The Book of Numbers is in some respects the most miscellaneous of the five books of the Torah, but it also includes a series of uniquely fascinating episodes that exhibit distinctive literary features. The first ten chapters are, by scholarly consensus, the work of Priestly writers and in a certain sense constitute a continuation of Leviticus. The four initial chapters are taken up with a detailed tabulation of the census of the tribes conducted in the wilderness and are the warrant for the prevalent English title of the book, which goes back to the Vulgate and the Septuagint and is also reflected in a designation appearing in rabbinic sources, ḥomesh hapequdim, “the Fifth [that is, one book of the Five] of Reckonings.” (The generally used Hebrew title, Bemidbar, which is simply the first common noun in the text, means “in the wilderness.”) The Priestly writers’ enthusiasm for pageantry is manifested in this great initial roll call of the tribes, which is picked up in the review of the order of their march through the wilderness in chapter 10 and in the elaborately repetitive rehearsal of the gifts of the twelve chieftains in chapter 7. In between these, we are given laws intended to protect cultic purity in chapters 5 and 6, with considerable attention devoted to the trial by ordeal of the wife suspected of adultery and to the nazirite’s vows of abstinence, and then the dedication of the Levites and the ritual of the Passover offering in chapters 8 and 9.
The book returns to the narrative impulse that marks the first half of Exodus—indeed, with certain pronounced parallels to episodes in Exodus—in chapter 11. Although some legal material, in large part concerned with the cult, will be introduced along the way, together with an additional chapter (26) devoted to census, narrative predominates to the end of the book. The Israelites, Sinai behind them, are on the move, edging toward the prospect of the conquest of the land that is first engaged here in the reconnaissance mission of the twelve spies (chapters 13 and 14) and that will become imminent, forty years later in narrated time, with actual combat against kingdoms to the east of the Jordan, from chapter 21 onward. We are repeatedly reminded of the passing of generations as the story carries us to the border of the promised land. After the incident of the spies, the entire adult generation that came out of Egypt is fated to die before the promise of the land can be realized. Moses, seconded by Aaron, fails the test of trusting in God’s provident intervention when he strikes the rock on his own initiative in order to bring forth water (chapter 20), and as a result, he, too, will not be privileged to enter the land. Miriam and Aaron die; Moses’s impending death on Mount Nebo is announced by God; and Joshua is lined up to succeed him as leader (the logical narrative continuation of this book being the Book of Joshua).
But if Israel is on the move from chapter 11 to the end, it must be said that this text associates movement with trouble. After the initial choreographed procession of the teeming tribes, each arrayed in orderly fashion around its own banner, we get repeated representations of a motley crew of malcontents—the Hebrew pejorative ʾasafsuf, “riffraff” (11:4), is aptly invoked to characterize them—a mob churning with complaints and frustrated desires, restive under Moses’s leadership, fed up with the hardships of life in the wilderness, and nostalgic for the material comforts of life in Egypt.
The incidents of Taberah (Conflagration) and Kibroth-Hattaavah (the Graves of Desire) reported in chapter 11 establish a model for much of what follows. The narrative motifs deployed, which first appeared in Exodus and now recur in a whole series of episodes here in Numbers, constitute such a fixed sequence that one is tempted to say they qualify as a type-scene, like the type-scenes of betrothal and annunciation in Genesis and Exodus. The one notable difference, however, from type-scene is that instead of the same scene, with significant variations, featuring different characters, we have a repetition of the same scene involving the same actors—Israel, Moses, and God—manifesting a certain intensification more than significant variation from one recurrence to the next. The scheme of the recurrent scene of “murmuring” or complaint is as follows: the people bitterly protests its misery in the wilderness or Moses’s leadership or both; God’s wrath flares against the people, expressing itself in some sort of “scourge” that decimates the Israelite ranks; Moses intercedes—in two instances, after God actually threatens to wipe out the entire people and to begin anew with Moses—and He relents. The two most salient episodes of Israelite recalcitrance are the story of the spies, who report the fabulous bounty of the land but despair of conquering it, then seek to storm it without divine authorization, and the story of the mutiny led by Korah (respectively, chapters 13–14 and 16–17). Restiveness under Moses’s rule is so epidemic that even Miriam and Aaron are infected by it, at one point resentfully rebelling against their brother (chapter 12). One suspects that all these repetitions of the scene of murmuring are introduced because the writers conceived it as a paradigm for the subsequent history of Israel: recurrent resentment of God’s rule and of the authority of His legitimate leaders, chronic attraction to objects of base material desire, fearfulness, divisiveness, and the consequences of national disaster brought about, in the view of the biblical writers, by this whole pattern of constant backsliding.
For all the prominence of these scenes of rebellion, Numbers offers a kind of dialectical counterimage to the representation of Israel as an obstinate and refractory mob. This generation that cannot free itself from the slave mentality it brought with it from Egypt also constitutes the beginnings of a people meant to realize a grand historical destiny. Imagery and acts of martial prowess, reinforced by sheer numbers that daunt the other nations of the region, and more pacific images of well-watered vegetation luxuriantly burgeoning, are associated with the assembled tribes of Israel. Many of these terms are introduced in poetry, and it is the striking poetic insets in Numbers that account for much of its distinctive quality among books of the Bible. The more typical convention of biblical literature is to insert a relatively long poem at the end of a book, as happens with the Blessing of Jacob at the end of Genesis and with the Song of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy, or after a climactic narrative event, as in the instance of the Song of the Sea in Exodus. Here, however, we are given snippets of what look like very ancient Hebrew poems at unpredictable points in the narrative, together with one relatively extended sequence of poems (it is not really a single continuous poem), Balaam’s oracles, a series of prophecies about Israel’s future that is pronounced, unlike any other biblical poetry, by a non-Israelite soothsayer.
It is worth reflecting on the ancient character of the poems and what role that plays in the narrative panorama of Numbers. The first of these (if one excepts God’s oracular pronouncement in 12:6–8 to Miriam and Aaron on Moses’s unique status as prophet) is a highly fragmentary quotation from a vanished work, the Book of the Battles of YHWH: “Against Waheb in a whirlwind and the Wadis of Arnon, / and the cascade of the wadis that turns down toward Ar’s dwelling, / and clings to Moab’s border” (21:14–15). These opaque lines are followed, two verses on, by the Song of the Well: “Rise up, O Well! / Sing out to it. / Well, that captains dug, / the people’s nobles delved it, / with a scepter, with their walking stick.” No one has offered a convincing explanation of what this is all about, and it is an interesting question why such scraps of old verse should have been incorporated in the Book of Numbers. The French literary critic Roland Barthes, in a much discussed essay, once provocatively claimed that many details of material reality in realist fiction are introduced not to signify anything or to serve any function of plot or theme but solely to invoke the category of the real, to produce a “reality effect.” In a roughly analogous way, I would like to propose that these fragments of old poems are introduced into the narrative of Numbers at least in part in order to produce an “antiquity effect.” There is no way of knowing whether Hebrew audiences in, say, the ninth century B.C.E. were still familiar with the Book of the Battles of YHWH, or whether it was already a lost work, surviving only in remembered fragments or perhaps tag ends of manuscript. The point, in any case, of the fragmentary quotation, triggered in context by the geographical references, would have been to evoke a distant moment in early Israelite history, suffused with the aura of the historical era of the story’s setting in the thirteenth century B.C.E. One may surmise that the Book of the Battles of YHWH was deemed too anthropomorphic or too mythological in character to be included in the canon that was evolving, perhaps (to judge by the title) featuring a warrior-god wielding lightning as his weapon, as in some of the Psalms and in Ugaritic poetry, leading the assault against Israel’s enemies. The enigmatic lines cited from this ancient text conjure up an era of fierce martial energies when Israel first established itself among the peoples of Canaan as a conquering nation. (The early-twentieth-century Hebrew poet Saul Tchernikhovsky would capture something of the spirit of this era by referring to the primordial deity of the Hebrews in a programmatically Nietzschean poem as “El, god of the conquerors of Canaan in a whirlwind.”) The Song of the Well might possibly recall a particular incident of discovering water in the wilderness, but, more prominently, it evokes a whole nomadic way of life in the desert, and in its extreme brevity, it looks more like the refrain of an old song than the complete text.
Later in chapter 21 (verses 27–30), a third ancient poem is introduced, beginning with the words “Come to Heshbon, let it stand built, / may the city of Sihon be unshaken.” What is striking about this particular text is that it is explicitly presented as coming from a non-Israelite source: it is said to be what the “rhapsodes” (moshlim) say; these would be West Semitic, possibly trans-Jordanian, bards of unspecified national identity, and the burden of their song is a celebration of the predominance of the Amorite city Heshbon over Moab that has no direct connection with Israelite history. These lines (which become somewhat obscure toward the end) are either a Hebrew translation of a foreign poem or a citation of a poem from a language so closely cognate with Hebrew that it required only minor adaptation. Given the foreign provenance of the poem, it is an especially striking instance of an antiquity effect, taking the story of the approach of the Israelite masses to the eastern border of Canaan back to a half-remembered time when many kingdoms rose and fell in this region.
The brilliant centerpiece among these citations of archaic poetry is the oracles of Balaam (chapters 23 and 24), which follow the story of Balaam and his she-ass, tracing a cunning network of analogies to it. That story has often been characterized as a folktale, and there are no other instances of talking animals in the historical narratives of the Bible (the only other candidate, the serpent in the Garden story, belongs to the primeval and hence more mythological phase of biblical literature). Especially because, according to prevalent preconceptions, there is no humor in the Bible, it should be noted that this story is quite funny. The humor serves the purposes of a monotheistic satire of pagan notions of the professional seer with independent powers to curse or bless: Balaam the celebrated visionary cannot see the sword-wielding divine messenger who is plainly visible to his ass, and he is reduced to spluttering frustration, finally engaging in an angry argument with his beast of burden. Balaam then plays the role of the ass whose eyes, and mouth, are opened by God vis-à-vis the thrice frustrated, and understandably fuming, Moabite king Balak, to whom Balaam’s previous role as imperceptive satiric butt is assigned in this second story.
The very figure of Balaam is part of the antiquity effect cultivated in this narrative. This selfsame soothsayer is the principal character in an inscription discovered in Jordan in 1967, written in a language that is a close relative of Hebrew, with Aramaic elements, and dating from the eighth century B.C.E.; and so we may infer that he was known as a seer of fabled powers in the traditions of this region, perhaps going back to tales told centuries earlier. His appearance in Numbers, pronouncing blessings on Israel in lofty poetic language, sets this story of Israel on the threshold of its entrance into the land in the large context of the archaic traditions of the region. It is an Aramean prophet, summoned from “the eastern mountains,” who beholds from a promontory the vast array of the tribes of Israel (a vivid narrative realization of the dry census figures at the beginning of the book) and projects spatial into temporal vision, prophesying the future greatness of Israel:
[F]rom the top of the crags do I see them
and from the hills do I gaze on them.
Look, a people that dwells apart,
amongst nations it is not reckoned.
Who has numbered the dust of Jacob,
who counted the issue of Israel? (23:9–10)
The archaic coloration of Balaam’s oracles is nicely conveyed through the names he uses for the deity. Balaam in the poems refers to God once, near the beginning of the first oracle, as YHWH, but then God is variously invoked as El, Shaddai, and Elyon, all names of deities from the Canaanite pantheon that have been, one might say, co-opted by the Hebrew monotheists. Balaam expresses his own identity as a seer schooled in the lore of West Semitic polytheists by using animal imagery for God (as the Psalms do), representing Him charging against Israel’s enemies with “wild ox’s antlers.” And yet, this pagan prophet, both through the ingenious turns of the story and through the poetry that is put in his mouth, has been enlisted in the monotheistic cause. All prophetic utterance, all curses and blessings, come from YHWH alone: “What can I hex that El has not hexed, / and what can I doom that the LORD has not doomed?” (23:8). His prophecies about Israel move from sheer multitudinousness to martial fierceness—the people ravening like a lion, smashing the bones and crushing the loins of its foes—to a pacific vision of palm groves and gardens by a river followed by concluding reprise of martial imagery. Instructively, the sequence of oracles ends not with Israel but with a rapid panorama, couched in rather obscure vatic language, of sundry nations of the region plummeting to destruction. Once again, this chronicle of IsraeI poised for the conquest of the land God has promised it is set into an ancient world, whether remembered or reinvented through scraps of inherited literary tradition, where kingdoms rise and fall in the long reaches of history.
In the end, there are complementary parallels, counterpoints, and also strong tensions between the Priestly sections of the Book of Numbers and its narrative and poetic passages. The Priestly writers above all seek to establish a vision of order and stability—through the intricate system of laws regulating personal behavior and cultic practice, through the long lists of numbers and names, through the representation of the grand order of march of the tribes. They aspire to an ideal of Israel as a holy people, bound by Priestly ordinances, that is altogether unique among the nations of the earth. The poetry Balaam utters also registers the idea of “a people that dwells apart,” yet his oracles, like the surrounding narrative, clearly see Israel as part of the unfolding history of the whole region. This is a theater in which great kingdoms have come and gone, long before the arrival of Israel: the biblical self-perception of the Israelite nation as a latecomer to the historical scene is palpably present here. Now, at this reported moment in the thirteenth century B.C.E., it is Israel’s turn to establish itself through conquest. As the concluding chapters of Numbers take up issues of inheritance and the division of the land, and as the departure of Moses is announced, the narrative has prepared us for the defining moment of the crossing of the Jordan, with Joshua in command.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai in the Tent of Meeting on the first of the second month in the second year of their going out from Egypt, saying, 2“Count the heads of all the community of the Israelites by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male by their heads. 3From twenty years old and up, everyone who goes out in the army in Israel, you shall reckon them by their battalions, you and Aaron. 4And with you let there be a man from each tribe, each man the head of his father’s house. 5And these are the names of the men who will stand with you: for Reuben, Elizur son of Shedeur; 6for Simeon, Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai; 7for Judah, Nahshon son of Amminadab; 8for Issachar, Nethanel son of Zuar; 9for Zebulun, Eliab son of Helon; 10for the sons of Joseph—for Ephraim, Elishama son of Ammihud, for Manasseh, Gamaliel son of Pedahzur; 11for Benjamim, Abidan son of Gideoni; 12for Dan, Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai; 13for Asher, Pagiel son of Ochran; 14for Gad, Eliasaph son of Deuel; 15for Naphtali, Ahira son of Enan. 16These are the ones called from the community, chieftains of their fathers’ tribes, they are the heads of the kin-groups of Israel.” 17And Moses, and Aaron with him, took these men who had been marked out by name. 18And all the community they assembled on the first of the second month, and they were affiliated by their clans, by their fathers’ houses according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, by their heads, 19as the LORD had charged Moses, and he made a reckoning of them in the Wilderness of Sinai.
20And the sons of Reuben, Israel’s firstborn, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, by their heads, every male from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 21their reckoning for the tribe of Reuben, forty-six thousand five hundred. 22For the sons of Simeon, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses according to the number of names, by their heads, every male from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 23their reckoning for the tribe of Simeon, fifty-nine thousand three hundred. 24For the sons of Gad, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 25their reckoning for the tribe of Gad, forty-five thousand six hundred and fifty. 26For the sons of Judah, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 27those reckoned for the tribe of Judah, seventy-four thousand six hundred. 28For the sons of Issachar, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years and up, everyone who went out in the army, 29their reckoning for the tribe of Issachar, fifty-four thousand four hundred. 30For the sons of Zebulun those born to them, by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 31their reckoning for the tribe of Zebulun, fifty-seven thousand four hundred. 32For the sons of Joseph—for the sons of Ephraim, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 33their reckoning for the tribe of Ephraim, forty thousand five hundred. 34For the sons of Manasseh, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 35their reckoning, for the tribe of Manasseh, thirty-two thousand two hundred. 36For the sons of Benjamin, those born to them, by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 37their reckoning, for the tribe of Benjamin thirty-five thousand four hundred. 38For the sons of Dan, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 39their reckoning for the tribe of Dan sixty-two thousand seven hundred. 40For the sons of Asher, those born to them, by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army, 41their reckoning for the tribe of Asher forty-one thousand five hundred. 42The sons of Naphtali, those born to them by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old up, everyone who went out in the army, 43their reckoning for the tribe of Naphtali, fifty-three thousand four hundred. 44These are the reckonings that Moses, and Aaron and the chieftains of Israel, made, twelve men, one man for each father’s house they were. 45And all the Israelites who were reckoned by their fathers’ houses, from twenty years old and up, everyone who went out in the army in Israel, 46all the reckonings came to six hundred three thousand five hundred and fifty. 47And the Levites by the tribe of their fathers were not reckoned in their midst. 48And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 49“But the tribe of Levi you shall not reckon, and their heads you shall not count in the midst of the Israelites. 50And you, make the Levites reckon with the Tabernacle of the Covenant and with all its furnishings and with all that belongs to it. They it is who shall bear the Tabernacle and all its furnishings, and they shall serve it, and around the Tabernacle they shall camp. 51And when the Tabernacle journeys onward, the Levites shall take it down, and when the Tabernacle camps, the Levites shall set it up, and the stranger who draws near shall be put to death. 52And the Israelites shall camp each man with his camp and each man with his banner by their battalions. 53And the Levites shall camp around the Tabernacle of the Covenant, that there be no fury against the community of Israelites, and the Levites shall keep watch over the Tabernacle of the Covenant. 54And the Israelites did as all that the LORD had charged Moses, thus did they do.
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. in the Wilderness. The Hebrew word represented by these three English words—bemidbar—is the prevalent Hebrew title for the book. Numbers, the topical title, derives from the Greek rubric as well as a Hebrew equivalent that appears in the Talmud. In this case, the convention of selecting the first significant word in the text as title fortuitously produces an apt characterization of the book, which is all about Wilderness wanderings and trials and upheavals in that liminal space for the nation in the making.
on the first of the second month in the second year. The Tabernacle was completed one month earlier (Exodus 40:17). Now, after the Priestly legislation that constitutes the Book of Leviticus, and which is not tied to a specific date, the narrative turns its attention outward from the sanctuary to the people and to the organization of a census.
2. Count the heads. Literally, “lift the heads.” The word for “head” at the end of this verse is not, as here, roʾsh but gulgolet, which means “poll” and also “skull.”
their fathers’ houses. The Hebrew beyt ʾav, which some render as “patriarchal house,” designates a social unit considerably larger than a nuclear family. The “clan” (mishpaḥah) would involve a large extended family, or several households of kinfolk. The most reasonable inference—there are differing opinions—is that the beyt ʾav encompassed a number of clans, as verse 4 here may suggest, since the head of a beyt ʾav is chosen as representative of the whole tribe.
3. everyone who goes out in the army. That is, every male eligible for military service. The purpose of the census here is to organize a general military conscription. The journeying from Sinai through the wilderness toward the promised land, about to be initiated after the completion of the Tabernacle in the second year of the Exodus, will necessarily be an extended military campaign. Thus, the Israelite males are to be counted “by their battalions.”
you shall reckon them. The root p-q-d, which is used again and again in connection with the census, is an all-purpose verb that variously means “to muster,” “to tally,” “to single out,” “to pay special attention to,” “to requite,” “to appoint,” and more. The first two of these meanings are the ones strictly relevant to our passage. This translation uses “reckon” precisely because it is an English term not restricted to one semantic field and thus able to suggest something of the overlapping senses of the Hebrew verb.
5. And these are the names. Jacob Milgrom notes that scarcely any of the names of the tribal representatives appear elsewhere in biblical literature and that none shows the theophoric suffix yah. He infers from this that the list reflects an authentically ancient tradition.
10. for the sons of Joseph. In keeping with Jacob’s deathbed promise to Joseph that Joseph’s two sons would be as his own sons, the descendants of the two sons of Joseph are given tribal status (and are elsewhere designated as “half-tribes”). Since the tribe of Levi will not be included in the census or the conscription, this device preserves the number of twelve for the tribes.
16. kin-groups. Although there is scholarly consensus that the Hebrew term ʾelef (in numerical contexts, “a thousand”) indicates a group of kinfolk, the size and configuration of the group and its relation to father’s house and clan remain uncertain.
18. affiliated. The unusual Hebrew verb, a reflexive form of the root that means “to give birth,” is interpreted by Rashi, and confirmed by modern scholarship, to have the sense of sorting out birth lines or pedigrees.
21. their reckoning. Although the Hebrew pequdim may look like a past participle (“those reckoned”), this form is also used to express an abstraction. Compare zequnim, “old age,” from the root z-q-n, “to be old.”
44. These are the reckonings. The verb of which this noun is object (“made”) is a cognate to the accusative in the Hebrew, paqad, “reckoned.”
49. But. The Hebrew ʾakh has a focusing and emphatic effect as well as an adversative sense—“yet,” “only.”
50. make the Levites reckon with the Tabernacle. The obvious sense of the verb is “to appoint” or “to install,” but the Hebrew puns on the term paqad used for the census, recasting it here in the hiphʿil or causative conjugation: you are not to reckon the Levites, but instead you must make them reckon with the Tabernacle, confer upon them the responsibility of its maintenance. The emphasis on the central role of the Levites will continue through much of the Book of Numbers.
51. the stranger who draws near. As is always the case in specifically cultic contexts, “stranger,” zar, has the technical meaning of anyone unfit to enter the sanctum, that is, a layman.
52. banner. This is the consensus of postbiblical Hebrew tradition for understanding the term degel. But Baruch Levine summons considerable comparative Semitic evidence, seconded by the Aramaic Targums, to argue that degel actually designates a “sociomilitary unit” (perhaps something like “regiment”?). It is also possible that a banner used to identify the military unit then became interchangeable through metonymy with the unit—roughly, the way “regimentals” in English came to be the term for the uniform of the regiment.
53. that there be no fury. The Hebrew term for “fury,” qetsef, means, at least etymologically, “foam,” as in a mouth foaming with rage. The fury in question is God’s punitive fury that would be triggered by any violation of the sacred space of the sanctuary.
the Levites shall keep watch. The Hebrew again has a cognate accusative, shamru mishmeret. Some understand the meaning to be that the Levites will attend to all the necessary maintenance of the Tabernacle, and mishmeret does sometimes have that meaning. But given the fact that the assignment of the Levites to the Tabernacle is in lieu of military service, and given the just stated need for them to ward off the unfit and thus prevent the unleashing of God’s fury, the sense of a military watch or vigil seems more likely: the Levites are cast as a kind of elite corps guarding the sanctuary.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2“Every man by his banner with standards for his father’s house, shall the Israelites camp opposite, round the Tent of Meeting they shall camp.” 3And those that camp to the very east, the banner of the camp of Judah by its divisions, and the chieftain of the Judahites, Nahshon son of Amminadab. 4And his division and those reckoned with them, seventy-four thousand six hundred. 5And those camped by him, the tribe of Issachar, and the chieftain of the Issacharites, Nethanel son of Zuar. 6And his division and those reckoned with it, fifty-four thousand four hundred. 7The tribe of Zebulun, and the chieftain of the Zebulunites Eliab son of Helon. 8And his division and those reckoned with it, seventy-five thousand four hundred. 9All the reckoning for the camp of Judah one hundred eighty-six thousand four hundred by their divisions. They shall journey first. 10The banner of the camp of Reuben to the south by their divisions, and the chieftain of the Reubenites Elizur son of Shedeur. 11And his division and those reckoned with it, forty-six thousand five hundred. 12And those who camped by him, the tribe of Simeon, and the chieftain of the Simeonites Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai. 13And his division and their reckoning, fifty-nine thousand three hundred. 14And the tribe of Gad, and the chieftain of the Gadites Eliasaph son of Reuel. 15And his division and their reckoning with them, forty-five thousand six hundred and fifty. 16All the reckoning for the camp of Reuben, one hundred fifty thousand four hundred and fifty by their divisions. And they shall journey second. 17And the Tent of Meeting, the camp of the Levites, shall journey in the midst of the camps. As they camp, so shall they journey, each in his own place, by their banners. 18The banner of the camp of Ephraim by their divisions to the west, and the chieftain of the Ephraimites Elishama son of Ammihud. 19And his division and their reckoning, forty thousand five hundred. 20And by him the camp of Manasseh, and the chieftain of the Manassehites Gamaliel son of Pedahzur. 21And his division and those reckoned with it thirty-two thousand two hundred. 22And the tribe of Benjamin, and the chieftain of the Benjaminites Abidan son of Gideoni. 23And his division and their reckoning thirty-five thousand four hundred. 24And the reckoning for the camp of Ephraim one hundred eight thousand one hundred by their divisions. And they shall journey third. 25The banner of the camp of Dan to the north by their divisions, and the chieftain of the Danites Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai. 26And his division and their reckoning, sixty-two thousand seven hundred. 27And those who camped by him, the tribe of Asher, and the chieftain of the Asherites Pagiel son of Ochran. 28And his division and their reckoning forty-one thousand five hundred. 29And the tribe of Naphtali, and the chieftain of the Naphtalites Ahira son of Enan. 30And his division and their reckoning, fifty-three thousand four hundred. 31All the reckoning for the camp of Dan one hundred fifty-seven thousand six hundred. They shall journey last by their banners. 32These are the reckonings of the Israelites by their fathers’ houses, all the reckonings of the camps by their divisions, six hundred three thousand five hundred and fifty. 33But the Levites were not reckoned in the midst of the Israelites, as the LORD had charged Moses. 34And the Israelites did as all that the LORD had charged Moses, thus they camped by their banners and thus they journeyed, each man by his clans, together with his father’s house.
CHAPTER 2 NOTES
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2. Every man by his banner with standards for his father’s house. After the preceding census lists, which provide the names of the tribal chieftains and then the head count of each of the tribes, with a stress on the census as a means of implementing military conscription, we are given a plan for the marching order of the Israelite forces, each tribe a military unit carrying its distinctive insignia.
round the Tent of Meeting they shall camp. The marching formation is a protective square, meant to ward off potential assaults from all directions, with the Tent of Meeting, the sacred locus of encounter between God and Moses and the site of the cult, inside the square.
3. to the very east. The Hebrew uses two successive synonyms for “east” (a procedure not followed for the other three directions), evidently with an effect of emphasis.
by its divisions. The Hebrew tseva’ot (singular tsavaʾ) has elsewhere been rendered as “battalions” in order to convey the martial force of the term. In the present context, however, “battalion” would be too small a unit because the numbers involved run into tens of thousands, and hence “division” seems a better English approximation.
4. those reckoned with them. Although the language for each of the tribes is unvarying boilerplate, as befits a list of this sort, in some instances the text says “reckoned with them” and in some “reckoned with him.” Abraham ibn Ezra rightly notes that there is no difference of meaning whatever—biblical Hebrew indifferently construes collectives as singular or plural. Similarly, the term rendered throughout in this passage as “fathers’ houses” is literally “fathers’ house,” though if linguistic usage followed logic, which it very often does not, the phrase would be either “fathers’ houses” or “father’s house.”
9. They shall journey first. Baruch Levine is surely right in arguing that here the verb “journey” (yisaʿu) has the military sense of “march.” But, by and large, biblical Hebrew adopts general terms for technical usages rather than coining specialized technical terms—compare “reckoned” for “mustered”—and this translation seeks to preserve that effect.
14. Reuel. In 1:14, 7:42, and 10:20, this name appears as “Deuel.” The letters indicating d and r are similar in form and hence there are sometimes scribal errors in transcribing them. The more likely form is Reuel.
17. the Tent of Meeting, the camp of the Levites. In the received Hebrew text, these two phrases appear to be in apposition, yielding a rather curious characterization of the Tent of Meeting. The second phrase is best understood as standing in a relation of metonymy to the first: the camp of the Levites surrounds the Tent of Meeting, serving as a protective extension to it and thus borrowing its name. This formulation sustains the notion put forth in 1:50–53 that the Levites fulfill a kind of military function in guarding the Tent of Meeting against all incursions. Thus in the marching plan for the army, the Levites inside the square act as an elite corps or palace guard.
33. But the Levites were not reckoned in the midst of the Israelites. This notation is in keeping with the differential instruction concerning the Levites in 1:49. The military role of the Levites is to serve as guards of the sanctuary, and as such they are not counted in the muster of the army that is assembled to confront external threats.
1And these are the generations of Aaron and Moses on the day the LORD spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai. 2And these are the names of the sons of Aaron: the firstborn Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. 3These are the names of the sons of Aaron, the anointed priests whom he installed to serve as priests. 4And Nadab and Abihu died before the LORD when they brought forward unfit fire before the LORD in the Wilderness of Sinai, and sons they did not have, and Eleazar and Ithamar served as priests in the lifetime of Aaron their father.
5And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 6“Bring forward the tribe of Levi, and set them before Aaron the priest, that they may serve him. 7And they shall keep his watch and the watch of all the community before the Tent of Meeting to do the work of the Tabernacle. 8And they shall keep watch over all the furnishings of the Tent of Meeting and the watch of the Israelites to do the work of the Tabernacle. 9And you shall give the Levites to Aaron and to his sons, wholly given shall they be from the Israelites. 10And Aaron and his sons you shall single out, that they keep their priesthood, and the stranger who draws near shall be put to death.” 11And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 12“And as for Me, look, I have taken the Levites from the midst of the Israelites in place of every firstborn womb-breach of the Israelites, that the Levites be Mine. 13For Mine is every firstborn. On the day I struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt I consecrated to Me every firstborn in Israel from man to beast—Mine they shall be. I am the LORD.”
14And the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, saying, 15“Reckon the Levites by their fathers’ houses, by their clans, every male from a month old and up you shall reckon them.” 16And Moses reckoned them according to the word of the LORD as he had been charged. 17And these were the Levites by their names: Gershon and Kohath and Merari. 18And these are the names of the sons of Gershon by their clans: Libni and Shimei. 19And the sons of Kohath by their clans: Amram and Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. 20And the sons of Merari by their clans: Mahli and Mushi. These are the clans of Levi by their fathers’ houses. 21To Gershon, the Libnite clan and the Shimeite clan, these are the Gershonite clans. 22Their reckoning, in the number of every male from a month old and up, their reckoning is seven thousand five hundred. 23The Gershonite clans shall camp behind the Tabernacle to the west. 24And the chieftain of the father’s house for the Gershonite, Eliasaph son of Lael. 25And the watch of the Gershonites in the Tent of Meeting, the Tabernacle and the Tent, its cover and the screen of the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, 26and the hangings of the court and the screen of the entrance to the court which is around the Tabernacle and the altar and its cords for all its service. 27And to Kohath, the Amramite clan and the Izharite clan and the Hebronite clan and the Uzzielite clan, these are the Kohathite clans. 28In the number of every male from one month old and up, eight thousand six hundred, keepers of the watch of the sanctuary. 29The clans of the Kohathites shall camp on the side of the Tabernacle to the south. 30And the chieftain of the father’s house for the clans of the Kohathite, Elizaphan son of Uzziel. 31And their watch is the ark and the table and the lamp stand and the altars and the sacred vessels with which they shall serve and the screen and all its work. 32And the chieftain of the chieftains of the Levites is Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, the charge of those who keep the watch of the sanctuary. 33To the Merarite, the Mahlite clan and the Mushite clan, these are the Merarite clans. 34And their reckoning, in the number of every male from one month old and up, six thousand two hundred. 35And the chieftain of the father’s house for the clans of the Merarite, Zuriel son of Abihail. On the side of the Tabernacle they shall camp to the north. 36And the charge of the Merarites, the boards of the Tabernacle and its bars and its posts and its sockets and all its furnishings and all its work, 37and the posts of the court all around and their sockets and their pegs and their cords. 38And those who camped before the Tabernacle to the east before the Tent of Meeting to the east, Moses and Aaron and his sons, keeping the watch of the Tabernacle, for the watch of the Israelites, and the stranger who draws near shall be put to death. 39All the reckonings of the Levites that Moses and Aaron reckoned according to the word of the LORD by their clans, every male from a month old and up—twenty-two thousand.
40And the LORD said to Moses, “Reckon every firstborn male of the Israelites from a month old and up and count the number of their names. 41And you shall take the Levites for Me—I am the LORD—instead of every firstborn among the Israelites, and the cattle of the Levites instead of every firstborn among the cattle of the Israelites.” 42And Moses reckoned as the LORD had charged him every firstborn among the Israelites. 43And all the firstborn males in the number of names from a month old and up in their reckoning came to twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy-three. 44And the LORD said to Moses, saying, 45“Take the Levites instead of every firstborn among the Israelites and the cattle of the Levites instead of their cattle, and the Levites shall be Mine. I am the LORD. 46And for the redemption of the two hundred seventy-three of the firstborn of the Israelites who exceed the number of the Levites, 47you shall take five shekels for each head, by the sanctuary shekel, you shall take, twenty gerahs to the shekel, 48and you shall give the silver to Aaron and his sons as redemption for those among them who exceed the number.” 49And Moses took the redemption silver from those who exceeded the number of those redeemed by the Levites. 50From the firstborn of the Israelites he took the silver, one thousand three hundred and sixty-five shekels, by the sanctuary shekel. 51And Moses gave the redemption silver to Aaron and to his sons according to the word of the LORD, as the LORD had charged Moses.
CHAPTER 3 NOTES
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1. And these are the generations of Aaron and Moses. Having completed the marching formation of the eleven tribes, the writer now turns to the tribe of Levi, listing its genealogy and its special duties. In keeping with his Priestly perspective, considerably more space is devoted to the Levites than to any of the other tribes.
4. brought forward. The Hebrew verb hiqriv has the overlapping meanings of “bring forward,” “bring near,” “present,” and “sacrifice.” In cultic contexts it suggests bringing before the divine presence or to the altar, and so it is appropriately followed here by “before the LORD.” Compare verse 6, “bring forward the tribe of Levi.”
unfit fire. Literally, “strange fire.” In relation to the cult, “strange” means “unconsecrated,” “unfit.” Compare “the stranger [the same word in the Hebrew] who draws near” in verse 10.
8. keep … the watch of the Israelites. The medieval commentators, like their modern heirs, are divided on the interpretation of “keep watch” (shamru mishmeret) and how it relates to the Israelites. Rashi prefers the unmartial sense of mishmeret as “maintenance” and explains that the sundry functions of the Tabernacle were necessarily the actions of the Levites on behalf of the entire community of Israelites. Abraham ibn Ezra, like the present translation, prefers the military sense: “they will keep watch that no Israelite touch the Tabernacle.” The likelihood that the meaning here is “to guard against” is supported by the recurrence in the next verse of the formula, “the stranger who draws near shall be put to death.”
9. wholly given shall they be. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “given, given shall they be.” “Given” in this context obviously means “dedicated,” “appointed,” but again the translation seeks to reflect the stylistic tendency of biblical Hebrew to use general terms for technical senses.
12. that the Levites be Mine. There may be an implicit etymological pun here. “Levite” (lewi) is the name of Jacob’s second son and hence of the tribe, but the name could suggest the verbal stem l-w-h, “to accompany,” “to attach to,” which is the role of the Levites vis-à-vis the deity.
15. every male from a month old and up. Unlike the other tribes, whose census is the vehicle of an explicit military conscription and hence based on the age of twenty and over, the Levites are dedicated to God for their whole lives. The count begins not from birth but from one month because given the prevalence of infant mortality, only after a month is the child regarded as a viable person (an explanation duly noted by several of the medieval commentators).
16. according to the word of the LORD. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “by the mouth of the LORD.” Jacob Milgrom’s proposal that the phrase refers not to divine command but to oracle has not found general acceptance. In verse 51, this phrase appears to be in apposition with “as the LORD had charged.”
41. instead of every firstborn among the Israelites. This injunction picks up the idea enunciated in Exodus 13 and elsewhere that, after the rescue of the Israelite firstborn in Egypt, some form of “redemption” or substitution for the firstborn was owed to God. Here the Levites, dedicated from infancy to the divine cult, serve as substitutes. Behind this law stands an archaic background in which cultic functions were performed by the firstborn instead of by a priestly caste.
46. exceed the number. The concept of “number” is in this context implied by the Hebrew verb ‘adaf, which means to “go beyond the limit,” “spill over the edge,” “exceed.”
47. you shall take five shekels for each head. How would the Israelites know who were the 273 who exceeded the number of the Levites and hence had to pay this price of redemption? Several early rabbinic sources plausibly suggest that a lottery was conducted to select the 273.
by the sanctuary shekel. “Shekel” means “weight” and is not a coin, coinage coming into Israelite life only in the Late Biblical period. The sanctuary shekel, about 11.4 grams, was heavier than the commercial shekel.
48. the silver. Although this word has the approximate sense of “money” (the meaning it frequently has in later Hebrew), what is given to Aaron and his sons are weights of silver, so it is preferable to render the term as “silver.”
1And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2“Count the heads of the Kohathites from the midst of the Levites by their clans, by their fathers’ houses. 3From thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who come to the army to do the task in the Tent of Meeting. 4This is the work of the Kohathites in the Tent of Meeting, the holy of holies. 5And Aaron shall come, and his sons, when the camp journeys onward, and take down the covering of the screen and cover with it the Ark of the Covenant. 6And they shall place over it a cover of ocher-dyed skin and spread a garment of pure indigo above it and put in its poles. 7And on the table of the Presence they shall spread an indigo garment and place on it the bowls and the ladles and the jars and the libation flasks, and the perpetual bread shall be upon it. 8And they shall spread over them a crimson garment and cover it in a covering of ocher-dyed skin and put in its poles. 9And they shall take an indigo garment and cover the lamp stand of the light and its lamps and its tongs and its fire-pans and all its oil vessels with which they serve. 10And they shall place it and all its vessels in a covering of ocher-dyed skin and place it on a beam. 11And over the golden altar they shall spread an indigo garment and cover it with a covering of ocher-dyed skin and put in its poles. 12And they shall take all the vessels of service with which they serve in the sanctuary and place them in an indigo garment and cover them with a covering of ocher-dyed skin and place on a beam. 13And they shall clear the ashes from the altar and spread over it a purple garment. 14And they shall place on it all its vessels with which they serve upon it, the fire-pans and the flesh-hooks and the scrapers and the basins, all the vessels of the altar, and they shall spread over it a covering of ocher-dyed skin and put in its poles. 15And Aaron, and his sons, shall finish covering the sanctuary and all the vessels of the sanctuary when the camp journeys onward, and afterward the Kohathites shall come to carry, so that they do not touch the holy and die. These make up the carriage of the Kohathites in the Tent of Meeting. 16And what is appointed for Eleazar son of Aaron the priest—the oil for the lamp and the aromatic incense and the perpetual grain offering and the anointing oil, what is appointed for all the Tabernacle and all that is in it, in the sanctuary and in its vessels.”
17And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 18“Do not let the tribe of the clans of the Kohathites be cut off from the midst of the Levites. 19And this shall you do for them, that they live and not die when they draw near the holy of holies: Aaron and his sons shall come and set every man of them at his work and at his carriage. 20And they shall not come in to see the sanctuary for even a moment and die.”
21And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 22“Count the heads of the Gershonites, too, by their fathers’ houses, by their clans. 23From thirty years old up till fifty years old you shall reckon them, all who do army service to do the work in the Tent of Meeting. 24This is the work of the Gershonite clans, for work and for carriage: 25They shall carry the curtains of the Tabernacle and the Tent of Meeting, its covering and the covering of ocher-dyed skin that is over it above and the screen of the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 26And the panels of the court and the screen for the entrance to the gate of the court which is all around the Tabernacle and the altar, and their cords, and all the vessels for their service and all that is done for them, and they shall do the work. 27By the word of Aaron and his sons shall be all the work of the Gershonites, for all their carriage and for all their work, and you shall oversee them watchfully in all their carriage. 28This is the work of the Gershonite clans in the Tent of Meeting, and their watch is in the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest. 29The Merarites by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, you shall reckon them. 30From thirty years old up till fifty years old you shall reckon them, all who come to the army to do the work of the Tent of Meeting. 31And this is the watch of their carriage for all their work in the Tent of Meeting: the boards of the Tabernacle and its bars and its posts and its sockets, 32and the posts of the court all around and their sockets and their pegs and their cords, for all their vessels and for all their work. And by name you shall reckon the vessels of their carriage watch. 33This is the work of the Merarites for all their work in the Tent of Meeting, in the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest.”
34And Moses, and Aaron and the chieftains of the community with him, reckoned the Kohathites by their clans by their fathers’ houses, 35from thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who came to the army, to the work in the Tent of Meeting. 36And their reckoning by their clans was two thousand seven hundred and fifty. 37This is the reckoning of the Kohathite clans, all who worked in the Tent of Meeting, which Moses, and Aaron with him, reckoned, by the LORD’s word, through the hand of Moses. 38And the reckoning of the Gershonites by their clans and by their fathers’ houses, 39from thirty years old up till fifty years, all who came to the army, to the work in the Tent of Meeting. 40And their reckoning by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, came to two thousand six hundred and thirty. 41This is the reckoning of the Gershonites, all who worked in the Tent of Meeting, which Moses, and Aaron with him, reckoned by the LORD’s word. 42And the reckoning of the Merarite clans, by their clans, by their fathers’ houses, 43from thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who came to the army, to the work in the Tent of Meeting. 44And their reckoning by their clans came to three thousand two hundred. 45This is the reckoning of the Merarite clans that Moses, and Aaron with him, reckoned by the LORD’s word, through the hand of Moses. 46All the reckoning by which Moses, and Aaron and the chieftains of Israel with him, reckoned the Levites by their clans and by their fathers’ houses, 47from thirty years old up till fifty years old, all who came to do the work and the work of carriage in the Tent of Meeting. 48And their reckoning came to eight thousand five hundred and eighty. 49By the LORD’s word did he reckon them through the hand of Moses, every man according to his work and according to his carriage, and his reckoning was as the LORD had charged Moses.
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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3. From thirty years old up till fifty years old. The Book of Numbers incorporates three different traditions regarding the beginning age of levitical service. The notion of the present unit that it begins at thirty seems to reflect a sense that, in contradistinction to general military service, which begins at twenty, the maintenance of the sanctuary as it is transported requires elaborate training or perhaps something like spiritual maturity.
all who come to the army. Throughout this chapter, the Hebrew word for “army,” tzavaʾ, is a kind of pun. The term has a secondary meaning of “service,” which is the primary sense in this context, but its repeated use reminds us that the Levites’ cultic service is an equivalent to fulfilling military obligations.
5. take down the covering of the screen. In both anthropological and literary terms, the key to this entire passage is the idea of protective envelope, barrier, covering. Not only are these terms used repeatedly but a rich vocabulary of synonyms is deployed: mikhseh and kisui (both meaning “covering”), masakh (“screen”), and, for the sheets of brilliant cloth used to wrap the sacred objects, beged, “garment.” This last term may reflect an anthropomorphizing sense of solicitous concern for the sacralia, but, more pervasively, the extravagant emphasis on coverings (which may be more the literary articulation of a theological idea than a record of the historical experience of early Israel) is driven by a widespread ancient Near Eastern notion of the terrific danger of the holy for all but the consecrated priests. Thus the transportation of the sanctuary from place to place, its disassembling and reassembling, was a moment of acute peril, for which our passage makes elaborate provision. Note how God exhorts Moses and Aaron (verse 18) to protect the Kohathites from being “cut off”—here, evidently, struck dead—by making sure not only that they avoid direct contact with the sacred objects but also that they not look at the sacred. This, too, is a taboo registered in other ancient Near Eastern texts. Only the consecrated Aaronite priests, not the Levites, may touch or behold the sacred objects.
7. the table of the Presence. This is a common ellipsis for the “table of the Bread of the Presence,” that is the table on which the twelve loaves of “perpetual bread” (changed weekly by the officiants of the sanctuary) were placed.
19. at his work and at his carriage. These paired terms are repeated through the passage. Though some scholars have proposed that they are a hendiadys—two terms bound together to indicate one concept—it is more plausible to see them as the two complementary labors of the Levites: ‘avodah, “work,” would be taking apart the sanctuary and perhaps also reassembling it; masaʾ, “carriage,” is the task of carrying it from place to place. It is misleading to render ʿavodah as “service” because hard physical labor is entailed, and only in later Hebrew does that noun come to mean the temple service.
20. even a moment. The Hebrew kevala‘ (the verbal root means “to swallow” or “to destroy”) is obscure. The translation follows a proposal of Baruch Levine, who compares the word with its occurrence in Job 7:19, but it should be said that in Job the verb, as an indication of a very brief moment, has a specific object: “You don’t let me go [even] while I swallow my spit.” One would have to assume, then, that kevalaʿ here is an ellipsis for an established idiom invoked more fully in Job, though there are scant grounds for confidence in that assumption. Others construe it as “dismantling,” but that seems a long stretch from the basic meaning of “swallow” or “destroy.”
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Charge the Israelites, that they send out from the camp everyone infected with skin blanch and everyone suffering from genital flux and everyone defiled by a corpse. 3Whether male or female, you shall send them off, outside the camp you shall send them, that they do not defile their camps in whose midst I abide.” 4And thus did the Israelites do, and they sent them outside the camp. As the LORD had spoken to Moses, thus the Israelites did.
5And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 6“Speak to the Israelites: Should man or woman commit any of the human offenses, to betray the trust of the LORD, that person shall bear guilt. 7And they shall confess their offenses which they committed, and he shall render back for his guilt the sum of its principal, and a fifth part of it he shall add to it, and give it to him whom he wronged. 8And if the man should have no redeemer to render back to him for his guilt, what is rendered back shall be the LORD’s, the priest’s, besides the ram of atonement with which he will atone for himself. 9And every donation for all the sacred offerings of the Israelites that they bring forward to the priest, his shall it be. 10And a man’s sacred offerings shall be his. That which he gives to the priest shall be his.”
11And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 12“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Any man whose wife may stray and betray his trust, 13and a man lie with her in seed-coupling and it be concealed from her husband’s eyes and she hide and be defiled, with no witness against her, and she herself be not apprehended—14then a spirit of jealousy may come over him and he will be jealous about his wife, with her being defiled, or a spirit of jealousy may come over him and he will be jealous about his wife, she not being defiled. 15The man shall bring his wife to the priest and bring her sacrifice for her, a tenth of an ephah of barley flour; he shall pour no oil over it nor put frankincense upon it, for it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering of remembrance, a remembering of guilt, 16and the priest shall bring her forward and stand her before the LORD. 17And the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and from the earth that is on the floor of the sanctuary the priest shall take and put into the water. 18And the priest shall stand the woman before the LORD and undo her hair and place on her palms the grain offering of remembrance, a grain offering of jealousy it is, and in the hand of the priest shall be the bitter besetting water. 19And the priest shall make her swear and shall say to the woman: If no man has lain with you and if you have not strayed in defilement from your husband, be cleared by this bitter besetting water. 20And you, if you have strayed from your husband and if you have been defiled and a man other than your husband has put his semen in you… . 21And the priest shall make the woman swear this oath of imprecation, and the priest shall say to the woman: May the LORD make you an imprecation and oath in the midst of your people through the LORD’s making your thigh sag and your belly swell. 22And this besetting water shall enter your innards to swell the belly and to sag the thigh. And the woman shall say: Amen, amen. 23And the priest shall write these imprecations in a record and wipe them out in the bitter water. 24And he shall make the woman drink the bitter besetting water and the bitter besetting water shall enter her. 25And the priest shall take from the woman’s hand the grain offering of jealousy and elevate the grain offering before the LORD and bring it forward to the altar. 26And the priest shall take a handful from the grain offering, its token, and turn it to smoke on the altar and, after, shall make the woman drink the water. 27Once he has made her drink the water, it shall come about that if she was defiled and betrayed her husband’s trust, the besetting water will enter her as bitter and her belly will swell and her thigh sag, and the woman shall become an imprecation in the midst of her people. 28And if the woman has not been defiled and she is pure, she will be cleared and sown with seed. 29This is the teaching of jealousy, should a woman stray from her husband and be defiled. 30Or a man over whom a spirit of jealousy may come and he be jealous about his wife. The priest shall stand her before the LORD and do to her all this teaching, 31and the man shall be clear of guilt, and that woman shall bear her guilt.’”
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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2. skin blanch. This English nonce term reflects the medical uncertainty of the Hebrew disease tsaraʿat (here in an adjectival form for the person suffering from it, tsaruʿa). The symptoms listed in Leviticus 13–14 make it clear that it is not leprosy (Hansen’s disease), as the older translations have it. Perhaps the term designated a group of diseases because the sundry skin lesions listed in Leviticus do not seem entirely compatible, with indications elsewhere (e.g., Exodus 4:6) that it involved a complete loss of pigmentation. In any case, the disease was regarded as contagious and, as other biblical texts record, required quarantine.
suffering from genital flux. This necessary clarification in translation does not do justice to the extraordinary compactness of the Hebrew, a single syllable, zav, “flowing.”
by a corpse. Literally, “for a [dead] person,” lanafesh. All three of these categories of impurity are clearly cultic, not moral. Pathology and death are viewed as contaminants, and the camp of Israel in the wilderness, in which God’s presence dwells with a specific locus in the Tabernacle, must be kept free of them.
6. any of the human offenses, to betray the trust of the LORD. The Hebrew ḥato’t haʾadam, “human offenses,” is unique to this text, and seems to indicate offenses of one person against another. The primary meaning of limʿol maʿal, “to betray the trust,” is to appropriate objects or goods that have been consecrated to the sanctuary. Here, the meaning has been extended to the illicit appropriation of another person’s property, which is equally seen as betraying the LORD’s trust.
7. the sum of its principal. “The sum of” represents the Hebrew particle be (“with”), which here has the sense of a price or sum paid for something. “Principal” is the technical monetary sense of the Hebrew roʾsh (literally, “head”). The fact that the wrongdoer is to pay back the value of the appropriated goods plus a fine of 20 percent, rather than a fourfold or fivefold restitution, suggests that what may be involved is some sort of embezzlement rather than outright theft.
8. if the man should have no redeemer. The most plausible construction is that the man referred to is the wronged person, not the wrongdoer. “Redeemer” has the technical legal sense, as in the search for a redeemer for Naomi’s deceased husband in Ruth 4, of a kinsman who can act as a surrogate for a deceased person. The case indicated, then, is one in which the wronged person is no longer alive to receive restitution and there is no relative who can be given the restitution in his stead. In such a case, the priest, God’s agent, becomes the proxy to whom restitution is made.
12. whose wife may stray and betray his trust. The law of the wife suspected of adultery is formally linked with the preceding section by the prominent use at the beginning and then repeatedly of the idiom “to betray his trust.” Similarly, the repeated characterization of the unfaithful woman as “defiled” verbally links this passage with the opening unit of this chapter concerning defilement of the camp by contact with corpses or diseased persons.
13. and a man lie with her in seed-coupling. If the Masoretic vocalization of the text can be trusted, the Hebrew makes “her” the direct object of “lie” (“lay her,” “bed her”), a usage that may highlight the brutality of the act. “Seed-coupling,” shikhvat-zeraʿ, is literally “seed-lying” or perhaps even “layer of seed.” In any case, the phrase clearly indicates vaginal penetration with emission of semen.
concealed … hide … no witness … not apprehended. The deployment of overlapping language stresses the clandestine nature of the act of adultery. With no concrete evidence of the sexual betrayal, with no more than his suspicions to go on, the husband is overcome by a fit of jealousy (verse 14) and has recourse to a trial by ordeal.
15. The man shall bring his wife to the priest. This troubling and also fascinating ritual is the only clear-cut instance of trial by ordeal in the Bible. It became the basis for a whole tractate of the Talmud, Sotah (“the straying woman”), and with the concern for the status of women in recent scholarship, it has been the subject of voluminous discussion and debate. Apologetic approaches seem questionable. The ritual reflects the strong asymmetry of sexual roles in the biblical worldview: a woman must submit to this ordeal on the mere suspicion of her husband, and the question of the man suspected of adultery is not even raised in the legal system. The ordeal, moreover, is based on a kind of archaic magic, however one seeks to square it with loftier versions of monotheism. Parallels have been noted with the Code of Hammurabi, which provides for an oath by the woman (compare verse 19 here) if her husband accuses her of unfaithfulness, and an ordeal of jumping into a river, sink or swim, if the accusation comes from someone else (compare the prominence of water here). Our passage powerfully records an ideology of marital relations, but in point of historical fact, there is no way of knowing to what extent it was actually practiced in ancient Israel. It is doubtful whether this was a living legal institution in the Second Temple period, and if the sanctuary setting of the ritual is the Tabernacle, it may even have not been observed in the First Temple period. In any case, it is a vivid male fantasy of testing and exposing sexual “defilement” in a woman.
her sacrifice … a tenth of an ephah of barley flour. A person seeking some sort of judicial or oracular determination from the sanctuary (understood to be from God through the priest) would have to come with an offering. But in consonance with the somber occasion for this visit to the sanctuary, this is a no-frills grain offering, not the usual semolina flour but barley, and devoid of oil and frankincense. As Rashi, citing Tractate Sotah, sharply puts it, “She did a beast’s act, and her sacrifice is a beast’s feed.”
offering of remembrance, a remembering of guilt. The verbal stem z-k-r manifested in these paired nouns refers both to the cognitive act of remembering and to making a record or explicit indication of something. The word for “guilt,” ʿawon, which can also mean “crime” and even “punishment,” is different from the term for “guilt,” ʾasham, used in verses 6–8.
17. holy water. This phrase does not occur elsewhere. It may plausibly be understood, as Abraham ibn Ezra and others have proposed, as a reference to the water in the basins of the sanctuary, set out for the use of the priests in ritual ablution. Two elements, then, of the sanctuary that are binary opposites are joined in the liquid vehicle of the trial by ordeal: water and earth. The latter, ʿafar (also “dust” or “dirt”), is not something one would ordinarily drink, and it is associated in biblical usage with mourning (ʿafar is placed on the head), and with death (“for dust you are / and to dust shall you return,” Genesis 3:19).
18. undo her hair. The Hebrew says literally, “undo her head,” a transparent metonymy. The loosening of the hair is an act of public shaming, so the woman in effect is exposed and vulnerable before she takes her oath and swallows the potion.
the bitter besetting water. Punning sound-play is crucial in the Hebrew phrase mey hamarim hameʾararim. The literal sense of the second of the two Hebrew qualifiers of “water” is “cursing” or “curse-conveying.” Verse 27 seems to indicate that the water turns bitter only if the woman fails the trial by ordeal (“if she … betrayed her husband’s trust, the besetting water will enter her as bitter”). The ever-acute ibn Ezra proposes that “bitter” is used proleptically, in analogy to “you … strip[ped] the naked of their clothes” in Job 22:6. It should be noted that in biblical idiom, bitter water is brackish or salt water that is unfit for drinking.
19. strayed … from your husband. The Hebrew says literally “strayed under your husband.” Some have interpreted this as “under the authority of,” a sense of the preposition for which there is scant biblical evidence. One recent interpreter reads it as “in place of,” one clear meaning of the Hebrew preposition, but which strains the syntax here. One might infer a symbolic or even sexual image of the husband on top, with the wife “straying” from under him.
20. And you. The woman is rhetorically buttonholed by this emphatic initial “you” at the beginning of this statement of the negative alternative of the oath.
put his semen in you. The term for “semen,” shekhovet, is derived from the verbal stem sh-k-v, “to lie,” used at the beginning of the passage, and appears to have this technical sexual sense. Its use, together with “seed-coupling” above, may offer support to those commentators who propose that the suspected woman is actually pregnant. Either the husband thinks he has grounds for suspicion that he is not the father (e.g., this wife has been frequently gone from the house at odd hours), or, in a case where he has not been having sex with his wife (whether through mutual estrangement or because he has been away), he thinks he can be certain. Bathsheba and Uriah would be an instance of the second alternative.
21. And the priest shall make the woman swear. This clause interrupts the move from the conditional clause of the oath (verse 20) to the consequence clause (“May the LORD make you an imprecation …”).
your thigh sag and your belly swell. Much futile energy has been devoted to working out what sort of medical symptoms might be indicated. “Belly” is often womb in the Bible, and “thigh” might be a metonymic euphemism for vagina, but not necessarily. In any case, something physically dire immediately happens to the guilty woman after she swallows the potion, and it happens in or around the organs of generation. If in fact she is pregnant, that could be a miscarriage, the ordeal thus becoming an induced abortion, though this remains uncertain.
22. this besetting water shall enter your innards. The verb for entering or coming into is also a biblical idiom for consummated sexual intercourse, so the penetration of the ritual potion into the woman’s innards answers to the act of which she has been accused.
23. these imprecations. Either the plural is a rhetorical intensification or it reflects the two symptoms, sagging thigh and swollen belly.
26. its token. Literally, “its remembrancing,” ʾazkaratah.
27. the woman shall become an imprecation. The ritual, for all its cruelty, does not prescribe a death penalty for the adulterers. (In Genesis 38, Judah’s judgment of Tamar presupposes the death penalty for such an act.) The punishment is public shaming and, one may infer, divorce without restitution of her bride-price.
28. sown with seed. This is the literal meaning of the Hebrew. If one sustains the assumption that the accused wife is pregnant, the phrase would mean that she retains her pregnancy, now proven to be legitimate, and will be rewarded with progeny. Otherwise, the phrase might suggest that her reward comes in her conceiving afterward by her husband: in this reading, the trial by ordeal would be a means of reconciliation between spouses separated by the husband’s suspicion.
29. This is the teaching. The Hebrew torah means “teaching,” “regulation,” “prescribed procedure.”
31. and the man shall be clear of guilt, and that woman shall bear her guilt. The asymmetry between the sexes is vividly summarized in this concluding verse. If the woman should fail the trial by ordeal, she will of course bear her own guilt, as the language of the oath that the priest has imposed on her makes clear. But even if she is proven innocent, the husband incurs no guilt in subjecting her to the ordeal: if he thinks he has grounds for suspicion—indeed, if he is simply caught up Othello-like in a “spirit of jealousy,” a jealous passion—it is his prerogative as husband to make her submit to the ordeal.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Man or woman, should anyone act exceptionally to make a nazirite vow to keep himself apart for the LORD, 3from both wine and strong drink he shall keep himself apart, neither wine vinegar nor liquor vinegar shall he drink, no grape steepings shall he drink, and grapes, whether wet or dry, he shall not eat. 4All the days of his naziritehood, of anything made from the grapevine, from seeds to skin, he shall not eat. 5All the days of his nazirite vow no razor shall pass over his head, until the days come to term. That which he sets apart for the LORD shall be holy, to grow loose the hair on his head. 6All the days of his setting apart for the LORD, he shall not come to a dead person. 7For his father and for his mother and for his brother and for his sister he shall not be defiled for them when they die, for the crown of his God is on his head. 8All the days of his naziritehood, he is holy to the LORD. 9And should a dead person die near by him all of a sudden and he defile his nazirite head, he shall shave his head on the day of his purification, on the seventh day he shall shave it. 10And on the eighth day he shall bring two turtledoves or two pigeons to the priest at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 11And the priest shall prepare one for an offense offering and one for a burnt offering and shall atone for him, as he has offended through the corpse, and he shall consecrate his head on that day. 12And he shall keep apart for the LORD the days of his naziritehood, and he shall bring a yearling lamb as a guilt offering, and the first days shall fall away because he defiled his naziritehood. 13And this is the teaching for the nazirite: When the days of his naziritehood come to term, he shall be brought to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, 14and he shall bring forward his sacrifice to the LORD, one unblemished yearling lamb for a burnt offering, and one unblemished yearling ewe as an offense offering, and one unblemished ram as a communion sacrifice, 15and a basket of flatbread of fine flour, cakes mixed with oil, and flatbread wafers coated with oil, and their grain offerings and their libations. 16And the priest shall bring them forward before the LORD and do the offense offering and its burnt offering. 17The ram he shall do as a communion sacrifice to the LORD with the basket of flat-bread, and the priest shall do his meal offering and his libation. 18And the nazirite shall shave his nazirite head at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and he shall take the hair of his nazirite head and put it on the fire that is under the communion sacrifice. 19And the priest shall take the cooked shoulder from the ram and one flatbread cake from the basket and one flatbread wafer and put them on the palms of the nazirite after he has shaved his crown. 20And the priest shall elevate them as an elevation offering before the LORD. It is holy for the priest together with the breast of the elevation offering and the thigh of the donation. And afterward the nazirite shall drink wine. 21This is the teaching for the nazirite who vows his sacrifice to the LORD for his naziritehood besides what his hand may attain. According to his vow that he vows, so shall he do, together with the teaching for his naziritehood.’ ”
22And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 23“Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘Thus shall you bless the Israelites. Say to them:
24May the LORD bless you and guard you.
25May the LORD light up His face to you and grant grace to you;
26May the LORD lift up His face to you and give you peace.’
27And they shall set My name over the Israelites, and I Myself shall bless them.”
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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2. should anyone act exceptionally. Much of the biblical view of the institution of the nazir depends on the interpretation of the verb yafliʾ that is used here. Some modern commentators make it relatively neutral by claiming that, in conjunction with “vow,” it merely means to state the vow expressly. The philological evidence, however, for this technical sense of the verb is slender, as Baruch Levine argues. Some medieval commentators, whom Levine follows, understand it as a synonymous reinforcer of the reiterated verb hazir, “to set apart,” assuming that the root p-l-ʾ is an orthographic variant of p-l-h, which does mean “to set apart” or “to distinguish.” But the common biblical use of the verbal stem p-l-ʾ is in the sense of performing a wonder or acting in a way that is profuse or extraordinary (thus Abraham ibn Ezra). If that is the most likely meaning, then the biblical legislator sees the person who assumes these obligations of self-restriction as doing something extraordinary. Whether this extraordinary act is viewed with admiration or suspicion is not entirely clear.
a nazirite vow. A nazir or nazirite is “someone set apart” (compare Joseph’s blessing, Genesis 49:26, “the one set apart from his brothers,” nezir ʾeḥaw). The word is a phonetic and etymological relative of the word that immediately follows it, neder, “vow.”
3. from both wine and strong drink. The second of these two terms, shekhar, clearly derives from the verb meaning “to intoxicate,” but it is not clear what sort of intoxicant it may have been. Some understand it as a form of ale, but Levine rightly questions whether any kind of fermented grain would have been allowed on the altar. The Targum of Onkelos renders yayin weshekhar as “new wine and old wine,” and since the restrictions on the nazirite are almost obsessively focused on anything connected with grapes, this understanding has a certain plausibility. Or, it might well be grappa.
5–6. no razor shall pass over his head … he shall not come to a dead person. There are, then, three different restrictions involved in the vow of the nazirite: abstention from all products of the grape, abstention from haircutting, and avoidance of any sort of contact with a corpse. The last of these three restrictions reflects a general regulation regarding impurity, and is unambiguously shared with the priesthood. The renunciation of wine is specific to the nazirite: though the biblical writers variously register the dangers of drunken excess, there is no general code of abstinence from drink, no biblical ethos of asceticism. Allowing the hair to grow uncut has been the subject of much anthropological speculation. The simplest inference is that it served as a very visible outward sign of the nazirite’s being “set apart,” and that it then could become a product of his body he could actually offer up—in flame—on the altar. (There are no indications in these laws that the nazirite was to refrain from sexual activity or joyous celebrations.) A late-ninth-century B.C.E. Phoenician inscription seems to reflect an offering of hair to Astarte. One suspects that a practice roughly resembling that of the biblical nazirite, and involving the renunciation of haircutting and then an offering of hair, was an established devotional regimen among the West Semitic peoples. The Bible, then, is by no means inventing or imposing this practice but recognizing it as something that certain individuals, in emulation of established pagan tradition, might want to do. The aim of the legislation is to regulate the practice and integrate it in the procedures of the official cult.
5. the days come to term. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “the days are filled.”
7. the crown of his God is on his head. The Hebrew turns on a pun: nezer is a common word for “crown,” but in context it also means “naziritehood.” The abundance of uncut hair, crowning the head of the vow taker, is, as the visible manifestation of his vow (neder), also a synecdoche for his naziritehood. Thus, in verse 9, “his nazirite head” could also be rendered as “the crown of his head.”
12. and the first days shall fall away. That is, the days until the moment he defiled himself by contact with the corpse are to be canceled, and he must begin anew the count of days of the period he has vowed to be a nazirite.
14. an offense offering. What offense (ḥataʾt) has he committed? The consensus of medieval and modern commentators is that by now removing his person from the realm of the consecrated to the ordinary realm of the profane, he is taking something away from God and so must make an offense offering. An antithetical construction is also possible: this “acting exceptionally” to set oneself apart for holiness, renouncing the pleasures of wine and letting one’s hair grow long, expresses a kind of presumption, an aspiration to spiritual superiority, and thus is an offense.
20. elevate them as an elevation offering. This was a performative act of gesturing that formally conveyed what was elevated to God’s jurisdiction. Practically, this meant that it was conveyed to God’s agent, the priest.
21. besides what his hand may attain. The sacrifice just stipulated is the constitutive obligation of the nazirite vow. If the person who makes the vow has the means and desire to pledge more than this as an offering, he is free to do so.
23. Thus shall you bless the Israelites. This cadenced threefold blessing came to play a central liturgical role for both Jews and Christians, and probably began to serve that function even in the biblical period. Remarkable for its rhetorical stateliness and its emphatic use of repetition and overlapping terms, it is not, in strictly formal terms, a poem, but it does exhibit a remarkable degree of formal organization. Jacob Milgrom aptly characterizes its three clauses as embodying “a rising crescendo of 3, 5, and 7 words, respectively”; and this pattern, he goes on to observe, is coordinated with the number of stressed syllables (3, 5, and 7), and the total number of syllables (12, 14, and 16). A nearly identical version of this blessing was found on two silver filigree amulets in a burial cave at a site called Kateph Hinnom, in Jerusalem, in 1980. The amulets have been dated to the seventh century or early sixth century B.C.E. The version of the blessing on the amulets is somewhat abbreviated, which has led some scholars to conclude that they register the “original” text. It seems more plausible, however, that the text was abbreviated in order to fit it on the small amulets: the shortened form does not preserve the just mentioned formal elegance of the version in our text. Levine speculates that the prayer to be favored and guarded by God may have been applied, given the fact that Kateph Hinnom was a burial place, to safeguarding in the underworld, though that is hardly the original intention of the blessing.
25. light up His face to you. In biblical idiom, the shining of the face (or eyes) toward someone is a showing of favor or affection. Lifting up the face has the same meaning.
27. and I Myself shall bless them. The device of emphasis—the insertion of the first-person pronoun ʾani before the conjugated verb, which because of its conjugation would normally make the pronoun superfluous—is not reflected in most translations. It is particularly important here because it underscores the idea of God’s special relationship with Israel: after the pronouncing of the threefold blessing, God’s name, a kind of divine proprietorship, will be set over Israel, and God Himself will carry out the blessing.
1And it happened on the day Moses finished setting up the Tabernacle, that he anointed it and consecrated it and all its furnishings and the altar and all its furnishings, and he anointed them and consecrated them. 2And the chieftains of Israel—the heads of their fathers’ houses, they are the chieftains of the tribes, they are the ones who stand over the reckoning—3brought forward and set their offering before the LORD: six covered wagons and twelve oxen, a wagon for every two chieftains and an ox for each one, and they brought them before the Tabernacle. 4And the LORD said to Moses, saying, 5“Take from them, and they shall be for doing the work of the Tent of Meeting, and you shall give them to the Levites, each man according to his work.” 6And Moses took the wagons and the oxen and gave them to the Levites, 7the two wagons and the four oxen he gave to the Gershonites according to their work. 8And the four wagons and the eight oxen he gave to the Merarites according to their work in the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest. 9And to the Kohathites he did not give, for the work of the sanctuary was upon them, on the shoulder did they carry. 10And the chieftains brought forward the dedication offering of the altar on the day it was anointed, and the chieftains brought forward their offering for the dedication of the altar. 11And the LORD said to Moses, “One chieftain each day, one chieftain each day, shall offer his offerings for the dedication of the altar.” 12And the one who brought forward his offering on the first day was Nahshon son of Amminadab of the tribe of Judah. 13And his offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 14One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 15One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 16One goat for an offense offering. 17And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Nahshon son of Amminadab. 18On the second day Nethanel son of Zuar, chieftain of Issachar, brought forward his offering, 19and his offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 20One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 21One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 22One goat for an offense offering. 23And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Nethanel son of Zuar. 24On the third day, the chieftain of the Zebulunites, Eliab son of Helon. 25His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 26One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 27One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 28One goat for an offense offering. 29And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Eliab son of Helon. 30On the fourth day, the chieftain of the Reubenites, Elizur son of Shedeur. 31His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 32One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 33One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling sheep for the burnt offering. 34One goat for an offense offering. 35And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Elizur son of Shedeur. 36On the fifth day, the chieftain of the Simeonites, Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai. 37His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 38One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 39One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 40One goat for an offense 41And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai. 42On the sixth day, the chieftain of the Gadites, Eliasaph son of Deuel. 43His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 44One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 45One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 46One goat for an offense offering. 47And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Eliasaph son of Deuel. 48On the seventh day, the chieftain of the Ephraimites, Elishama son of Ammihud. 49His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 50One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 51One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 52One goat for an offense offering. 53And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Elishama son of Ammihud. 54On the eighth day, the chieftain of the Manassites, Gamaliel son of Pedahzur. 55His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 56One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 57One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 58One goat for an offense offering. 59And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Gamaliel son of Pedahzur. 60On the ninth day, the chieftain of the Benjaminites, Abidan son of Gideoni. 61His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 62One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 63One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 64One goat for an offense offering. 65And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Abidan son of Gideoni. 66On the tenth day, the chieftain of the Danites, Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai. 67His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 68One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 69One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 70One goat for an offense offering. 71And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai. 72On the eleventh day, the chieftain of the Asherites, Pagiel son of Ochran. 73His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 74One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 75One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 76One goat for an offense offering. 77And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Pagiel son of Ochran. 78On the twelfth day, the chieftain of the Naphtalites, Ahira son of Enan. 79His offering was one silver bowl, a hundred thirty shekels its weight, one silver basin, seventy shekels by the sanctuary shekel, both of them filled with fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering. 80One golden ladle of ten shekels filled with incense. 81One bull from the herd, one ram, one yearling lamb for the burnt offering. 82One goat for an offense offering. 83And for the communion sacrifice two oxen, five rams, five he-goats, five yearling lambs. This is the offering of Ahira son of Enan. 84This is the dedication offering of the altar on the day of its anointing from the chieftains of Israel: twelve silver bowls, twelve silver basins, twelve golden ladles, 85one hundred thirty shekels each silver bowl and seventy each basin; all the silver of the vessels, two thousand four hundred by the sanctuary shekel. 86Twelve golden ladles filled with incense, ten shekels the ladle by the sanctuary shekel; all the gold of the ladles, one hundred twenty shekels. 87All the cattle for the burnt offering, twelve bulls, twelve rams, twelve yearling lambs and their grain offering, and twelve goats for an offense offering. 88And all the cattle for the communion sacrifice, twenty-four bulls, sixty rams, sixty he-goats, sixty yearling lambs. This is the dedication of the altar after it was anointed.
89And when Moses came into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the voice being spoken to him from above the covering that is over the Ark of the Covenant, from between the two cherubim, and He would speak to him.
CHAPTER 7 NOTES
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1. on the day Moses finished setting up the Tabernacle. “On the day” (beyom) has the semantic force of “when” but conveys a sense of epic solemnity lacking in the more ordinary Hebrew term, kaʾasher. (Compare Genesis 2:5, “On the day the LORD God made earth and heavens.”) The meaning here is obviously not restricted to a single day because it will take the tribal chieftains twelve days to present their offerings. Abraham ibn Ezra, characteristically looking for literary linkages, connects this entire passage with the immediately preceding priestly blessing: once the threefold blessing was pronounced, the elaborate proceedings of the dedication offerings could begin.
2. stand over. That is, supervise.
3. six covered wagons. The translation follows the Septuagint and the Aramaic Targums in their understanding of ʿeglot tsav. They in turn seem to have based their construction on the amphibian tsav in Leviticus 11:29, which many think is a turtle. Some recent scholars instead connect tsav with a possible Akkadian cognate that, like ʿagalah, means “wagon.” It would then be an intensifier here.
5. each man according to his work. As the subsequent verses show, the wagons are not distributed equally but according to the weight of the portage that the various levitical groups are to bear. The Kohathites, who carry the relatively light sanctuary furnishings on their shoulders, get no wagons.
12–88. This is the one signal instance in the entire Bible of extensive verbatim repetition without the slightest variation. (The single exception is that in verses 72 and 78, the word “day,” yom, is—untranslatably—repeated after the formula “On the xth day,” a usage perhaps dictated by the fact that the numeration has gone beyond ten to numbers that are compound in form in the Hebrew. The language in verse 12 reporting the first set of offerings also differs slightly from the formulas at the beginning of the subsequent eleven sets of offerings, but that is simply because it introduces the whole series.) Biblical narrative, as we have had many occasions to see, characteristically deploys significant swerves from verbatim repetition as it approximately repeats strings of phrases and whole clauses and sentences. This passage, however, is manifestly not narrative but a kind of epic inventory. Each of the tribes, here accorded absolutely equal status before the sanctuary without political hierarchy, brings exactly the same offering. One can readily imagine that the members of each tribe in the ancient audience of this text would be expected to relish the sumptuousness of its own tribal offering exactly equal to all the others, as it hears the passage read. It is also well to remember that lists and the repetitions they entail constitute an established literary form with its own aesthetic pleasures—as, for example, in the catalogue of the ships in the Iliad or in the cumulative repetitive structures of songs like ḥad Gadya (“An Only Kid”) and, more apposite to this catalogue of gifts, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” The offerings of the tribes encompass animal, vegetable, and mineral gifts (the sacrificial beasts, the grain offerings, the precious vessels) and are punctuated by the solemn stipulation of weight and number. All this is then totaled up in verses 84–88, after the twelve verbatim repetitions. Baruch Levine notes, moreover, certain similarities in form with various West Semitic temple inventories that have been uncovered by archaeologists. (In the Hebrew, for example, the ordinal numbers uncharacteristically follow the nouns rather than precede them, evidently the set form for temple inventories.) This entire passage, like almost all of the first ten chapters of Numbers, is the product of Priestly writers, and it strongly reflects both their professional concerns and the literary antecedents on which they drew.
89. And when Moses came into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him. This sentence about Moses’s mode of communication with God in the Tent of Meeting does not appear to be connected either with what precedes or what follows it. The sentence also exhibits three rather puzzling turns of speech. The masculine pronoun that is the object of “to speak with” has to refer to God, but God is not mentioned by name anywhere in this verse. One might have expected “to speak with the LORD” in the initial clause of this little unit. Perhaps it is absent because the unit has been excerpted from a larger literary document.
the voice being spoken. The second linguistic anomaly of this verse is the use of the reflexive form of the verb, midaber (instead of the usual medaber, “speaking”). Levine understands this form as an indication of “continually speaking,” though reflexive verbs in Hebrew are often used to indicate a passive sense. It is also possible that the meaning is genuinely reflexive: “the voice speaking itself.” There seems to be a theological impulse here to interpose some kind of mediation between the divine source of the speech and the audible voice that is spoken to Moses.
and He would speak to him. The third linguistic knot in the strand of this sentence is that the last two words, wayedabar ʾelaw, a verb and a preposition with no indication of proper nouns, could also be read the other way around: “and he [Moses] would speak to Him.” One wonders whether the cryptic style of this verse might reflect a certain nervousness about the fraught topic of direct communication between God and His prophet, as the highly cryptic language of the Bridegroom of Blood fragment (Exodus 4:24–26) reflects a nervousness about its potent mythic character.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to Aaron and say to him: ‘When you light up the lamps, opposite the front of the lamp stand shall the seven lamps give light.’” 3And thus Aaron did: opposite the front of the lamp stand he lit up its lamps as the LORD had charged Moses. 4And this is the fashioning of the lamp stand: hammered work of gold, from its base to its petal it was hammered work, according to the semblance that the LORD had shown Moses, thus did he make the lamp stand.
5And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 6“Take the Levites from the midst of the Israelites and purify them. 7And thus you shall do to them to purify them: sprinkle on them expiation water and pass a razor over all their flesh and wash their clothes and be purified. 8And they shall take a bull from the herd and its grain offering, fine flour mixed with oil, and a second bull from the herd you shall take as an offense offering. 9And you shall bring the Levites forward before the Tent of Meeting and you shall assemble all the community of Israelites. 10And you shall bring the Levites forward before the LORD, and the Israelites shall lay their hands on the Levites. 11And Aaron shall make of the Levites an elevation offering before the LORD from the Israelites, and they shall serve to do the work of the LORD. 12And the Levites, they shall lay their hands on the head of the bulls and make the one an offense offering and the one a burnt offering to the LORD to atone for the Levites. 13And you shall stand the Levites before Aaron and before his sons and make of them an elevation offering to the LORD. 14And you shall divide the Levites from the Israelites and they shall be Levites to Me. 15And afterward the Levites shall come to work in the Tent of Meeting and you shall purify them and make of them an elevation offering. 16For wholly given they are to Me from the midst of the Israelites instead of the breach of every womb, firstborn of all of the Israelites, I have taken them to Me. 17For Mine is every firstborn among the Israelites, in man and in beast, on the day I struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated them to Me. 18And I took the Levites instead of every firstborn among the Israelites. 19And I made the Levites wholly given to Aaron and to his sons from the midst of the Israelites to do the work of the Israelites in the Tent of Meeting, to atone for the Israelites, that there be no scourge against the Israelites when the Israelites approach the sanctuary.” 20And Moses, and Aaron and all the community of Israelites, did to the Levites as all that the LORD had charged Moses concerning the Levites, thus did the Israelites do to them. 21And the Levites did expiation and washed their clothes, and Aaron made of them an elevation offering before the LORD, and Aaron atoned for them to purify them. 22And afterward the Levites did come to do their work in the Tent of Meeting before Aaron and before his sons; as the LORD had charged Moses about the Levites, thus did they do to them.
23And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 24“This is what regards the Levites: from twenty-five years old and up, each shall come to do army service in the work of the Tent of Meeting. 25And from fifty years old he shall come back from the army work and shall work no more. 26And he shall serve his brothers in the Tent of Meeting to keep watch, but work he shall not do. So shall you do to the Levites in their watch.”
CHAPTER 8 NOTES
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2. When you light up the lamps. Rashi provides a vividly imaginative explanation for why this unit of four verses about the lamp stand should immediately follow the dedicatory offering of the twelve tribes: “When Aaron saw the dedicatory offering of the chieftains, he was dismayed that he was not together with them in the dedicatory offering, neither he nor his tribe. The Holy One said to him, ‘By your life, yours is greater than theirs, for you light and tend to the lamps.’”
4. petal. This is a collective noun indicating the floral ornamentation of the seven lamp holders.
6. Take the Levites … and purify them. If there is no biblical theology of original sin, there is, at least among the Priestly writers, a technology to deal with original impurity. The dangerous inner zone of the sanctuary can be entered only when a person has undergone an elaborate sequence of acts to rid himself of the impurity that is intrinsic to profane life: thus the Levites must be sprinkled with expiation water, have their body hair shaven, their garments washed, and a special sacrifice intended to remove even inadvertent offense (ḥataʾt) offered up for them.
7. expiation water. Many medieval and modern interpreters understand this as a reference to the water mingled with the ashes of the red cow referred to in Numbers 19:1–9, though Baruch Levine offers grounds for skepticism about this identification. The term ḥataʾt means both offense (political, diplomatic, social, moral, or cultic) and, especially in cultic contexts, any ritual means employed to remove or cancel the effect of the offense committed.
10. the Israelites shall lay their hands. For practical reasons, as many commentators have noted, the laying on of hands would have to be performed by designated representatives of the people.
19. I made the Levites wholly given to Aaron and to his sons. Although “given” (netunim) is not repeated (netunim netunim) as above, an analogous emphasis is conveyed by the cognate verb (in the translation “made” but literally in the Hebrew “gave”). This is the first clear indication of a hierarchical division of cultic labor between the Aaronide priests (kohanim) and the Levites, who serve them and do the heavy lifting in the sanctuary (the “work”), in contrast to officiating in the ritual. Levine conjectures that historically this division between Levites and priests began only at the time of Josiah’s reforms around 621 B.C.E.
that there be no scourge against the Israelites. This characteristically Priestly notion is that profane persons, presuming to enter sacred space, would automatically trigger the devastating manifestation of divine fury (qetsef) in the form of a scourge or epidemic. The presence of the Levites in the sanctuary is thus properly represented as a “watch” or the equivalent of army service, for as properly consecrated and purified cultic servitors, they act as a kind of protective phalanx that wards off danger from the Israelites who might otherwise approach too close to the sacred zone.
24. from twenty-five years old and up. Earlier, the beginning age for levitical service was stated as thirty. Various efforts have been made to harmonize the contradiction, but one suspects that the different passages reflect different traditions.
25. he shall come back from the army work and shall work no more. The provision made here is for a kind of phased retirement. The defining term of difference is “work.” From the age of fifty, the Levite is relieved of heavy labor within the sanctuary, the responsibilities that were undertaken as a kind of equivalent for military service, but he continues to assist his brother Levites, evidently outside the sanctuary, in their guard duty.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai in the second year of their going out from the land of Egypt in the first month, saying, 2“Let the Israelites do the Passover offering at its fixed time. 3On the fourteenth day in this month at twilight you shall do it at its fixed time, according to all its statutes and according to all its laws you shall do it.” 4And Moses spoke to the Israelites to do the Passover offering. 5And they did the Passover offering in the first month on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight in the Wilderness of Sinai, as all that the LORD had charged Moses, thus did the Israelites do.
6And it happened that there were men who were defiled by human corpse and could not do the Passover offering on that day, and they drew near before Moses and before Aaron on that day. 7And these men said to him, “We are defiled by human corpse. Why should we be withheld from offering the LORD’s sacrifice at its fixed time in the midst of the Israelites?” 8And Moses said to them, “Stand by, that I may hear what the LORD will charge you.” 9And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 10“Speak to the Israelites, saying, ‘Any man who may be defiled by corpse or on a distant journey, of you or of your generations to come, and would do the Passover offering to the LORD, 11in the second month on the fourteenth day at twilight they shall do it, with flatcakes and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 12They shall leave nothing of it till morning, and no bone shall they break in it, according to all the statutes of the Passover offering they shall do it. 13And the man who is pure and was not on a journey and fails to do the Passover offering, that person shall be cut off from his kin, for he did not offer the LORD’s sacrifice at its fixed time. 14That man will bear his punishment. And should a stranger sojourn with you and do the Passover offering to the LORD, according to the statute of the Passover offering and according to its law, thus shall he do. One statute shall you have, both for the stranger and for the native of the land.’”
15And on the day the Tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the Tabernacle of the Tent of the Covenant, and in the evening it would be over the Tabernacle like a semblance of fire until morning. 16Thus it would be perpetually: the cloud would cover it, and a semblance of fire at night. 17And as the cloud lifted from the tent, then the Israelites would journey onward, and in the place where the cloud would abide, there would the Israelites camp. 18By the LORD’s word the Israelites would journey onward and by the LORD’s word they would camp, all the days that the cloud would abide over the Tabernacle they would camp. 19And when the cloud lingered over the Tabernacle many days, the Israelites would keep the LORD’s watch and would not journey onward. 20And sometimes the cloud would be but a few days over the Tabernacle. By the LORD’s word they would camp and by the LORD’s word they would journey onward. 21And sometimes the cloud would be from evening till morning and the cloud would lift in the morning and they would journey onward, or a day and a night and the cloud would lift and they would journey onward. 22Or two days or a month or a year, when the cloud lingered over the Tabernacle to abide over it, the Israelites would camp and would not journey onward, and when it lifted, they would journey onward. 23By the LORD’s word they would camp and by the LORD’s word they would journey onward. The LORD’s watch did they keep by the LORD’s word in the hand of Moses.
CHAPTER 9 NOTES
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2. Let the Israelites do the Passover offering. The reiteration here of the instructions for the Passover offering picks up the first injunction about the Passover offering on the eve of the departure from Egypt (Exodus 12:43–51). There is narrative symmetry in the reiteration: the first Passover was celebrated just before the Israelites set out on their journey from Egypt. Now they are about to move onward from the Sinai encampment in their Wilderness itinerary—a topic to which verses 15–23 alert us—and again the departure is marked by the Passover offering.
6. And it happened that there were men who were defiled by human corpse. The injunction to offer the Passover sacrifice at its fixed time is followed by a piece of case law. What is to be done for Israelites who find themselves in a state of ritual impurity and hence excluded from the sacrificial ceremony?
7. Why should we be withheld from offering the LORD’s sacrifice at its fixed time in the midst of the Israelites? The partaking in the Passover sacrifice is the primary act of affirming membership in the community of Israel, and so the people in question are distressed that a mere accident, contact with a corpse (or perhaps another source of ritual pollution), should exclude them from the community. Conversely, a person who deliberately neglects to perform the Passover offering is “cut off from his kin.”
10. or on a distant journey. This is another circumstance, not that of the men who come to petition Moses, that would prevent someone from participating in the Passover offering. Baruch Levine plausibly infers that the stipulation of a distant journey presupposes the Deuteronomic requirement of a centralized cult. (The initial Passover sacrifice was performed in each household, and a person on a journey could presumably have participated with a household where he was a guest.)
14. should a stranger sojourn with you. This provision for the resident alien (ger) reflects a prevalent ancient Near Eastern practice of allowing such residents to adopt the local cult. No formal ceremony of “conversion,” as in later times, was required, though the law in Exodus stipulates that the stranger must be circumcised before he can partake in the Passover offering. That requirement is presumably implied here in “according to the statute of the Passover offering and according to its law” but it is not expressly stated.
15–23. This literary unit nicely sets the stage for the peregrinations and perturbations that will make up much of the Book of Numbers from chapter 10 onward. Until this point, the forward drive of narrative has been abandoned for tabulation—census and military roster—and legislation in a long stasis in the Wilderness of Sinai. Now the Israelites prepare to move on, and their order of march, dictated by the descent upon the Tabernacle and the ascent from the Tabernacle of the divine cloud, is reported in a series of verbs in the iterative tense. The indication of the varying time periods during which the cloud “abides” (or “tents,” “dwells,” a verb cognate with the noun mishkan, “Tabernacle”) over the Tabernacle may seem repetitious but in fact constitutes a grand rhetorical flourish: all of Israel’s movements through the wilderness are prompted by the divine sign, with the duration of encampment varying from a night or two to a month to a year. Yitzhak Avishur neatly confirms the purposeful rhetorical organization of the passage by pointing to its studied use of numerically formulaic repetitions: the phrase “by the LORD’s word” (literally, “by the LORD’s mouth”) occurs seven times—three times in conjunction with “they would journey onward,” three times in conjunction with “they would camp,” and at the very end of the passage, in conjunction with neither. “Tabernacle” occurs seven times; the root sh-k-n from which it derives, ten times; and, if one follows the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text, “cloud” also appears ten times. The carefully measured repetitions thus yield a tight thematic interweave of cloud, Tabernacle, camping, journeying, and God’s word or direction.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Make you two silver trumpets, hammered work you shall make them, and they shall serve you for calling the community and for the journeying of the camps. 3And when they blow them, all the community shall meet with you at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. 4And if but one they blow, the chieftains, the heads of Israel’s thousands, shall meet with you. 5And if you blow a long blast, the camps that are encamped to the east shall journey on. 6And if you blow a long blast a second time, the camps that are encamped to the south shall journey on, a long blast they shall blow for their journeyings. 7And when the assembly is gathered, you shall blow but let out no long blast. 8And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets, and they shall become for you an everlasting statute for your generations. 9And when you come in battle in your land against the foe who assails you, you shall let out a long blast with the trumpets and be remembered before the LORD your God and be rescued from your enemies. 10And on the day of your gladness and at your fixed seasons and on your new moons, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over your communion sacrifices, and they shall become for you a remembrance before your God. I am the LORD your God.”
11And it happened in the second year in the second month on the twentieth of the month that the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle of the Covenant. 12And the Israelites began on their journeyings from the Wilderness of Sinai, and the cloud abided in the Wilderness of Paran. 13And they journeyed on from the first by the word of the LORD through the hand of Moses. 14And the banner of the camp of the Judahites journeyed first by their divisions, and over its division, Nahshon son of Amminadab. 15And over the division of the tribe of Issacharites, Nethanel son of Zuar. 16And over the division of the tribe of Zebulunites, Eliab son of Helon. 17And the Tabernacle was taken down, and the Gershonites and the Merarites, the bearers of the Tabernacle, journeyed on. 18And the banner of the camp of Reuben by their divisions journeyed on, and over its division, Elizur son of Shedeur. 19And over the division of the tribe of Simeonites, Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai. 20And over the division of the tribe of Gadites, Eliasaph son of Deuel. 21And the Kohathites, the bearers of the sanctuary, journeyed on, and they would set up the Tabernacle by the time they came. 22And the banner of the camp of the Ephraimites by their divisions journeyed on, and over its division, Elishama son of Ammihud. 23And over the division of the tribe of Manassehites, Gamaliel son of Pedahzur. 24And over the division of the tribe of Benjaminites, Abidan son of Gideoni. 25And the banner of the tribe of Danites journeyed on, the rear guard for all the camps by their divisions, and over its division, Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai. 26And over the division of the tribe of Asherites, Pagiel son of Ochran. 27And over the division of the tribe of Naphtalites, Ahira son of Enan. 28These are the journeyings of the Israelites by their divisions as they journeyed on.
29And Moses said to Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’s father-in-law, “We are journeying to the place of which the LORD said to us, ‘It will I give to you.’ Come with us and we shall be good to you, for the LORD has spoken a good thing for Israel.” 30And he said to him, “I shall not go, but to my land and to my birthplace I shall go.” 31And he said to him, “Pray, do not leave us, for do you not know our encampment in the wilderness? And you will serve us as eyes. 32And so, if you go with us, by that good which the LORD will do for us, we shall be good to you.”
33And they journeyed on from the mountain of the LORD a three days’ march, with the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant journeying before them a three days’ march to scout for a resting place for them. 34And the LORD’s cloud was over them by day as they journeyed on from the camp. 35And it happened, as the Ark journeyed on, that Moses would say,
“Rise O LORD, let Your enemies scatter,
and Your foes flee before You!”
36and when it came to rest, he would say,
“Come back O LORD to Israel’s teeming myriads.”
CHAPTER 10 NOTES
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2. two silver trumpets. After all the lists of the early chapters of Numbers, the visual pageantry of the Tabernacle furnishings, and the deployment of the tribal troops with their banners, sound enters the text—in essence, musical flourishes, a pageantry of sound. These particular sounds are in the first instance the signal for the forward movement of the camp, and so propel the whole story from the long stasis of the stay at Sinai into the narrative of wanderings that constitutes much of what follows. The hammered silver trumpets are more artfully wrought wind instruments than the shofar, the ram’s horn, with which they share some functions. The shofar is used for the call to battle, and for coronations; these trumpets serve the distinctive purposes of signaling the march in the wilderness and accompanying cultic celebrations.
5. a long blast. There is no scholarly agreement as to whether the Hebrew teruʿah means “a long blast” and the other term, teqiʿah, “a short blast,” or the other way around. The verb taqaʿ has the primary meaning of “stab,” and by extension, a stabbing or penetration of breath through the aperture of a wind instrument. This sense might perhaps lend itself better to the idea of a short blast. Teruʿah also means “shout,” without the aid of an instrument, and might be more prolonged.
9. let out a long blast … and be remembered before the LORD. Here the function of the trumpets is identical with that of the shofar. The trumpet blast rallies the troops, perhaps frightens the enemy, and is imagined as a means for alerting God’s attention to Israel, calling them to mind, being a “remembrance” before Him.
12. And the Israelites began on their journeyings. The marching order of the tribes laid out in the next fifteen verses is a precise implementation of the tribal deployment detailed in chapter 2.
21. bearers of the sanctuary. In contradistinction to the Gershonites and the Merarites, “bearers of the Tabernacle,” the burden of the Kohathites is not the structure itself but the cultic paraphernalia of the sanctuary.
and they would set up the Tabernacle by the time they came. As elsewhere, biblical idiom is parsimonious in stipulating the antecedents of pronouns. The first “they” would have to refer to the Gershonites and Merarites, who carry the Tabernacle; the second “they” would be the Kohathites.
29. And Moses said to Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite. We now leave the Priestly tabulations and pomp and ceremony and enter the first actual narrative episode of the Book of Numbers. The name of Moses’s Midianite father-in-law is a bafflement that has been resolved only by rather contorted harmonizing explanations. In Exodus, he is called Jethro, who also seems to be identical with Reuel, while here he is Hobab son of Reuel. It seems likely that these narratives draw on authentic ancient traditions about an alliance and kinship between Moses and the Kenite clan of the Midianites, and those traditions provided an etiological explanation for the peaceful cohabitation of the Kenites with the Israelites (compare Judges 4:17–22). In the traditional variants of these stories about the Kenites, Moses’s father-in-law may have been assigned different names.
We are journeying to the place. No foreshadowing is allowed to intrude. At this point, Moses, unwitting of the disasters that lie ahead, imagines that both he and the people he is leading are about to cross the wilderness and enter into the promised land.
the LORD has spoken a good thing. Literally, “spoken good,” with the obvious sense of “promised to confer all manner of good things.” By repeating the root in both verb and noun, Moses twice emphasizes (the second time in verse 32) that he means to have Hobab share in the good that God has promised Israel.
30. to my land and to my birthplace I shall go. These words are probably an explicit allusion to God’s first command to Abraham, “Go forth from your land and your birthplace” (Genesis 12:1). Hobab asserts the desire to reverse that direction, to go back to his own homeland instead of forging on to the land God has promised Israel.
31. do you not know our encampment in the wilderness? Previously in Numbers, and before that in Exodus, there was a heavy stress on the idea that the cloud over the Tabernacle would guide the people. Here, by contrast, human agency is stressed: Hobab, himself indigenous to the great wilderness to the south of Canaan, is to act as a native guide through this forbidding territory. It is conceivable that this story registers an actual historical memory of receiving help of this sort from the Midianites. Hobab’s response to Moses is not stated, but the later presence of his descendants among the Israelites suggests that he agreed to accompany them. Perhaps the end of this story was excised editorially in order not to diminish the idea conveyed in the next two verses that it was the Ark with the accompanying cloud that led Israel through the wilderness.
33. the Ark … journeying before them a three days’ march. Although the Ark was to lead the way, this three days’ distance is baffling, for in that case the Ark would not have been visible to the people who were supposed to follow it. A common scholarly solution to the problem is to see the second occurrence of “a three days’ march” as an inadvertent scribal repetition (dittography) of the first.
35. Rise O LORD. These words attributed to Moses are often referred to as the Song of the Ark. Although one recent scholar, Richard Elliott Friedman, has expressed skepticism about whether this is actually a poem, there is sufficient evidence of poetic structure and diction even in the brief fragment. Rhythmically, these two versets contain, respectively, four and three stresses, a pattern sometimes found in lines of biblical poetry. The word pairings, enemies/foes, scatter/flee, are a hallmark of parallelistic poetry. The concluding line (verse 36) uses a bit of emphatic synonymity, “teeming myriads” (literally “myriads of thousands”) that is marked as poetic diction and also appears, with the order of “myriads” and “thousands” reversed, in the poetic blessing for Rebekah, Genesis 24:60. “Rise,” as several commentators have noted, also has a military sense of “attack,” but the visual image of elevation is important—God, imagined as enthroned on the cherubim carved over the Ark, surges up like a warrior-king as the Ark is lifted to be carried forward. In the Hebrew text, the unit that verses 35–36 constitute is bracketed off from what precedes and follows by inverted letter nuns. This is a scribal device known from Late Antiquity for marking a piece of text that is out of place, or quoted from another source. Some have conjectured that the Song of the Ark is actually a quotation from the mysterious Book of the Battles of YHWH mentioned elsewhere. Whatever the source, the quotation may give only the opening lines of two poems rather than the integral text of the poems. In any case, this is the first of several fragments of archaic Hebrew poetry quoted in Numbers.
36. Come back O LORD to Israel’s teeming myriads. There is no explicit “to” in the Hebrew connecting “come back” with Israel’s myriads. The absence of the preposition has inspired a variety of ingenious interpretations, but one should keep in mind that biblical poetic diction—especially in the case of the more archaic layer of Hebrew poetry—exhibits a great deal of ellipsis, which is, after all, a means of eliminating extra syllables and heightening the compactness of the utterance. It thus seems reasonable to infer that “to” is implied here.
1And the people became complainers of evil in the ears of the LORD, and the LORD heard and His wrath flared and the LORD’s fire burned against them and consumed along the edge of the camp. 2And the people cried out to Moses, and Moses interceded with the LORD, and the fire sunk down. 3And he called the name of that place Taberah, for the LORD’s fire had burned against them.
4And the riffraff that was in their midst felt a sharp craving, and the Israelites, too, again wept and said, “Who will feed us meat? 5We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for free, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. 6And now our throats are dry. There is nothing save the manna before our eyes.” 7And the manna was like coriander seed and its color like the color of bdellium. 8The people would go about and gather it and grind it between millstones or pound it in a pestle and cook it in a cauldron and make it into cakes. And its taste was like the creaminess of oil. 9And when the dew would come down on the camp at night, the manna would come down upon it. 10And Moses heard the people weeping by its clans, every man at the entrance of his tent, and the LORD’s wrath flared fiercely, and in Moses’s eyes it was evil. 11And Moses said to the LORD, “Why have You done evil to Your servant, and why have I not found favor in Your eyes, to put the burden of all this people upon me? 12Did I conceive all this people, did I give birth to them, that You should say to me, ‘Bear them in your lap, as the guardian bears the infant,’ to the land that You swore to their fathers? 13From where shall I get meat to give to all this people when they weep to me, saying, ‘Give us meat that we may eat’? 14I alone cannot bear this people, for they are too heavy for me. 15And if thus You would do with me, kill me, pray, altogether, if I have found favor in Your eyes, and let me not see my evil fate.” 16And the LORD said to Moses, “Gather for Me seventy men of the elders of Israel of whom you know that they are the elders of the people and its overseers, and you shall take them to the Tent of Meeting, and they shall station themselves there with you. 17And I shall come down and speak with you there and I shall hold back some of the spirit that is upon you and place it upon them, and they will bear with you the burden of the people and you yourself will not bear it alone. 18And to the people you shall say: ‘Consecrate yourselves for the morrow and you will eat meat, for you wept in the hearing of the LORD, saying, Who will feed us meat? For it was good for us in Egypt. And the LORD will give you meat and you will eat. 19Not one day will you eat and not two days and not five days and not ten days and not twenty days, 20but a full month of days, till it comes out of your noses and becomes a loathsome thing to you, inasmuch as you have cast aside the LORD Who is in your midst and you have wept before him, saying, “Why is it we have come out of Egypt?”’” 21And Moses said, “Six hundred thousand foot soldiers are the people in whose midst I am, and You, You said, ‘I shall give them meat and they will eat a month of days’? 22Will sheep and cattle be slaughtered for them and provide for them? Will all the fish of the sea be gathered for them and provide for them?” 23And the LORD said to Moses, “Will the LORD’s hand be too short? Now you will see whether My word will come about or not.” 24And Moses went out and spoke the LORD’s words to the people, and he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people and stood them round about the Tent. 25And the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him and held back some of the spirit that was upon him and put it upon the seventy men of the elders, and it happened, as the spirit rested upon them, that they prophesied, but did it no more. 26And two men remained in the camp. The name of the one was Eldad and the name of the other was Medad. And the spirit rested upon them, and they were among those inscribed, but they did not go out from the tent, and they prophesied in the camp. 27And the lad ran to tell Moses and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” 28And Joshua son of Nun, attendant to Moses from his youth, spoke out and said, “My lord Moses, restrain them!” 29And Moses said to him, “Are you jealous on my part? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would place His spirit upon them.” 30And Moses was gathered back into the camp, he and the elders of Israel. 31And a wind moved onward from the LORD and swept up quail from the sea and left them over the camp, about a day’s journey in every direction all round the camp and about two cubits deep on the ground. 32And the people arose all that day and all that night and all the next day and gathered the quail. The most sparing gathered ten homers, and they laid them out for themselves round about the camp. 33The meat was still between their teeth, it had not yet been chewed, when the LORD’s wrath flared against the people, and the LORD struck a very great blow against the people. 34And the name of the place was called Kibroth-Hattaavah, for there the people buried the ones who had been craving. 35From Kibroth-Hattaavah the people journeyed on to Hazeroth, and they were in Hazeroth.
CHAPTER 11 NOTES
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1. And the people became complainers of evil. The grammatical construction of the Hebrew is unusual—literally, “And the people became [or were] as complainers of evil.” Some understand this as an indication of persistence in the activity of complaint, though it is at least as plausible to construe it as conveying the initiation of the activity. The likelihood of the latter construction is reinforced by the fact that this episode is the first of the numerous episodes of “murmuring” that punctuate Numbers. In this initial instance, no specific content of the complaint is stipulated. This lack of specification may be intended so that the episode can serve as a general paradigm for all the incidents that follow: unreasonable complaint triggering God’s consuming wrath, a plea for Moses’s intercession, an end to the devastation.
3. Taberah. The place-name is derived from the verb baʿar, “to burn,” and so means something like Conflagration.
4. the riffraff. The Hebrew ʾasafsuf is a noun in the reduplicative form (like the English “riffraff”) derived from the verb ’asaf, “to gather.” The reduplicative form in Hebrew often has a pejorative sense: it is also used for the parallel term in Exodus 12:38, ʿerev rav (perhaps originally ʿararav, “motley throng”). Richard Elliott Friedman has noted that the verb ʾasaf is especially prominent in this chapter and the next. In the long second episode of the present chapter, Moses will strategically “gather” elders around him, and in an unusual usage that appears to be dictated by the desire to repeat this verb, he does not return to or enter the camp but is “gathered back into the camp” (verse 30). The play between ʾasafsuf and ʾasaf, I would suggest, focuses the issues of leadership and national cohesiveness that are central both to this chapter and to much of what follows in Numbers. There is a negative kind of “gathering” or assembly, the ragtag collection of ʾasafsuf that congregates in order to voice divisive gripes; and there is a positive gathering of leaders in which Moses delegates authority and imposes coherent governance on the people.
and the Israelites, too. The subversive complaints of the riffraff, who are of foreign origin, prove infectious and spread to the body of the Israelites proper.
Who will feed us meat? This question may seem puzzling because the people immediately go on to mention not meat but fish—a prominent source of protein in the Egyptian diet—and its elaborate vegetable garnishings. In the event, they get not fish, scarcely imaginable in this desert setting, but fowl. Some interpreters contend, with a bit of a stretch, that “meat” means “fish.” It may make more sense to infer that the complainers, filled with craving or lust (taʾawah) for the good old days of slavery, remember the sumptuous feasts of Egypt and, in their appetitive recollection, are a little confused about the culinary terms: first they say “meat,” the most substantial object of gluttonous craving, but when they review the actual menu of their Egyptian meals, the main course, plausibly enough along the banks of the Nile, turns out to be fish.
5. for free. This term is a striking instance of selective memory. The slaves did not have to pay for their food, which was provided by their owners, but of course a brutally high price was exacted through the punishing labor imposed upon them by their taskmasters.
6. before our eyes. The Hebrew lacks “before” (a mere particle, le), whether because this is an ellipsis or a scribal omission. In the Hebrew, there is an anomalous “to” (ʾel) before “manna,” and perhaps this preposition actually belongs before “eyes.”
7. bdellium. This English term may derive from the Hebrew bedolaḥ or its Semitic cognates; it is a semitransparent yellowish gum. Later Hebrew, working from what is probably a misinterpretation of the biblical term, uses bedolaḥ in the sense of “crystal.”
8. grind it … pound it … cook it … make it into cakes. This itemization of processes of food preparation (the “it” is merely implied in the Hebrew) makes one suspect that the reports of the manna reflect a real memory of some improvised food in the Wilderness wanderings. A common conjecture is that it might be the edible secretions of a particular insect found on trees in the Sinai. However ingeniously processed, it would have offered poor competition to the refinement and variety of Egyptian cuisine that riffraff and Israelites alike recall.
the creaminess of oil. In all likelihood, this refers to the thick upper layer of the first press of olive oil.
10. weeping by its clans. Throughout this episode, “weep” has the obvious sense of “complain,” but it is used instead of several possible biblical alternatives because it stresses the whining nature of the complaints.
11. Why have You done evil to Your servant. “Evil” here means “harm” but pointedly carries forward the perception by Moses in the previous verse that this whole affair is evil, bad business.
burden. The notion of the responsibility of leadership as a heavy load repeats the emphasis of the parallel episode in Exodus 18.
12. Did I conceive all this people, did I give birth to them. In an extravagant metaphor that expresses Moses’s sense of outrageous anomaly in the task he is required to do, he asks whether he is the mother of all these teeming multitudes. He then goes on, in the words he attributes to God, to wonder whether he is supposed to be an ʾomen, a guardian or private tutor of the sort that wealthy families would hire to care for and instruct their children.
15. kill me, pray, altogether, if I have found favor in Your eyes. In Exodus 33, the sign Moses sought that he had found favor in God’s eyes was that God would elect to go in the midst of the people and would show Moses something of the divine nature. Now, Moses in his desperation imagines an end to his suffering through death as the sign of God’s favor.
17. hold back some of the spirit. The verb ʾatsal, which Esau uses when he asks Isaac whether he has held in reserve some blessing for his real firstborn, suggests that a certain limited portion of the spirit vouchsafed Moses is taken from him to be distributed among the elders. This is precisely what is involved in the delegation of authority.
21. Six hundred thousand foot soldiers. That is, 600,000 males the age of military conscription. This figure would then be multiplied through all the additional female and minor mouths to feed. The incredulity expressed in the question indicates that even Moses cannot believe there is a way to provide meat—both he and God take the people at their own initial word, forgetting about the fish—for this vast populace.
22. provide for them. The Hebrew verb here usually means “find,” but this understanding of its meaning in context goes back to the Targum Onkelos and is endorsed by most modern scholars.
23. Will the LORD’s hand be too short? “Hand” here has the idiomatic sense of “power” but also manifests a metaphorical image—the hand of God reaching all the way to the sea to sweep up the quail and rain them down on the Israelite camp.
25. as the spirit rested upon them, that they prophesied. To “prophesy” (hitnabeiʾ) is to exhibit ecstatic behavior—dancing, writhing, emitting vatic speech. In this instance, the elders, who have been designated to share the burden of leadership with Moses, don’t do anything other than to make manifest through prophesying, after they have gathered round Moses, that they, too, are invested with the divine spirit and so share his responsibility. The end of the verse makes clear that this is a one-time event: the elders demonstrate here that they partake of the spirit, but they have no continuing role as prophets, in contrast to Moses.
26. they were among those inscribed. The most likely meaning is that they were “inscribed” among the seventy elders but differed from them in not coming out of the Tent. The particle waw, which usually means “and,” can have an adversative sense, as it probably does here, when it prefixes a verb in the perfective tense instead of the usual imperfective tense for historical narration (weloʾ yatsʾu, “but they did not go out”). Abraham ibn Ezra helpfully glosses: “they did not go out from the camp of Israel to the Tent of Meeting” (where the other elders had gathered).
28. from his youth. The Hebrew mibeḥuraw could also mean “from his chosen ones.”
My lord Moses, restrain them. The prophesying of the other sixty-eight elders in the designated place of sanctity, before the Tent of Meeting, is one thing, but the manifestation of prophecy in the midst of the Israelite camp is quite another, for it could turn into a dangerously contagious threat to Moses’s leadership.
29. Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets. Moses, just having surrendered a portion of the spirit invested in him to the seventy elders, now hyperbolically expresses the sense that holding on to a monopoly of power (equated with access to the divine spirit) is not at all what impels him as leader. Although he knows that there is scarcely any prospect that the entire people will become prophets, he nevertheless points to an ideal of what we might call radical spiritual egalitarianism. Access to the realm of the spirit is granted by God, in principle to anyone God chooses. The “gathering” of the elders to share the spirit is the antithesis of the mob of riffraff that assembles to express in complaint the dictates of the belly, not the spirit.
31. swept up quail from the sea. There may be a realistic kernel to this miraculous event: flocks of migratory quail from the sea do cross over the Sinai, where, exhausted from their flight, they are easy to trap.
32. ten homers. This would be a huge amount, since the ḥomer is ten ephahs, or more than five bushels.
they laid them out. The evident purpose is to cure the meat in the hot desert sun. But two ancient versions read instead of wayishteḥu, “and they laid out,” wayishḥetu, “and they slaughtered” (a reversal of the second and the third consonants of the verb).
33. it had not yet been chewed. The verb for “chew” or “consume,” yikaret, is unusual, for its ordinary meaning is “to be cut off.” It probably occurs here as an ominous bit of micro-foreshadowing, since the “blow” (or “plague”) God strikes against the people will, in biblical idiom, cut off many of them.
34. Kibroth-Hattaavah. The Hebrew means Graves of Desire (or Lust). In both this episode and the preceding one of Taberah, as in many incidents to follow, the Israelites move across the trackless wastes of the Sinai peninsula ironically leaving a trail of new place-names that is the history of their own repeated derilections.
1And Miriam, and Aaron with her, spoke against Moses concerning the Cushite wife he had taken, for he had taken a Cushite wife. 2And they said, “Is it but through Moses alone that the LORD has spoken? Has He not spoken through us as well?” And the LORD heard. 3And the man Moses was very humble, more than any person on the face of the earth. 4And the LORD said suddenly to Moses and to Aaron and to Miriam, “Go out, the three of you, to the Tent of Meeting.” And the three of them went out. 5And the LORD came down in the pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent and called, “Aaron and Miriam!” And the two of them went out. 6And He said,
in a vision to him would I be known,
in a dream would I speak through him.
7Not so My servant Moses,
in all My house is he trusted.
8Mouth to mouth do I speak with him,
and vision, and not in riddles,
and the likeness of the LORD he beholds.
And why did you not fear
to speak against My servant Moses?”
9And the LORD’s wrath flared against them, and He went off. 10And the cloud moved off from over the tent, and, look, Miriam was blanched as snow, and Aaron turned to Miriam, and, look, she was struck with skin blanch. 11And Aaron said to Moses, “I beseech you, my lord, pray, do not put upon us the offense which we did foolishly and by which we offended. 12Let her not be, pray, like one dead who when he comes out of his mother’s womb, half his flesh is eaten away.” 13And Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, “God, pray, heal her, pray.” 14And the LORD said to Moses, “Had her father spat in her face, would she not be shamed seven days, be shut up seven days outside the camp, and afterward she would be gathered back in?” 15And Miriam was shut up outside the camp seven days, and the people did not journey onward until Miriam was gathered back in. 16And afterward the people journeyed on from Hazeroth, and they camped in the Wilderness of Paran.
CHAPTER 12 NOTES
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1. And Miriam, and Aaron with her, spoke against Moses. This is one of the most striking instances of an expressive grammatical device in ancient Hebrew prose: when there are two or more subjects of a verb but a singular verb is used (here, feminine singular), there is a thematic focus on the first of the subjects as the principal agent in the action stipulated through the verb. (This translation adds “with her” to suggest an equivalent effect.) Thus Abraham ibn Ezra: “she spoke and Aaron assented or was silent, so he [too] was punished.” It is Miriam, of course, who will be stricken with the skin disease. The expression diber be often means “to speak against,” but in a punning usage, it can also refer, as it does repeatedly in this episode beginning with Aaron’s and Miriam’s dialogue in the next verse, to God’s speaking through a prophet. Verse 8 here also uses diber be, but because of the mouth-to-mouth idiom, in that one instance it is translated as “speak with.”
the Cushite wife. Is this Zipporah? Only if one locates Cush in Midian, which some interpreters find grounds for doing. Otherwise, Cush might be a designation for Nubia or Ethiopia, which would make this wife black. If she is a second wife, the objection might be simply to the fact that Moses had compromised Zipporah’s privileged status by this second marriage (Baruch Levine’s view), or it could reflect racial disapproval. If Miriam and Aaron are referring to Zipporah, the objection would simply be to her coming from a different ethnic-national group. In either case, they mean to suggest that Moses’s marital behavior is unworthy of a prophetic leader and hence evidence that he does not deserve to be the exclusive vessel of prophecy.
2. Has He not spoken through us as well? This familial “murmuring” should be read against the background of the immediately preceding episode. There two people, Eldad and Medad, were singled out as instruments of prophecy. Now these two siblings come forth to propose themselves as candidates for the same role, though there is scant indication in the earlier narratives that God has been speaking directly through them (despite Miriam’s designation as “prophetess” in Exodus 15:20). Moses responded to the prophesying of Eldad and Medad by wishing that the whole people might be endowed with the spirit of prophecy. In flagrant contrast, Miriam and Aaron pretend that their brother has been treating prophecy as a private monopoly, and their view of the prophetic spirit is of something one can seize as a means of privilege and power. The great biblical theme of sibling rivalry, until now absent from the story of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, here makes an appearance.
3. And the man Moses was very humble. As we have noted before (see the comment on Exodus 32:1), “the man,” quite exceptionally, is a kind of epithet for Moses. His humble or unassuming character is reflected here in the fact that he has not troubled to listen, or has paid no attention, to the malicious rumors about him that Miriam and Aaron have initiated. God, however, has heard.
4. the LORD said suddenly. The use of “suddenly” to introduce divine speech is quite unusual. Nahmanides proposes an interesting explanation: Miriam and Aaron, having made their dubious declaration that through them, too, God had spoken, “were not at the moment thinking of an expected prophecy, and for Moses’s sake it came upon them without invitation.” Prophecy, that is, proves to be an abrupt and frightening business, not the commodity of power they had imagined. Thus, in the next verse, God, having called to all three siblings, singles out Miriam and Aaron in peremptory direct address.
6. Listen, pray, to My words. God’s speech to Miriam and Aaron takes the exalted form of poetry. One of the conventions for beginning a biblical poem is an exhortation for those addressed to hearken to the utterances of the poet. (Compare the first of many instances, Genesis 4:23: “Adah and Zillah, O hearken my voice …”)
If your prophet be the LORD’s. The Hebrew text is cryptic, perhaps through scribal error, perhaps merely because of the compacted language of archaic poetry. The literal Hebrew word sequence is: If-there-be your-prophet the-LORD. The second and third of these word-units might be an ellipsis for “prophet of the LORD,” and both the Septuagint and the Vulgate show “of” or “for” (the Hebrew particle le). A couple of other ancient versions also reflect a reading of “a prophet among you.” Various modern textual critics move “the LORD” (YHWH) either back to the verb “said” at the beginning of the verse or forward to the next clause, leaving “If there be a prophet [among you].”
vision … dream. For an ordinary prophet, God reveals Himself through an oblique imaging process, in vision or dream.
7. My servant Moses, / in all My house is he trusted. “Trusted,” neʾeman, is an expected qualifier for “servant,” ʿeved. Moses figures here as a kind of faithful majordomo given the keys to God’s household.
8. and vision, and not in riddles. Although vision has been noted as one of the two vehicles of communication with the ordinary prophet, in Moses’s case it is no enigmatic vision but a perfectly clear image, as he, and he alone, is privileged to look upon “the likeness of the LORD.”
10. blanched as snow. If the Cushite woman is actually black, this sudden draining of pigmentation, as Jacob Milgrom notes, would be mordant poetic justice for Miriam’s slander.
11–13. The rhetorical contrast between Aaron’s petition to Moses and Moses’s petition to God is pointed. Aaron’s speech is relatively lengthy and centers on an elaborate, and horrifying, simile of stillbirth for Miriam’s skin disease. (Perhaps that simile is dictated by Aaron’s consciousness of the sibling bond between Miriam and her two brothers, as though he were saying to Moses: look, the three of us were born into life from the same womb, and now our sister is suffering a fate no better than that of a stillborn fetus.) Moses’s prayer is a mere five words and five syllables (both in the Hebrew and in this translation), devoid of any metaphorical elaboration or explanation of motive and circumstance, a kind of pure verbal distillate of imperatively urgent plea. The starkness of the language makes it all the more affecting. Compare Rashi’s comment on the urgency of the language: “Why did not Moses pray at length? So that the Israelites would not say, ‘His sister is in distress and he is standing and going on and on in prayer!’”
14. shut up seven days outside the camp. This does not appear to be the usual medical quarantine for this disease, which would be fourteen days, but, to judge by the immediate context, is rather a period of isolation until the public shaming Miriam has undergone will no longer be fresh.
15. gathered back in. This is the same locution used for Moses’s return to the camp in Numbers 11:30. The repeated usage underscores a thematic antithesis: Moses was gathered back into the camp, from which he had gone out to stand before the Tent of Meeting, after sharing his spirit of prophecy with the seventy elders. Miriam is gathered back into the camp after having been excluded from it in punishment because she had complained that Moses was monopolizing the spirit that by right belonged equally to her and to Aaron. In the first instance, we have a gesture of consolidating political unity; in the second instance, a divisive complaint.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Send you men, that they scout the land of Canaan which I am about to give to the Israelites, one man each for his father’s tribe, every one of them a chieftain.” 3And Moses sent them from the Wilderness of Paran by the LORD’s word, all of them men, heads of the Israelites they were. 4And these are their names: For the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur. 5For the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori. 6For the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh. 7For the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph. 8For the tribe of Ephraim, Hosea son of Nun. 9For the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu. 10For the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi. 11For the tribe of Joseph, the tribe of Manassah, Gaddi son of Susi. 12For the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli. 13For the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael. 14For the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi. 15For the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Machi. 16These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to scout the land. And Moses called Hosea the son of Nun Joshua. 17And Moses sent them to scout the land of Canaan, and he said to them, “Go up this way through the Negeb, and you shall go up into the high country. 18And you shall see the land, what is it like, and the people that dwells in it, are they strong or slack, are they few or many. 19And what is the land in which they dwell, is it good or bad, and what are the towns in which they dwell, are they in open settlements or in fortresses. 20And what is the land, is it fat or lean, are there trees in it or not. And you shall muster strength and take of the fruit of the land.” And the season was the season of the first ripe grapes.
21And they went up and scouted the land from the Wilderness of Zin to Rehob at Lebo-Hamath. 22And they went up through the Negeb and came to Hebron, and there were Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, offspring of the giant. And Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. 23And they came to Wadi Eshcol, and they cut off from there a branch and one cluster of grapes—and bore it on a pole with two men—and of the pomegranates and of the dates. 24That place was called Wadi Eshcol because of the cluster that the Israelites cut off there. 25And they came back from scouting the land at the end of forty days. 26And they went and came to Moses and to Aaron and to all the community of Israelites, at the Wilderness of Paran at Kadesh, and they brought back word to them and to all the community, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27And they recounted to him and said, “We came into the land to which you sent us, and it’s actually flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28But mighty is the people that dwells in the land, and the towns are fortified and very big, and also the offspring of the giant we saw there. 29Amalek dwells in the Negeb land, and the Hittite and the Jebusite and the Amorite dwell in the high country, and the Canaanite dwells by the sea and by the Jordan.” 30And Caleb silenced the people around Moses and said, “We will surely go up and take hold of it, for we will surely prevail over it.” 31But the men who had gone up with him said, “We cannot go up against the people for they are stronger than we.” 32And they put forth an ill report to the Israelites of the land that they had scouted, saying, “The land through which we passed to scout is a land that consumes those who dwell in it, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of huge measure. 33And there did we see the Nephilim, sons of the giant from the Nephilim, and we were in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.”
CHAPTER 13 NOTES
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3. all of them men. Rashi, followed by several modern commentators, proposes that “men” has the connotation of men of stature. In the present context, that might mean military prowess—a trait that would make the fearful majority report of the scouts all the more shameful.
4. And these are their names. These names are entirely different from the names of the tribal chieftains previously reported. Most of the names, moreover, do not appear elsewhere in the Bible. This could be an authentic ancient list of tribal military leaders, distinct from the tribal political heads.
16. And Moses called Hosea the son of Nun Joshua. The names are phonetically closer in the Hebrew—Hosheʿa and Yehoshuʿa. The latter is the variant of the former that bears the theophoric prefix, with the meaning “God-saves.”
17. and you shall go up into the high country. After crossing the Negeb desert, the tribes would move into the mountainous region of Judah in eastern Canaan.
18. are they strong or slack. The formulation of the mission of the scouts in terms of these binary opposites leads into the divided opinion of the report. The majority of ten will focus on “strong” and “fortifications.”
19. in open settlements. The Hebrew is literally “encampments.” This nomad’s term was evidently extended to any settlement lacking fortified walls. Given the fact that Canaan comprised a variety of city-states and regional mini-kingdoms which were often in conflict with one another, the landscape abounded in fortified cities.
20. muster strength and take of the fruit of the land. The notion that strength is required to take a sample of the fruit of the land is the first hint that the fruit is preternaturally heavy, just as the inhabitants are preternaturally large. The hyperbolic—or legendary—indication in verse 23 is that a single cluster of grapes is so heavy that it requires two men to carry it.
22. offspring of the giant. The second Hebrew term here, ʿanaq, is understood by some modern translators to be an ethnic designation (“Anakites”). The words of the scouts, however, in verse 33, clearly place “offspring of the ʿanaq” in apposition with Nephilim, the legendary man-god hybrids mentioned in Genesis 6:1–4, and there is no indication elsewhere of an ethnic group called Anakites. (On the basis of this chapter, ʿanaq in all subsequent strata of Hebrew is the standard term for “giant.”) The legendary scale of the bounty of the land, its “fatness,” is matched by the legendary proportions of its inhabitants. It should be noted that this representation of Hebron inhabited by giants swerves from the depiction of Hebron in Genesis 25, where the local denizens are ordinary, and commercially shrewd, Hittites.
Zoan in Egypt. This city is usually identified as Tanis.
24. Wadi Eshcol. “Eshcol” is the Hebrew term for “grape cluster.”
25. at the end of forty days. The number is of course formulaic, but it is also a reasonably plausible time in which a contingent of men on foot might traverse the Negeb, from its southernmost region (the Wilderness of Paran), make their way to northern Canaan, and return.
27. they recounted to him. Although Aaron and the representatives of the community are present, and have been shown the spectacular samples of the fruit of the land, it is to Moses as leader that they address the words of their report.
it’s actually flowing with milk and honey. Moses, conveying the divine promise, has repeatedly used this phrase for the fruitfulness of the land. Now the eyewitnesses confirm that it is actually (gam) true.
29. the Canaanite dwells by the sea. This indication is historically accurate for the thirteenth century B.C.E. because the Philistines, who would very soon control most of the coastal area, had not yet arrived.
30. We will surely go up … we will surely prevail. Caleb’s vehement contradiction of the majority of the scouts does not deny the substance of their report but rather insists that even against such huge adversaries and such an array of fortified cities the Israelites will prevail. This martial resolution will be fulfilled in the biblical account a full generation later, under Joshua’s leadership.
32. a land that consumes those who dwell in it. As several medieval commentators observe, the scouts now raise the ante in their negative report. At first, they duly noted the extravagant fruitfulness of the land together with the fearful aspect of its inhabitants. Now, in their rejoinder to Caleb, they put forth an ill report (dibah) of the land itself, saying that it consumes its inhabitants. Jacob Milgrom plausibly proposes that this phrase refers to a state of repeated war in which the inhabitants of this land find themselves, at the geographical crossroads between the Near Eastern empires to the south, to the east, and to the north. The multiple ethnic groups, moreover, of the land itself, indicated in the scouts’ report, reflect armed conflict among the various natives. The land flowing with milk and honey, then, is seen in these words as a kind of death trap: even if the Israelites were to succeed in obtaining a foothold and themselves became dwellers of the land, it would “consume” them through internecine and international warfare.
men of huge measure. “Huge” is merely implied in the Hebrew.
33. and so we were in their eyes. This judgment has to be sheer fearful projection, for they would scarcely have spoken with the Canaanites.
1And all the community lifted their voice and put it forth, and the people wept on that night. 2And all the Israelites complained against Moses and against Aaron, and all the community said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt, or in this wilderness would that we had died. 3And why is the LORD bringing us to this land to fall by the sword? Our women and our little ones will become booty. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4And they said one man to another, “Let us put up a head and return to Egypt.” 5And Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the community of Israelites. 6And Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh from those who had scouted the land tore their garments. 7And they said to all the community of Israelites, saying, “The land through which we passed to scout, the land is very, very good. 8If the LORD favors us, He will bring us to this land and give it to us, a land that is flowing with milk and honey. 9Only do not rebel against the LORD, and you, do not fear the people of the land, for they are our bread, their shade has turned from them and the LORD is with us. Do not fear them.” 10And all the community meant to pelt them with stones, but the glory of the LORD appeared in the Tent of Meeting to all the Israelites. 11And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise Me, and how long will they not trust Me, with all the signs that I have done in their midst? 12Let Me strike them with the plague and dispossess them, and I shall make you a nation greater and mightier than they.” 13And Moses said to the LORD, “And the Egyptians will hear that through Your power You brought up this people from their midst, 14and will say to the inhabitants of this land, they have heard that You the LORD are in the midst of this people, for eye to eye You are seen, LORD, and Your cloud stands over them, and in a pillar of cloud You go before them by day and in a pillar of fire by night. 15And you would put to death this people as a single man? And the nations who have heard rumor of You will say, saying, 16‘From the LORD’s inability to bring this people to the land that He swore to them, He slaughtered them in the wil-derness.’ 17And so, let the LORD’s power, pray, be great, as you have spoken, saying, 18“The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in kindness, bearing crime and trespass, yet He does not wholly acquit, reckoning the crime of fathers with sons, with the third generation and the fourth.’ 19Forgive, pray, the crime of this people through Your great kindness and as You have borne with this people from Egypt till now.” 20And the LORD said, “I have forgiven, according to your word. 21And yet, as I live, let the LORD’s glory fill all the earth. 22For all the men who have seen My glory and My signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness yet have tried Me ten times over and have not heeded My voice, 23they shall never see the land that I swore to their fathers, and all who despise Me shall not see it. 24But My servant Caleb, inasmuch as there was another spirit with him, and he followed after Me, I shall bring him to the land to which he comes and his seed will take hold of it. 25And the Amalekite and the Canaanite dwell in the valley. Tomorrow turn and journey onward in the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.” 26And the LORD said to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 27“How long for this evil community that raises against Me the complaints of the Israelites? That which they complain against Me I have heard. 28Say to them, ‘As I live, the LORD declares, just as you have spoken in My hearing, so will I do to you. 29In this wilderness your corpses will fall and all your reckoned ones from twenty years old and up, for you have complained against Me. 30You shall never come into the land about which I lifted up My hand vowing to make you dwell within it, except for Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 31And your little ones, of whom you said they would become booty, I shall bring them and they will know the land that you cast aside. 32And your own corpses will fall in this wilderness. 33And your sons will be herdsmen in the wilderness forty years, and they will bear your whoring until your corpses come to an end in the wilderness. 34By the number of days that you scouted the land, forty days, a day for a year, a day for a year, you will bear your crimes forty years, and you will know what it is to thwart Me. 35I the LORD have spoken: Will I not do this to all this evil community that joins forces against Me? In this wilderness shall they come to an end, and there shall they die.” 36And the men whom Moses had sent to scout the land, who came back and set all the community complaining against him, putting forth an ill report about the land, 37the men who put forth an ill and evil report of the land died in the scourge before the LORD. 38And Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh were left alive from those men who had gone to scout the land. 39And Moses spoke these words to all the Israelites, and the people mourned deeply. 40And they rose early in the morning and went up to the mountaintop, saying, “Here we are, and we shall go up to the place that the LORD said, for we have offended.” 41And Moses said, “Why is it you are overstepping the LORD’s word, when it will not succeed? 42Do not go up, for the LORD is not in your midst, lest you be routed before your enemies. 43For the Amalekite and the Canaanite are there in front of you, and you will fall by the sword, for have you not turned back from the LORD and the LORD will not be with you?” 44And they strove to go up to the mountaintop, and the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant and Moses did not budge from the midst of the camp. 45And the Amalekite and the Canaanite, who dwelled on that mountain, came down and struck them and shattered them all the way to Hormah.
CHAPTER 14 NOTES
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1. lifted their voice and put it forth. The conjunction of these two verbs with “voice” as their grammatical object is unusual, although elsewhere one or the other commonly appears with that noun as object. The apparent aim of the synonymity is emphasis: thus the sense of the whole verse is something like “they wept loud and bitterly.”
2. Would that we had died. The people’s complaint is cast in quasipoetic form, an indication of heightened, perhaps self-dramatizing, speech, in two semantically parallel clauses that are a neat chiasm: died (a), Egypt (b), wilderness (b'), died (a').
3. Our women and our little ones will become booty. The complainers, in their terror of the imposing inhabitants of Canaan, neatly forget that in Egypt, where they long to return, a royal decree had been devised to destroy all their male children, leaving the girls and women to be exploited by their enslavers.
4. Let us put up a head. So Rashi, Targum Onkelos, and many other interpreters. The Hebrew nitnah roʾsh is a little cryptic. Others understand it as “let’s pay attention” or even “let’s set up a marching column.” The New Jewish Publication Society, hanging on to the head in another sense, renders this as “let us head back.” One should note that the same verb (n-t-n) used for “voice” in verse 1 recurs here with “head” for its object.
5. And Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly. For the most part, this gesture is used to express submission to a greater power. Here evidently, as Nahmanides proposes, it is a desperate attempt by Moses and Aaron to plead with the people not to undertake the disastrous course that they have just threatened.
9. for they are our bread, their shade has turned from them. Caleb and Joshua’s words of exhortation conclude with what sounds like colloquial sting: as for these supposedly fearsome Canaanites, we will just gobble them up, and they are stripped of all protection, while the LORD is with us. “Shade,” in the languages of this hot desert region, is a fixed metaphor for protection. Abraham ibn Ezra, with an eye to the battlefield, suggests that the reference is to the shadow of the warrior’s shield.
10. but the glory of the LORD appeared. At the moment that Caleb and Joshua are threatened with death by stoning, God interposes His earthly manifestation, the luminous cloud, and drives back the assailants, rather like the way the two divine messengers to Sodom (Genesis 19) drive off the would-be rapists by striking them with blinding light.
11. How long will this people despise Me. It is not clear whether these are the words of an anthropomorphic God, sounding rather like an impatient parent, a God now thoroughly fed up with the repeatedly rebellious Israelites, or whether this divine proposal is intended as a test of Moses’s selfless devotion as leader. If the latter, he comes through with flying colors.
13. the Egyptians will hear. Moses does not even bother to protest that he has no ambitions to become the sole progenitor of a great people. Instead, he immediately focuses on the issue of God’s own global reputation. In the Exodus narrative, we were reminded again and again that the purpose of all the prodigious signs and wonders that God worked against Egypt was to make His uncontested supremacy known among all the nations. Were He now to destroy the Israelites, the effect would be to unravel the great skein of the Exodus by encouraging the nations to question whether the LORD has any real power.
16. He slaughtered them. Moses himself has just spoken of putting the people to death, but he puts in the mouth of the contemptuous foreign nations a stronger word, one usually reserved for the killing of animals.
17. let the LORD’s power, pray, be great. Some interpreters, leaning on one marginal biblical parallel, claim that “power” here actually means “forbearance.” Rashi more plausibly glosses “power” as God’s power to do what He has said. That proposal makes particular sense in light of the jeering reference to God’s inability, or lack of power, in the words attributed to the surrounding nations. That is, God, by standing by His word to Israel, will make the greatness of his power manifest.
18. The LORD is slow to anger. Moses here recapitulates the declaration of divine attributes made on Mount Sinai in Exodus 34:6–7, with some phrases deleted (see the comments there). That declaration of attributes indicates that God both exacts justice (“He does not wholly acquit”) and is compassionate. In the present urgent predicament, Moses cannot expect that God will simply shrug off the people’s rebelliousness, but the attributes, after all, begin with “the LORD is slow to anger and abounding in kindness,” an emphasis very much to Moses’s purpose as intercessor for a wayward Israel.
21. as I live, let the LORD’s glory fill all the earth. Many interpreters, from Rashi to the moderns, understood the second clause to mean “and as the LORD’s glory fills all the earth.” The Hebrew, however, has no grammatical indication of such an “as” structure, and there are no precedents for God’s swearing not merely by His life but by the fact that His glory fills all the earth. It is preferable to understand this clause as ibn Ezra does, to point forward in time to God’s unfolding historical plan: yes, the generation of adults in the wilderness will perish there, but loyal Caleb, together with the next generation, will enter the land, thus confirming God’s glory, demonstrating that it was not out of divine incapacity that the older Israelites failed to enter the land.
23. they shall never see. “Never” in the translation reflects the sense of solemn emphasis conveyed by the negative oath form—prefixed by ʾim—that is used in the Hebrew.
24. followed after Me. Literally “filled after”—an indication of absolute loyalty.
25. by the way of the Red Sea. In this case, the Israelites are directed toward Eilat/Akaba. Unable to confront the Canaanite adversaries, they must make a large sweep to the southeast and then ascend by stages through trans-Jordan, from where they will eventually invade Canaan from the east. The “valley” in which the Amalekites and Canaanites dwell is a puzzle because the Amalekites and the Canaanites at the end of this episode (verse 45) are said to come from the high country.
27. this evil community that raises against Me the complaints of the Israelites. Since a distinction is made between the “evil community” and the whole Israelite people, the former phrase would have to refer to the spies, though it is a little odd to call ten men a community (ʿedah).
29. all your reckoned ones from twenty years old and up. The laborious business of the military census, laid out in such detail in the opening chapters of Numbers, is now to be undone by death.
30. vowing. This word does not appear in the Hebrew but is implied by the lifting of the hand.
32. And your own corpses will fall in this wilderness. It would have been sufficient, idiomatically and semantically, to say “And you will fall in this wilderness.” God’s language, by making the corpses the grammatical subject, invites the Wilderness generation to contemplate the concrete reality of their own death, “you” turned into “corpses.”
33. they will bear your whoring. Whoring is of course a standard biblical metaphor for sinfulness—especially for betrayal (modeled on sexual betrayal). Your offspring, then, will bear the consequences of your rebelliousness for forty years until they are finally allowed to enter the land.
37. the men. This same word was emphasized at the beginning of the scouts’ expedition to express their standing as leaders and warriors. Now it is “the men” who perish.
an ill and evil report. Previously, the noun dibah, which itself means “ill report,” had been used without an adjective. Here, for the sake of emphasis, raʿah, “evil,” is added to dibah.
40. went up to the mountaintop. The geographical indication here is rather vague. There is a range of low mountains along the eastern axis of Canaan, but the Israelites at this point are encamped to the south of Canaan. The unspecified mountain is probably intended to be doubly paradigmatic: an enemy whose land is to be conquered would typically be situated in fortifications on heights, and the unauthorized scramble up the mountainside toward the summit is an act of presumption, distantly related to the heaven-seeking Tower of Babel.
we shall go up to the place that the LORD said, for we have offended. They recognize their own cowardice in having been persuaded by the scout’s negative report, but their resolution to storm the heights of Canaan is a misguided self-correction, entirely ignoring God’s declaration that none of this generation will enter the land.
44. strove. The Hebrew verb yaʿpilu is unique to this verse, and its meaning is in dispute. One common etymology links it with ʿofel, “height,” assuming that it means something like “strive upward.”
the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant and Moses did not budge from the midst of the camp. The would-be conquerors thus attack the heights without either their leader or the object that is the token of God’s potent presence in the midst of the people. (Compare the Ark Narrative in the early chapters of 1 Samuel, where the people believe they will be victorious if they carry the Ark with them into battle.)
45. all the way to Hormah. Hormah may be a place-name, though its location is unknown, or it could be a common noun, “destruction,” in which case the sense of the phrase would be “until they were utterly destroyed.”
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them: ‘When you come to the land of your settlement that I am about to give to you, 3you shall make a fire offering to the LORD, a burnt offering or a sacrifice to set aside a votive or a voluntary offering, or in your fixed seasons to make a fragrant odor to the LORD from the cattle or from the flock. 4And he who brings forward his offering to the LORD shall bring forward a grain offering of fine semolina, one-tenth measure mixed with one-fourth of a hin of oil. 5And wine for the libation, one-fourth of a hin you shall make with the burnt offering or for the sacrifice for each sheep. 6Or for the ram you shall make a grain offering of fine semolina, two tenth measures mixed with a third of a hin of oil. 7And wine for the libation, a third of a hin, you shall bring forward, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 8And should you make a head of cattle as a burnt offering or a sacrifice to set aside a votive or communion sacrifice to the LORD, 9the person shall bring forward with the head of cattle a grain offering of fine semolina, three-tenths of a measure mixed with half a hin of oil. 10And wine you shall bring forward for the libation, half a hin, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 11Thus shall be done for the one bull or the one ram or the lamb of the sheep or the goats. 12For the number that you do, thus you shall do for each one, according to their number. 13Every native shall do these thus, to bring forward a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 14And should a sojourner reside with you, or anyone in your midst for your generations, he shall make a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD, as you do, so shall he do. 15The assembly—one statute for you and for the sojourner who resides, a perpetual statute for your generations, you and the sojourner alike, shall there be before the LORD. 16One teaching and one practice shall there be for you and for the sojourner who resides with you.’”
17And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 18“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them: ‘When you come to the land to which I am about to bring you, 19when it happens that you eat of the bread of the land, you shall present a donation to the LORD. 20The first yield of your kneading troughs, a round loaf, you shall present in donation, like the donation from the threshing floor, thus you shall present it. 21From the first yield of your kneading troughs you shall give to the LORD, a donation for your generations. 22And should you err and not do all these commandments that the LORD spoke to Moses, 23all that the LORD has charged you by the hand of Moses, from the day that the LORD charged and henceforth for your generations, 24and should it happen that it was done as in errancy away from the eyes of the community, the whole community shall make one bull from the cattle as a burnt offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD, and its grain offering and its libation according to fixed practice, and one he-goat for an offense offering. 25And the priest shall atone for all the community of the Israelites and it will be forgiven to them, for it is an errancy, and they will have brought their offering, a fire offering to the LORD, and their offense offering before the LORD, for their errancy. 26And it will be forgiven to all the community of Israelites and to the sojourner who resides in their midst, for the whole people is errant. 27And if a single person errantly offends, he shall bring forward a yearling she-goat as an offense offering. 28And the priest shall atone for the person erring in his offense in errancy before the LORD, to atone for him, and it will be forgiven him. 29And for the native among the Israelites and for the sojourner who resides in their midst, one teaching there shall be for them for him who does in errancy. 30And the person who does it with a high hand, whether from the native or from the sojourner—he reviles the LORD, and that person shall be cut off from the midst of his people. 31For he has spurned the word of the LORD and His commandment he has violated. That person shall surely be cut off, his crime is upon him.’”
32And the Israelites were in the wilderness, and they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. 33And those who found him gathering wood brought him forward to Moses and to Aaron and to all the community. 34And they placed him under watch, for it had not been determined what should be done to him. 35And the LORD said to Moses, “The man is doomed to die. Let all the community pelt him with stones outside the camp.” 36And all the community took him outside the camp and pelted him with stones and he died, as the LORD had charged Moses.
37And the LORD said to Moses, saying, 38“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them that they should make them a fringe on the skirts of their garments for their generations and place on the fringe of the skirt an indigo twist. 39And it shall be a fringe for you, and you shall see it and be mindful of all the LORD’s commandments and you shall do them. And you shall not stray after your heart and after your eyes, after which you go whoring. 40So that you will be mindful and do My commandments, and you shall be holy to your God. 41I am the LORD your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt to become your God. I am the LORD your God.”
CHAPTER 15 NOTES
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2. When you come to the land. After the incident of the spies, the narrative movement is broken off by the insertion of a miscellany of laws pertaining to the cult, the sabbath, and the mnemonic ritual fringes. The narrative of Wilderness rebellions will resume in the next chapter with the story of Korah’s mutiny. It is not clear why the redactors deemed it appropriate to introduce this legal miscellany here, though the best effort of explanation has been made by Abraham ibn Ezra, with his characteristic alertness to possibilities of continuity in disjunct texts: “This section was juxtaposed to the previous because they [the ten scouts and their followers] had been cut down and people were mourning, to comfort the sons by letting them know that they would come to the land.” Ibn Ezra goes on to say that the emphasis here on forgiveness (verse 25) is also a response to the sin of the ten scouts and their followers, and the reference to a “high hand” (verse 30) looks back to their arrogance in trying to storm the Canaanite heights without divine authorization.
4. one-tenth measure. This is evidently the dry measure ʾephah, roughly a bushel.
15. one statute for you and for the sojourner. Apologetic commentary has made much of the egalitarianism of this reiterated formula. In fact, it was common in the ancient Near East for resident aliens to participate in the cult of the community in which they were, in effect, naturalized citizens. In this early period, no special ceremony of conversion was involved, and as a matter of historical actuality, it is likely that the descendants of resident aliens in the course of time would have become indistinguishable from native Israelites.
22. And should you err. The Hebrew root sh-g-h (here) or sh-g-g (in all the subsequent occurrences in this chapter) denotes an inadvertent offense, because the person either is not aware of the law or is not cognizant of what he is doing.
24. the whole community. A prohibited act performed inadvertently by members of the community incurs guilt on the whole group that must be expiated. (Compare the plagues that descend on Thebes in Oedipus the King and Antigone.)
30. with a high hand. This phrase, which suggests bold defiance, is the obvious legal antithesis to inadvertent transgressing, or erring.
32. And the Israelites were in the wilderness. This clause takes us back from the listing of timeless laws to the narrative setting of the Wilderness tales. The anecdote, however, proves to be a piece of case law indicating what is the sentence of a person willfully violating the sabbath.
35. Let all the community pelt him with stones outside the camp. The death sentence for violating the sabbath offers a grim prospect, which might well make one think of the brutal enforcement of strict theological conformity in certain modern theocracies. Ibn Ezra seeks to provide a palliative by linking this episode with the “high hand” of the immediately preceding passage, suggesting that the wood gatherer had been duly warned but high-handedly went on with his action. The larger narrative context comprises a series of acts of mutiny, threatening both the authority of Moses and the cohesiveness of the community, and this episode is conceived as a grave instance of such mutiny. Israel as a community is in part defined by its adherence to the sabbath. In the harsh reality of the Wilderness setting, he who has broken ranks is taken outside the camp and executed by the whole community.
38. make them a fringe on the skirts of their garments. The “skirts” of the garment are literally “wings” (kenafayim). The garment would typically be a kind of tunic (and so would not have “corners”), and the reference is thus to the hem or bottom edge. The fringe—elsewhere the Hebrew tsitsit refers to a lock of hair—is made up of uncut threads extending down from the hem.
an indigo twist. Though indigo may be a reasonable approximation of the color in question, it should be noted that the dye is not derived from a plant, as is indigo, but from a substance secreted by the murex, harvested off the coast of Phoenicia (see the comment on Exodus 25:4). The extraction and preparation of this dye were labor-intensive and thus made it quite costly. It was used for royal garments in many places in the Mediterranean region, and in Israel it was also used for priestly garments and for the cloth furnishings of the Tabernacle. One may infer that the indigo twist was a token of the idea that Israel should become a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” and perhaps also that, as the covenanted people, metaphorically God’s firstborn, the nation as a whole had royal status. Remnants of clothing found in the caves inhabited by Bar Kokhba’s men demonstrate that such indigo twists were still worn at the hems of ordinary outer garments in the second century C.E. Eventually, the indigo color was dropped as dye for the authentic hue became inaccessible. The fringes were transferred to the talit, or prayer shawl, though some devout Orthodox men and boys still wear as an inner garment a sleeveless piece of cloth with a large neckhole and fringes at its four corners.
39. be mindful of all the LORD’s commandments. The key Hebrew verb z-k-r means both “to remember” and “to be cognizant of.” There is a continuing concern with mnemonic devices and stories in Numbers. This fringe with the indigo twist is presumably meant to remind the Israelites of their obligation as a holy people and of their quasiroyal status before God: when tempted to look at the objects of desire, they are to look instead upon the mnemonic fringe.
you shall not stray. The Hebrew verb here also has the more neutral meaning of “to go about,” “to explore,” “to scout”; and, as many commentators have noted, it is the very verb used for the expedition of the twelve spies. Perhaps the “straying” is also intended, at least by the redactor, as a glance back at the sabbath wood gatherer.
41. I am the LORD your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, theology is an inseparable part of story. Israel’s fealty to God is not a consequence of abstract theological principle but of its experience of God’s workings in history. The indigo twist—Rashi even seeks to link it with the color of the sky on the night of the Exodus—is thus a reminder not only of the commandments but of the liberation from slavery, prelude to the Sinai epiphany through which Israel took on the obligation to become a kingdom of priests. The once enslaved people is henceforth to wear a constant token of royalty and sanctity.
1And Korah son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab and On son of Peleth sons of Reuben, took up, 2and they rose before Moses, and two hundred fifty men of the Israelites, community chieftains, persons called up to meeting, men of renown. 3And they assembled against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, “You have too much! For all the community, they are all holy, and in their midst is the LORD, and why should you raise yourselves up over the LORD’s assembly?” 4And Moses heard and fell on his face. 5And he spoke to Korah and to all his community, saying, “In the morning, the LORD will make known who is His, and him who is holy He will bring close to Him and him whom He chooses He will bring close to Him. 6Do this: Take your fire-pans, Korah and all your community. 7And place fire in them and put incense on them before the LORD tomorrow. And the man whom the LORD chooses, he is the holy one. You have too much, sons of Levi.” 8And Moses said to Korah, “Listen, pray, sons of Levi. 9Is it too little for you that the God of Israel divided you from the community of Israel to bring you close to Him to do the work of the LORD’s Tabernacle, to stand before the community to serve them? 10And He brought you close, and all your brothers the sons of Levi with you. And will you seek priesthood as well? 11Therefore you and all your community who band together against the LORD—and Aaron, what is he that you should murmur against him?”
12And Moses sent to call to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and they said, “We will not go up. 13Is it too little that you brought us up from a land flowing with milk and honey to put us to death in the wilderness, that you should also actually lord it over us? 14What’s more, to a land flowing with milk and honey you have not brought us nor given us an estate of fields and vineyards. Would you gouge out the eyes of these men? We will not go up!” 15And Moses was very incensed and he said to the LORD, “Do not turn to their offering. Not a donkey of theirs have I carried off, and I have done no harm to any one of them.”
16And Moses said to Korah, “You and all your community, be before the LORD, you and they and Aaron, tomorrow. 17And each man take his fire-pan and you shall place on it incense and bring it forward before the LORD, each man his fire-pan, two hundred fifty fire-pans, and you and Aaron, each man his fire-pan.” 18And each man took his fire-pan, and they placed fire in them and put incense on them, and they stood at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, with Moses and Aaron. 19And Korah assembled all the community by the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and the LORD’s glory appeared to all the community. 20And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 21“Divide yourselves from this community, and I will put an end to them in an instant.” 22And they fell on their faces and said, “El, God of the spirits for all flesh, should one man offend and against all the community You rage?” 23And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 24“Speak to the community, saying, ‘Move up from around the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.’” 25And Moses arose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel went after him. 26And he spoke to the community, saying, “Turn away, pray, from the tents of these evil men and touch nothing of theirs, lest you be swept away in all their offense.” 27And they moved up from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram from all around, and Dathan and Abiram went out, poised at the entrance of their tents, and their wives and their sons and their little ones. 28And Moses said, “By this shall you know that the LORD has sent me to do all these deeds, that it was not from my own heart: 29If like the death of all human beings these die, and if the fate of all human beings proves their fate, it is not the LORD who has sent me. 30But if a new thing the LORD should create, and the ground gapes open its mouth and swallows them and all of theirs and they go down alive to Sheol, you will know that these men have despised the LORD.” 31And it happened, just as he finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split apart, 32and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households and every human being that was Korah’s, and all the possessions. 33And they went down, they and all that was theirs, alive to Sheol, and the earth covered over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. 34And all Israel that was round about them fled at the sound of them, for they thought, “Lest the earth swallow us.” 35And a fire had gone out from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred fifty men bringing forward the incense.
CHAPTER 16 NOTES
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1. And Korah … took up. The verb (it is the first word here in the Hebrew text) is in the singular, thus thematically focusing on the principal agent, Korah, who becomes the archetype of the presumptuous rebel against just authority. The function of the verb is nevertheless not entirely clear: the verb “to take” is transitive and should have a direct object but none appears in this sentence. Abraham ibn Ezra solves this difficulty by claiming that an elliptical object, “men,” is implied. Others construe “take” to have the idiomatic sense of “take himself aside” or “rebel.” This translation replicates the ambiguity of the Hebrew.
Dathan and Abirman … sons of Reuben. The conjoining of Levites and Reubenites is the first signal of an underlying problem in the entire episode, abundantly registered by biblical scholars. This is a rare instance in which the editorial orchestration of literary sources, instead of producing polyphonic complexity, generates repeated dissonance. Two rebellions have been combined, a rebellion of Levites for priestly privilege and a rebellion of Reubenites for political power. It is fitting that the latter should come out of the tribe of Reuben, for Reuben is the firstborn who has been passed over in the struggle for political preeminence. As the two stories twine around each other, it emerges that there are two different places of confrontation—for Korah and his people, the sanctuary (“before the LORD”), where the trial of the fire-pans occurs; and for Dathan and Abiram and their followers, the entrance to their tents. And there are also two different modes of destruction—a consuming fire engulfs the Levites while the Reubenites are swallowed up by the earth. Perhaps this odd weaving together of the two rebellions was intended to suggest that political and sacerdotal power are inseparable (an idea that might have appealed to Priestly editors), but from a modern perspective it makes peculiar reading.
3. they are all holy. Korah and his followers throw back in Moses’s face the idea he has transmitted to them that all Israel should be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).
raise yourselves up. The verb also could mean “play the chieftain.”
4. Moses heard and fell on his face. This gesture of prostration ordinarily is an expression of reverence and self-abnegation, as indeed it is in verse 22; but here it would have to be a reflex of extreme dismay. Moses will promptly pick himself up and deliver an ominous prediction to the rebels.
5. Korah and to all his community. The Hebrew ʿadato has often been rendered as his “band” or his “faction.” But it is the term regularly used (as in “community chieftains” in verse 2) to indicate the legitimate organized collective of Israelites, and the point is that Korah has deflected a legitimate collectivity, the ʿedah, into a mutinous break-off group, so the term needs to be preserved for both the legitimate organization and the rebellion.
bring close. In ritual contexts, the verbal stem q-r-b almost always suggests the privilege of access to sanctified space and to the divine presence.
7. You have too much, sons of Levi. Moses is obviously flinging their own initial words of complaint against him (verse 3) back against them. This phrase will then be antithetically reversed at the very beginning of Moses’s next speech (verse 8), “Is it too little … ?”
9. divided you … to bring you close … to do the work … to stand before the community to serve them? The expansively synonymous character of Moses’s language underscores the immense bounty that the Levites received in being charged with all the (nonpriestly) work of the Tabernacle. (“Stand before” has the idiomatic sense of “serve.”)
11. Therefore you and all your community … and Aaron, what is he. The syntax here seems a bit disjunct, perhaps because the story of Korah is at this point interrupted by the story of Dathan and Abiram. Aaron is singled out here because from among the Levite clans it is upon Aaron and his sons that priesthood has been conferred.
12. Moses sent to call. The purpose of the summons is not stated, but it is clearly an expression of Moses’s political authority over these Reubenites, which they categorically reject by declaring, “We will not go up.” In this second story, where power rather than priestly privilege is at issue, the rebellion is directed against Moses, and Aaron now is not mentioned.
13. Is it too little. These words of course echo the phrase just used by Moses (verse 9) in addressing Korah and his followers and reflect an effort to pull the two strands together.
from a land flowing with milk and honey. Previous recollections in the “murmurings” stories of the fleshpots of Egypt are now ratcheted up as the house of bondage is represented in the very terms of bounty that have been repeatedly used for the promised land. The claim that the wilderness is no more than a death trap for the liberated slaves has been made from the start.
14. to a land flowing with milk and honey you have not brought us. This complaint is abundantly justified. They are still stuck in the pitiless rocky landscape of the Sinai desert, and the effort of the ten scouts to lead an expedition against the high country of Canaan has just been turned back in disastrous defeat.
Would you gouge out the eyes of these men? “These men” is a euphemism for “us,” employed to avoid saying something dire about oneself. Gouging out the eyes was sometimes a punishment of rebels in the ancient Near East, although the Reubenites may simply be saying, as ibn Ezra proposes, that they are not blind to Moses’s outrageous behavior.
15. Do not turn to their offering. Dathan and Abiram have mentioned no offering, so this could be an attempt to harmonize this story with Korah’s.
16. And Moses said to Korah. The narrative thread broken off at the end of verse 11 is now resumed.
21. Divide yourselves from this community. There is some ambiguity here about the scope of the noun ʿedah. If it means Korah’s faction, then in the next verse Moses and Aaron plead that only the ringleaders be punished, not all 250 rebels. But the subsequent occurrences of “community” in the story seem to point to the whole Israelite people, so perhaps Moses and Aaron fear that God is exhibiting another impulse to destroy the entire populace and to start again with the two brothers.
24. the dwelling. The Hebrew mishkan is also the term for “Tabernacle.” Its use may be still another effort to tie the two stories together, as its application to profane dwellings is generally in the plural (mishkenot).
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. The first of these names appears to be an interpolation, for Korah has been instructed to stand by the Tent of Meeting, not in front of his own tent.
27. they moved up. This is the same verb as the rebels’”we will not go up,” used here in a different conjugation to convey the sense of “removed themselves from.” It occurs equally in verse 24.
Dathan and Abiram. Korah has now, properly, disappeared from the scene in front of the tents.
32. the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households. This justice by cataclysmic portent is pitiless, and scarcely accords with the discrimination of guilty agents elsewhere in the Mosaic Code—everyone associated with Dathan and Abiram is engulfed, down to the little children.
and every human being that was Korah’s. Once more the name is inserted in order to try to splice the two strands, for one may infer that Korah should be awaiting destruction by fire at the Tent of Meeting.
34. And all Israel … fled at the sound of them. The real thrust of the story is not considered justice but monitory spectacle: terror surges through the whole people as they witness the earth gaping, then closing (no mere earthquake!), with the rebel Reubenites tumbling into the underworld.
35. And a fire had gone out from the LORD. Here we have the report of the denouement of the trial of the fire-pans, suspended after verse 22. The use of the pluperfect reflects an attempt to hold the two narrative lines together: while Dathan, Abiram, and company were being swallowed by the earth, a divine fire coming out from the sanctuary has consumed Korah and his people. But, pointedly, explicit reference to Korah is omitted from this verse because verse 32 has just placed him alongside Dathan and Abiram. The consequent confusion is carried into postbiblical Hebrew tradition, where Korah is sometimes represented as having been buried alive and sometimes as having been incinerated.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Say to Eleazar son of Aaron the priest that he should lift up the fire-pans from the midst of the burnt-out zone and scatter the fire abroad, for they have become holy—3the fire-pans of these offenders at the cost of their lives. And they shall make of them hammered sheets as plating for the altar, for they brought them forward before the LORD and they have become holy, and they will become a sign for the Israelites.” 4And Eleazar the priest took the bronze fire-pans that those burned to death had brought forward, and they hammered them into a plating for the altar, 5a remembrance for the Israelites, so that no stranger, who was not of the seed of Aaron, should come forward to burn incense before the LORD, and none should be like Korah and his community, as the LORD had spoken to him in the hand of Moses. 6And all the community of Israelites murmured on the next day against Moses and against Aaron, saying, “You, you have put to death the LORD’s people.” 7And it happened when the community assembled against Moses and against Aaron, that they turned to the Tent of Meeting, and, look, the cloud had covered it and the LORD’s glory appeared. 8And Moses, and Aaron with him, came before the Tent of Meeting. 9And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 10“Lift yourselves up from the midst of this community and I will put an end to them in an instant.” And they fell on their faces. 11And Moses said to Aaron, “Take the fire-pan and place fire upon it from the altar and put in incense and carry it quickly to the community and atone for them, for the fury has gone out from before the LORD, the scourge has begun.” 12And Aaron took as Moses had spoken, and he ran into the midst of the assembly, and, look, the scourge had begun against the people, and he put in incense and atoned for the people. 13And he stood between the dead and the living, and the scourge was held back. 14And those who died by the scourge came to fourteen thousand and seven hundred, besides those who died because of Korah. 15And Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and the scourge was held back.
16And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 17“Speak to the Israelites, and take from them a staff for every father’s house from all their chieftains, according to their fathers’ houses, twelve staffs—each man’s name you shall write on his staff. 18And Aaron’s name you shall write on the staff of Levi, for one staff there is for the head of their father’s house. 19And you shall lay them down in the Tent of Meeting before the Ark of the Covenant where I meet with you. 20And it will happen that the man whom I choose, his staff will flower. And I shall cause to subside from Me the murmurings of the Israelites which they murmur against you.” 21And Moses spoke to the Israelites, and all their chieftains gave him a staff for every single chieftain, according to their fathers’ houses, twelve staffs, and Aaron’s staff was among their staffs. 22And Moses laid down the staffs before the LORD in the Tent of the Covenant. 23And it happened on the next day that Moses came into the Tent of the Covenant, and, look, Aaron’s staff of the house of Levi had flowered, and it had brought forth flower and had burgeoned in blossom and had born almonds. 24And Moses brought out all the staffs from before the LORD to the Israelites, and they saw, and each man took his staff. 25And the LORD said to Moses: “Bring back Aaron’s staff before the Ark of the Covenant as a safekeeping, as a sign for rebels, and let there be an end to their murmurings against Me, and they shall not die.” 26And Moses did as the LORD had charged him, thus did he do. 27And the Israelites said to Moses, saying, “Look, we perish, we are lost, all of us are lost. 28Whoever so much as comes near the LORD’s Tabernacle will die. Are we done with perishing?”
CHAPTER 17 NOTES
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2. lift up. The idiomatic sense of this verb in context is “remove.” burnt-out zone. Literally, “the burning,” but the fire of course has now died down. scatter the fire. “Fire,” ’esh, sometimes can mean, as here, hot ashes.
3. for they brought them forward before the LORD and they have become holy. The first clause explains the second: the fire-pans, by virtue of having been carried into sacred space, even though by unauthorized persons who paid for the encroachment with their lives, have become holy.
they will become a sign for the Israelites. Again and again in the Book of Numbers, the narrative is concerned with collective mnemonic devices: ritual apparatus is meant to recall monitory events in the Wilderness wanderings—here, the bronze plating of the altar and, below, Aaron’s staff, set before the altar in “safekeeping.”
5. stranger. The general sense of zar is “alien” or “outsider.” As always in ritual contexts, the term refers not to an ethnic foreigner but to anyone not a member of the consecrated priesthood.
to him. The ambiguous antecedent is plausibly identified by Abraham ibn Ezra as Aaron.
6. all the community of Israelites. Given the people’s refractory nature, the violent suppression of a small band of rebels only triggers a general expression of resentment against Moses’s leadership. The repeated pattern of these stories is a study in collective malcontent, in the psychology of resistance to authority.
You, you have put to death the LORD’s people. The insertion of the emphatic second-person plural pronoun ʾatem vividly expresses the accusatory tone of the Israelites’ angry words to Moses and Aaron. As Richard Elliott Friedman aptly notes, the accusation turns everything around in the story: the Israelites are “the LORD’s people” and Moses and Aaron are thus lined up against them and God, saddled with the responsibility for the death of the rebels whom in fact God killed.
10. Lift yourselves up. This idiom for “remove yourselves” pointedly picks up the verb used for the removal of the fire-pans in verse 2. We have here a reiterated theme of the episodes of “murmuring”: God’s “fury”—literally, “foaming wrath,” qetsef—is on the point of consuming the whole rebellious people so that He can start all over with Moses and Aaron, but they intercede on behalf of the people.
12. he put in incense and atoned for the people. The burning of incense to drive off a plague should not be thought of as a sanitary technique. Since incense in ancient Near Eastern religions was imagined, like the burnt offerings it accompanied, as a fragrant odor in the nostrils of the gods, there would have been an expectation that the burning of incense had the power to assuage an angry deity. It is notable that this act of intervention to save the people is not dictated by God but is a device Moses on his own initiative orders Aaron to implement.
17. a staff for every father’s house. The social unit “father’s house” is used rather loosely here to designate “tribe,” perhaps because the two Hebrew words for “tribe,” mateh and shevet, both mean “staff,” and hence the use of either in this context would have introduced confusion. In any case, we are made conscious that the staff, the tribal emblem, is a metonymy for tribe.
20. I shall cause to subside from Me. The unusual Hebrew verb (the same root is used for the receding waters of the Deluge) suggests that the murmurings of complaint are imagined as a kind of flood that rises up around the deity. In this sentence, God clearly aligns Himself with Moses and Aaron as object of the complaints—in precise antithesis to the people’s attempt to put God on their side by identifying the two brothers as enemies of “the LORD’s people.”
21. Aaron’s staff was among their staffs. The tribe of Levi would not have been reckoned among the twelve tribes. Thus, there are twelve staffs representing the ten tribes and the two half-tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, and Aaron’s staff is placed together with them in this trial.
23. it had brought forth flower and had burgeoned in blossom and had born almonds. The chronology of these stages of vegetal growth is a little obscure because either “flower,” peraḥ, and “blossom,” tsits, are synonyms, or tsits may be an incipient peraḥ. Perhaps the parallel clauses are encouraged by the practice of synonymity in poetry, where the more unusual term (here, tsits) is always the second one. In any case, the bearing of fruit, the almonds, obviously follows in time the flowering, and this fast-forwarding of a slow process of growth spectacularly confirms the miraculous character of the event. Flowering staffs also make an appearance in Herodotus. The divine favor accorded the Levites is figured in this image of agricultural fertility linked with the tribe whose sacerdotal duties in fact removed them from the soil.
27. Look, we perish, we are lost, all of us are lost. Instead of embracing the monitory mnemonic of Aaron’s staff that has just been offered them and accepting God’s assurance that if they renounce their murmurings, “they shall not die,” the people conclude that they are about to be utterly destroyed. The panic they feel is etched in the stark simplicity and the repetitions of their expression of fear: in these two concluding verses, they say “perish” twice, “lost” twice, and (in the Hebrew) “approach” twice (kol haqarev haqarev). This whole story, like so many others in Numbers, marks out a borderline between the sacred and the profane, stressing that only the consecrated can cross into the zone of the sacred. The people, however, who live alongside the sacred precincts, are gripped with fear that at any time they might step over the line and be struck down.
1And the LORD said to Aaron, “You and your sons and your father’s house with you, you shall bear the guilt of the sanctuary, and you and your sons with you, you shall bear the guilt of your priesthood. 2And your brothers, too, the tribe of Levi, your father’s tribe, bring forward with you, and they will be levied with you and serve you, and you and your sons with you are to be before the Ark of the Covenant. 3And they will keep your watch, the watch of all the Tent. Only they must not come near the sacred vessels and the altar, so that they do not die, both they and you. 4And they will be levied with you and keep the watch of the Tent of Meeting for all the work of the Tent, and no stranger shall come near them. 5And you shall keep the watch of the sacred zone and the watch of the altar, that there be no more fury against the Israelites. 6And as for Me, look, I have taken your brothers the Levites from the midst of the Israelites, as a gift for you they are given to the LORD, to do the work of the Tent of Meeting. 7And you and your sons with you, you shall keep your priesthood for every matter of the altar and for inside the curtain, and you shall do the work. As gift work I shall give your priesthood, and the stranger who comes near will be put to death.”
8And the LORD spoke to Aaron, “And as for Me, look, I have given you the watch of My donations for all the holy things of the Israelites, to you I have given them as a share and to your sons as a perpetual statute. 9This will be yours from the most holy things from the fire, all their offerings, including all their grain offerings and all their offense offerings and all their guilt offerings that they give back to Me, most holy things they are for you and for your sons. 10In the most holy precincts you shall eat it, every male shall eat it. It will be holy for you. 11And this is yours: their gift of donations including all the donation offerings of the Israelites, to you I have given them, and to your sons and to your daughters with you as a perpetual statute, every clean person in your household will eat it. 12All the richest of the oil and all the richest of the wine and the grain, their prime yield that they give to the LORD, to you I have given them. 13The first fruits of all that is in their land, which they bring to the LORD, for you it will be, every clean person in your household will eat it. 14Everything that has been proscribed in Israel, yours it will be. 15Every womb-breach for all flesh that they offer to the LORD whether human or beast, yours it will be. But you shall surely redeem every human firstborn, and the firstborn of unclean beasts you shall redeem. 16And its redemption price from a month old you shall redeem at the value in silver of five shekels by the sanctuary shekel, which is twenty gerahs. 17But the firstborn of an ox or the firstborn of a sheep or the firstborn of a goat you shall not redeem; they are holy. Their blood you shall throw upon the altar and their fat you shall turn to smoke, a fire offering with pleasing fragrance to the LORD. 18And their flesh will be yours, like the best of the elevation offering and like the right thigh, yours it will be. 19All the donations of the holy things that the Israelites donate to the LORD I have given to you and to your sons and to your daughters with you as a perpetual statute, a perpetual covenant of salt it is before the LORD, for you and for your seed with you.”
20And the LORD said to Aaron, “In their land you shall have no estate, and no portion shall you have in their midst. I am your estate and your portion in the midst of the Israelites. 21And to the Levites, look, I have given every tithe in Israel as an estate in exchange for their work that they perform, the work of the Tent of Meeting. 22And the Israelites will no longer draw near to the Tent of Meeting to bear offense to die. 23And the Levite, he shall perform the work of the Tent of Meeting, and they will bear their guilt. It is a perpetual statute for your generations, and in the midst of the Israelites they will have no estate. 24For the tithe of the Israelites which they donate to the LORD, I have given as a donation to the Levites for an estate. Therefore did I say to them, ‘In the midst of the Israelites they will have no estate.’”
25And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 26“And to the Levites you shall speak, and you shall say to them, ‘When you take from the Israelites the tithe that I have given you from them as your estate, you shall donate from it the LORD’s donation, a tithe of the tithe. 27And it will be accounted for you as your donation, like the yield from the threshing floor and like the matured wine from the vat. 28So shall you, too, donate the LORD’s donation from all your tithes that you take from the Israelites, and you shall give from them the LORD’s donation to Aaron the priest. 29From all your gifts you shall donate the LORD’s donation, from all the richest of it, the consecrated part of it. 30And you shall say to them, When you donate the richest of it, it will be accounted for the Levites like the yield from the threshing floor and like the yield from the vat. 31And you shall eat it in every place, you and your households, for it is wages for you in exchange for your work in the Tent of Meeting. 32And you shall not bear offense for it when you donate the richest of it, and you shall not profane the holy things of the Israelites and you shall not die.’”
CHAPTER 18 NOTES
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1. And the LORD said to Aaron. After the account of the rebellion against Aaronite priestly privileges, concluding with the trial in which only Aaron’s staff blossoms, God directs this address not to Moses or to Moses and Aaron, as is everywhere else the case, but to Aaron alone. The subject, appropriately, is the grave responsibility of entering into the sanctuary and performing the sacred work there.
bear the guilt of the sanctuary. This compressed Hebrew idiom refers to bearing guilt, which is to say, the consequences of guilt, for any violation of the sacred zone of the sanctuary. This whole series of instructions highlights the intrinsic danger of the sacred zone, where any misstep can trigger divine “fury” (verse 5), and hence the need to protect the sanctuary from the intrusion of any unfit person (zar). The logic of placing these laws immediately after the story of Korah’s rebellion is manifest.
2. the tribe of Levi, your father’s tribe. The Hebrew uses two synonyms for tribe, first mateh (the characteristic Priestly term) and then shevet. Both words have the primary meaning of “staff” and then become metonyms for tribe because each tribe carries its distinctive staff.
3. keep your watch. As elsewhere, the Hebrew mishmeret has a military sense, to keep watch or guard, but may also refer to something like “maintenance.”
4. they will be levied with you. The Hebrew verb nilwu means “to be joined” or “associated,” but it is an obvious pun on Levi (lewi), and “levied,” in the sense of “mustered,” seems a close enough approximation that preserves the pun.
8. as a share. The Hebrew lemoshḥah is a homonym for a more common term that has the sense of “for anointing.” Baruch Levine has argued with especial cogency that context requires the sense of “share” or “measure,” which this root has in several other Semitic languages.
11. perpetual statute. The Hebrew noun ḥoq can mean either “statute” or “allotment,” and it appears to straddle both meanings here. In verse 23, where no gifts to the priesthood are being doled out, the same phrase can mean only “perpetual statute.”
every clean person. That is, everyone untainted by ritual impurity (such as having had contact with a corpse).
14. Everything … proscribed. Everything that has been declared ḥerem, “under ban,” “set aside,” and hence dedicated solely to the cult and not allowed for profane enjoyment.
15. redeem every human firstborn, and the firstborn of unclean beasts. Neither of these categories is acceptable for sacrifice, but for opposite reasons—human beings because their life is sacred, unclean beasts (pigs, scavengers) because it would be degrading to use them in the cult.
18. their flesh will be yours. For the landless Levites, the parts of the sacrificial animal not burned on the altar (only one class of sacrifices, the ʿolah, was wholly burned) become a special perquisite, and an important source of sustenance.
19. a perpetual covenant of salt. Although some commentators have argued for a reference to the actual consumption of salt as part of a covenantal feast, it is more likely that salt as a preservative is a figurative idiom that reinforces the idea of permanence equally invoked in “perpetual.”
20. no estate, and no portion. The two Hebrew terms naḥalah and ḥeleq often occur (in reverse order) as a hendiadys meaning “permanent estate.” Breaking out a hendiadys into two separate words for purposes of emphasis is a common stylistic maneuver both in Hebrew poetry and prose.
29. from all the richest of it. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “from all the fat of it,” fat, ḥelev, being a common biblical idiom for the best part of anything (as in “the fat of the land”).
32. you shall not bear offense for it … and you shall not profane the holy things … and you shall not die. This whole unit of instructions to the Aaronides closes in an envelope structure: the danger of suffering the consequences of violating the sanctuary, invoked at the beginning, recurs now on a note of reassurance: because these tithes of agricultural offerings are the priests’ just wages for their service in the cult, they run no risk of perishing for having eaten consecrated foodstuffs.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2“This is the statute of the teaching that the LORD has charged, saying, ‘Speak to the Israelites, that they take you a perfect red cow that has no blemish and on which no yoke has been put. 3And you shall give her to Eleazar the priest, and he shall take her outside the camp and she shall be slaughtered before him. 4And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger and sprinkle toward the front of the Tent of Meeting from her blood seven times. 5And the cow shall be burned in his sight, her hide and her flesh and her blood together with her dung he shall burn. 6And the priest shall take cedarwood and hyssop and crimson stuff and fling them into the burning of the cow. 7And the priest shall wash his garments and bathe his flesh in water, and then he may come into the camp, and the priest will be unclean till evening. 8And he who burns her shall wash his garments in water and bathe his flesh in water and will be unclean until evening. 9And a clean man shall gather the cow’s ashes and set them outside the camp in a clean place, and it shall become for the community of Israelites a thing to be kept as riddance water; it is an offense offering. 10And he who gathers the cow’s ashes shall wash his garments and will be unclean until evening, and it shall be for the Israelites and for the sojourner who dwells in their midst a perpetual statute. 11He who touches a dead body of any human person shall be unclean seven days. 12He shall cleanse himself with the ashes on the third day and on the seventh day he will be clean, and if he does not cleanse himself on the third day, on the seventh day he will not be clean. 13Whosoever touches a dead body, a human being who has died, and does not cleanse himself, he defiles the LORD’s Tabernacle, and that person shall be cut off from Israel, for riddance water was not thrown upon him. He is unclean; his uncleanness is still in him.
14“‘This is the teaching about a person who dies in a tent. Whosoever comes into the tent and all that is in the tent will be unclean seven days. 15And every open vessel that has no tight lid on it will be unclean. 16And whosoever in the open field touches a corpse slain by sword or a dead body or a human bone or a grave will be unclean seven days. 17And they shall take for the unclean person from the dust of the burning of the offense offering, and fresh water shall be put into it in a vessel. 18And a clean person shall take a hyssop and dip it in water and sprinkle it on the tent and on all the vessels and on the people who were there and on him who touched the bone or the corpse or the dead person or the grave. 19And the clean person shall sprinkle it over the unclean person on the third day and on the seventh day, and he shall cleanse him on the seventh day, and he shall wash his garments and bathe in water, and he will be clean at evening. 20And a man who becomes unclean and does not cleanse himself, that person will be cut off from the midst of the assembly for he has defiled the LORD’s sanctuary, riddance water has not been thrown on him, he is unclean. 21And it shall become a perpetual statute for them, and he who sprinkles the riddance water shall wash his garments, and he who touches the riddance water will be unclean until evening. 22And whatever the unclean person touches will be unclean, and the person who touches it will be unclean until evening.’”
CHAPTER 19 NOTES
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2. a perfect red cow that has no blemish. The traditional rendering of parah as “heifer” is not warranted by the Hebrew, which in no way suggests that the beast is not mature. The red color appears to be associated with the importance of blood in the purification ritual that follows, an association reinforced by the phonetic overlap in Hebrew between dam, “blood,” and ʾadom, “red.”
on which no yoke has been put. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “on which no yoke has gone up.” The manifest idea is that the cow should not have been used for profane purposes.
3. she shall be slaughtered. The Hebrew uses an impersonal third-person masculine verb, “one shall slaughter her,” a fairly common equivalent of the passive. (The same form occurs at the beginning of verse 5.) As verse 8 makes clear, some person other than Eleazar the priest does the burning: the priest himself is kept at a certain distance from this procedure, supervising it (the force of “before him” in this verse).
4. her blood. As elsewhere, blood has a purifying function, serving as what Jacob Milgrom calls a “spiritual detergent.” The blood is sprinkled “toward” the Tent of Meeting because the whole ritual takes place at a considerable distance from it, outside the camp.
9. it is an offense offering. This comment is a kind of gloss. A normal offense offering would be sacrificed on the altar to expiate an offense. These ashes mixed with water serve a similar function of ridding the person of contamination. Both the corpse and the act of transgression are imagined as imparting a polluting physical residue, a kind of miasma, that has to be cleansed.
11. He who touches a dead body. Baruch Levine has made a persuasive case that the “hidden agenda” of this whole section is an attempt to discourage the cult of the dead. Sundry Ugaritic and Mesopotamian documents suggest a widespread cult of the dead (especially, royal dead) in the ancient Near East, and there are some hints of its presence in the Bible proper. These laws, then, argue that the dead, far from being objects of worship and propitiation, are a source of contamination, and that even accidental contact with corpse or grave or bone requires a rite of purification. Without such purification, the defiled person is proscribed from the community (verse 13).
12. the ashes. The Hebrew says only “it,” but the antecedent of the pronoun has been substituted for clarity in the translation. (The Hebrew for “ashes” is singular.)
14. all that is in the tent will be unclean. The ritual impurity exuded by the corpse contaminates everything within the enclosed space of the tent, except for tightly sealed vessels. Although there is a similarity here to the modern understanding of the mechanism of contagion in highly communicable diseases, the similarity is a coincidence flowing from the ancient conception of impurity as a seeping miasma.
16. a corpse slain by sword or a dead body or a human bone. Any dead body, whether a victim of the sword or of natural causes, or any remnant of a dead body, is equally contaminant. The stress on “human,” as some of the medieval commentators note, indicates that no distinction is intended between Israelite and non-Israelite corpses.
17. the dust. Dust and ashes, because they are a set collocation in biblical usage (see Genesis 18:27), exhibit a certain degree of interchangeability, though ʿafar does usually indicate dust of the earth and ʾefer the residue of burning.
1And the Israelites, the whole community, came to the Wilderness of Zin, in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh. And Miriam died there and she was buried there.
2And the community had no water, and they assembled against Moses and against Aaron. 3And the people disputed with Moses, and they said, saying, “Would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the LORD. 4And why did you bring the LORD’s assembly to this wilderness to die here, we and our beasts? 5And why did you take us out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place, not a place of seed or fig tree or vine or pomegranate, and no water to drink?” 6And Moses, and Aaron with him, came away from the assembly to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and fell on their faces, and the LORD’s glory appeared to them. 7And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 8“Take the staff and assemble the community, you and Aaron your brother, and you shall speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will yield its water, and you shall bring forth water for them from the rock and give drink to the community and to its beasts.” 9And Moses took the staff from before the LORD as He had charged. 10And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly in front of the rock, and he said to them “Listen, pray, rebels! Shall we bring forth water for you from this rock?” 11And Moses raised his hand and he struck the rock with his staff twice and abundant water came out, and the community, with its beasts, drank. 12And the LORD said to Moses and to Aaron, “Inasmuch as you did not trust Me to sanctify Me before the eyes of the Israelites, even so you shall not bring this assembly to the land that I have given to them.” 13These are the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites disputed with the LORD and He was sanctified through them.
14And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom: “Thus said your brother Israel, ‘You know all the hardship that has found us. 15Our fathers went down to Egypt and we dwelled in Egypt many years and the Egyptians did evil to us and to our fathers. 16And we cried out to the LORD and He heard our voice and sent a messenger and brought us out of Egypt. And look, we are in Kadesh, a town on the edge of your territory. 17Let us, pray, pass through your land. We will not pass through field or vineyard and we will not drink well water. On the king’s road we will go. We will not swerve to the right or the left until we pass through your territory.’” 18And Edom said to him, “You shall not pass through me, lest with the sword I come out to meet you.” 19And the Israelites said to him, “On the highway we will go up. And should we drink your water, I and my livestock, I will pay its price. Only it is nothing. On foot let me pass through.” 20And he said, “You shall not pass!” And Edom came out to meet him with heavy troops and a strong hand. 21And Edom refused to let Israel pass through his territory, and Israel swung away from him.
22And they journeyed on from Kadesh, and the Israelites, all the community, came to Hor the Mountain. 23And the LORD said to Moses and to Aaron at Hor the Mountain on the border of the land of Edom, saying, 24“Let Aaron be gathered to his kin, for he shall not come into the land that I have given to the Israelites because you both have rebelled against My word at the waters of Meribah. 25Take Aaron and Eleazar his son and bring them up Hor the Mountain. 26And strip Aaron of his garments and clothe with them Eleazar his son, and Aaron will be gathered up and will die there.” 27And Moses did as the LORD had charged, and they went up Hor the Mountain before the eyes of all the community. 28And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments and clothed with them Eleazar his son, and Aaron died there on the mountaintop, and Moses came down, and Eleazar with him, from the mountain. 29And all the community saw that Aaron had expired, and all the house of Israel keened for Aaron thirty days.
CHAPTER 20 NOTES
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1. the whole community. Both Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra understand this phrase as intended to underline the fact that the Wilderness generation has died out and that a whole new community of Israelites is now poised to enter the land. The widely shared inference is that the story has now reached the fortieth year of Wilderness wanderings.
And Miriam died. This isolated obituary notice is inserted here to provide a symmetrical frame for the two stories of Moses’s striking the rock and the rebuff of Israel by Edom. Miriam’s death stands at the beginning and that of her brother Aaron at the end.
3. And the people disputed with Moses. This story is a close counterpart to the episode of complaint at the beginning of the Wilderness wanderings, Exodus 17:1–7. Even the place-names overlap: this place is called Meribah (Disputation); the site of the murmuring in Exodus is called Massah and Meribah (Testing and Dispute). In the present episode, the people provide a fuller description of the awfulness of the great desert (verse 5), and no mention is made here, as it is in Exodus 17, that Moses fears he will be stoned by the people, though perhaps fear is implied in the report that Moses and Aaron “came away from [mipney] the assembly to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting” (verse 6), as into a place of refuge.
Would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the LORD. To mention the most recent episode, Dathan and Abiram and their followers were swallowed up by the earth, Korah and his people incinerated—instantaneous deaths that now seem preferable to slow death by thirst.
8. Take the staff. The fact that it is not referred to as “your staff” implies that it is a staff—whether Moses’s or Aaron’s—that has been set aside for keeping in the Tent of Meeting “before the LORD” (verse 9).
assemble the community. The crucial verbal stem q-h-l has been used in a negative sense: the mutinous assembling against Moses and Aaron. Now they are enjoined to assemble the community to be united in witnessing God’s saving power.
10. Shall we bring forth water for you from this rock? The verb for taking out or bringing out is the same one the people used (verse 5) to refer to their trajectory from Egypt into the wilderness. Both they and Moses attach the verb to the wrong subject because in both cases it is God who does the bringing out, not Moses and Aaron. Milgrom, building on an insight of the medieval French Hebrew commentator Bekhor Hashor, persuasively argues that Moses’s sin, for which he is condemned to die outside the borders of the promised land, is his presumptuous claim, at the very moment he is supposed to “sanctify” God in the eyes of the people, that it is he and Aaron who will bring forth the water from the rock. A venerable tradition sees Moses’s sin in his angry striking of the rock instead of speaking to it as he was instructed, but in the twin episode in Exodus 17, he is actually told to strike the rock, and such efficacious gestures with the staff have been an authorized part of Moses’s role as a worker of wonders from the beginning of his mission.
13. and He was sanctified through them. The antecedent of “them” is ambiguous, but the proximate noun that creates the fewest difficulties is “waters.” Moses and Aaron had the opportunity to proclaim God’s power in bringing forth the water from the rock. Although they failed in this, the gush of water from the rock that revived the thirsting people nevertheless proved to be a confirmation of God’s power, “sanctifying” Him, rather than being a demonstration of Moses’s ability as an arch-magician.
14. Thus said your brother Israel. The first two words of this clause are the so-called messenger formula that is conventionally used to introduce the text, whether written or oral, of a message (roughly like the salutation in a modern letter). Collective Israel identifies himself to Edom as “your brother” because they are in fact ethnic kin; according to Genesis, the eponymous founders of the two peoples, Jacob–Israel and Esau–Edom, were twins. The sending of messengers to Edom, as many commentators have noted, recalls Jacob’s sending messengers to his brother Esau after two decades of separation. This heir of Esau, however, behaves quite differently from his ancestor, flatly rejecting Israel’s claim to brotherhood and its accompanying request of transit through his territory.
15. Our fathers went down to Egypt. This recapitulation of history is in part intended to enlist a sense of Semitic ethnic solidarity against the non-Semitic Egyptian persecutors.
16. sent a messenger. In some of the varying accounts in Exodus, not God Himself but a divine messenger leads Israel out of slavery into the wilderness.
territory. The Hebrew gevul means either “territory” or “border.” In verse 23 the term obviously has the latter meaning.
17. Let us, pray, pass through your land. The Israelites are careful to use the most polite and deferential forms in this diplomatic petition.
the king’s road. This is a major north-south route from Syria through trans-Jordan to Egypt.
18. And Edom said. The obvious sense is “the king of Edom,” just as “France” in Shakespeare’s plays can mean “the king of France.”
You shall not pass. Following the principle of contrastive dialogue often evident in biblical narrative, Edom’s response, after Israel’s elaborate petition, is abrupt and blunt. His second response (verse 20) is even more abrupt, only two words in the Hebrew, loʾ taʿavor, “you shall not pass.”
19. highway. The Hebrew mesilah is a beaten track, and appears to be a synonym for the king’s road.
I will pay its price. As Rashi suggests, Israel now proffers a possibility of economic gain if Edom will grant transit rights.
21. and Israel swung away from him. In order to avoid a clash with the massed Edomite forces, the Israelites, instead of proceeding north by northeast, swing around (literally, “incline”) to the east, coming to a place of encampment perhaps fifty miles eastward at Hor the Mountain.
22. Hor the Mountain. This odd form reproduces the unusual word order of the Hebrew, used only for this mountain.
24. gathered to his kin. This decorous euphemism is used instead of the plain verb “die.” you both. “Both” is added in the translation to reflect the plural Hebrew verb that addresses both brothers.
rebelled against My word. The Hebrew says literally “against My mouth.” God had said, “I shall bring forth water”; Moses on behalf of himself and Aaron said, “Shall we bring forth water … ?”
26. strip … clothe. The divestiture of Aaron leaves him naked in his human vulnerability, without accoutrement of office, before the universal fact of death. But clothing his son in the priestly garb is also a concrete manifestation of the continuity of his line and its sacerdotal authority. This is one reason that traditional Hebrew commentaries see Aaron’s demise as a blissful death.
die there. Only now is the blunt verb of death introduced, after Moses has been twice prepared for the loss of his brother through the euphemism and the instructions of divestiture.
29. all the community saw … all the house of Israel keened. The textual unit that began with “all the community” arriving at Kadesh, where they disputed with Moses and Aaron, ends with all the community joined in mourning for Aaron. The biblical narrator’s characteristic impassivity does not allow us to know confidently whether these thirty days of mourning are merely a formal ritual or an expression of real sorrow. Aaron was often enough a target of popular resentment, as in the very recent episode of the waters of Meribah. But he was also often a welcome intercessor for the people. Rashi neatly catches the second possibility, the people’s reaction to the loss of a cherished leader: “When they saw Moses and Eleazar coming down and Aaron did not come down, they said, ‘Where is Aaron?’ He said to them, ‘He’s dead.’ They said, ‘Is it possible that the angel of death should conquer him who stood against the destroying angel and held back the scourge?’”
1And the Canaanite, king of Arad, the Negeb dweller, heard that Israel had come by way of Atharim, and he did battle with Israel and took captives from him. 2And Israel made a vow to the LORD and said, “If You indeed give this people into my hand, I will put its towns under the ban.” 3And the LORD hearkened to Israel’s voice and He gave the Canaanite into his hand, and he put them and their towns under the ban, and called the name of the place Hormah.
4And they journeyed on from Hor the Mountain by way of the Red Sea to skirt round the land of Edom, and the people grew impatient on the way. 5And the people spoke against God and against Moses: “Why did you bring us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread and there is no water, and we loathe the wretched bread.” 6And the LORD sent against the people the viper-serpents, and they bit the people, and many people of Israel died. 7And the people came to Moses and said, “We have offended, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD that He take the serpents away from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. 8And the LORD said to Moses: “Make you a viper and put it on a standard, and so then, whoever is bitten will see it and live.” 9And Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it on a standard, and so then, if the serpent bit a man, he looked on the serpent of bronze and lived.
10And the Israelites journeyed on and camped at Oboth. 11And they journeyed on from Oboth and camped at Iye-Abarim in the wilderness that faced Moab, toward the rising sun. 12From there they journeyed onward and camped at the Wadi of Zered. 13From there they journeyed onward and camped across the Arnon, which is in the wilderness coming out from the territory of the Amorite, for the Arnon is the border of Moab between Moab and the Amorite. 14Therefore is it said in the Book of the Battles of YHWH:
“Against Waheb in a whirlwind and the Wadis of Arnon,
15and the cascade of the wadis that turns down toward Ar’s dwelling,
and clings to Moab’s border.”
16And from there to Beʾer, which is the well of which the LORD said to Moses, “Gather the people, that I may give them water.” 17Then did Israel sing this song:
“Rise up, O well!
Sing out to it.
18Well, that captains dug,
the people’s nobles delved it,
with a scepter, with their walking stick.”
And from Midbar to Mattanah. 19And from Mattanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to Bamoth. 20And from Bamoth to the valley that is in the steppes of Moab, by the top of Pisgah looking out over the wasteland.
21And Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, saying, 22“Let me pass through your land. We will not turn off in field or vineyard. We will not drink well water. On the king’s road we will go until we pass through your territory.” 23And Sihon did not let Israel pass through his territory, and Sihon gathered all his troops and went out to meet Israel in the wilderness, and he came to Jahaz and did battle with Israel. 24And Israel struck him down by the edge of the sword and seized his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok to the Ammonites, for the border of the Ammonites was strong. 25And Israel took all these cities and Israel settled in all the cities of the Amorite, in Heshbon and in all its surrounding villages. 26For Heshbon is the city of Sihon king of the Amorites, and he had done battle with the first king of Moab and he took all his land from his hand as far as the Arnon. 27Therefore do the rhapsodes say:
“Come to Heshbon, let it stand built,
may the city of Sihon be unshaken.
28For fire has come out from Heshbon,
flame from the town of Sihon.
It consumed Ar of Moab,
the notables of Arnon’s high places.
29Woe to you, Moab,
You are lost, O people of Chemosh.
His sons he has turned into fugitives,
and his daughters to captive state
to the Amorite king Sihon.
30And their mastery is lost,
from Heshbon to Dibon.
We wrought havoc up to Nophah,
which is all the way to Medeba.”
31And Israel settled in the land of the Amorite. 32And Moses sent to spy out Jazer, and they captured its surrounding villages and dispossessed the Amorite who was there. 33And they turned and went up on the road to Bashan, and Og king of Bashan came out to meet them in battle, he and all his troops, at Edrei. 34And the LORD said to Moses, “Do not fear him, for into your hand I have given him and all his troops and his land, and you shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites who dwells in Heshbon.” 35And they struck him down, and his sons and all his troops, till no remnant was left him, and they took hold of his land.
CHAPTER 21 NOTES
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1. king of Arad. Arad was a town in the central southern Negeb. Archaeological investigation raises doubts as to whether it existed in this early period. The whole account here of battles and conquests around the southern and eastern perimeters of Canaan appears to be a complicated interweaving of retrojections from a later period with fragmentary historical memories. The comments here will concentrate on the literary articulation of the account without attempting to sort out the layered phenomena of historical report.
he did battle with Israel. Although the way of Atharim has not been identified, the preceding narrative encourages the inference that the Israelites are advancing eastward along the southern border of Canaan, avoiding any penetration into Canaan proper. The king of Arad, then, hearing of their movements, takes the initiative in leading an expeditionary force southward across the border against them. This act of aggression, rewarded by the initial taking of captives, is what prompts the Israelites to their vow of utter destruction.
2. put its towns under the ban. The Hebrew verb heḥerim (cognate noun, ḥerem) means to devote to utter destruction, with any booty taken to be dedicated to the cult rather than retained for private enjoyment. The place-name Hormah memorializes this grim practice.
3. into his hand. This clarifying phrase (a single Hebrew word) is lacking in the Masoretic Text but is reflected in a couple of ancient versions.
4. the Red Sea. In the present context, yam suf could not refer to the Sea of Reeds, the marshy lake region in northern Egypt, as it appears to do in Exodus, but would plausibly be the Red Sea, the body of water for which the term is used in the Book of Kings.
5. we loathe the wretched bread. The probable literal sense of the Hebrew is “our very self [nafsheinu as an intensive form of the first-person plural pronoun] loathes the wretched bread.” The intensive sense is transferred in this translation to the extremeness of the verb “loathe.” But there are two more physiological meanings of nefesh that are also possible here: “appetite” or “gullet.” Perhaps the people are saying that they retch when they try to eat the bread. The complaint here repeats the pattern of a whole series of murmuring episodes that began in Exodus 17. The one notable difference in this instance is that the people revile the very stuff that God has given them as a bounty to sustain them in the wilderness—the manna. This denigration of a divine gift may explain why, in contrast to the earlier episodes, God immediately responds with lethal punishment.
6. viper-serpents. The Hebrew uses two words that, to judge by their bracketing elsewhere as parallel terms in poetry, are synonyms: neḥashim and serafim. The second word, transparently derived from the root that means “to burn,” is also used, in Isaiah 6, for “fiery angels” (from which the English “seraph” is taken); that application of the term to snakes appears to come from the burning effect of the venom. Although it is unlikely that the serafim were fire-breathing dragons, as some fanciful commentators have claimed, this is still another instance in which kernels of historical recollection have been expanded into myth. Israelites who wandered through the wilderness would no doubt have been regularly exposed to the threat of venomous snakes native to the desert. Here, however, the poisonous creatures are suddenly and miraculously dispatched by God against Israel as a relentless attacking force.
7. the serpents. The Hebrew employs a singular, collective noun, a common idiomatic pattern for animals in biblical usage.
9. a serpent of bronze. The Hebrew is neḥash neḥoshet. Rashi vividly catches the point of the wordplay: “It was not said to him ‘of bronze,’ but Moses said, ‘The Holy One calls it naḥash and I’ll make it out of neḥoshet’—a pun.” The word magic of replicating serpent/naḥash in bronze/neḥoshet reinforces the device of sympathetic magic whereby the sight of the bronze image of the serpent becomes an antidote for the serpents’ poisonous bite. Interestingly, a small bronze serpent, evidently used in the local cult, has been found at Timnah (where Solomon mined copper) near Eilat, the region in which this incident is reported to have taken place.
14. the Book of the Battles of YHWH. This is one of several lost books mentioned in the Bible. The tetragrammaton is represented in this instance as YHWH rather than as “the LORD” in order to intimate the archaic character of the book’s title. One may conjecture that this ancient—probably poetic—book was not preserved for the canon because it was felt by later authorities to be too mythological in nature, representing YHWH as a warrior-god in direct combat with Israel’s enemies—as He figures in the Song of the Sea—rather than working through the agency of Israel, as is the typical case in the Bible’s historical narratives.
Against Waheb in a whirlwind. The quotation from the Book of the Battles of YHWH is fragmentary, and it is not easy to determine what it might be about. The first two place-names are preceded by the accusative prefix ʾet but no verb is included in the quotation. It seems reasonable to infer that a verb of violent action, suggesting something like “to storm,” with YHWH as subject, was present in the text immediately before the words actually quoted. In this translation, the implication of the accusative prefix is represented by “against.” Sufah, the word for “whirlwind,” is construed by many to be a place-name (otherwise unattested), but given the subject of divine battling, “whirlwind” makes better sense.
16. Beʾer, which is the well of which the LORD said. Beʾer means “well” in Hebrew. The narrative here invokes an apparently familiar episode of God’s providing water in the desert but does not directly report it. Instead, we have the quotation of a second archaic poem that celebrates the discovery of the well. Such well-songs are actually current among later Bedouins: when life in the parched desert is so dependent on water, the discovery of an underground spring is an occasion for musical thanksgiving.
18. Well, that captains dug, / the people’s nobles delved it. Although Abraham ibn Ezra wants to identify these leaders as Moses and Aaron, it is far more likely that this ancient bit of song registers a less historically anchored celebration by desert tribesmen and their chieftains, who, hyperbolically, are said to have dug into a water source using their staffs of authority as digging implements.
20. the steppes of Moab. These notations of itinerary indicate that the Israelites have at this point completed their march to the east and are poised for a northward drive. The Moabites and the Amorites inhabit the region that is part of present-day Jordan; most of the towns mentioned are about a day’s march to the east of the Dead Sea. The northernmost area mentioned is Bashan, which is above the Dead Sea.
22. Let me pass through your land. Although the language repeats the salient elements of the diplomatic message to the king of Edom, there is no recapitulation of the enslavement in Egypt, perhaps because the Amorites are not a “brother” people like the Edomites.
23. Sihon did not let Israel pass through his territory. His response is the same as that of the king of Edom with one difference: he does not even honor the Israelites’ request for free passage with an answer but instead musters his forces for an attack against them, like the king of Arad.
24. the edge of the sword. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “mouth of the sword,” an image correlated with the idiomatic usage in which the sword is said to “consume.”
from the Arnon to the Jabbok. Both these rivers run north to south, the Jabbok on the border of Canaan. The impregnable border of the Ammonites is to the east.
25. all its surrounding villages. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “all its daughters.” In biblical idiom, the city figures as a mother and the little settlements in its vicinity are daughters.
26. the first king of Moab. The expression could conceivably mean “the former king of Moab,” as Baruch Levine contends.
27. Therefore do the rhapsodes say. In the anthologizing spirit of this entire section, we are given still another quotation from an old poem, one that evidently was a popular subject for recitation by the rhapsodes (moshlim) of this region. The poem could not be Israelite in origin, for it celebrates the greatness of the Amorite city Heshbon and its conquest of Moab. This text seems to be a Hebrew translation or adaptation of Amorite epic material celebrating a military victory famous throughout the region.
28. For fire has come out from Heshbon, / flame from the town of Sihon. The style of the poem is manifestly traditional, relying heavily on formulaic phrases and formulaic word-pairings. This line, which has numerous analogues in the poetry of the Prophets, is a textbook illustration of the formulaic construction of a line of parallelistic verse: fire/flame; Heshbon/the town of Sihon, the verb “come out” doing double duty for both versets, with the added element “town of” (qiryat) providing an accented syllable that a second verb would yield and thus preserving a three-beat rhythm in each verset.
29. You are lost. The Hebrew verb means “to be lost,” “to perish,” “to vanish.”
Chemosh. He is the patron deity of Moab.
His sons he has turned into fugitives. Although the verb could be a passive masquerading as a third-person singular transitive, it makes better poetic sense to construe Chemosh as the subject: the god of Moab has been compelled to make his own sons fugitives.
30. And their mastery is lost. The Hebrew waniram is obscure. The initial Masoretic vowel would make it a verb. This translation, following a construction endorsed by Rashi and many modern scholars, reads it as a noun, weniram. That noun, nir, has the primary meaning of “yoke,” and then by metaphorical extension, “mastery” or “rule,” and, alternately, by metonymic extension, “plowed field.” An attractive alternative reading offered by the Septuagint is weninam, “and their descendants.”
33. Og king of Bashan. According to the tradition registered in Deuteronomy 3:1–11, Og was a giant, but there is no indication of that in the present report.
troops. The collective noun ʿam usually designates “troops” in any sort of military context, though the conjunction of ʿam with “land” in the next verse raises the possibility that it might reflect here its more general meaning of “people.”
1And the Israelites journeyed onward, and they camped in the steppes of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho. 2And Balak son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorite. 3And Moab was very terrified of the people, for they were many, and Moab loathed the Israelites. 4And Moab said to the elders of Midian, “Now, this assembly will nibble away everything around us as the ox nibbles the grass of the field.” And Balak son of Zippor was king over Moab at that time. 5And he sent messengers to Balaam son of Beor at Pethor, which is on the Euphrates in his people’s land, to call him, saying, “Look, a people has come out of Egypt. Look, it has covered the eye of the land and it is sitting over against me. 6And so, pray, go curse this people for me, for it is mightier than I. Perhaps I shall be able to strike against it and drive it out of the land. For I know that whom you bless is blessed and whom you curse is cursed.” 7And the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian went, with spells in their hand, and they came to Balaam and spoke Balak’s words to him. 8And he said to them, “Lodge here tonight, and I shall give you back an answer as the LORD will speak to me.” And the chieftains of Moab stayed with Balaam. 9And God came to Balaam and said, “Who are these men with you?” 10And Balaam said to God: “Balak son of Zippor has sent to me: 11‘Look, the people that has come out of Egypt has covered the eye of the land. So, go hex it for me. Perhaps I shall be able to do battle against it and drive it out.’” 12And God said to Balaam, “You shall not go with them. You shall not curse the people, for it is blessed.” 13And Balaam rose in the morning and said to Balak’s chieftains, “Go to your land, for the LORD has refused to let me go with you.” 14And the chieftains of Moab rose and came to Balak, and they said, “Balaam refused to go with us.” 15And Balak once more sent chieftains, more numerous and more honored than the others. 16And they came to Balaam and said to him, “Thus said Balak son of Zippor: ‘Do not, pray, hold back from going to me. 17For I will surely honor you greatly, and whatever you say to me, I will do. And, pray, go hex this people for me.’” 18And Balaam answered and said to Balak’s servants, “Should Balak give me his houseful of silver and gold, I could not cross the word of the LORD my God to do either a small thing or a great one. 19And now, stay here, you, too, tonight, that I may know what the LORD may speak further with me.” 20And God came to Balaam in the night and said to him, “If these men have come to call you, rise, go with them. 21But only the word that I speak to you shall you do.” And Balaam rose in the morning and saddled his ass, and he went with the chieftains of Moab. 22And God’s wrath flared because he was going with them, and the LORD’s messenger stationed himself in the road as an adversary to him, and he was riding his ass, and his two lads were with him. 23And the ass saw the LORD’s messenger stationed in the road, his sword unsheathed in his hand, and the ass swerved from the road and went into the field, and Balaam struck the ass to steer her back to the road. 24And the LORD’s messenger stood in the footpath through the vineyards, a fence on one side and a fence on the other. 25And the ass saw the LORD’s messenger and was pressed against the wall and pressed Balaam’s leg against the wall, and once more he struck her. 26And the LORD’s messenger crossed over and stood in a narrow place in which there was no way to swerve right or left. 27And the ass saw the LORD’s messenger and crouched down under Balaam and Balaam’s wrath flared and he struck the ass with the stick. 28And the LORD opened the ass’s mouth, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you should have struck me these three times?” 29And Balaam said to the ass, “Because you have toyed with me. Had I a sword in my hand, by now I would have killed you.” 30And the ass said to Balaam, “Am I not your ass upon whom you have ridden your whole life till this day? Have I ever been wont to do thus to you?” And he said, “No.” 31And the LORD unveiled Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the LORD’s messenger stationed in the road, his sword unsheathed in his hand, and he prostrated himself and bowed down on his face. 32And the LORD’s messenger said to him, “For what did you strike your ass three times now? Look, I myself have come out as adversary, for the road plunged before me. 33And the ass saw me and swerved away from me these three times. Had she not swerved away from me, by now it is you I would have killed, while her I would have let live.” 34And Balaam said to the LORD’s messenger, “I have offended, for I did not know that you were stationed to meet me in the road. And now, if it is wrong in your eyes, let me turn back.” 35And the LORD’s messenger said to Balaam, “Go with the men. But the word that I speak to you, it alone shall you do.” And Balaam went with Balak’s chieftains. 36And Balak heard that he had come, and he went out to meet him to the town of Moab, which is at the edge of the territory. 37And Balak said to Balaam, “Did I not assuredly send to call you? Why did you not go to me? Is it true that I cannot honor you?” 38And Balaam said to Balak, “Look, I have come to you now. Can I possibly speak anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, only that will I speak.” 39And Balaam went with Balak, and they came to Kiriath-Huzoth. 40And Balak slaughtered cattle and sheep and sent to Balaam and to the chieftains who were with him. 41And it happened in the morning that Balak took Balaam and brought him up to Bamoth-Baal, and he saw from there the edge of the people.
CHAPTER 22 NOTES
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2. Balak … saw. The thematic key word of this entire episode is “to see,” raʾoh (and in the poems that follow, its poetic synonym, “to gaze,” shur). The Moabite king sees the vast expanse of the Israelite multitudes, which at the climax of the story Balaam, the hexer he has hired, will see as well; the ass sees the LORD’s messenger in the road while her master, the professional seer, remains blind to the divine emissary until his eyes are “unveiled.”
3. Moab was very terrified of the people, for they were many, and Moab loathed the Israelites. This report alludes pointedly to the response of the Egyptians to the Israelites in Exodus. There, too, the sheer magnitude of the Hebrews is stressed, with two terms, rabim and ʿatsumim, “many” and “mighty,” that recur here, and the Egyptians, too, are said to “loathe” (verbal stem quts) the Israelites.
4. nibble away everything. The verb here for “chewing up” or “nibbling away” is generally reserved for animals, as the ox simile makes clear. The covering of the eye of the land in the next verse is an image borrowed from the plague of locusts in Exodus, which neatly catches the Moabites’ fearful revulsion at the sight of the Hebrew multitudes. (In the Egyptian loathing in Exodus, the Hebrews are assimilated to the realm of crawling and creeping things by the verb “swarm.”) In practical terms, though the Israelites have not actually invaded Moab, Balak fears that this vast horde will eat up everything in sight along the borders of his territory (“everything around us”).
5. the Euphrates. The Hebrew says “the River,” which usually is the designation for the Euphrates. In what follows, there is some ambiguity as to whether Balaam’s homeland is Aram in Mesopotamia or Ammon, to the southwest of Aram, in trans-Jordan. In the latter case, “the River” might be the Jabbok. The very next phrase here, “in his people’s land” ʾerets beney ʿamo, sounds a little odd in Hebrew, and a reading reflected in the Vulgate and the Peshitta, ʾerets beney ʿamon, “land of the Ammonites,” is a more idiomatic usage and would place Balaam in trans-Jordan. That reading, however, may be merely an ancient solution to the very textual difficulty delineated here.
6. whom you bless is blessed and whom you curse is cursed. Balak’s concluding words are the crux of this monotheistic fable. He assumes that he can employ Balaam as a technician of the realm of spirits to put a hex on his enemies. The emphatic point of the story is that God alone controls human destiny, and man has no independent power to impose curses or blessings.
7. the elders of Midian. The addition of Midianites, not afterward mentioned, to the delegation is perhaps puzzling. A couple of the medieval commentators propose that the frightened king of Moab is rounding up allies from his neighbors.
with spells in their hand. The meaning of this phrase has long been disputed. Since the Middle Ages, many interpreters claim that this is an idiom that actually means “payment for spells to be cast,” although one may wonder whether the emissaries would really have brought Balaam his reward—to entice him?—before he performed any service. The alternative view is that they brought along spells to demonstrate their own expertise in magic as credentials for their engaging him in informed fashion as a past master of the craft.
9. And God came to Balaam. This idiom, as Moshe Weinfeld notes, is reserved for God’s appearance to non-Israelites. It is equally noteworthy that God typically comes to non-Israelites in night-visions. (Compare the Gerarite king Abimelech in Genesis 20:3.) Otherwise, the entire story, with the fable of the talking ass that this commentary regards as integral to it, is altogether distinct from the surrounding narrative. Even the use of YHWH and ʾelohim as designations of the deity does not follow the pattern of discrete literary strands detectable elsewhere in the Torah. Baruch Levine conjectures that both story and poem are the special product of Israelite literary activity in Gilead, the central northern trans-Jordanian region. It is striking that an inscription on plaster, probably composed in the eighth century B.C.E., discovered in 1967 at Deir ʿAlla, in this same region, about fifteen kilometers east of the Jordan River, speaks of a powerful soothsayer and seer named Balaam son of [the Aramaic bar is used rather than the Hebrew ben] Beor. The language of the inscription, which some scholars have called “Gileadite,” is very close to Hebrew, perhaps merely a dialect of it with certain Aramaizing elements. Some terms in the inscription are quite similar to terms used in Balaam’s poems in our text. The Deir ʿAlla inscription, though fragmentary, clearly reflects a polytheistic outlook, which would by no means exclude an Israelite author. The well-known figure, then, of the pagan seer Balaam, whether legendary or historical, has been co-opted by the author of the Balaam story in Numbers to make a monotheistic point with considerable satirical brilliance. Balaam’s first words reveal him as someone who assumes all answers and instructions come from “the LORD,” YHWH (verse 8).
Who are these men with you? As elsewhere in dialogue between God and man (e.g., “Where is Abel your brother?”), God asks a question not in order to get information He needs but to elicit a response from his human interlocutor that will register some appropriate recognition of the situation at issue.
10. has sent to me. The verb here indicates: has sent me the following message. Balaam then goes on to quote the text of the message.
11. Look, the people that has come out. Although Balaam’s report repeats Balak’s words, he abbreviates the message, and, as Yitzhak Avishur neatly observes, he edits out elements that would unduly stress Balak’s personal perspective. Thus, “and it is sitting over against me” and “it is mightier than I” are both deleted.
17. I will surely honor you. “Honor” throughout suggests the generous bestowal of material rewards. The “more honored” emissaries of the second delegation may well be imagined as more splendid in raiment and personal ornament, explicitly chosen on these grounds in order to provide Balaam an intimation of the munificence from which he will benefit after rendering his services. One should note that Balak’s second dispatch to Balaam is much briefer than the first, not repeating anything about the vastness of the Israelite hordes but instead stressing the promise of payment, not mentioned in the first dispatch.
20. If these men have come to call you. God of course realizes that the men have come to “call,” or invite, Balaam. He has now determined to turn this invitation of a professional hexer into a trap to humiliate the polytheists, as the second sentence here (“But only the word that I speak …”) makes clear.
22. God’s wrath flared because he was going with them. This is a famous source of puzzlement because God has just told Balaam to go with them. Some biblical critics solve the problem by cutting the textual knot and assigning the tale of Balaam’s ass that begins here to an entirely independent source. But could the God of this story be capable of capricious second thoughts? Or, to suggest more moral grounds for the seeming contradiction of God’s act, when later He repeats what He had said in the night-vision, “Go with the men. But the word that I speak to you, it alone shall you do” (verse 35), the implication of the second sentence may be that Balaam was inwardly harboring other intentions. That is, he may have accepted the instructions of the dream-revelation in good faith, but now on the way to Moab, contemplating the profusion of wealth Balak has dangled before him, he could have begun to wonder whether he might not go ahead with a good professional execration. This shift of intention would then trigger God’s wrath and the sword-wielding divine messenger.
24. the footpath. The Hebrew mishʿol, which occurs only here, is transparently derived from shaʿal, “span,” and so implies a narrow pedestrian way. The story assumes the folktale structure of a crescendo of three repetitions (like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”) with a climactic reversal or revelation in the third occurrence. What is noteworthy here is the progressive constriction: from road to footpath to a way so narrow that there is no room to move to either side. The spatial arrangement of the story becomes a dramatization of how man and beast are inexorably caught in God’s design for them, from which there is no escape.
a fence. The fences are, as one would expect in this region, low stone walls, and should not be imagined as picket fences or hedges. Their construction becomes clear in the next verse.
25. and pressed Balaam’s leg against the wall. In the progression of three occurrences, first Balaam is caused to make an involuntary detour, now he is caused physical discomfort, and finally he will be totally stymied in his forward movement as the ass crouches down under him.
27. with the stick. No stick was previously mentioned. Abraham ibn Ezra, ever alert to minute textual details, infers that in the two previous instances Balaam struck the ass with a switch or branch and only now administers a more serious beating with a stick.
28. And the LORD opened the ass’s mouth. This is the only talking animal, if one excludes the mythological serpent in the Garden story, in the entire Bible. The early rabbis, sensitive to the anomaly, put the mouth of Balaam’s ass on their list of ten prodigies especially preordained from the time of creation. But the talking ass is perfectly in accord with the theological assumptions of the story: if God absolutely controls blessings and curses and vision, He can do the same for speech. And the ensuing dialogue between master and ass opens up splendid comic possibilities.
29. Because you have toyed with me. The wonderful absurdity of this response is that Balaam doesn’t miss a beat. Confronted with the articulated speech of his ass’s eminently justified complaint, he answers irascibly as though he were thoroughly accustomed to conducting debates with his beast.
Had I a sword in my hand. Even as he harangues his ass, Balaam remains perfectly blind to something the ass has had no difficulty seeing all along: he wishes he had a sword at the very moment the LORD’s messenger stands in front of him wielding an unsheathed sword.
30. your whole life. The Hebrew, a single word, means literally “as long as you have been.”
Have I ever been wont to do thus to you? The ass sounds altogether like an aggrieved worker. Her service to her master has always been dependable, as Balaam concedes in his one-word response, so these three deviations must have special cause.
31. the LORD unveiled Balaam’s eyes. The unveiling or uncovering (verbal stem g-l-h) of the eyes is of course crucial to the central theme of vision, and both unveiling and eyes will recur in the prologue of Balaam’s oracles.
he prostrated himself and bowed down on his face. This gesture of reverence continues the comedy of man and beast, for Balaam unwittingly imitates what his ass has already done in crouching down.
32. the road plunged before me. The reader should be warned that no one really knows what this phrase means. The verb yarat occurs only one other time in the Bible, in Job 16:11, and it is not even certain that the same root is manifested there. The context in Job suggests violent descent or some other catastrophic action. Many interpreters, medieval and modern, seek to smooth out the meaning by understanding derekh, “road” or “way,” as “mission” or “behavior,” referring to Balaam. In that case, however, one would expect “your way” instead of “the way.” It seems best for the translation to reproduce the enigma of the Hebrew.
33. by now it is you I would have killed. The divine messenger, sword in hand, addressing the swordless Balaam, bounces back to him the very words he used against the ass (verse 29).
while her I would have let live. The messenger’s words are a virtual citation of the words Abram says about himself and Sarai, “they will kill me while you they will let live” (Genesis 12:12). This transposition of the predicament of patriarch and matriarch to pagan prophet and his ass is still another bold gesture of comic incongruity in the shaping of the story.
36. And Balak heard that he had come. Against the initial “seeing” (verse 2), he has now only this mediated report of Balaam’s arrival at his border, and he has not the slightest idea of all that Balaam with his unveiled eyes has seen, so he blithely imagines that his design against Israel is moving forward.
37. Why did you not go to me? Although the ordinary logic of English usage would call for “come,” this translation maintains “go” (verbal stem h-l-k) throughout because it is manifestly a thematic key word in Balaam’s story, the story of a man who goes on a questionable way.
38. The word that God puts in my mouth. Balaam, after his confrontation by the sword-wielding messenger of the LORD, is speaking in perfect good faith. Balak on his part no doubt assumes that this is the sort of pious twaddle that a top-notch execrator would invoke for the benefit of a client before proceeding to put a hex on someone.
40. and sent to Balaam and to the chieftains who were with him. Balak sends the dressed meat to Balaam and the chieftains as an act of hospitality and a prelude to the great ceremony of execration. It is unclear whether any of this slaughtering is sacrificial or whether it is purely a culinary measure, the same Hebrew verb serving both purposes.
41. brought him up to Bamoth-Baal. The place-name means “high places [that is, sacrificial sites] of Baal,” and so becomes the stage for the elaborate procedure of sacrifices that immediately follows. The bringing up is equally important because each of Balaam’s oracles is delivered from a promontory where he can look out over the multitudes of the Israelite camp.
and he saw from there the edge of the people. The narrative unit from the initial exposition of the story to the moment before the first oracle begins with Balak’s seeing Israel and concludes with Balaam’s seeing Israel. But the professional visionary can see only the “edge” of the people, both because he is at a considerable distance from them, on the heights, and because they constitute such a vast expanse that his eye can take in no more than the edge of their encampment. The legendary notion that the total population of the Wilderness generation comes to well over two million is here both dramatized and thematized.
1And Balaam said to Balak, “Build me here seven altars, and ready me here seven bulls and seven rams.” 2And Balak did as Balaam had spoken, and Balak and Balaam offered up bull and ram on each altar. 3And Balaam said to Balak, “Station yourself by your burnt offering, and let me go—perhaps the LORD will chance upon me and will show me something that I may tell you.” And he went off in silence. 4And God chanced upon Balaam, and he said to Him, “The seven altars I have arrayed, and I have offered up bull and ram on each altar.” 5And the LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth, and He said, “Go back to Balak and thus shall you speak.” 6And he went back to him, and, look, he was stationed by his burnt offering, he and all the chieftains of Moab. 7And he took up his theme and he said:
“From Aram did Balak lead me,
the king of Moab, from the eastern mountains:
‘Go, curse me Jacob,
8and go, doom Israel.’
What can I hex that El has not hexed,
and what can I doom that the LORD has not doomed?
9For from the top of the crags do I see them
and from the hills do I gaze on them.
Look, a people that dwells apart,
amongst nations it is not reckoned.
10Who has numbered the dust of Jacob,
who counted the issue of Israel?
Let me but die the death of the upright,
and may my aftertime be like his.”
11And Balak said, “What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, and, look, you have done nothing but bless.” 12And he answered and said, “Why, that which the LORD puts in my mouth, only that do I keep to speak.” 13And Balak said to him, “Go with me, pray, to another place, from which you will see him—only his edge will you see, but the whole of him you will not see, and hex him for me from there.” 14And he took him to the Lookouts’ Field, on the top of Pisgah, and he built seven altars and he offered up bull and ram on each altar. 15And he said to Balak, “Station yourself here by your burnt offering, and I myself shall seek some chance.” 16And the LORD chanced upon Balaam and put a word in his mouth and said, “Go back to Balak, and thus shall you speak.” 17And he came back to him, and there he was stationed by his burnt offering, and the chieftains of Moab with him. And Balak said to him, “What has the LORD spoken?” 18And he took up his theme and he said:
“Rise, Balak, and listen,
give ear to me, O Zippor’s son!
19El is no man who would fail,
no human who would show change of heart.
Would he say and not perform
would he speak and not fulfill it?
20Look, to bless I was taken,
and He blessed, so I will not reverse it.
21He has beheld no harm in Jacob,
and has seen no trouble in Israel.
The LORD his god is with him,
the king’s trumpet blast in his midst,
22El who brings them out from Egypt,
like the wild ox’s antlers for him.
23For there is no divining in Jacob
and no magic in Israel.
and to Israel what El has wrought.
24Look, a people like a lion arises,
like the king of beasts, rears up.
He will not lie down till he devours the prey,
and blood of the slain he drinks.”
25And Balak said to Balaam, “Neither to curse shall you curse him nor to bless shall you bless him.” 26And Balaam answered and said to Balak, “Did I not speak to you, saying, ‘All that the LORD speaks, only that may I do’?” 27And Balak said to Balaam, “Go, pray, let me take you to another place. Perhaps it will be right in the eyes of the god and you will curse him for me from there.” 28And Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, which looks out over the wasteland. 29And Balaam said to Balak, “Build me here seven altars and ready me here seven bulls and seven rams.” 30And Balak did as Balaam had said, and he offered up bull and ram on each altar.
CHAPTER 23 NOTES
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1. Build me here seven altars. This elaborate cultic procedure turning on the sacred number seven, and, as it emerges, repeated three times, may be Balaam’s set professional regimen of preparation for delivering an efficacious curse or blessing, but there is a suspicion that it could also be a delaying tactic through which he postpones the moment when the LORD, as he has good reason to expect, will put a blessing and not a curse in his mouth. The number seven is also the number of times that Balaam’s vatic utterances are formally introduced by “and he took up his theme and he said.” The narrative also establishes a satiric parallel between the three times that Balak and Balaam set up altars and offer sacrifices and the three times that Balaam and his ass are stymied by the LORD’s messenger. Balak now plays the role of the thrice frustrated Balaam in the preceding episode, and Balaam, whose eyes have been “unveiled,” plays the role of the ass. In each of the three instances, the LORD “chances upon” or sets His spirit on Balaam, just as the LORD’s messenger stationed himself before the ass. (The verb “to station oneself” is here transferred to Balak, waiting by the sacrifice.) In the progression from instance to instance, Balak’s frustration mounts, just as Balaam’s did with the ass, for not only is the plan of execration repeatedly frustrated, but the blessings pronounced upon Israel become more extravagant from one oracle to the next. The monotheist’s satiric exposure of the polytheist’s delusions could scarcely be more brilliant.
3. in silence. The Hebrew adverbial form beshefi occurs only here, and its meaning is not certain.
7. he took up his theme. The Hebrew term mashal represented by “theme” is variously used in the Bible for different kinds of poetic composition—aphoristic, proverbial, rhapsodic. (Thus the poets called moshlim in 21:27 are rendered as “rhapsodes.”) Here the poetic utterance is oracular in nature. Mashal is not a term generally used for the pronouncements of the Hebrew prophets, and so it may have been deemed especially appropriate for this gentile seer.
8. What can I hex that El has not hexed. El, though it is also a Hebrew common noun that means “god,” is the proper name of the head of the Canaanite pantheon. One may resist Baruch Levine’s conclusion that the poem reflects a still polytheistic stage of thinking about gods in ancient Israel, but there is surely a certain teasing quality of hovering between two different theologies in the designations for God in the poem. A non-Israelite visionary such as Balaam might well speak of El in the old Canaanite sense, yet El appears to be a synonym, in the parallelism of the two versets of this line, with YHWH, the LORD, and in the second oracle (verse 22), El plays precisely the traditional role of YHWH in bringing Israel out of Egypt. This translation seeks to preserve the poem’s gesture toward the archaic by using the proper noun El instead of “God.”
9. see … gaze. The synonymous language of the line highlights the theme of seeing that was prominent in the tale of the ass.
them. The Hebrew says “it/him,” the antecedent being the collective noun “Israel.”
10. who counted. Reading, with the Septuagint umi sapar instead of the Masoretic umispar, “and the number of.”
the issue. The meaning of the unusual Hebrew term rovaʿ is in dispute. The verbal stem r-b-ʿ (akin to r-b-ts) does sometimes apply to copulation and so, perhaps, to the consequence of copulation. Others relate it to the number four, ʾarbaʿ (thus Levine, “quarterland”); and still others, with an eye to a possible Akkadian cognate, understand it as another word for “dust,” or perhaps “dust cloud.”
the upright. An emendation of yesharim proposed by Levine produces yeshurun, “Jeshurun,” a synonym for Israel.
my aftertime. The Hebrew aḥarit is an abstract noun derived from aḥar, “after.” It is misleading to translate it as “afterlife” because Israel in this period had no real notion of an afterlife. What Balaam appears to be saying is that when he dies (an eventuality mentioned in the first verset here), he would like the name that lives after him to be as unassailable as that of the people of Israel. This view of life and death is closer to Homer than to later Judaism or Christianity.
18. Zippor’s son. The poem uses an archaic-poetic construct form, beno tsipor, instead of the usual ben tsipor, “son of Zippor.”
19. El is no man. The monotheistic point briefly stated in the first oracle (verse 8) is here expanded to a full-fledged theological proposition on God’s fixed intentions that resist any human manipulation.
20. I was taken. Reading luqaḥti instead of the Masoretic laqaḥti, “I took.”
and He blessed. A change of one vowel in the consonantal text yields the infinitive “bless,” which might make a better syntactic parallelism with the first verset.
22. like the wild ox’s antlers for him. Toʿafot, the word translated as “antlers,” usually means “mountain peaks” and perhaps is used metaphorically here for what juts out from the top of the wild ox’s head. To whom does this simile refer? The more cautious reading is that it is a representation of the fiercely triumphant Israel, now a militant people after its liberation from Egyptian slavery. It may, however, be more in keeping with the archaic character of the poem to see the animal imagery as a representation, in accordance with the conventions of Canaanite epic, of the fierce God who has freed Israel from Egypt.
23. Now be it said to Jacob / … what El has wrought. This line of verse follows directly from the assertion that there is no divining in Israel. Other nations may foolishly have recourse to soothsayers and word-magic professionals like Balaam, but Israel is immediately informed, whether through prophets or direct divine revelation, what God’s designs are.
24. like a lion arises. This image of the rising, bloodthirsty lion is a stock metaphor for martial prowess in biblical and other ancient Near Eastern poetry. The kenning “king of beasts” in the second verset of this line reflects a single Hebrew word: biblical Hebrew has five synonyms for lion (whatever distinctions there may have been among them have been lost with the passage of time), whereas English, alas, has none.
blood of the slain he drinks. The language here is similar to the startling picture in Job 39:30 of the eagle’s fledglings lapping up the blood of the slain. Altogether, Balaam’s second oracle has raised the stakes of frustration for Balak. Israel is envisaged now not merely as vast but as a fiercely indomitable warrior people—Balak now has not just been led off the road into the field but feels his leg crushed against the wall.
25. Neither to curse. Momentarily, Balak is so exasperated that he announces that he is dispensing altogether with Balaam’s professional services. But when Balaam replies that he is, after all, bound to carry out whatever the LORD tells him, Balak imagines that he may have better luck with this god on a third try.
27. Perhaps it will be right in the eyes of the god. Balak accepts the fact that Balaam’s words are dependent on this particular deity, but he clings to the hope that the deity at last will prove more favorably inclined to the plan of execration. The Hebrew ʾelohim could mean “God,” but the fact that it is prefixed by a definite article and that it is pronounced by a pagan makes the polytheistic sense of the term more likely.
1And Balaam saw that it was good in the eyes of the LORD to bless Israel, and he did not go as on the times before to encounter omens but turned his face to the wilderness. 2And Balaam raised his eyes and saw Israel dwelling by its tribes, and the spirit of God was upon him. 3And he took up his theme and he said:
“Utterance of Balaam, Beor’s son,
utterance of the man open-eyed,
4utterance of him who hears El’s sayings,
who the vision of Shaddai beholds,
5How goodly your tents, O Jacob,
your dwellings, O Israel!
6Like palm groves they stretch out,
like gardens by a river,
Like aloes the LORD has planted,
like cedars by the water.
7Water drips from his branch,
and his root in abundant waters.
and his kingship is lifted high.
8El who brings him out from Egypt,
like the wild ox’s antlers for him.
He consumes nations, his foes,
9He crouches, lies down like a lion,
like the king of beasts, who can rouse him?
Those who bless you are blessed,
and your cursers are cursed.”
10And Balak’s wrath flared against Balaam and he clapped his palms, and Balak said to Balaam, “To hex my enemies did I call you, and, look, you have done nothing but bless now three times. 11And so, go flee to your place. I said I would surely honor you, and, look, the LORD has held you back from honor.” 12And Balaam said to Balak, “Did I not speak to your messengers, too, whom you sent to me, saying, 13‘Should Balak give me his houseful of silver and gold, I could not cross the word of the LORD to do either a good thing or a bad one from my own heart. That which the LORD speaks to me, it alone can I speak.’ 14And so, I am about to go to my people. Let me counsel you what this people will do to your people in days to come.” 15And he took up his theme and he said,
“Utterance of Balaam, Beor’s son,
utterance of the man open-eyed.
16Utterance of him who hears El’s sayings
Shaddai’s vision he beholds,
prostrate with eyes unveiled.
17I see him, but not yet now.
I gaze on him, but not in time close.
A star steps forth from Jacob,
a meteor arises from Israel,
and smashes the brow of Moab,
and the pate of all the Sethites.
18And Edom will be dispossessed,
Seir dispossessed by its enemies.
But Israel performs prowess,
19and Jacob holds sway over them,
and destroys the city’s survivor.”
20And he saw Amalek, and he took up his theme and said,
“First of nations was Amalek,
and at his last unto destruction.”
21And he saw the Kenite, and he took up his theme and said,
“Staunch is your settlement,
and set in the rock your nest.
22But Cain will be for burning,
how long will Asshur hold you captive?”
23And he took up his theme and he said,
“Woe, who can live more than El has set him,
24and ships from the hands of the Kittites,
and they lay low Asshur and lay low Eber,
and he, as well, unto destruction.”
25And Balaam rose and went and returned to his place, and Balak, too, went on his way.
CHAPTER 24 NOTES
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1. he did not go as on the times before to encounter omens. This constitutes new information about Balaam’s two previous oracles. In each instance, as we now understand, he made his way along the promontory, in accordance with his usual professional procedures as seer and hexer or blesser, looking for signs (bird flight, cloud formations, or whatever) that would give him a clue about what to say. In each case, God intervened and “put a word in his mouth.” Balaam’s persistence in his seer’s craft throws retrospective light on his intentions toward Israel during his journey from the east when he was stymied three times by his ass as she was confronted by the divine messenger. Now, in keeping with the folktale pattern of three repetitions with a climactic switch in the third occurrence, Balaam abandons his quest for omens, instead looking out straightaway to the wilderness where Israel is encamped.
2. and the spirit of God was upon him. In this altered third instance, God does not put a word in Balaam’s mouth but sets His spirit upon him—the formula to designate inspiration used for the prophets (and the judges). With this spirit, he will now pronounce his most comprehensive blessing of Israel.
3. Utterance of Balaam. Although this line and the next (verse 4) sound very much like the set self-introduction of a professional seer who feels he can lay claim to special visionary powers, there was no equivalent at the beginning of the previous oracles, and so the declaration may be motivated in narrative context by God’s spirit having come upon Balaam.
4. El’s … / Shaddai. Elsewhere, El Shaddai is a compound name used for the God of Israel. As elsewhere in Balaam’s oracles, these designations, as well as Elyon in verse 16, appear to be names once used for Canaanite deities (and hence neatly appropriate in the speech of this non-Israelite prophet) that have been co-opted for monotheistic usage.
prostrate with eyes unveiled. The unveiled eyes hark back to the unveiling of Balaam’s eyes by the LORD’s messenger. A certain irony is generated by the link between the two texts: Balaam’s declaration here of his visionary power comes to remind us of his blindness when he was incapable of seeing what his ass plainly saw, until the LORD’s messenger intervened. “Prostrate” (literally, “falling,” nofel) most likely refers to the state of ecstasy in which the seer is flung to the ground. There are abundant indications elsewhere in the Bible that this sort of “falling” was expected as a consequence of the descent of the spirit on the seer or prophet.
6. Like palm groves. The Hebrew neḥalim, most scholars agree, is a homonym for the much more common term that means “wadis” or “brooks.” But the poet’s decision to use this unusual word here, as the Israeli scholar Shlomo Morag has plausibly suggested, is motivated by a desire to reinforce through the pun on palm groves/brooks the imagery of abundant water in the next several versets. There is also a near pun in these lines between the verb nitayu, “stretch out,” and nataʿ, “planted.”
7. his root. The noun zeraʿ, which ordinarily means “seed,” frequently designates “root” in poetry (repeatedly, in Job).
Agag. King of Amalek at the time of Saul.
8. their bones … / his loins. The switch from a plural to a singular object of the verb is characteristic of the fluid Hebrew usage in this regard.
and smashes his loins. The Masoretic Text reads “and smashes his arrows,” weḥitsaw yimḥats. A compelling emendation adopted by many scholars corrects this to weḥalatsaw yimḥats (the addition of a single consonant to the noun in question). This not only yields a much more intelligible parallelism but also reflects other lines of biblical poetry in which “loins,” ḥalatsayim, is the direct object of “smash,” maḥats.
10. clapped his palms. In the biblical world, this is a conventional gesture of despair.
11. honor. As before, “honor” refers to material reward. Balaam, having been promised vast quantities of silver and gold, will now go home empty-handed.
12. Did I not speak to your messengers. Following the established convention of biblical narrative, Balaam does not simply summarize what he said to the messengers but actually quotes his earlier speech verbatim. The only substitution, “a good thing or a bad one” instead of “a small thing or a great one,” is merely a synonymous variation, since both expressions have the sense of “anything at all.” This time, Balaam also adds “from my heart” by way of explanation.
13. That which the LORD speaks to me, it alone can I speak. This already repeated sentence, recurring now just before Balaam pronounces his final oracles, has the force of a thematic refrain: the whole point of the story is that there is no autonomous realm of word magic and vision that a technician of the holy can manipulate; all blessings and curses are dictated by the LORD.
14. people. Balaam pointedly repeats this word three times, laying before Balak a triangle of peoples: Moab, Israel, and his own people to the east, to whom he will return once he has told Balak what Israel will do to Moab.
16. and knows what Elyon knows. The extravagance of this whole self-advertisement, and especially of this clause, has a certain irony, given the previously unseeing Balaam’s absolute dependence on God for everything he manages to see and for everything he says.
17. I see him … / I gaze on him. Once more, as Balaam launches on his final series of pronouncements, the thematic words of sight are highlighted.
A star steps forth. The meaning of this phrase has defied interpreters. The Septuagint’s reading of zaraḥ, “shines,” instead of the Masoretic darakh, “steps forth” or “trods,” is a transparent instance of evading a textual difficulty by substituting a simpler term. Some modern interpreters, arguing from a Semitic cognate, claim that darakh here means “rules,” but that seems far-fetched because every other biblical instance has to do with treading or walking (or tightening a bow with pressure from a foot). It seems most sensible to imagine the star marching forth in military fashion or emerging from Jacob. The star is in all likelihood a metaphor for a king, something that Bar Kochba’s followers assumed in using this verse as a rationale for his messianic name, which means “son of a star.”
and the pate. The Masoretic Text here reads weqarqar, an infinitive form that might, only conjecturally, mean “and to raze.” This translation embraces the widely accepted emendation of weqodqod, “and the pate,” a neat parallel to “brow” and an apt object of the double-duty verb in the first verset, “smashes.” (The ancient Hebrew graphemes for d and r are very similar.) The identity of the Sethites is uncertain and obscurities will grow as Balaam moves on to his oracles about the nations.
19. and Jacob holds sway over them. Instead of the Masoretic “and he holds sway from Jacob,” weyerd miyaʿaqov, this translation reads weyirdem yaʿaqov, moving the mem from the beginning of the noun to the end of the verb that precedes it.
22. Cain will be for burning, / how long will Asshur hold you captive? The language of the second verset is especially crabbed and the meaning in doubt. There is also another way to construe the first verset. The verb baʿer can indicate either burning or grazing by cattle. Baruch Levine, adopting the second meaning, renders this as “Cain will be a trampled land.”
23–24. who can live more than El has set him, / and ships from the hands of the Kittites. An honest translator must admit that the Hebrew text here is not intelligible, and that the nexus between the seemingly philosophical pronouncement of the first verset and the invocation of a Mediterranean fleet in the second verset is obscure. Some scholars have sought to recover the original meaning by performing radical surgery on the text.
24. they lay low Asshur. What one can glean from these last vatic words of Balaam is a vista of destruction in which once great kingdoms sink into oblivion while the people of Israel powerfully persists.
25. And Balaam rose and went and returned to his place. This is a recurrent formula for marking the end of a narrative unit in the Bible. It should be noted that through much of the story, it was Balaam who was the subject of the verb “to go.” Now he is seen, according to the set formula, returning to his place, resuming a condition of stasis outside the boundaries of what can be narrated, while Balak goes on his way, not toward any indicated destination or mission, as was the case with Balaam, but in the frustration of all his intentions.
1And Israel stayed at Shittim, and the people began to go whoring with the daughters of Moab. 2And they called the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. 3And Israel clung to Baal Peor, and the LORD’s wrath flared against Israel. 4And the LORD said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people and impale them to the LORD before the sun, that the LORD’s flaring wrath turn away from Israel.” 5And Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you kill his men who cling to Baal Peor.” 6And look, a man of the Israelites came and brought forth to his kinsmen the Midianite woman before the eyes of Moses and before the eyes of the whole community of Israelites as they were weeping at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 7And Phinehas son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest saw, and he rose from the midst of the community and took a spear in his hand. 8And he came after the man of Israel into the alcove and stabbed the two of them, the man of Israel and the woman, in her alcove, and the scourge was held back from the Israelites. 9And those who died in the scourge came to twenty-four thousand. 10And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 11“Phinehas son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest turned away My wrath from the Israelites when he zealously acted for My zeal in their midst, and I did not put an end to the Israelites through my zeal. 12Therefore say: ‘I hereby grant him My covenant of peace. 13And it shall be for him and for his seed after him a covenant of perpetual priesthood in recompense for his acting zealously for his God and atoning for the Israelites.’” 14And the name of the man of Israel who was struck down, who was struck down with the Midianite woman, was Zimri son of Salu chieftain of the Simeonite father’s house. 15And the name of the Midianite woman who was struck down was Cozbi daughter of Zur, who was chieftain of the leagues of fathers’ houses in Midian. 16And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 17“Be foes to the Midianites and strike them. 18For they have been foes to you through their wiles that they practiced upon you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cozbi daughter of the chieftain of Midian, their kinswoman, who was struck down on the day of the scourge over the matter of Peor.”
CHAPTER 25 NOTES
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1. Shittim. The name means “acacias.” The full place-name, given in 33:49, is Abel-Shittim, which means “brook of the acacias.”
began to go whoring with the daughters of Moab. The sexual metaphor of “whoring” (verbal stem z-n-h) is regularly used in the Bible to represent Israel’s betrayal of cultic fidelity to its own God. This figurative usage leads Baruch Levine to argue that no actual sexual activity is involved in the present episode. That inference, however, is implausible because it offers no explanation of how or why it is the “daughters” (banot, “young women”) of Moab who lure the Israelite men to worship their god. Our story is rather an instance in which the literal sense of the verb “to whore” leads to the figurative sense. Rashi catches this double usage in the following vivid vignette: “When he was seized by his sexual impulse and said, ‘Submit to me,’ she would pull out an image of Peor from her lap and say to him, ‘Bow down to this.’”
2. they called. The verb here has the technical sense of “invited.”
3. And Israel clung to Baal Peor. There is no obvious link, beyond the trans-Jordanian setting, between this episode of cultic infidelity and the preceding tale of Balaam, and, indeed, the Baal Peor story seems clearly the product of another hand, or in fact, of other hands. The editorial decision, however, to insert this material here reflects the general predisposition of biblical literature to represent Israel dialectically. If in Balaam’s oracles Israel is a unique and indomitable nation, here it is pathetically vulnerable to the seductions of the surrounding pagan world. Perhaps most ironically apposite from Balaam’s oracles is the grand declaration that Israel is “a people that dwells apart.” Now, immediately after that oracle, the Israelites show how intertwined they can be with their pagan neighbors, both sexually and cultically. Baal is the Canaanite god of the fields: Baal Peor means the Baal who is venerated at Peor. (One wonders whether the story puns sexually on that place-name, which can be related to the Hebrew verb that means “to gape open.”) Jacob Milgrom notes that this is the first mention in the Bible of Baal, a deity whose worship became widespread only in the latter half of the second millennium B.C.E., and he also observes that the story reflects the fact that Israel has now come to the borders of Canaan, where it will be in contact with the Canaanite peoples.
4. impale them to the LORD before the sun. The clear implication of this grim command is that the public impaling of the Israelite leaders is conceived in quasiritual terms, “to the LORD,” as a kind of expiatory sacrifice or execution. In what follows, there is no report that this order of execution is carried out.
5. the judges of Israel. The Hebrew shoftim could mean “magistrates” or simply “leaders,” but in any case this has to be a group distinct from the “chiefs” (or “heads,” raʾshim) just mentioned.
Each of you kill his men who cling to Baal Peor. Moses seems to alter God’s instructions that the chiefs of the people be killed. Milgrom sees this as another instance of Moses’s acting as intercessor, in this case making only the malefactors the objects of the order of execution.
6. the Midianite woman. The story began with Moabite women, not Midianites, but this may reflect an assimilation of the two contiguous peoples rather than a confusion. In the story of Balaam, the Moabite delegation that comes to Balaam includes Midianite elders.
8. into the alcove … in her alcove. The Hebrew qubah is unique to this text, but it has been linked with the Arabic qubbe, which is a small tent of red leather used for cultic purposes, or, alternately, for conjugal purposes. (The English “alcove” actually derives from the Arabic al-qubbe.) The contention that the term refers here to the Tabernacle, and hence that a violation of the Israelite sanctum is at issue, is strained because the Tabernacle (mishkan) is nowhere else referred to as qubah. The second occurrence of qubah in this verse, if one follows the Masoretic vocalization, appears to be the same word, though it obviously puns on qebah, “belly.” One is warranted to understand the second “alcove” as a rather transparent euphemisim for the woman’s sexual part: she is stabbed in her “alcove.” Several of the medieval commentators follow this line of interpretation, invoking the principle of measure for measure.
and the scourge was held back. There was no previous mention of a scourge, and God’s orders to kill the Israelite chiefs might seem to exclude the use of a scourge as the agency of punishment. “The LORD’s flaring wrath,” (verse 4) however, may imply scourge, as it does in the parallel episode of the Golden Calf.
12. I hereby grant him My covenant of peace. Many understand the Hebrew briti shalom as “My covenant of friendship” (or “of fellowship”). In any event, there is some ironic dissonance between Phinehas’s bloody act of retribution and this covenant of shalom between his descendants and God. This is not the only instance in which members of the priestly caste figure as militant—indeed, military—champions of the LORD’s exclusive cult. Such militancy scarcely reflects the role of the priests in later Israelite history, though it may express an image of their stern authority that they sought to impress on the people.
14–15. Zimri son of Salu chieftain of the Simeonite father’s house … Cozbi daughter of Zur, who was chieftain of the leagues of fathers’ houses in Midian. The information about the name and lineage of the two culprits, given only at the end of the story, casts retrospective light on the implications of their act. This is not any “man of the Israelites,” as we might have thought, but a Simeonite prince, cohabiting with a Midianite princess. The targeting of the Israelite chiefs for execution is perhaps to be understood in this connection: the sexual conjunction of an Israelite prince and a Midianite princess is not merely an encounter of desire between two individuals but a treacherous model for the populace on both sides, an emblem of the religious and sexual amalgamation of the two peoples. Her name, whatever actual Midianite provenance it might have, clearly points to the Hebrew root k-z-b, “to deceive” or “to lie.” In all this, it is notable that Moses, who leaves the bloody work of execution to Phinehas, is himself married to the daughter of a Midianite priest, a figure who, far from promoting Baal, speaks of YHWH in virtually monotheistic terms. The Israelite attitude toward its neighbors appears to have oscillated over time and within different ideological groups between xenophobia, a fear of being drawn off its own spiritual path by its neighbors, and an openness to alliance and interchange with the surrounding peoples.
25:18b 1And it happened after the scourge that the LORD said to Moses and to Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saying, 2“Count the heads of all the community of Israelites from twenty years and up by their fathers’ houses, everyone who goes out in the army in Israel.” 3And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, spoke with them in the steppes of Moab by the Jordan opposite Jericho, saying, 4“From twenty years and up, as the LORD charged Moses and the Israelites who came out of the land of Egypt. 5Reuben firstborn of Israel. The sons of Reuben: Enoch, clan of the Enochite, for Pallu, clan of the Palluite. 6For Hezron, clan of the Hezronite. For Carmi, clan of the Carmite. 7These are the clans of the Reubenite, and their reckonings came to forty-three thousand seven hundred and thirty. 8And the sons of Pallu, Eliab. 9And the sons of Eliab, Nemuel and Dathan and Abiram, these are Dathan and Abiram, called forth from the community, who incited against Moses and against Aaron in the community of Korah, when they incited against the LORD. 10And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and Korah when the community died, when the fire consumed two hundred and fifty men and they became a sign. 11But the sons of Korah did not die. 12The sons of Simeon by their clans: For Nemuel, the clan of the Nemuelite. For Jamin, the clan of the Jaminite. For Jachin, the clan of the Jachinite. 13For Zerah, the clan of the Zerahite. For Saul, the clan of the Saulite. 14These are the clans of the Simeonite, twenty-two thousand and two hundred. 15The sons of Gad by their clans. For Zephon, the clan of the Zephonite. For Haggi, the clan of the Haggite. For Shuni, the clan of the Shunite. 16For Ozni, the clan of the Oznite. For Eri, the clan of the Erite. 17For Arod, the clan of the Arodite. For Areli, the clan of the Arelite. 18These are the clans of the sons of Gad by their reckonings, forty thousand and five hundred. 19The sons of Judah, Er and Onan, and Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. 20And these are the sons of Judah by their clans. For Shelah, the clan of the Shelanite. For Perez, the clan of the Perezite. For Zerah, the clan of the Zerahite. 21And these are the sons of Perez. For Hezron, the clan of the Hezronite. For Hamul, the clan of the Hamulite. 22These are the clans of Judah by their reckonings, seventy-six thousand and five hundred. 23The sons of Issachar by their clans. Tola, the Tolaite clan. For Puvah, the clan of the Punite. 24For Jashub, the clan of the Jashubite. For Shimron, the clan of the Shimronite. 25These are the clans of Issachar by their reckonings, sixty-four thousand and three hundred. 26The sons of Zebulun by their clans. For Sered, the clan of the Seredite. For Elon, the clan of the Elonite. For Jahleel, the clan of the Jahleelite. 27These are the clans of the Zebulunite by their reckonings, sixty thousand and five hundred. 28The sons of Joseph by their clans, Manasseh and Ephraim. 29The sons of Manasseh. For Machir, the clan of the Machirite, and Machir begot Gilead. For Gilead, the clan of the Gileadite. 30These are the sons of Gilead: Iezer, clan of the Iezerite. For Helek, clan of the Helekite. 31And Asriel, clan of the Asrielite. And Shechem, clan of the Shechemite. 32And Shemida, clan of the Shemidaite. And Hepher, clan of the Hepherite. 33But Zelophehad son of Hepher had no sons but daughters, and the names of the daughters of Zelophehad were Mahlah and Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. 34These are the clans of Manasseh by their reckonings, fifty-two thousand and seven hundred. 35These are the sons of Ephraim by their clans. For Shuthelah, the clan of the Shuthelahite. For Becher, the clan of the Becherite. For Tahan, the clan of the Tahanite. 36And these are the sons of Shuthelah. For Eran, the clan of the Eranite. 37These are the clans of the sons of Ephraim by their reckonings, thirty-two thousand and five hundred. These are the sons of Joseph by their clans. 38The sons of Benjamin by their clans. For Bela, the clan of the Belaite. For Ashbel, the clan of the Ashbelite. For Ahiram, the clan of the Ahiramite. 39For Shuphupham, the clan of the Shuphumamite. For Hupham, the clan of the Huphamite. 40And Bela’s sons were Ard and Naaman. The clan of the Ardite. For Naaman, the clan of the Naamanite. 41These are the sons of Benjamin by their clans, and their reckonings were forty-five thousand and six hundred. 42These are the sons of Dan by their clans. For Shuham, the clan of the Shuhamite. 43These are the clans of Dan by their clans. All the clans of the Shuhamite by their reckonings, sixty-four thousand and four hundred. 44The sons of Asher by their clans. For Imnah, the clan of the Imnite. For Ishvi, the clan of the Ishvite. 45For Beriah, the clan of the Beriitite. For the sons of Beriah. For Heber, the clan of the Heberite. For Malchiel, the clan of the Malchielite. 46And the name of the daughter of Asher was Serah. 47These are the clans of the sons of Asher by their reckonings, fifty-three thousand and four hundred. 48The sons of Naphtali by their clans. For Jahzeel, the clan of the Jahzeelite. For Guni, the clan of the Gunite. 49For Jezer, the clan of the Jezerite. For Shillem, the clan of the Shillemite. 50These are the clans of Naphtali by their clans, and their reckonings were forty-five thousand and four hundred. 51These are the reckonings of the Israelites: six hundred one thousand seven hundred and thirty.”
52And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 53“To these shall the land be apportioned as an estate by the number of names. 54For the many you shall make their estate large and for the few you shall make their estate small, each according to his reckonings shall his estate be given. 55But by lot shall the land be apportioned, by the names of their fathers’ tribes shall they inherit. 56According to lot shall their estate be apportioned, whether many or few.”
57And these are the reckonings of the Levites by their clans. For Gershon, the clan of the Gershonite. For Kohath, the clan of the Kohathite. For Merari, the clan of the Merarite. 58These are the clans of Levi. The clan of the Libnite, the clan of the Hebronite, the clan of the Mahlite, the clan of the Mushite, the clan of the Korahite. And Kohath begot Amram. 59And the name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed daughter of Levi whom she bore to Levi in Egypt, and she bore to Amram Aaron and Moses and Miriam their sister. 60And to Aaron were born Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. 61And Nadab and Abihu died when they brought forward unfit fire before the LORD. 62And their reckonings were twenty-three thousand, every male from a month old and up, for they were not reckoned in the midst of the Israelites, for they were not given an estate in the midst of the Israelites. 63These are the reckonings of Moses and Eleazar the priest, who reckoned the Israelites in the steppes of Moab by the Jordan opposite Jericho. 64And among these there was not a man from the reckonings of Moses and Aaron the priest, who reckoned the Israelites in the Wilderness of Sinai. 65For the LORD had said of them, “They are doomed to die in the wilderness.” And no man was left of them save Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
CHAPTER 26 NOTES
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25:18b. And it happened after the scourge. Although these words occur at the end of chapter 25 in the conventional chapter break, they clearly belong here.
2. Count the heads … from twenty years and up. The principal narrative sequence of the Book of Numbers, consisting largely of a series of incidents of rebellion, is framed by a census at the beginning (chapter 1) and a census at the end. The aim of the first census was a military conscription for the march through the wilderness, and that function was reflected in the numbering of all males twenty years old and above. Here, on the other hand, the census is intended to lay the grounds for the division of the land as the Israelites encamp opposite Jericho, the first point of attack in the conquest; and the stipulation of males twenty years old is to indicate that the Wilderness generation fated not to enter the land has died out, with a new generation having grown up to take its place.
4. as the LORD charged Moses and the Israelites who came out of the land of Egypt. The most plausible construction of this clause is that the present census follows the pattern of the census that the Israelites were commanded to conduct at the beginning of the Wilderness wanderings for the generation that experienced the Exodus.
9. these are Dathan and Abiram. Coming after a series of narrative incidents, this census, unlike the earlier one, takes space for parenthetical glosses of figures in the lineage cut off by premature death.
10. the earth opened its mouth … when the fire consumed. The reference to the two different agencies of destruction is a transparent effort to harmonize the imperfectly blended accounts of the two different rebellions in chapter 16. In fact, the Reubenites Dathan and Abiram and their followers were swallowed up by the earth while the priestly rebels led by Korah were consumed by fire.
a sign. The Hebrew nes generally means “banner” or “standard.” Here the sense is a sign of warning.
11. But the sons of Korah did not die. In fact, the Korahites ended up playing a prominent role in the later temple cult.
19. Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. In this instance, the gloss on the particular descendants of one of Jacob’s sons who died without leaving offspring refers to an episode not in Numbers but in Genesis (chapter 38).
30. Iezer. This name is a contraction of Abiezer. In the parallel list in Joshua 17:2 the full form of the name is given.
33. the names of the daughters of Zelophehad. This exceptional stipulation of daughters by name anticipates the issue of inheritance through daughters raised in the next chapter with the case of Zelophehad’s daughters as legal precedent. Two of these names have been found on ostraca in Samaria dating from around 800 B.C.E. and are the names of cities in the region. Other names in this census list may also be place-names figuring as the designation of clans.
51. six hundred one thousand seven hundred and thirty. As in the earlier census, the total number of adult males makes up a figure that is just a little over the legendary and formulaic tally of 600,000.
53. by the number of names. That is, each clan here registered by name in the census shall have territory inalienably assigned to it.
55. But by lot shall the land be apportioned. At first glance, this would seem to contradict the condition just stated that the territory is to be divided according to the varying size of the clans and the tribes. The use of lots, however, is in all likelihood restricted to the selection of particular regions and does not apply to the size of the territories granted.
57. the reckonings of the Levites. As in the earlier census, the tally of the Levites is given after the general census because the Levites had no land as estate (and in the previous census, they were not subject to military conscription).
65. save Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. These two are, of course, the sole exceptions to the death sentence on the adults of the Wilderness generation because they were the only scouts who brought back a positive report about the prospects for conquering the land. Mentioning them by name here at the end of the census aligns this textual unit with the inception of the conquest at the beginning of the Book of Joshua. Caleb will be the first mentioned to take an inheritance in the land, and Joshua will lead the conquest.
1And the daughters of Zelophehad son of Hepher, son of Gilead, son of Machir, son of Manasseh of the clans of Manasseh, son of Joseph came forward, and these are the names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noa, and Hoglah and Milcah and Tirzah. 2And they stood before Moses and before Eleazar the priest and before the chieftains and all the community at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, saying, 3“Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not part of the community that banded together against the LORD with the community of Korah, for through his own offense he died, and he had no sons. 4Why should our father’s name be withdrawn from the midst of his clan because he had no son? Give us a holding in the midst of our father’s brothers.” 5And Moses brought forward their case before the LORD. 6And the LORD said to Moses, saying, 7“Rightly do the daughters of Zelophehad speak. You shall surely give them a secure holding in the midst of their father’s brothers and you shall pass on their father’s estate to them. 8And to the Israelites you shall speak, saying, ‘Should a man die without having a son, you shall pass on his estate to his daughter. 9And if he has no daughter, you shall give his estate to his brothers. 10And if he has no brothers, you shall give his estate to his father’s brothers. 11And if his father has no brothers, you shall give his estate to his closest kin from his clan and he shall take possession of it. And this shall be a statute of law for the Israelites as the LORD has charged Moses.’”
12And the LORD said to Moses, “Go up to this Mount Abarim and see the land that I have given to the Israelites. 13And you shall see it, and you shall be gathered to your kin—you, too, as Aaron your brother was gathered, 14since you rebelled against My word in the Wilderness of Zin in the community’s dispute, to sanctify Me through the water before their eyes.” These are the waters of Meribah at Kadesh in the Wilderness of Zin. 15And Moses said to the LORD, saying, 16“Let the LORD, God of the spirits for all flesh, appoint a man over the community, 17who will go out before them and come in before them and who will lead them in and out on the march so that the LORD’s community will not be like a flock that has no shepherd.” 18And the LORD said to Moses, “Take you Joshua son of Nun, a man who has spirit within him, and lay your hand upon him. 19And you shall stand him before Eleazar the priest and before all the community, and you shall charge him before their eyes. 20And you shall set something of your grandeur upon him in order that all the Israelite community will heed. 21And before Eleazar the priest he shall stand and inquire of him for the ruling of the Urim before the LORD. By it shall they go out and by it shall they come in—he and all the Israelites with him and all the community.” 22And Moses did as the LORD had charged him, and he took Joshua and stood him before Eleazar the priest and before all the community. 23And he laid his hands upon him and charged him as the LORD had spoken through Moses.
CHAPTER 27 NOTES
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1. the daughters of Zelophehad. Rashi, noting that this episode immediately follows a mention of the ten fearful spies, construes it as a special argument in behalf of the role of women as opposed to men in the Wilderness narrative: “The men say (Numbers 14), ‘Let us make us put up a head and return to Egypt,’ and the women say, ‘Give us a holding.’”
3. Our father died. The choice of the favored instrument of biblical narrative—dialogue—for making this case has expressive consequences. The issue of daughters’ inheritance in the absence of male offspring is not presented as an abstract legal precedent but as an impassioned plea for justice—“Why should our father’s name be withdrawn …? Give us a holding”—by these five young women who fear that the patriarchal system of inheritance will deprive them of their rights. Though the notion of daughters’ inheriting was exceptional in the ancient Near East, this story is something other than a feminist argument. The chief concern is not to lose the inheritance pertaining to the clan, not to allow the “name” of the clan to disappear. But since the holdings of the clans were defined within tribal territories, the whole system would have been upset if the daughters were to marry outside the tribe. The follow-up to this episode in chapter 36 therefore stipulates that they are obliged to marry within the tribe.
for through his own offense he died. This would most plausibly be the “offense” of all the adults of the Wilderness generation after the episode of the spies. The daughters assume, as Abraham ibn Ezra notes, that the active conspirators against the LORD in the Korah rebellion are to be punished more severely, by death and by denial of inheritance to their descendants.
5. Moses brought forward their case before the LORD. The idiom refers to inquiry of an oracle, but, unlike the Urim and Thummim (evidently divinatory stones or tokens) that Joshua is directed to employ at the end of this chapter, Moses is represented as engaged in dialogue with God.
7. a secure holding. The Hebrew is literally “a holding of an estate.” The two terms, ʾaḥuzah and naḥalah, are virtual synonyms, and the use of two synonyms linked in the construct state often expresses an intensification of the noun (compare ḥoshekh ’afelah, “pitch-dark,” in Exodus 10:22).
8. Should a man die. From the dramatized instance of the daughters of Zelophehad, the divine response to Moses’s inquiry now proceeds to a casuistically formulated law of inheritance that includes the contingency of a daughter as heir but also stipulates the lines of inheritance when the deceased has neither sons nor daughters.
14. since you rebelled against My word … to sanctify Me through the water. The sense of the somewhat loose syntax of this sentence is: My instruction, against which you rebelled, was to sanctify Me through the water (that is, by making manifest that it was I bringing forth water from the rock rather than claiming the deed for yourself and Aaron as you struck the rock).
16. Let the LORD, God of the spirits for all flesh, appoint a man. In this final dialogue between Moses and God, it is noteworthy that Moses, far from demurring about the fate of imminent death that has just been pronounced upon him, expresses his concern about the continuity of leadership and the future of the people he has led. The relatively unusual epithet, “God of the spirits for all flesh,” points forward to the need for a man “who has spirit within him” (either the “spirit of wisdom,” ruaḥ ḥokhmah, or the “spirit of God,” ruaḥ ʾelohim). All living flesh has an animating spirit or life-breath in it, but only the few are endowed with a spirit of understanding or visionary presence.
17. go out before them and come in before them. This idiom has the sense of “to lead in battle,” an appropriate role for Joshua, who will command the Israelite forces in the conquest of the land. The same two verbs are used in the next clause transitively, in the causative conjugation, and there the translation adds “on the march” to underscore the military implication of the idiom.
that the LORD’s community will not be like a flock that has no shepherd. Though the image of ruler as shepherd of the people is conventional in the ancient Near East, it also harks back, as Richard Elliott Friedman aptly observes, to Moses’s own beginnings as a shepherd and his first dialogue with God at the burning bush to which he had come while tending his sheep.
18. lay your hand upon him. In the event, Moses will lay both hands on Joshua. Jacob Milgrom, arguing that two hands were regularly used for the gesture of passing on leadership, reads “hands” here, against the Masoretic Text. Rashi ingeniously makes an interpretive point out of the discrepancy between “hand” and the plural “hands” in verse 23: “[Moses acted] more generously, more than he had been commanded. For the Holy One said to him, ‘and lay your hand’ but he did it with both his hands and turned [Joshua] into a chock-full vessel and filled him with his wisdom generously.”
20. something of your grandeur. The Hebrew hod (“grandeur,” “majesty,” “aura”) is typically associated with kings, or with God. The partitive mem that prefixes the noun is a clear indication of the difference in stature between Moses and Joshua—only a part of Moses’s grandeur is to be conferred upon Joshua. In any case, this notion of leadership presumes that the leader in his personal presence must manifest some sort of charisma in order to enlist the loyalty of those he would lead, “in order that the whole Israelite community will heed.”
21. inquire of him for the ruling of the Urim. Joshua’s lesser stature in comparison with Moses is reflected in the fact that he will be dependent upon an institutionalized intermediary—the high priest manipulating the oracular device of the Urim and Thummim—instead of speaking with God “as a man speaks with his fellow man.” The Urim and Thummim were evidently two stones or dicelike carved objects that yielded yes-or-no responses to inquiries. The two terms begin respectively with the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. More conjecturally, Urim might be related to the root ʾ-r-r, “to curse,” and Thummim to the root t-m-m, “innocent.”
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Charge the Israelites, and you shall say to them, ‘My offering, My bread, for My fire offerings, My fragrant odor, you shall keep, to offer up to Me at its fixed time.’ 3And you shall say to them, ‘This is the fire offering that you will offer to the LORD: two unblemished yearling lambs a day, a perpetual burnt offering. 4One lamb you shall do in the morning and the second lamb you shall do at twilight. 5And a tenth of an ephah of fine semolina flour for the grain offering mixed with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil. 6A perpetual burnt offering like the one done on Mount Sinai as a fragrant odor, a fire offering to the LORD. 7And its libation, a quarter of a hin for each lamb in the sanctuary to pour out in libation of strong drink to the LORD. 8And the second lamb you shall do at twilight like the grain offering of the morning and its libation, you shall do a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD. 9And on the sabbath day, two unblemished yearling lambs and two-tenths of fine semolina flour, a grain offering mixed with oil, and its libation. 10The burnt offering for one sabbath to the next, besides the perpetual burnt offering and its libation. 11And on your new moons you shall offer up a burnt offering to the LORD, two bulls from the herd and one ram, seven unblemished yearling lambs. 12And three-tenths of fine semolina flour, a grain offering mixed with oil for each bull, and two-tenths of fine semolina flour, a grain offering mixed with oil for each ram. 13And one-tenth of fine semolina flour, a grain offering mixed with oil for every lamb, a burnt offering, a fragrant odor, a fire offering to the LORD. 14And their libations, these will be half a hin for the bull and a third of a hin for the ram and a quarter of a hin for the lamb—wine. This is the burnt offering for the new moon on each new moon of the year. 15And one goat as an offense offering to the LORD, besides the perpetual burnt offering, will be done, and its libation.
16“‘And in the first month on the fourteenth day of this month, a Passover offering to the LORD. 17And on the fifteenth day of this month, a festival, seven days flatbread shall be eaten. 18On the first day a sacred assembly: no task of work shall you do. 19And you shall offer up a fire offering, a burnt offering to the LORD, two bulls from the herd and one ram and seven yearling lambs, unblemished they shall be for you. 20And their grain offering, fine semolina flour mixed with oil, three-tenths for the bull and two-tenths for the lamb shall you do. 21One-tenth you shall do for every lamb and two-tenths for the seven lambs you shall do. 22And one offense-offering goat to atone for you. 23Besides the morning’s burnt offering which pertains to the perpetual burnt offering you shall do these. 24Like these you shall do each day seven days, bread of the fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD, besides the perpetual burnt offering shall it be done, and its libation. 25And on the seventh day a sacred assembly shall you have, no task of work shall you do.
26“‘And on the day of First Fruits when you offer up an offering of new grain to the LORD in your Festival of Weeks, a sacred assembly shall you have, no task of work shall you do. 27And you shall offer up a burnt offering as a fragrant odor to the LORD, two bulls of the herd, one ram, seven yearling lambs. 28And their grain offering mixed with oil, three-tenths for the single bull, two-tenths for the single ram. 29A tenth for every single lamb of the seven lambs. 30One goat to atone for you. 31Besides the perpetual burnt offering and its grain offering you shall do. Unblemished shall they be for you, and their libation.’”
CHAPTER 28 NOTES
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2. My offering, My bread. Although Moses is to be the speaker, he is enjoined to quote God’s direct discourse to the Israelites.
My offering. The end of the previous chapter was clearly what should have been the penultimate moment of the Moses story: Moses summoned to the mountaintop where he will be gathered to his kin and where he is enjoined to pass the leadership on to Joshua. Now, however, the Priestly redactors, pursuing their own professional concern with the cult, introduce a large block of material stipulating regulations for sacrifices (chapters 28–29). This will be followed by a sequence of passages pertaining to the conquest and the division of the land, but since in these sections Moses still holds the reins of leadership, they would have to be anterior to the end of chapter 27. One could scarcely find a more emphatic illustration of the rabbinic principle that “there is neither early nor late in the Torah,” i.e., that the text of the Torah passed down to us does not exhibit consistent chronological sequence.
My bread. As elsewhere, this is a synecdoche for food, since the burnt flesh of animals as well as grain offerings is involved. The sacrificial laws reflect the strongest nexus of biblical religion with antecedent paganism, and this link is reflected in the archaic survivals of the language, in which the sacrifices are represented as the food of the gods and the smoke from the altar as a “fragrant odor” in the nostrils of the gods, predisposing them in favor of those who offer the sacrifices. Although biblical monotheism by stages transcended this mechanical conception of sacrifice, as polemic passages against it in the Prophets demonstrate, one may assume that it had a powerful appeal, quite literally understood, for many ordinary Israelite worshippers.
3. perpetual. That is, a fixed and repeated requirement, performed daily.
5. beaten oil. The top-grade oil was produced with mortar and pestle rather than extracted with a press.
6. like the one done on Mount Sinai. The literal sense of the somewhat enigmatic Hebrew is “that is done on Mount Sinai.” Abraham ibn Ezra shrewdly infers that the sacrifices, first established and performed at Sinai, were not done during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
7. strong drink. The Hebrew shekhar is derived from the verbal root that means “to intoxicate.” Some think it means “beer” (widely used in the ancient Near East), but since it is unlikely that beer, a fermented substance otherwise prohibited in the cult, was used for libations, it probably refers to some sort of wine distinct from the ordinary kind or, even more likely, to grappa.
17. a festival. The Hebrew ḥag implies a pilgrim festival. The noun derives from the verb ḥug, “to move about in a circle,” and in all likelihood refers to the trajectory of the pilgrim procession making its way to the sanctuary. As several recent commentators have noted, ḥag is not mentioned in connection with the Feast of First Fruits, and this may not have been a pilgrim festival in the earlier biblical period.
26. Festival of Weeks. The Hebrew simply says “Weeks,” shavuʿot. The name refers to the seven weeks counted from the inception of Passover to this festival (hence the Christian Pentecost, festival of the fiftieth day, the day following seven weeks).
1“‘And in the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a sacred assembly, no task of work shall you do. A day of trumpeting it shall be for you. 2And you shall do a burnt offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD, one bull from the herd, one ram, seven unblemished yearling lambs. 3And their grain offering mixed with oil, three-tenths for the bull, two-tenths for the ram. 4And one-tenth for each lamb of the seven lambs. 5And a goat for an offense offering to atone for you. 6Besides the burnt offering of the new moon and its grain offering and the perpetual burnt offering and its grain offering and their libations according to their rule, as a fragrant odor, a fire offering to the LORD. 7And on the tenth of this seventh month you shall have a sacred assembly, and you shall afflict yourselves, no task shall you do. 8And you shall offer up a burnt offering to the LORD, a fragrant odor: one bull from the herd, one ram, seven unblemished yearling lambs you shall have. 9And their grain offering fine semolina flour mixed with oil, three-tenths for the bull, two-tenths for the one ram. 10One-tenth for every lamb of the seven lambs. 11One goat as an offense offering, besides the offense offering of atonement and the perpetual burnt offering and its grain offering and their libations.
12“‘And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month you shall have a sacred assembly, no task of work shall you do, and you shall celebrate a festival to the LORD seven days. 13And you shall offer up a burnt offering, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD, thirteen bulls from the herd, two rams, fourteen yearling lambs, unblemished they shall be. 14And their grain offering, fine semolina flour mixed with oil, three-tenths for each bull of the thirteen bulls, two-tenths for each ram of the two rams. 15And one-tenth for every lamb of the fourteen lambs. 16And one goat as an offense offering besides the perpetual burnt offering, its grain offering and its libation. 17And on the second day twelve bulls from the herd, two rams, fourteen unblemished yearling lambs. 18And their meal offering and their libations—for the bulls and for the rams and for the lambs by their number and according to their rule. 19And one goat as an offense offering besides the perpetual burnt offering and its grain offering and their libations. 20And on the third day eleven bulls, two rams, fourteen unblemished yearling lambs. 21And their grain offering and their libations—for the bulls and for the rams and for the lambs by their number according to their rule. 22And one offense-offering goat, besides the perpetual burnt offering and its grain offering and its libation. 23And on the fourth day ten bulls, two rams, fourteen unblemished yearling lambs. 24Their grain offering and their libations—for the bulls, for the rams, and for the lambs by their number according to their rule. 25And one goat as an offense offering, besides the perpetual burnt offering, its grain offering and its libation. 26And on the fifth day nine bulls, two rams, fourteen unblemished yearling lambs. 27And their grain offering and their libations—for the bulls, for the rams, and for the lambs by their number according to their rule. 28And one offense-offering goat, besides the perpetual burnt offering and its grain offering and its libation. 29And on the sixth day eight bulls, two rams, fourteen unblemished yearling lambs. 30And their grain offering and their libations—for the bulls, for the rams, and for the lambs by their number according to their rule. 31And one offense-offering goat, besides the perpetual burnt offering, its grain offering and its libations. 32And on the seventh day seven bulls, two rams, fourteen unblemished yearling lambs. 33And their grain offering and their libations—for the bulls, for the rams, and for the lambs, by their number according to their rule. 34And one offense-offering goat, besides the perpetual burnt offering, its grain offering and its libation. 35On the eighth day you shall have a convocation, no task of work shall you do. 36And you shall offer up a burnt offering, a fire offering, a fragrant odor to the LORD, one bull, one ram, seven unblemished yearling lambs. 37Their grain offering and their libations—for the bull, for the ram, and for the lambs, by their number according to their rule. 38And one offense-offering goat, besides the perpetual burnt offering and its grain offering and its libation. 39These shall you do for the LORD in your fixed seasons, besides your votive offerings and your donations, as your burnt offerings and your grain offerings and your libations and your communion sacrifices.’” 30:1And Moses said to the Israelites as all that the LORD had charged Moses.
CHAPTER 29 NOTES
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1. in the seventh month on the first of the month. In the postbiblical period, this sacred assembly would be designated Rosh Hashanah, New Year. The month in which it occurs, approximately equivalent to September, figures as the seventh month in biblical calculation because the agriculturally based calendar begins in the early spring.
A day of trumpeting. The Hebrew teruʿah in all likelihood refers to the sounding of the ram’s horn, the shofar. Blasts on the ram’s horn were used in coronation ceremonies, and as Moshe Weinfeld plausibly argues, this festival was probably linked with other ancient Near Eastern festivals that enacted an annual coronation of the principal deity. It is quite possible that as the biblical faith, evolving toward the form it took in rabbinic Judaism, became more monotheistically theological and less centered on agriculture, this theme of God’s kingship led to the adoption of the first day of the seventh month as the beginning of the year—the time when God’s majestic rule is ceremonially acknowledged and humanity vows fealty and submits itself (there are ancient Near Eastern precedents) to divine judgment.
7. and on the tenth of this seventh month … you shall afflict yourselves. The holiday referred to is the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, though that name is not mentioned here. The idiom “you shall afflict yourselves,” weʿinitem ʾet-nafshoteikhem, indicates fasting.
12. on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The holiday in question is the seven-day fall harvest festival of Succoth. Not only is that name not used here but there is also no mention of the harvest aspect of the holiday in this Priestly document, which focuses relentlessly on sacrificial procedures.
13. And you shall offer up a burnt offering. Throughout this cultic legislation, the et cetera principle is strenuously avoided. Although all of the sacrifices, except for the bulls, are identical on each day, for every day, as if to confirm the high ceremonial scrupulousness of what is to be performed, each of the items is restated verbatim. Only trivial variations in wording are allowed—“and” sometimes appears and sometimes is deleted in the lists; the goat is sometimes “one goat as an offense offering” (seʿir ʿizim ʾeḥad ḥataʾt) and some times, more concisely, “one offense-offering goat” (seʿir ʾataʾt ʾeḥad). This is a literature of meticulous protocol.
thirteen bulls. The bulls, which decrease by one each day, begin with the odd number thirteen in order that on the seventh day there will be a perfect match of seven bulls for the seven days—a harmonious pairing of the sacred number in the counting of the days and in the sacrificial animals.
35. On the eighth day you shall have a convocation. This eighth day’s convocation, ʿatseret, is clearly marked in the cult as a separate holiday because it has no part in the countdown of bulls, only one bull now being sacrificed. In postbiblical tradition, the holiday would come to be known as Shemini ʿAtseret, the Eighth-Day Convocation.
30:1. Hebrew Bibles set this as the beginning of chapter 30, but it is obviously a conclusion of the present unit, summarizing what has preceded.
2And Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes of the Israelites, saying, “This is the thing that the LORD has charged: 3Should a man take a vow or make an oath to the LORD, to take upon himself a binding pledge, he shall not profane his word. According to all that issues from his mouth he shall do. 4And should a woman take a vow to the LORD and make a binding pledge in her father’s house in her youth, 5and her father hear her vow and her binding pledge that she took upon herself, and her father remain silent to her, all her vows shall stand and every binding pledge that she took upon herself shall stand. 6But should her father restrain her when he hears all her vows and her binding pledges that she took upon herself, it shall not stand, and the LORD will forgive her, for her father restrained her. 7But should she indeed become a man’s with her vows upon her or her lips’ utterance that she made binding upon herself, 8and her husband hear of it at the time he hears and remain silent to her, her vows shall stand, and her binding pledges that she took upon herself shall stand. 9And if at the time her husband hears, he restrains her and annuls her vow that is upon her and her lips’ utterance that she took upon herself as a binding pledge, the LORD will forgive her. 10And the vow of a widow or a divorced woman, all that she took upon herself as a binding pledge, shall stand. 11And if she vowed in her husband’s house or took upon herself a binding pledge by oath, 12and her husband heard and remained silent to her, he did not restrain her, all her vows and every binding pledge that she took upon herself shall stand. 13But if her husband indeed annulled them at the time he heard, whatever issues from her lips in regard to her vows and to her binding pledge shall not stand. Her husband has annulled them and the LORD will forgive her. 14Every vow and every binding oath to afflict oneself, her husband shall let it stand and her husband shall annul it. 15And if her husband indeed remains silent to her day after day and lets all her vows stand or all her binding pledges that are upon her, he has let them stand, for he remained silent to her when he heard. 16But if he indeed annuls them after he has heard, he shall bear her guilt.” 17These are the statutes that the LORD charged Moses between a man and his wife, between a father and his daughter in her youth in her father’s house.
CHAPTER 30 NOTES
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3. Should a man take a vow. Jacob Milgrom proposes that the editorial decision to introduce this section on the laws of vows was dictated by the references to vows or votive offerings (nedarim) at the end of the preceding section (29:39) of laws about sacrifices.
vow … oath … binding pledge. The first term, neder, as Baruch Levine has shown, refers to a conditional promise made to God: if God will do such-and-such, the vow taker commits himself then to repay God by offering such-and-such. (Jephthah’s vow to sacrifice to God whoever or whatever comes out of his house when he returns victorious from battle is a striking, if outrageous, instance of a neder.) The second term, shevuʿah, is an oath binding from the moment it is pronounced. The distinction between these two and the third term, ʾisar, “binding pledge,” is not entirely clear, though Levine suggests that ʾisar is an oral pledge which is then set down in legally obligating written form.
4. should a woman. Though this section begins with a man who makes a vow or pledge, its real subject is the woman who takes upon herself this sort of obligation. The woman, clearly, has limited legal automony in this society. Before marriage, her vows may be annulled by her father; after marriage, by her husband.
in her youth. The abstract noun neʿureiha refers to the period when she is a naʿarah, a nubile young woman, from puberty until marriage.
6. restrain. That is, abrogate the vow she has made.
10. the vow of a widow or a divorced woman. This is the one category of woman not subject to the authority of a man that biblical law imagines, since it does not allow for the case of the spinster (presumably a great rarity in biblical society with its ubiquitous imperative to marry and procreate).
11. And if she vowed in her husband’s house. The legal autonomy, however, of the widow or the divorced woman is restricted to her present single state. Commitments she made while married are still validated or voided by the say-so of her deceased or former husband.
13. whatever issues from her lips. Throughout these laws, there is a sense that the pronounced word, what comes out of the mouth, is a palpable entity with legally binding force. Jephthah’s daughter’s words in Judges 11:36 perfectly illustrate this notion.
14. to afflict oneself. As in 29:7, this idiom refers in the first instance to fasting.
16. if he indeed annuls them after he has heard, he shall bear her guilt. Although the formulation is rather compressed, the clear sense is as follows: if the husband remains silent when he hears the woman’s vows, and only afterward annuls them, the vows are still binding, and should she now ignore the vow, it is he who must bear the consequences of the violated commitment, having led her to think that the vow was no longer binding.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Wreak the vengeance of the Israelites against the Midianites. Afterward you shall be gathered to your kin.” 3And Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Send forth a vanguard of men from you for the army, for them to be against Midian to exact the LORD’s vengeance from Midian. 4A thousand for every single tribe, for all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the army.” 5And a thousand for the tribe, twelve thousand of the thousands of Israel, were delivered as vanguards of the army. 6And Moses sent them out, a thousand for the tribe to the army—them and Phinehas son of Eleazar the priest, to the army, and the sacred vessels and the trumpets for blasting were in his hand. 7And they arrayed against Midian, as the LORD had charged Moses, and they killed every male. 8And they killed the kings of Midian, besides their slain men—Evi and Rekem and Tsur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian, and Balaam son of Beor they killed by the sword. 9And the Israelites took the Midianite women captive, and their little ones, and all their cattle and all their livestock and all their wealth they plundered. 10And all their towns in their places of settlement and all their encampments they burned to the ground. 11And they took all the booty and all the spoil both human and beast. 12And they brought to Moses and to Eleazar the priest and to the community of Israelites the captives and the spoil and the booty, to the camp in the steppes of Moab which are at the Jordan opposite Jericho. 13And Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. 14And Moses was furious with the commanders of the force, the captains of the thousands and the captains of the hundreds who came from the battling army. 15And Moses said to them, “You have let every female live! 16Look, these are the ones who led the Israelites by Balaam’s word to betray the LORD’s trust in the affair of Peor, and there was a scourge against the LORD’s community. 17And now, kill every male among the little ones, and every woman who has known a man in lying with a male, kill. 18And all the little ones of the women who have not known lying with a male, let live. 19And you, camp outside the camp seven days. Everyone who has killed a person and everyone who has touched the slain, you shall cleanse yourself on the third day and on the seventh day, you and your captives. 20And every garment and every article of leather and everything made of goatskin and every wooden vessel you shall cleanse.” 21And Eleazar the priest said to the men of the army who came to the battle, “This is the statute of teaching that the LORD charged Moses: 22Only the gold and the silver and the bronze, the iron, the tin, and the lead, 23everything that can come into fire you shall pass through fire and it will be clean. Only in riddance water shall it be cleansed. And everything that cannot come into fire you shall pass through water. 24And you shall wash your garments on the seventh day and you shall be clean. Afterward shall you come into the camp.” 25And the LORD said to Moses, saying, 26“Count the heads of the spoil of captives, both human and beast, you and Eleazar the priest and the heads of the fathers of the community. 27And you shall divide the spoil in half between those who bore arms in battle, who went out to the army, and the whole community. 28And you shall raise a levy for the LORD from the men of war who go out to the army, one living creature out of five hundred from the humans and from the cattle and from the donkeys and from the sheep. 29From their half-share you shall take it and give to Eleazar the priest as the LORD’s donation. 30And from the half-share of the Israelites you shall take one part of fifty from the humans, from the cattle, from the donkeys and from the sheep, from all the beasts, and you shall give them to the Levites, keepers of the watch of the LORD’s Tabernacle.” 31And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, did as all that the LORD had charged Moses. 32And the spoil, over and above the plunder that the troops of the army had plundered, came to six hundred seventy-five thousand sheep, 33and seventy-two thousand head of cattle, 34and sixty-one thousand donkeys, 35and human persons, of the women who had not known lying with a male, all the persons came to thirty-two thousand. 36And the half, the share of those who went out to the army, the number of sheep was three hundred thirty-seven thousand and five hundred. 37And the levy for the LORD from the sheep came to six hundred seventy-five. 38And the cattle, thirty-six thousand head, and their levy to the LORD, seventy-two. 39And donkeys, thirty thousand five hundred, and their levy to the LORD, sixty-one. 40And human persons, sixteen thousand, and their levy to the LORD, thirty-two persons. 41And Moses gave the levy of the LORD’s donation to Eleazar the priest as the LORD had charged Moses. 42And of the half-share of the Israelites that Moses had split off from the men serving in the army—43the half-share of the community came to three hundred thirty-seven thousand and five hundred sheep. 44And cattle, thirty-six thousand head. 45And donkeys, thirty thousand five hundred. 46And human persons, sixteen thousand. 47And Moses took from the half-share of the Israelites one part of fifty from the humans and from the beasts, and he gave them to the Levites, keepers of the watch of the LORD’s Tabernacle, as the LORD had charged Moses. 48And the commanders of the army’s thousands, the captains of the thousands and the captains of the hundreds, approached Moses. 49And they said to Moses, “Your servants have counted the heads of the men of war who are in our hands, and not a man of them is missing. 50And we would offer up the LORD’s offering, each man what he found of gold ornaments, armband and bracelet, ring, earring, and pendant, to atone for our lives before the LORD.” 51And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, took from them every wrought ornament. 52And all the gold of the donation that they donated to the LORD came to sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty shekels, from the captains of the thousands and from the captains of the hundreds. 53But the men of the ranks had each of them taken booty for himself. 54And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, took the gold from the captains of the thousands and the hundreds, and they brought it to the Tent of Meeting as a remembrance for the Israelites before the LORD.
CHAPTER 31 NOTES
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2. Afterward you shall be gathered to your kin. In the rather intermittent narrative progress of the later chapters of Numbers, this military campaign against the Midianites, with the invocation of Moses’s imminent death, should properly come after (or just before) God tells Moses of his impending demise in chapter 27 and after the Israelite involvement with the seductive Midianite women reported in chapter 25.
3. Send forth a vanguard. The verbal root ḥ-l-ts can mean “to pull out” or “to gird.” Either sense might lead to the specialized noun used in military contexts, ḥaluts, “vanguard.” Here the root occurs strictly as a verb, but the likely meaning is that the men should constitute a vanguard.
to exact the LORD’s vengeance from Midian. Rashi wonders why the Moabites, who after all were the ones who engaged Balaam to curse Israel, are not mentioned. His answer is that the Moabites acted out of fear of Israel, whereas the Midianites took up a quarrel that was not theirs. It may be more likely that the writer has in mind Midian’s enticing the Israelites to join in pagan orgies in the Baal Peor incident, as Moses’s angry words in verse 16 suggest.
4. to the army. Throughout this episode, this term could also be interpreted to mean “for military service.”
6. them and Phinehas son of Eleazar the priest. One of several apparent discrepancies between this story and the antecedent narrative is that a priest is sent out as a frontline chaplain but there is no mention of a field commander, and certainly not of Joshua.
the sacred vessels and the trumpets for blasting. It is not clear which sacred vessels are to be brought, though it was common to bring instruments of divination, such as the Urim and Thummim, to the battlefield to guide tactical decisions. Some medieval commentators, with the Ark Narrative in 1 Samuel in mind, propose that the Ark was taken on the campaign. The trumpets for blasting would be used to muster the troops.
8. besides their slain men. The “slain” (ḥalalim) is the term for those fallen in battle. These kings were then killed after being taken captive.
Balaam son of Beor they killed. Here Balaam, in contrast to his performance in the Oracles narrative, appears as a negative figure, evidently assumed to have instigated the actions of the Midianite women (verse 16).
17. kill every male among the little ones, and every woman who has known a man. Moses’s command—one should note that it is Moses’s, not God’s—to perpetrate this general massacre, excluding only virgin females, is bloodcurdling, and the attempts of the interpreters, traditional and modern, to “explain” it invariably lead to strained apologetics. The practice of massacring most or all of a conquered population was widespread in the ancient Near East (the Moabite Mesha stele records a similar “ban” or ḥerem against a defeated enemy, using certain Semitic terms cognate to ones that are employed here), but that is not exactly a palliative. It is painfully evident that this is an instance in which the biblical outlook sadly failed to transcend its historical contexts. Many commentators have also puzzled over the fact that Moses, whose own wife is Midianite, should now show such intransigence toward the Midianite population. Either two conflicting traditions are present in these texts, or, if we try to conceive this as a continuous story, Moses, after the Baal Peor episode, reacts with particular fury against the Midianite women (not to speak of all the males) because he himself is married to one of them and feels impelled to demonstrate his unswerving dedication to protecting Israel from alien seduction. But it must be conceded that the earlier picture of the Midianite priest Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, as a virtual monotheist and a benign councillor of Israel does not accord with the image in these chapters of the Midianite women enticing the Israelites to pagan excesses.
18. all the little ones of the women. This phrase is a literal representation of the Hebrew, which sounds equally odd. The obvious sense is: all the young females not yet nubile. This leads Rashi and others to infer that sexually mature virgins were included in the massacre, though that inference seems to be contradicted by the emphasis on “the women who have not known lying with a male.”
19. you shall cleanse yourself. The instructions here are in strict keeping with the regulations in chapter 19 regarding purification from ritual contamination imparted by contact with a corpse.
23. everything that can come into fire. That is, everything that can be passed through fire without being destroyed. This seems to have been viewed as the preferred process of purification.
Only in riddance water shall it be cleansed. The repetition of “only” (ʾakh) from the previous sentence is a bit confusing. If the text is dependable, the sense is that after having been passed through fire, the fireproof substances are to be washed in the specially prepared “riddance water” (chapter 19) to complete the process of purification. Other substances must simply be cleansed with water.
28. one living creature. The Hebrew ʾeḥad nefesh is peculiar on two counts: the number precedes the noun instead of following it as it ordinarily does, and the number is masculine whereas nefesh is feminine. There are, however, instances in which numbers precede nouns, and the use of the masculine number here may be influenced by the phrase for “one part of fifty” (verse 30), which equally reverses the usual order of number and noun: ʾeḥad ʾaḥuz.
32. six hundred seventy-five thousand. The approximate correspondence to the number of adult male Israelites in the wilderness is obvious. The numbers are schematic and patently exaggerated, as are other details of the defeat of the Midianites (most extravagantly, the report in verse 49 that the Israelites did not suffer a single casualty).
50. armband and bracelet, ring, earring, and pendant. Despoiling the defeated enemy of jewelry was a standard practice and is alluded to elsewhere as an expected procedure (compare David’s elegy over Saul and Jonathan: “O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, / who clothed you in scarlet and bangles, / who studded your garments with jewelry of gold” [2 Samuel 1:24]). Of the items mentioned here, armbands and rings (that is, signet rings) could be worn by either sex, but the bracelets, earrings, and pendants are women’s ornaments. The exact meaning of kumaz, the term translated as “pendant,” is not entirely certain. Rashi imagines it is “an image of the vagina,” which is perhaps fanciful but not completely off the mark, since ancient pendants have been found in this general region showing erotic female figures.
52. all the gold of the donation. As in the case of the Israelite donations for the making of the Tabernacle, the sundry gold ornaments are to be melted down and then refashioned as sacred vessels.
53. But the men of the ranks. More literally, “the men of the army.” The form of the verb here clearly suggests contrast: the ordinary soldiers, in contrast to the officers, kept what they had taken as booty, the entire donation being made up by the officers.
1And the Reubenites and the Gadites had much livestock, very numerous, and they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, and, look, the place was a place for livestock. 2And the Gadites and the Reubenites came to Moses and to Eleazar the priest and to the chieftains of the community, saying, 3“Ataroth and Dibon and Jazer and Nimrah and Heshbon and Elealeh and Sebam and Nebo and Beon, 4the land that the LORD struck down before the community of Israel, is livestock land, and your servants have livestock.” 5And they said, “If we have found favor in your eyes, let this land be given to your servants as a holding. Do not make us cross the Jordan.” 6And Moses said to the Gadites and to the Reubenites, “Shall your brothers come to battle and you sit here? 7And why would you hinder the heart of the Israelites from crossing into the land that the LORD has given to them? 8Thus your fathers did when I sent them from Kadesh-Barnea to see the land. 9And they went up as far as Wadi Eshcol and saw the land, and they hindered the heart of the Israelites from coming into the land that the LORD had given them. 10And the LORD’s wrath flared on that day and He swore, saying, 11‘These men who have come up from Egypt, from twenty years old and up, shall not see the soil that I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, for they have not fulfilled My behest, 12save Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they fulfilled My behest.’ 13And the LORD’s wrath flared against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the eyes of the LORD came to an end. 14And, look, you have arisen in your fathers’ stead, a breed of offending men, to add still more of the LORD’s flaring wrath against Israel. 15For you would turn back from Him, so that He would continue to leave them in the wilderness, and you would destroy all this people.” 16And they approached him and said, “Sheep enclosures we shall build here for our livestock, and towns for our little ones. 17And as for us, we shall head out swiftly in the vanguard before the Israelites until we bring them to their place, and our little ones will dwell in the fortified towns because of the inhabitants of the land. 18We will not return to our homes until the Israelites take possession every man of his estate. 19For we will not take possession with them on the other side of the Jordan and beyond, for our estate has come to us on the side of the Jordan to the east.” 20And Moses said to them, “If you will do this thing, if you go out in the vanguard to battle before the LORD, 21and every member of the vanguard among you crosses the Jordan before the LORD until He dispossesses His enemies before Him, 22and the land is conquered before the LORD, then you may return and you will be clear of the LORD and of Israel, and this land will be a holding for you before the LORD. 23And should you not do thus, look, you will have offended to the LORD, and know your offense, which will find you. 24Build your towns for your little ones and enclosures for your sheep, and the utterance of your mouth you shall do.” 25And the Gadites and the Reubenites said to Moses, saying, “Your servants will do as my lord charges. 26Our little ones, our wives, our livestock, and all our beasts will be there in the towns of Gilead. 27And your servants will cross over, all the vanguard of the army, before the LORD to the battle, as my lord speaks.” 28And Moses charged them, with Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun and the heads of the fathers of the Israelite tribes. 29And Moses said to them, “If the Gadites and the Reubenites cross the Jordan with you, all the vanguard to the battle before the LORD, and the land is conquered before you, you shall give them the land of Gilead as a holding. 30But if they do not cross over with you as a vanguard, they shall find holdings in your midst in the land of Canaan.” 31And the Gadites and the Reubenites answered, saying, “That which the LORD has spoken to your servants, so will we do. 32We will cross over in the vanguard before the LORD to the land of Canaan, while ours will be our secure holding on the other side of the Jordan.” 33And Moses gave to the Gadites and to the Reubenites and to the half-tribe of Manasseh son of Joseph the kingdom of Sihon, king of the Amorite, and the kingdom of Og, king of the Bashan, the land with its towns within the borders of the towns of the land all around. 34And the Gadites built Dibon and Ataroth and Aroer, 35and Atroth-Shophan and Jazer and Jogbehah, 36and Beth-Nimrah and Beth-Haran—fortified towns and sheep enclosures. 37And the Reubenites built Heshbon and Elealeh and Kiriathaim, 38and Nebo and Baal-Meon, changed in name, and Sibmah. And they called by names, the names of the towns they had built. 39And the sons of Machir son of Manasseh went to the Gilead and captured it and dispossessed the Amorite who was in it. 40And Moses gave the Gilead to Machir son of Manasseh, and he settled in it. 41And Jair son of Manasseh went and captured their hamlets and called them Jair’s Hamlets. 42And Nobah went and captured Kenath and its surrounding villages and he called it Nobah, in his name.
CHAPTER 32 NOTES
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1. the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead. The flexible Hebrew term ʾerets, “land,” often means “region,” as it does here, rather than “country.” The area of settlement where these animal-breeding Israelites seek to stay is east of the northern half of the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan River that flows down into it, extending all the way up to the Sea of Galilee.
3. Ataroth and Dibon and Jazer. Perhaps out of a certain nervousness at presenting Moses with a request that might elicit his displeasure (this proves to be the case), the Reubenites and Gadites begin their speech with a long catalogue of names of recently conquered places, not at first explaining what they have on their mind.
5. And they said. As is generally the case, the repetition of the formula for introducing speech with no intervening response from the other party is an indication of temporary lack of response because of the nature of what has been said. The Reubenites and Gadites present a catalogue of towns, then say that this is good land for livestock and that they have livestock. This is a leading statement, and Moses no doubt sees where their remarks are leading. He listens in stony silence: they hesitate, then resume their speech, now making the explicit request to settle east of the Jordan.
6. Shall your brothers come to battle and you sit here? At least according to this canonical account, the fighting in the region east of the Jordan (against the Amorites, the Moabites, and the Midianites) has already been successfully concluded, whereas the conquest of Canaan proper remains to be undertaken.
11. the soil. Here Moses chooses to have God say ʾadamah, which can mean “land” or “country” but which has a strong connotation of “arable land” or “soil,” underlining the prospective fertility of the territory promised to Israel. The more usual term in these texts of promise is ʾerets, “land.”
they have not fulfilled My behest. The literal meaning of this phrase is “they have not filled after me,” that is, implicitly followed Me.
15. to leave them in the wilderness. The Hebrew says, a little confusingly, “to leave him,” the evident antecedent being the collective noun “people.”
17. because of. Or “in the face of,” “against.”
18. We will not return to our homes until the Israelites take possession. The existence of a substantial Israelite settlement east of the Jordan, whether one attributes it to this early period or to later expansionist drives, clearly posed a problem of national unity. The exemplary readiness of the Reubenites and Gadites to head out in the vanguard to fight for their cis-Jordanian brothers is intended as a rousing image of national solidarity.
19. for our estate has come to us. As Rashi notes, the idiom means “to come into legal possession.”
22. you will be clear of the LORD and of Israel. The idiom refers to being clear of the obligations of a vow or pledge—in this case, because they will have been fulfilled.
23. know your offense, which will find you. Although this agreement with the trans-Jordanian tribes is strictly between them and Moses (in this case Moses does not turn to God for guidance), the implicit guarantor of the pledge is God. Violating the pledge would be an offense “to the LORD,” and the consequences of the offense would be felt by the violators of the pledge.
24. the utterance of your mouth. More literally, “what goes out from your mouth”—an idiom used for oaths, which cannot be retracted once they are pronounced.
28. the heads of the fathers of the Israelite tribes. “Fathers” apparently enters this string of phrases as a reference to the social-organizational unit “father’s house,” or patriarchal house.
32. our secure holding. See the comment on 27:7 for an explanation of this phrase.
33. the half-tribe of Manasseh. Until this point, there was no mention of Manasseh as part of the trans-Jordanian group.
34. built. The implication is not that they built these towns from the ground up but that they rebuilt them after conquest and, one assumes, partial destruction. This is a common biblical use of this verb.
38. changed in name. Some of these towns, as Rashi observed, bore names associated with pagan gods (notably, the just mentioned Baal-Meon), so the Israelites were impelled to rename them.
39. the sons of Machir. Although the obvious meaning is Machirites, in this instance the translation literally reproduces the Hebrew “sons of” because of the identification of Machir, twice, in what immediately follows as literally “son of Manasseh.”
1These are the journeyings of the Israelites who came out of the land of Egypt by their battalions, in the hand of Moses and Aaron. 2And Moses wrote down their departure points for their journeyings by the word of the LORD, and these are their journeyings by their departure points.
3And they journeyed from Rameses, in the first month on the fifteenth day of the first month on the morrow of the Passover offering the Israelites went out with a high hand before the eyes of all Egypt. 4And the Egyptians were burying all the firstborn that the LORD had struck down among them, and the LORD had dealt punishment to their gods. 5And the Israelites journeyed from Rameses and camped at Succoth. 6And they journeyed from Succoth and camped at Etham, which is on the edge of the wilderness. 7And they journeyed from Etham and went back toward Pi-Hahiroth, which is opposite Baal-Zephon, and they camped before Migdol. 8And they journeyed from Pi-Hahiroth and crossed over through the sea to the wilderness, and they went three days in the Wilderness of Etham and camped at Marah. 9And they journeyed from Marah and came to Elim, and at Elim there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there. 10And they journeyed from Elim and camped by the Sea of Reeds. 11And they journeyed from the Sea of Reeds and camped in the Wilderness of Sin. 12And they journeyed from the Wilderness of Sin and camped at Dophkah. 13And they journeyed from Dophkah and camped at Alush. 14And they journeyed from Alush and camped at Rephidim, and there was no water there to drink. 15And they journeyed from Rephidim and camped in the Wilderness of Sinai. 16And they journeyed from the Wilderness of Sinai and camped at Kibroth-Hattaavah. 17And they journeyed from Kibroth-Hattaavah and camped at Hazeroth. 18And they journeyed from Hazeroth and camped at Rithmah. 19And they journeyed from Rithmah and camped at Rimmon-Perez. 20And they journeyed from Rimmon-Perez and camped at Libnah. 21And they journeyed from Libnah and camped at Rissah. 22And they journeyed from Rissah and camped at Kehelath. 23And they journeyed from Kehelath and camped at Mount Shepher. 24And they journeyed from Mount Shepher and camped at Haradah. 25And they journeyed from Haradah and camped at Makheloth. 26And they journeyed from Makheloth and camped at Tahath. 27And they journeyed from Tahath and camped at Terah. 28And they journeyed from Terah and camped at Mithkah. 29And they journeyed from Mithkah and camped at Hashmonah. 30And they journeyed from Hashmonah and camped at Moseroth. 31And they journeyed from Moseroth and camped at Bene-Jaakan. 32And they journeyed from Bene-Jaakan and camped at Hor-Haggidgad. 33And they journeyed from Hor-Haggidgad and camped at Jothbathah. 34And they journeyed from Jothbathah and camped at Abronah. 35And they journeyed from Abronah and camped at Ezion-Geber. 36And they journeyed from Ezion-Geber and camped in the Wilderness of Zin, which is Kadesh. 37And they journeyed from Kadesh and camped at Hor the Mountain at the edge of the land of Edom. 38And Aaron the priest went up Hor the Mountain by the LORD’s word and died there in the fortieth year of the Israelites’ going out from Egypt, in the fifth month on the first of the month. 39And Aaron was one hundred twenty-three years old when he died on Hor the Mountain. 40And the Canaanite, the king of Arad, who dwelled in the Negeb in the land of Canaan, heard when the Israelites came. 41And they journeyed from Hor the Mountain and camped at Zalmonah. 42And they journeyed from Zalmonah and camped at Punon. 43And they journeyed from Punon and camped at Oboth. 44And they journeyed from Oboth and camped at Iye-Abarim on the border of Moab. 45And they journeyed from Iye-Abarim and camped at Dibon-Gad. 46And they journeyed from Dibon-Gad and camped at Almon-Diblathaim. 47And they journeyed from Almon-Diblathaim and camped in the high country of Abarim, before Nebo. 48And they journeyed from the high country of Abarim and camped in the steppes of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho. 49And they camped by the Jordan from Beth-Jeshimoth to Abel-Shittim, in the steppes of Moab.
50And the LORD spoke to Moses in the steppes of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho, saying, 51“Speak to the Israelites and you shall say to them, ‘You are about to cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan. 52And you shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land before you, and you shall destroy all their carved figures and all their molten images you shall destroy, and all their cult-places you shall demolish. 53And you shall take possession of the land and dwell in it, for to you I have given the land to take hold of it. 54And you shall settle the land by lot according to your clans. For the many you shall make their estate large and for the few you shall make their estate small. Wherever the lot falls, there it will be his. By the tribes of your fathers you shall settle. 55And if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land from before you, it will come about that those of them you leave will become stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will be foes to you on the land in which you dwell. 56And it will come about that as I had thought to do to them, I shall do to you.’”
CHAPTER 33 NOTES
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1. These are the journeyings. Now at the end of the long chain of Wilderness stories that began in Exodus, as the Israelites are poised to cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, we get a grand recapitulation of the whole narrative in the form of an itinerary of all the way stations in the Wilderness march. Such itineraries were a set literary form in the ancient Near East, with Mesopotamian examples, akin in form to the document in this chapter, going back to early in the second millennium B.C.E.
2. Moses wrote down their departure points. As elsewhere, the narrative reflects a consciousness of the antiquity and primacy of writing in Hebrew culture.
by the word. Literally, “by the mouth.”
4. the LORD had dealt punishment to their gods. The conjecture of some scholars that this clause reflects a lost tradition in which the God of Israel battled directly against the gods of Egypt seems unnecessary. From the story in Exodus, it is clear enough that the Ten Plagues and the freeing of the Hebrew slaves are understood as a resounding demonstration of the impotence of the gods of Egypt in the face of the all-powerful YHWH.
5–49. Most of the place-names occur in the narrative in Exodus and Numbers, and the rehearsal of these names here constitutes a summary and recollection of incidents that occurred at the sundry places. (Thus Kibroth-Hattaavah, verse 16, which means Graves of Desire, hardly an ordinary place-name, recalls the incident recorded in chapter 11.) But there are some important episodes with their place-names that do not appear in this itinerary: even, surprisingly, the central stop at Mount Sinai is not actually mentioned, only a stay in the Wilderness of Sinai. At the same time, a number of places are recorded in the itinerary that do not appear in the preceding narrative. At least a few of these are designations that don’t sound like conventional place-names but appear to refer to some event that occurred at the location in question (e.g., Haradah in verse 24 is the Hebrew word for “terror”). All this makes it likely that, in keeping with a common compositional procedure of biblical literature, an archival document has been spliced into the text, reflecting some traditions about the Wilderness wanderings that were not incorporated in the canonical narrative of Exodus and Numbers.
52. cult-places. The bamah was an open-air altar on which sacrifices, to agricultural and other gods, were offered. Israelites in fact widely used bamot until they were suppressed in the reforms of Josiah around 621 B.C.E.
55. stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides. Given the next clause, “they will be foes to you on the land” (Onkelos interprets the verb here as “oppress”), the reference of these metaphors appears to be strategic: unless you entirely destroy or expel the Canaanites, they will continually attack you as you try to dwell in the land. The parallels to this verse in Exodus 34:11–13, Deuteronomy 7:1, and Joshua 23:4–9 see the danger of the Canaanite presence as cultic temptation rather than military harassment. In any case, the idea of wiping out or totally banishing the Canaanites was never actually implemented, and it has the look of a theological program retrojected onto a purportedly historical narrative as a desideratum presented by God to Israel.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Charge the Israelites, and you shall say to them, ‘When you come into the land of Canaan, this is the land that will fall to you in estate, the land of Canaan by its borders. 3And your southern limit shall be from the Wilderness of Zin by Edom, and your southern border from the edge of the Dead Sea to the east. 4And your border shall swing round south of the Ascent of Akrabbim and pass through Zin, and its farthest reaches shall be south of Kadesh-Barnea, and it shall extend out to Hazar-Addar and pass through to Azmon. 5And the border shall swing round from Azmon toward the Wadi of Egypt, and its farthest reaches to the Sea. 6And the western border—the Great Sea shall be your border, this shall be your western border. 7And this shall be your northern border, from the Great Sea you shall trace a line to Hor the Mountain. 8From Hor the Mountain you shall trace a line to Lebo-Hamath, and the farthest reaches of the border to Zedad. 9And the border shall extend to Ziphron, and its farthest reaches, Hazar-Enan. This shall be your northern border. 10And you shall trace for yourselves a line for the eastern border from Hazar-Enan to Shepham. 11And the border shall go down from Shepham to the Riblah, east of Ain, and the border shall go down and touch the slope of Lake Chinnereth to the east. 12And the border shall go down to the Jordan, and its farthest reaches at the Dead Sea. This shall be your land by its borders all around.’”
13And Moses charged the Israelites, saying, “This is the land of which you will take possession by lot, as the LORD has charged to give to the nine and a half tribes. 14For the tribe of the Reubenites by their fathers’ houses and the tribe of the Gadites by their fathers’ houses and the half-tribe of Manasseh have taken their estate. 15The two and a half tribes have taken their estate beyond the Jordan across from Jericho to the east.” 16And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 17“These are the names of the men who will share out estates of the land for you: Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun. 18And one chieftain, one chieftain from each tribe you shall take to share out the estates of the land. 19And these are the names of the men: For the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh. 20For the tribe of the Simeonites, Samuel son of Ammihud. 21For the tribe of Benjamin, Elidad son of Chislon. 22And for the tribe of the Danites, chieftain Bukki, son of Jogli. 23For the Josephites of the tribe of the Manassites, chieftain Hanniel son of Ephod. 24And for the tribe of the Ephraimites, chieftain Kemuel son of Shiphtan. 25And for the tribe of the Zebulunites, chieftain Elizaphan son of Parnach. 26And for the tribe of the Issacharites, chieftain Paltiel son of Azzan. 27And for the tribe of the Asherites, chieftain Ahihud son of Shelomi. 28And for the tribe of the Naphtalites, chieftain Pedahel son of Ammihud. 29These are the ones whom the LORD charged to share out estates to the Israelites in the land of Canaan.”
CHAPTER 34 NOTES
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2. fall to you. As Rashi aptly notes, this verb is used because the apportionment of the land is to be carried out by lot.
3–12. As the Book of Numbers draws to a close, with the Israelites ready to begin the conquest of the land (a sequence of events that will not be reported until the Book of Joshua), the reality of the land in which Israel will dwell is concretized through this mapping out of its borders. Those borders are only partly consistent with the delineation of the borders in Joshua and Ezekiel, and it is questionable whether they completely correspond to any historical contours of Israelite dominion. The northern borders extend far into Syria, well north of Sidon. Though the Mediterranean as western border seems neat, it does not reflect the fact that for several centuries much of the coastal plain was Philistine territory. Some scholars have argued that these borders are substantially those of the Egyptian province of Canaan agreed on with the Hittites after the battle of Kedesh in 1270 B.C.E., but that proposal has not been universally accepted and it remains to be explained why a later writer would adopt those borders.
4. the Ascent of Akrabbim. The Hebrew means “Scorpion Ascent.”
6. the western border. The Hebrew term for “west,” yam, actually means “sea.” That word, whether by itself or with the qualifier “great,” always refers to the Mediterranean, unless it is otherwise specified in the name (e.g., yam suf, Sea of Reeds).
15. have taken their estate beyond the Jordan. The decision of the two and a half tribes to settle east of the Jordan in the Gilead region was reported in detail in chapter 32. Although this was a recognized area of Israelite settlement, there is a sense here that it lies outside the land of Canaan proper, whose eastern border is marked by Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and the Jordan and the Dead Sea below it.
1And the LORD spoke to Moses in the steppes of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho, saying, 2“Charge the Israelites, that they give to the Levites from their secure holdings towns in which to settle and pastureland for the towns around them you shall give to the Levites. 3And the towns will be theirs to settle, and their pasturelands will be for their cattle and for their goods and for all their beasts. 4And the pasturelands of the towns that you give to the Levites are to be a thousand cubits all around from the wall of the town. 5And you shall measure outside the town the eastern limit two thousand in cubits and the southern limit two thousand in cubits and the western limit two thousand in cubits and the northern limit two thousand in cubits, with the town in the middle. This will be their towns’ pasturelands. 6And the towns that you shall give to the Levites, the six towns of asylum you shall give for a murderer to flee there, and in addition to them you shall give forty-two towns. 7All the towns that you shall give to the Levites will come to forty-eight towns, they and their pasturelands. 8And the towns that you give from the holdings of the Israelites, from the many you shall give much and from the few you shall give less, each according to his estate of which he takes possession shall he give of his towns to the Levites.” 9And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 10“Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them, ‘When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, 11you shall set out for yourselves towns, towns of asylum you shall have, and a murderer may flee there, one who strikes down a person in errance. 12And the towns will be an asylum for you from the avenger, and the murderer will not die until he stands before the community for judgment. 13And the towns that you give, six towns of asylum you shall have. 14Three towns you shall give beyond the Jordan the avenger, and three towns in the land of Canaan, towns of asylum they shall be. 15For the Israelites and for the sojourner and for the settler in their midst these six towns shall be an asylum for everyone who strikes down a person in errance, to flee there. 16But if he struck him with an iron tool and he died, he is a murderer, the murderer is doomed to die. 17And if he struck him with a hand stone by which one may die and he died, he is a murderer, the murderer is doomed to die. 18Or with a wooden hand tool by which one may die he struck him and he died, he is a murderer, the murderer is doomed to die. 19The blood avenger shall put the murderer to death, when he comes upon him he shall put him to death. 20And if in hatred he should knock him down or fling something on him by design and he die, 21or in enmity he strike him with his hand and he die, he who struck is doomed to die, he is a murderer. The blood avenger shall put the murderer to death when he comes upon him. 22But if on an impulse, without enmity, he knocked him down or flung upon him any tool, without design, 23or with any stone by which one may die, without seeing he dropped it on him and he died, he not being his enemy nor seeking his harm, 24the community shall judge between him who struck and the blood avenger on these matters of judgment. 25And the community shall rescue the murderer from the hands of the blood avenger and the community shall take him back to the town of asylum where he fled, and he shall stay there until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the holy oil. 26But if the murderer should indeed go out beyond the border of his town of asylum where he has fled, 27and the blood avenger finds him outside the border of his town of asylum and the blood avenger murders the murderer, he has no bloodguilt. 28But he shall stay in his town of asylum until the death of the high priest, and after the death of the high priest the murderer shall go back to the land of his holding. 29And these shall be for you a statute of judgment for your generations in all your dwelling places. 30Whoever strikes down a person, by witnesses shall the murderer be murdered, and a single witness shall not testify against a person to die. 31And you shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty to die, for he is doomed to die. 32And you shall not take ransom in lieu of flight to his town of asylum to let him go back to dwell in the land, until the death of the high priest. 33And you shall not pollute the land in which you are, for blood will pollute the land, and for the land there will be no ransoming for the blood that has been shed in it except through the blood of him who shed it. 34And you shall not defile the land in which you dwell, in the midst of which I abide, for I am the LORD, abiding in the midst of the Israelites.’”
CHAPTER 35 NOTES
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2. give to the Levites … towns in which to settle. The Levites, it should be recalled, had no tribal territory, and so the other tribes are enjoined to apportion towns for them.
5. the eastern limit. Both the invocation of the four points of the compass and the use of the term “limit” (peʾah) recall the apportionment of the land in the preceding chapter. The juxtaposition—presumably, an editorial maneuver—is significant. The division of the land into tribal territories and clan holdings does not guarantee the creation of a stable, harmonious society. Provision must be made, as it is in these regulations for towns of asylum, for acts of violence of Israelite against Israelite, with protection for the manslayer when the act is not premeditated.
two thousand in cubits. The seeming contradiction with the just stipulated one thousand cubits is most simply resolved by assuming that the two thousand cubits are from perimeter to perimeter, with the breadth of the town itself (“the town in the middle”) excluded from the calculation. Rashi’s solution is that in fact an area extending two thousand cubits beyond the town walls is designated—an inner zone of one thousand cubits for pastureland and an outer zone of another thousand cubits for planted fields and vineyards.
7. forty-eight towns. The total number amounts to four towns per tribe, though the contribution of towns is to be implemented proportionately to the size of the tribe (verse 8).
11. set out. The use of the verbal stem q-r-h here is a little unusual because it generally indicates a chance event. Rashi proposes that the essential meaning of the verb is “to determine,” “to cause to happen” (leshon hazmanah).
murderer. The Hebrew rotseaḥ is used for both an intentional murderer and, as here, for someone who has committed manslaughter.
12. the avenger. The term goʾel is an abbreviated form of goʾel hadam, “blood avenger,” used elsewhere in this chapter. Blood vengeance was a form of vendetta justice executed by the family of the victim. The ritual motive beyond the simple thirst for vengeance was an archaic sense that blood wrongfully shed polluted the land, generated a kind of poisonous miasma, and had to be “redeemed” by shedding the blood of the murderer. (Compare Genesis 9:6: “He who sheds human blood / by humans his blood shall be shed.”) The laws here try to blend this older system of justice implemented by the family with a system in which justice is administered by courts. Thus, the “community” is given the responsibility for adjudicating between the accused person and the blood avenger by determining whether the accused has committed premeditated murder. If he has, capital punishment is then executed by the blood avenger, not the community.
14. Three towns … beyond the Jordan. It is odd that the division should be three on each side of the Jordan because nine and a half of the tribes reside to the west of the Jordan. Rashi’s suggestion that there was an unusually high homicide rate among the trans-Jordanian Gileadites seems fanciful. Perhaps three towns of asylum east of the Jordan made sense because this was the region of Israelite settlement farthest removed from the main centers of Israelite population, and thus a fugitive from vendetta justice was likely to feel more safely distanced there from the reach of the avengers.
15. for the sojourner and for the settler. Although “for” is repeated before each noun in the Hebrew, this is merely a variant form of the common hendiadys ger wetoshav, which means “resident alien.”
16. with an iron tool. As Jacob Milgrom reminds us, the historical setting for these laws was the early Iron Age, when iron may have been chiefly used for weapons. The prohibition in Exodus 20:25 against using iron tools in the construction of an altar reflects the same situation. If the fatal blow was delivered with a lethal implement, the presumption is that the killing was intentional.
17. a hand stone. The translation literally reproduces the gnomic expression of the Hebrew. The obvious meaning is a sizable stone that can be grasped in the hand and used as a weapon.
18. Or with a wooden hand tool. There appears to be a progressive extension of the principle of lethal implement through these three instances. The iron tool is designed as a weapon. The stone is an improvised weapon. The wooden hand tool—say, a wooden mallet—is an implement meant for another purpose that has been appropriated as a weapon.
19. when he comes upon him. The verb p-g-ʿ indicates an encounter between two parties (or two material substances), but there may be a pun here because the verb also means “to stab” (the sharp encounter of iron with flesh).
22. But if on an impulse. Or “suddenly,” which is to say, the perpetrator of the act himself did not foresee or plan it.
23. with any stone by which one may die. This stipulation recognizes that the previously mentioned nature of the instrument of killing is not sufficient proof of premeditation: a person could, for example, carelessly throw a “hand stone” out a window, not realizing that someone was standing below.
26. if the murderer should indeed go out beyond the border of his town of asylum. There is a link between the notion of levitical towns of asylum and the extension of protective sanctuary at the altar to manslayers and other accused criminals. Baruch Levine suggests that once the cult was centralized in Jerusalem, the levitical towns assumed the function of asylum previously associated with local sanctuaries. In Mesopotamia there were analogous towns of asylum, and Moshe Weinfeld notes that the Egyptians had zones of asylum, supervised by priests, which may shed light on the linking of the duration of asylum here with the life span of the high priest.
30. by witnesses. For capital crimes, at least two witnesses were necessary to convict the accused.
shall the murderer be murdered. The verb ratsaḥ reaches its longest semantic stretch here when it is used in the sense of “execute”—probably in order to underline the notion of measure-for-measure justice. In verse 25 it is used to designate an involuntary manslayer.
32. ransom in lieu of flight. The Hebrew says literally, “ransom to flee.” Ransom thus is equally prohibited as a substitute for the capital punishment of a murderer and as a substitute for a manslayer’s settling in a town of asylum, which would be a form of exile within the borders of the country (as in the sentence of internal exile to a remote region in the Czarist system of justice).
1And the heads of the fathers’ houses for the clan of the son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh from the clans of the sons of Joseph came forward and spoke before Moses and before the chieftains, heads of the fathers’ houses of the Israelites. 2And they said, “The LORD charged my lord to give the land to the Israelites in estate by lot, and my lord was charged by the LORD to give the estate of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters. 3But should they become wives to any of the sons of the Israelite tribes, their estate would be withdrawn from our fathers’ estate and added to the estate of the tribe to which they would belong, and from the lot of our estate it would be withdrawn. 4And though the jubilee comes for the Israelites, their estate would be added to the estate of the tribe to which they would belong, and from the estate of our fathers’ tribe it would be withdrawn.” 5And Moses charged the Israelites by the word of the LORD, saying, “Rightly do the tribe of the sons of Joseph speak. 6This is the thing that the LORD charged concerning the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, ‘To whomever is good in their eyes they may become wives, only within the clan of their father’s tribe must they become wives. 7And an estate of the Israelites shall not turn round from tribe to tribe, but the Israelites shall cling each man to the estate of the tribe of his fathers. 8And every daughter inheriting an estate from the tribes of the Israelites shall become wife to someone from the clan of her father’s tribe, so that the Israelites may inherit each man the estate of his fathers. 9And an estate shall not turn round from a tribe to another tribe, but each man shall cling to his estate in the tribes of the Israelites.’” 10As the LORD charged Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad do. 11And Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah and Milcah and Noa the daughters of Zelophehad became wives to their uncles’ sons. 12Within the clans of the sons of Manasseh son of Joseph they became wives, and their estate was attached to the tribe of the clan of their father.
13These are the commands and the regulations that the LORD charged the Israelites by the hand of Moses in the steppes of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho.
CHAPTER 36 NOTES
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1. the heads of the fathers’ houses. In both occurrences of the phrase in this verse, the Hebrew uses an ellipsis, “heads of the fathers.”
2. the estate. The issue of inheritance, so urgent in the later chapters of Numbers, is thematically focused in this concluding episode by the constant repetition of “estate,” naḥalah.
3. any of the sons of the Israelite tribes. The obvious reference is to husbands outside their own tribe and clan.
their estate would be withdrawn … and added to the estate … from … our estate it would be withdrawn. The speech of the Gileadite leaders reflects an extraordinary degree of redundancy (and these recurring phrases are recycled still again in the next verse). Perhaps the repetition indicates nervousness on their part about the substance of their petition: they seem peculiarly anxious that some parcel of their tribal estate might slip away from them and be annexed by another tribe unless Moses takes immediate steps to rectify the situation. Moses’s answer shows something of the same inclination to repetition (compare verses 7 and 9), as though in response to their anxiety he wanted to make absolutely clear what the governing principle must be.
the lot of our estate. The slightly odd collocation of these two nouns in the construct state (smikhut) is dictated by the fact that the estate is divided by lot.
4. though the jubilee comes for the Israelites. In the jubilee year, the end of a forty-nine year cycle, land that has been sold is supposed to revert to its original owners. This is not the case, however, for inherited land, and so the land inherited by Zelophehad’s daughters, were they to marry outside the tribe, would remain attached to their husbands’ tribes, even after the occurrence of the jubilee.
5. by the word of the LORD. Despite this phrase, there is no indication here that Moses has consulted an oracle, which was the case in the initial legal issue of the daughters of Zelophehad (chapter 27). Confronted with an unanticipated consequence of the earlier ruling, a ruling said to be dictated by God, Moses the judicial leader is compelled to engage in legal interpretation of how the ruling is to be applied. The act of interpretation itself is represented as a kind of extension of the oracular revelation that was manifested in the earlier incident. The phrase, “by the word [literally, mouth] of the LORD” here is a microcosmic adumbration of the whole theology of legal interpretation that later will undergird the Talmud: every rabbinic ruling is halakhah lemosheh misinai, “a law according to Moses from Sinai.”
Rightly do the tribe of the sons of Joseph speak. As Richard Elliott Friedman notes, these words are a pointed self-quotation by Moses of his response to the petition of the young women in 27:7: “Rightly do the daughters of Zelophehad speak.”
12. and their estate was attached to the tribe of the clan of their father. Although the legal anecdote of the marriage of Zelophehad’s daughters is often characterized by scholars as an appendix to the Book of Numbers, it does serve as a vivid focus for the prospect of inheriting the land that confronts the Israelites as they await orders to begin their invasion. Not only does “estate” recur as a key word but also “clan,” “tribe,” and, it should be duly noted, “fathers” and “sons.” The case of inheriting daughters puts a certain strain on the patriarchal system, but its patriarchal character remains firmly in place, as the reiteration of “fathers” and “sons” makes clear, and thus a limitation on the choice of husband (to which noninheriting daughters would not be subject) is imposed on these young women in order to preserve the integrity of the tribal configuration with its patriarchal definition. With the viability of the tribal division of the land thus reaffirmed, the Israelites are prepared to begin the conquest. First, however, in the redacted final form of the Five Books of Moses, they will have to listen to Moses’s long, recapitulative valedictory speech that makes up the Book of Deuteronomy.
13. These are the commands and the regulations. This concluding summary is more appropriate as a coda to the sections of law and cult procedure in the latter part of Numbers than to the book as a whole, with its many incidents of rebellion and its account of military campaigns in the trans-Jordan region.
in the steppes of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho. This phrase of geographical location has been repeated several times, reminding us that the Wilderness wanderings of the Israelites conclude with a long pause at this final way station. It is fitting that “Jericho” should be the last word in the Book of Numbers. Jericho will be the first military objective when the Israelites cross the Jordan, and so the concluding word here points forward to the beginning of Joshua.
