standard in later Judaism, may not yet have been normative in the biblical period, and hence its binding application to the Day of Atonement had to be stipulated.
you shall keep your sabbath. More literally, “you shall cease your cessation.”
36. solemn gathering. This is a single word in the Hebrew, ʿatseret (elsewhere, also ʿatsarah), which appears to refer specifically to the cultic assembly at the end of the festival, perhaps because the verb from which it derives means “to retain” or “to hold back.”
40. a stately tree. In modern Hebrew, ʿets hadar has come to mean “citrus tree,” but that is only because in the late Second Temple period this whole phrase was understood to refer to the citron, the somewhat larger and brighter-yellow cousin of the lemon. Hadar, however, is a general term referring to majesty, stateliness, or splendor, and it is probable that the original instruction was to take the fruit of any grand-looking tree, not necessarily the fruit of a specific genus of trees.
you shall rejoice before the LORD your God. The injunction to rejoice occurs only in the case of Succoth, the fall Festival of Huts. One reason for this may be that this was the final harvest festival of the agricultural cycle, and hence the pilgrims, free from the need to hurry back to their farms to look after the next crop, could spend the full week in celebration at the sanctuary where sacrifices were offered and attendant feasts enjoyed. In the climate of the Land of Israel, this was the time (late September to early October) when the long hot dry season came to an end and the welcome autumnal rains were imminent. In precisely this connection, we know from the Mishnah that the Succoth celebration in the Second Temple included an elaborate ritual for invoking water for the land (simḥat beyt hashoʾevah), a ritual explicitly represented as a peak of collective joy.
43. I made the Israelites dwell in huts. Huts were used for temporary shelter by farmers watching over their crops about to be harvested and so may have been associated with this festival of the fall harvest. Milgrom suggests that the flood of pilgrims to the central sanctuary in this most popular of the pilgrim festivals compelled many of them to spend the week in huts or other temporary shelters because the town itself could not have possibly provided the bulk of them with lodging. Whether the original explanation was in agricultural practice or in the material necessities of pilgrimage, a historical-theological rationale is now provided.
44. Moses spoke the fixed times. Here “spoke” has the obvious sense of “enjoined,” “proclaimed,” “enunciated.”
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Charge the Israelites, that they take clear beaten olive oil for the light to kindle a lamp perpetually. 3Outside the curtain of the Covenant in the Tent of Meeting Aaron shall set it out from evening till morning before the LORD perpetually, an everlasting statute for your generations. 4On the pure gold lamp stand he shall set out the lamps, before the LORD perpetually. 5And you shall take semolina flour and bake it into twelve loaves. Each loaf shall be two-tenths of an ephah. 6And you shall place them in two rows, six to a row, on the pure gold table before the LORD. 7And you shall place clear frankincense together with the row and it shall become a token offering for the bread, a fire offering to the LORD. 8Sabbath day after sabbath day they shall be laid out before the LORD perpetually on behalf of the Israelites, an everlasting covenant. 9And it shall be Aaron’s and his sons’, and they shall eat it in a holy place, for it is holy of holies for him from the LORD’s fire offerings, an everlasting statute.”
10And the son of an Israelite woman, he being the son of an Egyptian man, went out among the Israelites, and the son of the Israelite woman and an Israelite man brawled in the camp. 11And the son of the Israelite woman invoked the Name, vilifying it. And they brought him to Moses. And his mother’s name was Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. 12And they left him under guard until it should be made clear to them by the word of the LORD. 13And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 14“Take out him who vilified beyond the camp, and all who heard shall lay their hands on his head, and all the community shall stone him. 15And to the Israelites you shall speak, saying, ‘Should any man vilify his God, he shall bear his offense. 16And he who invokes the LORD’s name shall be doomed to die; and the community shall surely stone him, sojourner and native alike; for his invoking the Name he shall be put to death. 17And should a man mortally strike down any human being, he is doomed to die. 18And he who mortally strikes down a beast shall pay for it, life for life. 19And should a man maim his fellow, as he has done so shall it be done to him. 20A fracture for a fracture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—as he has maimed a human being, so shall he be maimed. 21And he who strikes down a beast shall pay for it, but he who strikes down a human being shall be put to death. 22One law shall there be for you, for sojourner and native alike shall it be, for I am the LORD your God.’” 23And Moses spoke to the Israelites, and they took out him who had vilified beyond the camp and pelted him with stones. And the Israelites did as all that the LORD had charged Moses.
CHAPTER 24 NOTES
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2. beaten olive oil. “Beaten” (katit), from a verb that means “to smash” or “to pulverize,” suggests that the olives are to be pounded with a pestle rather than crushed in a press.
perpetually. The Hebrew tamid implies that the light is to be constantly renewed, not that it is to burn incessantly as an “eternal light.”
3. the curtain of the Covenant. The last word here is a prevalent ellipsis for “Ark of the Covenant.”
4. the pure gold lamp stand. As both Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra note, the Hebrew phrase—literally, “the pure lamp stand”—is an ellipsis for “pure gold lamp stand.” The same is true of the phrase “pure [gold] table” in verse 6.
5. twelve loaves. This sanctified number of course reflects the number of the tribes of Israel, as does the number of stones in the breastplate of the high priest. The bread in question is the “bread of display” or “bread of the Presence” (King James Version, “shewbread”). Laying out bread on the altar daily, or even several times a day, with the idea of symbolically feeding the deity, was a widespread practice in ancient Near Eastern religions. Jacob Milgrom suggests that it was in order to distance this cherished cultic procedure from any notion of providing sustenance to God that this version of the law stipulates putting out fresh loaves only once a week. The inevitably stale bread could then be consumed by the priests (perhaps one of the less attractive of their sacerdotal perquisites).
7. clear frankincense. The adjective used, zakh, is the same one applied to olive oil in verse 1, and translations that render it as “pure” run the risk of introducing a confusion with the pure (tahor) gold lamp stand and table. Since frankincense is a resin, this might be an indication that it should be translucent, a visual attribute squarely within the semantic range of zakh.
a token offering for the bread, a fire offering. Since the bread itself is not consumed on the altar but is left untouched until the following sabbath, when it may be given to the priests, the frankincense, set alongside the bread, is burned as a “token offering” in lieu of the bread.
8. Sabbath day after sabbath day. The literal contour of the Hebrew idiom is “On the sabbath day, on the sabbath day.”
10. brawled. This verb of violent altercation is the same one used for the two Hebrew men whom the young Moses rebukes (Exodus 2:13). It is perhaps this verbal trigger that led Rashi to claim, rather fancifully, that the blasphemer in this episode was the son of the Egyptian taskmaster whom Moses killed on the day before his encounter with the two brawling Israelites.
11. invoked the Name, vilifying it. “The Name,” in an interesting biblical anticipation of later pious usage in Hebrew, is an ellipsis for “the Name of YHWH.” One suspects that the writer avoided using the complete phrase because the idea of actually invoking and vilifying God’s holy name was so abhorrent to him. The object of “vilifying” it (the Name), is merely implied. Though it might at first seem that the brawler is verbally abusing his adversary, supercharging the abusive language by introducing God’s sacrosanct name, verse 15 clearly makes “his God” the grammatical object of “vilify,” and this direct verbal assault on the name YHWH is of course a graver transgression.
Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. Mary Douglas ingeniously detects in these names a kind of allegorical play: Compensation (or Retribution) daughter of Law-suit from the tribe of Judgment.
12. until it should be made clear to them by the word of the LORD. What is to be made clear is what should be done with the malefactor. “By the word [literally, by the mouth] of the LORD” in the present context obviously refers to an oracle, and God’s speech to Moses in the following verses is the message of the oracle.
14. him who vilified. God, too, suppresses the divine object of the verb of scurrilous speech.
all who heard. That is, all who heard the blasphemous utterance.
shall lay their hands on his head. In biblical idiom, bloodguilt rests “on the head” of the perpetrator. The laying on of hands by the witnesses is the confirming of the guilt (and so Rashi observes).
16. for his invoking the Name he shall be put to death. The element of the idiom that sticks in the craw of the pious writer, “and vilifying it,” is merely implied. This act of lèse-majesté aimed at God, Who is the very rationale for the existence of the community, is understood to be a threat to the community itself, and so all are to be involved in the execution. In any case, this formulation, which appears to hold the mere invoking of the Name as a sin, led later on to a general ban against pronouncing the name YHWH except by the high priest on the Day of Atonement in the Holy of Holies.
17. And should a man mortally strike down any human being. The use of the generic term ʾadam, “human being,” sets up the contradistinction of killing a domestic animal rather than a human being. But there may also be an implied contrast with God in the preceding unit. God in principle cannot be hurt by any human act, but His name, available for manipulation and debasement in human linguistic practice, can suffer injury, and for this injury the death penalty is exacted, as here in the case of murder.
18. shall pay for it, life for life. Since what is explicitly stated is providing restitution to the owner of the animal that has been killed, “life for life” here clearly means the monetary value of the dead creature that will enable its owner to acquire another one. Although the rabbis strenuously sought to extend this notion of monetary compensation to all the cases of lex talionis that follow here, the plain language of the text appears to call for an actual infliction of injury for injury, as Milgrom plausibly concludes after an exhaustive survey of the age-old interpretive debate. The formulation of the lex talionis in Exodus 21:23–25 may leave a bit more latitude for the possibility of monetary compensation because there is no verb for the act of maiming like what is used here, “as he has maimed a human being so shall he be maimed.” See the comment on Exodus 21:23–25.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them: ‘When you come into the land that I am about to give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to the LORD. 3Six years you shall sow your fields and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its yield. 4And in the seventh year there shall be an absolute sabbath for the land, a sabbath to the LORD. Your field you shall not sow and your vineyard you shall not prune. 5The aftergrowth of your harvest you shall not reap and the grapes of your untrimmed vines you shall not pick. There shall be an absolute sabbath for the land. 6And the land’s sabbath shall be food for you, for you and for your male slave and for your slavegirl and for your resident hirelings who sojourn with you, 7and for your cattle and for the beasts that are in your land, all its yield shall be for food. 8And you shall count you seven sabbaths of years, seven years seven times, and the days of the seven sabbaths of years shall come to forty-nine years. 9And you shall send round a blasting ram’s horn, in the seventh month on the tenth of the month, on the Day of Atonement, you shall send round a ram’s horn through all your land. 10And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and call a release in the land to all its inhabitants. A jubilee it shall be for you, and you shall go back each man to his holding and each man to his clan, you shall go back. 11It is a jubilee, the fiftieth year it shall be for you. You shall not sow and you shall not reap its aftergrowths and you shall not pick its untrimmed vines. 12For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy for you. From the field you may eat its yield. 13In this jubilee year you shall go back, each man to his holding. 14And when you sell property to your fellow or buy from the hand of your fellow, you shall not defraud one another. 15By the number of years after the jubilee you shall buy from your fellow, and by the number of years of yield he shall sell to you. 16The larger the number of years, the more you shall pay for its purchase and the smaller the number of years the less you shall pay for its purchase, since he is selling you the number of yields. 17And you shall not defraud each other, and you shall fear your God, for I am the LORD your God. 18And you shall do My statutes, and My laws you shall keep and do them, and you shall dwell on the land securely. 19And the land will give forth its fruits and you will eat to fullness, and you will dwell securely on it. 20And should you say: What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we do not sow and do not gather in our yield? 21I have charged My blessing for you in the sixth year, and it will produce yield for three years. 22And you shall sow in the eighth year and eat of the old crop until the ninth year, until its yield comes, you shall eat the old. 23And the land shall not be sold irreversibly, for Mine is the land, for you are sojourning settlers with Me. 24And in all the land of your holdings, you shall allow a redemption for the land. 25Should your brother come to ruin and sell his holding, his redeemer who is related to him shall come and redeem what his brother sold. 26And should a man have no redeemer and his hand attain and find enough for its redemption, 27he shall reckon the years it was sold and give back the difference to the man to whom he sold, and he shall go back to his holding. 28And if his hand cannot find enough to pay him back, what he sold shall be in the hands of the buyer till the jubilee year, and it shall be released in the jubilee, and he shall come back to his holding. 29And should a man sell a dwelling house in a walled town, its redemption shall be till the end of the year of its sale. A year its redemption shall be. 30And if it is not redeemed by the time a full year has elapsed for him, the house in the town that has a wall shall pass over irreversibly to its buyer for his generations. It shall not be released in the jubilee. 31And houses in the hamlets that have no walls all around shall be reckoned as part of the land’s open fields. They shall have redemption and be released in the jubilee. 32And as to the towns of the Levites, the houses of the towns of their holding, the Levites shall have a redemption forever. 33And what is redeemed of the Levites, the sale of house and the town of his holding, shall be released in the jubilee, for the houses of the Levites’ towns are their holding in the midst of the Israelites. 34And the unenclosed fields of their towns shall not be sold, for it is an everlasting holding for them.
35“‘And should your brother come to ruin and his hand buckle under you, you shall hold him as sojourning settler, and he shall live under you. 36You shall not take from him advance interest or accrued interest, and you shall fear your God, that your brother may live with you. 37You shall not give him your silver for advance interest, and for accrued interest you shall not give him your food. 38I am the LORD your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan to be God for you. 39And should your brother come to ruin under you and be sold to you, you shall not work him the work of a slave. 40Like a resident hireling he shall be under you, till the jubilee year he shall work under you, 41and he shall be released from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his clan, and to his fathers’ holdings he shall go back. 42For they are My slaves, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold in a slave’s sale. 43You shall not hold crushing sway over him, and you shall fear your God. 44And your male slave and your slavegirl whom you may have from the nations that are around you—from them you may buy a male slave or a slavegirl. 45And also from the children of the settlers sojourning among them—from them and from their clan that is with them you may buy whom they have begotten in your land, and they shall become a holding for you. 46And you shall hold them in estate for your children after you to inherit a holding forever. Them you may work, but your brothers the Israelites—no man shall hold crushing sway over his brother. 47And should the hand of a sojourning settler with you attain means when your brother comes to ruin under you and is sold to a sojourning settler under you, or to an offshoot of a sojourner’s clan, 48after being sold, he shall have a redemption; one of his brothers may redeem him. 49Or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him or any of his own close kin from his clan may redeem him, or his hand may attain the means and he shall be redeemed. 50And he shall reckon with his buyer from the year of his sale to him till the jubilee year, and the silver of his sale shall be according to the number of the years, like the time of a hireling he shall be under the other. 51If there are still many years, according to them he shall pay back his redemption from the silver of his purchase. 52And if few years are left till the jubilee year, he shall reckon for him, according to its years he shall pay back its redemption. 53Like a hireling from year to year he shall be under you. No one shall hold crushing sway over him before your eyes. 54And if he is not redeemed through any of these ways, he shall be released in the jubilee year, he and his children with him. 55For Mine are the Israelites as slaves, they are My slaves whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’”
CHAPTER 25 NOTES
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1. on Mount Sinai. The mention here of Mount Sinai has become proverbial in Hebrew for a puzzling juxtaposition of two disparate terms—in Rashi’s classic formulation: “What is the connection between Mount Sinai and the Year of Release?” The most plausible explanation, put forth by several recent scholars, is that there is an invocation of a Mesopotamian practice, in which a king assuming his throne would issue a general proclamation for the release of slaves. Thus God announcing His kingship at Sinai definitively releases the Israelites from the status of slaves to which they had been reduced in Egypt. They become instead God’s slaves (a parodoxical definition of their new freedom), as the end of this chapter pointedly reminds us.
2. the land shall keep a sabbath to the LORD. More literally, “the land shall cease a cessation to the LORD.”
4. your vineyard you shall not prune. The vines of course do not have to be planted annually like the grains, but without annual pruning, they will not yield an adequate crop of grapes.
5. untrimmed vines. A very literal representation of this phrase would be “nazirite vines.” The Hebrew nazir reflects a root that means “to set apart,” but because the nazirite refrains among other things from cutting his hair, the idiom here may be a simple analogical extension from uncut hair (because it is forbidden) to untrimmed vines (because it is equally forbidden).
6. the land’s sabbath shall be food for you. This phrasing is an obvious ellipsis for “the land’s sabbath yield shall be food for you.”
your resident hirelings. Throughout this section, the two nouns sekhirkha wetoshavkha, connected by “and,” should be understood not as separate items (“your hireling and your resident”) but as a hendiadys, two terms indicating a single concept.
7. all its yield. “Its” (feminine in the Hebrew) refers either to “land” or to “sabbath.”
9. send round. This verb is chosen because what is suggested is that the ram’s horn is to be carried around the country from place to place by delegated heralds and to be appropriately sounded, so that everyone will know that the jubilee year has arrived.
10. call a release in the land to all its inhabitants. One must regretfully forgo the grandeur of the King James Version, inscribed on the Liberty Bell: “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” In fact, the passage is concerned with the legal arrangements regarding property in the jubilee year, and modern scholarship has persuasively demonstrated that deror does not mean “liberty” but is cognate with a technical Akkadian term, anduraru, which means a release from, or moratorium on, debts and indenture.
jubilee. Though scholarly debate persists about the etymology of this word (which has entered English from the Hebrew), the noun yovel in Exodus 19:13 clearly indicates a ram’s horn (the alternate term is shofar), and thus it is plausible that the fiftieth year was called jubilee, yovel, because this was when loud blasts of the ram’s horn were sounded throughout the land.
12. its yield. The only proximate candidate for an antecedent of “its” (feminine) is “jubilee year.”
13. you shall go back, each man to his holding. Without the notion of inalienable property holdings, the whole system of permanent division of the land according to tribes, and then clans, would have broken down. On the other hand, the arrangements for the jubilee release entailed the most cumbersome complications, as verses 16–17 concede, and once the tribal territories had disappeared as a historical fact in the Second Temple period, the rabbis devised a legal mechanism that in effect abrogated the jubilee.
16. since he is selling you the number of yields. If, say, there remained only three years until the jubilee, the buyer would enjoy only three harvests before the land would revert to its original owner, and so the seller could demand only a limited purchase price (in all likelihood, ¾₉ of its intrinsic value).
19. its fruits. Here the term functions in its general sense of “produce.”
21. I have charged My blessing for you in the sixth year, and it will produce yield for three years. This miraculous intervention in order to generate a harvest in the sixth year sufficient for three years suggests that the legislation for the sabbatical year was in a way utopian, and could have been observed only imperfectly for compelling practical reasons.
23. sojourning settlers. As everywhere in biblical usage, the two Hebrew nouns (literally, “sojourner and settler”) are a hendiadys with the modern legal sense of “resident alien.”
24. you shall allow a redemption for the land. Land can be redeemed at any time either by its original owner or by a relative acting on behalf of the original owner, and the buyer is obliged to sell back the land, to “allow redemption.” The jubilee, then, is a kind of backup system: if neither the original owner nor his kin can come up with the price of redemption, the land will in any case revert to its original owner in the jubilee.
28. released. The literal meaning of the verb yatsaʾ is “go out,” but in contexts of property law it has this technical meaning, and the literal sense would not be intelligible in English.
30. the house in the town that has a wall shall pass over irreversibly to its buyer. In an agrarian economy, real property in open fields was a permanent and indispensable source of livelihood, whereas urban real estate was primarily a residence rather than a source of income. As a result, it was not regarded as inalienable property and might be permanently relinquished if the seller could not scrape together funds to buy it back within a year.
35. his hand buckle under you. The verb here is more typically associated with the foot, where it has the sense of “stumble.” Because “hand” is a metonym for “power,” the idea is that the person has suffered something we would call economic collapse.
he shall live under you. That is, he shall live under your authority or power, with the understanding that you shall take reasonable steps to allow him to subsist.
36. advance interest or accrued interest. There is some uncertainty as to the precise differentiation between these two kinds of interest. The former term, neshekh, etymologically means a “bite”; the latter, marbit, comes from the verb that means “to multiply.”
42. For they are My slaves. The parodoxical consequence of the fact that the Israelites, as God’s covenanted people, have assumed the condition of God’s slaves is that they are prohibited from treating each other as slaves. The status outlined here, with mandatory release in the jubilee year, is a kind of indentured servitude. In contrast, however, to the sabbatical laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy, manumission occurs only in the jubilee, so the maximum period of servitude is forty-nine years, not six.
43. You shall not hold crushing sway. This idiom combines two locutions for exercising absolute authority, the verb radah (see Genesis 1:26, with the second comment there) and the adverb befarekh, which is used for the harsh enslavement of the Hebrews by the Egyptians (see the comment on Exodus 1:13).
47. hand … attain means. The object “means” has been added in the translation for the sake of intelligibility, the idea being that the resident alien has amassed the wherewithal to purchase an impoverished Israelite.
48. after being sold, he shall have a redemption. This system, which envisages Israelite domination of the land, is sharply asymmetrical. An Israelite sold into slavery to an alien has the permanent right, without temporal restriction, to have his freedom bought for him, whereas the alien sold to an Israelite may become a permanent slave.
50. reckon … from the year of his sale … till the jubilee year. The procedure is precisely parallel to that for the redemption of property. Since in the fiftieth year the owner would in any event be obliged to release the Israelite slave, the closer the time of buying back his freedom is to the jubilee, the less his market value.
like the time of a hireling he shall be under the other. The value of the slave shall be computed as though he were a hireling. If a hireling is paid x amount of silver per year, and there are twelve years remaining until the jubilee, his value is 12x of silver. In the translation, “the other” is added for clarification: the Hebrew, a bit cryptically, simply says “under him.”
1“‘You shall make you no idols nor set up a sculpted image or a sacred pillar for yourselves, and you shall not put a figured stone in your land to bow over it, for I am the LORD your God. 2My sabbaths you shall keep, and My sanctuary you shall revere. I am the LORD. 3If you go by My statutes and keep My commands and do them, 4I shall give you rains in their season, and the land will give its yield and the tree of the field will give its fruit. 5And your threshing will overtake the vintage, and the vintage will overtake the sowing, and you will eat your bread to the full, and you will dwell securely in your land. 6And I shall set peace in the land, and you will lie down with none to make him tremble, and I shall make evil beasts cease from the land, and no sword will pass through your land. 7And you will pursue your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword. 8And five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword. 9And I shall turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you and fulfill My covenant with you. 10And you will eat old grain long stored, and you will clear out the old for the new. 11And I shall place My tabernacle in your midst, and I shall not loathe you. 12And I shall go about in your midst, and I shall be God to you, and as for you, you will be My people. 13I am the LORD your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from your being slaves to them, and I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk upright.
14“‘But if you do not heed Me and do not do all these commands, 15and if you reject My statutes and if you loathe My laws, not doing all My commands, voiding My covenant, 16I on My part will do this to you: I will direct panic against you, consumption and fever wasting the eyes and making the throat ache, and you shall sow your seed in vain, and your enemies shall eat it. 17And I will set My face against you and you shall be routed before your enemies, and your foes shall hold sway over you, and you shall flee with none pursuing you. 18And if even with these you do not heed Me, I will go on to chastise you sevenfold more for your offenses. 19And I will break the pride of your strength and make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. 20And your power shall be spent in vain, and your land shall not give its yield, and the tree of the land shall not give its fruit. 21And if you come in encounter against Me and do not want to heed Me, I will go on with blows against you sevenfold for your offenses. 22And I will unleash the beasts of the field among you and they shall bereave you of your children and cut off your cattle and diminish you, and your roads will be desolate. 23And if through these you do not take chastisement by Me, and you come in encounter against Me, 24I on My part will come in encounter against you and I Myself will strike you sevenfold for your offenses. 25And I will bring against you the avenging sword of the covenant’s vengeance, and you shall gather into your towns, and I will send pestilence in your midst, and you shall be given into an enemy’s hands. 26When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven and dole out your bread by weight, and you shall eat and not be sated. 27And if despite this you do not heed Me and you come in encounter against Me, 28I will come against you in wrathful encounter and I on My part will chastise you sevenfold for your offenses. 29And you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you shall eat. 30And I will destroy your cult-places and cut off your incense stands, and I will put your corpses on top of the corpses of your fetishes, and I will loathe you. 31And I will turn your towns into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will not smell your fragrant odors. 32And I Myself will lay waste to the land, and all your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled by it. 33And you I will scatter among the nations, and I will unsheath the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your towns a ruin. 34Then shall the land expiate its sabbath years all the days it is desolate while you are in the land of your enemies, then shall the land keep a sabbath and expiate its sabbath years. 35All the days of the desolation it shall keep a sabbath for not having kept your sabbath years when you dwelled there. 36And those left among you, I will bring faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, and the sound of a driven leaf shall pursue them, and they shall flee as in flight from the sword and fall, with none pursuing. 37And each man shall stumble against his brother as before the sword, with none pursuing, and there shall be no standing up for you in the face of your enemies. 38And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall consume you. 39And those left among you shall rot in their guilt in the lands of your enemies, and also in the guilt of their fathers with them they shall rot. 40And they shall confess their guilt and the guilt of their fathers, in their betraying My trust, 41and also in their coming in encounter against Me. I on My part will come in encounter against them and bring them into the land of their enemies, and then shall their uncircumcised heart be humbled, and then shall they expiate their guilt. 42And I will remember My covenant with Jacob and also My covenant with Isaac and also My covenant with Abraham I will remember, and the land I will remember. 43And the land shall be forsaken of them, and it shall expiate its sabbath years when it is desolate of them, and they shall expiate their guilt, by very reason that they have rejected My laws, and My statutes they have loathed. 44Yet even this, too—when they are in the land of their enemies I will not reject them and I will not loathe them to put an end to them, to void My covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God. 45And I will remember for them the covenant of the first ones whom I brought out from the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations to be God for them, I am the LORD.’”
46These are the statutes and the laws and the teachings that the LORD set out between Himself and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through the hand of Moses.
CHAPTER 26 NOTES
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1. You shall make you no idols. These words signal a shift in the discourse to summarizing generalization, for the language of this verse and the next, as Jacob Milgrom observes, invokes three of the first five injunctions of the Decalogue, reverting, one may say, to first principles. These verses, then, may be construed as an overture to the grand epilogue to the laws of Leviticus that swings into full momentum with verse 3, the point at which Jewish tradition marks the beginning of the textual unit for communal reading. What follows is a rhetorically powerful evocation (the style switching from legalistic to rhetorical) of the blessings that will ensue if Israel keeps the covenant and the ghastly curses if it violates the covenant. Both in its placement in the book after the code of laws and in its own formal organization and language, the enire passage closely parallels Deuteronomy 28.
figured stone. The etymology of the word rendered as “figured,” maskit, has long been debated, though it might derive from a verb that means “to look.” Milgrom plausibly suggests that the stone in question is a paving stone (hence “bow over it”), perhaps with a mosaic design, set in the floor of a sanctuary.
5. your threshing will overtake the vintage. This image of a kind of fast-forward of the agricultural cycle as a hyperbolic representation of fertility is used in Amos 9:13.
your bread. Once again, this is a synecdoche for food in general.
6. I shall make evil beasts cease from the land. As both biblical narrative and poetry repeatedly attest, in the early period of Israelite settlement predatory beasts—in particular, lions and bears—were a threat to the population (the young David became a skilled fighter by learning how to contend with them). In the hyperbolic language of the passage, predators, like invading enemies, will entirely vanish. As in the Prophets, hyperbole points the way to later messianic constructions of an end-time in history.
9. I shall turn toward you. The rabbis supply “in favor,” an idea clearly implied by the idiom as it stands.
make you fruitful and multiply you. The phrasing explicitly invokes God’s injunction to humankind in the Priestly version of the creation (Genesis 1:28).
10. you will eat old grain long stored. This appears to be an allusion to the preceding chapter (25:20–22) in which God promises to provide Israel sufficient grain in the sixth year of the sabbatical cycle to tide people over the seventh and eighth year until they can harvest new crops, planted in the eighth year, during the ninth. This detail, perhaps oddly specific in context, is evidently put forth as a particular instance of God’s special providential care for Israel. The punctilious observance of the sabbatical year, as the section of curses makes clear, is a paramount concern of this writer.
11. tabernacle. Milgrom argues that mishkan (from the root sh-k-n, “to dwell”) means “presence” here, though elsewhere it is always a cultic structure, and the fact that Israel in the wilderness already has a tabernacle by no means prevents God from promising that He will establish a sanctuary within the land which the people is about to enter.
loathe. The present translation concurs with Milgrom that the multivalent nefesh here means “throat” and hence the phrase lo tigʿal nafshi ʾetkhem means literally “my throat will not expel you,” i.e., I will not retch in disgust over you, loathe you. Although it might at first seem surprising that so strongly negative a locution would be used in a blessing, albeit prefaced by a “not,” it is chosen in order to stand in counterpoint to Israel’s loathing God in verses 15 and 43 and God’s loathing Israel in return for its miscreance.
13. I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk upright. In Hebrew, as in other languages, “yoke” is a general symbol for subjugation (an English word which itself means “being under the yoke”). But here the dead metaphor is resuscitated: the two bars of the yoke connecting to the crosspiece are broken, and enslaved Israel, forced to go about (in the metaphor) pulling heavy burdens on all four like a beast, can now stand up straight.
15. voiding My covenant. The antithesis to God’s fulfilling the covenant (verse 9).
16. making the throat ache. Since a particular body part seems required to match the wasted eyes, it is highly likely that the sense here of nefesh is once again “throat.”
17. I will set My face against you. This is the antithesis of “I shall turn toward you” in verse 9. Throughout this section of curses, the translation uses “will” in the first person and “shall” in the second because the modal force of the language seems more emphatic in the curses than in the blessings.
19. your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. This grim simile is a common feature in Assyrian treaty curses and is equally exploited in Deuteronomy 28:23, although in that instance bronze goes with the heavens and iron with the earth.
21. come in encounter against Me. The exact origin of this phrase, unique to this passage, telkhu ʿimi beqeri, is in dispute, though it obviously means something like “confront,” “dispute,” “rebel against.” The most plausible etymology of the noun qeri is from the verbal stem q-r-h, suggesting “encounter,” “happening upon,” or even “mishap,” and so this translation uses the phrase “in encounter” (which of course can also mean “duel”), preserving what may be a slight idiomatic oddness in the Hebrew.
22. your roads will be desolate. If one pauses to reflect, this is a haunting image (and one to which several of the Prophets revert): the once teeming highways of the land will be bleak and empty after the devastation of the populace.
23. And if through these you do not take chastisement. The section of curses is structured as a sequence of downward spiraling disasters. After each set of punishing blows, God, as it were, pauses to see if Israel will correct its ways. When this does not happen, He intensifies the catastrophes, which will culminate in exile.
25. the avenging sword of the covenant’s vengeance. A covenant is both a promise and a threat. From those who violate their covenantal obligations, vengeance is exacted.
28. against you in wrathful encounter. Ominously, God now adds the component of wrath, ḥamah, to the reiterated noun qeri, suggesting that divine hostility is now ready to trump Israelite hostility in a climactic set of disasters.
29. you shall eat the flesh of your sons. On this grisly detail, see the comment on Deuteronomy 28:53. The verse is arranged as a neat chiasm—eat (a), flesh of your sons (b), flesh of your daughters (b'), eat (a')—as a rhetorical means of hammering home the horrific images.
30. your corpses … the corpses of your fetishes. Although logically fetishes cannot have corpses, not ever having been alive, the same word is pointedly repeated, suggesting a bitter equation between the inert, heaped-up bodies of the fetish worshippers and the inert, lifeless fetishes, which have been “corpses” all along, and now deprived of worshippers, are all the more conspicuously sheer dead matter.
31. sanctuaries. The plural surely suggests that in this text a single central sanctuary is not presupposed.
I will not smell your fragrant odors. The reference is to the fragrance of the sacrifice burned on the altar and thought, at least in the pre-Israelite period, to be a pleasing aroma in the nostrils of the gods. By the time of the writing of this text, it may have become a dead metaphor simply meaning, I will not look with favor on your sacrifices.
34. Then shall the land expiate its sabbath years. These words, and those of the next two verses, reflect both a logic of restitution and mordant satiric irony. The people has violated its obligation to keep the sabbatical year. Now, as the depopulated land lies fallow year after year, all those violated sabbaths will be made up for, numerically. But this is also a bitterly mocking image of the land, violently divested of its Israelite inhabitants, compelled by grim history to keep on its own a whole series of sabbatical years, in which nothing is sown or reaped.
37. there shall be no standing up for you in the face of your enemies. This is a vivid antithesis to “made you walk upright” in verse 13. The two Hebrew words in question derive from the same root—“upright,” qomemiyut, and “standing up,” tequmah.
39. guilt. The Hebrew ʿawon means “iniquity” (or “crime”) and by causal extension, both “guilt” and “punishment.”
41. their uncircumcised heart. This is a recurrent metaphor for obtuseness or callousness. See the comment on Deuteronomy 10:16.
44. My covenant. The envelope structure formed by the reiteration of this key term at the beginning and the end of the entire section is meant as a reassurance. God will respond in terrible wrath to Israel’s dereliction, but the commitment to the covenant He expressed at the beginning will in the end lead Him to rescue Israel from exile as He once rescued them from Egyptian slavery.
45. the covenant of the first ones. This somewhat opaque phrase refers to the founding generation that stood at Sinai, but its very vagueness allows a certain elision between these “first ones” and the patriarchs, with whom God initially sealed the covenant that has just been mentioned.
46. between Himself and the Israelites. This locution of betweenness, in the summation at the end of all the preceding laws and statutes, followed by this chapter’s catalogue of blessings and curses, is an indication of the two-sided contractual nature of God’s covenant with Israel that is repeatedly invoked in the blessings and the curses.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them, ‘Should a man set aside a votive offering in the value fixed for persons to the LORD, 3the value for the male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels by the sanctuary shekel. 4And if it is for a female, the value shall be thirty shekels. 5And if it is for someone from five years old up to twenty years old, the value shall be twenty shekels for the male and for the female ten shekels. 6And if it is for someone from a month old up to a year, the value of the male shall be five silver shekels and for the female the value three silver shekels. 7And if it is for someone from sixty years old and above, if a male, the value shall be fifteen shekels and for the female ten shekels. 8And if one should become too impoverished to meet the value, he shall be set before the priest, and the priest shall evaluate him, according to what the hand of the votary can attain shall the priest evaluate him. 9And if it is an animal that is brought forward as an offering to the LORD, any of which may be given to the LORD shall be holy. 10He shall not exchange it and shall not replace it, whether good for bad or bad for good, and if in fact he replaces one animal for another, both it and its replacement shall be holy. 11And if it is any unclean animal that is not to be brought forward as an offering to the LORD, the animal shall be set before the priest. 12And the priest shall evaluate it, whether good or bad, according to the priest’s valuation, thus shall it be. 13And if he in fact redeems it, he shall add a fifth to its value. 14And should a man consecrate his house as holy to the LORD, the priest shall evaluate it, whether good or bad. As the priest evaluates it, thus shall it stand. 15And if he who consecrates his house redeems it, he shall add a fifth to the silver of its value, and it shall be his. 16And if a man should consecrate anything from a field of his holding to the LORD, its value shall be according to its seed—a homer of barley seed at fifty silver shekels. 17If he consecrates his field from the jubilee year, it shall stand according to its value. 18And if he consecrates his field after the jubilee, the priest shall reckon the silver for him according to the remaining years until the jubilee, and these shall be deducted from its value. 19And if he who consecrates the field shall in fact redeem it, he shall add a fifth to its value, and it shall become his. 20And if he does not redeem the field and had sold the field to another man, it may no longer be redeemed. 21And the field when it is released in the jubilee shall be holy to the LORD, as a proscribed field. His holding shall become the priest’s. 22And if he consecrates a field he has purchased, which is not from the field of his holding, to the LORD, 23the priest shall reckon for him the amount of the value until the jubilee year, and he shall give the value on that day, a sacred donation to the LORD. 24In the jubilee year the field shall revert to him from whom it was bought to him who has the holding of the land. 25And every valuation shall be by the sanctuary shekel, twenty gerahs the shekel shall be. 26But the firstborn of the animals, which is marked firstborn to the LORD, no man shall consecrate. Whether ox or sheep, it is the LORD’s. 27And if it is of an unclean animal, he shall ransom it by its value and add a fifth, and if it is not redeemed, it shall be sold at its value. 28But anything proscribed, that a man may proscribe for the LORD, of anything he has, whether of humans or animals or of the field of his holding, shall not be sold and shall not be redeemed. Anything proscribed is holy of holies to the LORD. 29No human who has been proscribed may be ransomed. He is doomed to die. 30And all tithes of the land, of the seed of the land, of the fruit of the land, are the Lord’s, holy to the LORD. 31And if a man in fact redeems something of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it. 32And all tithes of cattle and sheep, anything that passes under the staff, the tenth shall be holy to the LORD. 33He shall not look out for good or bad, and he shall not replace it. And if in fact he replaces it, it or its replacement shall be holy, it shall not be redeemed.’”
34These are the commands that the LORD charged Moses for the Israelites on Mount Sinai.
CHAPTER 27 NOTES
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2. Should a man set aside a votive offering. This miscellany of laws seems, by modern lights, an odd way to conclude a book. Interpretive attempts have been made to rescue it as a thematically appropriate conclusion, but none is altogether persuasive. This final chapter is best regarded as an appendix to Leviticus focusing on a variety of laws pertaining to voluntary offerings and taxed obligations to the sanctuary. Perhaps these monetary issues, necessary for the maintenance of the sanctuary but not altogether agreeable for the audience of the book to contemplate, were deliberately tacked on at the very end.
in the value fixed. The Hebrew term, at least as it has been vocalized by the Masoretes, is beʿerkekha, which means literally “in your value/valuation.” It seems likely (though there are other philological solutions) that this is a colloquial term—“as you would evaluate”—that became frozen and lexicalized as an abstraction with the general sense of “assessed value.” The verb used in verse 8 and elsewhere for the priest’s assessment of monetary value is cognate with this noun and hence is translated here as “evaluate” in order to make that connection clear.
the value fixed for. What follows is a table of fixed values in weights of silver (the meaning of “shekel”), the valuation being strictly according to age and gender with no regard to the social or economic standing of the person. The system of valuation, as Baruch Levine plausibly contends, reflects the potential economic productivity of a person of the stipulated age bracket and gender. A male has greater potential productivity than a female, a mature person greater productivity than a child or than an aged person. The idea of setting the amount of a votive offering of silver as the equivalent of the value of a person has symbolic and psychological force, for it expresses the idea that the votary is offering to the sanctuary an equivalent of himself or herself.
8. if one should become too impoverished. The verb, which in different contexts has been translated “fall to ruin,” indicates a process of steep economic decline. What it logically means here is that the person in question made the vow to give the offering of his fixed value in silver but then fell on hard times, so that he now does not have the wherewithal to pay his pledge. The priest is therefore enjoined to assess the person’s economic state and impose whatever limited amount it seems reasonable for him to pay.
9. any of which may be given to the LORD. That is, any of the specified kinds of animals acceptable as sacrifices. Such an animal, once pledged by the votary, becomes “holy,” to be offered as a sacrifice with the greater part of its flesh reserved for the exclusive consumption of the priests.
10. whether good for bad or bad for good. The particular animal that the votary has pledged must be offered, and the substitution of, say a fatter animal for a scrawny one or the other way around, is not allowed.
11. any unclean animal. The animal in this case, which could not be used as a sacrifice, serves as a unit of value. Though Jacob Milgrom argues that unclean animals—for example, donkeys—could be used as beasts of burden in the sanctuary, the stipulation here of the priest’s function as an assessor of value suggests that what the law has in view is the equivalent in silver of the animal.
12. whether good or bad. This means, of course, whether high or low, but the valuation itself is set according to the health, age, size, and so forth (“good or bad”) of the animal.
13. if he in fact redeems it. The votary may change his mind and decide he wants to hang on to this particular animal. In that case, he is obliged to pay a 20 percent surcharge on top of its assessed value in silver.
16. according to its seed. That is, according to its capacity to be planted with a particular quantity of seed.
a homer. The ḥomer, derived from ḥamor, “donkey” (a load that a donkey can carry), is a large unit of dry measure, well above a hundred liters.
17. from the jubilee year, it shall stand according to its value. This accords with the preceding laws about the redemption of slaves and real property in relation to the jubilee cycle. Consecration at the time of the jubilee would produce the maximal value. Because the land is part of the person’s ancestral, tribal holding, it must revert to him at the next jubilee.
20. and had sold the field to another man. The Hebrew is a little cryptic. Milgrom, following Menahem Haran, plausibly argues that the person has first sold the field, which would ordinarily revert to him in the jubilee, and then consecrated it to the priests. The consecration following the sale (which was in effect no more than a lease) suggests that he is renouncing his right to have the property revert to him in the jubilee, as the next verse makes explicit.
22. a field he has purchased. This is a piece of property that is not part of his ancestral holding and hence need not revert to him in the jubilee.
25. the sanctuary shekel. As elsewhere, this phrase indicates a shekel that has a greater weight than the mercantile shekel.
26. But the firstborn of the animals … no man shall consecrate. Since the firstborn in any case belongs to the deity, its owner is in no position to consecrate it as though it were his voluntary offering.
28. anything proscribed. The Hebrew term is ḥerem, which in martial contexts means the “ban” of total destruction to which a conquered population and its possessions are subjected. In the present context, a more pacific kind of ḥerem is intended: whatever a person irrevocably divests himself of and sets aside to be dedicated to God. Thus “humans” (ʾadam) here must mean the one category of human beings that can become permanent property, non-Israelite slaves, and their fate in this instance is not destruction but transfer to the jurisdiction of the sanctuary. Thus three categories of property are listed: slaves, livestock, and land.
29. No human who has been proscribed. In this case, the reference is by no means limited to slaves, and the ḥerem referred to is the lethal kind. One clear-cut example would be a prisoner taken from a conquered town that was to be subjected to the ban of total destruction (like Agag the Amalekite king in 1 Samuel 15). The ban cannot be revoked, and hence the proscribed person is “doomed to die.” The appropriateness in this instance of the verb “ransomed,” instead of the reiterated “redeemed” is clear.
32. anything that passes under the staff. The staff in question is obviously the shepherd’s staff, and the phrase as a whole, which appears with variations elsewhere in the Bible, is a kenning for herded animals. Both medieval and modern commentators, putting this phrase together with the next verse, have understood the law to be that the shepherd actually counts the animals passing under his staff, marking every tenth one to be tithed to the sanctuary. As the next verse makes clear, the tenth animal, whether it is robust or meager, cannot be replaced by another creature, for better or for worse.
34. These are the commands that the LORD charged Moses. Most commentators see this statement of closure as an explicit tie-in with the formal conclusion (26:46) of the previous textual unit, “These are the statutes and the laws and the teachings that the LORD set out between Himself and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through the hand of Moses.” Since this chapter does not deal with covenantal material, the language of betweenness is omitted, and “commands” may have been introduced as a term that comprises the others. But as an editorial decision, this final verse equally points back to the whole Book of Leviticus and forward to the Book of Numbers. Leviticus begins not exactly on Mount Sinai but at the Tent of Meeting, after the Sinai epiphany and presumably still in spatial proximity to the mountain. The opening words of Numbers remind us of the link between God’s revelation on Sinai and His further commands to Moses from the Tent of Meeting, locating God’s speech to Moses “in the Wilderness of Sinai in the Tent of Meeting.”
