Political Themes in the Hebrew Scriptures

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Author: Jules Gleicher

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P T   H S

Jules Gleicher

POLITICAL THEMES IN THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

Copyright © Jules Gleicher, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–61822–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gleicher, Jules. Political themes in the Hebrew Scriptures / Jules Gleicher. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–61822–0 (alk. paper) 1. Politics in the Bible. 2. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Jews—Politics and government—To 70 A.D. 4. Judaism and politics. I. Title. BS1199.P6G54 2010 221⬘.832—dc22

2009039968

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: March 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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Preface 1 The Book of Origins 2 Mosaic Episodes

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3 Observations on the Mosaic Law

135

4 The Prophetic History

181

5 Five Prophetic Practitioners

213

Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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All the essays in this book originated as short, informal presentations—divrei Torah (words of instruction)—at the Ohave Sholom Synagogue in Rockford, Illinois, beginning in 1993. (This may help explain their rhetorical flavor.) I am grateful to Rabbi William Fertig, Rabbi Elihu Milder, and my fellow parishioners for affording me the privilege of the pulpit and for providing helpful suggestions. My interest in undertaking these explorations into political, social, and other themes in Judaism’s sacred text received crucial impetus from an NEH-sponsored seminar on “Law and Religion in Biblical Antiquity,” led by Professor Calum Carmichael, which I attended during the summer of 1994. Support, encouragement, and constructive criticism were provided by Professors Carmichael, Paul Gottfried, George Anastaplo, Leonard “Rick” Sorenson, and Eric Pullin, and my son David H. Gleicher; my colleagues on Rockford College’s Faculty Development Committee and the administration of the college that approved my applications for sabbaticals and released time in 2001, 2002, and 2007, when I developed some of my thoughts into journal articles and conference papers; my editors at Palgrave Macmillan—Chris Chappell, Samantha Hasey, Rohini Krishnan, Kristy Lilas, and Toby Wahl—and my wife and best friend Joan Kapstein. Two things should be readily apparent from these essays: First, that I am neither a cleric nor an academic Biblicist. My observations and arguments are thus neither informed nor bound by the doctrinal and methodological premises of these respectable professions. Second, that this book has no single unifying thesis. It is rather a set of somewhat eclectic inquiries into the Hebrew Scriptures and, in Professor Anastaplo’s phrase, “respectful readings”—an amateur work, in the original sense of a work driven by love of the subject matter. It would be remarkable if such an enterprise did not stumble into occasional error. I console myself with the hope that even where I may be totally off base, my remarks will be interesting and thought provoking.

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PREFACE

I dedicate this volume to the memory of my mother, Sadie Gleicher, to whom I owe, among much else, my first exposure to the Jewish faith; and to my brother, Gerald Jay Gleicher, my first exemplar of virtuous skepticism. JULES GLEICHER Rockford, Illinois November 13, 2009

CH A P T ER

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The Book of Origins

Recent years have seen a burst of scholarly and popular interest in the Book of Genesis, manifested in nuanced, annotated translations; a Public Affairs Television discussion series; and multifaceted interpretations.1 The present essay continues the enterprise of exploring and reflecting on the intricacies of this ancient and venerable text.

A. T P N I. Why Begin at the Beginning? The Torah is essentially the story of the founding of the Israelite people and preeminently a collection of the basic Law that defines them as a people. The events that accomplish these things are the Exodus from Egypt, the epiphany at Mount Sinai, and the subsequent wanderings in the wilderness. (The first person to call the Israelites a people [am b’nei Yisrael] is the hostile Pharaoh, mentioned at the start of the Book of Exodus, who “did not know Joseph” [Exod. 1:8–9]).2 So understood, the Book of Genesis is mostly an account of the genealogical origins of the ancient Israelite and later Jewish nations. It is the Book of the Patriarchs. Ancient rabbinical commentary, repeated in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries by Rashi and Nachmanides, teaches that Genesis affirms the LORD’s covenant with Abraham, and thus the Israelites’ right to the Promised Land. Specifically, the episodes of Abraham’s purchase of the field and cave at Machpelah as a burial place for Sarah and Jacob’s purchase of land on the outskirts of Shechem (Gen. 23; 33:18–19) were supposed to obviate all doubts about future claims of ownership.3 This explanation is singularly unsatisfying. Why would pagan Gentiles of antiquity (as distinguished perhaps from medieval Christians and Moslems, of whose sensibilities Rashi and Nachmanides would have been aware) be convinced of the justness of the future

2

POLITICAL THEMES IN HEBREW SCRIPTURES

Israelites’ claims by the narratives in Hebrew Scripture? And even if they would, why not begin the story at chapter 12, with the LORD’s call to Abram and Abram’s relocation from Haran to the land of Canaan?4 Why all the material about Creation, the expulsion from Eden, Cain’s killing of Abel, the Great Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the several genealogies that fill the first eleven chapters? Despite the massive significance of some of these events, God’s dealings with humanity remain relatively few and are sometimes impersonal. If the defining characteristic of Genesis as a whole is the absence of the Sinaitic Law, that of its prepatriarchal component is the absence of a Chosen People (or at least a chosen extended family). Two other answers seem more to the point: First, as Aristotle observes at the start of his Metaphysics (980a22), human beings by nature want to know the causes of things. And once we start tracing causes, where do we stop? Why were the Hebrews in Egypt at all? Because Joseph brought them there. And why was Joseph there? Because his brothers sold him into slavery. Why did they do that? Because they were jealous of the favoritism their father Jacob showed toward him. And why did Jacob behave in this way, and so on? If one reads Genesis backward, as one might arrange a family picture album, there is no reason to stop looking once we reach the life of the Patriarch Abraham. We might as well trace things all the way to their distant and murky beginnings, at the Beginning. And second, to do so establishes what is repeatedly reaffirmed elsewhere, that the special God of Israel is also the Lord of the world, Who cares for other nations. To pursue this point further, we offer a thought experiment. Here is the start of an alternative first book of the Torah, “the Book of Ancestors”: And it happened in the days of Noah, a man of simple goodness, that the LORD God brought a great flood upon the earth because of the wickedness of men. So great was this flood that all mankind perished except for Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives, who survived in a vessel that the LORD God had commanded Noah to build. Also, all beasts that were upon the earth perished, and all birds of the air, except those which Noah brought into the vessel, as the LORD God had commanded. And so great was this flood that it blotted out all memory of mankind and of the creatures of the earth that had been upon the earth before it. (Anc. 1:1–4)

What would we miss if Bereshis, “In the beginning,” never really spoke of the Beginning, but rather started at the Noah narrative, or a

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variation of it, and relegated any preceding events to the status of forever lost mystery? We would lack an account of the kind of wickedness that warranted God’s judgment of doom against man and beast. But the account given in the actual text is so cryptic as to leave us no more satisfied on this score (Gen. 6:1–8). We would not have a catalogue of Noah’s lineage. But once his parents, siblings, uncles, and cousins are gone, what difference does his ancestry make? Nobody else is around to contest his standing as the prospective father and possible ruler of mankind. Moreover, our countertext accords with the occasional experience of great catastrophes, natural and man-made, that claim among their victims not only living beings but also historical records. What we would miss is a story of how it all came about and therewith an explanation of why, or at least how, it all is. It is a commonplace among biblical critics that the first few chapters of Genesis contain not one but two Creation stories, composed at different times, with the later one coming first.5 This arrangement produces a third account, which is more than the sum of its parts, in which the second, probably older, story appears as a detail of the first. This second version tells of the fashioning of Eve from Adam’s rib, the serpent’s trickery, the primordial couple’s disobedience and consequent expulsion from Eden, and the sequel stories of Cain and Abel, Cain’s descendents, and the line of Seth. Overall, it traces the human tendency to decline in the absence of divine guidance. To this commentary on human nature, the ancient editor, or Redactor, of Genesis added the prefatory cosmological account of Creation, which supplies a general, and arguably transforming, context to these stories. Creation here proceeds through a set of logical steps. In the first three days, God creates places or realms through a series of separations: the realms of light and darkness on the first day; the sky between the waters above and the waters below on the second; and dry land on the third. Over the next three, He creates beings to inhabit the respective realms: the sun and the moon to rule the realms of light and darkness on the fourth day; sea creatures and birds of the air to fill the seas and the sky on the fifth; and land animals, including mankind, on the sixth.6 This six-day chronology in Genesis 1 emphatically asserts, first, that the world is the work of a Creator God, and not itself eternal and self-subsistent; and second, that this created universe is orderly, good in its parts, and very good in its total articulation (Gen. 1:31). The culmination of this Creation sequence is the seventh day, on which God ceases or rests from His work, for which He blesses and sanctifies this day (Gen. 2:2–3). Creation, that

4


is, even of an orderly universe would be incomplete, even radically deficient, without taking some time out, perhaps to contemplate and appreciate it. The opening account thus provides an authoritative vision of the whole. The sequel depicts man’s problematic place within it. II. What Kind of Creation? For a long time, the standard Jewish doctrine, like the traditional Catholic Church teaching, held that God created the world ex nihilo, that the second word in Genesis, bara (“created,” as opposed to “made” or “formed”), refers exclusively to divine activity.7 So too the Sabbath hymn Yigdal’s poetic restatement of Moses Maimonides’ “Thirteen Articles of the Faith”: More ancient than all things that He created, the First, and there is no beginning to His beginning.8

That is, only God is eternal. But recent textual criticism notes that the first word of the Torah, b’reishis, is, at least sometimes, in the genitive case—“In the beginning of . . .”9 Thus, the 1988 edition of the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh (p. 3) reads, “When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:1–3). This wording is open to the premise that unformed matter or chaos, including at least the elements of wind and water, is also primordial. After the narration of God’s creation of light and separation of it from the primordial darkness occurs this statement: Vay’hi erev vay’hi boker yom ehad (Gen. 1:5). Older translations, such as the King James and Isaac Leeser versions, render the sentence as “And it was evening and it was morning, the first day.” Rabbi Hertz, Everett Fox, and the Orthodox “Stone” Chumash, however, render the last two words “one day.” JPS attempts to compromise by saying in the text “a first day,” but adding in a footnote: “Others ‘one day.’ ”10 This distinction makes a real theological difference. The Hebrew word for “first” is rishon. Ehad means “one.” Imagine translating the Sh’ma, “Hear O Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is first,” with its implication of polytheism! To read yom ehad as “first day” is to anticipate that there will, and must, be a second, that once God embarks on Creation, He is bound to pursue it to completion—that

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He is not Almighty but is subject to Necessity. “One day,” on the other hand, implies that the totality of Creation could have consisted of transforming darkness into light, and that God is radically free. Only later do we find God compromising His freedom, when He binds himself after the Flood never again to doom the earth because of man nor to upset the cycle of seasons as long as the earth endures (Gen. 8:21–22; cf. Is. 54:9–10). And only later still do we hear Abraham suggest the contrary thesis, that God is limited by His very godliness, in one of the most remarkable rhetorical questions in all literature: “Shall the Judge of all the earth not deal justly?” (Gen. 18:25; cf. Plato, Apology of Socrates 21b; Euthyphro 10d). Most of the six steps in the cosmological account are punctuated by the observation that God saw that what He had just made was good, but there is an exception to this repeated formula. On the second day, He creates a space or expanse, called Sky (or Heaven), which separates the water above from the water below, and nothing is said of its goodness (Gen. 1:6–8). Unlike the goodness of the firstcreated light, which may be self-evident, the goodness of the sky is apparently equivocal. Its ultimate goodness is implied by the statement at the conclusion of Creation that God judged the totality to be “very good” (Gen. 1:31). The sky’s goodness is established by its position as part of the articulated whole. Without that whole, it might not be good. In Egyptian mythology (reminders of Egypt are frequent in the Torah), the intercourse between the sky goddess Nut and the earth god Geb produces a small pantheon of second generation gods.11 The sky is thus a potential rival god and the source of many rival gods to YHWH.12 Perhaps noteworthy is that God Himself is not, at this point in the text, said to be good. To do so might be impertinent, insofar as it subjects the Deity to an external standard. (Psalm 136:1’s injunction, Hodu l’Adonai ki tov [Praise the LORD, for good], is ambiguous. Does tov refer to the LORD or to the act of praising Him? Cf. Ps. 92:2). What would the cosmos be had He not created the sky? Apparently, an alternately dark and light water world, inhabited, if He so chose, by sea creatures—a place of simple goodness and perhaps of incorruptibility. Let us anticipate that the fish are not destroyed in the Great Flood, not only for the obvious reason that they already dwell in water but perhaps also because, in contrast to land animals and birds, their innocence is not compromised by man’s wickedness (see infra, VII and note 29). Even if there were room for the sun and moon to traverse a crawl space at the top of this fishbowl universe, and thus to regularize the division of time into days and years

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(Gen. 1:14), what need would there be for such measuring? With due respect to fish lovers, although fish can be soothing and the colorful ones are truly beautiful, their world seems quite limited and monotonous. The stated functions of the sun and moon, created on the fourth day, are to “dominate” day and night and to mark the passage of discrete units of time: [A]nd let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. (Hertz, pp. 3–4)

Or, in JPS: [T]hey shall serve as signs for the set times—the days and the years. (p. 3)

Conspicuously missing is the term “months,” even though this would be the most natural association for the moon. Perhaps this is what “seasons” or “set times” mean. But also perhaps the lunar cycle is at this point the definition of a year, which later is implicitly redefined in terms of seasons or a recurrent cycle of seasons (Gen. 8:22). This possibility may make the prodigious human life spans recorded in these early chapters more sensible, albeit at the price of demystifying them. A life of 930 months is not mind boggling, though this mode of calculation also produces problems. Some of mankind’s early progenitors would beget their first children when they themselves were children (Gen. 5). Robert Alter mentions the rabbinic sage Resh Lakish’s attempt to explain the unusual use of the definite article for the sixth day (as distinguished from the preceding five days) by referring it to the sixth day of the Hebrew month Sivan, when the Torah was supposedly given to Israel. Resh Lakish had connected this to the Talmudic teaching that the continued existence of all created things was made contingent on Israel’s acceptance of the Torah (Alter, p. ix, citing Babylonian Talmud: Shabbat 88A). This is a telling psychological and political index of the esteem in which the rabbis of the Talmudic Era held the Torah and the teachings they judged necessary to hold the Jewish community together. But what should we, as interpreters of the text, make of the distinctive phrase “the sixth day,” in contrast to the preceding list: “a second day,” “a third day,” through Day Five? Consistent with our observation on the phrase yom ehad rather than yom rishon at the start of the sequence, the definite article at the

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conclusion of God’s work on Day Six reaffirms the premise of His absolute sovereignty and infinite creative power. Just as there need not have been a second day, so too the work of Creation could have proceeded, in ways we can only dimly imagine, through a seventh day, and an eighth, and a ninth, and so on and so forth until He decided that this universe was articulated enough. Creation is presented as an open-ended process, which God resolves to halt at a point satisfactory to Him, because of which what would have been yom shishi becomes yom hashishi.13 At the conclusion of the sixth day, God reviews “all that He had made, and found it very good” (Gen. 1:31). We have already noted that the goodness of the whole seems to dispel or to compensate for any doubt about the goodness of the sky. Let us also note that “very good” is not quite the same as perfect.14 Theologians and philosophers have puzzled over the origin of and justification for the existence of evil. But positing a God who experiments removes, or at least recasts, the need for such explanations. Like the Aristotelian metaphor of nature as a doctor who cures himself (Physics 192b24–33), the cosmological account of Creation may introduce us to a God Who is constantly improvising, experimenting, and learning. III. “Let Us Create . . .” At Genesis 1:26, we encounter a phrase that may be significant for divergent Jewish and Christian readings: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness [na’aseh adam b’tzalmeinu kidmuseinu].” To whom does God speak? A Trinitarian assumption might explain the use of the plural as a dialogue among the Persons of the Christian Divinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the plural construction has also attracted rabbinical notice and is susceptible to several different interpretations and comments. One possibility is that the plural imperative is merely the idiomatic way biblical Hebrew expresses internal deliberation (see also Gen. 11:7). Even in everyday experience, we may lapse into the plural when deliberating alone: “What shall we (i.e., I) wear today? Let’s (i.e., let me) consult the weather forecast to decide.” Unfortunately, the deliberative plural is not consistent Scriptural usage. At Genesis 18:17–19, we overhear divine deliberation in the singular: Now the LORD had said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him? For I

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have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right, in order that the LORD may bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.”

Noting also the use of the third person, we may simply have to conclude that it is God’s prerogative to refer to Himself however He wishes. Rabbi Hertz offers a second interpretation, that the “let us” construction is the language of royal commands (p. 5, citing Ezra 4:18). Such usage is not limited to the Bible. Shakespeare’s English kings routinely refer to themselves in the plural, and it may still be conventional for the current monarch to do so in her annual address to Parliament. On the other hand, if the royal custom was initially adopted in imitation of God’s speech at Genesis 1:26, then this argument is circular. An Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, the Targum Yonasan has God saying “Let us make Man” to the ministering angels who were created on the second day (Scherman, p. 8). This version deviates from the traditional Masoretic text by interpolating the creation of angels.15 Leaving aside the popular iconography of winged men and plump winged babies, we find that both the Hebrew word malakh and the Greek angelos (from angelo, “to send”) mean “messenger.” An angel, or messenger, of God, whatever form it takes, is a divine manifestation. This returns us to the scenario of God’s internal deliberation. Biblical scholarship presents a fourth option, that the religion of the early Israelites, the original religion of Abraham, was not strictly monotheistic but rather belief in a sole God’s attachment to one’s own people, while accepting other gods’ existence and attachment to other peoples.16 In this case, the plural at Genesis 1:26 envisions the Creator God, who eventually becomes the special God of Israel, speaking to His fellow gods, who could be as infinite in number as the nations. In view of Judaism’s development into an emphatically monotheistic religion, such an opening to polytheism would obviously have been troubling to the Rabbis (and to the Christian Church Fathers). To get around this difficulty, a convoluted Midrashic commentary was devised, according to which God—in order to teach that, following His example of taking counsel with the ministering angels, we should always consult with others before embarking on major new initiatives—knowingly risked misinterpretation, because only one

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who already seeks an excuse to blaspheme will err in this way (Scherman, p. 8).17 Whatever sound advice about human decision making and psychological insight into the nature of belief this commentary contains, it is theologically troubling. It depicts God as an intentional deceiver, who deliberately sets textual traps for the unwary. In this respect, it parallels, though with narrower focus, St. Paul’s problematic argument that the Mosaic Law, in all of its supposed complexity, was given for the ultimate purpose of conveying the lesson, after an interval of 1,300 years, that it is unworkable (Gal. 3–4). But the true significance of the Genesis passage may lie not in the plural construction but in the fact that a radically free God creates through speech. As Nahum Sarna explains, the Genesis concept of Creation by divine fiat is “worlds apart” from notions of magical incantation found elsewhere in the ancient Near East, for which pronouncing the right word must actualize potentialities already present in the inert matter. The biblical concept of an absolute, transcendent God, to whom nature is subservient, freed the mind from mythopoeic thinking and religion from the blighting influence of magic.18 IV. God’s Sabbath Work The conclusion of the cosmological account poses an interesting puzzle: The heaven and earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing [vay’khal Elohim bayom hashvi’i m’lakhto asher asah], and He ceased [or “rested”] on the seventh day from all the work [mikol-m’lakhto] that He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done [ki vo shovas mikol-m’lakhto asher bara Elohim la’asos]. (Gen. 2:1–3; JPS, p. 4)

Rabbi Hertz’ version is similar: And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all His work which God in creating had made. (p. 6)

However we understand these cosmological “days,” what happens on the seventh? Manifestly, what happens over the previous six is the

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successive creation of distinct realms and the respective beings that inhabit and rule them. This is all declared to be finished before the seventh day. And on that seventh day, God ceased, or rested, from all His creative work. But between these familiar statements the text says something more: “On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing [or ‘which he had made’]” (Gen. 2:2). That is, between creation of heaven, earth, and all their array, on the one hand, and Sabbath rest, on the other, there seems to be some unspecified seventh day work. Thus the distinction between m’lakhto (His work) in the first half of this sentence and mikol-m’lakhto (from all His work) in the second. And thus the puzzle: What work did God do on that first seventh day, before He finally came to rest? This question carries a practical implication. Insofar as the institution of the Sabbath is grounded in an imitation of God, what work may or should or must one do on it? Whether the Sabbath is so grounded or not apparently depends on whether we consult the Exodus version of the Fourth Commandment or the one in Deuteronomy, which states a seemingly altogether different rationale, a remembrance of the liberation from slavery in Egypt (Exod. 20:11; see also Exod. 31:16–17; Deut. 5:15). Two other translations treat the problematic sentence differently. Here is Everett Fox’s: God had finished, on the seventh day, his work that he had made, and then he ceased, on the seventh day, from all his work that he had made. (p. 17; emphasis supplied)

By rendering vay’khal as “had finished,” Fox makes whatever God does here a kind of backward glance rather than continued real activity. The “Stone” Chumash is similar: By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He abstained on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. (Scherman, p. 11; emphasis supplied)

Citing the Vilna Gaon, this version offers the gloss that although God’s Creation was complete on the sixth day, the text teaches human beings that even though there is always more to do, Man must abstain from his creative work on the Sabbath (Scherman, p. 10).19 One must respect the morally edifying lesson of this commentary, but is “by the seventh day” sound translation? Probably the most difficult words to translate are prepositions, especially in idiomatic

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expressions. The Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius lexicon of biblical Hebrew terms provides six and a half columns of usages for the Hebrew prefix letter beth (BDBG, pp. 88–91). The foremost is with respect to location, “in”; also with respect to time, as in b’reishis—“in the beginning”—or where “in” would be awkward in English, “on,” as with the present passage—“bayom hashvi’i” (Gen. 1:1; 2:2; BDBG, p. 88). The phrase “by the seventh day” thus seems forced; the more natural expression for this meaning would be “ad-hayom hashvi’i.” Another terminological distinction may be more illuminating. As mentioned above, Hertz distinguishes between God’s “creating” and man’s “making” or “forming.” Of course, God also “makes” and “forms,” but the work of the first six days is clearly creative—the word bara is used three times (Gen. 1:1, 21, 27). It appears again at the conclusion of the cosmological account, in the complex construction “because on [the seventh day] God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done” (Gen. 2:3). The preceding verse under scrutiny, however, speaks not of creation, but of “m’lakhto asher asah”—according to our suggestion, His work that He did. Of what would such noncreative work consist? The pace of Creation articulated in Genesis 1 is increasingly complex, detailed, and engaging. It “feels” accelerating. Anyone who has ever warmed to a task knows that once “on a roll,” stopping requires a determined effort. We suggest that the action to which the text refers is not stopping and resting, but the preceding self-determination of an infinitely creative Being to stop creating. It is the first of several selfimposed divine limitations, one which, in the anthropomorphic idiom of the Scriptures, teaches a lesson akin to that of the Vilna Gaon. In our nondivine, noncreative making, doing, and fashioning, we must not just work until we can do no more. We must, like the Deity, make it part of our work to reflect on what we do and to decide when we have done enough. So viewed, this passage may bridge the gap between the two versions of the Fourth Commandment. To work until we stop or drop is the function of slaves. To be free and God-like is to be able to take stock of our activities, which presupposes that we are already truly active, and to choose rest. V. Of Man’s First Disobedience Genesis 2 tells of the creation of Adam and Eve, their temptation by the serpent, and the consequent disobedience, curses, and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Its word play invites reflection on the association between the sexes. The LORD God “formed man [adam]

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from the dust of the earth [ha’adamah]” (Gen. 2:7). Although Adam is not born of a human mother, this first male’s material substance is drawn from a grammatically and metaphorically female being.20 Conversely, Eve is extracted from him, through a process distortedly analogous to childbirth (with the benefit of anesthesia!), for which Adam declares a mirroring pun: This one at last Is bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman [ishah], For from man [ish] was she taken. (Gen. 2:21–23)

There is a nice symmetry in the two passages, and a touching emphasis on the commonality of the sexes in this world’s first love song.21 There are also some sinister anticipations. Adam’s material kinship with the earth echoes in the divine assertion of his mortality, “For dust you are, / And to dust you shall return.” And the motif of commonality receives an ironic twist in the Jacob narrative, when Laban, the consummate trickster, says, after hearing how Jacob had preempted his brother’s birthright and blessing, “You are truly my bone and flesh” (Gen. 3:19; 29:14). Was there sexual intercourse in the Garden of Eden?22 The text reports that “the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain,” only after the expulsion (Gen. 4:1). But the prevailing rabbinical view tilts otherwise. Thus, Rashi translates the phrase V’ha’adam yoda es-Havah ishto as “Now the man had known his wife Eve” (Scherman, p. 19). And Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, a commentator of the sixteenth century, maintained with regard to Eve’s punishment of pain in childbearing, that before the sin the couple cohabited and Eve conceived and gave birth immediately and painlessly (Scherman, pp. 19, 17). We may add that both the benevolent injunction “Be fertile and increase” and the observation that borders on a command, “Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh,” precede the primordial couple’s act of disobedience (Gen. 1:28; 2:24). These texts may make the rabbinical glosses superfluous. Increased pain in childbirth need not imply that it was formerly immediate or entirely painless. And the word yoda could also be translated as “to be intimate,” with the same intellectual implication as in English—that is, to grasp something or someone in detail, with one’s mind as well as physically. Thus, before sampling

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the knowledge of good and bad, they would have coupled with the innocence and incuriosity of animals.23 The curses themselves are etiological. That is, they are accounts of the origins of phenomena, of a kind that a curious person, perhaps especially a curious child, might ask about: Why must we work so hard? Why is childbirth painful? Why are women afraid of snakes? The pattern is continued in later stories in Genesis: Why do wild animals fear us? Why do people speak different languages? Why is the region around the Dead Sea barren? But they also convey secondary meanings. Adam’s curse falls not only on humankind but also upon the earth: Cursed be the ground because of you; By toil shall you eat of it All the days of your life: Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you. But your food shall be the grasses of the field; By the sweat of your brow Shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground— For from it you were taken. (Gen. 3:17–19)

The theme, soon to be underscored by the spilling of blood, is that human misdeeds pollute the land (cf. Num. 35:33). A similar point may be made in the serpent’s curse, depending on translation of the phrase mikol-hab’heimah umikol hayas hasadeh (Gen. 3:14). Hertz seems the most straightforward: Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou from among all cattle, and from among all beasts of the field. (pp. 11–12; emphasis supplied)

But JPS provides a different twist: Because you did this, More cursed shall you be Than all cattle And all the wild beasts. (p. 6; emphasis supplied)

That is, the serpent’s action spills over to all animal-kind, though we are not told what constitutes their accursedness. (Does the LORD’s

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anger here exceed proper bounds?) Adam’s curse also includes a change in man’s dietary code. Formerly, people were fruitarians (Gen. 1:29); now, men are to cultivate grain and make bread. The LORD’s words to Eve are not called a curse. This may be understatement, because her burden is threefold. Not only will she suffer birth pain, but also subservience and divided inclinations: . . . your urge shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you. (Gen. 3:16)

Of these three characters, she may be the most complex and inventive. To the serpent’s sly question, “Did God really say: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” she answers, “We may eat of the fruit of the other trees of the garden. It is only about fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said: ‘You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die’ ” (Gen. 3:1–3). She takes upon herself the command that the LORD had expressly directed only to Adam, she adds to it an injunction against even touching the forbidden fruit, and she subtracts the divine threat that death will follow disobedience swiftly—literally in the same day (cf. Gen. 2:16–17). She embellishes a negative command, by building an unstated “fence” around what is forbidden, and grasps the rhetorical exaggeration of the threatened punishment. Alternatively, she may be dutifully repeating the injunction as revised by Adam, from whom she would have received it. Whether these discrepancies demonstrate innovation or the perils of relying on an oral tradition, the text signals the reader to be alert to details. VI. Excursus on Satan It is apparently standard Christian interpretation, made vivid by Milton’s Paradise Lost, that the serpent in the Garden of Eden is Satan, though the textual basis for this identification is limited (Rom. 16:20; Rev. 12:9; 20:2). The presence of Satan in Hebrew Scripture is little and probably different from common expectation: Zechariah 3:1–2, Job 1 and 2, and 1 Chronicles 21:1. In Zechariah and Job, “Satan” is not a proper name. It is rather hasatan, the satan, derived from sitnah—contention, adversity, or accusation (cf. Gen. 26:21). Hence, hasatan, in these contexts, is the Adversary or the Accuser. The familiar word “devil” picks up on this idea from the Greek diabolos, one who throws himself across (dia ballo) your path. Possibly this character’s evolution from an angelic prosecuting attorney to the

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embodiment of evil reflects the Zoroastrian influence to which the Jews in Babylonia and then the Persian Empire would have been exposed during the Exilic and post-Exilic periods. This religion of ancient Persia posited two gods, one good, the other evil, whose eternal strife pervades the world. By the lifetime of Jesus and in subsequent rabbinical literature, Satan is a developed character, as reflected in the liturgy (e.g., Siddur Sim Shalom, pp. 12, 292), but, as with the idea of the afterlife, not the focus of attention in Judaism that he seems to be for Christianity. The related word “demon” is a cognate of the Greek daimon, which likewise originally had no necessary connotation of evil (see, for example, Plato Apology of Socrates 27c-e), but the early Christians probably gave it this connotation because the daimones were pagan gods. In the Chronicles passage, however, the relevant word is just satan: “Satan arose against Israel and incited David to number Israel [i.e., to conduct a census]” (1 Chron. 21:1). A historical reference book, The Timetables of Jewish History, gives as likely approximate dates of composition 520 BCE for Zechariah, 500 BCE for Job, and 400 BCE for Chronicles; and 600 BCE for the career of Zarathushtra, the founder of Zoroastrianism. 24 This is consistent with our conjecture. By 400 BCE, the Zoroastrian worldview would have had more time to work its influence on Jewish thinking. We also find an imperfect parallel to the Chronicles passage at 2 Samuel 24:1: “The anger of the LORD again flared up against Israel; and He incited David against them, saying, ‘Go and number Israel and Judah.’ ” There is no hint of Satan here, nor in any of several other passages of earlier composition where a master evil spirit would fit: the Golden Calf episode, Korah’s rebellion, the insolence of the Sodomites (Exod. 32; Num. 16; Gen. 19). These silences argue for the view that this character is a relatively late intrusion on the ancient IsraeliteJewish biblical cosmology. An interesting sidelight is this verse from Isaiah 45:7 (the so-called Second Isaiah of the early Persian exilic period), perhaps composed in resistance to Zoroastrianism: “Forming the light, and creating darkness; making peace, and creating evil: I the Lord do all these things” (Isaac Leeser trans., II, p. 715). The Sabbath liturgy changes “evil” to “all things” (Siddur Sim Shalom, p. 340). As uneasy as Isaiah was with duotheism, the Rabbis were equally uncomfortable with the idea of God as the creator of evil. Strong’s Concordance provides a fourth Hebrew reference to “Satan,” at Psalms 109:6: “Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.”25 This is from the King James Version.

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But both JPS and Leeser translate satan here as “an accuser,” which seems to fit the general context of earthly imprecation: O God of my praise, do not keep aloof, for the wicked and the deceitful open their mouth against me; . . . They answer my love with accusation [tahas-ahavasi yis’t’nuni] and I must stand judgment. . . . Appoint a wicked man over him; may an accuser stand at his right side [v’satan ya’amod al-y’mino]; may he be tried and convicted; may he be judged and found guilty. (Ps. 109:1–7)

VII. The Antediluvian Generations The segment of the prepatriarchal narrative between the expulsion from Eden and the Great Flood is a picture of almost steady moral decline, seasoned by occasional innovations, some of which are, surprisingly, presented approvingly.26 The first such hint occurs even before the expulsion, when Adam and Eve, newly aware of their nakedness “sewed together fig leaves and made themselves loincloths” (Gen. 3:7). (What were their sewing implements?) The LORD seems to ratify this new invention, covering: “And the LORD God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife, and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). Does He thereby become the first killer of animals? We read at Genesis 4:4–5 that Cain and Abel brought offerings from their respective occupations to the LORD, and that He paid heed to Abel’s offering but not Cain’s. The word for “offering,” minhah, does not necessarily imply that Abel’s choicest sheep were burnt up on an altar (the burnt offering, olah, seems to be Noah’s invention [Gen. 8:20–21]), nor need Abel even have killed the sheep. They might simply have been set aside and dedicated to God—that is, regarded as special. The standard explanation for the LORD preferring Abel’s offering to Cain’s, which the text supports, is that he takes care to offer the best of his flock, while Cain merely presents some of his produce. But why is Abel tending sheep at all? Following Adam’s curse, it would seem that man’s commanded occupation is to toil the ground, and that Cain, “a tiller of the soil,” is thus the more obedient (Gen. 3:17–18; 4:2). The phrase “keeper of sheep” (ro’eih tzon) could, with different pointillation, be read as “friend” or “companion”

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(rei’eh), suggesting a more relaxed attitude. When Cain later asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9), he uses the word shomeir, which implies active guardianship. Is the LORD perhaps pleased by Abel’s innovative attempt to do something useful, produce wool for clothing (man’s diet still being vegetarian), in a mode that is not onerous and that cultivates a benign connection to other sentient beings? Cain’s famous rhetorical question betrays his guilt and implies the text’s judgment that man innately understands that murder is wrong— unlike eating of the tree in the middle of the Garden, which seems to be wrong, as far as Adam and Eve are aware, only because God has forbidden it. But the question also contains a moral judgment. It suggests that other people should not be guarded like animals or other possessions. It is, ironically, an affirmation of human dignity. It may imply too that Abel is too easygoing as an overseer of his flocks—not a diligent shomeir, but merely a ro’eih—and thus a bad worker. The LORD’s response is to condemn Cain to fruitless labor and wandering (Gen. 4:12). Cain infers an additional consequence, that “anyone who meets me may kill me” (Gen. 4:14). He supposes that someone in his condition will naturally be regarded as a jinx or an outlaw, whose life may be taken with impunity. The LORD relents somewhat by marking him in an unspecified way to discourage any would be killer. Implicit in this “mark of Cain” episode is the textual judgment that, absent his special sign, Cain would deserve to be killed, that execution is the natural punishment for murder. Also noteworthy is the assertion of this account that misdeeds pollute the earth: Hark, your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! Therefore, you shall be more cursed than the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. (Gen. 4:11)

This echoes God’s speech to Adam, “Cursed be the ground because of you,” and anticipates the pollution that the Sodomites and Judah’s son Onan perpetrate by wasting their semen (Gen. 3:17; 19:4–5; 38:9–10). Acts of wrongdoing are not self-contained. They radiate and spoil their surroundings. Cain relocates eastward, begets a son, Enoch, and founds a city, which he names for his son (Gen. 4:17). As in Roman “history,” the founder of Scripture’s first city is a fratricide. In the Genesis narratives, cities are dubious places, centers of pride and corruption. The quintessential cities are Babel and Sodom. The city of Enoch, which

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apparently is distinguished simply by its existence rather by anything that happens there, could not, given how few people there are in the world, be much more than an extended family. Is this fact bad enough, insofar as too many relatives living in close proximity deviates from the norm that a man “leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife” (Gen. 2:24)? Does it hint at sexual promiscuity and incest (whatever that would mean at this point 27)? Or does the essence of city-hood lie in the practice of naming pieces of the earth after particular people? In the fifth generation from Cain, we encounter evidence of a sharp moral decline. One brief but telling index of the downward propensity is a character named Lamech, the first man said to have more than one wife (Gen. 4:19), an arrangement that is exceptional in the biblical narratives and that almost invariably works out badly. Like Cain, he is a murderer, but while Cain intuitively acknowledges his misdeed and seeks to hide it, Lamech celebrates his homicide (Gen. 4:9, 23–24). He does so in a song of triumph to his wives, the second poem by a human being in Scripture and a vivid contrast to Adam’s love song to Eve. (Significantly perhaps, the letters of his name, when slightly rearranged, spell melekh [king], an index of the text’s sometime antimonarchical bias, or Molech, the Canaanite idol whose worship included human sacrifice [Lev. 18:21].) Lamech’s family introduces several more novelties: Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who dwell in tents and amidst herds. And the name of his brother was Jubal; he was the ancestor of all who play the lyre and the pipe. As for Zillah, she bore Tubal-cain, who forged all implements of copper and iron. And the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. (Gen. 4:20–22)28

The text does not say whether nomadism, music, metallurgy, and the chronicling of women are good or bad developments. Perhaps they are mentioned here, along with polygamy and proud murder, as among the inevitable offshoots of urbanization. (Nomadism may seem counterintuitive, but perhaps this is how ancient cities dealt with their surplus population, especially their undesirables [cf. Plato Laws 735b–36a]. Music, occupying the middle position, has a place both within the city [“the lyre”] and outside [“the pipe”].) The text reports that when Adam was 130 years old, he begot his third son Seth (Gen. 5:3). If our earlier conjecture concerning literally lunar years is valid, this number would translate to eleven or twelve solar years. Whatever the intended time span, we need not assume

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that the first couple was idle in the intervening period. Presumably some of their time was spent generating daughters. In the prelude to the story of Noah, there occurs this cryptic passage: When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the divine beings [lit., “the sons of God”—b’nei ha’elohim] saw how beautiful the daughters of men were and took wives from among those that pleased them. (Gen. 6:1–2)

Jewish tradition resists the notion of demigods or fallen angels (Hertz, pp. 18–19), but a more earthbound explanation is available. The “sons of god” are royalty. With the advent of cities come kings, and kings like to present themselves, and perhaps come to think of themselves, as superhuman. The phrase “from among those that pleased them” (or “from all whom they chose”—mikol asher baharu) suggests the crudest exercise of absolute, arbitrary power. An Orthodox gloss on a passage shortly later (Gen. 6:11–12) observes that in Noah’s time man’s immoral sexual conduct extended to animals (Scherman, p. 31). Reading that interpretation back, the “sons of God” verse could be seen as an oblique reference to bestiality, a subject later dealt with explicitly in the Mosaic Law (Exod. 22:18; Lev. 18:23; Deut. 27:21). 29 With these broad hints of sexual anarchy, we reach the nadir of the antediluvian moral decline. A world from which divine intervention is withheld, without some chosen people, will sink so low as to deserve universal destruction. VIII. The Flood Noah, the chief character in Genesis 6–9, is a great innovator.30 He is the Bible’s first recorded shipwright and mariner—although, one must note, the teivah (or ark)31 has neither sails nor rudder, and so is not quite a ship, and Noah is not quite a sailor or navigator. He is also the first person to build an altar and offer up burnt sacrifices (olos) (Gen. 8:20; 9:2–3), to plant a vineyard and get drunk, and to curse another person. Contrary to juvenile Sunday school lessons, the narrative of the Flood is not a quaint animal story, but, if we visualize its details, a quite horrible tale about the near undoing of over a third of the universe—the work of the third and sixth days and a part of the fifth day of Creation. The physical dimensions of the ark describe a large rectangular solid—assuming a cubit to be about 18 inches—45 feet

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high, 75 feet wide, and 450 feet long (Gen. 6:15–16). Not so much a ship or a boat, the ark is an oversized, three-story coffin, with the ironic twist that its occupants survive while everyone on the outside dies. Apparently, it has no exposed deck; rather, its human inhabitants, like the animals, are enclosed within it (Gen. 7:16). From inside the ark, Noah and his family can hear the sounds of rain pouring down continuously for forty days and nights; of animals and people scurrying for the elusive safety of higher ground, some perhaps desperately pounding on the sides of the ark, vainly begging to be let in; of living beings drowning; and then deathly silence from without, save for the monotonous rolling of the waves. For almost a year they live in near darkness, surrounded by animal sights visible only with difficulty, maddening animal sounds, and disgusting animal smells, with no hint of when this condition will end, and doubtless with the gnawing thought, “What will happen when the food runs out? Must all the beasts devour each other? And then we devour them? And then must we become cannibals?” And what sight greets them when they eventually emerge? A storm-ravaged earth, the ground everywhere muddy and littered with carcasses. No wonder old Noah needs a drink! Natural calamities remind us continually of how destructive floods can be. That some regional catastrophe like the Great Flood might have occurred is suggested by the existence of corresponding stories in ancient Sumerian and Akkadian literature, and in Hindu Scripture.32 Plato’s Laws (977 ff.) refers to epochal disasters, such as floods, which wipe out whole civilizations and require mankind virtually to begin anew. Critical scholarship sees two closely interwoven Flood stories in Scripture, distinguishable through discrepancies between one passage and another (see, for example, Friedman, pp. 54–60): Does Noah take in two of each species or seven pairs of the “clean” animals and the birds (Gen. 6:19–20; 7:8–9; 7:2–3)? Is the Flood’s immediate cause 40 days and nights of rain or 150 days of upswelling from “the fountains of the great deep” and “the floodgates of the sky” (Gen. 7:4, 12; 7:11, 24)? Does Noah discover the waters’ abatement by sending out a dove three times or a raven once (Gen. 8:8–12, 7)? Even if these differences can be reconciled to produce a single story, the question remains, Did something big happen back then, of which several nations felt obliged to give an account? We occasionally encounter genealogies in the Torah. The lists that precede and conclude the Great Flood also include data on the life spans of named individuals of the lines of Seth (plus Adam) and Shem (plus Noah) and the ages at which they begot their first sons.

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Generally, the men of the antediluvian period live prodigiously long lives, averaging 847 years (907 if we disregard Noah’s greatgrandfather Enoch, who departs “young” at 365). The generations after Noah have sharply diminishing life spans, from Shem, who lives 600 years; to the next three generations, who average 445; to the next five, who average 212; to the Patriarchs, who average 167 (see the chart in Scherman, p. 53 and p. 51 n 19). The readiest interpretation of these numbers is that they index mankind’s general moral decline. Perhaps they reflect too the change in man’s diet in the postdiluvian period, when he is allowed to eat meat (Gen. 9:3; cf. 1:29; 3:17–19). Noah’s position is unique. His total life span, 950 years, places him among the antediluvians. But unlike previous or later generations, he waits an extraordinary 500 years before begetting children (Gen. 5:32). Consistent with his initial description as “a righteous man; he was blameless in his age” (Gen. 6:9), does he so share the LORD’s disgust with human wickedness that he renounces reproduction, until it is revealed that he is to be the instrument of the world’s repopulation (Gen. 6:17–18)? In addition to being born after the deaths of three of his nine lineal ancestors, Noah witnesses the demise of the other six. Does this too influence his “righteous” delay in producing children? “If man is only born to die,” we may imagine him saying, “then what’s the point of living at all, and of perpetuating the species?” While such lassitude may seem an odd kind of righteousness, we can readily grasp it as a defensive, paralytic response. Ironically, it may take the prospect of an impending utter catastrophe, in which he stands to witness the death of almost everybody, and the immense responsibility it places on him, to redirect him to a more natural course of action.33 The Flood demonstrates God’s supreme power over the world, in the crude sense of the power to destroy what He has created. But the destruction is not total. It extends only to land animals and birds, and it is effected by divine manipulation of the forces of nature rather than by fiat. That is, God does not simply undo part of Creation by saying of human beings, beasts, birds, and creeping things in which there is breath of life, “Let them not be!” Thus, even before the divine pledge never again to destroy every living being (Gen. 8:20–22), there is an implicit divine commitment to the permanence of at least part of Creation. One kind of being apparently does not survive the Flood. The Nephilim, beings described cryptically as the heroes of old, perhaps the hybrid offspring of the “sons of God” and the daughters of men, perish completely, though they also apparently are to reappear sometime later—a promise of which Scripture never makes much

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(Gen. 6:1–4; cf. Num. 13:33). Hebrew myth will be about God and human beings, including some quite remarkable ones, but it will not be cluttered by the antics of demigods like those of the Greeks, Romans, and Germans.34 The major point of the Flood for mankind is its uniqueness. It culminates in God’s promise never again to destroy every living being on earth (Gen. 8:21–22). It thus sets a pattern of partial or threatened destruction followed by divine forbearance and redemption, repeated in later episodes: the binding of Isaac, the Israelites’ desert wandering, the Babylonian Exile. The divine pledge not to destroy all humankind is, of course, consistent with destruction of particular individuals and nations. The Tower of Babel story in chapter 11, however, suggests that the existence of separate nations—and thus the possibility of their divine destruction—comes about only with the multiplication of languages. Scripture here anticipates Aristotle’s teaching that what constitutes a political community is not so much common location or ethnic stock (important as these things may be), but a shared conception of right and wrong, just and unjust, which requires a shared vocabulary and linguistic conventions (Politics 1280a34–80b11). The Noahidic Covenant and the ensuing story of Noah’s drunkenness indicate divine concessions to human corruption. For the first time since Creation, some 1600 to 1700 years earlier, God gives man permission to eat meat. The concomitant of this concession is an estrangement between man and other animals, which will henceforth fear and dread humans (Gen. 9:2–3). Noah plants a vineyard and becomes drunk and immodest about his nakedness because of his drunkenness (Gen. 9:20–21). Intoxication, with its implications for sexual conduct, is presented as a human discovery, rather than as a divine gift or manifestation. On the other hand, God does not forbid it. He rather leaves it, by His silence on the subject, as a powerful force for human beings to manage. The story of Noah’s drunken stupor, the attempt by his elder sons Shem and Japheth discreetly to cover their father’s nakedness, and the curse that Noah lays upon certain descendants of his third son Ham, apparently because Ham has treated his nakedness lightly, have regard to both past and future developments (Gen. 9:22–27). At the Creation, nakedness symbolized man’s innocence (Gen. 2:25). This story transforms it into an object of shame and affirms sexual modesty as a moral virtue. This Scriptural incident was used by nineteenth-century proslavery publicists in the United States to justify Negro slavery, on the ground that the Africans are the descendants of

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Noah’s offending son Ham, whose name in Hebrew (ham or hom) means “hot”—apparently supposing that the Hamites settled in places where the climate is so hot that they were burnt black.35 But the identifiable named Hamite peoples—Cush (Ethiopia), Mizraim (Egypt), Put (Lybia), Canaan, and Babel (Babylon)—are not subSaharan black Africans (Gen. 10:6–10). Except for Cush, they are not black-skinned, and in any event the climate in none of these places (or anywhere else) is hot enough to accomplish this feat. More important, Noah does not curse all Hamites; he curses only Ham’s youngest son Canaan (Gen. 9:25–27). The only slavery thereby justified is Israel’s subjugation of the Canaanites, which is, arguably, the Israelite author’s point. What is Ham’s offense? We are told that he sees his father’s nakedness (the word ervah denoting the genital region) while Noah is in his drunken stupor and tells his brothers about it, apparently meaning that he jokes about it, that he shows disrespect (Gen. 9:22). And Noah, upon awakening, somehow knows what has happened and pronounces his curse. How does he know? Perhaps he wakes up just as Shem and Japheth have finished covering him and deduces the rest from Ham’s absence. Or perhaps the brothers tell him. If so, their tattling may prefigure Joseph’s “evil report” to Jacob concerning his half brothers (Gen. 37:2).36 The obscurity of this passage has inspired some exotic interpretations. The Stone Chumash reports glosses from the Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer and Rashi that either Ham’s son Canaan or Ham himself castrated Noah (Scherman, p. 44).37 In the Levitical Law, to “uncover nakedness” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse (Lev. 18:6–19). Leviticus 18:7 reads, “The nakedness of thy father, and the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover; she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness” (Hertz, p. 490). Although both father and mother are mentioned initially, the rationale focuses on the mother only. Given that father and mother are “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24), should we perhaps see in this injunction two descriptions of the same act, which shames both parents? Thus, JPS renders the Leviticus passage: “Your father’s nakedness, that is, the nakedness of your mother, you shall not uncover etc.” (emphasis supplied). Connecting this text to the Noah story, we infer that Ham’s misdeed was to have incestuous relations with his mother, and that by boasting about this act to his brothers he was attempting to establish himself as the head of the family, their “new father.” In this, he would commit a more extreme version of the insolence displayed by Reuben and by Absalom when they consort with the concubines of their

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respective fathers, Jacob and King David (Gen. 35:22; 2 Sam. 16:20–22). Where would Ham have gotten the idea to do such a thing? From living at close quarters with, and observing for a year the behavior of, our cousins the beasts, who have no taboos about incest and among whom the sexual displacement of old males by younger, more vigorous ones is commonplace. Hence, perhaps, the permission that mankind now receives to eat meat, the introduction of burnt offerings, and the divine announcement that the animals will live in dread of man (Gen. 8:20–9:4)—signifying the gulf that now must separate human from animal nature, lest man descend to bestial emulation. This reading may also explain why Noah curses Canaan rather than Ham, which at first seems arbitrary and, therefore, unjust. By consorting with his mother, Ham has confused the generations. Noah’s curse is a mirroring punishment that reaches forward to the next generation, and thus “balances” Ham’s action. Another possibility is that Canaan is the product of this incestuous union.38 This adds obvious force and immediacy to Noah’s curse and parallels the story of Lot’s daughters (Gen. 19:30–38). Like the Moabites and Ammonites, ancient Israel’s traditional enemies, the despised Canaanite nation is also the offspring of sexual irregularity. Alternatively, Noah’s deflected curse may express derangement of his judgment, caused by his experience of the Flood. It thus reminds, as we approach the “trials” of the Abraham narrative, that even men who are “righteous, blameless in [their] generations,” have their breaking points (Gen. 6:9). IX. The Tower of Babel and Abram’s Genealogy The story of the Tower of Babel, another etiological tale, tries to explain why different groups of people speak different languages.39 Officially, the diversity of languages is the result of a divine punishment, or perhaps more aptly a remedy, for some human dereliction. The most common account is that the human wrongdoing is the attempt to build a tower high enough to reach the heavens. But the text is less specific. The tower is part of a more complex project that includes building a city, making a name for themselves, and not getting scattered over the earth (Gen. 11:4).40 Cities are, as we noted, suspect enterprises. They are dense concentrations of population, which tend to thwart the divine command, given at Creation and again after the Flood, to “fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28; 9:1; cf. Sarna, p. 67). And in seeking to make a name for themselves mankind may

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come to regard themselves as omnicompetent, and perhaps become so in fact (Gen. 11:6). History and current events give us to deplore the differences among peoples that excite them to mutual animosity and to acts of violence and oppression. If only we could all “speak the same language,” we are tempted to think, what could we not accomplish for our common good? The Tower of Babel story invites us to consider the benefit that may lie in at least some measure of mutual inscrutability as an obstacle to universal hubris. The prepatriarchal narrative concludes with the genealogy from Shem to Abram, his brothers, and their offspring. In addition to demonstrating diminution of the human life span, it establishes Abram’s credential as the senior heir of the senior line of Noah. It ends, however, on three jarring notes, which suggest that the natural order of generational matters is going awry. First, Terah’s son Haran dies before his father—not an unheard of occurrence, but still unusual (Gen. 11:28).41 Second, Abram’s brother Nahor marries Milcah, his niece. Not only is Milcah identified as the daughter of Haran, but Haran is in turn identified as the father of Milcah and her sister Iscah (Gen. 11:29). Also, Milcah, who is the grandmother of the Matriarch Rebekah, is mentioned later in a way that suggests she may be more central in her household than her husband-uncle Nahor (Gen. 24:15, 24; cf. 24:47; see also 24:28). Women, who have not been especially active in the narrative since Eve gave Adam the fruit of the forbidden tree, are about to assume a more important role. And third, it is noted that Abram’s wife Sarai is barren, a fact that will produce complications later (Gen. 11:30).

B. T A N If we were to read the Book of Genesis backward, as one might peruse a family picture album, we would discover, not surprisingly, that the fullest accounts concern the more recent ancestors of the Israelites, and that the further back we go the sparser become the mementos and the more indistinct our sense of the characters. The segment dealing with the first Patriarch, Abraham, presents much material about a series of his actions (though rather little direct insight into his thoughts), separated by substantial gaps in time—not a continuous narrative, but a set of bright dots that the reader has to connect. The task of illumining this text has been further complicated by the Jewish and Christian traditions’ celebration of Abraham as the father of faith, a characterization that tends rather to obscure than to reveal him

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plainly. The present section attempts, by reexamining the discrete episodes of Abraham’s career, to appreciate him as a complex character, animated by a combination of political ambition, intense attachment to principles of natural justice, and an enigmatic sense of fatalism. I. The Progenitor’s Origins The Abraham narrative formally begins with the LORD’s call to Abram, as he is then named, who is living in his father Terah’s household in the northern Mesopotamian city of Haran, to go forth from his land, his country (alt.: “your native land” or “your kindred”— mei’artz’kha umimolad’t’kha), and his father’s house, and Abram’s subsequent journey to the land of Canaan (Gen. 12:1–6).42 But of every apparent beginning we may ask, “What preceded it?” In the case of this seminal event, the preceding chapter gives, what we may, with slight irony, call the Terah narrative, the story of Abram’s father and his family: . . . Now this is the line of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begot Lot. Haran died in the lifetime of his father Terah, in his native land, Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram and Nahor took to themselves wives, the name of Abram’s wife being Sarai and that of Nahor’s wife Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren, she had no child. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan; but when they had come as far as Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah came to 205 years; and Terah died in Haran. (Gen. 11:27–32)

We are not told what prompted Terah to leave Ur, with Canaan as his original destination. It would be extravagant to interpolate a divine call to him that prefigures the one to Abram. On the other hand, the LORD later says to Abram, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to assign this land [i.e., Canaan] to you as a possession” (Gen. 15:7). So the hand of God is, by stipulation, present, albeit perhaps silently, in the Terah clan’s earlier westward migration. Nor are we told why Terah stops and settles in Haran, approximately mid-way to Canaan. We may reasonably suppose that Haran offers economic opportunity, for when Abram leaves, he is said to have amassed wealth and acquired persons there (Gen. 12:5).

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Abram’s departure is, then, not an entirely new beginning, but continues the journey his father never completed. Terah takes with him Abram, Sarai, and Lot, but not his other surviving son Nahor, who apparently stays behind in Ur with his wife-niece Milcah. Does this intergenerational union offend Terah, so that he disowns his second son? Nahor’s and Milcah’s son Bethuel and their grandchildren Laban and Rebekah later show up in Aramnaharaim, near Haran, in what is called the city of Nahor (Gen. 24), so a “tag-along” journey must be inferred. Abram, in turn, takes Sarai, of course, but also Lot with him, so the break with Terah, whatever its cause, is complete. Unlike Terah, he does not name any of his sons after his father (Gen. 11:24; 16:15; 21:3; 25:1–2).43 Nor is it reported, in contrast to the conduct of his own sons Isaac and Ishmael, that he returns to attend to his father’s burial (Gen. 25:7–10). The motif of intrafamilial estrangement that later assumes so many permutations is here anticipated from the outset.44 II. Father of Faith?—The Early Episodes The rabbis sometimes draw a contrast—especially at Rosh Hashanah, when the text describing Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac (Gen. 22) is read—between Moses’ several protestations of self-doubt, when he is summoned to his mission of national liberation, and Abram’s unquestioning obedience when he is first called, also at a respectable age (seventy-five), to go forth from Haran to the land that God will show him (Gen. 12:1–4; Exod. 3:7–4:17). As befits the occasion, the contrast invariably favors Abraham as the father of faith.45 But whatever he may later become respecting faith, this first call, and nearly every other command God gives him, is coupled with the promise that he will become a great nation, the father of multitudes, a blessing to all nations, and other such foretellings. One must, that is, appreciate that Abraham is a man of great political ambition, a seeker of glory. (That the LORD does not similarly appeal to Moses in their first encounter, and that when He does later, in the Golden Calf and abortive spy mission episodes, he is impervious to such offers, implies Moses’ greater purity of character [Exod. 32:7–14; Num. 14:11–20].) 46 Let us pursue this thought by looking at God’s five speeches to Abram in chapters 12–17. The first is in these terms: Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.

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I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you And curse him that curses you; And all the families of the earth Shall bless themselves by you. (Gen. 12:1–3)

This is a fine set of promises: political leadership, prosperity, renown, and fitting consequences for others based on how they treat him. But much is omitted. It is not said that the great nation will consist of Abram’s own descendants—his household already includes an unstated number of “acquired persons” (Gen. 12:5)—nor that it will occupy its own land or that it will be long-lasting. This bill could be filled by a glorious but short-lived mixed race of nomads. And the promise, that others will be blessed or cursed accordingly as they bless or curse Abram, emphatically does not guarantee that only good treatment awaits him or his followers. (This feature never changes.) The second speech comes a few verses later, when Abram arrives in Canaan: “I will assign this land to your heirs [lit., to your seed— l’zar’akha]” (Gen. 12:7). This apparently solves the nomad problem, as well, it seems, as any doubt over the great nation’s genetic stock— unless it is a separate promise altogether. That is, what if the nomads whom you lead will be a great and glorious but evanescent nation, and afterward your descendants—a different group of people—will inherit this land? The third speech, if it does not quite close this possible gap, raises the stakes for his descendants: Raise your eyes and look out from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west, for I give all the land that you see to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring too can be counted. Up, walk about the land, through its length and its breadth, for I give it to you. (Gen. 13:14–17)

It occurs after Lot has separated from Abram, when he is dwelling in the hill country near Bethel, so the invitation to survey the compass points presumably takes in the wide expanse of territory visible from a mountaintop. (Does this also include the plain of the Jordan, which

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Lot has just chosen as his dwelling place after looking about from the same location [Gen. 12:10–14]?) The previous short speech was also given in hill country, near Shechem, a bit to the north, but the text makes nothing of its terrain, and it lacks the visual sweep of the present statement (cf. Gen. 12:6, 8; 13:3–4). Separating the two speeches is the curious episode in Egypt, where Abram pretends that Sarai is his sister, and so ends up profiting from her temporary abduction into the Pharaoh’s harem (Gen. 12:10–20). Whatever other dubious character traits of Abram this story displays, it apparently shows his willingness to risk creating confusion over the paternity of Sarai’s offspring. Was Abram not terribly impressed by the LORD’s previous pledge to give the land around Shechem to his descendants, and did he, therefore, need a more stunning demonstration of how much land and how many offspring are involved? We are not told the intervals between these statements, but the next speech is said to occur “[s]ome time later.” Possibly as much as ten years have passed since Abram’s departure from Haran (cf. Gen. 12:4; 16:3). This fourth divine speech is quite long and involves an elaborate and mysterious sacrificial ceremony designed specifically to overcome Abram’s skepticism concerning his possession of the land (Gen. 15:1–21, esp. 15:8). Its several points are as follows: The thus far childless Abram’s heir will be “none but your very own issue,” not Eliezer of Damascus, his chief steward. His offspring will be as numerous as the stars in heaven. They will be strangers in another’s land, enslaved and oppressed for 400 years, but the LORD will judge the nation they serve, and they will go free with great wealth. Abram will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. Finally, the scope of the land assigned to his descendants is described in geographic detail as an area even greater than he could have seen from his mountaintop years earlier. Like pieces of a puzzle, the disparate elements of progeny, landedness, and great nationhood are converging. But other pieces are still missing. It is not yet clear where Sarai fits in this picture, or even where God Himself fits. These gaps are filled in the fifth speech, in chapter 17, years later still, when Abram is 99. His and his wife’s names are changed to Abraham and Sarah. He will be father to a multitude of nations and to kings. God Almighty (El Shaddai) will be the God of his offspring “throughout the ages,” and the land of Canaan is assigned to them “as an everlasting holding.” For their part, they must keep the covenant of circumcision. Abraham is promised that Sarah will bear Isaac within the year, and that God’s everlasting covenant will be with Isaac and his offspring. And he is assured that Ishmael, the son he had

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improvised with Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian servant, for whom he also evidently cares, will become a great nation too (Gen. 17:1–21). If the LORD’s earlier pronouncements were partial, even coy, this sudden cascade of benefits, coming after at least thirteen years of silence, goes to the opposite extreme. If the vision in chapter 15 was needed to answer one note of doubt on Abram’s part, what mountain of accumulated skepticism does the present passage address? These successive and increasing promises signify at least that Abram requires repeated and increasing reassurance, and thus that his faith is not perfect. Further, they suggest that he is a person for whom only the kind of appeal that is embodied in these speeches would be reassuring—a man of action and ambition; a man, to speak crudely, whose price is high but who has a price. Just how great a price he in turn will be called upon to pay by the end of this divine bidding is yet to be revealed. Other details of these passages reveal other aspects of Abram’s character. In the latter half of chapter 12, when there is famine in the land, Abram and Sarai journey to Egypt, the region’s bread basket, where they pretend that she is his sister, because he fears, if the Egyptians know her to be his wife, they will kill him to capture her. The ruse backfires when Sarai is taken into Pharaoh’s harem. But when Pharaoh’s household is stricken with unspecified mighty plagues, the king correctly guesses the cause and expels them from the country (Gen. 12:10–20). We might expect Abram to be chastened, but about twenty years later, he tries the same trick with King Abimelech of Gerar, with similar results (Gen. 20). In chapter 13, Abram and his nephew Lot peaceably part company, when their herdsmen quarrel over grazing land for their respective flocks and herds, and in chapter 14, Abram leads a military expedition to rescue Lot and his household, who have been captured incident to a battle between two alliances of adversary kings (Gen. 13:1–12; 14:1–16). One might infer some affection toward Lot. But in chapter 15, Abram laments that if he dies childless his household will pass to his steward Eliezer of Damascus (Gen. 15:2–3). Apparently, Lot is out of the inheritance picture. As we saw, the LORD reassures him that his heir will be his own child, and that his descendants will be as innumerable as the stars of heaven, and, it is reported, “he put his trust in the LORD” (Gen. 15:4–6). Abram the man of faith! But when the LORD further states that this land has been assigned to him as a possession, he asks, “O Lord GOD, how shall I know that I am to possess it?” (Gen. 15:7–8) There then follows the mysterious passage sometimes called the Covenant between the Parts (Scherman,

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p. 67). Why trust in the one case but request a demonstration in the other? Is it because having offspring depends only on the cooperation of God and two people, while possessing a land—that is, dispossessing its previous inhabitants—requires a multitude with military skill? The man of faith is also a man of practicality. One feature of this episode involves a “dog that does not bark”— that is, a significant gap, an expected event that does not occur or a speech that is not given, the absence of which conveys important information.47 The Covenant between the Parts contains such a pregnant silence: And He said to Abram, “Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years; but I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve, and in the end they shall go free with great wealth. . . . And they shall return here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” . . . On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I assign this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. . . .” (Gen. 15:13–18)

Despite the flood of details in the surrounding text (Gen. 15:7–21), we find that Abram is not told the name of the nation destined to oppress his descendants for 400 years. This silence is highlighted by the explicit mention of the “river of Egypt” as one of the boundaries of the Promised Land, as well as by the many references to Egypt throughout the Torah. We offer two unorthodox explanations for this curious silence. One is that the LORD, being omniscient, knows full well that the oppressor nation will be Egypt, but He withholds this datum from Abram because He also knows that Abram would be unduly frightened by it, and, therefore, cannot be trusted with it. Abram has already had some unpleasant dealing with the Egyptians and with their king during the famine. True, once the ruse was detected, he left Egypt richer in livestock, servants, and money than when he entered, but he also departed in bad odor (Gen. 12:10–13:2). We can readily imagine someone with this experience who, upon being told that the Egyptians will enslave his descendants, issues an everlasting ban forbidding his household from setting foot on Egyptian soil. Indeed, God confirms that Egypt may be too dangerous a place for a Hebrew when, during a later famine, He prevents Isaac from going there (Gen. 26:1–5). The other (possibly heretical) explanation is that the LORD does not specify Egypt as the land of the Hebrews’ enslavement and

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oppression, because He does not yet know it. The God of this part of Scripture, that is, is not omniscient. To be sure, He knows a great deal. As Arbiter of nations, He knows that the Amorites are on the way to earning dispossession, and that the Hebrews must be off the scene for a while, lest they become as corrupt as the inhabitants of Canaan. Perhaps too, He knows that over the next few generations Abram’s descendants will become an unruly lot, who will possibly need the discipline of enslavement to shape their character. But Egypt is not the only eligible oppressor. This role could perhaps as well be filled by the Arameans or the Chaldeans. What needs to happen is clear, but who should be the instrument of this part of the divine plan is still open. Even God needs to observe, to discover, and only then to decide. III. Man of Peace; Man of War; Man of Pride; Henpecked Husband; Loving Father Abram repeatedly goes out of his way to avoid confrontation and conflict, but when events require it, he can be forceful. Like Shakespeare’s King Henry V on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, he could say, We would not seek a battle as we are, Yet, as we are, we say we would not shun it. (Henry V, III.vi.165–66)

Thus, his morally dubious ruse concerning Sarai when they are in Egypt can be viewed favorably as an attempt to avoid violence. Likewise, giving Lot first choice of where to settle when they separate, even though Abram, as head of the household, could claim primacy. We see his assertive side in Lot’s rescue from captivity. The event that gives rise to the rescue mission is a battle between rival alliances of local kings. We should not envision here grand kingdoms on the scale of Egypt or Babylonia, but petty principalities or city-states that could field armies numbering in the hundreds. Still, Abram’s mustering a force of 318 men from his own household and his local allies is no negligible achievement. On his way back from the successful raid, he has two characterologically and theologically significant encounters. The first is with the king-priest Melchizedek of Salem, about which we say more in chapter 3 (infra, chap. 3, C., VI). The second is with the unnamed king of Sodom: Then the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, and take the possessions for yourself.” But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I swear to the LORD, God Most High, Creator of heaven

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and earth: I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours; you shall not say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.’ For me, nothing but what my servants have used up; as for the share of the men who went with me—Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre—let them take their share.” (Gen. 14:21–24)

The king of Sodom’s motive for wanting the captives becomes clear enough in the sequel story about the destruction of that place and its sister city Gomorrah.48 What is striking about Abram’s rebuff of his sinister offer is not any evident concern to spare the captives from slavery or sexual abuse, but the abundant pride he shows in not wishing to become known as the Sodomite monarch’s protégé. When, in chapter 16, the focus shifts to Abram’s marital relations, we see him again being compliant, even to a fault. Sarai, conscious of her barrenness, gives him her Egyptian maidservant Hagar as consort, so the product of their union might be considered her own surrogate son. Abram heeds her request, with what degree of enthusiasm is unclear. But when Hagar becomes pregnant and acts haughtily, Sarai reproaches Abram. He, again submissively, gives her carte blanche to deal with Hagar, and Sarai accordingly treats her so harshly that she flees, and is persuaded to return only by an angel of the LORD. Manifestly, the relation between Abram and Sarai is fraught with tension. Is he so obliging because of lingering guilt over trafficking with her during their Egyptian sojourn? The unsatisfying substitution of one woman for another, the creation of a wife who is not quite a wife, distortedly echoes Abram’s earlier attempt to conceal Sarai’s true status, thus enabling her to become Pharaoh’s not-quite-wife. In this circuitous way, he acquires a son, Ishmael, toward whom he bears real fatherly affection. Thus, when, thirteen years later, the LORD appears to him, changes his name to Abraham, and promises him a son through Sarai (now renamed Sarah), his all but first response is, “O that Ishmael might live by Your favor!” (Gen. 17:18) And a few years afterward, when Sarah has him cast Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert—but for divine intervention, to almost certain death—for “mocking” Isaac, “The matter distressed Abraham greatly, for it concerned a son of his” (Gen. 21:11). Hitherto, we have heard about his actions and speeches. The narrative now glances at his emotions. IV. What’s in a Name? Students of ancient literature may recall from Homer’s Odyssey how very important names can be. Odysseus’ troubles begin in earnest

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when he imprudently taunts the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom he has blinded and from whose den he and some of his men have just escaped, by telling him his name. This permits the Cyclops, by carefully repeating the formula Odysseus has just given, to summon an effective curse on his adversary—for to name a being is in a sense to capture its essence. Conversely, to misname invites ironic results. Odysseus had earlier identified himself to Polyphemus as “No-man.” When he is being blinded and cries out to his neighbors for help, his fellow Cyclopes ask who is harming him, and when told it is No-man they reply that if it is not a man it must be one of the gods, and they do not want to tangle with them (Homer Odyssey 9.117–630). Hebrew Scripture also recognizes the importance of names and their misuse. When the LORD first summons Moses to his mission of liberation, he asks what name of the God who sent him he should declare to the Hebrews. He answers, “Ehyeh asher ehyeh”—I-am-whoI-am, or I-will-be-what-I-will-be (Exod. 3:13–14). That is, this God is not some genie, who can be conjured from and back into his bottle by intoning a name. Again, the Third Commandment—“You shall not take in vain the name of the LORD your God . . .” (Exod. 20:7)— concerns something more serious than casual “cussing.” It prohibits misappropriating the Name as an instrument of sorcery—that is, trying to capture and subordinate God to one’s own will for selfish purposes (see also Lev. 24:10–23; infra, chap. 3, A. III). When we turn to the Patriarchs, we see irony as marked as Odysseus’ deception. The name of the second Patriarch, Isaac, means “laughter,” because when Sarah, who is past the natural age of childbearing, first hears that she will give birth to a son, she laughs in disbelief (Gen. 18:9–15). Isaac’s life, however, is anything but mirthful. Derided by his half brother Ishmael, nearly sacrificed as a burnt offering by his father, duped by his wife, his son, and his own senses, Isaac is overall a sorrowful and sorry figure (Gen. 21:9–10; 22:1–19; 27:1–40). The third Patriarch, Jacob, is renamed Israel—“he who strives with God”—because he wrestles with a mysterious man commonly understood to be an angel, and supposedly prevails (Gen. 32:23–31). But Jacob’s life consists more of striving with various relatives, and most often not prevailing. If we did not already know his name, and had to pick one from the list of Patriarchs, we might call him Abraham, “father of a multitude.” Of the three, Jacob sires the most children. Abraham’s original name, Abram, means “exalted father.” His acquired name refers to the multitude of nations that will eventually descend from him (Gen. 17:1–8). But in the more immediate and

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literal sense of fatherhood, Abraham is childless for nearly half of his long life, has one son when he is 86, another at 100, and more only after the age of 137 (Gen. 17:24–25; 21:5; 23:1; 25:1–2). Were we to choose a name for him from the same list, we might well call him Israel. It is he who argues with God in order to save the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:20–33). Does he not virtually dare God to protect him when he attempts to pass Sarah off as merely his sister during their sojourns in Egypt and Philistia (Gen. 12:10–20; 20)? We can even read his near-sacrifice of Isaac as a contest of wills between him and the Deity (infra, VI). V. Sodom and Gomorrah The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in Genesis 18–19, shows Abraham as an advocate of justice and mercy, a role for which the prior text has not especially prepared us. It is common to regard the cities’ special sin as homosexuality. (In a notable court case in 1995, a New Jersey judge upheld the Boy Scouts’ ban on homosexual scoutmasters, citing this biblical story as evidence of our culture’s deep disapproval of sodomy.)49 This view is reinforced by the Mosaic Law’s “uncompromising condemnation” of this offense, which, along with child sacrifice, bestiality, and various forms of incest, it punishes with the death penalty (Hertz, p. 492; cf. Lev. 18:21–23; 20:2–5, 11–16). Gay Rights Movement advocates, however, have argued that the sexual code in Leviticus is a later development, and that the Sodomites’ sin is breach of hospitality, exhibited in the attempted violence against the angelic travelers, which contrasts with Abraham’s generous conduct (Gen. 19:4–11; cf. 18:1–8).50 No doubt, raping one’s guests is inhospitable by any measure, but can we understand this action apart from its specifically homosexual character? One thinks here of the landmark Supreme Court case of Powell v. Alabama, decided in 1932, in which the “Scottsboro boys,” seven black youths, were convicted of raping two white girls and were sentenced to death.51 The defendants were poor, illiterate, from another state, and thus ignorant of Alabama law on trial procedures. They could not afford to hire legal counsel and were not provided effective counsel by the trial court. The trial came only a week after their arraignment and was completed in a single day. They were tried by juries from which Negroes were systematically excluded. And the entire proceeding occurred in an atmosphere of great public hostility, with crowds of local people kept at bay by a military presence. Were

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one asked, “What was wrong with the Scottsboro trial?” the answer might be, “Everything.” In the actual event, the Supreme Court found a denial of due process in the lack of effective counsel, and because this ground sufficed to overturn the conviction, the justices did not address the other issues. But it does not follow that the other objections were invalid or insubstantial. Similarly, the easy judgment that the Sodomites violate norms of hospitality does not absolve them of blame for sexual deviance. Of significance are the words they use when they surround Lot’s house and shout to him: “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them” (Gen. 19:5).52 The verb yoda, the generic term for “know” or “be intimate with,” does not necessarily or typically imply the use of force. Compare with this the description of Shechem’s treatment of Jacob’s daughter Dinah— “he took her, and lay with her, and did her violence” (vayikah osah vayish’kav osah vay’aneha)—or King David’s son Amnon’s treatment of his half sister Tamar—“he overpowered her, and violated her, and lay with her” (vayehazak mimenah vay’aneha vayish’khav osah) (Gen. 34:2; 2 Sam. 13:14 [Isaac Leeser translation]).53 Despite the availability of these more violent words, the narrator ascribes to the Sodomites the culpable desire only “to know” the strangers. That their desire is specifically homosexual becomes clear when they reject Lot’s extravagant offer to give them his two virgin daughters if they will spare his guests (Gen. 19:6–9). Finally, in a text where punishment is tailored to mirror the offense, the wicked cities’ destruction by fire and brimstone involves not only annihilation of the inhabitants but also sterility of the land, which mirrors the sterility of homosexual relations. The punishment of the land is also an etiological account of why the region near the Dead Sea is barren (Gen. 19:23–25; cf. 13:10–12). And the story’s postscript provides a nasty explanation of the origin of the Moabites and Ammonites, neighboring peoples against whom Israel later often waged war, in the incestuous union between Lot and his two surviving daughters (Gen. 19:30–38). This sequel too has a moral edge. By offering his daughters to the Sodomite mob, Lot had shown willingness to have them consort with any man whatsoever. That indifference now comes dramatically home to roost. Where does this episode fit in Abraham’s story? At the end of chapter 18, Abraham, seeking to prevent injustice, extracts from the LORD the promise not to destroy Sodom if ten who are innocent can be found there (Gen. 18:22–32). Why does he stop at ten, and not carry the argument to its limit, that God will judge each person

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individually and not punish anyone for someone else’s sins? Perhaps his nerve just fails him—he is, after all, speaking to the “Judge of all the earth” (Gen. 18:25).54 Equally plausible, though, is that the text here assumes that justice is not only an individual matter. It also entails community responsibility. A basically good man, as Lot may be when he first comes to Sodom, who cannot find nine good neighbors, or make nine bad neighbors good, should view that community as incorrigible and feel obliged to leave. The text emphasizes that Sodom is such a community when it notes that the mob that surrounds Lot’s house includes “young and old—all the people to the last man” (Gen. 19:4; see also 19:11). However this may be, we are left to believe at the end of this conversation that Abraham believes Sodom will be spared (Gen. 18:33). What, then, must he think the next morning, when “looking down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and all the land of the Plain, he saw the smoke of the land rising like the smoke of a kiln” (Gen. 19:27–28)? That God has broken His word? Or that God, who let him bargain down to ten, knew all along his effort would be futile, and was thus mocking him? That the cities’ envisioned punishment might diminish Abraham’s loyalty to God is anticipated in a rare textual glimpse into divine deliberation: Now the LORD had said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him? For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right, in order that the LORD may bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.” (Gen. 18:17–19)55

Abraham’s faith is already suspect. Why does the LORD need to promise him a son by Sarah in chapter 18, when God has recently made the same promise near the end of chapter 17 (Gen. 18:9–15; 17:15–22)? It would seem that, having heard the word once, he is simply not doing his duty with Sarah to fulfill it. Perhaps this is because he is still recovering from his recent circumcision (Gen. 17:23–27). Or has he invested so much hope in Ishmael that he deliberately avoids intimacy with Sarah (Gen. 17:18)? And after the destruction of the cities, he goes to Gerar, where for the second time he tries to pass Sarah off as merely his sister, and for the second time she is taken into a king’s harem (Gen. 20:1–2; cf. 12:10–20). Given how poorly this ruse worked before, his action is at least puzzling, even suspect, considering God’s twice-stated promise to provide a son through Sarah. It looks like an act of defiance, as though he is going

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out of his way to confound the divine promise. Is he getting back at God for trifling with him about not destroying Sodom—in effect saying, “If the LORD’s words are inscrutable, and He will do whatever He will do, then let Him do it without my help”? But God accepts the dare, and not only shields Sarah from King Abimelech, but establishes Abraham’s reputation as “a prophet” (Scripture’s first use of the term) and induces Abimelech to lavish gifts upon him (Gen. 20:3–18, esp. 20:7). The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah thus continues the cluster of events that reveals Abraham’s faith to be imperfect. If by the time of the akeidah (the binding of Isaac for sacrifice) his faith is whole, it is because he develops as a character. Or should we speak not so much of his faith as (in Kierkegaard’s phrase) his “infinite resignation”? VI. The Akeidah56 The “binding of Isaac” text is only nineteen verses long and does not report its characters’ thoughts, but gives only their short speeches and their actions. But what a wealth of complicating details these speeches and actions contain! And it happened after these events that God tested Abraham. . . . He said, “Please take your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go you to the land of Moriah, and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall tell you.” (Gen. 22:1–2)

What does it mean to test someone? And what kind of test is this? Essay? Short answer? Multiple choice? And if multiple choice, may more than one answer be correct? Or may none of the available choices be correct? As teachers know, tests can be a device merely to generate a grade (an unfortunate necessity), or they can produce a spread of grades. And then there are “diagnostic tests,” those designed merely to discover what the test taker knows but on the basis of which no judgment will be made. Is the LORD, for whom man’s eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a departure from intended script, continuing to explore the implications of this “first disobedience”? Is He trying to discover how much this chosen man knows, or can figure out, concerning good and evil? That the test, whatever modifier we attach to it, places Abraham under great strain, there should be no doubt. We must reject any facile suggestion that Abraham knew all along that God really didn’t

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mean it. So too the proposition that the command to “offer him up” (aleihu sham l’olah) could be satisfied by just taking Isaac to the mountaintop without sacrificing him (Scherman, p. 101, citing Rashi and Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik). Olah is the technical term for “burnt offering,” and is so used ubiquitously in Leviticus. Its relation to alei, “go up,” is that the offering is completely burned up on the altar—it all goes up in smoke—unlike other kinds of sacrifices that the devotee or the priest “shares” with God, by keeping a part of the sacrificial animal for himself. On the other hand, God’s command is strangely equivocal. With uncharacteristic politeness, He says “Please” (kah-na es-bin’kha). He reminds Abraham of all that Isaac is to him—“your son, your only one, whom you love”—and thus of why he might want to resist this call. And He uses the reflexive construction, telling him to “go you (lekh-l’kha) to the land of Moriah,” a form that in other contexts implies that the person is being told to do something for his own benefit, perhaps more given permission than being commanded (cf. Gen. 12:1; Num. 13:2). Is God inviting dispute? Abraham had, after all, challenged the divine expression of intent regarding the sinful cities. In what is arguably his finest moment, he had then said to the LORD Himself, Will You sweep away the righteous along with the wicked? . . . Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the righteous with the wicked, so that righteous and wicked fare alike. Far be it from You! [Halilah l’kha—It would be a desecration for you.] Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice? (Gen. 18:23–25)

The verb form of the word halilah—desecration—appears in the Holiness Code of Leviticus, in the command, “[Y]ou shall not profane [or desecrate] the name of your God” (v’lo t’haleil es-shem elohekha), which directly follows an injunction against giving one’s children over “to Molech,” that is, for sacrifice (Lev. 18:21). Hence, the rabbinical teaching that a fundamental lesson of the akeidah is the God of Israel’s absolute rejection of human sacrifice (Hertz, p. 201). Likewise, that it would be a hilul haShem, a defilement of God’s good name, to ascribe to Him the desire or the demand that an innocent be sacrificed. Why, then, does Abraham not protest or argue when the life of his own innocent son is at stake? One suggestion is that in the Sodom and Gomorrah dialogue there is no actual command for him either to obey or to resist, but merely a statement of intent. This distinction

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makes too little of the authority of such a divine statement (a virtual command), while not seeing the “soft edges” of the command in the akeidah. Another possibility is that Abraham has been chastened by the fate of the Cities of the Plain. Can he not bring himself to believe that a community can be so wicked as to lack even ten righteous men (cf. Gen. 19:4), and does he, therefore, conclude that the LORD has been toying with him, that this God wants not justice but blind obedience? Is the Abraham whom God calls at the start of chapter 22 not the model of faith but a disillusioned man? Or perhaps Abraham suffers from a kind of false modesty to which high-minded people may be especially susceptible, the conviction that, while one ought to seek justice for the stranger, to plead strenuously for one’s own cause is improper because it is tainted by selfishness. Is the much revered story of the akeidah a cautionary tale about the errors into which noble minds may fall when they either underestimate the degree of wickedness in the world or lose touch with what is near and should remain dear to them? Other details suggest that Abraham is acutely aware of what he is being called upon to give up, and that he considers stratagems of evasion. He “arose early in the morning” (Gen. 22:3). Hertz takes this as a sign of his devotion to God, that he was prompt to obey (p. 74). But a more mundane explanation is available. Given the nature of his mission, one cannot imagine that Abraham slept much, if at all. He saddled his ass, split wood to fuel the burnt offering, and set off with Isaac and two young men-servants (Gen. 22:3). Why chop the wood at the start of the journey and carry it? Why not rather gather it after reaching their destination? He later tells the servants to “Stay here with the ass” (in the singular) while he and Isaac go off to worship (Gen. 22:5). Four men and a pile of wood, but only one ass! Whether Abraham rode, as might befit his age, and the three boys carried the wood, or the ass was a pack animal and all four of them walked, their pace would be set by the slowest walker. When, three days later, their destination became visible from afar, Abraham “lifted up his eyes” (Gen. 22:4), suggesting a downcast posture that would further retard their progress. (Tradition places the location of Mount Moriah at what later became the Temple Mount in Jerusalem [Hertz, p. 74], about fifty miles from Beer-sheba. This seems too much to cover in three days of slow walking, but perhaps some extra time should be added after the place is first seen from a distance.) In addition, the two servants are called “two of his lads” (sh’nei n’arav), the same term (hana’ar) that Abraham uses to describe Isaac (Gen. 22:3, 5). Did he have it in mind to substitute one or both of these young men for Isaac, as he later substitutes a ram? If so, he obviously

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rejects the idea. But these several peculiarities hint that he is stalling or seeking a way around his predicament. In the story, an angel of the LORD intervenes at the last moment and speaks twice. In the first speech, the angel tells Abraham to do the lad no harm, and that He (the angel speaking for God) now knows that he fears God because he has not withheld his son. Abraham then sacrifices the ram and names the place Adonai-yireh—“the LORD will see” (Gen. 22:10–14). This is the same phrase he had used when, ascending the mountain with Isaac, his son had asked where the sacrificial sheep was: “And Abraham said, ‘God will Himself see to the sheep for a burnt offering, my son.’ [Elohim yir’eh-lo haseh l’olah b’ni]” (Gen. 22:8). Jack Miles points out that this statement could be rendered in the jussive—“Let God see to the sheep”—making the phrase less an expression of faith than of defiance in the first instance and irony in the second.57 The angel’s second speech, which may come after a pause of indeterminate length, repeats, magnificently, the promises the LORD had made to Abraham before and adds some new features (Gen. 22:15–18). We infer that the second speech is needed because the first fails to satisfy either Abraham or us. (“All right, you have passed the test. Now go home!”) We also infer that God communicates in this segment through an intermediary because, to speak anthropomorphically, He knows that this time He has asked for too much and is ashamed to face him directly. Thus the new, crowning additions to the promises already made: Abraham’s seed, who will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens and the sand on the seashore, “shall possess the gate of his enemies; and by your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, pursuant to your listening to My voice” (Gen. 22:17–18). His descendants will be exceedingly abundant, victorious, and the means whereby all others may become blessed. This last point returns us to the terms of God’s original call to Abram, expanding upon it and partly depersonalizing it (cf. Gen. 12:1–3). Abraham lives another sixty years (assuming, as seems reasonable, that the “lad” Isaac is in his teens and Abraham is, therefore, about 115 years old), but has no further reported conversations with the Almighty, and dies contented (Gen. 25:7–8). The weight of being a blessing to others has been lifted from his shoulders. That honor and burden now pass to his heirs. VII. Arranging a Burial Genesis 23:1 states that Sarah was 127 years old when she died. According to Targum Yonasan, a rabbinical gloss from the second

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century CE, the fact that the account of Sarah’s death follows the akeidah indicates a causal connection—she died when Satan told her that Abraham had actually slaughtered Isaac (Scherman, p. 106). Sarah was ninety years old when she miraculously gave birth to Isaac (Gen. 17:17). This would make Isaac thirty-seven at her death, and, by this interpretation, at the time of the akeidah. Because the akeidah text fails to state Isaac’s age, such speculation is fair game. It is more credible and very much less shocking to imagine a man in his thirties voluntarily submitting to be sacrificed than a mere boy or adolescent teenager. Isaac emerges from this picture more a soldier of God than an innocent victim, and Abraham a captain of God rather than a monster of faith.58 But this commentary does not so much illumine the text as obscure it for the sake of teaching what the Rabbis regarded (perhaps rightly) as the most needed moral lessons—in this case, among other things, the activity in the world of Satan, that post– Hebrew Scriptural personified principle of evil. Its very premise is countertextual. The account of Sarah’s death does not directly follow the akeidah. Rather, there intervenes a brief genealogy: “Some time later, Abraham was told, ‘Milcah too has borne children to your brother Nahor,’ ” who are then listed by name (Gen. 22:20–24). Its opening phrase, aharei had’varim ha’eileh, invariably denotes the passage of some indefinite but noteworthy amount of time. Moreover, if Isaac, whatever his age, was willing to be sacrificed, why did he need to be bound? Further, the text separates the various place references of Abraham’s domicile, the location of Sarah’s death, and where Isaac dwelt following her death, suggesting mutual estrangement (Gen. 21:33–34; 22:19; 23:2; 24:62). Most of chapter 23 consists of the intricate bargaining in which Abraham, after mourning for Sarah, engages with the Hittite inhabitants of the land to obtain a burial site. Notwithstanding the great formality and politeness, beneath the surface the dialogue is a tug of war for high stakes, for which Abraham pays a high price. (Midrashic commentary points to this purchase and those of the site of the Temple and the Tomb of Joseph, without haggling by Abraham, as proof of the Jews’ rightful possession of the Holy Land [Scherman, p. 109].) As a sojourner whose household is vastly outnumbered by the natives, Abraham must be keenly aware of his weak position. He approaches the community of Hittite leaders, so that the transaction will be a public act, before witnesses, that cannot later be denied, and he resists the superficially magnanimous offer of Ephron son of Zohar to give him the cave and the adjoining field (which Abraham did not request—this is apparently a package deal) without payment

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(Gen. 23:3–13). To accept such a gift would make him permanently indebted, an arrangement that, we recall, he earlier eschewed in the encounter with the Sodomite king (Gen. 14:21–24). And the price Ephron eventually names and Abraham accepts without dispute, 400 shekels of silver, is an enormous sum (Gen. 23:14–16). By way of comparison, the “head tax” that every Israelite is required to pay under the Mosaic Law for the upkeep of the sanctuary is a half-shekel, and the price that Joseph fetches as a healthy male slave is twenty shekels (Exod. 30:13; Gen. 37:28). Does Abraham agree out of weariness and desperation, residual affection for Sarah (or a guilty conscience, to make good his disaffection from her during her life), or the prescient desire to stake an incontestable claim to the land for his descendants? The text, perhaps fortunately, does not compel a single, exclusive explanation, but it hints at the latter by assuming a long-range narrative time frame: “And then Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave of the field of Machpelah, facing Mamre—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan” (Gen. 23:19).59 VIII. Arranging a Marriage “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” Clearly a criticism of delegating responsibility, this familiar maxim exaggerates a truth more aptly stated, “If you want something done your way, do it yourself.” The way someone else carries out your assignment, though different from yours, could still be right—or right enough under the circumstances. The corollary can also be stated simply: “He who delegates responsibility must be content not to micro-manage.” The episode described in Genesis 24 illustrates these principles of administration. Abraham is 140 years old. He has at long last begun to weaken. He is, we may suppose, not up to making another long journey. So he summons his trusted chief household servant and assigns him a solemn task, reinforced by oath: “[Y]ou will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but will go to the land of my birth [ki el-artzi v’el-molad’ti teileikh] and get a wife for my son Isaac” (Gen. 24:3–4). The arrangement seems odd for two reasons. First, the unnamed servant is himself old (Gen. 24:2), and so may suffer the same limitations of endurance as Abraham. And second, Isaac is no child, but a forty-year-old man. Why not let him find his own wife? While the text is circumspect on the point, Isaac, never especially dynamic, seems immobilized by grief for Sarah, who died three years earlier (Gen. 23:1; 24:67; 25:20).

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(Was he also traumatized into passivity by his experience of the akeidah?) The servant, with a ten-camel caravan, gets as far as Aram-naharaim (“Aram of the two rivers”), in northwestern Mesopotamia, what is now the Kurdish region of eastern Turkey, a journey of about 500 miles. Is this where he is supposed to go? Not if we take “the land of [Abraham’s] birth” literally. That would be the city of Ur, in Lower Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, 550 miles further (cf. Gen. 11:26–28). But the city of Haran, in the area of Aram-naharaim, where Abraham’s father Terah had resettled, is also called his native land (Gen. 11:31; 12:1). The servant apparently regards this part of the assignment as satisfied once he reaches the nearest Mesopotamian location, even though the place may be culturally not Chaldean, but Aramean. If this chief servant is the person whom Abraham had earlier described as “he that shall be possessor of my house” were Abraham to die childless, then he is Eliezer of Damascus, a native Aramean (Gen. 15:2). We can imagine him reasoning that if what his master wants is a daughter-in-law drawn from stock superior to the Canaanites, then this is far enough—for surely we Syrians are as good as those Iraqis! After he meets Rebekah and discovers her lineage, he compensates for any shortcoming in interpreting his destination by playing on an ambiguity in “my birth-place” (molad’ti), which can also mean “my kindred.” Thus, when he tells his story to Rebekah’s parents and brother Laban, he embellishes the terms of his mandate: “[M]y master made me swear, saying, ‘You shall not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites in whose land I dwell; but you shall go to my father’s house, to my family [el-beis-avi teileikh v’el-mishpahti]’ ” (Gen. 24:37–38). It is obvious from the servant’s prayer, when he arrives at the local well, that he adds a condition to his master’s charge or substitutes a completely different criterion, one that reflects his own present situation: Let the girl who responds favorably to his request for a drink and who offers to fetch water for his camels be the one whom the LORD has decreed for Isaac (Gen. 24:14). He is tired, thirsty, and surely does not feel like watering ten camels. A maiden who would accommodate him in these respects would literally be the answer to an old man’s prayer. How could such a gift from God not also be the perfect wife for his master’s son? But, of course, nothing guarantees that a young woman who is kind to old men and animals would also be a good wife, or of the right family or racial stock. And Rebekah appears, who exceeds his prayer, for “[t]he maiden was very beautiful” and “a virgin whom no man had known”

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(Gen. 24:16). As though drawn by magic, the servant runs toward her and asks for a sip of water from her jar. She hastens to oblige, and when he is done drinking she offers to “draw for your camels, until they finish drinking,” then runs down to the well and does so (Gen. 24:17–20, 22). Given the camel’s great storage capacity, this exercise must entail carrying an enormous amount of water. Finally, after he rewards her with a gold nose-ring and bracelets and inquires about her identity and whether her family can provide lodging, and it is revealed that she is Abraham’s kinswoman, she runs home to tell her family the good news (Gen. 24:22–28). What stands out amid all this carrying and running is not so much Rebekah’s beauty or purity, or even her kindly disposition, as her prodigious vigor. When the servant later recounts the vignette to her family, he discreetly suppresses all this athleticism, no doubt in order not to obscure her feminine attractiveness (Gen. 24:45–48). That Rebekah has her own agenda is suggested by some verbal discrepancies between the servant’s description of her domestic relations and either hers or the narrator’s. She is officially introduced as “Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor,” an identity that she confirms by calling herself “the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor” (Gen. 24:15). The central figure of this genealogy is the grandmother Milcah, Abraham’s niece who married her other uncle (Gen. 11:29). The hint at matriarchy is buttressed by the statement that Rebekah ran and told of her encounter with the servant to “her mother’s household” (Gen. 24:28). The servant, perhaps not alert to the degree of female influence, continues to speak of “your father’s house” and to call her “[t]he daughter of Bethuel, son of Nahor, whom Milcah bore to him” (Gen. 24:23, 47). The servant brings Rebekah, not to Abraham for his stamp of approval, but directly to Isaac (Gen. 24:62–66). Does he apprehend that Abraham might not approve? Let us imagine the speech that might precede his objecting to her: It is evident, my dear, that you are good looking, morally pure, and physically fit. You come from an excellent family—mine. And I hear that you are kind to strangers and dumb animals. This is all quite commendable. But (forgive me if this seems intrusive) there is one question that I must ask: Do you have regular menstrual periods?

If we find this hypothetical question startling, consider the burden of childlessness that for so long weighed upon Sarah. Abraham seeks to

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establish succession to the Covenant through Isaac. And given that it takes Rebekah nineteen years to conceive, her answer could well have been unpromising. That her dissembling brother Laban sends her off with the blessing, “Our sister, may you become thousands of ten thousands,” should also arouse suspicion (Gen. 24:60). Despite this concern, we are reassured to read at the end of this charming story that “Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother’s death” (Gen. 24:67). Despite the shifting agendas incident to delegation of authority, the outcome is very right. IX. Abraham’s Final Years Following Sarah’s death, Abraham takes another wife, Keturah, by whom he has six more sons, and the text hints at other, unnamed concubines who bear other, unnamed sons (Gen. 25:1–6). While some people are shattered or permanently scarred by a spouse’s death, others are liberated. Old Abraham, whom God tests ten times, whose marriage to Sarah was always clouded by tension (Gen. 12:10–13; 16:1–6; 17:15–18; 18:12; 20:1–2; 21:9–13; 22:19; 23:2), seems in his ripeness to bloom. He alone of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, generally unhappy figures, is said to die contented (Gen. 25:8). Of his relation to Isaac and Rebekah, however, Rabbi Burton Visotzky conjectures that Abraham’s continued fecundity constituted a standing rebuke to his son as time passed and Rebekah remained childless (Visotzky, p. 134). The Abraham narrative, that is, ends on a textually characteristic note of ambiguity. X. The Shaping of an Ethnos Abraham is not the Israelite nation’s political Founder, qua lawgiver. Rather, the rule he exercises over his household, consisting mostly of servants, is personal and despotic (see, for example, Gen. 17:23–27). But neither is he merely the first provider of the Israelites’ DNA. The narrative’s greater significance lies in the qualities of character that he displays for emulation and avoidance. Abraham is ambitious and proud, but also accommodating and compliant. His pride inclines him toward forthrightness, but to avoid unwanted trouble he is sometimes devious. He is an anguished loving father, but a husband of doubtful affection. He shows an attachment to justice, especially for the stranger, that is perhaps unmatched in literature. But, at what may be the most agonizing moment of his life, he manifests reluctance to plead his own case, which we ascribe to a

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fatal excess of high mindedness. And he is, with much qualification, a man of some faith. To the narrator’s great credit, he is presented as anything but one-dimensional. The lessons that his biological and spiritual descendants are apt to draw from his career must, therefore, be a thoughtful balance of filial respect and admonition. Arguably, it is intended that we experience the Torah as a spiritual ascent from the vagaries of personal rule to the certainty of the Law, and that we come thereby to appreciate how blessed the Children of Israel are in their numerous and intricate commandments. But submission to law necessarily limits the scope of individual nobility. The Abraham narrative gives us to see the cost of this trade-off in its full complexity.

C. T J N By rabbinical convention, there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Of these, only three are from the Book of Genesis (Gen. 1:28; 17:9–10; 32:32). 60 Insofar as Genesis is defined by the absence of the Law, and can thus be conceived as the Book of Lawlessness, its characters must live by their native wits, and by as much of the fundamental norms of human decency as they can deduce and retain. 61 But even the management of a family, especially one that spans several generations, includes servants, and lives among people of different ethnic stock, raises issues of rulership. Such circumstances are apt to place a premium, at least occasionally, on the low talents of fraud, deception, and manipulation, and to produce frustration and disappointment. Nowhere is this more evident than in the career of the Patriarch Jacob, which we can divide into more or less discrete episodes, corresponding to his places of residence. I. Jacob in His Parents’ Household Jacob is the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham. According to the biblical chronology, Abraham, who lives to be 175, is still alive during the first 15 years of Jacob’s life (Gen. 21:5; 25:26; 25:7), but there is no mention of any involvement with Jacob. He may even live apart from Isaac and his household, where Jacob and his twin brother Esau are raised (Gen. 22:19; 24:62). Still, the knowledge that his renowned grandfather spends his last years enjoying his third marriage, siring several sons, and dying contented may provide an early, even if distant, glimmer of hope to Jacob of how a long, eventful, and

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troubled life may yet end well, especially regarding the goal of producing many offspring (Gen. 25:1–11). Isaac, sometimes called “the forgotten Patriarch,” is rather a passive, albeit a sympathetic, figure. Although he lives 180 years (Gen. 35:28–29), he seems not to do very much. The most famous event linked to his name, the “binding” of Isaac, is usually treated as an episode in Abraham’s career. Even where the narrative speaks of him most, the focus soon turns to the rivalry between Jacob and Esau and how Jacob obtains first the birthright and then the blessing intended for his brother. Like a town viewed from a fast moving train, Isaac is apt to be more heard of than seen. Isaac is the child of Sarah’s old age, and her care for him is violently intense. Soon after he is weaned, she has his half brother Ishmael and her servant Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, expelled from the household, because she sees Ishmael “mocking” him (Gen. 21:9).62 Does this toddler, the offspring of a ninety-year-old mother, have some unmentioned defect that makes him a natural object of Ishmael’s mockery? Some unspecified time later, when he is still young enough for the text to call him “the lad” (hana’ar), Abraham nearly sacrifices him as a burnt offering, at God’s command (Gen. 22). Abraham emerges successfully from this ordeal with his faith, wits, and vigor intact, but can we imagine it from Isaac’s perspective as other than traumatic? Later still, Abraham does not trust the forty-year-old Isaac to find a wife for himself, but instead sends his senior servant to get one for him from “the land of my birth” (Gen. 24:4). The servant, possibly reinterpreting this instruction to mean a member of Abraham’s family, ends up selecting, through a series of events charitably described as providential, Isaac’s cousin Rebekah. She is one of a number of strong women who populate Hebrew Scripture, and the rightness of the match between her and Isaac strikes us when we read the simple statement that Isaac loved her—the first time (nearly halfway through Genesis) that a man is explicitly said to love his wife (Gen. 24:67). The marriage is childless for nineteen years. A more “proactive” patriarch, faced with the possible extinction of his line, might consider taking a second wife, as Abraham did and Jacob will do. Instead, Isaac pleads to the LORD on Rebekah’s behalf, and she conceives. But the pregnancy is painful. When Rebekah inquires of the LORD, He answers that she carries twins who strive in her womb as the two nations that will come from them will strive in the world (Gen. 25:21–23). As between his sons, Isaac favors Esau, who is a skillful hunter, because Isaac “had a taste for game” (Gen. 25:27).

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For better or worse, Isaac is a man of simple, even somewhat crude, affections. At the core of Jacob’s early career are his thefts-through-deception of Esau’s birthright, for a bowl of lentil stew, and later of the blessing that Isaac intended for Esau. Of the former episode Rabbi Visotzky observes that it casts both men in a bad light—Esau as cavalier and stupid for giving up half of his prospective inheritance (the oldest son inherits a double portion) for a bowl of lentil stew, and Jacob as avaricious for demanding so much of a brother (Visotzky, p. 132). It may be thought that this acquisition of the birthright is not really a theft, but rather an above-board but hard bargain that Jacob drives with the famished and foolish Esau in return for a meal. The text draws from this vignette the conclusion “Thus did Esau spurn the birthright” (Gen. 25:34). But even on Esau’s terms, Jacob may have short changed him. When Esau, a hunter of game, comes in from the field and sees Jacob cooking a stew, he says, “Give me some of that red stuff [lit., “that red red”—ha’adom ha’adom hazeh] to gulp down, for I am famished” (Gen. 25:30). Probably, this crude carnivore expects some rare meat, but what he gets is red lentils. That he may feel cheated even this early in the saga is suggested by the absence of further conversation: “[H]e ate and drank, and he rose and went away” (Gen. 25:34). In a play on language and appearances, Jacob uses red to fool Esau, whose nickname, Edom, means “red.” The theft of Esau’s blessing occurs when Isaac, now over 100 and blind, thinks he is near death. His intuition is off by eighty years, but in another sense it is apt. With the adulthood of his more dynamic sons and the dimming of his eyesight, he may be weary of life—a feeling likely aggravated by his and Rebekah’s bitterness over Esau’s unwelcome marriage to two Canaanite women (Gen. 26:34–35). Despite this bitterness, which he never mentions to Esau (Gen. 28:6–9), but which the text treats as well grounded, he still prefers Esau to Jacob, and would give him his “innermost blessing” after Esau has served him a dish of freshly killed game (Gen. 27:3–4). Isaac, in his old age, is ruled more by his sense of taste than by common sense. Accordingly, Rebekah and Jacob conspire to trick his senses. By a “vote” of three senses (touch, taste, and smell) to one (hearing), with one (vision) abstaining, and under the influence of wine, Isaac is convinced that the son in his presence is Esau, and he gives the disguised Jacob the blessing of the firstborn (Gen. 27:5–29). When the deception becomes apparent to him, he is “seized with violent trembling” (Gen. 27:33), but cannot retract his action. He understands and submits to the conventional inviolability of blessings. The best he

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can offer Esau is a “consolation prize” blessing that promises an eventual end to his subservience to Jacob, albeit through strife (Gen. 27:39–40). This is prophetic on an interethnic scale. Esau is progenitor of the Edomite nation, a neighboring people with whom the Israelites are always on uneasy terms. The Edomites refuse Israel safe passage when they come up from Egypt (Num. 20:14–21). At the end of the Scriptural history, when the Babylonians sack Jerusalem, Edom apparently cheers them on: Remember O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall; how they cried, “Strip her, strip her to her very foundations!” (Ps. 137:7)

The later prophets Malachi and Obadiah speak in the same vein, the latter’s “Book” being a one-chapter-long invective against Edom (Mal. 1:2–5; Obad. passim). The rabbinical tradition has been equally harsh, inventing various colorful and bizarre stories about Esau’s supposed wickedness (see Scherman, pp. 126 ff.). And Hertz notes that the rabbinical writings used “Edom” as a code name for Imperial Rome and later Christian persecutors (p. 102). But if we divest ourselves of this interpretive baggage, and view the immediate text with unprejudiced eyes, Esau emerges more sympathetically, as a rough fellow who is obviously victimized by his conniving mother and sibling. How can we not feel sorry for him and Isaac when we read of their instantaneous reaction when the hoax becomes apparent to them? No sooner had Jacob left the presence of his father Isaac—after Isaac had finished blessing Jacob—than his brother Esau came back from his hunt. He too prepared a dish and brought it to his father. And he said to his father, “Let my father sit up and eat of his son’s game, so that you may give me your innermost blessing.” His father Isaac said to him, “Who are you?” And he said, “I am your son, Esau, your firstborn!” Isaac was seized with very violent trembling. “Who was it then,” he demanded, “that hunted game and brought it to me? Moreover, I ate of it before you came, and I blessed him; now he must remain blessed!” When Esau heard his father’s words, he burst into wild and bitter sobbing, and said to his father, “Bless me too, Father! . . . Have you not reserved a blessing for me? . . . Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too, Father!” And Esau wept aloud. (Gen. 27:30–38)

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How bitter must the later writers’ and commentators’ experience have been to transform this poor oaf into a demon! The Torah text suffers from no such tunnel vision. Jacob is repaid in kind for this deception, when Laban plays bait-and-switch with his daughters (Gen. 29:21–30). And the Holiness Code of Leviticus surely has this story in mind when it admonishes, “You shall not . . . place a stumbling block before the blind” (Lev. 19:14). Jacob gets to feel betrayed even sooner, when Rebekah urges him to flee to Haran, to stay with her brother Laban until Esau’s deadly anger subsides, “and he forgets what you have done to him” (Gen. 27:42–45). The theft of the blessing and its entire orchestration were her idea, and when Jacob had hesitated, she urged him on with the words, “Your curse, my son, be upon me!” (Gen. 27:5–17) Perhaps this is why Jacob, during his twenty-year sojourn with Laban, apparently never communicates with or inquires about his mother, and why he himself first proposes a seven-year apprenticeship, then accedes to a second, as the price he is willing to pay for Rachel (Gen. 29:18, 27, 30). Jacob, it seems, has burned his bridges. In the next generation, he receives similar silent treatment from Joseph, who does not contact him even after becoming viceroy of Egypt. In a final glimpse of Isaac, apart from the later brief mention of his death, he instructs Jacob not to marry a Canaanite woman, but instead to go to Paddan-aram and seek a wife from among the daughters of Laban (Gen. 28:1–5). The first part of this charge he gives at Rebekah’s prompting, but the rest, though it coincides with her wish to send Jacob there to escape Esau’s wrath, is apparently his idea (Gen. 27:41–46). And he blesses Jacob with the blessing of Abraham. Apparently Isaac is reconciled to Jacob’s “firstborn” status. Even after the hoax he is guided by his wife’s sound advice, and he draws the appropriate lessons from Esau’s poor choice in wives and from the choice Abraham’s servant happily made for him. II. Jacob in Laban’s Household When Jacob arrives at Paddan-aram, in the midst of an apparently warm and pleasant reception into Laban’s household, we hear an ominous note in the guise of a compliment: “[Jacob] told Laban all that had happened,” including, we must suppose, an account of his deceptions of Esau, “and Laban said to him, ‘You are truly my bone and flesh’ ” (Gen. 29:14). The affinity between these two is manifested dramatically in Laban’s most famous deception. His substitution of Leah for Rachel (one daughter for another) as Jacob’s wife, made possible by the darkness of the bridal chamber and doubtless

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facilitated by the consumption of wine at the wedding feast, mirrors Jacob’s substitution of himself for Esau (one son for another) before the blind Isaac, the scrambling of whose wits was also accomplished partly through eating and drinking (Gen. 29:21–25; 27:24–29). (Other instances in which the reported or probable drinking of wine is connected to acts of deception and/or dubious sexual contact include the stories of Noah and his son Ham, Lot and his two daughters, and Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar [Gen. 9:20–27; 19:30–38; 38:12–19]). The theme of bargaining and manipulation, especially over sexual matters, recurs in the growth of Jacob’s household. When Rachel perceives that she is not bearing children, while her sister Leah is producing a son every year, she tells him to consort with her servant Bilhah, as her surrogate, which he does. Not to be outdone, Leah, who has also temporarily stopped bearing, gives him her maid Zilpah, whom Jacob also obliges (Gen. 30:1–13). Then there is this curious story: Jacob’s firstborn son Reuben, probably about seven or eight years old, finds some mandrakes, a root thought to be an aphrodisiac, and brings them to his mother Leah. Rachel asks for some, and, after some sisterly squabbling, offers her Jacob’s services as payment (Gen. 30:14–18). Jacob raises no protest to this trafficking in his generative powers, which also promotes the agenda of fulfilling God’s promise to him of numerous descendants (Gen. 28:14). This sexual commerce returns to haunt him years later, when, after Rachel’s death, “Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine; and Israel found out” (Gen. 35:22). Was Reuben, by this scandalous act, belatedly taking his reward for finding those precious mandrakes? Manipulation and deception also occupies the economic sphere. Jacob, wishing to take leave of Laban, asks for all the dark sheep and speckled goats in Laban’s flocks as wages for his twenty years’ labor. Laban agrees, then surreptitiously removes all the “irregular” animals so Jacob will not find any. Jacob overcomes this ploy through a combination of sympathetic magic and selective breeding. He cuts white stripes into rods of poplar, almond, and plane, and exposes these speckled rods to the sheep and goats that he wishes to breed, so they end up producing offspring of the desired appearance (Gen. 30:25–43). In an echo of the birthright-for-food episode with Esau, Jacob employs white to confound Laban, whose name means “white.” Such methods follow Jacob out of Paddan-aram and back to the land of Canaan. When he and his by now sizeable family sneak away from Laban, Rachel takes her father’s household idols. Laban pursues

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and overtakes them, and searches their belongings, but fails to find his gods because Rachel concealed them in the camel cushion on which she sits. She excuses herself for not rising by claiming, we suspect falsely, that she is having her menstrual period (Gen. 31:19–35). Laban, ostensibly in order to protect his daughters, has Jacob swear that he will not mistreat them, and then adds a gratuitous clause that Jacob will take no more wives, thus assuring that any inheritance will remain in “his” extended family (Gen. 31:43–50). Partly lost in translation, variations on the word for theft or stealing, ganav, loom large in this passage. Most explicit is the account that “Rachel stole her father’s household idols [vatignov Raheil es-hatrafim asher l’aviha],” when Jacob and his family secretly leave (or as we might say, “steal away”). But this is immediately followed by the idiomatic statement that “Jacob kept Laban the Aramean in the dark [lit., “Jacob stole the heart (or mind) of Laban”—vayignov Yaakov es-leiv Lavan], not telling him that he was fleeing” (Gen. 31:17–20; phrase repeated at 31:26). Soon after, when they confront each other, in a model dispute between management and labor, Jacob reminds Laban that he absorbed the cost of accidental losses that befell the part of his employer’s flocks entrusted to his care: “That which was torn by beasts I never brought to you; I myself made good the loss; you exacted it of me, whether snatched by day or snatched by night [lit., “stolen”—g’nuvsi yom ug’nuvsi lailah]” (Gen. 31:39).63 Beyond the obvious teaching, which the text presupposes, that stealing is generally wrong, there is a more subtle lesson about the casual or careless misuse of serious speech. Jacob, accused by Laban of stealing his gods, and ignorant of Rachel’s deed, rashly declares, “[A]nyone with whom you find your gods shall not remain alive!” (Gen. 31:32) In this text, words are efficacious. Jacob’s assertion presages Rachel’s premature death. So too may the excuse she gives for not descending from the camel cushion that covers the idols, that she is having her menstrual period, for to rise would apparently violate a taboo against exposing such blood (Gen. 31:34–35; cf. Lev. 18:19). If this claim is a ruse, she trifles about her fertility, and her words implicitly deny her life—as she had earlier told Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die” (Gen. 30:1). It is, then, harsh poetic justice that she dies while giving birth to Benjamin (Gen. 35:16–19). III. The Wrestling Contest; Esau Reencountered; Jacob’s Decline An edifying story about the Patriarch Jacob runs as follows: Jacob is a mother’s boy. His father Isaac, not noted for discernment, favors the

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more dynamic, marginally elder twin brother Esau, apparently because of their shared taste in food. (By preferring this crude fellow, does Isaac overcompensate for his own physical deficiencies?) Although Jacob is no weakling, as he demonstrates by singlehandedly moving the wellstone at Paddan-aram, he prefers to advance by bargaining and trickery. By these means he acquires the birthright and blessing that would ordinarily be Esau’s and later the choice increase of his father-in-law Laban’s flocks (Gen. 29:2–10; 25:29–34; 27:1–41; 30:25–42). But when, returning to Canaan with his household, he hears that Esau is about to intercept him with a troop of 400 men, there occurs a turning point in his life. He wrestles all night with an unnamed man—either an angel or his conscience—who renames him Israel (“he who strives with God”). Thenceforth, Jacob becomes his own person, who faces Esau man-to-man and reconciles with him (Gen. 32:25–33:4). This story has much to be commended. It teaches a valuable moral lesson—that clever as one may be at working around rules and other people, sometimes one must confront problems head-on. The account of Jacob’s early career and character is basically sound. And the wrestling incident is indeed pivotal. But it fundamentally mistakes the nature of Jacob’s transformation. Without denying that Jacob undergoes a crisis of conscience, the wrestling match is clearly a physical event that produces a physical result, the dislocation of his hip. We offer a very unorthodox conjecture about this event: In order to save his family from destruction at Esau’s hand, and thereby to fulfill the promise to “make your offspring as the sands of the sea, which are too numerous to count” (Gen. 32:13), Jacob tries to propitiate God by throwing himself off one of the cliffs that line the steep banks of the Jabbok River.64 This gesture is consistent with his attempt to propitiate Esau by sending him gifts (Gen. 32:14–21). (The comparison of Esau to God is continued in Jacob’s obsequious language when they finally meet [Gen. 33:10; cf. 32:31].) Unlike Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, this would-be self-sacrifice has not been commanded, and would betoken Jacob’s lack of faith that God will preserve his family without some such extraordinary act. But the offer is refused—Jacob sees God faceto-face and survives (Gen. 32:31). But he survives literally a broken man, who limps to his meeting with Esau, “bow[ing] low to the ground seven times,” no doubt in excruciating pain that Esau must observe but does not acknowledge (Gen. 32:32; 33:3). So much for fraternal reconciliation! All their hugging, weeping, and extreme politeness are a thin diplomatic veil for the fact that Esau

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plunders Jacob, walking off with the choicest of his flocks and herds (Gen. 33:4–11; cf. 23:3–16). (One rabbinical gloss notes that in the Torah Scroll each letter of the word vayishakeihu—“and he [Esau] kissed him [Jacob]”—is superpointillated [Gen. 33:4], and explains that the text thereby indicates a phony kiss, that Esau was really trying to bite him on the neck!) A humiliated Jacob is lucky to get away with his life and the lives of his household intact, and even this is accomplished partly through deception. Claiming that he wishes not to slow Esau’s return to Seir by his own camp’s pace, which is set by the frailty of the children and the nursing lambs, Jacob urges him to proceed and promises to follow. Esau thereupon heads south, and Jacob continues westward across the Jordan (Gen. 33:12–17). Their separation occurs after Esau “offers” to “assign to you some of the men who are with me”— that is, to place Jacob and family under armed escort. Jacob responds, “Oh no, my lord is too kind to me!” (Gen. 33:15) As with Abraham’s bargaining at Machpelah (Gen. 23:3–16), we should see past the niceties to the implicit threat of captivity that is ultimately averted only when Esau relents after Jacob’s total humiliation. The two meet next at Isaac’s burial, sixty years later (Gen. 35:28–29). Further, in preparing for Esau’s possible violence toward his family, Jacob places his concubines and their sons and Leah and her children in the front and middle lines, respectively, as a human buffer to protect Rachel and the infant Joseph (Gen. 33:1–2). By showing such blatant favoritism in a dire situation, he plants the seeds of the brothers’ later deadly hatred toward Joseph, a hatred surely based on more than petty jealousy over a multicolored robe. Three other sequel passages underscore the fatal decline in Jacob’s credentials. First is the thoroughly nasty story of Jacob’s daughter Dinah and the Shechemites, which must occur some years later for Dinah to be of marriageable age (Gen. 34). (Though safely back in Canaan, Jacob still apparently takes his time returning to Isaac and Rebekah, who, for all he and we know, may by now be dead.) The only half-decent character in this tale is Prince Shechem, who, after raping Dinah, has a change of heart and tries to “do the right thing.” The story as a whole resolves into an emphatic rejection of assimilation, although Jacob himself (unlike Abraham and Isaac) seems open to the idea, first broached deceptively by his sons, then adopted by the city’s ruler Hamor, that his household and the Shechemites intermarry and “become one people” (Gen. 34:16, 22). The text is ambivalent on who, Jacob or his sons, is more in the right. But it seems clear that, however much Jacob may disapprove of his sons’ deception, he cannot control them. We cannot imagine Isaac or Ishmael preempting

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or talking back to Abraham the way Jacob’s sons do to him (Gen. 34:5–17, 30–31). In the second passage, God tells Jacob to relocate to Bethel, to build Him an altar there. In preparation, Jacob orders his household “and all who were with him” to “[r]id yourselves of the alien gods in your midst” (Gen. 35:1–2). These would likely, at least in part, have been introduced by the Shechemites’ wives and children whom Jacob’s sons took as spoil from the devastated city, an action to which he had raised no immediate objection (Gen. 34:29). Taking wives from the neighboring peoples may be a practical necessity for the present, until the next generation provides a supply of homegrown marriageable female cousins, but it requires vigilance not to lose sight of the crucial religious distinction between Us and Them. Apparently Jacob has until now been unconcerned about Canaanite idolatry in his camp, or has felt unable to address it. The final incident occurs after Rachel’s death, when Reuben “went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine; and Israel found out” (Gen. 35:22). The eldest son, that is, partakes of his inheritance as though Jacob were already dead (cf. Hertz, p. 131). It is unclear whether “Israel” here means only Jacob or the entire household (cf. Gen. 34:7). Either way, Jacob does nothing about it, and apparently keeps the hurt to himself for decades, until, on his deathbed in Egypt, he finally rebukes Reuben for this outrage (Gen. 49:3–4). Could there be a more poignant gauge of Jacob’s impotence? The picture of human relations we get from Genesis is not the most edifying. Like the State of Nature construct in classic social contract theory, it gives us to appreciate what we have by providing a glimpse of how life would be without it. Patriarchal, like all merely personal, rule is as strong or weak as the patriarch of the moment. By exposing the flaws, defects, and scandals of the patriarchal period, the Torah prepares us to experience Moses’ ascent onto Mount Sinai to receive the Law as a spiritual ascent above the rule even of virtuous men. It also allows us to appreciate—what their number and intricacy may make it easy to overlook—how blessed the Children of Israel are in their commandments that spare them from having to live this way. IV. Jacob in Egypt In Genesis 37–50, the focus shifts to Jacob’s eleventh son Joseph, whose remarkable rags-to-riches story may be unparalleled in literature or life. Jacob appears briefly at the beginning and then again significantly at the end of this narrative.

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The firstborn of Jacob’s beloved deceased wife Rachel, Joseph is his pampered favorite son, who does not scruple at “bring[ing] bad reports” of his brothers to Jacob (Gen. 37:2). He is also a natural genius, who displays his special gift of inspired dreaming in a way that deepens his brothers’ hatred and in one, apparently unique, instance even incurs Jacob’s rebuke. When he relates his dream that the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him, his father berated him. “What,” he said to him, “is this dream you have dreamed? Are we to come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow low to you to the ground?” (Gen. 37:10)

To bow low, in biblical terminology, is to kowtow, knees and forehead to the ground—a gesture of respect bordering on worship. Of this incident the text cryptically records, “his father kept the matter in mind” (Gen. 37:11). We should perhaps resist the temptation to overinterpret this statement to mean that Jacob appreciated his young son’s prophetic ability. It may indicate nothing more, nor less, than that this was a seriously awkward moment of the sort that every parent and child at some time experiences and that neither forgets. Does Joseph, we wonder, ever forgive Jacob for this rebuke? Is this why he makes no attempt to contact his father once he rises from slavery to the highest position of power in Pharaoh’s court? Perhaps to repair this momentary breach, perhaps to reaffirm Joseph’s status as his brothers’ “watchman,” Jacob sends him to “see how your brothers [who are pasturing Jacob’s flock at Shechem] are and how the flocks are faring, and bring me back word” (Gen. 37:14). The assignment proves fateful. The resentful brothers attack Joseph, and conspire to sell him into slavery.65 To account for Joseph’s disappearance, they dip his tunic in goat’s blood and show it to Jacob. Jacob concludes that Joseph has been devoured by a wild beast, and goes into perpetual mourning. We next encounter Jacob twenty-one years later. Canaan is in the grip of a severe region-wide famine. But due to Joseph’s foresight, there is grain to be had in Egypt. Jacob sends all the brothers except the youngest, Benjamin, Joseph’s full sibling, to whom Jacob has apparently now transferred his favoritism, to Egypt to buy grain. When they arrive, Joseph, whom they do not recognize but who recognizes them, accuses them of being spies, and holds Simeon, Jacob’s second son by Leah, captive until the others will bring Benjamin as a sign of their good intentions. But Jacob refuses to let Benjamin go—implicitly acceding to Simeon’s indefinite imprisonment—until,

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after a year, Judah persuades him. It is during this second journey to Egypt that Joseph reveals himself, after toying with the brothers mercilessly, and orders them to relocate there with Jacob. Jacob spends the last seventeen years of his life in Egypt (neatly mirroring the first seventeen years of Joseph’s life outside of Egypt), “so that the span of Jacob’s life came to 147 years” (Gen. 47:28). This number accords with what he tells Pharaoh soon after arriving there: Pharaoh asked Jacob, “How many are the years of your life?” And Jacob answered Pharaoh, “The years of my sojourn are 130. Few and hard have been the years of my life, nor do they come up to the life spans of my fathers during their sojourns.” (Gen. 47:8–9)

While 130 years might not seem to us a short “sojourn,” Jacob’s point is clear. His life has been difficult, he has not lived as long as Abraham (175 years) or Isaac (180 years), and he does not expect to live much longer (Gen. 25:7; 35:28–29; 45:28). But something here does not compute. It had earlier appeared that Jacob is forty years old when he and Rebekah trick Isaac into giving him Esau’s blessing and he flees to Paddan-aram (Gen. 26:34). He stays with Laban for twenty years, so he is sixty when he returns to Canaan (Gen. 31:38). Joseph, who is born near the end of this period, is sold into slavery when he is seventeen, so Jacob would then be seventy-seven (Gen. 37:2). Joseph is thirty when he interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and enters the king’s service, and Jacob’s household settles in Egypt nine years later, in the second year of the famine (Gen. 41:46; 45:11). When Jacob has his audience with Pharaoh he should, therefore, be not 130 but “only” 99, and at the time of his death not 147 but “only” 116. An explanation for this discrepancy may lie in his words to Pharaoh, “Few and hard have been the years of my life.” His years are few compared to his father’s and grandfather’s, but his experience, especially the presumed loss of Joseph, has been so bitter as to make them seem thirty years longer. Because this subjective reckoning expresses a more profound truth about what it means to be human than does mere counting, the text accepts and ratifies it in its report that Jacob died at 147.66 Jacob’s remaining appearances are two deathbed scenes. In the first, he blesses and “adopts” Joseph’s two sons as his own. In this way, Joseph—who, as viceroy of Egypt, surely does not need it—stands to inherit a triple portion of his father’s property. He also elevates Joseph’s younger son Ephraim over the elder Manasseh. This act

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replicates his own elevation over Esau and prophetically anticipates the later preeminence of the Ephraimite demitribe. The more significant deathbed scene consists of parting statements to his twelve sons. Only the one to Joseph, the longest, is clearly a blessing. A few—those relating to Reuben, Simeon, and Levi—are sarcastic reminders of their delinquencies. Most are prophetic descriptions about the character or geographic situation of the tribes that will descend from the sons. The statement to Judah is usually taken as a blessing and praise, but by supplying different vowels from those in the Masoretic text, one can make it fit the sarcastic Reuben-SimeonLevi model.67 Overall, the descriptions are unflattering: Unstable as water . . . (Gen. 49:4) [W]hen angry they slay men, And when pleased they maim oxen. (Gen. 49:6) . . . a strong-boned ass, Crouching among the sheepfolds. (Gen. 49:14) . . . a serpent by the road, A viper by the path, That bites the horse’s heels So that his rider is thrown backward. (Gen. 49:17) . . . a ravenous wolf; In the morning he consumes the foe, And in the evening he divides the spoil. (Gen. 49:27)

Near the middle of the list, between the brief statement to Dan and the even briefer one to Gad, Jacob exclaims, “Lishu’os’kha kivisi Adonai—I wait for Thy salvation [or deliverance], O LORD” (Gen. 49:18).68 Hertz incorporates this verse into Dan’s blessing, noting that the later tribe of Dan occupied the most exposed geographic position (p. 186). The tribe of Dan originally settled in the southwestern part of ancient Israel, what is now the Gaza Territory, where, during the period of the Judges, they fell under Philistine dominion. Samson was a Danite hero, whose exploits, while perhaps temporarily irritating to the foreign occupiers, did not change the basic situation. Eventually, unable to prosper there, the Danites migrated to the area north of the other tribes. They conquered the unoffending Sidonian

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city of Laish, massacred its inhabitants, and renamed it “Dan” (Judges 13–18). The Phoenicians, with whom the Israelites enjoyed consistently good relations, were doubtless better neighbors than the Philistines, and the city of Dan was important enough for Jeroboam I, first ruler of the separate Northern Kingdom of Israel, to set up a cultic golden calf there (1 Kings 12:26–30). Because of its still exposed position, Dan was probably among the first tribes to be conquered by the Arameans or the Assyrians. In terms of Jacob’s exclamation, they could certainly have used God’s deliverance, but at one crucial moment, their collective migration, they took deliverance into their own hands. All this is perhaps interesting but basically irrelevant to the present text. Jacob’s exclamation—“I wait for Thy deliverance, O LORD”— which is a first person singular intrusion into a long third person passage, is about himself. It is the kind of dramatic outcry we might expect from a pious person on the brink of death, especially one who has had a hard life. (The word translated as “wait for,” kavah, may have as its root meaning “twist” or “endure,” referring to the tensile strength of a piece of rope [BDBG, p. 875].) Yet there is something strange and different about his interjection—Jacob’s use of the Name “LORD” (YHWH). The reader has not seen this way of referring to the Deity since the end of chapter 39, at least twenty-eight years earlier in the narrative, before Joseph’s meteoric rise in fortune: “The keeper of the prison looked not to any thing that was under [Joseph’s] hand, because the LORD was with him; and that which he did, the LORD made it to prosper” (Gen. 39:23). And the last time any character spoke this Name was Jacob’s prayer for deliverance before reencountering Esau, when he was only sixty—a gap of eighty-seven years, according to Jacob’s reckoning of his lifespan (Gen. 32:10)! That Joseph, who spends all but his first seventeen years in Egypt, would not have pronounced the Name is not surprising. As a later Pharaoh observes to Moses, the vocalization “Yahweh” does not belong to any god the Egyptians recognize (Exod. 5:2). Joseph could have used it in the speeches to his brothers after revealing himself, but he instead continues to employ the more generic term Elohim—“God.” Does Joseph not say “LORD” because he too has never heard the Name, even during childhood, from Jacob? Jacob seems always to have been reticent about invoking the Name. Before the prayer at the time of the Esau episode, he only does so four times, and always at a rhetorical distance.69 When he approaches Isaac to receive the firstborn’s blessing, Isaac asks how he has managed to

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capture the game for his dinner so quickly. Jacob answers, “Because the LORD thy God sent me good speed” (Gen. 27:20). That he does not acknowledge the LORD as his own God may in this case be excusable—he is pretending to be Esau. When on his way to Paddanaram, he dreams at Bethel of angels ascending and descending a ramp (or ladder) to heaven, and the LORD promises him the surrounding land, numerous descendants, and divine protection until he returns to the place. He awakens and exclaims, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not” (Gen. 28:12–16). This clearly acknowledges His presence, but falls short of personal endorsement. A few verses later he takes a vow: “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then shall the LORD be my God” (Gen. 28:20–21). The forty-year-old Jacob is bargaining for his religious allegiance, demanding favors beyond those the LORD has already promised. And when, twenty years later, he wishes to leave Laban’s household, and he and Laban bicker over his wages, he says, “[I]t was little which thou hadst before I came, and it hath increased abundantly; and the LORD hath blessed thee whithersoever I turned” (Gen. 30:30). This too is an acknowledgment, but one made for essentially polemical purposes. His prayer before encountering Esau may seem a defining moment in his relation to the LORD: O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, O LORD, who saidst unto me: Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will do thee good; I am not worthy of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast shown unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two camps. Deliver me, I pray Thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he come and smite me, the mother with the children. [But] Thou saidst: I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. (Gen. 32:10–13)

This humbler and moving supplication is also bargaining. The LORD has substantially made good His previous promise and most of Jacob’s additional demands. He has provided Jacob with food, clothing, many children, and protection up to this point. Does Jacob now realize, to his dismay, that his own safe return to his father’s house need not require his family’s survival, or that his descendants’ eventual inheritance of the land might be accomplished consistently with their temporary capture by Esau? Alternatively, the promise of numerous

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descendants who inherit the land could also come about through his survival and subsequent remarriage, even if his current family were all killed (though this scenario would breach his pledge to Laban not to take any more wives [Gen. 31:50]). However this may be, he again does not call the LORD “my God,” and thereby seems to add yet another precondition, rescue from the hand of Esau, in return for his devotion. In the actual event, Jacob is delivered from Esau, but at a very high price. As noted above, he emerges from their meeting despoiled, crippled, and humiliated in the eyes of his children, who thereafter treat him with conspicuous disregard. And then silence—however many decades of silence, during which the Name “LORD” never passes his lips, until that final convulsive cry, “I wait for Thy deliverance, O LORD.” Jacob, the embittered Patriarch of imperfect faith, even on his deathbed, still waiting for rescue, still waiting for Yahweh to deal with him fairly!

D. T J N I. The Case for Joseph The story of Joseph comprises about 30 percent of Genesis, and is so familiar (even being the subject of a Broadway musical) as not to need retelling. Joseph is one of Scripture’s more thoroughly sketched characters. The amount of attention he receives—more text than does Abraham, as much as Isaac and Jacob combined—suggests someone of great importance. From the perspective of a biblical Israelite, we can appreciate why. The Josephite demitribe of Ephraim was politically prominent. Joshua, the military leader under whom the Israelites conquered Canaan, was an Ephraimite (Num. 13:8, 16). So was King Jeroboam I, who became head of the separate Northern Kingdom of Israel when the ten northern tribes revolted against the Davidic dynasty, around 928 BCE (1 Kings 11:26; 12:20; TJH, pp. 13–14). The geographic territory of Ephraim was the southern-most, and the most interior, of the Northern Kingdom, and thus one of the last to fall to foreign conquest during that kingdom’s final decades of decline. (The Assyrian Empire overran the Northern Kingdom and deported much of its population in 722 BCE [TJH, p. 19].) Toward its very end, Ephraim was Israel (see, for example, Jer. 31:2–20). To these Northerners, Joseph might have been a virtual fourth Patriarch. Joseph occupies a pivotal position in biblical history. His plan to mitigate the effects of the prolonged, severe, regional famine—the

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greatest natural disaster since the Great Flood—by storing surplus Egyptian grain during the preceding years of plenty, makes him the savior not only of his family and their descendants, the Israelite people, but of much of the world (Gen. 41:56–57). His policy also, incidentally, teaches the more characteristically classic modern virtue of thrift. His personal qualities are impressive by any standard. Joseph is, not to mince words, a genius. We commonly use this term in two (not mutually exclusive) senses. First, we call a genius someone who has a rare and precious innate talent, who can, unaided, perform deeds that others would need to study long and hard just to approach. Joseph’s skill at dream interpretation surely fits this description. The exposition of dreams, as it appears in Scripture, is a systematic science (see Sarna, p. 213). One wonder of the Joseph story is that this unschooled Hebrew slave can, by virtue of his divine gift, perceive the meaning of Pharaoh’s dreams that apparently eludes the professionally trained court magicians (Gen. 41:1–36). In another, more ordinary, sense, we sometimes describe as a genius someone who is quick minded, who thinks along the same lines as everyone else, only faster. Joseph exhibits this quality too in his speech to Pharaoh, which begins with the dream interpretation and concludes with the sound advice to gather up surplus grain during the seven years of plenty, so as to have a supply during the succeeding seven years of dearth. Sandwiched between these two parts is a gratuitous but pregnant suggestion: “[L]et Pharaoh find a man of discernment and wisdom and set him over the land of Egypt” (Gen. 41:33). Joseph has seen his opportunity to ascend from his wretched condition and seizes it. Pharaoh just as quickly rises to the bait: And Pharaoh said to his courtiers, “Could we find another like him, a man in whom is the spirit of God?” So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is none so discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my court, and by your command shall all my people be directed; only with respect to the throne shall I be superior to you.” (Gen. 41:38–40)

In this instance, as elsewhere, Joseph exhibits resourcefulness, an ability to watch out for himself (see also Gen. 40:14–15). Further, his speech to Pharaoh shows that he can learn. The chastened man of thirty has relinquished the boastfulness that made the seventeen-year-old lad so obnoxious to his brothers that they wanted to kill him. Back then, he could not contain the desire to flaunt his favored status by revealing his dreams of primacy—first,

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that their sheaves of wheat bowed low to his; then, that the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed low to him. As noted above, to bow low, in the biblical terminology, is to kowtow, a gesture tantamount to worship. This second dream occasions a rare, perhaps unique, rebuke from Jacob: “What . . . is this dream that you have dreamed? Are we to come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow low to you to the ground?” (Gen. 37:5–10) Let us recall that Joseph’s mother Rachel is dead. So the symbolism of this second dream is that he is being worshiped by the living and the dead—an honor reserved to God.70 Whether the Joseph who addresses Pharaoh thirteen years later thinks any less of himself or not, he now knows better than to say so. He also knows the appropriateness of invoking God. Given the relative simplicity of Pharaoh’s dreams, why were the court magicians unable to interpret them? The answer may be less technical than political. These dreams foretell a famine of catastrophic magnitude (Gen. 41:56). Who would want to be the bearer to the king of such grim tidings concerning his land? The magicians quite likely grasp the dream’s meaning but dare not speak it, though court etiquette requires that they have the first opportunity to do so. Thus, the chief butler, whose dream of restoration to the king’s favor Joseph had interpreted while they were both in prison, does not call Pharaoh’s attention to Joseph until the official interpreters have been asked to speak (Gen. 41:8–13). Joseph, however, finesses the problem: And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, but no one can interpret it. Now I heard it said of you that for you to hear a dream is to tell its meaning.” Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, “Not I! God will see to Pharaoh’s welfare.” . . . Joseph said to Pharaoh, “Pharaoh’s dreams are one and the same: God has told Pharaoh what He is about to do.” (Gen. 41:15–16, 25)

As the late Professor Aaron Wildavsky noted, Pharaoh is not just a king. He is also reputed to be, and may believe himself to be, a god. By presenting himself as the conduit through which one God does a favor for another god, Joseph demonstrates that he has learned the virtue of discretion where it matters most, in speaking unpleasant truths to persons of great power (Wildavsky, pp. 783, 784). While Joseph was in prison, “The LORD was with [him], and showed him kindness, . . . and made [all that the warden entrusted to him] to prosper” (Gen. 39:21–23). If God was so much “with” Joseph, why did He allow his false imprisonment? If Joseph is to become

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prime minister of Egypt, from which position he can implement the grain storage policy that keeps multitudes alive during the seven-year famine, he must first come to Pharaoh’s attention by virtue of his dream interpretive ability. The link that allows him to do so is his encounter with the temporarily displaced chief butler in the prison, for which his incarceration and his prior sale into slavery are preconditions. It is God’s prerogative to work silently, inconspicuously, and circuitously. As Joseph will later reassure his understandably anxious brothers, “[A]lthough you intended me harm, God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20). Here, as elsewhere, we perceive the Hidden Hand of God.71 Joseph is loyal to a fault to his masters, Potiphar and Pharaoh. If his conduct in the episode with Potiphar’s wife does not exactly prove his chastity (we do not know how he would have responded to the sexual advances of the baker’s or the butler’s wife), it does exhibit a keen sense of the particular situation’s proprieties (Gen. 39:7–9). And if the very fact of success in some sense speaks its own praise, Joseph’s dramatic rise in fortune acclaims him in incomparable terms. The eleventh son of a shepherd, of obscure stock, from an area on the fringes of the civilized world, who is sold into slavery, becomes chief minister to the king of the world’s most significant empire—in effect, the most powerful man in the world (Gen. 41:40–45; 45:8). What Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story can match this tale? Because Joseph succeeds so spectacularly, we may be tempted to ascribe to him unbounded optimism and constant equanimity, born of his faith in God. But this would be unwarranted. The textual assurances to the reader that the LORD was with Joseph and brought success to whatever he did, first in Potiphar’s service and then in prison, do not necessarily mean that Joseph himself saw things this way (Gen. 39:2–4, 21–23). At one point, he hints at despair (Gen. 40:14–15). And the tears he repeatedly sheds when, unrecognized, he overhears his brothers’ conversations and later when he reveals his identity are, perhaps like all tears, ambiguous. Does he weep out of fraternal sympathy, or from self-pity, and thus continuing resentment, as he recollects their ill treatment of him (Gen. 42:24; 45:2, 14–15; cf. 33:4)? However this may be, once he reveals himself, he shows generosity and forgiveness, as he can well afford to do, since he now holds all the cards (Gen. 45:4–11). And after Jacob dies, and the brothers fear that Joseph may finally take his revenge, he reassures them of his clemency (Gen. 50:15–21). This time, given the circumstances, we can rest content that the gesture is sincere. The Book of Genesis, which began

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with the assertion, in the cosmological account of Creation, of a wellordered universe (Gen. 1:1–2:4), concludes with a corresponding expression of reconciliation and reconstituted order in Israel’s ancestral family. II. The Case against Joseph The Joseph narrative is so lush with details that we seem to be in another world altogether from the sparse, laconic, almost passionless descriptions of the prepatriarchal period or the Abraham text. For example, although there is much in the earlier material that we may find heart-wrenching, the first character who is said to weep is Abraham’s concubine Hagar, when Abraham, at Sarah’s insistence, casts her and Ishmael into the wilderness, about a third of the way into Genesis (Gen. 21:16). The first men who show such emotion are Isaac and Esau, when Jacob steals the firstborn’s blessing, just halfway through (Gen. 27:33–34). By contrast, the Joseph account is soggy with tears. The adult Joseph weeps when he overhears his brothers confessing guilt for their earlier treatment of him, and again when he sees his “baby” brother Benjamin, who, let us appreciate, is a grown man, probably in his thirties, with ten sons of his own (Gen. 42:21–24; 43:29–31; 46:21). Judah’s poignant speech to Joseph, which provokes Joseph’s disclosure of his identity to the brothers, is seasoned with yet more weeping by him and Benjamin—though, interestingly, not their brothers, who may at this moment be thinking less sentimental thoughts about how Joseph has toyed with them (Gen. 44:18–34; 45:2, 14–15). At the conclusion of the Book, Joseph weeps as soon as Jacob dies—quite naturally, we might suppose, but he is the only one said to do so—and again when the brothers petition him not to be vengeful (Gen. 50:1, 17). Weeping seems to be a prerogative of the highly placed, for whom it comes as an easy self-indulgence.72 Let us note some other elements of this Egyptian environment that were formerly lacking. Egypt is a kingdom, not on the small scale of previously mentioned city-state kingdoms, but a vast empire, in which whole cities are used to store the nation’s grain supply (Gen. 41:35–36; Exod. 1:11). Its ruler is not just a person, but the personification of a centralized bureaucracy—the title “Pharaoh” means “great house,” comparable to the president and his entourage being called “the White House” (BDBG, p. 829). Egyptian society includes an important class of independent farmers, whom Joseph helps subordinate to the crown, and a distinct class of priests, which retains its autonomy (Gen. 47:13–26). There are ranks of professions and nations

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(Gen. 43:32; 46:33–34). There are prisons and punishments of lengthy imprisonment. There is science, for divination is a systematic study, conducted by a closed guild under professional rules. There is the elaborate art of embalming (Gen. 50:2–3). There are the customs of shaving and wearing fine linen clothing and the observance of birthdays—at least the king’s birthday—and therewith the more regular reckoning of time (Gen. 41:14, 42; 40:20). And there are very many slaves. This is a much busier, more bustling, and more variegated milieu than the pastures of Canaan or Paddan-aram. One should retain this image of a developed civilization, for the later Exodus is not just an escape from Egypt the place, but also a rejection of much of this complex way of life. Rabbinical tradition praises Joseph as a tzaddik (a man of righteousness) and the perfect model of a Jewish leader.73 But the text sustains a contrary description of him as one of the Hebrew Scripture’s more morally and politically dubious characters. Joseph is largely responsible for the enslavement of the Israelites, not only because he induces his relatives to resettle in Egypt, but more importantly because he brings about a fateful change in Egyptian political society. When the famine lies heavy upon the land, Joseph sells to the Egyptians the grain he has collected during the preceding seven years of plenty, and he sells it apparently at a very high price, for after two years his customers have no more money. So, in the third year he barters grain for their livestock (including, one supposes, work animals—their agricultural capital), and in the fourth for their land (Gen. 47:13–20). He thereby transforms the Egyptian regime from a monarchical government over a class of freeholders to a Soviet-style absolute despotism over a nation of tenant farmers. And he underscores the point by relocating the population “city by city, from one end of the border of Egypt even to the other end thereof” (Gen. 47:21). As Wildavsky observes, Joseph’s enslavement of the Egyptians to Pharaoh sets the stage for the Hebrews’ future enslavement (Wildavsky, p. 787).74 On the moral side, Joseph fares no better. Even after he has risen to the position of viceroy of Egypt, he apparently makes no effort to contact Jacob. The rabbinic attempt to explain this omission in terms of a heirem, a solemn ban imposed by the brothers, forbidding anyone from divulging to Jacob what they had done to Joseph, is unconvincing (Scherman, pp. 205–6). Disregarding all periodization, it treats the ancient Middle East as one big shtetl (an East European Jewish village) and the ne’er-do-well brothers as a reputable council of learned rabbis. The textual Joseph would have no

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reason to respect such a ban, and he shows no such restraint when he finally reveals himself and, invoking his authority as master of Egypt, orders them to bring Jacob to him (Gen. 45:9–13). The only moral justification for his twenty-two years of silence (but surely not his concern) is that it repays Jacob for his similar treatment of Isaac and Rebekah during his twenty-year sojourn in Paddan-aram. As for Joseph’s quite correct conduct vis-à-vis Mrs. Potiphar, one need not recur, as the rabbis do, to a miraculous admonitory apparition of Jacob’s face to explain his self-restraint (Scherman, p. 215). The rationale Joseph offers, that to consort with her would be a betrayal of his master’s trust and a sin against God, suffices (Gen. 39:8–9). Such a dereliction would also be imprudent. Whatever risk he actually runs of false accusation, the peril would be much greater if he acceded to her crude demand. Concerning family relations, let us reconstruct the situation just before Joseph’s self-revelation to his brothers. His half brother Simeon has been held in bondage for a year, as surety for the others’ return, and for all we know might remain in prison for the rest of his life if they do not return (Gen. 42:18–26; 43:23). Joseph has trifled with the brothers mercilessly over the matter of his divining cup— especially with Benjamin, who, unlike the others, was totally innocent of Joseph’s sale into slavery, and who now himself faces the prospect of unjust enslavement (Gen. 44:1–17). If Joseph pursues the charade to its end, Benjamin would be permanently separated from the others, they would be left to incur Jacob’s bitter reproach, and Jacob would suffer the loss of a second favorite son. Nothing in the text, up to the moment of Judah’s supplication (Gen. 44:18–34), warrants our supposing that Joseph is only bluffing or intends to alter the trajectory of his prior actions. Judah thus becomes the pivotal figure. He is a character who, as explained below, learns from harsh experience and grows in stature. As for Joseph’s Jewishness, as yet there is no Law, and, therefore, no Judaism as we know it, nor even prerabbinical Israelite religion. There is only the acceptance of the LORD as one’s God. But unlike Abraham, Isaac, and (rarely) Jacob, Joseph never uses the Name “Yahweh,” preferring instead the more generic Elohim (God) (cf. Exod. 5:1–2). When Joseph is brought out of prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, he shaves and dons Egyptian clothing—that is, he assumes the appearance of an Egyptian (Gen. 41:14, 42). Subsequently, he receives an Egyptian name, takes as his wife the daughter of an Egyptian priest, and gives his sons names that suggest divorce from his Hebrew past: Manasseh (M’nasheh—“making to forget”), “for

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God has made me forget (nashani) all my toil and all my father’s house”; and Ephraim (from the root parah—“to be fruitful”), “for God has made me fruitful (hifrani) in the land of my affliction” (Gen. 41:45, 50–52). Culturally, he has become an Egyptian. Is he also a religious apostate? Notwithstanding Joseph’s occasional invocations of God, especially as the source of his extraordinary talent with respect to dreams, God never speaks directly to him as He does to the Patriarchs. Moreover, as already noted, his second dream, in which the sun, moon, and eleven stars bow low before him, not only expresses the aspiration for primacy among his siblings, but also hints at divinity (Gen. 37:10). The issue of assimilation has been raised in earlier passages. Abraham sends his servant “back east” to obtain a wife for Isaac, because he does not want him marrying “from among the daughters of the Canaanites” (Gen. 24:1–4). Esau marries two Canaanite women, who are a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah, so he takes a third wife from Egypt, apparently to regain respectability (Gen. 26:34–35; 28:6–9). Jacob’s twenty-year sojourn in Paddan-aram is apparently significant enough for the Book of Deuteronomy to refer to him as a “wandering Aramean” (Deut. 26:5). And when Jacob returns to Canaan, he seems prepared at least to consider Hamor of Shechem’s proposal that their two people become one through intermarriage (Gen. 34). Joseph’s first set of dreams indicates acceptance of different customs: Hear this dream which I have dreamed: There we were binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly my sheaf stood up and remained upright; then your sheaves gathered around and bowed low to my sheaf. (Gen. 27:6–7)

Commonly noticed, because the second dream replicates it, is the conspicuous obeisance that the symbols representing his brothers pay to his symbol. Is not just as significant the matter-of-fact acceptance that they would be binding sheaves of wheat in the first place? This family’s principal occupation has been and continues to be herding sheep (cf. Gen. 47:3). But somewhere along the way they have acquired agriculture as a sideline. The Torah’s first mention of wheat is the pregnant episode that occurs while Jacob is in Paddanaram, when Reuben discovers the mandrakes “at the time of the wheat harvest” (Gen. 30:14). “Jacob the Aramean” seems to have adopted and brought back to Canaan the foreign vocation of growing wheat.

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Joseph’s second dream may manifest another intercultural borrowing: Look, I have had another dream: And this time, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me. (Gen. 37:9)

Are the “eleven stars” shorthand for eleven constellations of the Zodiac, which would comprise either another cultural loan from the Arameans or an anticipation of the astrological science of Egypt or Babylon? Alter rejects this possibility, in part because there should then be twelve constellations (p. 208). But the absence of one Zodiacal star/ constellation is interpretively sensible. The unmentioned twelfth one, which does not bow down to him, represents Joseph himself. A third hint at cultural adoption—one that does not explicitly take root among the Israelites for several centuries—is found when Joseph is sold to Potiphar, who is variously called a courtier, officer, or court official of Pharaoh (Gen. 37:36; JPS, p. 60; Hertz, p. 145; Scherman, p. 207, Fox, p. 181; Alter, p. 213). Of the Hebrew word s’ris that is used here, Alter comments that we should see it, not as “eunuch” (which it can mean in other contexts), but as a loan-word from the Akkadian sa resi, “royal official” (p. 216). The word is used and translated as “eunuch” with reference to the courts of the later kings of Israel and in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel (cf. 2 Kings 9:42; 20:18; Is. 39:7; 56:3, 4; Jer. 29:2; 34:19; 38:7; 41:16; 52:25; Dan. 1:3, 7–11, 18). It arguably should also be in the Book of Esther (Esth. 1:10). The presence of sarisim is ascribed in Chronicles to the court of King David, for whose narrative the possession and dispossession of wives is a thematic issue, and is used by the prophet Samuel in his warning against establishing a monarchy (1 Chron. 28:1; 2 Sam. 11–12; 16:20–22; 1 Sam. 8:15). The general point of Samuel’s speech is that kings will live in luxury at the people’s expense, and although the king who immediately feels his disapproval is Saul, the one who best fits his admonitory description is Solomon, whose legendary harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines would seem most emphatically to call for eunuch guardians (1 Kings 11:3). For one strand of rabbinical interpretation, it would simply not do to make Potiphar a eunuch. This reading holds that Poti-phera, priest of On, Joseph’s eventual father-in-law (Gen. 41:45), is the same man as Potiphar. Joseph’s marriage to his daughter discredits the slander against him regarding Potiphar’s wife (Scherman, p. 229, citing Alschich).75 This identification of Potiphar with Poti-phera adds a level of providential necessity to Joseph’s resistance to Mrs. Potiphar’s

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sexual advances, for if Joseph is destined to marry the daughter it would be a most serious sin for him to also consort with the mother. If, on the other hand, we suppose, with Hertz (p. 158), that the two men with similar names are distinct persons, and if we also suppose that the word s’ris does denote Potiphar as a eunuch, then we have a ready and compelling explanation for his nominal wife’s crude, desperate, but quite understandable attraction to the young Hebrew slave whom the text calls “well built and handsome” (Gen. 39:6; cf. 29:17). At one point, Joseph’s cultural identification takes an ironic turn. When he is about to present five of his brothers to Pharaoh (why only five, rather than all eleven?), he prompts them to describe themselves as “breeders of livestock [anshei mikneh]” rather than as shepherds (ro’ei tzon), apparently because sheep and those who tend them are regarded with contempt in Egyptian society (Gen. 46:33–34). But when in their interview Pharaoh asks their occupation, the brothers answer directly, “We your servants are shepherds, as were also our fathers”—that is, also Joseph’s ancestors (Gen. 47:3). What we suppose is an amused Pharaoh generously tells what we suppose is an embarrassed Joseph that “the land of Egypt is open before you: settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land,” and he adds with what we suppose is good natured irony, “And if you know any capable men among them, put them in charge of my livestock”—a parody of Joseph’s self-advancing advice when he interpreted Pharaoh’s dream, to “find a man of discernment and wisdom, and set him over the land of Egypt” (Gen. 47:6; 41:33). The social climber par excellence,76 the hyper-Egyptian Joseph, who seeks to distance himself from his humble origins, and who does not quite trust the Egyptian king to show the kind of tolerance and human empathy that transcends national prejudice, receives a much deserved comeuppance. And the generally uncouth and morally dubious brothers get to enjoy a moment of pride in themselves and their ancestry, and to provide an object lesson for future generations of Jews: No matter how high you may rise, no matter how successful you may become, do not despise your roots or deny to your host community the chance to display human virtue. Finally, let us consider his behavior concerning his father’s and his own deaths. Jacob and Joseph are the only characters in Hebrew Scripture whose remains are said to be embalmed (Gen. 50:2–3, 26; IDB, v. 2, p. 96). For Joseph this is no surprise. Except for his first seventeen years, he has lived his entire life in Egypt. He dresses and shaves like an Egyptian, no doubt speaks Egyptian fluently, has

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risen to the highest rank of Egyptian politics, second only to Pharaoh, and has married into the Egyptian aristocracy (Gen. 41:14, 39–45). It is appropriate that his corpse be treated according to the local custom. The remarkable feature is that he makes his brothers swear that they (i.e., their descendants) will carry his bones from Egypt when they eventually return to Canaan (Gen. 50:24–25; cf. Exod. 13:19). Jacob’s situation is quite different. He spends only the last seventeen years of his life in Egypt, and there is no hint that he adopts Egyptian customs (Gen. 48:28; cf. 47:7–10). Not that he is heedless of his posthumous disposition. As his long valedictory statement to his sons indicates, he wants to be remembered not only as their father but also as a judge and prophet (Gen. 49:1–28). And he insists, having earlier made Joseph swear, that he be buried in the cave of Machpelah where Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah were buried (Gen. 47:28–31; 49:29–32). Does his repetition of this instruction to all his sons imply lack of confidence in Joseph’s promise? However this may be, there is no reason to think that embalming his remains à la mode égyptienne is part of his intention. Of course, some way of forestalling, or at least masking, quick decay would be needed for the journey back to Canaan, but if that desert crossing were expeditious, something perhaps like the Gospel of John’s report of Jesus’ burial might suffice: “Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury” (John 19:40).77 Full-scale Egyptian embalming, especially the form used for royalty and perhaps others of high rank, was a much more elaborate version of this process. In order to keep the body “attractive enough to lure back the soul and other elements,” the vital organs were removed, washed, and treated with herbs, and then replaced into the body cavity, which was also “seasoned” with aromatic perfumes. The body was cured in nitre for seventy days, then washed and wrapped in gummed cotton bandages, before being coffined and entombed.78 The duration of this exotic process markedly contrasts with anything in the accounts of the other Patriarchs’ deaths and the later Jewish law of burial as quickly as circumstances permit (Deut. 21:22–23).79 Perhaps some compromise is present in Jacob’s case. The text says that his embalming required forty days, but it adds, “The Egyptians bewailed him seventy days,” and only then does Joseph seek Pharaoh’s consent to have the body taken to Canaan (Gen. 50:3–5).

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Consider too the text’s description of the funeral procession: So Joseph went up to bury his father; and with him went up all the officials of Pharaoh, the senior members of his court, and all of Egypt’s dignitaries, together with all of Joseph’s household, his brothers, and his father’s household; only their children, their flocks, and their herds were left in the region of Goshen. Chariots, too, and horsemen went up with him; it was a very large troop. When they came to Goren ha-Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they held there a very great and solemn lamentation; and he observed a mourning period of seven days for his father. And when the Canaanite inhabitants of the land saw the mourning at Goren ha-Atad, they said, “This is a solemn mourning on the part of the Egyptians.” That is why it was named Abel-mizraim [the mourning of the Egyptians], which is beyond the Jordan. (Gen. 50:7–11)

This spectacle is preeminently a display of Egyptian (i.e., Joseph’s) power and presence. So, at least, it is perceived by the Canaanites, who do not mention Jacob. By keeping his brothers’ children, flocks, and herds behind in Egypt, does Joseph hold them hostage, and so ensure that the brothers will not remain in Canaan? Does this anticipate the tactical compromises the later hostile Pharaoh tries to strike with Moses (Exod. 10:8–11, 24)? Small wonder, then, that the brothers, fearful of Joseph’s revenge, concoct the story that Jacob had ordered their forgiveness and present themselves to him as prepared to be his slaves (Gen. 50:15–18). And when Joseph, attempting to reassure them, asks, “Am I a substitute for God?” (Gen. 50:19), must they (and we) not wonder whether in his estimation the question is merely rhetorical? Only in this respect is it clearly not—that Joseph being as mortal as anyone else, his remains, including his reputation, are at the mercy of his successors. Small wonder, too, that the rabbinical “spin” employs such heavy artillery as Jacob’s specter, the brothers’ heirem, and Joseph’s supposed associations with the figure of the Messiah (Wiesel, p. 168) (a concept dating from the Roman era, and quite alien to this text) to support the claim of Joseph the tzaddik. They reach so far afield because the text so fully feeds the contrary image of Joseph the reprobate. Why does the tradition do so? In addition to the general imperative of filiopiety—that we must not allow ourselves to speak or even think any ill of our ancestors and national heroes—there is a consideration perhaps more peculiar to Joseph. He is a survivor, an

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archetype of resourcefulness, who manages to prevail in the face of exile and injustice, by applying his gifts and making the most of his opportunities. As such, he presents a perhaps necessary kind of model for the Jews of later ages in comparable circumstances. III. The Judah Narrative As mentioned, to inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, in which the demitribe of Ephraim was prominent, Joseph might have been a virtual fourth Patriarch. But to subsequent Jews, after the Assyrian conquest of Israel, residual Ephraimites were likely marginal. The word “Jew” derives from the name Judah, the Southern Kingdom that remained loyal to the Davidic dynasty and which was dominated by the tribe of Judah, descendants of Jacob’s son of that name. Were they to seek a fourth Patriarch, it would not be Jacob’s eleventh son but his fourth. The Joseph narrative digresses in Genesis 38 to tell a fairly detailed story about Judah, covering over twenty years of his life. Unfortunately, the story is, at least at first glance, scandalous. After conspiring to sell Joseph into slavery, Judah resettles elsewhere in Canaan, marries a Canaanite woman, and has three sons. Time passes, and he selects as a wife for his eldest son Er a woman named Tamar. But Er incurs the LORD’s disfavor and dies without having a son to perpetuate his name. We are not told the nature of Er’s offense, but the letters of his name, ayin-resh, when inverted spell ra, the generic word for “bad,” “evil,” or “wicked.” On the one hand, Er’s wrongdoing could be anything at all that displeases the LORD, even something as trivial as the Scriptural equivalent of jaywalking or littering. The point would be to emphasize God’s absolute and arbitrary power. On the other hand, it might be something quite specific but abhorrent and unmentionable, such as consorting sexually with his mother. This conjecture would anticipate the mirroring irregular intergenerational sexual union with which the story resolves. Also, Er’s mother is a Canaanite, a race to which the Torah ascribes virtually every imaginable aberration. There is even, as we commented in the cursing episode of the Noah story, an oblique textual hint that the Canaanites derive from an instance of this quintessential taboo (Gen. 9:20–27; cf. Lev. 18, esp. vv. 3, 7, 24–28). Judah orders his second son Onan to perform the duty of levir, that is, to join with Tamar to generate a son in his dead brother’s name. Onan pretends to do so but in fact does not. This evasion of duty displeases the LORD, and Onan too dies. Because, on account of this incident, Onan’s name has become, at least in English,

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something of a jest, we should note that his offense is essentially economic, not sexual. As the elder of Judah’s surviving sons, he stands to inherit two-thirds of Judah’s property. Were he to produce offspring in his senior brother’s name, that infant would get half, and his share would drop to 25 percent (cf. Deut. 25:5–10). Judah, fearing that Tamar may be a jinx, withholds his third son Shelah from her temporarily, ostensibly because the boy is still too young, and in the interim sends her back to her father to live as a widow. That is, she may not remarry until Shelah comes of age and produces a son on Er’s behalf. More time passes. Shelah is now mature enough to father a son, but Judah still does not summon Tamar. His dawdling is underscored by the detail that his wife dies, he observes the period of mourning, and then goes about his business. Tamar, hearing that Judah will be at Timnah for a sheep shearing festival, dons the garb of a harlot, including a veil to cover her face, and stations herself along the way. Judah sees her, consorts with her, and leaves his ring, cord, and staff as a pledge for her agreed upon price. When, the next day, he sends a friend with payment for the “cult prostitute” (k’deishah—apparently a more respectable term, related to kadosh, “holy,” than zonah, the common word for harlot), she cannot be found (Gen 38:21, 15). Three months later, when it becomes apparent that Tamar is pregnant, Judah orders her put to death for her evident immorality. But he relents when she dramatically declares, “I am with child by the man to whom these [the ring, cord, and staff] belong.” He admits that she was “more in the right than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah,” but is not intimate with her again. She bears twin sons, Perez and Zerah, who while being born engage in a curious jostling to be first, which recalls and perhaps parodies the birth of Esau and Jacob (Gen. 38:27–30; cf. 25:24–26). (Perez, the “elder” twin, is ancestor of King David [Ruth 4:18–22].) The German biblicist Gerhard von Rad treats the Judah-Tamar episode as a rude and unconnected intrusion inserted into the beginning of the very organized Joseph stories (Wildavsky, p. 782). But if it is worth telling at all, one could not find for it a place less disruptive to the Joseph narrative. Further, the period covered, corresponding to the time from Joseph’s arrival in Egypt as a slave to his brothers’ arrival as famished suppliants, forms a backdrop and foil to Joseph’s rise in fortune. A feminist reading finds a “women’s folktale” of a wronged but clever female who outwits a powerful but gullible male. The literary critic Harold Bloom argues, on the basis of this and other passages,

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that the original “J” source was a woman—a very keen sighted and literate woman, perhaps of the royal family, in the court of King Solomon and his son Rehoboam.80 Whatever one ultimately makes of these source conjectures, the “clever woman / powerful man” motif is fairly common and not limited to female authors. Genesis includes other examples of women ruling men: Eve induces Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. Sarah initiates Abraham’s marriage to Hagar and its later dissolution. Lot is the passive instrument of his daughters’ determination to produce issue. Rebekah orchestrates the deception of Isaac that channels his blessing to Jacob. Jacob himself, for all his dynamism, is for a while passed around among his four wives like an article of commerce, his sexual services at one point traded for some mandrake root (Gen. 3:6; 16:1–6; 21:9–16; 19:30–38; 27:5–17; 30:1–24). Perhaps one symptom of the Patriarchal Era’s lawlessness was the ability, and perhaps the need, for women to exercise such inordinate influence. Wildavsky notes that throughout the Joseph narrative there is a pattern of doubling, most evident in the three pairs of dreams. The Judah-Tamar story, he argues, fits into this pattern by teaching in condensed form a lesson that the story of Joseph in Egypt repeats more expansively, that survival must be guided by the moral law. Judah is not simply wrong to withhold Shelah, because he apprehended that marrying him to Tamar would bring on his death. But Tamar is “more in the right” than Judah, because she ensures survival and fulfills her legal obligation (Wildavsky, p. 782). Similarly, Joseph is right in wishing to save his brethren from famine, but wrong in the means he chooses—enhancing the power of his patron Pharaoh by transforming the Egyptian regime from a moderated monarchy to an absolute despotism. Crucial to this account is that Judah, like Joseph, learns from his strange experience. Indeed, while his change in fortune is not as spectacular as Joseph’s (whose could be?), he may be the better learner. It is Judah who proposes to eight of his brothers that, rather than kill Joseph, they should sell him to the Ishmaelite traders (Gen. 37:26–27). While this spares Joseph’s life for the moment, we should perhaps see it, given the uncertainty of a slave’s future, less as a humanitarian gesture than as an attempt to profit from Joseph’s murder-on-theinstallment-plan and to evade responsibility for his probable death by putting it out of sight. Judah’s career thus begins by selling a life. In the Tamar episode, he unknowingly buys two lives, the twin sons she ultimately bears. Also noteworthy perhaps is Joseph’s selling price, twenty pieces of silver. Because Reuben is not party to the transaction

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(Gen. 37:29–30), and Benjamin is still a boy and off the scene, this sum would be divided nine ways. So each culprit gets two coins, with two more left over. Does Judah, as author of the idea, take a double share of the profit? Is his brothers’ likely resentment over this the reason he soon leaves them to join company with his friend Hirah the Adullamite (Gen. 38:1)? Is this extra share of ill-gotten gain the seed money that enables him to start his own apparently successful sheep herding business? After the Tamar affair, Judah is a changed man. Twenty-two years have passed since Joseph’s enslavement, and the famine is in its second year. The brothers have gone to Egypt once, have been required by the unrecognized Joseph to leave Simeon as a hostage, and have been told not to return without Benjamin, the by now adult “baby” whom Jacob will not let go. They have exhausted the provisions from the first trip, and it is Judah who persuades Jacob to place Benjamin in his personal care for the second. Judah has become the leader. This is partly by default: Reuben forfeited this status years earlier by being intimate with his father’s concubine Bilhah (Gen. 37:21–22, 29–30; 35:22). Similarly, Simeon’s and Levi’s credentials were tarnished by their violence against the city of Shechem (Gen. 34:25–31). Judah’s speech to Jacob is significant: Send the boy in my care, and let us be on our way, that we may live and not die—you and we and our children. I myself will be surety for him; you may hold me responsible: if I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, I shall stand guilty before you forever. For we could have been there and back twice if we had not dawdled. (Gen. 43:8–10)

His plea is urgent, but balanced, emphasizing both the moral stakes and the practicalities of the situation. Contrast this with Reuben’s clumsy speech the previous year: “You [i.e., Jacob] may kill my two sons [i.e., your grandsons] if I do not bring him back to you” (Gen. 42:37). (Poor Reuben! Perhaps he is trying to atone for his earlier act of insolence. But however genuine his intentions, he cannot seem ever to get it right.) Judah, who has lost two sons and nearly executed his daughter-in-law (and therewith two more sons), seems to have learned that one does not trifle away others’ lives to make a rhetorical point. And he demonstrates in the long speech that he makes to Joseph the Egyptian viceroy—the second longest continuous speech in the Bible up to this point, a speech of such eloquence that it finally moves Joseph to reveal his identity—that he is prepared to relinquish his own freedom, to undergo the fate he thinks he inflicted on Joseph

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years earlier, when it appears that Benjamin will be enslaved (Gen. 44:18–34). Judah has become a man of character. One part of this speech deserves special attention: My lord asked his servants, “Have you a father or another brother?” We told my lord, “We have an old father, and there is a child of his old age, the youngest; his full brother is dead, so that he alone is left of his mother, and his father dotes on him.” Then you said to your servants, “Bring him down to me, that I may set eyes on him.” We said to my lord, “The boy cannot leave his father; if he were to leave him, his father would die.” But you said to your servants, “Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, do not let me see your faces.” . . . Later our father said, “Go back and procure some food for us.” We answered, “We cannot go down; only if our youngest brother is with us can we go down, for we may not show our faces to the man unless our youngest brother is with us.” Your servant my father said to us, “As you know, my wife bore me two sons. But one is gone from me, and I said: Alas, he was torn by a beast! And I have not seen him since. If you take this one from me, too, and he meets with disaster, you will send my white head down to Sheol in sorrow.” (Gen. 44:19–29)

Professor Leonard Sorenson has disputed our characterization of Judah.81 He notes that almost all of this beautiful speech is a fabrication (as are elements of the brothers’ earlier descriptions to Jacob of their encounter with the Egyptian viceroy), and suggests that Joseph’s weeping here is prompted not by sympathy but by his recognition that his half brother is a transparent liar, whose narrowly selfish motivation is to save himself from humiliation in their father’s eyes. The present heart-wrenching speech not only adds to what Jacob had said to the brothers, but also invents an elaborate dialogue in which Joseph himself is supposed to have engaged (cf. Gen. 42:9–20; 43:3–8). And he is telling this to Joseph! Just how gullible does he take Joseph to be? Let us grant that the brothers, and Judah in particular, do lie, first to Jacob, then to Joseph, and that Joseph probably notices it. What does this say of their character? An answer would have to begin with an assessment of the moral status of lying. Clearly, the Torah condemns certain kinds of lying in the strongest terms. Bearing false witness (i.e., judicial perjury), invoking the LORD’s Name in vain, and the lying that is implicit in worshipping false gods are prohibited in the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:4–7, 13). But the text seems more equivocal about lying under various other circumstances and for various reasons; and deceptions, exaggerations, and embellishments

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are an almost ubiquitous feature of the Genesis narratives, including the Deity’s exaggeration to Adam, Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as [lit., “in the day that”] you eat of it, you shall die. (Gen. 2:16–17)

and His concealment to Abraham of some of Sarah’s words: And Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment—with my husband so old?” Then the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am?’ ” (Gen. 18:12–13)

The Rabbis teach that God Himself gives only a partial account in order to avert possible quarreling between spouses (Hertz, p. 64). Other deceptions are ambiguous. Jacob’s pretense to be Esau in order to obtain the favored son’s blessing from Isaac may be a necessary means to get around the old man’s poor judgment, symbolized by his blindness, and to fulfill the LORD’s prediction to Rebekah that “the older shall serve the younger.” But it is still a poignant event and an exploitation of Isaac’s handicap, for which Jacob suffers a parallel deception at the hand of his father-in-law Laban (Gen. 25:23, 28; 27; 29:21–30). A long-standing dispute persists in moral philosophy over whether an action should be gauged by its consequences or by the actor’s intention. The Genesis narratives generally tilt toward consequentialism. As Joseph reassures his brothers near the end of the Book, “[A]lthough you intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about the present result—the survival of many people” (Gen. 50:20). On the other hand, we are familiar with the judicial consideration that the absence of malice can at least mitigate the punishment for an offense—a principle the Mosaic Law recognizes in the establishment of cities of refuge for perpetrators of accidental homicide (Num. 35:9–34). Sometimes the distinction is obscure, as in the Deuteronomic prescription for false witnesses: “If the man . . . has testified falsely against his fellow, you shall do to him as he schemed to do to his fellow” (Deut. 19:18–19). And some offenses, such as covetousness, may themselves consist of wrongful intent (Exod. 20:14). Judah’s case presents a happy confluence of both factors. He tries to direct Jacob and Joseph toward a right course of action, and both times he succeeds. If his words are literally false

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(though substantively true), they are not something worse. They are not malicious or misleading. Standard translations of Jacob’s deathbed address to his sons present Judah as rehabilitated: You, O Judah, your brothers shall praise; Your hand shall be on the nape of your foes; Your father’s sons shall bow low to you. . . . The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet; So that tribute shall come to him [alt: Until he comes to Shiloh] And the homage of peoples be his. He tethers his ass to a vine, His ass’s foal to a choice vine; He washes his garment in wine, His robe in blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine; His teeth are whiter than milk. (Gen. 49:8–12)

Calum Carmichael, by reading the verbs as past tense rather than future and by applying different vocalizations, sees this “blessing” as a sharp rebuke of Judah’s conduct toward Tamar, replete with sarcastic puns. Thus, “Shiloh” (or “tribute to him”—shai loh) becomes “Shelah”: The scepter did not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet [—recalling the staff that he left with Tamar as partial pledge for her wages?—], Until Shelah came. (Gen. 49:10)

“[H]is foal” (iroh) becomes “his Er,” and “the son of his she-ass” (b’ni asono) plays on the slang term for a Canaanite woman (i.e., Judah’s wife): He tethers his Er to a vine, The son of his she-ass to a choice vine. (Gen. 49:11)

The words for vine, gefen and soreikah, may allude obliquely to Tamar, whose name means date-palm tree. And the references to wine recall

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Judah’s probably tipsy condition at the sheep shearing festival, when he trafficked with Tamar without recognizing her, an echo of Jacob’s own situation when he ended up marrying Leah instead of Rachel (Gen. 49:11–12; 29:22–25). But Jacob’s judgment about his sons is always colored by partiality for his beloved Rachel and her offspring. Notwithstanding the prophetic value of a Patriarch’s testament, we are in this instance better able than Jacob to assess the growth in Judah’s character. Despite his dubious beginning, the Jewish people can in the end willingly acknowledge him as their fourth Patriarch.


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Mosaic Episodes

I The beginning of the Book of Exodus describes the start of a new era in Israelite history. No longer an extended family living under the personal rule of a patriarch, soon to cease being a confused multitude oppressed by a foreign despot, the Israelites are about to assume the status of an independent people living under a code of laws. The event, accompanied by signs and wonders, can aptly be described as millennial. The text shows particular concern with, inter alia, the measurement of time. In Genesis we encountered fantastic time—people living hundreds of years, and continuing in advanced age to produce children and engage in such heavy labor projects as building a very large boat. That life spans diminish as the book progresses no doubt expresses a point about the species’ moral degeneration. But this may also signify different ways of reckoning time. This possibility came to light near the end of Genesis, when Jacob tells Pharaoh he is 130 years old (Gen. 47:8–9). As we noted, if we count backward to the year of Joseph’s enslavement and beyond, we get a set of ages for Jacob at key events in his life that clash with those we get by counting forward from his leaving Isaac’s household at the age of forty. The events in Joseph’s life, by contrast, seem to happen pretty much when they should. Even his reported death at the age of 110 seems humanly possible, with only slight exaggeration. Perhaps for nomadic and pastoral people like the Patriarchs, shorter years consisting of groupings of less than twelve months, and that thus routinely allow people to live into their 100s, or “years” of variable length that express subjective notions of time, are appropriate. But a complex civilization, like Egypt’s (and Joseph is an Egyptian for over 70 percent of his life), needs more objective time keeping, calibrated to the solar year, to regularize the agricultural calendar and chronicle its kings’ glorious deeds (cf. Gen. 40:20).

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The Hebrew title of Exodus, Sh’mot (Names), taken, as customary, from the first distinctive word in the opening sentence—“These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob”— offers one crude method of chronology, counting generations (Exod. 1:1). In chapter 6, however, a problem with this simple measure emerges. Moses’ father, Amram, is Levi’s grandson. Moses is, therefore, of the third generation of Levites. But Amram’s wife, Jochebed, is Levi’s daughter. So Moses is, on his mother’s side, of the second generation (Exod. 6:16, 18, 20). The Levitical law will later prevent this kind of glitch from recurring by forbidding marriages between nephews and aunts, thus ensuring that in this respect as well as others there will never again arise in Israel a prophet like Moses (Lev. 18:12). A less variable, more precise way of gauging the passage of time is needed for the nascent Israelite nation, as is apparent from the first commandment they receive as a people, regularly to observe the annual Passover festival (Exod. 12:1–20). The holidays, especially the festivals, which are also agricultural events, require a cyclical, basically solar, calendar. But the Hebrew calendar is also lunar. Coordination of the two celestial cycles was a problem for many ancient peoples. In his account of the life of Julius Caesar, Plutarch commends Caesar for finding the best solution to the problem of nonsynchronicity between lunar months and the solar year, a problem that had baffled others (Life of Caesar, LIX). In doing so Caesar took control over the calendar from the priests, who would arbitrarily insert intercalary months from time to time. One can easily imagine such acts affecting civil matters—for example, prolonging terms of office or extending debt repayments—as well as the timing of religious events. The priests’ function in this regard would henceforth be the merely ceremonial one of announcing the sacrificial festivals. This Caesarian reform did to the Roman priesthood what his earlier actions had done to the Roman Senate—demoting them from decision-making bodies to ratifying and implementing entities.1 The opening backward glance proves brief. Five verses later, there is a plot shift: “Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation. . . . A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph” (Exod. 1:6, 8). Rabbi Hertz explains, not unreasonably, that this statement refers to the advent of a new, native Egyptian dynasty, which displaced the Asiatic Hyksos kings (p. 206). The phrase “who did not know Joseph” (asher lo-yoda es-Yoseif ) could most simply mean ignorance. But would any well-born Egyptian, only a few generations later, be ignorant of the man who was prime minister for eighty years, who saved Egypt from the effects of a seven-year-long

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regional famine, and who transformed the regime into a centralized despotism? Rather, “not knowing” would here denote not remembering or deliberately forgetting. We hear this sense of “knowing” echoed in the closing sentence of chapter 2: “God heard [the Israelites’] moaning, and God remembered [vayeida] His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob” (Exod. 2:24). (Is the implication that, in the generation after Joseph, God also chose to forget?) Moses’ emphatically Levite lineage—“A certain man of the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son” (Exod. 2:1–2)—is something for which the Genesis narrative has left us totally unprepared. Levi and his elder brother Simeon had fallen out of Jacob’s favor because of their brutal attack on Shechem (Gen. 34), which earned them Jacob’s dismissive deathbed declaration: Simeon and Levi are a pair; Their weapons are tools of lawlessness. . . . Cursed be their anger so fierce, And their wrath so relentless. I will divide them in Jacob, Scatter them in Israel. (Gen. 49:5–7)

This statement proves half-ironically prophetic. The tribe of Simeon disappears, apparently submerged into the tribe of Judah. The Levites, however, end up being “scattered,” landless among the other tribes, in a condition of high dignity. It is not apparent that Jacob intends any such result. Eclipsed in this Mosaic genealogy are the two more obvious seedbeds for Israelite leadership, the tribes of Joseph (especially the demitribe of Ephraim) and Judah. The Josephites, in addition to being descended from a former supreme official in the royal court, are, on their maternal side, derived from Poti-phera, an Egyptian priest of On (Gen. 41:45, 50–52). And Judah, we recall, emerged as the man of the hour whose poignant speech deflected Joseph from his vengeful course of action and brought about whatever reconciliation occurred between Joseph and his brothers (Gen. 44:18–45:13). In standard readings of Jacob’s deathbed words, Judah emerges, with Joseph, as a chief beneficiary: You, O Judah, your brothers shall praise; . . . Your father’s sons shall bow low to you. . . . The scepter shall not depart from Judah,

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Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet; So that tribute shall come to him And the homage of peoples be his. (Gen. 49:8, 10)

Ephraim and Judah will later resurface as sources of Israelite leadership, in the person of Joshua and in the Davidic dynasty. But for most of the Exodus story and the sequel desert wandering, they are on the sidelines. God’s will is working through different and unexpected channels. The story of Moses’ birth and upbringing inverts a common mythic archetype, that of the prince who is lost, stolen, or exposed in infancy, but is rescued and raised by people of low status and later recovers his rightful throne through some heroically beneficent act. The readiest example is the troubled King Oedipus. In almost exact contrast, Moses, the son of slaves, is mercifully set afloat on the Nile by his mother, is raised by Egyptian royalty, goes into exile as an adult, and returns (reluctantly) to liberate his subject people from tyrannical rule through God-sent acts of destruction.2 These opening passages include several references to the preceding Book of Genesis, which help to integrate the narrative into a continuous text. These passages too denote Moses as, from the start, an extraordinary personage, and so provide a context for the later precautions that are taken to avoid the error of deifying him, one that needs to be appreciated as a temptation. The first such retrospective link occurs in the first sentence: “These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household” (Exod. 1:1). The connection is, obviously, to the Joseph story. Similarly, verse 8: “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” The Genesis connection is also suggested by the preceding verse: “But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them” (Exod. 1:7)—echoing God’s command (the chronological “First Commandment”) to the parents of mankind: “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it,” which is repeated to Noah and his sons after the Flood (Gen. 1:28; 9:1). A more focused reference is the statement that Moses’ mother hid her baby boy for three months, but then could no longer (Exod. 2:2–3). A similar interval occurs in the story about Tamar, who conceals her pregnancy for three months (Gen. 38:24). In both cases the offspring is the result of an irregular sexual union between people of different generations. Moses’ parents, Amram and Jochebed, are nephew and

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aunt; the tribal patriarch Judah consorts with the disguised Tamar, his son’s widow (Exod. 6:20; Gen. 38:6). When Judah learns of Tamar’s pregnancy, but before she reveals that he is the father, he orders that she (and implicitly therewith her unborn twin sons) be burned (Gen. 38:24). When Jochebed can no longer conceal her infant, she contrives to save his life by putting him into a basket that she places among the reeds on the banks of the Nile (Exod. 2:3). The instrument of Moses’ deliverance is water, the element that extinguishes fire. Perhaps the most poetically significant connection to Genesis lies in the word used for the container in which the infant Moses is placed, teivah. The same word is used for the vessel in which Noah, his family, and the specimens of animal life dwell during the Flood. Just as mankind’s future and its second beginning are stored in Noah’s teivah, so the future and rebirth of the Israelite people are concentrated in Moses’.

II In Exodus 3–4, God first speaks to Moses. While divine speeches to Moses become frequent, this event marks a new departure for the LORD. Hitherto, such discourses have been relatively brief and sporadic, often separated by long stretches of silence. The previous divine utterance was in a night vision to Jacob as he prepared to go down to Egypt with his family, 209 years earlier according to the rabbinic calculation (Gen. 46:1–4; Scherman, p. 359). God does not speak to Jacob during the last seventeen years of his life, nor ever to Leah, Rachel, Joseph, or Joseph’s brothers. The closest approximation to divine speeches are the veiled messages in the dreams Joseph interprets. Nor do we see any miracles, qua supernatural events, during this time. Even the seven-year Egyptian famine is an extreme manifestation of an inherently natural possibility. But over the next forty years, especially during the immediate two, the LORD will involve Himself directly and intensely in the lives of this man and this people, and it will literally rain miracles. This is not to say that God is absent from the intervening events. As Joseph tells Pharaoh, the dreams are from God (Gen. 41:16, 25). As he says to his brothers, “[A]lthough you intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about . . . the survival of many people” (Gen. 50:20). We see divine influence at work in the actions of the midwives Shiphrah and Puah, who, “fearing God,” disobey the Egyptian king’s murderous command, and whose righteousness God

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rewards by establishing households for them; in the pity that Pharaoh’s daughter shows toward the infant Moses; and in the seeming happenstance that allows Moses to come to Jethro’s daughters’ defense, and so gain entry into his adoptive Midianite home (Exod. 1:15–21; 2:5–10, 16–22). The first revelation to Moses, as an existential event, comes at an especially inviting moment. He has been in Midian for a long time (forty years, according to rabbinic tradition [Hertz, p. 213]), the old king of Egypt, whose decree he f led, has recently died, and the Israelites have cried out in their bondage (Exod. 2:23). A new ruler’s accession can bring uncertainty, especially if the departed one’s reign was long. If Hertz’ conjecture is correct (p. 213), the deceased Pharaoh was the renowned Ramses II, who reigned for sixty-seven years and was succeeded around 1224 BCE by his son Merneptah, by then a man in middle age. 3 It is not unusual for new rulers to polish their credentials through gestures of generosity, such as pardoning convicts and fugitives, to “begin with a clean slate.” But the hope that the new king will be generous can easily slide into the belief that he is soft, and so tempt to resistance on the one hand and shows of toughness on the other. Transitions are perilous on all sides. Thus, the Israelites “cried unto God” when they realized that the “regime of ruthless oppression” begun under Ramses “would now become the status quo” (Hertz, p. 213). Alternatively, where silent suffering indicates despair, crying out may be a token of complaint and restiveness, and thus of opportunity for the would-be liberator. Is this how Moses hears it, in remote Midian? What does it mean to receive God’s call? The text describes it as an event that comes to Moses from without. But we can also understand it as an unfulfilled yearning from within, and the liberation of the Hebrews as a project broken off abruptly in its infancy when his killing of the Egyptian taskmaster years ago became known (Exod. 2:11–15). Until we die, who can say that any “abandoned” activity is not merely in suspense? Thus, he hears of the change of rulers in Egypt and, being no fool, wonders what this might imply for his kinsmen and for his own fugitive status. (The later news that “all the men who sought to kill you are dead” is clearly presented as the removal of an obstacle [Exod. 4:19].) He drives Jethro’s flock into the wilderness, to the mountain of God, in order to be alone with his thoughts. He sees the burning bush, which appears not to be consumed, and in it sees a personal metaphor. As Winston Churchill

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wrote, some ten to fifteen years before becoming Prime Minister of Great Britain, Moses watched the skinny flocks which browsed upon a starveling herbage, and lived a life almost as materially restricted as theirs. He communed within himself, and then one day when the sun rode fierce in the heavens, and the dust-devils and mirages danced and flickered amid the scrub, he saw The Burning Bush. It burned, yet it was not consumed. It was a prodigy. The more it burned the less it was consumed; it seemed to renew itself from its own self-consumption. Perhaps it was not a bush at all, but his own heart that was aflame with a fire never to be quenched while the earth supports human beings.4

It is well known that Moses is a reluctant prophet. In the ensuing dialogue between him and the LORD, Moses raises very substantial objections to his mission: Who am I to confront Pharaoh? What name of God shall I tell the Israelites to convince them of my credentials? What if they don’t believe me? I am not a good public speaker. Ultimately he provokes the LORD’s anger (Exod. 3:11, 13; 4:1, 10, 13–14). But God’s speeches too can be read as Moses’ own attempts to frame responses to these objections—for the question about God’s name, a halting and improvised response (cf. the discontinuous speech at 3:14–15)—and His anger as Moses’ anguished irritation at his own timidity. What we have is a model of the internal debate between the laudable ambition to accomplish something good and the self-doubt in the face of evident dangers with which we may all need to contend.

III George Orwell observes in his short story “Shooting an Elephant”: “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”5 In immediate context, the metaphor is a piece of social criticism. The story is about a British colonial administrator in Burma, who is called upon to put down a work elephant that has gotten out of control and killed a man. By the time he arrives at the scene, the elephant has calmed down and no longer poses a threat. But he shoots it anyway, fully aware that this act is superfluous, because that is what is expected of someone in his position. The phenomenon of growing into one’s role is probably typical for leaders, including our preeminent leader, Moses, whose growth in self-confidence can be neatly tracked in Exodus 3–13. (This particular

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kind of growth is not universal. Although Joseph, for example, experiences vast changes in fortune, and at one point is on the brink of despair because of his bleak circumstances, he seems never to doubt his own abilities.) A gauge of Moses’ development in this regard is the series of mostly short speeches he gives, from the LORD’s initial appearance to him through his final speech to Pharaoh. Here he is when God first reveals his mission to lead the Israelites out of slavery: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?” “When I come to the Israelites and say to them ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” “What if they do not believe me and do not listen to me, but say: The LORD did not appear to you?” “Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” “Please, O Lord, make someone else Your agent.” (Exod. 3:11, 13; 4:1, 10, 13)

He is the model of modesty and self-doubt, as well befits an eightyyear-old shepherd (never mind that he was, long earlier, raised as an Egyptian prince), who is suddenly summoned to confront the world’s most powerful ruler. So too, perhaps, his short speech to his fatherin-law Jethro, in whose household he has lived for many years—“Let me go back to my kinsmen in Egypt and see how they are faring” (Exod. 4:18)—which is consistent with the view that Moses is himself not entirely convinced of the reason for his impending journey. Moses and his spokesman Aaron—who is so chosen because, unlike Moses, he “speaks readily” (Exod. 4:14; see also infra, V)—encounter initial success, when they repeat the LORD’s words to the Israelite elders and perform the specified signs before the people, who believe them (Exod. 4:29–31). But in their audience with Pharaoh, they stray from script. When Pharaoh asks, either defiantly or with genuine puzzlement, “Who is YHWH that I should heed Him and let Israel go?” they answer, “The God of the Hebrews has manifested Himself to us. Let us go, we pray, a distance of three days into the wilderness to sacrifice to the LORD our God, lest He strike us with pestilence or sword” (Exod. 5:2–3). This is not the language of divine command but of humble supplication, even pitiful pleading—“Please, Majesty, shield us from our God’s anger!” Were

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Pharaoh to comply, the Israelites would owe their freedom not to the LORD’s power and grace but to the Egyptian king’s credulous generosity. Fortunately for the big picture, Pharaoh will have none of it. He turns them away and increases the Israelites’ labor by requiring them to supply their own straw to make bricks. The Israelite foremen vent their anger on Moses and Aaron, evoking from Moses a plaintive prayer, in which he questions God’s intent and his own adequacy (Exod. 5:22–23; see also 6:12). This is the psychological nadir of Moses’ mission in Egypt. And then come the signs and wonders, beginning with Aaron’s rod turning into a serpent and transformation of the waters of the Nile into blood. It appears that now they do not improvise. The LORD tells them what to do and say, and they dutifully obey (Exod. 7:6, 10, 20). During the second plague, Pharaoh, for the first of several times, momentarily relents. Then, Moses said to Pharaoh, “You may have this triumph over me: for what time shall I plead in behalf of you and your courtiers and your people, that the frogs be cut off from you and your houses, to remain only in the Nile?” “For tomorrow,” he replied. And [Moses] said, “As you say—that you may know that there is none like the LORD our God; the frogs shall retreat from you and your courtiers and your people; they shall remain only in the Nile.” (Exod. 8:5–7)

Moses is again speaking his own words, but, apparently emboldened by Pharaoh’s forced concession, he now bargains more as an equal. After the fourth plague, the bargaining becomes more intense, and Moses wary of possible traps. Pharaoh tells Moses and Aaron to “sacrifice to your God within the land.” But Moses objects that their sacrifices may be abominable to the Egyptians, who might, therefore, stone them (Exod. 8:21–23). By the eighth plague, Moses knows he has the upper hand, and the LORD seems content to give general commands and let him compose the vivid details: Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your sons and of your sons’ sons how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them—in order that you may know that I am the LORD.” So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?

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Let My people go that they may worship Me. For if you refuse to let My people go, tomorrow I will bring locusts on your territory. They shall cover the surface of the land, so that no one will be able to see the land. They shall devour the surviving remnant that was left to you after the hail; and they shall eat away all your trees that grow in the field. Moreover, they shall fill your palaces and the houses of all your courtiers and of all the Egyptians—something that neither your fathers nor fathers’ fathers have seen from the day they appeared on earth to this day.’ ” With that he turned and left Pharaoh’s presence. (Exod. 10:1–6)

Let us not underestimate the significance of this last gesture— showing his back to the king. (Note too the eloquent symmetry of Moses’ “neither your fathers nor fathers’ fathers” to God’s “your sons and your sons’ sons.”) And he continually raises the ante: “We will all go, young and old: we will go with our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds; for we must observe the LORD’s festival.” (Exod. 10:9) “You yourself must provide us with sacrifices and burnt offerings to offer up to the LORD our God; our own livestock, too, shall go along with us—not a hoof shall remain behind: for we must select from it for the worship of the LORD our God; and we shall not know with what we are to worship the LORD until we arrive there.” (Exod. 10:25–26)

By this time, after the ninth plague, darkness, Pharaoh surely knows that what Moses is demanding is not just a three-day leave of absence, but a mass departure from Egypt, and he responds accordingly: Pharaoh said to him, “Be gone from me! Take care not to see me again, for the moment you look upon my face you shall die.” And Moses replied, “You have spoken rightly. I shall not see your face again.” (Exod. 10:28–29)

Aaron is not mentioned as present during this exchange. Apparently Moses is self-confident enough to face his royal adversary alone. In the actual event, these last words—“I shall not see your face again”— seem incorrect. Moses appears before Pharaoh once more (again, Aaron is not said to accompany him), to announce the final plague, the death of Egypt’s firstborn. Now even the pretense of a three-day journey, and therewith the excuse that the Israelites sneaked away by

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guile, is discarded. At the conclusion of his actual last speech to him, “he left Pharaoh’s presence in hot anger” (Exod. 11:8). From “Who am I?” to hot anger, Moses presents the engaging spectacle of a character who grows and develops (and later, deteriorates). A perhaps necessary piece in the divine plan for the Israelite nation, he is much more than an animate means to an end. He is humanly interesting.

IV At Exodus 6:2–3, God tells Moses an apparent untruth: God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name YHWH. . . .”

This, despite numerous instances in the Genesis narrative in which the Name is used both by various people and by God speaking to various people.6 The thought of God lying to His greatest prophet was, it seems, troubling enough to the Rabbis to require a justification. Rashi explains that the Name Adonai was known to the Patriarchs, but not its essential meaning as “the everlasting God of faithfulness whose promises, even though they extend over centuries and millennia, are invariably fulfilled.” The full signification of the Name would become manifest now only through the Israelites’ redemption from slavery (Hertz, p. 232). This account makes sense if we analogize from human beings who “make a name for themselves.” Thus, Plutarch tells of the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius, who, when just beginning his public career, was advised by his friends to drop or change his comical cognomen, Cicero, which means “bean” (probably because his nose was indented like a chickpea). To which he answered that he would “strive to make the name of Cicero more illustrious than such names as Scaurus or Catulus” (Life of Cicero I. 5–6). So too, perhaps, of gods—and this God is about to display great signs and wonders of a sort not characteristic of the patriarchal narrative. We know this, because the written text allows us to make Rashi’s comparison. But Moses does not have the benefit of a written text. Just how much he knows about the careers of the Patriarchs, let alone about the events soon to unfold in Egypt, is unclear. So, to import Rashi’s meaning into the sacred vocalization may be, for Moses, to much overburden the description. What we do know, from the immediate context, is

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that Moses is having a very blue moment. He has already had his first meeting with Pharaoh, who responded to his plea to let the LORD’s people go by increasing the Israelites’ work load, for which “favor” the Israelite foremen have rebuked him and Aaron, and in one of several moments of deep despair and frustration (emotions to which he is occasionally prone), he questions why God has sent him on this mission (Exod. 5). We suggest that God’s representation of His special name as an innovation is a psychological ploy designed to revive Moses’ flagging spirit—for aptly to name a being is, in a sense, to grasp its essence and potentially to bring it under control. For this God this conclusion would be wrong—He will be what He will be (Exod. 3:13–14)—one that He will eventually need to remedy in the Third Commandment: “You shall not take the LORD’s name in vain” (Exod. 20:7). For the time being, however, such a diversion may be practically necessary. We have called attention to other divine “white lies” before (supra, chap. 1, D. III). To these Torahidic examples we may add His solace to the prophet Samuel, when the people demand a king, “Heed the demand of the people in everything they say to you. For it is not you that they have rejected; it is Me they have rejected as their king”— when, the context makes clear, they are, of course, also rejecting Samuel and his corrupt sons (1 Sam. 8:7, 1–3; infra, chap. 4, VI). Like a considerate, compassionate teacher and prudent ruler, the LORD speaks for the good of His students and of the overall situation. One corollary of this reading of the immediate passage is that it belies the dubious general rabbinical interpretation that “God” (Elohim) signifies the deity in His aspect of power and “LORD” (Adonai) in that of mercy (Hertz, pp. 7, 199). The considerate speech to Moses is ascribed to “God,” and in it He equates the tetragrammaton Name with El Shaddai, “God Almighty.”

V Let us consider the twelve plagues of Egypt—for sometimes there is more before us than meets the eye, and sometimes there is less, and sometimes what meets the eye is obscured or distorted by what has often met the ear. So let us hear, perhaps anew, the speech the LORD makes to Moses before all the plagues begin: See, I place you in the role of God to Pharaoh, with your brother Aaron as your prophet. You shall repeat all that I command you, and

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your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh to let the Israelites depart from his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt. When Pharaoh does not heed you, I will lay My hand upon Egypt and deliver My ranks, My people the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with extraordinary chastisements. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand over Egypt and bring out the Israelites from their midst. (Exod. 7:1–5)

There is a certain pageantry in the situation that the LORD sets up. Moses will be as God (perhaps more properly, as a god) to Pharaoh, with Aaron as Moses’ prophet. Pharaoh , of course, also lays claim to godhood. So a symmetrical dramatic situation is being established, in which Moses is Pharaoh’s equal and Aaron is the counterpart to Pharaoh’s relevant servants. This situation becomes manifest in their next encounter, in which Aaron and the court magicians cast down their rods, which turn into serpents, but Aaron’s rod swallows theirs (Exod. 7:8–13). This event is the usually uncounted first of the signs and wonders, the “eleventh plague.” The twelfth is the one that isn’t. The staff-to-serpent spectacle was anticipated when the LORD first revealed Himself to Moses and announced his mission (Exod. 4:1–5). That passage then continues: The LORD said to him further, “Put your hand into your bosom.” He put his hand into his bosom; and when he took it out, his hand was encrusted with snowy scales! And He said, “Put your hand back into your bosom.”—He put his hand back into his bosom; and when he took it out of his bosom, there it was again like the rest of his body.— “And if they do not believe you or pay heed to the first sign, they will believe the second.” (Exod. 4:6–8)

The phenomenon here described is the skin ailment called tzaraat, formerly misidentified as leprosy, which is discussed at length in Leviticus 13–14. Its devastating effects can be sensed from Aaron’s and Moses’ horrified reaction when their sister Miriam is stricken during the desert wanderings: When Aaron turned toward Miriam, he saw that she was stricken with scales. And Aaron said to Moses, “O my lord, account not to us the sin which we committed in our folly. Let her not be as one dead, who emerges from his mother’s womb with half his flesh eaten away.” So Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, “O God, pray heal her!” (Num. 12:10–13)

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Why is this intermediate step, which the LORD makes available for Moses to display before the doubting Israelites, omitted when he appears before Pharaoh? More than just another sign or wonder, it surely ranks as at least the threat of a full-fledged plague. Would it, at this point in the proceedings, be too grave? Here are the familiar ten plagues: blood, frogs, lice, insects, cattle disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaying of the firstborn. The first two, blood and frogs, are merely disgusting. A few, such as lice and boils, are physically discomforting. Some others—cattle disease, hail, and locusts— are destructive of the Egyptian economy. But until the final slaying of the firstborn, none is deadly. To introduce tzaraat at the beginning runs the risk that Pharaoh will capitulate to Moses’ demand too soon. In that case, we would have a scenario in which one god, Pharaoh, accedes to another god, Moses. Like the famous hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, the omission of this available manifestation of divine power is necessary in order to produce a crescendo of horrors, from which the LORD emerges as the God of gods. This, not only to answer Pharaoh’s initial sneer, “Who is the LORD that I should heed Him and let Israel go?” (Exod. 5:2), but also to keep the Israelites from the potentially fatal error of deifying Moses. We should also notice the locations of the successive conventional ten plagues. The first, blood, attacks the Nile River, which necessarily runs to a depth below ground level. The second, frogs, involves an animal that ascends from the river onto dry land. The next four—lice, swarms (of insects or wild beasts [Hertz, p. 240]), cattle disease, and boils—concern matters at or near the ground, or creatures that come up from the ground (Aaron produces the lice by striking the dust of the earth [Exod. 8:12–13]) or that walk upon it. Three more—hail, locusts, and darkness—either come from the sky or attack the sun, the being that dominates the sky. The plagues successively sweep from the realm below the earth to the earth’s surface to the sky, so as to comprehend all places. At least some of these matters have their distinctive patron gods. The Nile is a god. The sun is a god. Other gods preside over health, harvests, wind, and weather (IDB, v. 2, pp. 56 ff.). The Hebrew God, whom Pharaoh had initially dismissed as one whose name, YHWH, he did not even recognize (Exod. 5:2), is confronting the Egyptian pantheon, one by one, and displaying His mastery over them all.

VI A phrase at the start of Exodus 10 provides some existential insight into how the plagues unfold from Pharaoh’s perspective: “Then the

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LORD said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers [v’es-leiv avodav], in order that I may display these My signs among them’ ” (Exod. 10:1; emphasis supplied). Yet after Moses and Aaron threaten Pharaoh with the plague of locusts—the eighth by the conventional tally—these same courtiers urge capitulation (Exod. 10:7). It would appear that God’s hardening of their hearts is just a temporary, even a momentary, phenomenon. We can readily appreciate what occurs here from common experience. We sometimes find ourselves in the grip of a powerful emotion, such as anger, indignation, or hatred—so much so that we can accurately say our feelings have gotten the better of us. This is also true of love or intoxication. How can a grown man, weighing 150 or 200 pounds, be overpowered by a mere feeling, or by the juice of a cluster of grapes that weigh only a few ounces? Obviously, because a god produces the feeling, or dwells within the grapes, or the feeling itself is a god. God hardening their hearts is, then, a poetic way of saying that Pharaoh and his courtiers are, at that moment, consumed by an overwhelming feeling of anger, resentment, and stubbornness— anger and resentment at having been bested seven times by the God of their slaves, stubbornness in their determination not to suffer humiliation again. But when they hear Moses and Aaron, whose threats have by now become quite credible, the courtiers regain their self-control and allow their sober, calculative second thoughts to prevail. Pharaoh, on the other hand, also vacillates, for neither the first nor the last time, but ultimately returns to the passion, pride, to which he has habitually attached himself, as to an addiction. This is not to deny the miraculous element in the Exodus narrative, nor to trivialize its details. It is, rather, to suggest that in order to grasp the essence of the miraculous, the sense of awe, it may be helpful, even necessary, to build bridges to it using the materials of ordinary life. Psychological insight, human and divine, is also at the heart of the ninth plague: Then the LORD said to Moses, “Hold out your arm toward the sky that there may be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched.” Moses held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was, but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings. (Exod. 10:21–23)

One explanation of the phenomenon here described, offered by the biblical scholar Greta Hort, is that the plague of darkness is a

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khamsin, a kind of sand and dust storm common to the region in the spring that usually causes atmospheric haze. But the flooding, hail, and locust infestation of the previous plagues would have so eroded the soil as to produce enough dense matter to block out the sun.7 However this may be, the description—“a darkness that could be touched [or felt]”—is as much psychological as physical. Again, “People could not see one another” does not quite convey the sense of isolation and abandonment of the original: lo-ra’u ish es-ahiv—a man does not see his brother. What makes the dark frightening? The inability to see lurking perils, to be sure, but also the doubt that anyone else, especially the “brother” on whom we can usually rely, is there to protect or assist us or even just to share the danger. Is it not this profound loneliness, as much as any apprehension about accidentally stumbling over a chair or being set upon by evil spirits, that paralyzes the Egyptians and keeps each one riveted to his place? Conversely, is not the light the Israelites enjoy a reflection of their growing sense of confidence in each other as a community? Association of the ninth plague with isolation rests too on Pharaoh’s increasing isolation in his dealings with Moses. In their first real confrontation (their second meeting), his magicians could approximately match Aaron’s staff-to-serpent trick (Exod. 7:8–12). Pharaoh, that is, could rest on the support of his court’s occult establishment. Likewise during the first two plagues, blood and frogs, which the court magicians can replicate (Exod. 7:19–23; 8:1–3)—though arguably, it would have been more useful had they been able to repel the plagues instead of just copy them. But at the third plague, the magicians can no longer do so. Beginning with the fourth, the Israelites are immune. With the sixth, the magicians cannot appear by Pharaoh’s side to confront Moses. The seventh sees some courtiers heeding Moses’ warning. And when Moses warns of the eighth, they urge capitulation (Exod. 8:14, 18; 9:11, 20; 10:7). One by one, the pieces of Pharaoh’s political and religious support structure have fallen away. The ninth plague’s isolating character underscores that he must now deal with Moses man-to-man. But as already noted, Pharaoh also has pretensions of godhood. The plagues puncture this claim by exposing his impotence in the face of divine destructiveness. He had even used a suggestive turn of phrase at the time of the seventh plague: “Entreat the LORD, and let there be enough of these mighty [or godly] thunderings and hail [kolos elohim uvorod]” (Exod. 9:28 [Hertz, p. 243]). The plague of darkness brings the possibilities of godly destruction back to the very first things. Is this the beginning of the end in a cosmic sense—the

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undoing of the “Let there be light!” with which the world began (Gen. 1:3)? More, let us recall what observant Jews affirm every day (Siddur Sim Shalom, pp. 14, 100, 202, 432): Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad—the LORD is our God, the LORD is One; or the LORD is our God, the LORD alone; or, as the absence in Hebrew of a specific present tense verb of being permits, the LORD is our God, the LORD is alone (Deut. 6:4). That is, unlike the gods of the Egyptian, Canaanite, or other pagan pantheons, this God has no peer and no other half, no goddess-consort or company of divine companions with whom to share cups of nectar or indulge in endless episodes of mutual vexation. To be utterly alone in one’s divinity—this is what it means to be God! Well, Pharaoh, are you up to it? I thought not. The vignette concludes with what has by now become a pattern of pharaohnic vacillation. Torn between fright and his desire to salvage what he can, he descends to haggling over whether the Hebrews may take their cattle with them when they go to worship the LORD. He lacks even the resolve to reject on his own Moses’ latest demand, that he must supply the sacrifices and burnt offerings, so the LORD must harden his heart in order to make possible yet one more calamity (Exod. 10:24–29). Moses’ parting statement, “I shall not see your face again!” is seemingly contradicted in the next chapter, where he foretells the final plague, the dying of the Egyptian firstborn (Exod. 11:4–8). But in another sense, is the point not already accomplished? Is Pharaoh not already reduced to a fragment of his former self? Is the face that Moses confronts anything more than the shadow and parody of the erstwhile proud autocrat and would-be deity?

VII We commented above, apropos of the succession of a new Egyptian king, that transitions are times of both peril and opportunity. What sort of transition is the Israelites’ departure from Egypt? Manifestly, it is a movement from servitude to freedom. But also from serving the despotic Pharaoh to serving the LORD, a form of service that becomes increasingly detailed and elaborate as we move through the Torah. Was the former servitude necessary psychological preconditioning for the latter? As troublesome and “stiff-necked” as the Israelites prove to be, would they have been even less receptive to living under the Law had their ancestors, Jacob’s sons, not resettled in Egypt and acquired, admittedly to excess, certain habits of obedience? Let us recall the unflattering terms that the dying Jacob had used to describe some of them (supra, chap. 1, C. IV): Unstable,

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irascible, indolent, treacherous, predatory—these unruly guys do not sound like “Rule of Law material.” The text seemingly suggests that, in the first instance, they need the discipline of slavery. The transition from Egypt to the wilderness is a movement from the protection provided by the Egyptian State to the uncertainties and risks of self-reliance. On this point even the LORD has His doubts about the Israelites. He leads them out of Egypt, not by the most direct route through Philistine territory, but by way of the Sea of Reeds, lest they “have a change of heart when they see war, and return to Egypt.” This, even though they “went up armed out of the land of Egypt” (Exod. 13:17–18). God’s apprehension is well grounded. (How could it not be?) The Israelites not only fall into a fright, understandably, when they see the formidable Egyptian army advancing upon them at the Sea of Reeds; they are also severely disturbed by the attack of the Amalekites at Rephidim—in itself probably no more than a desert raid by a not very prominent nation. Hence, the terrible curse the LORD lays upon Amalek (Exod. 14:10–12; 17:8–16). Similarly, the Exodus is a transition from Egyptian abundance to the austerity of desert life. Or so the Israelites remember it shortly later, when they invidiously compare their monotonous diet of manna to the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic they formerly enjoyed (Num. 11:4–6). Transition is not simply change, but a combination of change and continuity. In addition to their culinary yearnings, what other Egyptian institutions, rules, customs, and habits do the Israelites retain? Let us recall some of the features, which we saw in the Joseph narrative, of the busy, bustling, variegated Egyptian environment that were lacking in the earlier descriptions of the pastures of Canaan or Paddan-aram: Egypt is a kingdom on a grand scale. Its ruler is the personification of a centralized bureaucracy. Egyptian society includes an important class of independent farmers and a distinct class of priests. There are ranks of professions and nations, punishments of lengthy imprisonment, the science of divination, the elaborate art of embalming, the customs of shaving and wearing fine linen clothing, the regular reckoning of time, and many slaves. We observed then that the Exodus is a rejection of much of this complex way of life (supra, chap. 1, D. II). And clearly, most if not all of the elements mentioned here are ill suited for desert nomads. But some, urbanization and bureaucracy, find eventual expression in Israelite institutions (e.g., 1 Kings 4). Some—slavery, agriculture, the priesthood—are anticipated or established in the Mosaic Law (e.g., Exod. 21:1–11; 22:4–5; 23:10–11; 29; Lev. passim). Others, fine cloth and a regular

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calendar, are intrinsic to the Exodus itself (Exod. 12:1–20, 35–36). And others are transformed: Not embalming but mortuary rituals of cleansing; not prisons but cities of refuge; not divination but prophecy (Num. 19; 35; Deut. 18:9–22). Nothing, it seems, is entirely new or quite as simple and clear-cut as it first appears.

VIII The theme of Moses’ Song by the Sea (Exod. 15:1–18) is the miracle at the Sea of Reeds (formerly mistakenly called the Red Sea), where the LORD drowns Pharaoh’s army.8 Its overwhelming mood is exultation. This fact has caused discomfort in some rabbinical circles, as has the question posed by the preceding plagues that God sends against Egypt: What should our attitude be toward our enemies’ adversities and suffering? The Babylonian Talmud comments: When the Egyptian armies were drowning in the sea, the Heavenly Host broke out in songs of jubilation. God silenced them and said, “My creatures [the Egyptians] are perishing, and you sing praises?” (Sanh. 39b)

The version of the Passover Haggadah found in the Order of Prayer of Rav Saadia Gaon, in Maimonides’ Code, and the Yemenite ritual omit the paragraph in which it is emphasized that the LORD Himself—not an angel, seraph, or messenger—“will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt.” 9 Elie Wiesel agonizes over why God apparently “boast[s] of killing innocent children, be they Egyptian,” and muses: “Is He teaching us an essential lesson? That He alone may kill? And that no one has the right to imitate Him?” Again, he explains that the seder custom of spilling drops of wine when enumerating the plagues is “[t]o signify our compassion for the Egyptians who were also victims, albeit of their own arrogance. . . . Also to manifest our sadness. [For] [o]ur tradition prohibits us from celebrating the defeat of the enemy.”10 Much of this seems to be forced, especially Wiesel’s problematic attempt to transform the Torah text into a brief against capital punishment. Let us grant that all, Jew and Gentile alike, are God’s creatures and that one should make every effort to spare the innocent. Let us grant the imprudence of a scattered subject people advertising their former glory to stronger, possibly unsympathetic host nations (the more plausible significance of the Gaonic, Maimonidean, and Yemenite excisions from the liturgy). We still cannot ignore the

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triumphant rejoicing of Moses’ song and what it focuses on—not so much the Israelites’ safe passage as the defeat of their recent adversary and the fear that will possess their future adversaries. Old fashioned and “fundamentalist” as it may sound, the text teaches that it is a positive good to rejoice in the defeat and destruction of one’s would-be destroyers. As mentioned, the body of water at which this event occurs was formerly misidentified as the Red Sea, which would make no sense geographically. It is now generally understood to be a relatively small and shallow lake or marshland, probably near the mouth of the Nile. The Israelites arrive there by temporarily turning back from their eastward march toward Canaan, a detour that emboldens Pharaoh and his courtiers in the belief that the recent slaves have lost their sense of direction or become irresolute in their intention to flee (Exod. 14:1–4). For the text to make physical sense, however, the water they pass through must be deep enough to drown soldiers laden with war gear and horses hitched to chariots. The song spans eighteen verses; then, after a short narrative sequel, Miriam repeats, with slight variation, the first line. The entire poem is ascribed to Moses and the Israelites, but its content suggests a responsive structure. That is, one set of verses would be sung by Moses, then another few by the Israelites, and so again, back and forth, through its conclusion. And although it begins in the singular and personal, I will sing to the LORD . . . The LORD is my strength and might; He is become my deliverance. This is my God and I will enshrine Him; The God of my father, and I will exalt Him. (Exod. 15:1–2)

we can better imagine these God-focused passages sung by a chorus, with the intervening narrative-like verses recited or sung by Moses, or, in the period of the Temple, a solo vocalist or second chorus. There is no contradiction here, no more than any collective body proclaiming together what each member affirms individually, as happens all the time in prayer. Taking this dialogic structure as a template, the song divides into seven parts: four grand choruses whose common theme is the LORD’s glory, power, majesty, splendor, and eternal rule; interspersed with three quasinarrative passages that evoke human scenarios. The

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dividing lines among the parts is not always clear, but the synagogue convention of chanting some verses in a slower, more stately voice, and others more briskly at normal volume, seems at least plausible. The supposed solo narratives move from the present to the recent past to the more distant future, painting a verbal picture in concentric circles. Thus first, the song speaks of Pharaoh’s chariots and army being “cast into the sea,” descending “into the depths like a stone” (Exod. 15:4–5). Next, it focuses on the foe’s thwarted ambition to “pursue,” “overtake,” and “divide the spoil” (Exod. 15:9–10). Finally, it anticipates agony, dismay, trembling, terror, and dread that will grip the inhabitants of Philistia, Edom, Moab, and Canaan, when they hear of the LORD’s exploits on behalf of Israel (Exod. 15:13–16). Music lovers will recall that George Frederick Handel concluded his oratorio “Israel in Egypt” with an exultant chorus from the Song by the Sea: The LORD shall reign for ever and ever. . . . for He hath triumphed gloriously; The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea. (Exod. 15:18, 21)

It works as well in good musical English as in chanted Hebrew.

IX Everyday life, assisted by situation comedy, informs us that relations among in-laws are sometimes quite happy and sometimes problematic. Scripture’s examples cover the range of possibilities. The most benign and touching is that of Ruth and Naomi, who are bound by Ruth’s marriage to Naomi’s son, by their common situation as widows, and by a deep personal affection. Ruth’s famous declaration to her mother-in-law reads like a wedding vow: [W]herever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the LORD do to me if anything but death parts me from you. (Ruth 1:16–17)

But this kind of attachment is exceptional. More typical is the undetailed report that Esau’s Hittite wives “were a source of bitterness to Isaac and Rebekah” (Gen. 26:35). Or the text’s utter, possibly

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ominous, silence about any feelings at all between Rebekah and Abraham. We are told much about Jacob’s evolving twenty-year-long relationship with Laban, which begins on a note of high hospitality, then is soured by episodes of deception and exploitation, and finally resolves in an uneasy truce (Gen. 29–31). Jacob himself briefly acquires a sort of son-in-law in Shechem the Hivite, who takes Jacob’s daughter Dinah by force but then falls in love with the girl and seeks to marry her, a suggestion to which Jacob may be open until his sons invade Shechem’s town and kill all the men (Gen. 34). Judah’s ambiguous relationship with the widowed Tamar culminates in a sexual encounter, although her identity is concealed from him and the text troubles to say that he was not intimate with her again (Gen. 38). In later time, King Saul gives his daughter Michal to be David’s wife, then attempts several times to have David killed (1 Sam. 18–27). And later still, in the period of the two kingdoms, when King Ahaziah of the Southern Kingdom of Judah is assassinated, the Queen Mother Athaliah kills off as many of her late son’s relatives of the Davidic line as she can find, in order to establish herself as sole ruler (2 Kings 9–11). Compared to most of these cases, the relation between Moses and his father-in-law Jethro appears quite fortunate. The two men seem always to respect each other, although their dealings are tinged with an element of formality. Their association at first and for some considerable unspecified time looks to be what the Jacob-Laban alliance should have been. Moses, in a situation that obviously echoes Jacob’s first encounter with Rachel at the well, rescues Jethro’s seven daughters, who are trying to draw water for their father’s flocks, from some harassing shepherds (Exod. 2:16–17; cf. Gen. 29:1–14). Jethro (here called Reuel, one of his alternative names) has Moses invited in “to break bread.” Moses ends up staying with him and marrying Zipporah, one of his daughters (Exod. 2:18–21). The situation seems hospitable, congenial, and capable of lasting indefinitely, until God intervenes. Later, Jethro brings Moses’ wife and sons to him and offers sound advice on how to govern the Israelites, which Moses promptly adopts (Exod. 18). But there are also hints of tension. When Moses receives his mission from the LORD, he conceals it from Jethro, telling him only that he wishes to “go back to my kinsmen in Egypt and see how they are faring” (Exod. 4:18). Nor is it clear that he has ever corrected the daughters’ initial impression that he is an Egyptian (Exod. 2:19). Does Jethro, who has heard “all that God had done for Moses and for Israel His people,” bring Zipporah and “her two sons” because he is

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apprehensive that Moses, now engaged in his new career of national leader, might otherwise abandon his family (Exod. 18:1, 2; emphasis supplied)? Also, at the end of the chapter, where both Hertz and JPS use phrases that suggest Jethro’s voluntary departure, the Hebrew Vayishlah Mosheh es-hosno may imply that Moses sends him away (Exod. 18:27). Jethro had introduced his useful proposal on establishing a judicial hierarchy with the observation, “The thing you are doing [i.e., settling all disputes personally] is not right” (Exod. 18:17). Does Moses not take well to this, or perhaps any, criticism? Moreover, the appellate system does not work out quite as anticipated. Instead of Moses receiving “every major dispute [kol-hadavar hagadol],” he ends up getting “the difficult matters [es-hadavar hakosheh]” (Exod. 18:22, 26). Is he perhaps annoyed at this outcome? Thus, while their relationship appears generally good, it may be more a kind of middle ground. As between them, Jethro comes off looking spotless, while Moses shows hints of deviousness and petulance, of which we see evidence in other passages as well.

X Preceding the first formulation of the Ten Commandments, and in peril of being eclipsed by it, is a twenty-five-verse chapter of preparatory material, which establishes a mood and a context for the impending great event. It first mentions that it is the start of the third month following the Exodus from Egypt and the Israelites are entering the wilderness of Sinai (Exod. 19:1). Assuming the applicability of the traditional Hebrew calendar, it is late spring, when, even in the wilderness, nature is apt to be at its most glorious. There are, of course, no clear lines of demarcation and check points in the desert. Presumably the text designates the Israelites’ location as it does, the wilderness of Sinai, because the landscape has visually just become dominated by Mount Sinai. It might take them a few more days to reach the mountain, thus justifying the dating of Shavuot at fifty days after the start of Passover. Moses goes up the mountain to God, in the first of several ascents and descents. The LORD, in a speech that Moses is to declare to the Israelites, recalls what He has done to the Egyptians and that He has borne the Israelites to Himself “on eagle’s wings” (Exod. 19:4). As with the Commandments that are soon to come, the first prefatory word is a reminder both of favors conferred and of the divine power and grandeur (cf. Exod. 20:2). It implicitly appeals at once to presumed senses of gratitude, exaltation, and fear (What I did to the

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Egyptians I could do to you!). God promises: “[I]f you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant . . . you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:4–6). The meaning of this offer is not self-evident. But it is not a promise of individual salvation or personal immortality. Nor of power, riches, victory over their enemies, or any other of the standard indices of a nation’s success, or even of peace and security—things that the Israelites and their descendants often lacked. Rather, it is a promise of the highest refinement, to occupy a special place in God’s affection and to be distinguished in that peculiar way called holiness. To appreciate, even to grasp, this proposal already requires some refinement. Do the Israelites have it? Their univocal response, when Moses comes down and puts “all that the LORD had commanded him” before them, is unrevealing: “All that the LORD has spoken we will do!” (Exod. 19:7–8) Moses reascends the mountain to deliver this answer, but apparently before he can speak the LORD extends a private assurance that Moses is not specifically told to repeat: “I will come to you in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after” (Exod. 19:9). This esoteric communication looks in two directions. First, based on the assumption that a human being may not behold God and live (Exod. 33:20, 23; cf. Gen. 31:31; Is. 6:5), the thick cloud allows Him to approach close enough to the Israelites to be heard without being seen. In this way, they may themselves witness the impending revelation—the giving of the Ten Commandments will not be an event that takes place “off stage” and that they must simply accept on Moses’ testimony. Our references to fatal visibility and audible distance are, of course, metaphoric. Divine manifestations can be intensely quiet and invisible, as an example from the career of the prophet Elijah, which reads as though written to contrast with the Sinaitic epiphany, shows: [Elijah] went into a cave, and there he spent the night. . . . And lo, the LORD passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake—fire; but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire—a soft murmuring sound [alt.: a still, small voice]. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his mantle about his face and went out. (1 Kings 19:9–13)

Therefore, second, the thick cloud in Exodus is not so much to reveal God as to reaffirm Moses’ credentials. It is one prop among several— thunder, lightning, smoke rising from Mount Sinai, the mountain

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trembling violently, and the crescendo of trumpet blasts and blaring of the shofar (the latter, props that imply human assistants)—designed to reinforce Moses’ authority (Exod. 19:16–19; 20:15–16). The message may be refined; the mode of delivery is crudely overwhelming. Moses reports the people’s words, and the LORD issues instructions. They are to purify (or sanctify) themselves and wash their garments in preparation for the revelation to come in three days. And Moses is to set bounds around the mountain, which neither man nor beast may transgress, on pain of death (Exod. 19:9–13). Moses understands sanctification as refraining from sexual relations, surely one possible interpretation (Exod. 19:15). Or perhaps this is an expression of his characteristic prudishness (cf. Exod. 32:19; infra, XII). The more general sense seems to be that of distinguishing or setting oneself apart from everyday activities, as with the sanctified time, the Sabbath, that is about to be commanded (Exod. 20:8–11). The juxtaposition of the instruction to have them wash their clothes produces the result that in this case cleanliness is literally next to holiness, if not quite godliness. At dawn on the third day, Moses assembles the people at the foot of the mountain, amid the spectacular sights and sounds. The LORD summons him to the mountaintop, and for the third time he ascends. In a final preparatory dialogue, He tells Moses to go down and warn the people not to break through the boundary to gaze at the LORD, and to remind the priests to stay pure, lest the LORD “break out against them” and many perish (Exod. 19:16–22). Is this a needless precaution, even perhaps a miscalculation of the people’s psychology? Their reported reaction immediately after the Commandments are given is not to approach the mountain out of consuming curiosity, but to keep their distance out of fear (Exod. 20:15–18). However this may be, Moses, who is perhaps wary of making unnecessary trips up and down Mount Sinai (he is over eighty years old), contests this assignment as needless, because the people have already been sufficiently warned (Exod. 19:23). But the LORD orders him to go down and come back with Aaron (this part is apparently not carried out) (cf. Exod. 20:18), and also, by the way, to keep the priests and the people from breaking through to come up to the LORD. So, Moses descends again and presumably conveys this possible redundancy (Exod. 19:24–25). This exchange seems at first glance a diversion that detracts from the narrative’s continuity and power. Here is how the text would read without it: Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the LORD had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole

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mountain trembled violently. The blare of the horn grew louder and louder. As Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder. The LORD came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain. . . . [And] God spoke all these words, saying: I the LORD am your God etc. (Exod. 19:18–20:2)

It works! The omitted verses arguably weaken the dramatic effect and are jarring. What, then, is their purpose? They are a brief but ominous signal of the uncertainty, even the obscurity, of the Israelites’ motives and character, an intimation of the flaws that they will soon manifest in the Golden Calf episode and other derelictions. We are on the brink of the most glorious revelation. But beyond it, rough times lie ahead.

XI We can also get a coherent, seemingly continuous narrative by including the material omitted in the just examined passage while leaving out the fourteen crucial verses that comprise the text of the Ten Commandments: . . . And Moses went down to the people and spoke to them. . . . All the people witnessed [Hertz: “perceived” (p. 300); lit.: “saw” (ro’im)] the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance. “You speak to us,” they said to Moses, “and we will obey; but let not God speak to us, lest we die.” Moses answered the people, “Be not afraid; for God has come only in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may be ever with you, so that you do not go astray.” So the people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was. (Exod. 19:25; 20:15–18)

It is common experience that what one person speaks is not quite what his audience hears. “God,” we are authoritatively told in our (conveniently) written sacred text, “spoke all these words, saying: I the LORD am your God etc. (Exod. 20:1–2).” But what the people “witness” or “perceive” are the cruder, awesome natural manifestations of the divine Presence, assisted by the man-made accompaniment of shofarim. Apparently, Moses, who is down with the people, can discern the words of God amidst the thunder. But does, or can, anyone else? Much may hinge on an answer, for if they cannot, or if

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they can only indistinctly through all the background and foreground noise, can they be blamed for not quite understanding, or for outright misunderstanding, and consequently for straying, as they do in the Golden Calf incident? How much of the content of these Commandments would be sufficiently conveyed by or through thunder, lightning, earthquake, volcanic activity, and blaring horns? Put another way, how much of this is new teaching, and how much is emphatic reminder of what the people can already be assumed and expected to know or to figure out for themselves? The first statement—“I, the LORD, am your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage”—is, for the Israelites, probably an easy inference. Although logically possible, it would be perverse for Moses to introduce them to the power of one God through the signs and wonders in Egypt and the miracle at the Sea of Reeds, only to hand them over to a different God at Mount Sinai. Likewise, the command, “You shall have no other gods besides [or in preference to] Me,” and its sequel injunction against making, bowing down to, and serving images of the things in the heavens, on the earth, and beneath the earth. The relevant events of the preceding year have largely consisted of this God doing battle against and defeating the various gods of Egypt. That He is an “impassioned” or, as traditionally translated, a jealous God, Who demands exclusivity, or at least primacy, should by now also be evident. Arguably too, the Third Commandment, against “swear[ing] falsely by” or “taking” or “carrying” the LORD’s name in vain, which we should understand not as a prohibition on casual “cussing,” but rather as an injunction against conjuring—that is, against trying to capture and use this God’s power for one’s selfish purposes. The manifest message of this grand display of divine power is to remind the onlookers of who the boss is. Let us skip, for the moment, to what is usually depicted as the second tablet of the Decalogue. The Commandments against murder, adultery, theft, judicial perjury, and coveting what belongs to others can be regarded as a set of basic moral rules essential to the well-being of any community. As such, they would not depend on special revelation, but could be discovered by unaided human reason, though perhaps with some difficulty and strange distortions along the way.11 This view is supported by Scripture itself: The LORD asks Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Is it not obvious that Cain already knows it was wrong to kill Abel? And when He sets a sign upon Cain, so those who meet him will not kill him, is it not evident that this is a special act of grace to

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avert the punishment his act deserves (Gen. 4:9, 14–15)? Abraham, sojourning in Egypt and Gerar, passes Sarah off as his sister, because he fears the local people might kill him to abduct her. Why not just take the wife without killing the husband? Does not Abraham’s stratagem presuppose the general understanding that wives belong exclusively to their husbands? And when God afflicts Pharaoh and King Abimelech for taking Sarah into their harems and they reproach Abraham for his ruse, is it not clear that these pagan rulers know that adultery is wrong (Gen. 12:10–20; 20)? Or recall Abraham’s longwinded bargaining with Efron the Hittite to purchase the cave of Machpelah as a burial place for Sarah, and the remark that Jacob bought the territory near the city of Shechem. Is not the text establishing the legitimacy of these acquisitions, which they would not have were they stolen (Gen. 23; 33:18–19)? With respect to these moral precepts, the impressive audiovisual display at Mount Sinai reminds the people of what they already should know. What is remarkable here is not the substance of these basic moral rules, but that this God cares about them, perhaps unlike the idolaters’ gods, who care only about being fed their ritual sacrifices. We may also, though more tentatively, suggest that the Commandment to honor one’s father and mother is implicit in the Sinaitic epiphany. If our initial conception of divinity extrapolates from our first earthly authorities, parents, then it seems sensible that this grand divine manifestation would reciprocally remind us of our obligation to them. So much for what one may “read” out of lightning, thunder, a fiery mountain, and the other present phenomena. What part of “all these words” lies beyond such inference? The entire Sabbath Commandment and the explanatory passages. That this is an impassioned God may be obvious. That He “visit[s] the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations” of those who reject Him, and “show[s] kindness to the thousandth generation” of those who love Him and keep His commandments could not be (but cf. infra, chap. 3, A. III). Or again, the connection between honoring our parents and enduring longer on the land that the LORD our God gives us seems to rest simply on stipulation (but cf. infra, chap. 3, A. IV). Or yet again, we may be able to conclude that occasional rest is good for us, or even, after long observation, that the formula “every seventh day” is optimal, but this seems too sophisticated to be called self-evident. And the connection between the Sabbath and the order of Creation is in itself so arcane that even Moses seems not to grasp it, for in his Deuteronomic recapitulation of this episode he assigns a different, and in terms of the Israelites’ experience a more readily

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accessible, reason for Sabbath observance—remembrance of the liberation from Egypt (Deut. 5:15; cf. Exod. 20:11; cf. supra, chap. 1, A. IV). That even Moses may mistake what he hears through the thunder should caution us against being too self-assured about what we may think we know. Marshall McLuhan to the contrary, sometimes the medium muddles the message.

XII The story of the Golden Calf is among the most dramatic episodes in the Torah. One gauges its importance by the Talmudic observation, “There is not a misfortune that Israel has suffered which is not partly a retribution for the sin of the calf” (Sanh. 102a). The obviously implicated sin is idolatry, violation of the Second Commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Exod. 20:4–5). Certainly, the Israelites contravene the spirit of this command, but is there a technical distinction between a sculpted idol and one cast from molten metal? Is this why God, in the Second Covenant, specifically forbids the making of molten gods (Exod. 32:4; 34:17)? The story also contains a breach of the First Commandment (or Statement): “I the LORD am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” This sin occurs even before the Calf is made, when the people demand of Aaron “gods who shall go before us,” and is confirmed when they say of it, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exod. 20:2; 32:1, 4). Are not both Commandments also violated when they credit Moses, rather than the LORD, with bringing them out of Egypt—when they “idolize” him (Exod. 32:1)? Also revealing about the “sin of the calf” is Moses’ reaction: As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it; he ground it to powder and strewed it upon the water and so made the Israelites drink it. (Exod. 32:19–20)

As we have observed elsewhere, Moses’ sudden anger is likely occasioned by the element of sexual immodesty implicit in the people’s “dancing”—something not mentioned in the LORD’s description

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to him of their dereliction. Also, the strange business of pulverizing the Calf, mixing the powder into water, and making the people drink it is explained by the fact that the color of a colloidal suspension of gold dust in water is blood red, thus making this brew a visible and metallically tastable reminder of the plagues in Egypt.12 In addition to Egyptian idolatry, Egyptian luxury is implicated. The LORD orders Moses to have the people “leave off [their] finery,” and they remain “stripped” of it from this point on (Exod. 33:5–6). This command, coming after Moses destroys the Calf, after the Levites kill 3,000 idolaters, and after the LORD sends a plague among them and withdraws Himself from their midst, may seem like petty insult. But it is of a piece with the earlier punishment. The fine clothes that they took from the Egyptians, which could have been emblems of liberation, have become, like the Calf itself, a symbol of lingering attachment to their former world of enslavement, so it too must be cast off.13 There is a chilling echo of this incident, some 300–400 years later in Israelite history, in the career of King Jeroboam I, who detaches the Northern Kingdom from the united realm of David and Solomon: Jeroboam said to himself, “Now the kingdom may well return to the House of David. If these people still go up to offer sacrifices at the House of the LORD in Jerusalem, the heart of these people will turn back to their master, King Rehoboam of Judah; they will kill me and go back to King Rehoboam of Judah.” So the king took counsel and made two golden calves. He said to the people, “You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!” He set up one in Bethel and placed the other in Dan. That proved to be a cause of guilt, for the people went to worship [them]. (1 Kings 12:26–30)

(Jeroboam’s boldness gives us to wonder whether the Mosaic story might have not been generally known at the time of the early Israelite monarchy.) Apostasy, idolatry, hero worship, sexual excess, slavish attachment to material possessions and ostentation, a corresponding scorn for the gift of freedom, the symbol and perhaps also the seed of national dissolution—all this and perhaps more is bound up in the “sin of the calf.” These are immanent temptations of all times. Small wonder that the Rabbis saw in this event such a wellspring of calamities!

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XIII The last six chapters of Exodus consist mostly of detailed descriptions of the construction of the Tabernacle and religious ritual. But a passage in chapter 36 may appeal more to modern readers. Moses has called upon the entire congregation to bring voluntary offerings of gold and silver, fine cloth and dyed skins, spices and oil, and precious stones, and has commissioned two gifted craftsmen to supervise the working of these materials into their assigned form. The people bring so much of the requested gifts that . . . all the artisans who were engaged in the tasks of the sanctuary came, each from the task on which he was engaged, and said to Moses, “The people are bringing more than is needed for the tasks entailed in the work that the LORD has commanded to be done.” Moses thereupon had this proclamation made throughout the camp: “Let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary!” So the people stopped bringing: their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done. (Exod. 36:2–7)

What makes this scene of dignified generosity especially impressive is that it comes so soon after the orgiastic abandon of the Golden Calf episode. Then Aaron had asked the people to contribute only their gold earrings, from which he fashioned the infamous idol (Exod. 32:2–4). Arguably, Aaron was never eager about this project—the initiative came from the people, who grew impatient at Moses’ prolonged absence, and he tried to dilute the idolatry by proclaiming a feast of the LORD (Exod. 32:1, 5). His sin was one of weakness rather than evil intent—he could not resist corrupt public opinion or the evil urging of the moment. And his failing cost the lives of 3,000 Israelites (Exod. 32:28). But of interest now is how little he asked of them, even for a bad cause. Did he thereby foster the belief that piety can be purchased cheaply, that the people can easily have the benefits of both religion and self-indulgence, that, as long as they can live prosperously, it matters not whether the priesthood serves the LORD or Mammon? The contrast with the present passage is striking. Moses asks for more, and he receives even more than he requests. He appeals to the people’s better selves, makes clear that real piety demands much, and lets them rise to the occasion. Of course, in the near background, and perhaps informing their “freewill offering,” is the recollection of what happened on account of the Golden Calf. Immediately preceding his appeal for contributions is the stern injunction to observe the Sabbath,

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on pain of death (Exod. 35:2). He thus reminds that the precondition for performing good deeds, and perhaps for wanting to do so, is awareness that wicked deeds have consequences.

XIV Every ten years, we are privileged to fill out a census form. And while some of the questions each time may be new, the practice of taking censuses goes back to antiquity, as we see in the opening chapters of the Book of Numbers. Compared to recent experience, the Mosaic census looks very simple. There are no questions about the market value of one’s tent, or the number of bathrooms it contains, or whether anyone in the household is prevented from tending his sheep by physical or mental incapacity. Still, some details are noteworthy. The idea of counting the Israelites comes from God, so the enterprise must be taken seriously. Its timing is specifically noted: “On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the LORD spoke to Moses, . . . saying: ‘Take a census of the whole Israelite community etc.’ ” (Num. 1:1–2). The act confirms the reckoning of the Israelites’ calendar from the Exodus, and it begins just one week after concluding the first anniversary of Passover—no idling here! A later passage indicates that they break camp and begin their march from Mount Sinai on the twentieth day of the same month, following a twelve-day dedication ceremony of the Tabernacle, the altar, and its utensils (Num. 10:11–12; 7:78). The preceding census must, therefore, take about a week to complete. Its speed is no doubt in part owing to its simplicity. It is, as noted, just a count, not a survey of miscellaneous information. But the census King David orders, in the third century later, is also just a count, and it takes over nine months (2 Sam. 24:8–9). Somewhat surprisingly, it shows that the population of Israel and Judah has only about doubled through the intervening period. Does the low number and apparent difficulty of administering this census indicate that the later Israelites have become wary of being counted for the purpose of military service, and that the more urbanized kingdom provides more places to hide? These censuses only count the adult male population. We should not understand this as a slight against the Israelite women, but in terms of its function as a military tally (Num. 1:2–4). Moses and Aaron are to be assisted in their task by twelve chieftains, one from each tribe, not including the Levites, who are exempted from military service, but counting the Josephite demitribes of Ephraim and

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Manasseh as two. In designating these twelve men, the LORD names the tribes in this order: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Gad, and Naphtali (Num. 1:5–15). The general ordering principle is straightforward. The first five are descendants of the Patriarch Jacob’s first wife Leah, in order of seniority. The next three derive from Rachel, in order of seniority, as modified by Jacob in his blessings of Joseph’s sons (Gen. 48:12–20). The remaining four stem from Rachel’s and Leah’s handmaids Bilhah and Zilpah, but here the order is jumbled. The Bilhahite tribes of Dan and Naphtali are separated by the Zilpahite tribes of Asher and Gad, and the order of seniority for these two is inverted. Apparently some flexibility and departure from strict protocol is permissible, and even required by God Himself, though the reason, if any, is obscure. But what God advances man enhances. When the census results are reported, the numbers for Reuben and Simeon are given first, as we would expect. But then the spokesman for the tribe of Gad, which was eleventh on the previous list, preempts Judah and reports third. Further, the Gadite tally is rounded to the nearest fifty, whereas the other tribes round to the nearest hundred, and is reported using a slightly abbreviated version of the formula for presentation, which thereafter becomes the standard formula (Num. 1:20–42). Apparently this zeal to do the LORD’s service is forgivable excess, for when He assigns the tribes their respective stations around the Tent of Meeting, Gad remains associated with Reuben and Simeon, on the south side. The slight to Judah, the largest tribe, is compensated by giving it and the other Leahite tribes, Issachar and Zebulun, the vanguard position to the east (Num. 2: 3–14). This reordering is further ratified when the tribes present their (identical) offerings at the dedication ceremony and in their subsequent marches (Num. 7:12–83; 10:14–27). The men who actually conduct the census seem, superficially, to be a distinguished group, whose names convey edifying teachings: Elizur—my God is a rock; Shelumiel—God is my peace; Nethanel— God has given; Eliab—my God is father; Elishama—my God has heard; Gamaliel—God’s recompense; Abidan—my Father judged; Pagiel—God’s fortune; Eliasaph—my God has added; Ahiezer—my brother is help; and Ahira (short for Ahirea [Hertz, p. 569])—my brother is a friend. The one startling exception is the censor for the tribe of Judah, Nahshon, whose name means “little serpent.” But he may have made the list through political connections—he is Aaron’s brother-in-law (Exod. 6:23). And what becomes of them? Almost to

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a man, their careers follow the same track. Each takes the census of his tribe, reports the results, is assigned the title of prince (nasi) for that tribe in its placement around the Tent of Meeting, presents its offering at the dedication ceremony, leads it on the march from Mount Sinai, and is never mentioned again. With two partial exceptions: Elishama ben Ammihud, the censor of the demitribe of Ephraim, is identified in the Book of Chronicles as Joshua’s grandfather (1 Chron. 7:26). And Nahshon ben Amminadab, the Judahite, politically connected “little serpent,” is said in the Book of Ruth to be the grandfather of Boaz, who marries the Moabite widow and through her is the great-grandfather of King David (Ruth 4:20–22). Apparently, the census taker is probably taking the first step to a dead-end career, with one chance in six that it will pay off big for his descendents. The Mosaic census is divided into several successive parts. First is the count of all the Israelite men, from the age of twenty on, “all those in Israel who are able to bear arms,” except for the Levites, who, because of their special religious duties, are exempt from military service (Num. 1:3, 47–53). Then the Levites are counted separately, “by ancestral house and by clan . . . every male among them from the age of one month up” (Num. 3:15). Finally, a third enumeration is made from among the Levites, of those between the ages of thirty and fifty, who would actually perform the service of the Tent of Meeting assigned to their respective houses and clans (Num. 4). Apparently three censuses, but, as we shall presently see, there really are four. We can readily understand the first and third categories by reference to their distinct, explicitly identified functions—military organization and actual religious service. But why the middle group, whose numbers include “retired” old men, youths, children, and even infants? One answer is that the Levites are to “take the place of every first-born among the Israelite people,” apparently as a birthright. Therefore, a fourth, intermediate, tally is ordered of “every first-born male of the Israelite people from the age of one month up,” presumably again excluding the Levites (Num. 3:41, 40). Hertz, probably stating a traditional rabbinical position, explains that the conventional sacredness and priestly functions of the firstborn were forfeited through their complicity in the worship of the Golden Calf, and were transferred to the Levites in recognition of their faithfulness (Hertz, p. 575; cf. Exod. 32:25–29). A second reason for counting virtually all the Levites is that they will have no share of the land, and, therefore, will have to be supported by the sacrificial contributions of the other tribes. If only those capable of bearing arms are relevant to the

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general census, every stomach that needs to be filled is relevant to this one. Hence, this count includes those as young as a month old. The real total number, which includes the female members of Levite families, could be derived by just doubling this figure. And third, the mere presence of inactive young and superannuated kohanim (priests) and levi’im (Levites), standing on the sidelines while their fathers and sons perform the ritual duties, adds to the atmosphere of holiness a reminder of the continuity and the presumption of permanence in the LORD’s service. There is a peculiar glitch in the tabulation of the Levites that speaks to students of politics. The numbers given for the three Levite clans—7,500, 8,600, and 6,200—should yield a sum of 22,300. But the total number reported is only 22,000. The total of non-Levite firstborn Israelites, for whom the Levites must substitute, is a very precise 22,273. As a consequence of the 273 discrepancy, the surplus firstborn Israelites must pay a “redemption price” of five shekels apiece to Aaron and his sons (Num. 3:46–48). It is not said by what means they determine which individuals comprise this “surplus,” but the number would have been neatly covered, with 27 to spare, had those other 300 Levites not been lost in the count. Hertz offers the following gloss: The Talmud explains the discrepancy by saying that the Levites were taken and counted instead of the first-born of the Israelites and as a ‘redemption’ for them. Hence, their own first-born, who amounted to 300, had to be excluded, as being ineligible for the purpose of redeeming other first-born. (Hertz, p. 577; cf. Scherman, pp. 742–43, citing Rashi)

While the logic of this explanation works, the arithmetic does not. For there to be only 300 firstborn out of 22,300 Levites males, each Levite family would need the fantastic average of over 74 male members. Whatever the rationale, the bottom line of this official “undercount” is that Aaron’s family pockets 1,365 “sanctuary shekels” of “redemption money” (Num. 3:49–51). Aaron’s name is superpointillated in this verse of the Torah scroll, a feature explained exegetically as a sign that the ancient scribes saw some mystery that will be resolved only in the Messianic Era, when all will be revealed. In the meantime, one might observe the maxim of the Watergate scandal’s Deep Throat: “Follow the money.” Further light is shed on this quirk a few chapters later. Numbers 7 describes the offerings of flour, oil, incense, and their containers, and

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sacrificial animals brought on successive days to the dedication of the altar of the Tabernacle by the twelve tribes (minus the Levites, but counting the Josephite demitribes of Ephraim and Manasseh as two). The description is long. It is also very repetitive, and, therefore, in a sense, not nearly as long as it first appears. Each tribe’s contribution is identical, but the text, instead of using a convenient shorthand expression, enumerates all the items twelve times. This narrative device adds to the passage’s atmosphere of dignity and ceremonial correctness. It also conveys the message that, despite the disparities among the tribes revealed in the preceding census, from Manasseh’s 32,200 to Judah’s 74,600, when they approach the sacred precincts they do so as equals. The order in which the tribes make their offerings replicates their locations around the Tabernacle as they travel in military formation through the wilderness (Hertz, p. 572). First up are Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, who are on the vanguard east side; then Reuben, Simeon, and Gad, to the south; Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin, to the west; and finally Dan, Asher, and Naphtali to the north. This order probably roughly reflects the relative degree of military peril in which they stand, given that at this point, one year after the Exodus, they are generally pointed eastward toward Canaan, in expectation of imminent conquest of the Promised Land. Within each grouping, the tribe occupying the central position goes first, followed by the one to its left, then the one to its right. At the conclusion of the offerings, a tally is given of the total, including the monetary value of the various container bowls, basins, and ladles—2,520 sanctuary shekels. Whatever this amount translates into in modern currency, the overall impression is of a considerable sum. Joseph was sold into slavery for twenty pieces of silver, and the head tax paid by each Israelite at the time of the census is a half-shekel (Gen. 37:28; Exod. 32:13). The aforementioned windfall going to Aaron’s household for the 273 “surplus” firstborn Israelites over the reported total number of Levites—1,365 shekels—is about 54 percent of the value of the sanctuary vessels.

XV A certain stereotype depicts Jews as given to complaining. Five successive expressions of discontent at Numbers 11–12 provide some not altogether unrespectable basis for this generally unfortunate characterization.

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The first instance is brief to the point of obscurity: The people took to complaining bitterly before the LORD. The LORD heard and was incensed: a fire of the LORD broke out against them, ravaging the outskirts of the camp. The people cried out to Moses. Moses prayed to the LORD, and the fire died down. That place was named Taberah [burning], because a fire of the LORD had broken out against them. (Num. 11:1–3)

We are not told what they were complaining about. It may have been anything or everything that could idly come to mind. If we apply the exegetical rule that a passage can often be explained by consulting the preceding one, we learn that they relocated a distance of three days journey from Sinai, where they had camped for about a year (Num. 10:11–12, 33–34). Were they annoyed at the need to move? The area around Mount Sinai may have been wilderness, but it was a place of rest and possible settlement, perhaps not immediately troubled by the prospect, which the text anticipates, of having to contend with enemies while in transit (cf. Num. 10:35–36). Does this punishing fire echo the great epiphany at Sinai, when the mountain “was all in smoke, for the LORD had come down upon it in fire” (Exod. 19:18)? The second complaint is about their diet: The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look at!” (Num. 11:4–6)

On its face, this conduct seems blatantly ungracious. God’s manna is the gift that keeps them from starvation. We can partly understand their discontent from the description of the cakes that the people would make from this mysterious substance: “It tasted like rich cream [lit., “cream of oil (or fat)”]” (Num. 11:8). A steady diet of this stuff could easily become monotonous and unpleasant. What makes the complaint seriously culpable is that their gustatory dissatisfaction gives them to romanticize about their former lives in Egypt, a place of abundance and variety but also of slavery and idolatry. It is likely the latter consideration that so incenses the LORD to devise an exquisitely cruel punishment. He sends a thick flock of quail, on which the

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people feast. But the flesh is, it seems, contaminated. A severe plague breaks out, which kills off an unstated but apparently substantial number of people (Num. 11:31–34). Inserted into the middle of this story are two other complaints. Moses, distressed by the people’s weeping and the LORD’s anger, laments the burden he has to carry alone: Did I conceive this people, did I bear them, that You should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries an infant,” to the land that You have promised on oath to their fathers? . . . I cannot carry all this people by myself, for it is too much for me. If You would deal thus with me, kill me rather, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness! (Num. 11:12–15)

Moses indulges in a kind of whininess and histrionics that everyone may at some time have witnessed in a family member, or at least heard about. Not that his grievance is unjustified—he did not request this assignment, and although he takes his mission seriously enough repeatedly to save the Israelites from God’s deadly anger, his affection toward them is always ambivalent. In this case, God’s response seems benign. He has Moses gather seventy elders and officers of the people, to share the spirit, and hence the burden, that he carries (Num. 11:16–17). But the remedy is a spiritual dead end. When the spirit the LORD draws from Moses is put upon the seventy elders, “they spoke in ecstasy [alt., “they prophesied”—vayisnab’u], but did not continue” (Num. 11:25; emphasis supplied). It would seem that Moses is uniquely qualified to receive and translate what he receives from the divine spirit, which in others expresses itself merely as incoherent babbling. Yet another complaint of a sort is embedded in this story. Two men, Eldad and Medad, receive the spirit, not in the Tent of Meeting but in the camp, and they too speak ecstatically. When word of this reaches Moses, Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ attendant from his youth, spoke up and said, “My lord Moses, restrain them!” But Moses said to him, “Are you wrought up on my account? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD put His spirit upon them!” (Num. 11:28–30)

Hertz interprets Joshua’s distress as apprehension that the men’s actions might diminish Moses’ honor and authority (p. 617). Equally plausible is that he regards their apparent madness as an embarrassing

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detraction from the congregation’s dignity. Either way, Moses’ response seems to manifest noble generosity. But here too, there is a baser side. Might this statement just reiterate, in its most extreme form—Let everyone be a prophet!—his desire to have assistants in carrying his burden, and thus to be released from his particular responsibility? The final instance is more famous. Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses, “because of the Cushite woman he had married,” and also lay claim to equal status as spokespersons for the LORD. The meaning of the Cushite matter is not self-evident, but the latter complaint is treated by the text as an obvious act of insolence, for which the LORD punishes them by afflicting Miriam for seven days with the disfiguring skin disease called tzaraat, the most conspicuous symptom of which is snowy white scales (Num. 12:1–15). We have previously treated the Cushite reference from a racial perspective, Cush being a name for Ethiopia and the hallmark of Ethiopians being their dark skin (cf. Jer. 13:23). Thus, what Miriam suffers is another example of mirroring punishment. If she and Aaron do not like black people, if they only want white, then God will give them white with a vengeance.14 These examples are all more complicated than they at first appear. For those that clearly involve punishments, the punishments mirror the offense. The two that seem accommodating rather than punitive imply an unsatisfactory accommodation. And nobody ends up looking especially good, nor perhaps simply bad. The people do indeed complain, but not without reason. Moses may well be overburdened, but he comes across as alternately self-pitying or generous to the point of naiveté. Joshua is too fastidious about public appearances. And were the LORD’s actions anyone else’s, we might characterize them as testy, gratuitously nasty, and immature overreactions to real but understandable provocations.

XVI In Numbers 16–17, Moses confronts the greatest challenge to his leadership, the rebellion led by his Levite cousin Korah, and by Dathan and Abiram, two chieftains of the tribe of Reuben. (A third Reubenite rebel, On, is mentioned once and then drops out of the picture [Num. 16:1]—a textual hint, perhaps, of the fragility of revolutionary alliances.) A crude measure of the gravity of this episode is the number of rebels who are killed, nearly 15,000, five times the toll of idolaters who perish in the Golden Calf incident. Another index is

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that, unlike the Golden Calf affair, in which Moses’ authority is reestablished with the aid of the Levites, the suppression of this revolt requires three successive miracles—an earthquake (or more aptly, a sinkhole), a fire, and a plague (Num. 16:25, 31–32, 35; 17:14; cf. Exod. 32:25–28). We readers know, of course, who is in the right, both because Moses is by stipulation God’s greatest prophet (Num. 12:2–8; Deut. 34:10) and because the rebels’ assertions are so obviously insolent. But a few details in the narrative suggest a more nuanced view of the event. We may be dealing here not with a single rebellion, but with three separate, differently motivated ones that are conflated into a closely connected sequence. First, there is that of Korah and his Levite followers against the preeminence of the Aaronic priesthood. With this group, Moses attempts politic persuasion: Moses further said to Korah, “Hear me, sons of Levi. Is it not enough for you that the God of Israel has set you apart from the community of Israel and given you access to Him, to perform the duties of the LORD’s Tabernacle and to minister to the community and serve them? Now that He has advanced you and all your fellow Levites with you, do you seek the priesthood too? Truly, it is against the LORD that you and all your company have banded together. For who is Aaron that you should rail against him?” (Num. 16:8–11)

In other words, You Levites already have a half loaf of privileges; don’t be greedy! The second group, the Reubenite leaders Dathan and Abiram, refuse even to confer with Moses, and ask pointedly, “Is it not enough that you brought us from a land flowing with milk and honey to have us die in the wilderness, that you would also lord it over us?” (Num. 16:12–13). It is hard to imagine how Moses could answer this criticism. Their characterization of Egyptian slavery as a condition of milk and honey is surely perverse. And the Reubenites’ implicit claim to preeminence by virtue of their ancestor’s firstborn status was lost when the Levites were elevated for their role in the Golden Calf episode (Num. 3:11–13). One rebellious faction’s supposed consolation is the other’s source of protest. Further, the point about dying in the wilderness was just proclaimed, in the abortive spy mission, as the Exodus generation’s common punishment because of their lack of faith (Num. 14:20–35). The third, more thoroughly democratic, rebellion occurs the next day, after the execution of the two groups of rebel leaders—not just

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Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, but 250 “chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute” (Num. 16:2, 35)—when “the whole Israelite community railed against Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘You two have brought death upon the LORD’s people!’ ” (Num. 17:6) Again, in view of the carnage that has just occurred and what follows, the death by plague of another 14,700, one can hardly dismiss the complaint as baseless. Moses’ prayer after Dathan and Abiram refuse to meet with him is also textually curious: “Moses was much aggrieved and he said to the LORD, ‘Pay no regard to their oblation. I have not taken the ass of any one of them, nor have I wronged any one of them’ ” (Num. 16:15). This is a strange kind of personal pleading from a man certain of the invalidity of his adversaries’ arguments. It suggests an inkling of self-doubt on Moses’ part. Finally, consider the dramatic description of the chief rebels’ literal downfall: Now Dathan and Abiram had come out and they stood at the entrance of their tents, with their wives, their children, and their little ones. And Moses said, “By this you shall know that it was the LORD who sent me to do all these things; that they are not of my own devising: if these men die as all men do, if their lot be the common fate of all mankind, it was not the LORD who sent me. But if the LORD brings about something unheard-of, so that the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, you shall know that these men have spurned the LORD.” Scarcely had he finished speaking all these words when the ground under them burst asunder, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, all Korah’s people and all their possessions. They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them; the earth closed over them and they vanished from the midst of the congregation. All Israel around them fled at their shrieks, for they said, “The earth might swallow us!” (Num. 16:27–34)

Moses here dictates the mode of his opponents’ doom, seemingly forcing God’s hand. Whatever else this says about the person who was called, only four chapters ago, “a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth” (Num. 12:3), it casts a long shadow over the rabbinic depiction of Moses’ later audacity in the “Waters of Meribah” affair, when he strikes the rock twice in order to produce water, instead of speaking to it as the LORD commands (Num. 20:2–13), as a unique deviation in an otherwise spotless career.

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XVII At various points in Scripture, we encounter phrases denoting the passage of time, such as “And it happened after these things,” or “And the land was tranquil forty years” (Gen. 22:1; Judges 5:31). At Numbers 19–20, however, we see the contrary phenomenon. Chapter 19 deals with the arcane expiatory rite of the red heifer, pursuant to the account of Korah’s rebellion and its aftermath—events that called for much expiation (Num. 16–18). And then, chapter 20 begins, “The Israelites arrived in a body at the wilderness of Zin on the first new moon, and the people stayed at Kadesh” (Num. 20:1). But for a helpful editor’s footnote, one would not know that this passage picks up the narrative in the fortieth year following the Exodus, thirtyeight years after the immediately preceding verse. In a text so liberally peppered with temporal markers, this silence virtually begs for comment. What happens during this silent interval? One thing that happens is much movement. Korah’s rebellion and the disastrous spy mission that precedes it occur in a place called the wilderness of Paran, which, to serve as home base for the spies, must be fairly near Canaan (Num. 12:16). So too must be the wilderness of Zin, for Kadesh is identified as a town on the border of the territory of Edom, soon to become Israel’s neighbor (Num. 20:16). But a later tally of their stopping points over the entire forty years lists seventeen places between Rithmah (presumably identical to Paran) and Zin (Num. 33:19–36; cf. 33:18 with 12:16). This averages to about twoand-a-quarter years per stop, most of them probably unknowable locations on the Sinai Peninsula. Here, we must suppose, the people become accustomed to being on the move—which does not mean that they ever come to like it. Another thing that must happen is death—lots of it. That, after all, was the point of their being condemned to thirty-eight additional years of wandering after they display lack of faith in the spy episode. And not necessarily death at a ripe old age. If everyone of that rebellious generation who was over twenty at that time, except for Joshua and Caleb, was doomed to perish in the wilderness, then some would have died off even as young as fifty-eight (Num. 14:26–35). But we may reasonably infer, from the absence of any described big events, that most of this passing from the scene happens gradually, from one day to the next. It is a common experience when we see someone after a long interval to be struck by how much they have changed (or not changed, contrary to reasonable expectation). But when we see that person

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every day, we are less aware of changes that happen in small increments. The Israelites who arrive at the wilderness of Zin in chapter 20 are, individually, different people from those who left Paran. They are like a ship, whose every plank, beam, and rope gets replaced over the course of time, but which still retains its name and formal design. Does Moses, who is with them on a daily basis, underappreciate the generational shift that has occurred? Admittedly, when we first hear from them, they sound as whiney as their parents. But at least one of their complaints, lack of water in the desert, can hardly be called unreasonable. When Moses produces water for them at Meribah, he calls them “rebels,” rhetorically equating their grievance with the acts of Korah and his followers (Num. 20:10). It was Maimonides’ view and that of the Malbim that it was for this intemperate speech, and not for striking the rock, that he and Aaron are condemned not to enter the Promised Land (Scherman, p. 845).15 What we do not get during these thirty-eight years are any more commandments or recorded conversations with God. Apparently, the Law as it stands by the end of Numbers 19 is sufficient for the time being. What the people need now is not more rules but the acquired habit of obeying those they already have and the experience of dealing with everyday life under harsh conditions. If the LORD continues to speak “mouth to mouth” with His servant Moses, it is apparently not about matters of public consequence (Num. 12:8). Has God too learned something important about the limits of human endurance, and the corresponding need to hold back for a time on making new demands, to give the old ones adequate opportunity to sink in?

XVIII In Numbers 22, the Mesopotamian prophet Balaam, whom the Moabite king Balak hires to curse the Israelites but who ends up blessing them instead, converses briefly with his donkey. But for the fact that the animal is a she-ass (ason) rather than a jackass, we might be tempted to say that we have all probably been there, figuratively, at some time or other. In this case, however, the ass has the better part of the argument. The Israelites’ generation of desert wandering is nearing its end. They are encamped on the plains of Moab, on the east bank of the Jordan River, poised to attack the land of Canaan. They have just defeated the forces of two neighboring kings, Sihon of Heshbon and Og of Bashan, and King Balak of Moab is understandably nervous. In alliance with some Midianite tribes, he sends a deputation of

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dignitaries to Balaam, a prophet who lives in eastern Syria, on the bank of the Euphrates, and apparently has an established reputation for effective blessing and cursing, to get him to curse the Israelites. Balaam evidently would like to oblige his guests, and to get whatever reward Balak is willing to offer, but he knows that he can bless or curse only as the LORD directs. So when God tells him that he is not to curse the Israelites, he sends the men away. Balak assumes that Balaam is bargaining for a higher fee and dispatches a larger and more distinguished group of emissaries. This time Balaam wavers. He asks them to stay the night, apparently hoping that God might change His mind. And God seems to do so, for He now allows Balaam to go with the men. But this may be a divine test of Balaam’s motives, for as soon as he leaves, “God was incensed at his going; so an angel of the LORD placed himself in his way as an adversary” (Num. 22:22). Now Balaam’s donkey enters the story. She sees the angel, drawn sword in hand, blocking her master’s path. Three times she avoids a fatal encounter—first by swerving into a field, next by pressing to one side of the road (in the process squeezing Balaam’s foot against a wall), finally by stopping in her tracks and lying down. Balaam, who cannot see the angel, grows increasingly angry and beats her. Then the LORD opens her mouth, and the following dialogue ensues: The ass: What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times? Balaam: You have made a mockery of me! If I had a sword with me, I’d kill you. The ass: Look, I am the ass that you have been riding all along until this day! Have I been in the habit of doing thus to you? Balaam: No. (Num. 22:28–30)

The LORD then enables Balaam to also see the angel, who confirms that, far from deserving a beating, the long-suffering she-ass has saved his life. A contrite Balaam offers to turn back, but the angel tells him to continue the journey, taking care to say only what he is told. In other words: Be slow to anger. Appreciate the good intentions of your loyal servants, who may more keenly see your situation than you do. And don’t let the prospect of personal gain obscure subservience to God’s will. So many sound and edifying lessons, packed so neatly into a charming, amusing fable! Perhaps as remarkable as the fact of this exchange is that, as with Eve’s exchange with the serpent in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:4–5), Balaam seems quite unsurprised by his beast speaking. Maybe that is just how it is with prophets and innocents. In reading a text so liberally

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seasoned with miracles, we should surely not quibble about talking animals, but we can also appreciate this story in a less literal, but perhaps more mundanely relevant, sense. If Balaam is sensitive to his beast’s soul and aware of his long-term relation to her, we can easily imagine the interspecies dialogue as a conversation he has within himself when he reads the animal’s hurt expression. So charming is this story that we may momentarily forget the deadly earnestness of Balaam’s mission. In the sequel Balak stations him three times on hilltops, where he can see the Israelite camp and pronounce his curse, and three times the LORD inspires him only to speak blessings, culminating in the ecstatic poem, “How fair are your tents, O Jacob, / Your dwellings, O Israel!” (Num. 24:5) He proceeds to predict Israel’s future subjugation of Moab, when “A star rises from Jacob, / A scepter comes forth from Israel” (Num. 24:17), apparently anticipating King David’s conquests. An enraged Balak sends Balaam back home without reward. Balak’s three unsuccessful attempts to elicit curses recall Balaam’s frustration at what appeared at the time to be his donkey’s three acts of rebellion. The parallel structure suggests a serious parallel content. The prophetic profession is inherently perilous. In the most interesting cases, it consists of telling powerful people unpleasant, unwelcome truths. Thus, Moses begs off five times, and provokes God’s anger, when his mission is first revealed to him. Elijah spends years hiding in the wilderness from King Ahab’s and Queen Jezebel’s agents. And Jonah, ordered to go east to rebuke the citizens of Nineveh, books passage on a ship headed as far west as possible (Exod. 3–4; 1 Kings 17, 19; Jonah 1). Does Balaam, while traveling to Moab, suffer similar second thoughts? What if God has not wavered in His resolve to bless Israel and is merely using Balaam to bear ill tidings to Balak? What fate awaits him then? Not rewards, but perhaps death. Can he soften the blow, so Balak, though vexed, will not direct his ire at him? Better still, can Balak be charmed into gratitude toward the faithful servant who perhaps saves him from a fatal encounter with Israel, even if it means enduring some frustration and discomfort? We can imagine Balaam telling Balak this fable, in which the she-ass takes his place and he substitutes for Balak, as a way to soften the blow of disappointing news.16

XIX As the Israelites prepare to invade Canaan, a second census is taken (Num. 26). Between the first census and this one, the total Israelite

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military population declines by almost 2,000, attesting to the harsh desert conditions and the toll of successive plagues and purges (Num. 11:33; 16:35; 17:14; 25:9). The constituent figures show vast fluctuations among the tribes. Six grow and six shrink, some substantially. Among the former, Judah, the largest, grows least (by 1,900 or 2.55 percent), and Manasseh, in the first count the smallest, grows most (by 20,500 or 63.7 percent). Among those that shrink, Dan, the largest, shrinks at the lowest rate (4.87 percent), and Ephraim, the smallest, shrinks at the second highest (19.8 percent). Simeon suffers the greatest loss (37,100 or 62.6 percent), doubtless reflecting their role as the worst offenders in the apostasy of Baal-Peor (Num. 25). We can also understand some shifts in terms of the tribes’ military arrangement around the Tent of Meeting (Num. 2:1–32). The three who march on the south side of the Tabernacle (Reuben, Simeon, and Gad) all lose population. They would have been most exposed to the recent corrupting influence of the Moabite and Midianite women and the consequent plague. Similarly, the losses suffered by Dan and Naphtali, camped on the north and northeast, may reflect either the earlier plague that followed the Israelites’ glutting on quail that blew in from the Mediterranean Sea, which they were positioned to gather first and most, or the more recent attacks from the north by Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan (Num. 11:31–34; 21:21–35). Most puzzling is the enormous increase in the tribe of Manasseh and the simultaneous reduction in Ephraim. Although the order of all the other tribes is the same in the second census as in the first, these two are reversed. Did an ancient copyist’s slip of the pen end up recording for one tribe the other’s figures in the second census? With this correction, Manasseh’s numbers remain flat (consistent with its place next to the south side tribes), and Ephraim, camped north of Manasseh, west of the Tabernacle, increases by a respectable but not outrageous 30.1 percent. Or perhaps because the blood ties between these two tribes are close (the text later calls Manasseh, not a tribe, but a Josephite clan [Num. 36:1]), their members may intermarry more freely or identify themselves as belonging to the one or the other more casually than do the other Israelites. Concerning the Simeonites, we recall that their progenitor Simeon and his brother Levi were the principal perpetrators in the massacre of the men of Shechem, for which rash act Jacob rebukes them from his deathbed (Gen. 34: 25–26; 49:5–7). But unlike the Levites, Simeon’s descendants do not redeem themselves in the Golden Calf affair (Exod. 32:25–29). When the famine-stricken sons of Jacob

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delay their second journey down to Egypt for two years, because, by command of the Pharaoh’s prime minister, the unrevealed Joseph, they would have to bring their “baby” brother Benjamin, Simeon languishes in Egyptian captivity (Gen. 42:24; 43:23)—he, apparently, is dispensable. By the end of the desert wandering, the tribe of Simeon does not even warrant mention in Moses’ valedictory blessing to the nation (Deut. 33). And in the later historical narrative, the Simeonites, at the southern end of the conquered land, simply disappear, apparently getting absorbed into the tribe of Judah or the neighboring pagan peoples. (It is commonplace to speak of the “ten lost tribes of Israel.” With Simeon and the Simeonites we seem to encounter characters whose very purpose is to get lost.) Ironically, these significant shifts cast doubt on the long-term viability of the census’s second purpose, the equal apportionment of the land among the households composing the various tribes and clans (Num. 26:52–56). An equal division may be possible initially on the basis of this census, but over time some tribes, clans, and families will grow more quickly, others more slowly, and others may shrink. But if the initial distribution is held sacred, and is periodically restored in the years of the Jubilee (Lev. 25:13–16, 23–26), then inevitably some individuals—the heads of households of small clans and tribes—will become disproportionately wealthy. The extreme expression of this phenomenon is the importance of certain prominent Benjaminites in the time of the early monarchy, following the near annihilation of their tribe in a brutal civil war during the period of the judges (Judg. 19–21).

XX The Book of Numbers’ narrative is highly episodic, fragmented, and elliptical. (See, for example, the reference to the long-lost Book of the Wars of the LORD [Num. 21:14–15].) An enticing passage is the statement, “Then Moses sent to spy out Jazer, and they captured its dependencies and dispossessed the Amorites who were there” (Num. 21:32). So much is said about the disastrous spy mission thirty-eight years earlier, and will be said about Joshua’s more successful one before he attacks Jericho (Num. 13–14; Josh. 2), that this aside is breathtakingly brief and cryptic: four words—Vayishlah Mosheh raglei es-Yazer—and no further details, except that a successful military expedition resulted, from which we infer that the information brought back by the unnamed and unnumbered spies was accurate and useful. The other two missions invite the conclusion that Joshua learns how

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not to spy from Moses’ earlier faux pas. The present less-than-oneliner shows that Moses also learns from his own mistake, as well he has reason to. A reluctant prophet from the start, he has lived with the consequences of the error in judgment that turned a two-year project of liberation into forty years of wandering in the wilderness. At the age of 120, he is not about to repeat the kind of misstep that might add another forty thankless years to his assignment. If this incident has contemporary relevance, so does what occurs directly after the LORD tells Moses that he will soon die. Moses asks that someone be appointed to “go out before [the community] and come in before them.” The LORD designates Joshua and commands that he be invested with “some of your authority,” in the presence of Eleazar the priest and the whole community, . . . so that the whole Israelite community may obey. But he shall present himself to Eleazar the priest, who shall on his behalf seek the decision of the Urim before the LORD. By such instruction they shall go out and by such instruction they shall come in, he and all the Israelites, the whole community.

And Moses does as the LORD commands him (Num. 27:15–23). As we witness every four years at our national major party conventions, and then again on January 20 at the presidential inauguration, investiture ceremonies are important public events. They confer an aura of public ownership on the office being filled. In the case of Joshua, the ceremony also confers sanctity. Just as important, the conspicuous presence of Eleazar the high priest emphasizes that Joshua is receiving only a part of Moses’ authority. He and his later counterparts will “go out and come in before the community,” an idiom for military leadership, from which civil rule may naturally flow, but they will not have the supreme religious authority that Moses has exercised. As the seventeenth-century apostate Jewish philosopher Benedict de Spinoza notes, we see here the beginning of the division of sovereignty into sacred and secular spheres.17 We should not, of course, exaggerate or distort its contextual meaning. The Israelite Law, civil and ceremonial, is all Godgiven, and, therefore, thoroughly suffused with religious significance. The civil leader is religiously invested, and thus carries the mandate of Heaven. But it is a mediated mandate that must respect the priesthood’s henceforth independent authority. This situation is fraught with potential conflict, and when, in later time, the monarchy

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subordinates the priests, a new source of independent opposition emerges in the prophets. As is suggested by a central passage from the Book of Deuteronomy, the Torah is keenly alert to the problem of abuse of absolute political power. Although its expedients do not exactly prefigure our familiar tripartite functional separation of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, it reveals much ingenuity in devising methods to mitigate this danger (cf. esp. Deut. 16:18– 19:15).18

X XI When is it proper to break one’s word, or to deviate from previously established arrangements? Numbers 30–32 explores this question through three examples of intervening authority or amended obligation. The first is a straightforward law that Moses gives to the tribal heads. If a woman makes a vow to the LORD or assumes an obligation, she shall be bound by it, unless her father (in the case of a young woman) or husband—whichever man’s household she lives in— objects. He may annul the vow, but he must restrain her “on the day he learns of it.” If the relevant man offers no immediate objection, then the vow or obligation shall stand (Num. 30:4–13). The rule affirms that women, even young women, are free moral agents, entitled to make vows and assume obligations under oath, and thereby enter into a direct relation with God, without having to obtain prior authorization from a husband or father. Thus, in the unambiguous case of a widow or a divorced woman, “whatever she has imposed on herself, shall be binding upon her” (Num. 30:10). The rule does not subordinate one principle to another, but tries to balance two desirable principles. In general, people should not make vows casually and should regard obligations taken under oath as binding. But also in general, fathers and husbands should have authority over their households. Therefore, the father or husband must annul the objectionable vow or obligation promptly upon learning of it, if he is to do so at all. The principle of intervening authority at work here may invite other applications. It seems natural to ask whether it shouldn’t also apply to young men who continue to live with their father or to the authority of masters over slaves or of political leaders over their subjects. Perhaps this is why the text has Moses say all this to the heads of the Israelite tribes (Num. 30:2).

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The second example concerns a story that we have characterized as the moral low point of Moses’ career. God tells him, “Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites.” Following a successful military campaign, in which all the Midianite men are killed, Moses orders the further slaughter of the captured adult women and boys (Num. 31:1–17). Having discussed this troubling passage elsewhere, we only repeat here our conclusion that this order stands as far from divine authorization as a Mosaic command possibly can and our doubt that it is even obeyed.19 In the third example, the tribes of Reuben and Gad request of Moses, Eleazar, and the chieftains of the community permission to settle in the petty kingdoms east of the Jordan River that the Israelites have already conquered, land suitable for raising their cattle, rather than having a share of the Promised Land across the Jordan. Moses objects that they would thereby shirk their duty to their brethren, turn the others’ minds away from the land the LORD has given them, and incur His wrath. But they promise to participate fully in the conquest of Canaan, even to occupy the front battle lines, provided they can settle in their preferred location. Moses agrees to these terms, impressing upon them the obligatory character of their undertaking, and instructs Eleazar, Joshua, and the family heads of the Israelite tribes accordingly (Num. 32:1–28). On its face, this is a win-win proposition. The petitioning tribes receive their desired territory, and the other Israelites still get the benefit of their services, as well as a larger share of Canaan. The only losers are the Amorites and the inhabitants of Bashan whom they have dispossessed.20 But there are two jarring notes. Although the request is brought to a collective leadership consisting of Moses, Eleazar, and the chieftains, Moses decides unilaterally. Notwithstanding his dire warnings about incurring the LORD’s wrath, it appears that he does not consult with God. And second, although the request, negotiation, and agreement concern only the tribes of Reuben and Gad, in the final settlement the half-tribe of Manasseh also is assigned land east of the Jordan. Does their “muscling in” implicitly vindicate Moses’ admonition about turning the Israelites’ hearts away from the Promised Land (Num. 32:33–42, 7)? And does his assumption of sole authority to decide cast further doubt on his credentials?

X XII Ordinarily, the Sabbath Torah readings exhibit a unifying theme or include some single passage that so stands out as to define the

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section. This seems not to be the case with Deuteronomy 7:12– 11:25. Rather, this part of Moses’ valedictory speech markedly lacks focus. If the Mosaic rhetoric still soars, it does so like an unguided missile, moving from one subject to another, at times literally all over the map, and then abruptly back again (see esp. Deut. 9:8– 10:11). Is the unflattering subtext that the aged Moses, his eye undimmed and his vigor unabated (Deut. 34:7), shows signs of attention deficit? This is not to say that the reading lacks substantial content. It includes one very memorable aphorism, “Man does not live by bread alone,” upon which Jesus, some 1,300 years later, conferred a prominence not evident from its immediate context (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:1–4). It also includes the middle paragraph of the Sh’ma (Hear, O Israel) prayer in the Jewish liturgy, the one to which we likely least resonate. The emphasis is not on loving the LORD with all our heart, soul, and strength, nor on wearing the fringed garment that helps distinguish Jews from Gentiles, but rather on the material rewards that will follow upon obedience, especially rain for one’s harvest, and the material deprivation that will overtake those who stray (Deut. 11:13–21; cf. Deut. 6:4–9; Num. 15:37–41). Material consequences—prosperity, health, victory over one’s enemies, and their opposites—are a recurrent motif of this reading (see, for example, Deut. 7:12–24; 8:19–20). Another striking passage is the following: “Bear in mind that the LOR D your God disciplines you just as a man disciplines his son” (Deut. 8:5). This is presented as the conclusion to be drawn from the observation that although the LOR D tested the Israelites by making them travel in the wilderness for forty years (by design allowing an entire generation to perish), he also fed them on manna and saw to it that their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell (Deut. 8:2–4). This seems a peculiar form of “tough love,” one that most of us would not want to emulate in dealing with our children. Interestingly, the corresponding prophetic reading from Deutero-Isaiah, which also meanders, contains one of a few descriptions of God’s love through female imagery: Zion says, “The LORD has forsaken me, My Lord has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her baby, Or disown the child of her womb?

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Though she might forget, I never could forget you. (Is. 49:14–15)

One must suspect that the pseudonymous poet of the Babylonian Exile and the Rabbis who assembled the weekly readings intended a deliberate contrast to the Mosaic version of paternal affection.

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Observations on the Mosaic Law

A. T D I What makes the Ten Commandments commandments? Obviously, because God commands them. But what if God had not given them? Would it be permissible to murder, commit adultery, or steal? The examples, cited above, of Cain’s evasive reply when the LORD asks about Abel; of Abraham’s unsuccessful attempts to represent Sarah as his sister while sojourning in Egypt and Gerar; and of his and Jacob’s land purchases at Machpelah and Shechem suggest otherwise (Gen. 4:9, 14–15; 12:10–20; 20; 23; 33:18–19; supra, chap. 1, A. I, VII; B, VII; chap. 2, XI). It would seem that for the Commandments that embody fundamental moral rules, our obligation to behave rightly does not depend on the Sinaitic revelation. Rather, all human beings can recognize these rules by using their natural reason to reflect on what restraints a society needs to function or what it means to be human. The relevant Commandments merely repeat these rules and give them the added force of divine endorsement. Even the strictly religious Commandments may come under this description. Concerning idolatry, for example, Maimonides teaches that no one ever has or ever will imagine that the form he fashions from metal, stone, or wood created and governs the heavens and the earth (The Guide of the Perplexed, I.36; cf. Is. 44:9–20). On the other hand, at least one Commandment, observance of the Sabbath, seems to depend on revelation. Natural reason may tell us that there is one God, Who created heaven and earth, and that occasional rest from our labors is good for us. But that we should rest every seventh day in remembrance of God’s having done so at the Creation is the kind of thing we can know only because He tells us.

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Nor is it obvious that there are precisely ten. The text does not use the phrase “Ten Commandments” at Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 (but cf. Deut. 4:13). While the standard division into ten subjects is reasonable, other groupings are possible. But at Exodus 34:10–28, a different list of commands is called the Ten Words (aseres ha’d’varim). A few of them paraphrase the familiar Commandments: You are not to bow down to any other god! For YHWH— Jealous-One is his name, a jealous God is he! . . . Molten gods you are not to make for yourselves. . . . For six days you are to serve, but on the seventh day, you are to cease, at plowing, at grain-cutting, you are to cease. (Exod. 34:14, 17, 21 [Fox, pp. 456–57])

Most of this list, however, concerns recognizably ceremonial matters, such as observance of the Festivals, dedication and redemption of the firstborn, what may or may not be offered as sacrifices, and the injunction against cooking a kid in its mother’s milk. This list, called the Second Covenant, occurs after the Golden Calf episode, in which the Israelites show their spiritual incapacity to appreciate the Law as it has been revealed so far, including the conventional Ten Commandments. A new beginning is, therefore, in order, a simpler beginning, consisting of some clear practical rules (few enough to be counted on one’s fingers) that will distinguish Israel from all other nations (Exod. 33:16). If these simpler rules are the original “Ten Commandments,” we can perhaps best appreciate what happens next through a modern analogy. The charitable organization called the March of Dimes used to raise funds for medical research to cure or prevent infantile paralysis. Then came the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Polio became preventable. The March of Dimes had succeeded. But rather than close a functioning organization with established name recognition, the March rededicated itself to another worthy cause, raising funds for medical research to cure or prevent birth defects. Did something similar happen with the Ten Commandments? The Israelites dispossessed the Canaanites, observed the Festivals and the rules governing sacrifices, obeyed their distinctive dietary laws, and so on. They learned these things so well as to remove the need to designate them with a special name. But a name like “Ten Commandments” is too neat to waste, so it was transferred in public discourse to the already existing

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list of more fundamental—and more nearly universal—religious and moral rules that began the First Covenant. II In Mel Brooks’ movie History of the World, Part I, Moses descends from Mount Sinai holding three stone slabs and proclaims to the Israelites, “The Lord has given unto you these fifteen. . . . Oops! . . . these ten commandments for all to obey.” Ten is such a convenient number, and the image of the two tablets, each bearing the first letters of five of the Commandments, is so visually compelling that it requires effort to see other principles of organization. But the familiar visual symmetry vanishes if we see the text. The first five are elaborate and somewhat verbose. They explain as well as command. Numbers six through ten are, by contrast, brief—no explanations, just a short list of very important “Don’t”s. This imbalance should not surprise. The conventional second tablet lists what may be considered self-evident truths, for which no explanation is needed. The prohibited acts and attitudes imperil any community: randomly killing the innocent, violating property rights, demeaning the special relation constituted by legally contracted marriage between those able to produce offspring. Altogether, they comprise about one-seventh of the Commandments’ words, and one-third (five of sixteen) of the verses. This grouping seems balanced by the first three—a cluster that also occupies one-third of the verses (six of sixteen), but about three-sevenths of the words—which deal thematically with the Israelites’ obligations toward their God: They are to prefer no other gods to Him; they are not to make, worship, and serve images of created beings; they are not to misuse His name (i.e., His power, for names are efficacious). These commands seem specific to Israel, for the LORD grounds them on His status as the God who “brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage,” a description not applicable to other nations. And because they are not self-evident truths—we can easily imagine viable communities of idol worshipers—they are buttressed by appeals to the gratitude the Israelites should feel for their liberation from Egypt, or the promise of divine favor, or the threat of divine disfavor. Between these two sets are the Fourth and Fifth: sanctify the Sabbath and honor your parents. Occupying five of the sixteen verses and about three-sevenths of the text, they combine features of both flanking groups but do not fit neatly into either. They are not simply about the Israelites’ relation to their God, but concern human practice. On

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the other hand, unlike the five that follow them, what they express are not universal truths. One might wish to dispute this statement with regard to honoring one’s parents. We may suspect that this rule is necessary to any civilized community. But the text does not treat it as inherently compelling, for it appends a kind of bribe: Honor your parents “in order that you may long endure on the land that the LORD your God is assigning to you.” Perhaps too we do not fully appreciate how much substance is implicit in the word “honor” (or glorify—kaveid). Let us recall the Draconian command at Deuteronomy 21:18–21, which requires that wayward and defiant sons who persist in disobeying their parents be stoned to death and that the parents publicly accuse such sons. Was it this extreme image of “tough love” that Friedrich Nietzsche had in mind when he characterized the command “[t]o honor father and mother and to follow their will to the root of one’s soul” as “the tablet of overcoming that another people hung up over themselves” and that rendered them “powerful and eternal” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I.15 [“On the Thousand and One Goals”])? And then there is the Fourth Commandment—Shabbat, the quintessentially peculiar Jewish institution. Contra Nietzsche we recall the familiar aphorism, “More than Israel has kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept Israel.”1 So un-self-evident is this command that it receives two explanations. Exodus 20:11 refers it to the creation of heaven and earth; Deuteronomy 5:15 invokes the liberation from Egypt. What both explanations have in common, and share with the command to honor one’s parents, is their emphasis on origins. They advise us of who we are by reminding us of where we come from, in all senses: cosmic, ethnic, and personal. In this way these two Commandments form a unit—the middle of the three thematic Tables of the Law. Perhaps Mel Brooks was right! III Is there special significance in the number ten? Calum Carmichael has offered that the Commandments echo God’s ten statements at Creation, given in Genesis 1.2 This parallel number emphasizes the message in the Exodus version of the Fourth Commandment that God is the Creator, that human beings should not go about making their own gods, as exemplified by Aaron in the Golden Calf episode or King Jeroboam I when the Northern Kingdom seceded (Exod. 32; 1 Kings 12:28–31).


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Taking the connection a step further, we may see thematic parallels in their respective items. God’s first Creation speech, “Let there be light,” is reflected in the First Commandment’s imagery, “I the LORD am your God who brought you out of . . . the house of bondage” (Gen. 1:3; Exod. 20:2). Israel’s emergence from slavery is like exiting from a house into the open, from darkness into light. The second Creation speech, which summons the sky into being to separate the water above from the water below, corresponds to the Second Commandment’s prohibition on idolatry, which separates worship of the LORD from that of other gods (Gen. 1:6; Exod. 20:4–6). The description of the LORD as “an impassioned God, visiting guilt upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me” may raise doubt about His justice. George Anastaplo notes that the “irreparable harm” indicated for an idolater’s “children and grandchildren, perhaps even to his great-grandchildren,” may be a kind of natural and “not uncommon extension of the consequences of one’s actions.” [T]he generations referred to . . . are those one can hope to see for oneself. Thus, one can witness the deterioration that one may be responsible for. On the other hand, proper submission to the God of Israel can lead to thousands of years of goodness, and hence well-being, for a people.

He contrasts this warning with the Fifth Commandment’s promise that those who honor father and mother will “long endure on the land that the LORD your God is assigning to you” (Exod. 20:12). This reminds us of something noticed by Aristotle, that parents naturally care more for their children than children care for their parents. Thus, parents are told (in the Second Commandment) of the harm that can come to their children, whereas children are offered something good for themselves (in the Fifth Commandment) if they treat their parents properly. (Anastaplo, pp. 94, 97; emphasis in original)

The Third Commandment forbids vain or false use of the LORD’s Name; the Fourth orders remembrance of the Sabbath as a day of rest (Exod. 20:7–11). The passage from Genesis describing the third and fourth Creation speeches reads as follows: God said, “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land

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Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas. And God saw that this was good. And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation: seedbearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. (Gen. 1:9–11)

Hertz treats the Third Commandment as dealing chiefly with judicial perjury. But then the Ninth—“You shall not bear false witness”— seems superfluous. To escape this redundancy, and perhaps following tradition, he reads the Ninth as banning slander, defamation, and misrepresentation, most of which would not occur in a judicial setting (Hertz, pp. 296, 300). Is it not more logical to take the Ninth at face value, as focusing on judicial perjury, and to regard the Third’s primary concern to be misuse of the LORD’s Name as a tool of magic or sorcery? To do so connects the first three Commandments: The LORD alone is our God. You shall not make, use, or invoke the power of other gods. You shall not misuse or invoke the Name, and hence the power, of our God magically for false, probably selfaggrandizing, purposes. The connection to the Creation speech, which gathers the lower water into seas so that dry land may appear, is that sorcery seeks to control, transform, and thus confuse the elements God separated at Creation. This reading makes serious sense of the seemingly fanciful examples Hertz cites of what the Third Commandment forbids: using the Name of God in false oaths (e.g., that wood is stone) and in vain and flippant oaths (e.g., that stone is stone) (p. 296). A magician would not just be swearing to these things, but also employing the holy Name to make them so. A test of the Third Commandment occurs at Leviticus 24:10–23. A fight erupts between an Israelite and the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father, during which the half-breed “blasphemed the Name, and cursed.” The LORD orders him executed. It is not clear whether the man curses God or blasphemes the Name by using it to curse his human opponent. Both acts are punishable, but the latter, more consistent with our reading of the Commandment, also makes sense of a seeming digression in what God tells Moses: . . . Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin. And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death. . . . And he that smiteth any man mortally shall surely be put to death. And he that smiteth a beast mortally shall make it good: life for life. And if a man maim his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him: breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he hath maimed a man, so shall it be rendered unto him. And he that killeth a


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beast shall make it good; and he that killeth a man shall be put to death. (Lev. 24:15–21 [Hertz, p. 527])

What has all this smiting, maiming, and the lex talionis (“life for life, . . . eye for eye, tooth for tooth”) to do with the Egyptian? Nothing, unless he had sought these results by means of his curse.3 Dennis Prager points out, in a taped lecture on the Ten Commandments, that the word tisa, commonly translated as “take” in the phrase “You shall not take in vain,” literally means “to carry.” (Cf. Fox [p. 371]: “You are not to take up / the name of YHWH your God for emptiness.”) To whom, Prager asks, is this command especially addressed? Those who routinely carry God’s name—the clergy. By invoking God’s name and authority for vain or improper purposes, or by behaving badly under cover of religious credentials, malfeasant clergy not only misbehave as individuals. They also mislead their flock and cast disrepute on God. (Hobbes identified misbehavior by clerics as one of the principal causes of atheism [Leviathan, chap. 12]). This offense is especially unforgivable, and, the LORD declares, He will not clear or acquit those who commit it. In the fourth Creation speech, which brings about vegetation, and the Fourth Commandment, which ordains the Sabbath, an obvious connecting idea is rest or immobility. But this is unsatisfactory. Sabbath rest is not vegetative immobility. Rather, the Sabbath is reserved for prayer, reflection, study, and in former time special sacrifices—that is, for privileged activity. A more congenial approach is advanced by Leon Kass, who observes that from the viewpoint of Genesis 1, plants, lacking sentience and motion, are not fully alive. Rather, they “belong to the earth”; they are “the surface display of the earth’s native activity.”4 The intimate association between the earth and its plants is suggested by the fact that both are created on the same day. Vegetation, we may say, completes, clothes, and adorns the earth. Jewish prayer similarly speaks of the Sabbath as the week’s adornment (Siddur Sim Shalom, pp. 265, 299). The fifth Creation speech calls for “lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; [to] serve as signs for the set times—the days and the years.” The measuring of time is reflected in the Fifth Commandment’s promise of long endurance on the God-given land for those who honor their parents (Gen. 1:14; Exod. 20:12). The thematic link—life—between the sixth Creation speech, which produces sea creatures and birds (the first creatures described as “living”) and the Sixth Commandment’s prohibition of murder is

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obvious. So too is the connection—sexual union—between the seventh speech’s blessing—“Be fertile and increase”—and the Seventh Commandment’s prohibition of adultery (Gen. 1:20–22; Exod. 20:13). The eighth Creation speech concerns living creatures of the land, including cattle, a principal form of property; the Eighth Commandment forbids stealing, the violation of property (Gen. 1:24; Exod. 20:13). The ninth speech calls for creation “in our image” of man, who will rule the other living creatures. The Ninth Commandment forbids bearing false witness (Gen. 1:26; Exod. 20:13). To bear witness is to testify about how things appear, to give a verbal “image” of events. Moreover, perjury may be especially subversive of right and orderly rule. Finally, the tenth speech repeats the blessing of fertility and increase (this time addressed to the first human beings), and adds mastery over the other living creatures and permission to eat seedbearing plants. The privileges of sex, mastery, and eating imply limits on what kind of things, persons, and relationships one should desire— the subject of the Tenth Commandment, which forbids coveting (Gen. 1:28–30; Exod. 20:14). The Ten Commandments thus not only define Israel’s special status as God’s Chosen People, but also recall the order of God’s Creation and Creation’s orderliness. In this way, a basic moral code points us to perhaps yet more basic cosmological reflections. IV Were one to ask which of the Ten Commandments is the most distinctly Jewish, the readiest answer might be the Fourth, to “remember” or “observe” (according, respectively, to the versions in Exodus and Deuteronomy) the Sabbath. Other ancient peoples set aside special days on their calendars, sometimes to help synchronize lunar months and the solar year, but the Jews may have been unique in observing a weekly day of rest. We have already mentioned the adage that the Sabbath preserved Israel. That is, the regular Shabbat observance of shared rituals held the Jewish communities together, by setting them apart, through times of hardship and stress, as well as through times of tolerance and the temptation to assimilate into their host communities. But an intellectually noteworthy source, Friedrich Nietzsche, provides a different answer in his allegorical masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra.5 His fictionalized prophet focuses on the Fifth Commandment as the characteristic Jewish center and source of


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esteeming, self-discipline, energy, and endurance. The Fifth bridges the divide between our obligations to God, the subject of the first four, and the basic moral duties that define a decent society, that of the remaining five. The Deuteronomic version also reminds that the desired relation has been divinely commanded and links that relation to how one fares on the divinely assigned land: Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may long endure, and that you may fare well, in the land that the LORD your God is assigning to you. (Deut. 5:16)

Parents are human, but they are also special—in how they stand toward us and toward God and the land. We probably think of honoring in terms of showing special courtesy, respect, and deference, most commonly manifested in acts of self-restraint. We do not publicly contradict, scold, or “pull rank” on parents. But the word kaveid has a more active and conspicuous aspect. It also means “to glorify.” Used as an adjective, it can mean “heavy.” The bridge concept is that of “laying on the praise” so that the glorified person is heavily laden with it, as if with fine garments, gold, silver, and precious gems (BDBG, pp. 457–59). This is respect writ very large. And it applies to both parents—a restatement in the Holiness Code of Leviticus even puts “mother” first (Lev. 19:3). Perhaps as significant as what the Commandment says, it does not insist that we love our parents. In most cases this demand would be unnecessary. And where, exceptionally, parents are not loved (possibly because they happen to be disagreeable people), the requirement to honor them nonetheless tends to obscure, even if it does not negate, lack of affection.6 The Torah here recognizes the limits of trying to command inner attitudes, though the injunction against covetousness refutes the glib notion that such attempts are futile and, therefore, dispensable. Connected to this “hard case” scenario of unlovable parents is the inclusion in the Commandment of a promised reward for obedience: “that you may long endure, and that you may fare well, in the land that the LORD your God is assigning to you.” It thereby tacitly concedes that to honor, or glorify, unloved parents may be a difficult assignment, and, therefore, seeks to channel self-interest on its behalf. The link to land is, moreover, not arbitrary. Land is enduring and solid—“the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts,” Scarlett O’Hara’s father tells her. (By being so single minded, does he thereby

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diminish his own credentials?) In addition to being the principal kind of inheritable property, it is, in its fecundity, analogous to family. Insofar as the present generation is seen by the next, the rising, generation to be conspicuously respectful toward parents, they cultivate the model of how they should be treated in their dotage, implant the habit of and desire for perpetuation, and lay the groundwork for families to endure, like the land, as meaningful continuous units through the ages. As important as honor, respect, and glorification are, there is a limit beyond which these behaviors and their underlying inclinations must not pass. Parents, like all other created beings, are not to be worshiped. The Deuteronomic language conveys this negative through a parenthetical positive. The words, “as the LORD your God has commanded you,” not only add force to the command, but also remind that the LORD, not parents, is “your God.” This distinction implies that Nietzsche’s gloss, “to follow [father’s and mother’s] will to the root of one’s soul,” is, like much else that emanated from his often overcharged mind, a fruitful exaggeration and misunderstanding. V The Tenth Commandment enjoins against coveting. In possible contrast to the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, mainstream Jewish thought maintains that man is created good but also free to choose the bad. But even the yetzer hara, the bad inclination, is not all bad, because without the possibility of choosing to do wrong, man’s right doing would be incomplete, automatic (like the behavior of animals), and, therefore, not truly praiseworthy, perhaps even meaningless. We may distinguish four different possible meanings of “covetousness.” First, there is a kind of jealous admiration for what someone else has, but that accepts the situation and, therefore, produces no corresponding action. It is coveting only in the sense of idly wishing that things had turned out differently, more to one’s own advantage, but that directs no ill will toward anyone else. Then, there is the same kind of jealousy that incites to permissible actions—for example, “I wish I were as wealthy as he is, so I will resolve to work harder,” or “I wish I had his house, so I will offer to buy it from him for a fair price, accepting that he has the right to refuse to sell it.” Then, there is the Ahab-Jezebel case—“I want Naboth’s vineyard, but he refuses to sell it, so I will do anything to get it” (cf. 1 Kings 21:1–16). This species is as obviously culpable as the first two are innocent. Most


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morally ambiguous is wishing someone else ill because of what he has, even taking pleasure in the thought of misfortune befalling him or fantasizing about harming him yourself, but not acting on these thoughts. This is what former President Carter surely meant, when he said, in his famous Playboy interview in 1976, that he had committed adultery in his heart. In this, he was echoing Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matt. 5:27–28)

We suggest that the first two meanings of the Commandment are not forbidden. Indeed, the second is what is meant by the teaching of the goodness of the yetzer hara, desire that produces ambition and constructive actions. But we must add that the thing desired should itself be worthy. That is, there is no virtue in going out and working hard for the sake of acquiring mere trifles or symbols of vanity. Here, as elsewhere, the means must be gauged largely by the end they pursue. Whether or not a good end can justify any proportional means, a bad end clearly taints such otherwise praiseworthy means as industriousness. The third meaning, coveting as the prelude to actual wrongdoing, just as clearly is forbidden. Concerning the fourth meaning, murdering or stealing or committing adultery “in one’s heart,” Hobbes argues that this is not really sinful, because our thoughts are largely involuntary responses to outside stimuli, and in themselves they hurt no one. Only actual attempts to do these things should be considered real coveting. It is only natural to wish ill on one’s enemies or to daydream about taking one’s pleasure, even with forbidden persons or things. We must “cut some slack” for human nature (Leviathan, chap. 27). As a matter of how to read the Torah, we differ from both Jesus and Hobbes, because both (though for contrary purposes), by collapsing coveting into the actions it contemplates, make the Tenth Commandment redundant. The Seventh and Eighth, which already cover the overt acts of taking what belongs to others (including their lawful spouses), arguably also includes overt, even unsuccessful, attempts to take them. The Tenth goes the further, distinct step of forbidding wicked thinking. The prohibition may be humanly unenforceable, but it is still an offense against God, Whose divine prerogative it is to command us to control our thoughts as well as our

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actions. This applies both prohibitively, as here, and affirmatively, as in the cardinal mitzvot of the Sh’ma and the Holiness Code of Leviticus, which Jesus described as the frame on which hang all the law and the prophetic teachings (Matt. 22:34–40): You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deut. 6:5)

and Love your fellow [alt: your neighbor—rei’akha] as yourself. (Lev. 19:18; see also 19:34)

B. T H C I The traditional Torah reading for the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most sacred day of the Jewish year, is Leviticus 18. It consists of a list of prohibited sexual unions and related sins, and forms part of what is called the Holiness Code, based on the statement at the start of chapter 19: “You shall be holy, for I, the LORD your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). Most of the forbidden sexual acts, described idiomatically as “uncovering nakedness,” involve intercourse with close relatives, though not all would qualify as incest under American law—for example, consorting with one’s sister-inlaw (Lev. 18:16). The list contains at least one apparent redundancy— having relations with a half sister is mentioned twice (Lev. 18:9, 11). Curiously, seduction of one’s natural daughter is not mentioned, although intercourse with one’s natural granddaughter, stepdaughter, and parents is (Lev. 18:10, 17, 7). And while homosexual relations between men and sexual relations of both men and women with beasts are forbidden, the list is silent on such relations between women (Lev. 18:22–23). In sum, the list is an odd assortment of sometimes complex and unlikely inclusions and equally puzzling omissions. Officially, the text explains why it reads as it does: “You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws” (Lev. 18:3). Whether all these odd practices were common among the Egyptians and the Canaanites we do not know. The Egyptian royal custom of marriage between brother and sister was probably a privilege reserved to the pharaohs because of their presumed divinity, rather than a general practice among commoners. Similarly,


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the Canaanites are thought to have performed human sacrifice sometime in their history (cf. Lev. 18:21), as well as cult prostitution, but the principal source for this information is the hardly impartial Hebrew Scripture itself, and the Israelites so thoroughly obliterated Canaanite culture that little independent evidence remains against which to check these assertions. Whatever may have been the case among these other ancient peoples, there is a source closer to home that sheds light on several of the Levitical prohibitions—the biblical narrative itself, in Genesis and the early chapters of Exodus, about the Patriarchs and other characters whose actions were important to the Israelites. We suggested above that a defining feature of this first segment of the Torah is the absence of the Law, with the consequent need for its characters to live by their wits. The Levitical Code places into relief the shortcomings of this improvisational mode of existence, while at the same time keeping the nation mindful of its legendary origins. Verse 7 forbids uncovering the nakedness of one’s father or mother. This recalls two stories from Genesis, both of which occur in the aftermath of great disasters. Following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the two daughters of Abraham’s nephew Lot believe themselves to be unmarriageable. So, in order to “maintain life,” they get their father drunk and lie with him while he is in a stupor. These irregular unions produce two sons who are the progenitors of the Moabite and Ammonite nations, Israel’s neighbors and traditional enemies (Gen. 19:30–38). There is no explicit account of someone having sexual relations with his mother, but in an epilogue to the Great Flood, Noah’s son Ham literally looks upon his father’s nakedness when Noah too falls into a drunken stupor (Gen. 9:20–27). As we suggested above, if we take the Levitical text’s linking of father and mother as an interpretive guide (husband and wife being “one flesh” [Gen. 2:23–24]), then Ham’s supposed indiscretion may be a metaphor for having intercourse with his mother—an action to which he could have been inspired by the example of the animals on the Ark (supra, chap. 1, A. VIII). Verse 8 forbids intercourse with one’s father’s wife. This describes the action of Jacob’s eldest son Reuben, who “went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine” (Gen. 35:22). Verse 9 forbids consorting with “your sister—your father’s daughter or your mother’s, whether born into the household or outside.” Verse 11 seemingly repeats a subset of this rule, “your father’s wife’s daughter, who was born into your father’s household.” The two sister or half sister formulations recall the parallel ruses tried by Abraham and Isaac on

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successive kings of Gerar, that their wives were really their sisters, but in reverse order. That is, the first, more open-ended formula applies to Isaac, who, unlike Abraham, does not go into detail about the precise line of Rebekah’s supposed consanguinity (Gen. 20:1–13; 26:6–11). The intervening verse 10, which forbids relations with one’s granddaughter, has no precise analogue in the narrative, but may allude obliquely to Abram’s marriage to Hagar, his old wife Sarai’s obviously much younger servant (Gen. 16:1–4). Verse 12 forbids intercourse with one’s father’s sister. This is the relation between Moses’ parents, Amram and Jochebed (Exod. 6:20). Verse 13 states the parallel injunction against consorting with one’s mother’s sister. This again recalls the Reuben-Bilhah incident. Jacob had married Bilhah, Rachel’s servant, after Rachel became frustrated at her apparent barrenness, “so that she may bear on my knees and that through her I may have children” (Gen. 30:1–8). Bilhah is thus a surrogate for Rachel, the sister of Reuben’s mother Leah. Another deflected image occurs in verse 14, which forbids union with one’s father’s brother’s wife. One character who appears briefly in Genesis is Milcah, the daughter of Abram’s brother Haran, who marries Abram’s and Haran’s other brother, her uncle Nahor (Gen. 11:27–29). The Levitical Law, which generally assumes the male perspective, translates this into the nearest male-centered counterpart, one’s paternal uncle’s wife. Verses 15–17 forbid, in turn, intercourse with one’s daughter-inlaw, one’s brother’s wife, and both a woman and her daughter or granddaughter. These all allude, from different angles, to the story of Judah and Tamar (Gen. 38). Tamar is Judah’s daughter-in-law. She seeks, albeit under circumstances that make it permissible, to consort with her dead husband Er’s brothers. The younger of these brothers, Judah’s third son Shelah, is still a child when Tamar becomes a widow. For practical purposes, he is of the third generation in this tangled story. Tamar thus has relations with Judah, his son Er, and seeks to do so with Shelah, who might as well be Judah’s grandson. As with the reference to Milcah, the Levitical text takes the male perspective and converts the men in this story into their female counterparts. Verse 18 enjoins against marrying a woman as a rival to her sister during the other’s lifetime. The example of Jacob’s marriages to Rachel and Leah is too obvious to need elaboration (Gen. 29:15– 30:24). Verse 19 cautions against approaching a woman during her menstrual period. It recalls Sarah’s skeptical laughter when the angelic visitors tell Abraham that she will have a son, even though “it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women” (Gen. 18:9–12).


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Verse 20 forbids carnal relations with a neighbor’s wife. One thinks of Joseph’s misadventure with Mrs. Potiphar (Gen. 39). (Although Joseph is merely a slave, he rises as near to being Potiphar’s “neighbor” as someone in that lowly status can.) Verse 21 turns from incest and adultery to apparently graver matters. It forbids human sacrifice: “Do not allow any of your offspring to be offered up to Molech, and do not profane the name of your God.” This arguably alludes to the akeidah. However much we may admire Abraham for his faith, we are not supposed to imitate his action (Gen. 22:1–19). Verse 22 forbids male homosexuality. Notwithstanding revisionist interpretations of the episode, the role of homosexuality in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is too plain to deny (Gen. 19:4–10). Finally, verse 23 prohibits carnal relations of either men or women with beasts. While there is no literal instance of this in the prior narrative, the terms for ass, hamor and ason, are sometimes used as derogatory slang expressions for Canaanite. As such, they recall the marriages of Judah and his son Er to Canaanite women, for which Jacob arguably ridicules him in his deathbed statement, and the rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah by a Canaanite prince, Shechem, whose father’s name is Hamor (Gen. 49:11; 34).7 II A similar approach might be tried for chapter 19. For example, verses 16–19 command, inter alia, against scandal-mongering, hating one’s brother, taking vengeance, and putting on garments of mixed material. These recall events in Joseph’s career (Gen. 37:2, 4, 8, 18–27; 41:42). (The term for mixed cloth, shaatnez, is perhaps an Egyptian loan-word [BDBG, p. 1043].) Again, the injunctions, in verses 31 and 32, not to turn to ghosts and familiar spirits, and to rise before the aged and show deference to the old, seem to anticipate an incident toward the end of King Saul’s life. On the eve of his final battle against the Philistines, Saul has a sorceress conjure up the ghost of the prophet Samuel to discover what fate awaits him, and then falls into a swoon before that spirit when he hears the fatal forecast (1 Sam. 28:3–20). But narrative connections with most of the other passages are not nearly so obvious, and a different organizing principle, one with perhaps more human appeal, is available. We should first acknowledge what meets the eye, that this chapter presents an apparently odd assortment of rules on various subjects. A few, at verses 3, 4, 11, 12, and 30, paraphrase the Ten Commandments. Many others are grandly moral, including the popular “love thy

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neighbor as thyself,” which should be read in conjunction with the less trendy preceding verse, “thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor, and not bear sin because of him”—that is, Be judgmental! (Lev. 19:18, 17 [Hertz, pp. 502, 501].) Other rules, though morally keen, focus more narrowly on particular situations (Lev. 19:9, 10, 13–16, 29, 32, 35–36). Still others seem more concerned with religious ritual and folk customs (Lev. 19:5–8, 19–28, 31). These descriptive terms may run counter to the rabbinical tradition, which resists the common, characteristically Christian, distinction between the moral and the ceremonial law. We can readily appreciate this resistance. It is a short step from distinguishing between these two aspects of the Law to devaluing the latter as “merely ceremonial,” and thus dispensable. On the other hand, a determined refusal to recognize this distinction defies common sense—rather like saying, within the secular sphere, that the law is the law, and, therefore, it is just as bad to litter or jaywalk as to commit murder. What, then, is Leviticus 19’s organizing principle? The previous chapter, we recall, consists mostly of prohibitions having the overall effect of channeling a man’s sexual attentions toward a wife who falls within definite parameters. That is, it establishes practical preconditions for a sound and stable family structure. It should, therefore, not surprise that the first specific command of the present chapter is to revere one’s mother and father, in that order (Lev. 19:3). This is chronologically the first obligation that a child, growing up in a wellconstituted family, would incur. This is followed by commands to “keep My sabbaths,” not turn to idols, consume sacrifices of wellbeing to the LORD on the same day the sacrificial animal is offered or the next day, and leave the gleanings of one’s harvest and the fallen fruit of one’s vineyard for the poor and the stranger (Lev. 19:3–10). As varied as these rules are, they are all things a reasonably alert child could be expected to notice and appreciate while still young. The command about not eating meat that is more than a day old may be an especially appropriate means, in an age that lacked refrigeration, to impress on young children that our eating habits are not those of scavenging beasts—that we are sanctified eaters.8 The next set of rules—dealing with theft, deception, false oaths, fraud, and exploitation of the disadvantaged—concerns the kinds of things a person would encounter as he moves from childhood through youth and into adulthood, and as he assumes the responsibilities that come with property ownership and economic dealings (Lev. 19:11–14). Verses 15–18 shift the focus to such a person’s public capacity, as a citizen or possible judge, magistrate, or leader of the people: “You shall


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not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich. . . . Do not profit by the blood of your fellow. . . . Reprove your kinsman. . . . You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself.” Verses 20–22 present a rule of atonement for consorting with a female slave who has been designated for another man. While we may be irked by its content, we note that it presupposes a man of adult years, adequate means, and lively instincts. Verse 29 commands against giving one’s daughter over to harlotry. Its addressee is thus an adult who is old enough to have a daughter of marriageable age. The injunctions against recourse to ghosts and for displays of respect to the elderly, at verses 31 and 32, reflect the normal concerns of those who are nearing the end of their life. Finally, the rules at verses 33–36, dealing with treatment of foreigners, are a kind of postscript, not because they come at the end of one’s life, but because the biographical structure of the preceding list might be unduly disrupted were they mentioned sooner. And the command to love the stranger as yourself nicely parallels and expands upon the earlier passage, which focuses on one’s fellow countryman (Lev. 19:34, 18). We have not touched every item in this chapter, but, we trust, have established well enough that the Holiness Code is not just a random collection of sanctifying actions, but a guide on how to lead a sanctified life from beginning to end.

C. M L  J I Education mostly consists of becoming acquainted with the new, strange, or exotic. It also includes the converse, taking what is already familiar and seeing it as strange and different, in part so we can more fully appreciate what we have. In Exodus 12, Moses instructs the Israelites on the law of Passover. Because Passover is so established a religious institution, we might overlook the several ways in which this instruction is remarkable. In delivering this law Moses writes on an almost blank slate. Judaism is rightly seen as a highly legalistic religion, planted thick with numerous and intricate commandments—by traditional count, 613 in the Torah, plus all the secondary rules built upon them. But at this point in the biblical narrative, the Israelites have hardly any laws. Perhaps they follow the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision— Pharaoh’s daughter does recognize the infant Moses as a Hebrew child (Exod. 2:6). But perhaps not. The custom lapses during their

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forty years of wandering, for Joshua has the desert-born generation of men circumcised when they cross into the Promised Land (Josh. 5:2–8); Moses neglects to circumcise his own son (Exod. 4:24–26); and in any event, the practice was also common among the Egyptians. We can imagine other ways to recognize an infant’s nationality. (Cecil B. DeMille, perhaps not just out of delicacy, had Baby Moses wrapped in a cloth of distinctly Hebrew design.) Perhaps they observe the peculiar dietary restriction mentioned after Jacob’s wrestling match, of not eating the thigh muscle on the socket of the hip, but the full-fledged dietary code is not yet in place (cf. Lev. 11). Whatever these Hebrew slaves in Egypt later become, when Moses speaks to them they are not yet recognizable Jews. The LORD begins this commandment to Moses and Aaron by focusing on the calendar: “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you” (Exod. 12:2). We commonly think of the Hebrew year beginning in the autumn, with Rosh Hashanah (“head of the year”), but this text says otherwise, as does the one read on Rosh Hashanah, which refers to the holiday in other ways: “In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a sacred occasion [mikrakodesh]: you shall not work at your occupations. You shall observe it as a day when the horn is sounded [yom truah]” (Num. 29:1). As long as we are founding a new calendar, why not begin the month with Passover itself, at the full moon? The formulation of the command— “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months”— suggests that lunar months running from new moon to new moon may be adopted from the surrounding Egyptian culture. Also, the preparations leading up to Passover—selecting and slaughtering the lamb or kid, smearing its blood on the doorposts and lintel, and clearing the houses of leaven—must be seen as integral to the event itself (Exod. 12:3–7, 18–20). We would probably find the cooking instructions for the lamb strange, even off-putting: “Do not eat any of it raw, or cooked in any way with water, but roasted—head, legs, and entrails—over the fire” (Exod. 12:9). Rabbi A. Y. Kahan, in The Taryag Mitzvos, an Orthodox compilation of the 613 Torahidic commandments, explains that roast lamb was “a royal dish,” off-limits for slaves. Its consumption by the Israelites was, therefore, a mark of their liberation (p. 16). But he sidesteps the detail about cooking it with entrails intact, by intruding the anachronism of the Temple at Jerusalem, built about three centuries after the Exodus, that the animal’s blood, entrails, and fat would be separated for a burnt offering at the Temple’s altar, with the


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celebrant then partaking of the remainder at home with his friends and family (p. 14). The requirement that the animal be cooked whole and thoroughly would probably much extend the cooking time. This runs contrary to the general teaching that the Passover meal, which must be eaten hurriedly, should also be prepared in haste (Exod. 12:11; Hertz, p. 255). It at least suggests that whatever the external exigencies might be, some sacred tasks must be carried out slowly and to the letter. We conjecture that keeping the entrails in while it roasts would make the meat taste unpleasant, which, combined with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (Exod. 12:8), would yield a rather nasty culinary experience—not the food of royalty, but perhaps of gods, whose altar sacrifices routinely include the inward parts of animals. The LORD, after all, is, by striking down the firstborn of Egypt, man and beast, also executing judgment on all the gods of Egypt (Exod. 12:12). If the Egyptian gods are dethroned, might not the triumphant Israelites be tempted to exalt themselves as gods? In that case, a Passover meal that is emphatically bad tasting would caution them against such hubris. II When we feel overwhelmed by data aplenty, it is useful to look for underlying structures and overarching principles that explain each item’s location and may even suggest what to expect next. The three chapters in Exodus following the Ten Commandments list about forty-five rules, on a wide variety of subjects: slavery; homicides; assaults; theft; acts of negligence; loss of or damage to property; seduction of virgins; sorcery; sexual deviance; apostasy; treatment of foreigners, widows, and orphans; moneylending; judicial process; Sabbath and festival observance; and dietary regulation, among others. It is a bewildering array that at first glance seems to lack any organizing principle. But as we learn from a convoluted and arcane section of an Orthodox prayer book, “A dubious word or passage is explained from its context [in’yan] or from a subsequent expression.”9 The Aramaic in’yan has the Scriptural meaning of “task” or “occupation” (BDBG, p. 775). A context can be defined by a prior passage that establishes an agenda for the passage under review. Thus, the Ten Commandments, the proximately preceding passage, sets the agenda elaborated in these rules and provides categories that help explain their grouping. The first several rules are about slavery; the Ten Commandments begin with the statement, “I the LORD am your God, who brought

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you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage [lit., “slaves”— avodim]” (Exod. 21:2–11; 20:2). God has liberated the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, but slavery as an institution will persist. Therefore, we must regulate it. The Sixth Commandment forbids murder, but not all killing is murder. Therefore, we need a set of rules that distinguish between murder and such things as accidental or incidental homicide. Because the penalty for premeditated murder is death, this section also includes rules for other crimes that entail capital punishment, such as kidnapping someone for the purpose of selling him (presumably to foreigners) into slavery—a kind of murder on the installment plan—or negligence that results in someone’s death where the culpable party had prior warning of the danger (Exod. 20:13; 21:12–32). In the midst of this part of the list, flanking the rule about kidnapping, there are two rules that recall the Fifth Commandment by prescribing death for someone who strikes his parents or treats them contemptuously (Exod. 20:12; 21:15, 17). The placement of the kidnapping rule between these two reminds us, perhaps recalling the story of Joseph, that this crime also strikes at parental-filial relations, by depriving parents of their children and children of their parents. The rules about negligence resulting in someone’s death naturally enough segue into rules about negligence resulting in the death of one’s beasts of burden, and these to rules concerning theft of such beasts and other property—the subject of the Eighth Commandment— and these in turn to rules about the loss of inanimate property due to negligence (Exod. 21:33–22:14; 20:13). Passed over in this sequence is the Seventh Commandment, forbidding adultery, which is implicated in the next rule, concerning seduction of unbetrothed virgins, a situation that needs to be distinguished from adultery (Exod. 20:13; 22:15–16). Following the seduction rule, the focus shifts back to matters that relate to the First Commandment’s injunction, “You shall have no other gods besides Me,” and the Second’s prohibition of idolatry, in the form of three rules that forbid sorcery, having sexual relations with animals (a practice, which, we suppose, played some part in the pagan fertility cults), and sacrificing to gods other than the LORD (Exod. 20:3–6; 22:17–19). The already mentioned reference in the First Commandment to Egyptian slavery provides the context for the next rule, not to wrong or oppress foreigners, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And this rule connects to the next three, concerning ill treatment of others who, like strangers, are in disadvantaged positions: widows, orphans, and the poor (Exod. 20:2; 22:20–26).


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The Third Commandment, against misusing the LORD’s Name, informs the next rule, “You shall not revile God, nor put a curse upon a chieftain among your people” (Exod. 20:7; 22:27). As argued above, the Commandment primarily envisions misuse of the sacred Name as an instrument of conjuration, to pronounce inappropriate blessings and curses for selfish purposes (supra, A. III). But there are sacred occasions when the use of God’s Name as an instrument of blessing is called for. Hence, the next rules, requiring dedication to God of a portion of one’s new wine, firstborn sons, and the firstlings of one’s cattle and flocks (Exod. 22:28–29). If the method employed here is valid, we know what to expect in the remainder of the list—rules that implicate the Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Commandments, requiring Sabbath observance, prohibiting perjury and covetousness, and other rules derivative from them. As our high school geometry textbooks would occasionally say, often to our immense frustration, the proof of these theorems is left as an exercise for the reader. III There is a category of propositions known as legal fictions, stipulations accepted as true without proof. For example, the lawfully wedded husband of a woman who gives birth is presumed to be the child’s father. Of course, in any given case the legal fiction might be untrue, and could today be set aside based on DNA testing. Still, such rules are valuable. They dispense from the need to conduct inquiries that may be cumbersome, expensive, or impossible to resolve. And as is evident in this example, they implicitly reaffirm norms of how things should be. Exodus 21 provides instances of this phenomenon. It begins with a set of laws about slavery, an institution that the Torah permits, but the inherent severity of which it attempts to moderate: When you acquire a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years; in the seventh year he shall go free, without payment. . . . If his master gave him a wife, and she has borne him children, the wife and her children shall belong to the master, and he shall leave alone. But if the slave declares, “I love my master, and my wife and children: I do not wish to go free,” his master shall take him before God. He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall then remain his slave for life. (Exod. 21:2–6)

Disregarding the possible discrepancy between remaining his master’s slave for life (lit., forever—l’olam) and the later requirement of release in

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the semicentenary year of the Jubilee (Lev. 25:10), let us focus on a part of the formula that the slave who faces this moral dilemma is supposed to recite: “I love my master.” What is clear from the circumstances is that the poor fellow loves his wife and children enough to submit to extended servitude in order not to be separated from them, but that he would also love his master is not self-evident. Yet he must profess that he does, in order to maintain the public pretense that his submission is completely voluntary. But if this profession functions as it should, it will also impress upon the master the obligation to behave responsibly, in a way that is worthy of a freeman’s voluntary subjection. The next passage begins with one of the more unfortunate acts to which men may be driven by extreme poverty: When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not be freed as male slaves are. If she proves to be displeasing to her master, who designated her for himself, he must let her be redeemed; he shall not have the right to sell her to outsiders, since he broke faith with her. And if he designated her for his son, he shall deal with her as is the practice with free maidens. If he marries another, he must not withhold from this one her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. If he fails her in these three ways, she shall go free, without payment. (Exod. 21:7–11)

Clearly, this rule is about acquiring not just a household servant but a concubine, who, it commands, must be treated with something like the dignity of a wife and not as a mere sex slave. However desperate her father’s situation may have been, and however crude her master’s initial intention, the implicit legal fiction seems to be that she is desired for herself. And the limitations on the master’s arbitrary power encourage him to seek in his concubine qualities befitting a free woman. A cluster of rules that concern homicides produce an interesting implication: He who fatally strikes a man shall be put to death. If he did not do it by design, but it came about by an act of God, I will assign you a place to which he can flee. When a man schemes against another and kills him treacherously, you shall take him from My very altar to be put to death. . . . When men quarrel and one strikes the other with stone or fist, and he does not die but has to take to his bed—if he then gets up and walks outdoors upon his staff, the assailant shall go unpunished, except that he must pay for his idleness and his cure. (Exod. 21:12–14, 18–19)

Here is an obvious distinction between premeditated murder and accidental killing, as well as between intentional killing, which is an


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inexcusable crime, and the infliction of nonfatal injury, which is treated as a civil offense requiring only compensation for damages. Seemingly excluded in this analysis is the crime of attempted murder. Intentions are sometimes obviously important, as when a person is actually killed, but apparently at other times the need for finality—to just fix what is broken and get on with life—or perhaps the absence of a prison system to deal with intermediate-level crimes, compels the fiction that intentions are legally irrelevant. Also, in a quarrel, as distinguished from an ambush, malice may be equally present on both sides. One final example seems quaint, even charming: When a man steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or sells it, he shall pay five oxen for the ox, and four sheep for the sheep. . . . But if what he stole—whether ox or ass or sheep—is found alive in his possession, he shall pay double. (Exod. 21:37; 22:3)

Hertz notes of the latter case that one of the two compensating animals must be the one originally stolen (p. 311). (In the first case, the owner’s particular beast is either dead or presumed lost.) This seems to imply the legal fiction, probably close to common fact, that owners of animals do and should become personally attached to their beasts, and must, therefore, if the creature is irrecoverable, be compensated not only for material loss but for emotional grief as well. The Torah’s expression of kind regard toward our four-legged and winged cousins is one of its especially endearing features (cf. Lev. 22:27; Deut. 22:4, 6–7, 10; 25:4). IV The rules in Exodus 21–24 are not comprehensive. As Sarna observes, there are too many subjects left unmentioned for us to call this list a full-fledged legal code: ordinary laws of inheritance, the ceremonies that make marriages legal, general rules of sanctuary, and almost the whole realm of commercial law (Exploring Exodus, pp. 170–71). But some items merit special attention and comment. The first cluster of rules concerns the institution of slavery among the Israelites. Is it not remarkable that a people who had just emerged from the condition of slavery would adopt this institution? More, that the God who continually exhorts them to remember that they were strangers in the land of Egypt, and, therefore, to treat strangers kindly, would intrude it upon them! But perhaps this question proceeds from our own peculiarly modern, liberal democratic, bias.

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For most of human history slavery was not peculiar. Even today it can be found in some less enlightened, and less technologically developed, parts of the world, sanctioned by custom if not by the civil law. Supposing that, in the absence of machines that may make use of hard human labor unnecessary, slavery will be an ever-present temptation and perhaps an inevitable tendency (cf. Aristotle Politics 1253b33–39), what do the Mosaic rules teach? First, that it should be private. The institution described here is a kind of household slavery, in which the relations of master and servant are personal and involve mutual obligations. By contrast, in Egypt the Israelites were, like the Egyptians themselves, the servants of Pharaoh—that is, slaves of the state, a condition akin to modern communism. Second, Israelite slavery is a temporary arrangement, essentially a form of indentured servitude, usually imposed for inability to pay debts, and limited to six years in the first instance and to forty-nine by the later law of the Jubilee (Exod. 21:2–6; Lev. 25:8–12; cf. Exod. 22:3). And third, although a slave is considered his master’s property, one’s mastership can be forfeited for physically abusing his slave (Exod. 21:20–21, 26–27). As John Locke noted, this was not so much slavery as drudgery: “[T]he master of such a servant was so far from having an arbitrary power over his life, that he could not, at pleasure, so much as maim him, but the loss of an eye, or a tooth, set him free” (Second Treatise of Government, § 24). Like the rules about animal sacrifice, the intended effect of these laws is not to make tame men harsh but to help tame an inherently harsh institution. The second thing that strikes our attention is the number of crimes that carry the death penalty—not only premeditated murder, as we might expect, but also kidnapping, criminal negligence that results in someone’s death, striking or insulting one’s parents, witchcraft, having sexual relations with animals, and sacrificing to gods other than the LORD (Ex. 21:14–17; 22:17–19; cf. Lev. 27:29). Here too, we might view these provisions from a different angle, by considering the offenses for which capital punishment might have been imposed but is not—for example, theft of property, accidental homicide, and negligence that does not result in a death. Still, this code is more hard-headed than the rabbinical tradition’s declaration, “A sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seventy years is called destructive” (The Taryag Mitzvos, p. 45).10 Not surprisingly, several of the crimes described in these rules directly violate one or another of the Ten Commandments. Others do so by implication: Sorcery would likely include conjuration, or false use of the LORD’s Name. Kidnapping is


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an especially egregious form of theft. So too is the criminal negligence consisting of not guarding one’s animal that is known to be dangerous (Exod. 21:28–29). Though not theft, this offense is a very serious misuse of property, and if the beast kills a man it is murder at one remove. And the particular form of sexual deviance singled out here, bestiality, likely formed part of the cultic ceremonies of the local idolaters. Can we not say that the list taken as a whole, in light of its many references to the Ten Commandments—that most sacred of texts—confers a kind of sanctity on the punishment itself? On the other hand, would we really want to execute for all these misdeeds? To the extent that our answer is No, we might well ask, Why not? In the case of sorcery, probably because we no longer take the crime itself seriously. But if there really were witches who employed black magic to imitate divine power, would they not be prime candidates for execution? In the case of disrespect for parents, perhaps because we no longer take ourselves quite so seriously, or because we cannot imagine ourselves accusing our children, knowing that if convicted they would face execution. Would not parental affection generally prevent the penalty from being overused? In any event, the implementation procedure the Torah later prescribes is so hedged with conditions as to make it enforceable only in the most extreme instances (Deut. 21:18–21; infra, XIII). As for kidnapping (at least where the victim’s life is threatened) or failure to restrain a known dangerous animal, is there not some appeal in making these capital offenses? At least to make the death penalty available in these cases might impress upon public consciousness the gravity of these crimes. Of possible interest as a gauge of current attitudes is the observation of John Stuart Mill, the foremost liberal British political thinker of the nineteenth century, that “a people who are revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination” is unfit for self-government (Considerations on Representative Government, chap. 1). Let us look more closely at the “dangerous animal” rule: When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox is not to be punished. If, however, that ox has been in the habit of goring, and its owner, though warned, has failed to guard it, and it kills a man or a woman—the ox shall be stoned and its owner, too, shall be put to death. (Exod. 21:28–29)

The animal is to be stoned, and its flesh not eaten. Is this an actual punishment, which ascribes responsibility, and, therefore, moral

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comprehension, to a beast? There is a perversely plausible story that a medieval court in southern France tried a sow and her litter of piglets for trampling an infant. The mother pig was convicted and executed, but the little porkers were acquitted on the ground that they were too young to understand the charges against them. Such extravagance is not necessary to interpret the Torah. The stoning of the dangerous ox should be seen not as a punishment, but as a way to impress upon the community the gravity of the situation and the owner’s responsibility to keep watch over his animals, which are not just property but living, subrational, and, therefore, capricious beings. Similarly, the unavailability of the carcass as food prevents the owner or anyone else from incidentally profiting from a human victim’s death, and so muddying the moral waters by extracting a practical benefit from a calamitous event. Finally, let us note the dietary rule at Exodus 23:19: “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” This injunction, repeated twice elsewhere in the Torah (Exod. 34:26; Deut. 14:21), is the basis for the Jewish prohibition on eating meat and dairy products at the same meal. It has been suggested11 that this passage should be read in the context of the three rules that immediately precede it: Three times a year you shall hold a festival for Me: You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, . . . and the Feast of the Harvest, . . . and the Feast of Ingathering. . . . You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with anything leavened; and the fat of My festal offering shall not be left lying until morning. The choice first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the LORD your God. (Exod. 23:14–19)

That is, rather than being a general dietary restriction, the original prohibition on cooking a baby goat in its mother’s milk is parcel to a small set of specifications concerning sacrificial ceremonies at the three pilgrimages, and probably aims to distinguish the customs of the Israelite festivals from their Canaanite counterparts. V The adage that clothes make the man is inherently dubious, but the elaborate instructions concerning the ceremonial attire of the prospective Israelite priesthood (the kohanim), in Exodus 28–29, lends it some support. Some Christian denominations may be better equipped to appreciate these passages than most Jewish congregations in the West. Present day kohanim are distinguished only by birth


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status, which entitles them to certain ceremonial privileges, but they look pretty much like everyone else. It is among the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox clergy especially that the priests dress in a distinctive manner reminiscent of the kohein of antiquity, because it is deliberately patterned on the biblical description (Plaut, p. 617). (The late Cardinal Bernardin mused that God must have a sense of humor— look at the funny costumes he wants us to wear!) Reform Rabbi Gunther Plaut counts six separate items of priestly garb; Orthodox Rabbi A. Y. Kahan lists eight (Plaut, p. 616; The Taryag Mitzvos, p. 79). Either way, this was a very clothed priesthood, in contrast to the relatively unclothed, perhaps nearly naked, clergy of the Canaanite cults, as appears from the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal: [The prophets of Baal] took the bull that was given them; they prepared it, and invoked Baal by name from morning until noon, shouting, “O Baal, answer us!” . . . [T]hey performed a hopping dance about the altar that had been set up. . . . [T]hey shouted louder, and gashed themselves with knives and spears, according to their practice, until the blood streamed over them. (1 Kings 18:26, 28)

All this hopping, gashing, and bleeding would just not work for the covered Israelite priests. On the other hand, the description of the kohanic attire and of the investiture ceremony that follows it is not ascetic. The high priest’s costume is a spectacle of white, gold, blue, purple, and crimson cloth, punctuated by the variously colored gems on his breastplate. The hem of his robe is decorated with golden bells that are audible when he enters and leaves the sanctuary (Exod. 28:4–5, 17–20, 33–35). The investiture ceremony includes laying hands on the heads of the sacrificial bull and ram, applying the animals’ blood to the priests and the altar, and burning parts of the animals to produce a pleasing aroma. And the priests are commanded to eat part of the sacrifice (Exod. 29:10–12, 15–21, 25, 31–32). The total experience is designed to draw the Israelites’ thoughts to God by engaging all five senses without collapsing into sensuality. These detailed instructions, as well as those on the construction of the ark and the tabernacle, take forty days for Moses to receive and commit to writing or to memory (Exod. 24:18). We should recall what in the meantime is going on in the Israelite camp: the people’s impatience at Moses’ absence, their petition to Aaron to give them gods, his molding the Golden Calf, and their orgiastic celebration before it (Exod. 32:1–6). With the benefit of early twenty-first century

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“multitasking,” we can perhaps create in our mind’s eye a split-screen image of these two simultaneous sets of events, even coordinating some details into parallel episodes. We would see at a glance the construction of the ark on the one hand and the fashioning of the idol on the other; the anticipated clothing up of the kohanim, including Aaron, the kohein gadol (high priest), and the actual stripping down of the idolaters, perhaps also including Aaron; the dignity of the priestly investiture and the frenzy of the Calf worshipers. The artfulness of the contrast is nearly overwhelming. At the start of these instructions, the LORD tells Moses: “You shall bring forward your brother Aaron, with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests: Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron” (Exod. 28:1). We are so accustomed to identify the kohanim as the descendants of Aaron that it might not occur to ask just what the term “priest,” as used here, means. Prospectively, beginning with this passage, it means that first Aaron, then his sons, then their sons after them will be set apart to perform an elaborate set of functions, having primarily to do with offering sacrifices, but also including the practical occupations of health inspector, building inspector, and occasional judge (Lev. 13–15; Deut. 17:8–13 [“the levitical priests,” v. 9]; 19:15–21). What “kohein” already means up to this point is less clear. Just before the Israelites received the Ten Commandments, nine chapters earlier, the LORD had told Moses, “Go down, warn the people not to break through [the boundary around Mount Sinai] to the LORD to gaze, lest many of them perish. The priests also, who come near the LORD, must stay pure, lest the LORD break out against them” (Exod. 19:21–22). Apparently there are already priests among the people, but who they are and what they generally do is not stated. (Perhaps they are the ones blowing the shofarim while Mount Sinai smokes like a kiln and the earth trembles [Exod. 19:18–19].) The later designation of Aaron and his sons is, then, not the establishment of a new order where none had previously existed, but a narrowing of the priestly ranks from a preexisting talent pool. A few verses earlier still, the LORD had declared to the Israelites, through Moses, that if they obey Him faithfully and keep His covenant, “you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:5–6). The promise apparently is that of enjoying a favored status in God’s affections, but not of performing any special ceremonial duties. Other nations, too, have their kohanim. Moses’ father-in-law Jethro is “priest of Midian” (Exod. 2:16–21; 3:1; 18:1). Joseph’s father-in-law, the Egyptian Poti-phera, is “priest of On,” a member of


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an obviously prestigious, institutional priesthood (Gen. 41:45, 50; 46:20; 47:20–26). And Abraham, early in his career, encounters a priest: When he returned from defeating Cherdorlaomer and the kings with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh, which is the Valley of the King. And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High [El Elyon]. He blessed him, saying, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your foes into your hand.” And [Abram] gave him a tenth of everything. (Gen. 14:17–20)

The passage is pregnant with the symbols of future customs: blessings over wine and bread, the practice of tithing, and the phrase “God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth,” which became part of the standard Sabbath liturgy (Siddur Sim Shalom, p. 314). In immediate context, King Melchizedek seems to be a foil to the King of Sodom. Where Melchizedek recognizes that Abram is favored of God and celebrates him appropriately, the Sodomite king sees only a partner in dividing the spoils of war (Gen. 14:21–24). The only other potential reference to him in Hebrew Scripture occurs in the Psalms: The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek. (Ps. 110:4 [King James, p. 542])

But this last phrase, al-divrosi malki-tzedek, is ambiguous enough for JPS to translate it as “a rightful king by My decree,” and so not a reference to the person Melchizedek at all (Tanakh, p. 1243). (The Christian Testament makes more of Melchizedek, seeing in him a prefiguration of Christ, the perfect non-Levitical priest [Heb. 5–7].) Melchizedek is the first person in Scripture to be called a priest, just as Abraham is the first to be called a prophet (Gen. 20:7). Are they perhaps definitive of the common denominator of these two religious types? What defines Abraham and all future prophets is not any forecasting ability, which he does not display and others can while still being false prophets (Deut. 13:2–6), but their nearness to God. What defines Melchizedek and all true priests is their ability to perceive such nearness and their duty to honor it publicly.

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VI The Book of Leviticus does not read easily. Unlike Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, its narrative passages are relatively few and far between, and it lacks the kind of vivid characters who populate these other books. Nor does it display the soaring rhetoric of Moses’ valedictory speeches in Deuteronomy. Its dominant theme, rather, is laws—lots of them, largely concerned with the arcane ceremonies of the ancient priesthood, much of it focusing on animal sacrifice. In a word, it seems most out of step with our time’s characteristic concerns and mind set. A relatively recent gauge of this psychic distance is a case the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1993 that bears the exotic name The Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. The City of Hialeah.12 In this case, the Court struck down as religiously discriminatory a city ordinance banning the practice of animal sacrifice, which, one gathers from the Court’s description of the facts, is a standard feature of the Santeria religion, an amalgam of Christianity, voodoo, and West African paganism, whose adherents live principally in Cuba, the West Indies, and southern Florida. Over the past several decades, the religion clauses of the First Amendment have often proved quite troubling for the Court. It is not unusual in such cases for there to be no single opinion speaking for a majority of the justices, but rather a scattering of separate opinions applying different standards and approaches. This time, however, although there were some separate concurring opinions, the justices were unanimous concerning the result, and there was an official opinion of the Court. The local statute, they noted, did not simply forbid the killing of or cruelty to animals. It singled out “sacrifice,” and thus clearly evidenced a religious (more aptly, an antireligious) intent, directed against this particular sect. While the Court’s logic is straightforward, and its verdict perhaps inevitable, our appreciation of the result likely requires us to overcome a visceral revulsion toward the practice at issue. This sentiment is not peculiar to us. Under rabbinical interpretation, the rules of sacrifice are at least suspended until the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple. In place of animal sacrifice Judaism has substituted prayer and study. And in place of the hereditary priesthood, religious leadership has passed to the rabbis, a category of people whose claim to authority is not birth status but learning. Even during the Middle Ages, notable rabbis differed over whether animal sacrifice would be resumed in the rebuilt Temple of the Messianic Era. Some maintained that while the practice was


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appropriate to earlier, barbarous times, we have now progressed beyond the need for it. Thus, the sixteenth-century scholar Rabbi Joseph Caro does not include the subject in his codification of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch. On the other hand, Moses Maimonides, the foremost medieval Jewish philosopher, a follower of Aristotle, and generally regarded as an arch-rationalist within the rabbinical tradition, “believed [in the reinstitution of the sacrificial system] so strongly that in his code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, he devotes considerable space to this theme, and includes a full exposition of the sacrificial procedures so that when the Messiah arrives and the Temple service is restored Priests will know how to carry on.”13 Currently, Orthodox prayer books retain traditional references to sacrifices, those of the Reform and Reconstructionist movements have eliminated these prayers, and the Conservative Siddur Sim Shalom provides a middle ground position, calling upon God to lead the Jews to their homeland, where “our ancestors sacrificed,” so that we “may . . . worship” (p. 435). The generic term for all sacrifices and offerings, korban, is derived from korav, which means to approach or draw near (BDBG, pp. 897–98). The act of sacrificing manifests the natural human desire to get closer to God, which finds Scriptural expression as early as the second generation of mankind, in the story of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:3–5). Although the array of sacrifices in the Levitical Law can bewilder, one distinction is basic and readily accessible. There is the olah, the burnt offering, which is entirely consumed on the altar, and thereby displays one familiar sense of “sacrifice”—to give up, forgo, do without. And there is everything else, various sacrifices and offerings in which the person shares with God (or with the priests and Levites) a part of something of which he also partakes and enjoys. Both are ways of drawing near. The sacrificial system imposes strict limits at both ends of the scale, so that the act of sacrificing not become trivial on the one hand or excessive, ostentatious, and the occasion for self-glorification on the other. In particular, this system quite precludes human sacrifice. VII We learn in Leviticus 25 about the Sabbath of the Land, when the land is supposed to “rest,” that is, lie fallow every seventh year, and about the institution of the Jubilee every fiftieth year, when Hebrew slaves should be freed and alienated landholdings returned to their proprietary families. The former is both sound agricultural practice

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and an act of piety—the extension to our little piece of inanimate nature of the privilege and duty to rest that we enjoy in imitation of God. It thus implicitly affirms the interconnectedness of all Creation. If the agrarian seventh year is so obviously analogous to the Sabbath, the Jubilee Year seems to correspond in its numerical description to the holiday of Shavuot (Pentecost): You shall count off seven weeks of years—seven times seven years—so that the period of seven weeks of years gives you a total of forty-nine years. . . . [The] fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you. (Lev. 25:8, 11)

Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments. It requires annual return to this concise encapsulation of Jewish laws and traditions. Similarly, the Jubilee returns the land to the families of its ancestral owners, and it returns indentured servants to the free status requisite to membership in a self-governing community. If the defining theme of the seventh year is Rest, then that of the fiftieth is Return. The Jubilee’s redistribution of property invites comparison to the occasional agrarian reform laws that took place in ancient Rome and reflection on how different our politics might be if wealth were periodically equalized as a remedy for gross inequities that develop over time. These are natural enough thoughts for people of the twentieth century, an age when socialism was so much in the air. So we even find Rabbi Hertz succumbing to the tendency to regard the Jubilee as a “safeguard against deadening poverty,” which, by keeping houses and lands “from accumulating in the hands of the few,” aimed at “the emancipation of the individual from the shackles of poverty, and the readjustment of the various strata in the commonwealth in accordance with social justice” (p. 532). This description is edifying and contains a kernel of truth, but it oversimplifies a complex rule, and in a crucial respect misses the point. The Jubilee rules distinguish six different forms of property that are to be treated in various ways. Hebrew slaves are to be emancipated, but not Gentile slaves. Alienated landholdings are to be restored to their original owners, or their families, or the nearest of kin clan members of their original owners’ families. But alienated property within walled cities that has not been repurchased within a year of its sale is not restored. Dwellings within unwalled cities are treated like alienated land, and so are dwellings that belong to Levites, even if they are within walled cities. While there is an element of equalization


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here, just as evident are elements of rank, orders, and privilege— natives over foreigners, Levites over ordinary Israelites, and especially land over other property. The preference given to Hebrew over Gentile slaves is straightforward ethnic discrimination, of a kind that needs no explaining. The emancipation of all Hebrew slaves at fifty-year intervals modifies an earlier rule in the Book of Exodus, which allowed a Hebrew slave’s term of service, ordinarily limited to six years, to be extended “for life” (Exod. 21:2–6; supra, III and IV). Apparently, “for life” must be read elliptically, as “until he dies or the year of the Jubilee, whichever comes first.” The Levitical exception is perhaps compensatory justice, to offset the Levites’ landless status. But the more general exception of urban property from the redistribution rule is significant. Far from equalizing wealth, it permits development of a potentially quite wealthy class of urban property holders and entrepreneurs. Insofar as the Jubilee law takes something from them, it does so only indirectly, not by making them share their commercial wealth with the poor, but by requiring them to divert some of it to recover ancestral estates they might prefer not to have. Further, the reconstituted ancestral land holdings are not limited in size, and, depending on the circumstances of particular tribes, clans, and families, could be very unequal. The numbers of the tribe of Benjamin, whose near annihilation in a civil war is described in Judges 19–21, are much reduced, but the ancestral tribal territory remains the same. Consequently, the surviving Benjaminite families can be enormously wealthy and influential. (It is, we suspect, not only because he is from the smallest tribe, or because he stands a head taller than everyone else, that Saul is chosen to be the first king of Israel.) Thus, consolidation of large familial estates may even, as a result of unforeseen intervening events, be reinforced by periodic application of the Jubilee law. The Jubilee law is thus not, as Hertz and others would have it, essentially about social leveling. Rather, its egalitarian implications are secondary to a different, markedly conservative main point—to keep the people rooted in the land and in their traditions. In this respect, it resembles the story of Zelophehad’s daughters in the Book of Numbers, which may at first appear to be about female emancipation, but upon closer examination turns out to pursue another agenda—to guard against the destitution of orphaned women, for the sake of which a limited degree of female equality is instrumental. And as with that case, if perverse results are to be avoided, the rule may in actual

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practice need to be reexamined and perhaps repaired by some compensating rule (Num. 27, 36).14 Let us apply this observation to the Jubilee’s counterpart, Shavuot. Every year we revisit and reaffirm the Ten Commandments and its derivative rules and customs. They are ours! We will keep and remember them! But might their application to changed circumstances require reevaluating their practical meaning, while still adhering to core principles? What does the injunction against idolatry mean in an age when no one any longer literally worships carved or sculpted statues? Of what account is the promise, attached to honoring one’s parents, to lengthen one’s days “on the land which the LORD your God has given you,” for a people in Diaspora? What is murder, when the very definition of life is a matter of dispute? If the relation between the Jubilee and Shavuot is reciprocal, we are thus led not only to the theme of Return but also to Adaptation. VIII The concluding chapter of Leviticus is about personal vows to the LORD—that is, pledges, either of money, based on a standard table of valuation according to one’s age and sex, or of cattle, a house, or a field. It is rather technical material, apt to inspire indifference, except perhaps for this passage: And if [the thing pledged] be a beast, whereof men bring an offering unto the LORD, all that any man giveth of such unto the LORD shall be holy. He shall not alter it, nor change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good; and if he shall at all change beast for beast, then both it and that for which it is changed shall be holy. (Lev. 27:9–10 [Hertz, p. 548])

Two kinds of substitution for a pledged beast are apparently prohibited—the one covered by the command “He shall not alter it” (lo yahalifenu), the other by the phrase “nor change it” (v’lo-yamir oso). The former term implies a more radical replacement of one being for another. (Its root, halaf, is sometimes used to refer to the succession of one ruler upon the death of another, as in the Arabic title “Caliph”—successor to Mohammed [BDBG, p. 338].) Hertz explains the difference, plausibly, as follows: “Alter is to replace one species by another, e.g. a bull for a sheep; change refers to different members of the same species” (p. 548). The first kind of replacement is simply forbidden. So too, it seems, is the second, but then the text hedges on


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its own command and instructs on what to do if the less radical exchange of one beast for another of the same species is made. This is at least curious—one does not ordinarily expect equivocation in commands. (Just imagine: “Thou shalt not commit adultery. . . . But if you must, then do it this way. . . .”!) The “Stone” Chumash explains this complication as a precaution against evil inclination, in case someone, having sanctified an animal, changes his mind and wishes to substitute an inferior one for it. It applies the same penalty to substitution even of a better victim, “because if people were permitted to substitute in some circumstances, they might feel free to do so in other cases as well” (Scherman, p. 719). It never hurts to anticipate and correct for evil inclinations, and for this purpose the explanation works well enough. But if this were the only concern, the remedy could just as well be a simple, absolute prohibition on this kind of substitution as well as the previous kind. The point, however, is that the text permits such substitutions within the stipulated restrictions. When would this be warranted? Not when animated by evil inclinations, but by good—when, for example, a person’s fortunes have improved and he wishes to exceed his vow by providing a better beast as a mark of gratitude. By focusing exclusively on the “down side” of human nature, the preceding interpretation obscures both the text’s appreciation for noble inclinations and the possibility that sometimes change can be improvement. Moreover, allowing this kind of regulated “change” nicely reinforces the absolute prohibition on “alteration” of one’s vow: As long as you can demonstrate generosity by upgrading your pledge from one sheep to two, why should you want to transform it into a different pledge of an ox? And the requirement to preserve within view the original pledged animal along with the new may impose a helpful limit even on such upgrading. You may get away with adding a second beast, but a third or a whole flock would imply either stinginess in the original vow or ostentatious excess in the final delivery. An echo of this rule’s language was adapted into the Sabbath hymn Yigdal, a poetic rendition of Moses Maimonides’ “Thirteen Articles of the Faith”: “Lo yahalif ha-El v’lo yamir daso l’olamim l’zulaso— God will never replace or change for another” the Torah that He gave to His people through His prophet Moses (Siddur Sim Shalom, p. 326). If Maimonides, or, following him, the medieval poet Daniel ben Judah, had the Levitical text in mind, we may do well to apply the same interpretive guidelines to this statement: The Torah will never be replaced by another of a “different species”—that is, another religion’s doctrines or sacred texts. Nor will it ever be changed by

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another Jewish text that removes it from view. But changes “within the species”—supplementary teachings that preserve and enhance the Torah of Moses—are permissible if nobly motivated and accomplished with moderation. IX Numbers 6 presents the rule of the Nazirites, a kind of religious order in ancient Israel, but one consisting of individuals rather than of people living together as a community. There is apparently some question as to whether the Nazirites dedicated themselves out of spontaneous and extraordinary piety or were penitent sinners.15 Either way, they were distinguished by three peculiar vows: to abstain from wine and other strong drink and from grapes and grape products, to not cut their hair, and to avoid contact with corpses. The most famous nazir was Samson, whose parents dedicated him for life, on instruction from an angel of God, before he was born (Judges 13:2–7). The prophet Samuel may have been similarly dedicated for life by his mother (1 Sam. 1:11). But the relevant Torah passage clearly envisions that one could consecrate himself or herself to the LORD as a nazir for a stipulated limited time (Num. 6:4–8, 13, 18, 20). The nazir’s vows entail real deprivations. They deny themselves the pleasures of intoxication and certain enjoyable tastes, the pride and comfort of neat appearance, and the consolation of participating in rites of mourning, even for immediate relatives (Num. 6:6–8). Accidental contact with or proximity to a corpse abrogates their vow, so their period of dedication must begin anew (Num. 6:9–12). These deprivations are just as noteworthy for what they do not include. There are no vows of celibacy—as the example of Samson, whose fondness for the ladies was notorious, makes abundantly clear—no monastic seclusion, and no acts of self-mutilation or other morbid practices. And while other vows of offering to the LORD are permissible and, once made, binding (Num. 6:21), these limitations on the vows of the nazir establish a tone of moderation to guide such other self-imposed obligations. The Nazirite rule provides a model of how to give the generally commendable motivation of religious zeal its due while not setting it at war with human nature in the manner of later, ascetic movements. X Textual interpretation consists in part of “connecting the dots”— describing and explaining linkages among parallel texts. There are at


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least three such “dots” implicit in Numbers 19, which deals with the ritual of the red heifer, but even after drawing the connecting lines, the picture that emerges in still unclear. A “red cow without blemish” or defect, “on which no yoke has been laid,” is to be slaughtered and burned outside the camp in the presence of Eleazar the priest. The parah or heifer is a young cow, not yet used for a secular purpose, the reddishness of whose coat is not compromised by so much as two hairs of another color—apparently, a very rare creature (Hertz, p. 652). The carcass is to be burned completely—hide, flesh, blood, and dung—and the priest is to throw some cedar wood, hyssop (a spongy, leafy plant), and “crimson stuff” into the fire consuming it. The ashes are to be gathered and preserved outside the camp in a clean (ritually pure) place. The priest and the person who did the burning are to bathe, and they and he who gathered the ashes are to wash their clothing. They are considered ritually impure for the remainder of the day. The ashes are to be mixed with fresh water, and the suspension of ashes in water used as a purifying agent for those who have become unclean by virtue of contact with a corpse or a human bone or a grave, and for tents in which someone has died and for those who enter such tents and for open vessels within them. On the third and seventh day of their impurity, a ritually pure person is to take some hyssop, dip it into the cleansing water, and sprinkle the water on the unclean person, tent, or vessel. They shall become clean at the end of the seventh day (the unclean person after washing his clothes and bathing). The person who sprinkles or touches the cleansing water, whatever he touches, and whoever touches him, shall be unclean until the evening (Num. 19:1–22). There is an obvious connection between this passage and the episode of the Golden Calf. There, the molten replica of a young beef was also burned to ashes, the ashes mixed with water, and the resultant mixture distributed among the erring Israelites (Exod. 32:20). But the parallel is a mirror image, a set of contrasting reflections. An innocent young female bovine takes the place of the idol of a young bull that inspired the Israelites to some very un-innocent conduct (Exod. 2:6). The Golden Calf became red through the process of burning, pulverizing, and mixing with water (the color of a colloidal suspension of gold dust is blood red); the heifer begins red and is then burnt to ashes and admixed. Moses made the Israelites drink the Golden Calf mixture; that of the red heifer is applied to the impure person’s or thing’s surface. The one punished by sickening (Exod. 32:35); the other cleanses. That Eleazar rather than Aaron is to preside at the slaughter and burning of the first red heifer recalls that Aaron’s credentials were tarnished for this purpose, but not for his

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other priestly functions, by his role in the Golden Calf incident (Hertz, pp. 652–53). In addition to cleansing from the impurity incident to any ordinary contact with a corpse, the ritual thus also reminds the Israelites of this first great apostasy and idolatry, in which 3,000 idolaters were killed by the Levites and contact with corpses must have been many. Although only the Levites put down the Golden Calf idolaters, Moses’ call for volunteers was unrestricted (Exod. 32:26). This may explain why the one dispensing the red heifer cleansing water apparently need not be a priest. The red heifer ritual is announced now, after Korah’s unsuccessful rebellion, because it is the occasion of a second, even more widespread, mass carnage among the Israelites, in which almost 15,000 perish (Num. 16:27–35; 17:8–14). Thus far we have a neat and rich-in-detail correspondence between two passages. But another feature of the red heifer ritual redirects our attention. While the heifer is being burnt, the priest is to throw “cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff” into the fire (Num. 19:6; Hertz and King James: “cedarwood, and hyssop, and scarlet”). The same combination of ingredients is used in the cleansing ritual for those who suffer from the skin ailment called tzaraat (Lev. 14:4, 6, 49, 51, 52). Like the impurity addressed in the red heifer ritual, tzaraat can affect dwellings and certain objects as well as people, and the stipulation that the heifer be completely red recalls that a symptom of tzaraat is discoloration, including discoloration of the hair (Lev. 13, esp. vv. 20, 21, 26, 29–37). And just as the narrative contains a recent corpse-littered rebellion, it also features a relatively recent incidence of tzaraat in the story of Miriam’s gossiping against Moses because of his Cushite wife (Num. 12). Mention of hyssop establishes yet a third textual association. Bunches of this plant were the brush-like instruments used in the Exodus story to smear the Passover lamb’s blood on the lintel and doorposts of the Israelite houses in Egypt prior to the tenth plague, the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn (Exod. 12:22). Does the present passage link this one in Exodus to those in Leviticus? Was the means of the Egyptian firstborns’ death a sudden and virulent outbreak of tzaraat? We recall that the threat of this disease was one of the demonstrations Moses had at his disposal to convince the Israelites (and a fortiori the Egyptians) of his credentials as the LORD’s messenger (Exod. 3:6–8; supra, chap. 2, V). However this may be, the ritual of the red heifer is the last rule the Israelites receive at this stage in the biblical chronology. When the narrative resumes in the next passage, it is 38 years later, the generation


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of the craven spies and Korah’s rebellion has passed from the scene, and the Israelites are again poised to advance into Canaan. However in particular we connect the dots, the red heifer passage is a capstone or exclamation point, tying up loose ends for the generation of the Exodus. XI In a long and impassioned section of his valedictory address in the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses declaims on the subject of apostasy, prescribing death and destruction for culpable individuals and even entire towns (Deut. 12:29–13:16). Leaving aside the characteristically harsh punishment, we have here a neat short list of major fundamental ways in which people can be, and frequently are, misled. First, we can mislead ourselves out of curiosity—ordinarily a wholesome human inclination, without which progress would be impossible in the practical or speculative sciences. But curiosity has its dark side, and the text casts a keen glance into the depths to which a morbid curiosity may lead—inquiry into cults whose members offer up their own children as sacrifices (Deut. 12:31). Though intellectual defensiveness can lead to absurdities of insularity, a Torah that hedges our curiosity against the worst cultic possibilities is arguably a blessing. In the second place, we are sometimes misled by false prophets and dream interpreters—to restate it in modern idiom, by extraordinary leaders, who dazzle us with their (often genuine) talents—and not only religious leaders. Is not, for example, the art of economic forecasting, based on reading market data, as occult to most people as the things of which Moses speaks? As the text makes clear, the falseness of false prophecy does not consist of inaccurate prediction—their signs and portents may come true—but in deviation from God’s law (Deut. 13:2–5). Third, we can be led astray by friends and loved ones. This temptation may exert an especially strong emotional pull, as is suggested by the text’s intimate and comprehensive terms: “your brother, your own mother’s son,” “the wife of your bosom,” “either near to you or distant, anywhere from one end of the earth to the other” (Deut. 13:7–8). It may also be the peril of greatest vintage, the first instance of which was Eve’s enticement of Adam to eat the forbidden fruit— unless we consider the serpent in the Garden of Eden as the first example of a false prophet, whose predictions concerning the consequences of eating the fruit are accurate but who leads them away from God’s command (Gen. 3:1–7).

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The final kind of misleading is perhaps the most relevant to a democratic age. Whole communities can stray—perhaps initially on account of certain scoundrels, but thereafter by force of common opinion. A false view widely shared seems to shed half its falseness, if only because of the seeming futility of opposing the crowd. It may take the shock of an occasional Hitler to remind us that 17,000,000 Germans can be wrong. This supineness in the face of a shared error is the phenomenon that Alexis de Tocqueville called democracy’s “courtier spirit” (Democracy in America, vol. 1, part 2, chap. 7). Would it not be refreshing, just once, if a defeated candidate for public office were to begin and end his concession speech on election night, “The people have spoken, and they have erred”? XII Here are two-and-a-half translations of Deuteronomy 16:18–20. First, JPS (p. 301): You shall appoint magistrates and officials [shoftim v’shotrim] for your tribes, in all the settlements that the LORD your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall not judge unfairly [lo-sateh mishpat]: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes [v’lo-sikah shohad], for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just. Justice, justice shall you pursue [tzedek tzedek tirdof ], that you may thrive and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

And Hertz (pp. 820–21): Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, tribe by tribe; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons; neither shalt thou take a gift; for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous. Justice, justice shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

The “Stone” Chumash bears certain similarities to each of these, but renders tzedek as “righteousness” (Scherman, p. 1025). One can appreciate the translators’ dilemmas. The shoftim of the post-Conquest period were military leaders as well as judges, so JPS’s “magistrates” may be apt, but the immediate focus of this passage is on their judicial function, so “judges” may be too. Whether shohad is


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called a bribe or a gift may depend on whose perspective one adopts, the social critic’s or that of the donor or the recipient who wants to obscure the inherent temptation it carries to compromise the judge’s impartiality. Either way, whatever you call it, don’t do it! The difference between “justice” and “righteousness,” however, may have practical importance. Righteousness suggests moral rectitude, holiness, and a close adherence to the letter of God’s law, while justice is a more elastic term. It can mean all these things, but it can also look in the direction of equity, to the possibility of skirting the letter of the law in order to adhere to its spirit or basic principles. Here is a difference not only in terminology but also in jurisprudence, between what might be called strict versus broad construction. This ambiguity is anticipated in the previous sentence’s opening injunction, “Lo-sateh mishpat”—You shall not judge unfairly, or alternatively the archaic sounding but probably more literal “Thou shalt not wrest judgment.” Tateh is the imperative of natah, to stretch forth or extend (BDBG, pp. 639–41). Ordinarily, the word is either morally neutral, as in to spread out or pitch a tent, or it implies beneficence, as in the phrases “noteh shamayim—who stretches forth the heavens” or “bizroa n’tuyah—with an outstretched [protective] arm.” But in the present context it indicates distorting the law to reach an unwarranted or perverse result. Clearly, this fits the two examples the text gives of abandoning impartiality, to curry favor with persons of prominence (lit., “faces”—panim) or in return for bribes, but it does not definitively resolve the question whether to judge by the law’s letter or spirit. What it presupposes, however, is that there is a law that must not be forced or distorted. Whether we should judge strictly or broadly, the text seems to discountenance the kind of creative jurisprudence that would change the fundamental principles themselves for the sake of having a “living Constitution.” XIII We comment here on two commandments from Deuteronomy 21. If a man has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community. They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Thereupon the men of his town shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out

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evil from your midst: all Israel will hear and be afraid. (Deut. 21:18–21)

The image is so strikingly harsh that Hertz feels compelled to insist that, according to the Rabbis, it “was never once carried out,” and by virtue of its complicating details, could not be. It is present, rather, to warn against and to emphasize the heinousness of disobeying parents (p. 842). We should not doubt that the command’s intent is primarily deterrent, as may be all prescribed punishments. The requirements that accusation be brought by both parents, that they do so publicly, and only after attempting personally to discipline their son guard against its being used often or lightly. And the stipulation that they allege gluttony and drunkenness seemingly excludes the son whose disobedience does not involve these specific vices— otherwise, the accusation would entail bearing false witness. On the other hand, these hurdles are not insurmountable. And the very severe notion of parental authority that a “naïve” reading suggests is consistent with the image Moses earlier ascribes to the LORD: “Bear in mind that the LORD your God disciplines you just as a man disciplines his son” (Deut. 8:5)—that is, with forty years of desert wandering, during which an entire generation perishes. However “affectionate, and even indulgent” (Hertz, p. 841) Jewish parents may have become, the Mosaic teaching seems to be made of sterner stuff. Hertz also draws an invidious comparison between the judicial procedure implicit in the Mosaic Law and the Roman law under which “a father could at will put even a grown-up son to death” (p. 841). It is unclear how often this Roman law was actually used, but a story in Livy’s History of Rome suggests that it too may have been rare and exceptional. During the Latin War of 340 BCE, the general Titus Manlius Torquatus had his son executed for violating military orders. The younger Titus’s disobedience consisted of engaging and killing one of the enemy commanders in single combat without the consuls’ permission. (A similar incident occurs in Israelite history when King Saul nearly has his son Jonathan executed for violating a militarily much more questionable command [1 Sam. 14:24–45].) Even though Torquatus acted within his authority as commander in chief, Livy reports that his soldiers “were transfixed with horror by this dreadful command,” and that they greeted the young man’s execution with “agonized complaint so unrestrained that they spared neither laments nor curses” (VIII.7). Torquatus went


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on to win an important victory in the ensuing battle, largely through his considerable tactical skill. Nonetheless, when he returned to Rome, “only the older men went to meet him as he approached the City, and . . . the younger men loathed and abominated him then and afterwards throughout his life” (VIII.12). The other law is in the immediately succeeding passage: If a man is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you impale him on a stake [Hertz: “hang him on a tree”—v’salisa oso al-eitz], you must not let his corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury him the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God: you shall not defile the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess. (Deut. 21:22–23)

In itself, this is a very focused rule about the limited exposure and hasty burial of the remains of executed criminals. But the Rabbis derived from this command the general imperative that all deceased Jews must be buried quickly after death—usually within 24 or 48 hours, but in any event as soon as circumstances allow (Kolatch, I, 57; II, 185). One supposes the argument to be that if even convicted criminals must be accorded this dignity, then surely everyone else should be too. One could, of course, infer the opposite—that the corpses of criminals must be disposed of with haste not applicable to others, because the very sight of them is corrupting. The probable rabbinical logic is thus neither unreasonable nor compelling. One stretch that is altogether unreasonable is the Christian gloss that sees in this passage a description of crucifixion in general or a foretelling of the Crucifixion of Jesus in particular. Hertz notes that the “hanging” in this passage applies to the criminal only after he has been executed, as a “token of infamy” or a “further deterrent,” the “fiendish punishment” of death by crucifixion being a later, Roman invention (p. 842). The capital punishment that we read of most often in Scripture is stoning, but, we gather, sometime early in the Common Era, when the doctrine of the physical resurrection of the dead was gaining ground, that the Rabbis substituted strangulation as the standard method, so the bodies even of criminals could be preserved intact. The explicit reason for quick burial given in the Deuteronomic text is to avoid defiling the land. We should not overlook the possibility that this is meant, in its simplest, most superficial sense, to preclude the odor of decay. This meaning parallels the command in another nearby passage, to reserve an area outside the camp where the people

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can relieve themselves and to bury their excrement once they have done so (Deut. 23:13–15). It seems noteworthy that the law under review seeks only to limit undignified treatment of criminals’ corpses, but stops short of outright prohibition. Perhaps it thereby recognizes that the desire for this kind of revenge beyond the culprit’s death is natural and inevitable; and it channels this desire in a direction that, if crude, is nonetheless more benign than available alternatives, such as harassing his family. A rationalist might regard revenge taken against a corpse as an utterly senseless act. After all, the object of our indignation is beyond appreciating or even sensing it. One might, for the same reason, ask what all the fuss is about. Why get any more upset about the maltreatment of a corpse than of the dead person’s car, house, or golf clubs? None of these things, including the corpse, is the person. Yet the mutilation of corpses seems to be something that excites special outrage, as we may recall from the famous incident in Somalia in the early 1990s. Conversely, we tend to regard dignified treatment of corpses, the remnant of the human being, as one of a short list of indices of what it means to be civilized. It is the mark and the occasion, one last time, of paying respect, or perhaps repaying, through a symbolic act of gratitude. A very moving example of this phenomenon occurs in the career of King Saul. One of Saul’s first acts as King of Israel is to rescue the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead from a siege by the Ammonite king Nahash, who had cruelly demanded not only their surrender, but also, as a token of Israel’s humiliation, “that everyone’s right eye be gouged out” (1 Sam. 11:1–11). Twenty years later, Saul and three of his sons are killed in an intense battle against the Philistines. We then read: The next day the Philistines came to strip the slain, and they found Saul and his three sons lying on Mount Gilboa. They cut off his head and stripped him of his armor, and they sent them throughout the land of the Philistines . . . and they impaled his body on the wall of Beth-shan. When the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard about it—what the Philistines had done to Saul—all their stalwart men set out and marched all night; they removed the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth-shan and came to Jabesh and burned them there. Then they took the bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh, and they fasted for seven days. (1 Sam. 31:8–13)

Irrational? Perhaps. But what a glorious affirmation of humanity!


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XIV Deuteronomy 29:28 offers the following cryptic, yet also remarkably straightforward, Mosaic observation and injunction: The secret things belong unto the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Hertz, p. 880)

Hertz also notes, following the late nineteenth-century biblical scholar Benjamin Szold, that alternative phrasing of the word v’haniglos (and the revealed) yields this variant: The secret things belong to the LORD our God and the revealed things; for us and our children it is to carry out all the words of this Law. (Hertz, p. 880)

Both versions assert a realm of secret things that belong to God, and in both there is a distinction between the things that belong to God and those that belong to us, but they draw the line of demarcation differently. The former draws it between the secret (or hidden) matters, which are God’s, and the revealed, which are ours. The latter groups the secret and the revealed together as God’s, and leaves it to us to just obey hatorah hazos—this Torah, Law, Teaching, or Instruction. Its boundary is between knowing and doing. Each reading has its logic. Insofar as God is all-knowing, or is just the source of revelation, the revealed things, as well as the secret, must also belong to Him. But the words of the Torah that we must carry out have been revealed to us to know. How, otherwise, could we truly carry them out, except perhaps randomly—which would make the Torah virtually no Teaching at all? One could, of course, know the Law only as a set of arbitrary commands, which we grasp only as “commanded,” and whose reasons, if there are any, remain obscure and are known only to God. But the text itself seems to reject this possibility in those notable instances where a command is explained or supported by a reason—for example, “In the same day thou shalt give [a hired servant that is poor and needy] his hire; . . . for he is poor, and setteth his heart [alt. per Rashi: ‘for he risks his life’] upon it” (Deut. 24:15 [Hertz, p. 852]). But sometimes even a stated reason may be insufficient or problematic, and a hidden reason or missing link must be inferred. For example, Honor your father and your mother, that you may long endure on the land that the LORD your God is assigning to you. (Exod. 20:12)

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Here is a command, buttressed by an incentive. Is the link between honoring parents and long endurance on the land merely that of divine grace, manifested here in the form of a promised reward, or is there another, more logical connection? Those who honor parents will act well, for virtuous deeds and their underlying attitudes honor them. Among such acts and attitudes will be respect for the parents’ estate, for which they have cared, and that one stands to inherit from them; industriousness to improve it; and courage to defend it—all of which make more likely that one will end up keeping and preserving that very land and the greater Promised Land of which it is a part. The command, by a subterranean channel, tends to be self-fulfilling. At first glance conversely, another command, to remember to blot out the memory of Amalek (Deut. 25:19) seems incapable of literal realization, because it is self-defeating. The very act of remembering the obligation precludes the erasure of Amalek’s memory. The passage begs for some hidden meaning, which in this case is not very hidden. The Amalekites’ supposed special offense was that in attacking the Israelites as they departed from Egypt, they targeted the most vulnerable, feeble, and weary stragglers. The point is that those who behave in this way are, whatever their actual genealogy, “virtual Amalekites,” who deserve to be utterly destroyed, to have their name blotted out from under heaven; and this lesson should never be forgotten. We offer a third example of “secret things” with some hesitation. In our first quoted passage, the phrase “unto us and to our children” (lanu ul’vaneinu) plus the succeeding letter ayin is superpointillated in the Torah scroll, for no readily apparent reason. Unlike a similarly marked phrase in the Jacob-Esau reunion episode—vayishakeihu (and he kissed him)—which could be dropped with only minimal loss to the sense of the passage (Gen. 33:4), this one seems essential to the meaning of the sentence. Applying different vowel points and making allowance for some irregular spelling, we can discern in this succession of letters a second phrase: lanavu-leiv nin’vei—To [or for] the comely of heart, Nineveh. Is this a superimposed hint by fifth century BCE scribes about a possible Mesopotamian haven, or alternatively a sarcastic comment about those Jews of the supposedly post-Exilic period who refused the chance to resettle in the land of Israel? We decline to pursue this inquiry further, lest we end up sounding like Nostradamus.

CH A P T ER

4

The Prophetic History

I A familiar literary character type is Madam Rosa, the whore with the heart of gold. Joshua 2 revolves around such a figure, the harlot (ishah zonah) Rahab, whose heart, whatever its metallurgy, is disposed to promote the Israelites’ good fortune. Joshua, Moses’ successor as the Israelites’ secular leader, sends spies to the Canaanite city of Jericho, to get information that may be useful to his planned attack. A veteran of the disastrous spy mission that Moses had dispatched to scout the land of Canaan thirty-eight years earlier, Joshua has learned well (Num. 13–14). In contrast to the conspicuously public Mosaic mission, the very existence of Joshua’s seems unknown to the Israelites generally. He sends only two young men (Josh. 6:23), whose names are never revealed, in whom he apparently has immense confidence. They go to Rahab’s house, probably not for harlotry, but because such people are commonly innkeepers, and an inn would be an apt place for spies to gather information (Hertz, p. 635). But the intelligence network of Jericho’s king has somehow gotten wind of them, and he sends men to apprehend them. Rahab hides the spies, sends the king’s agents elsewhere, and advises her guests on how to avoid detection. In return she asks their protection for herself and her family from the slaughter that is sure to accompany the Israelite conquest, and the spies prescribe arrangements that will spare them. Following her advice, the men hide in the hills for three days, then return to camp, and report to Joshua. They repeat Rahab’s account of the Jerichans’ universal fear and conclude triumphantly that the LORD has delivered the whole land into their power. The story contains a clever, slightly naughty pun. The word rahav means broad, wide, or open. As a harlot, she makes her living by opening herself to her clients. But here she opens herself, qua divulging

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her thoughts, to the spies, and thereby is instrumental in opening the city to the conquering Israelites. She also opens her soul to the God of Israel, to Whose miraculous and protecting power she pays tribute (Josh. 2:9–11). (Another biblical character who puns on this word is King Solomon’s son, King Rehoboam, whose name roughly means, “The people spreads out [or expands].” Not a bad name for a king, except for the grim irony that Rehoboam so alienates his subjects that the ten northern tribes secede from his authority, leaving him with only the Southern Kingdom of Judah, about 40% of his former realm [1 Kings 12:1–24].) Rahab’s motives are as down to earth as her profession. She seeks to preserve her life and those of her family. Objectively, she is a traitor to her people. But religious tradition has elevated her to a position of high respect. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible reports that “[in] rabbinic tradition she was one of the four most beautiful women in the world and an ancestress of eight prophets (including Jeremiah) and [the] prophetess [Huldah]” (IDB, vol. 4, p. 6, citing Meg. 14b, 15a; cf. 2 Kings 22:14–20). The Christian Bible identifies her as the mother of Boaz, and thus the ancestress of King David and Jesus (Matt. 1:5). Jewish prayer acknowledges indirectly her religious credentials thrice daily by repeating approximately a formula that she pronounces: “. . . for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth below” (Josh. 2:11; Siddur Sim Shalom, pp. 160, 196, 224). She thereby approximates a statement from Moses’ first Deuteronomic speech, which she, of course, would not have heard (Deut. 4:39). But the two spies to whom she speaks would have heard Moses, and would doubtless have resonated to the inspiration implicit in Rahab’s echoing turn of phrase. More than just a whore with a heart of gold, Rahab fits the archetype of a person of humble origins and lowly status who, whatever her intentions, ends up speaking a prophet’s words and advancing the LORD’s work.

II The Book of Judges is about the transitional period in biblical history, between Joshua’s conquest of Canaan and establishment of a national monarchy under King Saul, when Israel was a tribal confederation. Each tribe was essentially autonomous under its ruling elders, but in times of war they were supposed to unite under ad hoc leaders called “judges” (shoftim), whose function was as much military as judicial. Sometimes the arrangement worked; sometimes it did not. An able

THE PROPHETIC HISTORY

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leader like Deborah, Gideon, or Jephthah could unite enough of them to repel a common enemy, but even then cracks might show in the façade. Because the various episodes focus on different tribes or combinations of tribes, it is difficult to determine the book’s time span. If the stories are read sequentially, it is about 300 years, but if as overlapping “local histories” it is closer to 100. Adding to the ambiguity is the occasional use of phrases like “the land was tranquil forty years” (Judges 5:31). We should probably not take this number literally, but as an idiom for a generation, just as we might say “dozens” without meaning exact multiples of twelve. The chronological order of the events in Judges can be doubted, but the sequence makes literary sense in its depiction of the country’s overall decline and disintegration into anarchy. In its final episode, the tribe of Benjamin is almost annihilated in a civil war (Judges 19–21). The book’s concluding remark, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did as he pleased” (Judges 21:25), states the condition that made the advent of monarchy practically necessary a generation later. There is an unusually obvious connection between Judges 4–5 and Exodus 13:17–17:16, the Torah reading with which it is paired in the Synagogue liturgy. The latter includes Moses’ Song by the Sea after the drowning of Pharaoh’s charioteers; the reading from Judges includes the prophetess Deborah’s song of triumph after the Israelite general Barak defeats the army of the Canaanite King Jabin and his general Sisera (Exod. 15:1–18; Judges 5). A second link is the shorter song of Moses’ sister Miriam, who is also identified as a prophetess, prefiguring perhaps the important role that women of valor like Deborah and Jael will occasionally play in Israelite history (Exod. 15:21). And both texts are about military engagements, three of them if one counts the brief, but historically pregnant, story of the Israelites’ battle with the Amalekites (Exod. 17:8–16). The differences among these three engagements attract our attention. At Exodus 13:17 God avoids leading the Israelites along the northern route through the land of the Philistines, lest they “have a change of heart when they see war, and return to Egypt.” How unsuited for warfare they are is made apparent when they fall into despair upon the approach of Pharaoh’s force of “600 chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over all of them,” even though they themselves number 600,000 men (Exod. 14:10–12; 14:7; 12:37). Just two months later, enough Israelites have apparently acquired military training and toughness to resist and drive off the Amalekites. We are not told this enemy force’s size or how many men Joshua recruits to fight them. But the Israelites’ situation is

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apparently so delicate that their existence can be imperiled by what is probably a desert raid by a not very prominent nation. Hence the terrible curse the LORD lays upon Amalek (Exod. 17:14–16). In Deborah’s and Barak’s battle, a century later, 10,000 Israelite foot soldiers defeat an army of 900 iron chariots and supporting infantry (Judges 4:13–16). Another difference is the divine involvement in the three incidents. The first is thoroughly miraculous—God drowns the Egyptians; the Israelites witness the event (Exod. 14:30–31). The second is hybrid— Israel prevails over Amalek by force of arms, but only while Moses’ hands are raised. So Moses enlists the aid of Aaron and Hur, to prop up his hands until the battle is finally won (Exod. 17:10–13). (Why do their arms not get similarly weary from propping up his?) In the third case, the LORD’s role either consists simply of Barak’s victory itself or perhaps of a powerful rainstorm that so muddies the ground as to make Sisera’s chariots useless: O LORD, when You came forth from Seir, Advanced from the country of Edom, The earth trembled; The heavens dripped, Yea, the clouds dripped water. (Judges 5:4)

“[A]nd the LORD threw Sisera and all his chariots and army into a panic before the onslaught of Barak. Sisera leaped from his chariot and fled on foot” (Judges 4:15; cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1974 ed., Micropaedia, III, p. 418, “Deborah”). In the sequel, Sisera perishes at the hand of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, who offers him shelter in her tent, then kills him in his sleep by driving a tent peg through his head (Judges 4:17–21). These events, noteworthy as battlefield lore, can be understood entirely in human or naturalistic terms. A final contrast concerns who does the fighting. In the first case, at the Sea of Reeds, it is God Himself. In the second, it is an undifferentiated troop of Israelites. The force Joshua leads against Amalek is not drawn from any particular tribe or tribes—the attack that threatens the entire Israelite nation is repelled by a force that represents the nation. Not so the battle at Mount Tabor. As much as Deborah’s song celebrates the LORD’s favor and Barak’s triumph, it also highlights Israel’s divisions. The tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin, Manasseh, Zebulun, Issachar, and Naphtali are praised for joining


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the battle. The trans-Jordanian tribes of Reuben and Gad and the coastal tribes of Asher and Dan are criticized for holding back. The southern tribes of Judah and Simeon are not even mentioned, it apparently being assumed that they would not care about this northern affair (Judges 5:14–18). This datum illustrates a lesson observable in the history of nations. As a people becomes more numerous and self-reliant, as the common danger posed by external threats recedes, internal differences advance. So powerful is the temptation to tribalism or clannishness that it may quite obscure the common bonds that formerly united or defined a people, and render them so mutually indifferent, even hostile, that each part will regard with equanimity the others’ conquest, oppression, or destruction by outsiders (cf. The Federalist, Nos. 5, 10).

III We have elsewhere discussed the fable of Balaam and his talking donkey (Num. 22; supra, chap. 2, XVIII). Another Scriptural fable occurs at Judges 9. We may understand a fable as a story in which nonhuman characters, usually animals, exhibit human traits, especially speech, in order to teach moral lessons. The most famous, those of the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop, are part of our common cultural lore. The characters in the one from the Book of Judges are plants. As noted above, the period of the judges is largely defined as the time when the Israelites, unlike the inhabitants of the surrounding nations, tried to get along without a king. But the issue of monarchy always at least looms in the background and sometimes comes to the fore. The particular episode comes after the career of Gideon, a very skilled and respected leader, who defeats the Midianites. He is also called Jerubbaal, that is, “Let Baal [the local pagan deity] contend with him, since he tore down his altar” (Judges 6:32). Following his victories, the Israelites offer to make Gideon their king: Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, “Rule over us—you, your son, and your grandson as well; for you have saved us from the Midianites.” But Gideon replied, “I will not rule over you myself, nor shall my son rule over you; the LORD alone shall rule over you.” (Judges 8:22–23)

It is a dramatic and defining moment about what the “shoftimic” system should be.

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Despite his refusal of kingship, Gideon has a taste for wealth and grand living. He has many wives, who provide him with seventy sons. He also has a concubine from the city of Shechem, by whom he has a son named Abimelech (“My father is king”). Following Gideon’s death, Abimelech conspires with his Shechemite kinsmen to install him as king, and thereby to establish Shechem’s primacy within Israel. The Shechemites agree and hire a group of mercenaries, whom Abimelech leads in invading his father’s house and killing his seventy half-brothers. Only the youngest brother, Jotham, escapes and goes into hiding. Abimelech, a genuine Israelite by his paternal lineage is apparently accepted as king only by the Shechemites, although he “held sway” over Israel for three years (Judges 9:22). When Jotham learns that the Shechemites have proclaimed Abimelech king, he ascends Mount Gerizim (cf. Deut. 27:11, 14) and shouts a story to the citizens of Shechem (Judges 9:7–20). It tells of how the trees sought a king to reign over them. They successively approached the olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine, but they all declined the offer, because they had productive and beneficial work to do. But the thornbush agrees, provided they “are acting honorably.” If not, it warns, “may fire issue from the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!” Jotham then extrapolates: If the Shechemites have acted honorably to the memory of Gideon and to his house by setting up the murderous and illegitimate Abimelech as king, may he and they “have joy” in each other. “But if not, may fire issue from Abimelech and consume the citizens of Shechem and Beth-millo, and may fire issue from the citizens of Shechem and Beth-millo and consume Abimelech!” The fable’s obvious point is that the Shechemites have acted dishonorably and dangerously in elevating the lowest of Gideon’s “fruits.” But it also broadly hints that no truly productive and useful people would want a king. Jotham’s speech proves prophetic. After three years, a spirit of discord erupts between Abimelech and his fellow Shechemites that produces a violent rebellion. Abimelech has the city demolished, its people massacred, and the ground sowed with salt. Then, while he is besieging the tower of a neighboring town, a woman drops a millstone on his head, which cracks his skull. Rather than have it said that a woman killed him, he has his arms-bearer run him through (Judges 9:53–55; cf. 4:9). Abimelech of Shechem thus became the first of three Israelite rulers to die by suicide, the other two being Saul, Israel’s first legitimate king, and Zimri, an army commander of the Northern Kingdom, whose coup d’état installs him as king for all of seven days (1 Samuel 31:1–7; 1 Kings 16:8–20; see also Judges 16:23–30).


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IV The subject of Judges 11 is Jephthah, whose principal credential to be a “judge” is military prowess, as is stated at the outset, along with another datum indicative of the dubious direction events are taking: “Jephthah the Gileadite was an able warrior, who was the son of a prostitute” (Judges 11:1). When his father dies, his legitimate half brothers deny him a share of the inheritance and drive him from their house. So he resettles in a less cultivated area called (ironically?) Tov (“Good”) and leads a band of brigands, an occupation at which he excels. Sometime later, the Ammonites go to war against Israel—or more likely, against the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh. The elders of Gilead, the area on the east bank of the Jordan where these tribes had settled, approach Jephthah to lead them. He drives a hard, but under the circumstances not unreasonable, bargain. He will be their commander (rosh) but also, if militarily successful, their political chief (katzin) afterward. Both the elders and Jephthah seem careful to avoid the word “king” (melekh). As with the Roman Republic, the Israelites are willing to confer dictatorial power, but the title “king” is taboo, perhaps in part out of residual distaste from the Abimelech episode. Before leading his troops into battle, Jephthah attempts diplomacy. He reminds the Ammonite king that the land under dispute had previously been held by the Amorite king Sihon of Heshbon, from whom the Israelites conquered it toward the end of their wandering after the Exodus (Judges 11:26). Because the text is not (and does not claim to be) impartial, we are not told the basis of the Ammonites’ claim, but Jephthah’s explanation basically repeats the account of these long past events given in the Book of Numbers. He neglects, however, to mention something the Torah narrative emphasizes, that King Sihon of Heshbon had himself conquered this land from the Israelites’ and the Ammonites’ common cousins, the Moabites (Num. 21:21–31; Judges 11:14–27). For students of politics, the two texts illustrate an often observable lesson, that if a place is worth possessing at all, the question “Who was there first?” can invariably be answered “Someone else.” That is, all nations’ possession of their particular lands can probably be traced back to conquest, and if it cannot, that is likely because the earliest known inhabitants did not keep meticulous records. In the end, therefore, Jephthah invokes the gods: Now, then, the LORD, the God of Israel, dispossessed the Amorites before His people Israel; and should you possess their land? Do you not hold what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? So we will hold

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on to everything that the LORD our God has given us to possess. . . . May the LORD, who judges, decide today between the Israelites and the Ammonites! (Judges 11:23–24, 27)

In the history of political thought, this line echoes almost 3,000 years later, in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (first published in 1689), a classic text of modern Social Contract Theory that informs the American Declaration of Independence: To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to Heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature. For where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power. Had there been any such court, any superior jurisdiction on earth to determine the right between Jephtha and the Ammonites, they had never come to a state of war, but we see he was forced to appeal to Heaven. The Lord the judge (says he) be judge this day between the Children of Israel, and the Children of Ammon. Judges xi. 27, and then prosecuting, and relying on his appeal, he leads out his army to battle. (Second Treatise, § 21 [emphasis removed])

Just as Jephthah omits mention of King Sihon’s prior conquest of Moab, Locke changes a line—“The LORD the judge be judge this day etc.”—so as to turn Jephthah’s provisional attempt at diplomacy into a simple call to arms to the ensuing battle. Both men emphasize and suppress what suits their purpose, but the actual result is the same. Where words fail to dissuade, the appeal to Heaven amounts to a collective trial by ordeal in the hope that God (or the stronger god) is on your side. The Rabbis chose to end the synagogue reading at verse 33, on a note of high triumph in a stunning Israelite victory. But in the text the story continues to a grim conclusion, of which we get an ominous premonition: And Jephthah made the following vow to the LORD: “If you deliver the Ammonites into my hands, then whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me on my safe return from the Ammonites shall be the LORD’s and shall be offered by me as a burnt offering.” (Judges 11:30–31)

Sure enough, when Jephthah returns home from battle, the first being to emerge from his house to greet him is his daughter, his only


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child, who, after a two-month reprieve to “bewail her maidenhood,” is duly offered up as a human sacrifice in fulfillment of her father’s ill considered vow (Judges 11:34–40). This is what theologians and professional Biblicists call a troubling text. How could Jephthah have sworn so recklessly? Was he expecting that he would be greeted by a goat or a cow that just happened a moment earlier to be inside his house? Or by the family dog (an unclean animal whose sacrifice is forbidden)? Or by a dispensable servant? And why did he not go to a priest to be absolved from the vow and allowed to offer something permissible instead of his daughter? It would appear that Jephthah places his pride in being steadfast in his word—ordinarily a virtue for a military man—above the sacrificial law’s prohibitions. The Rabbis, wishing to have a celebratory text, cut it short of its sinister dénouement. In so doing, they deprived us of a much needed lesson on a dangerous pathology—the belief that morals are essentially personal, that all “vows” are, therefore, equally legitimate, and that their validity is detachable from their broader social consequences.

V Judges 13 concerns the divine revelation to Manoah and his wife foretelling the birth of their son Samson. Samson is a peculiar hero. His story is told in the Book of Judges, presumably because that is where it belongs in the biblical chronology, but he is never depicted as peaceably adjudicating disputes among his fellow citizens (cf. Judges 4:4–5). To be sure, the shoftim were also military commanders, but unlike Deborah, Gideon, or Jephtha, Samson never leads or accompanies a troop of soldiers into battle. All of the 4,030 Philistines (plus 300 foxes and 1 lion) whose deaths are accredited to him he engages alone (Judges 14:5–6, 19; 15:4–5, 14–15; 16:27–30). And although he is described prophetically as a deliverer of Israel from the Philistines (Judges 13:5), all his actions seem guided by self-indulgence. He is best known for his extraordinary strength, in which respect he is perhaps more like Hercules than any other figure in Jewish lore, and for the singular connection between his strength and not having his hair cut. Also noteworthy are his scarcely bridled lust and his penchant for Gentile women. He is surely not the fulfillment of every Jewish mother’s dream. The divine plan for Israel’s salvation here courses through some strange channels. The disjunction between appearance and some deeper reality is also present in the events preceding Samson’s birth. Manoah’s barren

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wife describes the person who predicted that she will bear a son as a man of God who “looked like an angel of God, very frightening” (Judges 13:6). But to Manoah the stranger seems so human that it takes a minor miracle to convince him otherwise (Judges 13:19–21). Setting aside the familiar iconography of winged men and plump winged babies, what would we expect the distinguishing marks of an angel to be? The primary meaning of the Hebrew mal’akh, like the Greek angelos, is messenger. What makes the messenger angelic is presumably not his appearance but his credentials. But how can we judge such things? For Mrs. Manoah, how things look depends on her faith, for which the text intends us to admire her more than her skeptical husband. But her faith is not totally detached from reason. She reassures her husband that God would not have revealed these things and accepted their sacrificial offerings if He meant to kill them (Judges 13:22–23). She reasons about this messenger’s character from the assumption of a benevolent God, Who cares about human affairs, especially about His Chosen People. Her faith thus guards her from the misguided fear Manoah displays once he becomes convinced of the visitor’s supernatural character. Is not this a more wholesome and more coherent faith than that implied by a public opinion poll in the mid-1990s, according to which more Americans believed in angels, heaven, and hell than in God? She filters what she hears, as well as what she sees. The angel of God tells her that her future son will “be a nazirite to God from the womb on. He shall be the first to deliver Israel from the Philistines” (Judges 13:5). When she relates this to her husband, she omits the reference to their son’s political destiny and instead concludes, “[The man of God] said to me, ‘. . . the boy is to be a nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death!’ ” (Judges 13:7). Does she, thinking as a mother, lose sight of the political dimension because she sees the project of national liberation through to its grim, personal conclusion? Other details of this episode and its sequel echo the stories about the Patriarchs. Like the mysterious man with whom Jacob wrestles, and who renames him Israel, the visitor to Manoah refuses to reveal his name (Judges 13:17–18; cf. Gen. 32:25–30). Like the visitors to Abraham, he announces that a barren woman will bear a son (Judges 13:3; cf. Gen. 18:9–10). He also warns her not to eat anything unclean; Abraham, we recall, serves his guests a meal that has a mix of meat and dairy products (Judges 13:4, 14; Gen. 18:8). (He should not be faulted for this, because the Mosaic Law that forbids cooking a kid in its mother’s milk had not yet been given.) And although Samson is in other respects as unlike Isaac as one can imagine, he


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will, like Isaac, spend his final days as a blind man (Judges 16:21; cf. Gen. 27; but cf. also Gen. 26:8). There may also be an echo of the Isaac story in the detail that the Philistines torment Samson just before his death by making him “dance” (alt: “make sport”—viysahek, vay’tzaheik) (Judges 16:25; cf. Gen. 21:9). Isaac’s Hebrew name, Yitzhak, means “he will laugh,” a reflection of the skeptical laughter with which his mother Sarah, who is by then past the age of child bearing, greets the overheard prediction of his conception and birth (Gen. 18:1–15; 21:1–3). Do these parallels suggest that in the absence of a secure and stable political order, as under the conditions of the tribal confederation, we are in peril of returning to a state akin to the lawlessness of the patriarchal period, when even good men and women had essentially their native wits, punctuated by divine interventions, to guide them (see esp. Judges 19:22–25; cf. Gen. 19:4–12)? The departures from the earlier texts are perhaps equally interesting. This annunciation of an unlikely birth is made, at first, to the mother-to-be, a pattern repeated in the story of Hannah, the hitherto barren mother of the prophet Samuel (1 Sam. 1). Has God learned that this intimate piece of “women’s information” is best communicated directly to women? And the very concept of the nazir has shifted from the Torahidic person who voluntarily takes an extraordinary but temporary obligation upon himself or herself to a lifelong status that can be designated by God or conferred by one’s parent (Num. 6:1–20; Judges 13:5; 1 Sam. 1:11). In the Christian tradition, these archetypes are developed further. The Virgin Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel, who announces to her that she will become pregnant by agency of the Holy Spirit, and that her son will be a person of great consequence. She responds, after some intervening events, by composing a hymn of praise that parallels Hannah’s (Luke 1:26–56; 1 Sam. 2:1–10). And Manoah’s angel’s ascension into heaven is, of course, replicated at the end of Jesus’ life. In one sense, this is all fair game. The elements of divine or angelic annunciation, ascension, and the miraculous birth of people in whose careers much is implicated, having been once set forth and then reworked in Hebrew Scripture, should Jews be offended, or rather flattered, when others adopt and adapt them?

VI The establishment of the Israelite monarchy under King Saul, probably around 1025 BCE, deals with an issue of perennial political importance, the relation between religious and secular authority

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(1 Sam. 11:14–12:22). It also provides insight into one of the more significant, and perhaps one of the most unpleasant, characters in Hebrew Scripture, the prophet Samuel. The fixed point in Samuel’s political firmament is his implacable hatred of the institution of monarchy. The worst sin that the Israelites can commit, in his estimation, is to set up a king. This may seem strange in light of the Torah’s permissive anticipation of the subject, and the prudent moderating precautions it prescribes, as spelled out in the Book of Deuteronomy (Deut. 17:14–20).1 But to Samuel the people’s desire for a king is a betrayal of God Himself. And the man who undeservedly suffers the brunt of Samuel’s political animosity is Saul, even from his first day as king, an occasion that should have been a celebration of personal triumph and joy for him. To appreciate how extraordinary the event is, imagine the following scenario: It is the January 20 after an American presidential election. The newly elected President is about to take the oath of office. But before administering the oath, the Chief Justice, a man of reputation and eloquence, delivers a long and very moving address, in which he recalls his own respectable career of public service and his impeccable personal credentials, and tells his countrymen in no uncertain terms that they are about to make a terrible mistake. Not that the President-elect is an especially bad man—he is a virtual nonentity—but the presidency itself is fundamentally misconceived, a betrayal of our basic principles, an office so inherently flawed as to corrupt even the best of men. As if to underscore the correctness of the Chief’s words, while he is speaking storm clouds suddenly gather, and heaven itself punctuates his every proposition with a thunderclap. By the end of the speech, the people are ready to scrap the position of President altogether. Meanwhile, the President-elect stands awkwardly, his mouth gaping, his hand half-raised to take the oath, not quite knowing what to do or say next, suspended in this newly created and quite unexpected political limbo. Poor Saul! He never asked for the job, was even doubtful of his qualifications; Samuel rather thrust it upon him (1 Sam. 9–10, esp. 9:21). And now he must be subjected to this display of prophetic gaucherie! Perhaps this should have been no surprise. When the people first petitioned Samuel to give them a king, he had warned them: This will be the practice of the king who will rule over you: He will take your sons and appoint them as his charioteers and horsemen, and they will serve as outrunners for his chariots. He will appoint them as his chiefs of thousands and of fifties; or they will have to plow his


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fields, reap his harvest, and make his weapons and the equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He will seize your choice fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his courtiers. He will take a tenth part of your grain and vintage and give it to his eunuchs and courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, your choice young men, and your asses, and put them to work for him. He will take a tenth part of your flocks, and you shall become his slaves. (1 Sam. 8:11–17)

Eventually these dire predictions of royal luxury and oppression come to pass, but not under Saul. In the mid-1990s, archeologists uncovered what they thought was Saul’s official dwelling—not a huge royal palace, but a large house, as might befit a man of inherited wealth. The nearest he comes to maintaining a royal harem like those of David or Solomon is to have two wives, a distinction he shares with, among others, Samuel’s father Elkanah. Notwithstanding the LORD’s attempt to reassure Samuel that “it is not you that [the people] have rejected; it is Me they have rejected as their king” (1 Sam. 8:7), Samuel seems to take this change in political arrangements personally. As well he might! God is being too polite—for the text makes clear that Samuel is at least partly to blame, for having appointed as judges his own sons, who accepted bribes and subverted justice (1 Sam. 8:1–3). This is the specific concern that precipitates the people’s request for a king. In the inauguration speech Samuel likens himself to some of his heroic predecessor judges: Gideon, Samson, and Jephthah (1 Sam. 12:11). (Does he betray another kind of tunnel vision by neglecting Deborah?) But unlike these other shoftim, Samuel, a priest by adoption if not by birth, cannot bear arms. The contrast with Gideon is especially revealing. Following his victory over the Midianites, the people offer to set up Gideon as king and head of a royal dynasty, but he refuses, both on his own and his sons’ behalf (Judges 8:22–23; supra, III). Samuel, while abhorring the title “king,” seeks to make the office of judge hereditary. Moreover, the call for a king answers a real need, both to oppose oppression from neighboring kingdoms and to repair the chaos into which the country had fallen. The last episode in the immediately preceding Book of Judges is an unusually nasty story of how a brutal murder and rape leads to a civil war, in which the tribe of Benjamin is almost destroyed. The narrator, who generally sympathizes with Samuel’s critique of monarchy, perhaps begrudgingly concludes, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did as he pleased” (Judges 21:25).

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The two men’s relations steadily worsen. During his entire reign, Saul wages war against the Philistines (1 Sam. 14:52). On one occasion, he and his badly outnumbered army wait seven days for Samuel to show up, to offer appropriate sacrifices before battle. The anxious troops have begun to drift away. So Saul himself makes the offerings. Just as he finishes, Samuel arrives, berates him for lack of faith, and announces that God will consequently establish another dynasty over Israel (1 Sam. 13:1–14). Sometime later, Samuel orders Saul, in God’s name, to wage a war of total extermination against the Amalekites, in retribution for their attack on the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt centuries earlier. (The omniscient narrator does not report God Himself saying this [1 Sam. 15:1; cf. 15:10–11; see also Exod. 32:25–29; Num. 31:1–18]. Also, while Samuel is fastidious about the impropriety of Saul, who is not a priest, performing sacrifices, he apparently has no such scruple concerning his own warrant to act as Saul’s commander-in-chief.) Saul does a generally thorough job of destroying the Amalekite warriors, their families, and their goods, but spares their king Agag and some sheep and cattle. Samuel is furious, tells Saul that for this unwarranted clemency the kingdom will be torn away from him, nearly boycotts the victory celebration, and, in a de facto public rebuke, butchers King Agag himself (1 Sam. 15). (Apparently he leaves the sheep alone.) Granted, Saul’s faith is imperfect (see his references to “the LORD your God” [1 Sam. 12:15 and 21]), and in later years he suffers bouts of depression, possibly linked to epilepsy. But he takes his responsibilities seriously, is an able and very busy military leader, who personally leads the troops into battle to his dying day, and is deferential and patient to a fault in his dealings with this self-righteous and meddlesome priest. It is a commonplace that history is written by the winners. With the advent of the Davidic dynasty, Saul’s reputation became an eligible target. (We wonder how well David might have fared during the first half of his reign had Samuel lived to be 100, or whether David, who could be quite peremptory, would have tolerated Samuel.) Clearly too, the narrator shares at least some of Samuel’s skepticism about monarchy. But the text is rich enough in its details to reveal the political and moral ambiguity inherent in the relations between the prophet-priest and the king—or as we might say, between Church and State—and to allow us to repair some of the bad press that has attached to the memory of K ing Saul.


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VII The Amalek episode illumines some politically relevant questions: How long should one bear a grudge? And how much revenge is proper? It also allows us to trace the successive permutations of an idea. The seminal text is from Moses’ long valedictory address in Deuteronomy: Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the LORD your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget! (Deut. 25:17–19)

The incident referred to is described more tersely at Exodus 17:8–16: Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. [There follows an account of the day-long battle, which the Israelites, under Joshua’s command, win.] Then the LORD said to Moses, “Inscribe this in a document as a reminder, and read it aloud to Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven!” . . . [Moses] said, “. . . The LORD will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages.”

There is nothing here about Israel being famished and weary (though in the preceding episode they did complain about lack of water [Exod. 17:1–7]), nor about the Amalekites cutting down stragglers, that is, the slowest moving and presumably most vulnerable members of the community. These may be pieces of Mosaic embellishment—Moses is, after all, saying this to the next generation, who were not present at the battle (Num. 14: 26–35). On the other hand, the attack comes at a time when the entire Israelite people is vulnerable, being not yet three months out of Egypt and, still imbued with the habits of slavery, not yet battle ready (Exod. 19:1; 13:17–18). Also, in the Exodus account, God promises to blot out the memory of Amalek; but in Deuteronomy, Moses exhorts the Israelites to do so. To “blot out the memory from under heaven” is an idiomatic expression, meaning to destroy utterly. This is how Samuel, who may

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fancy himself a second Moses, understands it when he brings this unfinished business to Saul’s attention: Thus said the LORD of Hosts: I am exacting the penalty for what Amalek did to Israel, for the assault he made upon them on the road, on their way up from Egypt. Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses! (1 Sam. 15:2–3)

This passage should be disturbing. Samuel is directing Saul to wage the kind of indiscriminate warfare that would today become the focus of a war crimes tribunal. Let us, moreover, appreciate the chronology. Since the attack of the Amalekites in Moses’ lifetime, the Israelites have wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, conquered the land of Canaan over the course of another generation, and endured the period of tribal confederation under the shoftim, a span of between 100 and 300 years. The Book of Esther, in which Esther and Mordecai thwart the genocidal plan of Haman the Agagite to kill off all the Jews in the Persian Empire, picks up this old score some 500 years later still (Esther 3:1; 8:5). At what point in the passing of time does collective guilt disappear? We are drawn to this question not only by general considerations of justice, but also in particular as Jews, who have so often been collectively tarred as “Christ-killers.” The settled, and sensible, rabbinical answer, we gather, is forty years—the conventional time it takes for one generation to replace another.2 When most of those who are around now have been born subsequent to the offending action, then culpability has sufficiently dissipated that collective punishment is no longer appropriate. (This, of course, does not mean that the offense itself is forgiven, much less forgotten, or that individual culprits should no longer be pursued.) We should note that Samuel’s declaration to Saul—“Thus said the LORD of Hosts”—is not corroborated by the omniscient anonymous narrator. Even when the LORD expresses regret for making Saul king, “for he has turned away from Me and has not carried out My commands,” He does not specify the particular supposed command to annihilate the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15:10–11). Is Samuel, then, falsely representing God? Rather, he has already displayed a knack for selective perception by not seeing his sons’ corruption, and a tendency to ascribe to God his own intense hatred of monarchy (1 Sam. 8, 12; cf. Deut. 17:14–20). Perhaps similar flaws are manifest in the present story. Again, the situation of Israel under King Saul does not replicate


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the one Moses projected as the ripe time to blot out the memory of Amalek, “when the LORD your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you.” On the contrary, the immediately preceding text in the Samuel narrative states, “There was bitter war against the Philistines all the days of Saul” (1 Sam. 14:52). Finally, Saul’s treatment of the Amalekites is not as thorough as it first appears. He “destroyed Amalek from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is close to Egypt,” but there may have been others elsewhere (1 Sam. 15:7). Years later, when Saul wages his final battle against the Philistines, his rival, the soon-to-be king, David, is off elsewhere fighting a group of Amalekites (1 Sam. 30). And after Saul commits suicide in order to avoid capture, a young Amalekite mistakenly tries to curry favor with David by falsely claiming to have killed Saul himself (1 Sam. 31; 2 Sam. 1). As mentioned, the Amalekite saga is resumed in the Book of Esther. Does the deadly retribution taken there, not only against Haman, but also against his ten sons—who have not previously been described as complicit in their father’s plot—signal that cloture in this matter has finally been achieved, that the last Amalekites are finally gone (Esther 9:7–10)? (Consider, in this regard, that Haman’s wife, Zeresh, who does conspire with him, but is not called a descendant of Agag, is apparently spared [Esther 5:9–14; 6:12–13].) Or, to the contrary, does the naming of these supernumeraries suggest that there will always somewhere be some metaphoric Amalekites? It will not surprise that the text can be read either way.3

VIII The Rabbis who constructed the annual calendar of Scriptural readings assigned for Sabbaths on the day before a new month a textual passage that describes an incident in the careers of David and Jonathan, Saul’s son (1 Sam. 20:18–42). By law of averages, this passage should, therefore, come up once or twice every year. Arguably, no year should pass without our being inspired by the example of Jonathan or touched by the story of his affection for the young man who later becomes king. Jonathan is Saul’s first son, and, therefore, heir to the throne. Considering how many princes are mediocrities, this may say rather little. But Jonathan is an accomplished warrior and a hero among his troops. In a telling episode a few chapters earlier (which precedes young David’s encounter with the Philistine warrior Goliath), Jonathan and his arms-bearer kill twenty Philistines in hand-to-hand

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combat, an event that leads to Israelite victory in the ensuing battle (1 Sam. 14:1–23). Meanwhile, Saul has rashly laid an oath on his troops, on pain of death, not to eat before nightfall, by which time he expects to defeat the enemy. But Jonathan, unaware of the oath, tastes some honey. When the battle omens are unfavorable, and the lots that are cast point to Jonathan as the culprit, he is prepared to be executed, but the fighting men forbid it, telling the King, “Shall Jonathan die, after bringing this great victory to Israel? Never! As the LORD lives, not a hair of his head shall fall to the ground” (1 Sam. 14:45). Following David’s defeat of Goliath, “Jonathan’s soul became bound up with the soul of David; Jonathan loved David as himself” (1 Sam. 18:1). The narrator makes no corresponding statement about David’s soul. Later, when David’s popularity soars and Saul, fearing that he might seize the throne, seeks to have David killed, Jonathan saves his life—first, by interceding with Saul on his behalf; then by helping him escape. Saul is convinced that Jonathan’s succession will not be secure as long as David lives and thinks it disgraceful that Jonathan will not strive to guard the kingship for himself, “to your shame, and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness!” (1 Sam. 20:31) That is, by deferring to David he virtually concedes his own illegitimacy. David, let us recall, has already been anointed by the prophet Samuel, and the text never denies his ambition to be king after Saul (1 Sam. 16:1, 11–13). In view of his own prestige among the troops, it seems plausible that Jonathan could, if he chose to, successfully contest for the crown. He does not, partly no doubt out of personal attachment to David and admiration for his character. Perhaps out of piety too—whether David has told him of his having been anointed by Samuel or whether Jonathan infers from his string of military successes that David enjoys the LORD’s favor, he later concedes that David will be the next king (1 Sam. 23:17). But also, we suspect, because of a certain high mindedness that regards it as unbecoming to hustle for what one is entitled to. As Aristotle intimates, a gentleman never rushes, for to do so would imply that the thing he is rushing to get is more important than he is (Nicomachean Ethics 1125a13–17). Thus, George Washington never “ran” for the Presidency; rather, he “stood” for it, while it came to him. (But seven decades of popular government later, Lincoln ran.) In the sequel, Jonathan dies heroically, with his father and two of his brothers, fighting the Philistines at Mount Gilboa. When David becomes King, and must himself guard against possible rivals from Saul’s family, he remembers his promise to Jonathan and spares the


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life of Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth, but he prudently keeps him under a polite form of house arrest (2 Sam. 9). Hertz points to the relationship between Jonathan and David, and to that of Ruth and Naomi, to proclaim the Bible “the supreme Book of Friendship” (p. 950). Ruth’s relation to Naomi, however, is more nearly daughterly devotion. The friendship of David and Jonathan looks unique in a book that has several examples of love between relatives, and several more of sibling hatred. Perhaps because of its uniqueness, it is impressive. It seems grounded in the high regard that one virtuous man can have for another, a relation treated of systematically in Books 8 and 9 of Aristotle’s Ethics, and that sounds more characteristically classical than biblical, more Greek than Hebrew. The suspicion of a homosexual tie is scarcely avoidable when, for example, we read David’s lament upon hearing of Jonathan’s death: How have the mighty fallen In the thick of battle— Jonathan, slain on your heights! I grieve for you, My brother Jonathan, You were most dear to me. Your love was wonderful to me, More than the love of women. (2 Sam 1:25–26)

On the other hand, it may be that in more innocent ages than ours, people of the same sex could openly profess love without risking the imputation of venery. And for David who, as we know from other passages, was fond of the ladies, comparison to the love of women would have been the most obvious way to make the rhetorical point.

IX Americans can be relieved and gratified that the political transitions we witness every four or eight years are peaceful and relatively neat. In stark contrast to this is the vignette of what can aptly be described as a palace coup at 1 Kings 1. For all the political importance and gravity of its subject matter, the story begins in a peculiarly private, almost titillating, way. The septuagenarian King David, apparently suffering from poor circulation, cannot get warm. So a beautiful young virgin, Abishag the Shunammite, is found to “lie in [his] bosom,” to keep him warm. But

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the text troubles to note, “the king was not intimate with her” (1 Kings 1:1–4). This remarkably candid hint at David’s impotence discreetly obscures the even more delicate deficiency at his other end—his equally probable senility. But there are some clues. The text twice emphasizes his age, although seventy does not seem extreme by biblical standards (1 Kings 1:1, 15). Is “old” here a polite way of saying feeble? When his formerly favorite wife Bathsheba, mother of the future King Solomon, enters his presence, his words of greeting— “What troubles you?”—give no clear indication that he recognizes her. He later orders that she be summoned, although there is no prior mention that she has left the chamber (1 Kings 1:16, 28). And the rehearsed speech that the prophet Nathan composes for both himself and Bathsheba suggests the need to tell David everything twice (1 Kings 1:11–27). David has been in decline for twenty years, ever since his adultery with Bathsheba, who was then the wife of Uriah, a captain in David’s army, and his treachery in getting Uriah conveniently killed off (2 Sam. 11) set in motion a sequence of personal and political disasters.4 First, the offspring of this liaison dies (2 Sam. 12:15–18). Then, David’s eldest son and heir Amnon rapes his half sister Tamar, only to be killed in revenge by her brother Absalom. After several years in exile and several more at court, Absalom raises a nearly successful revolt, which, at its high point, forces David and his followers to flee Jerusalem (2 Sam. 13–15). In a gesture of triumphant insult, Absalom “lay with his father’s concubines [before the eyes] of all Israel,” in a tent that is pitched on the same palace roof from which David first saw Bathsheba (2 Sam. 16:22). The revolt is ultimately crushed and Absalom killed while fleeing from battle (2 Sam. 18:6–17). David takes his death quite hard, and emerges from these events a pitiful and spiritually exhausted figure (see esp. 2 Sam. 18:24–19:9). In a brief later episode, the once great warrior-king grows weary and is almost killed in combat, and his men forbid him to go into battle again (2 Sam. 21:15–17). Five more years have now passed since Absalom’s abortive revolt. David’s now-eldest son and likely heir Adonijah, a man reminiscent of Absalom, lines up support for himself among the political, military, and religious establishment. Adonijah is backed by Joab, commander of the regular army and for many years David’s prime minister, by Abiathar, one of the two chief priests, and also apparently by David’s courtiers of the tribe of Judah and all the other royal princes except Solomon (1 Kings 1:5–9). And why not? He is at this point David’s logical heir.


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Notably excluded from those whom Adonijah courts are his half brother Solomon; the prophet Nathan; Zadok, the other chief priest; and Benaiah, captain of David’s palace guard (1 Kings 1:8, 10). (Does Solomon’s exclusion from the company of all his brothers suggest that they regard their father’s marriage to Bathsheba as not quite valid, and him as illegitimate?) Sensing the insecurity of their own and Solomon’s lives were Adonijah to become king, Nathan and Bathsheba “remind” David that he had sworn to make Solomon his successor and tell him that Adonijah has had himself declared king. David thereupon commands that Solomon be publicly anointed and proclaimed the next king, which order is promptly carried out (1 Kings 1:15–40). Crucial to appreciate these events are the facts that there is no earlier mention in the Samuel-Kings text of David’s supposed oath to make Solomon his heir, that Bathsheba’s characterization of Adonijah’s action is at least an exaggeration (1 Kings 1:18), and that Solomon may have as many as six older half brothers who are passed over in the succession (2 Sam. 3:2–5; 5:13–16). Perhaps the most interesting character in this story is Nathan, a man of God who sees with quickness and clarity that there is no middle ground in this situation, that their fortunes depend on Solomon becoming king, that this must be accomplished not by brute force but with the aura of political legitimacy through King David, and that the way to reach him is through Bathsheba. In view of how all this comes about, one could scarcely fault Joab and company, and the larger community, for any apprehension they might feel that the new king would be a mere puppet of the “gang of four”—Benaiah, Zadok, Nathan, and Bathsheba. But as the immediate sequel makes clear, it is the young and perhaps universally underestimated Solomon who exercises royal power (1 Kings 1:50–53). And once he becomes king in his own right, after David’s death, he exercises it quickly and effectively. He dismisses Abiathar and kills off Adonijah and Joab; makes a prestigious alliance with Egypt by marrying the Pharaoh’s daughter; offers sacrifices to the LORD, some on a grand scale, at various public shrines; and decides the famous case of the two women who claim the same infant, upon which is grounded his reputation for “divine wisdom to execute justice” (1 Kings 2:13–35; 3:1, 3–4, 16–28).5 What kind of king might Adonijah have been? The brief glimpse we get of him suggests an attractive looking, somewhat vain man, of no special ability, who is keenly aware of political symbolism (1 Kings 1:5–10; 2:13–22). But with an able prime minister, like Joab—a man of utter ruthlessness whose political judgments are invariably

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sound—he could have been adequate. In the actual event, as the text goes out of its way to emphasize, ancient Israel gets in Solomon a prince extraodinaire, despite the dubious circumstances of his accession.

X Sigmund Freud is said to have said, “Anatomy is destiny.” Whether the assertion is true or not, we may observe of the description of the physical plan of the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon (1 Kings 5:26–6:13), “Architecture is destiny.” Solomon’s Temple seems to have been a stately but not enormous, basically rectangular, building, a much simpler affair than the later Temple of Herod, which the historian Josephus describes as a heavily fortified virtual city within a city (The Jewish War V.136–237). The building was three stories high. The text is not definite on whether each level had its own ceiling or the middle and upper levels were balconies, lined with rooms along the perimeter, perhaps small chapels, surrounding an interior open space. For a reason to be stated presently, we incline toward the latter image. Perhaps the most interesting feature is that the dimensions of the three levels increase as one goes higher, the outermost parts of the middle and upper levels being supported by external pillars. This rectangular “salad bowl” shape is historically significant in both temporal directions. But to appreciate this we must use our mind’s eye. Let us imagine that, instead of being only three stories tall (a height perhaps dictated by limitations inherent in the building materials and architectural techniques of the period), it was 7, 13, or 20, each level 2 cubits (between 36 and 88 inches) wider than the one under it. Let us further imagine that, instead of rising only from the ground, it also had a series of subterranean levels that penetrated as deeply into the earth as they would need to until the opposed sides converged. The shape so described is an imperfect, elongated, inverted pyramid. The Temple’s form is a section of an imaginable larger structure that turns the most visually conspicuous symbol of Egypt upside down. It is a visual reaffirmation of the rejection of Egyptian culture, especially Egyptian religion, with its basic conception of this life as a mere prelude to the next. As Moses had said in his valedictory address, “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live—by loving the LORD your God, heeding His commands, and holding fast to Him” (Deut. 30:19–20). Further, the pyramids were large and very solid, filled in with bricks,


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except for a small interior space to hold the remains of the Pharaoh, who was, of course, a god, and a sampling of his toys, so he could amuse himself on his way to the next realm. This is why one should prefer the large vacant interior spatial image of the Temple, a dwelling place not for God Himself, Who cannot be contained in a building, for Whom the heavens are His throne and the earth His footstool (Is. 66:1), but for His Name. It is a picture as calculatedly contrary to the pyramids and all they represent as possible. For the future significance of the Temple’s structure we should consult the story in which young King Joash of the later separate Southern Kingdom of Judah discovers that the Temple, by then a century and a quarter old, has fallen into disrepair and orders establishment of a building fund to remedy the situation (2 Kings 12:1–17). What if one of the crucial points of deferred maintenance was the deterioration of the tall exterior pillars holding up the outwardly extended middle and upper floors? And what if the pillars themselves could not be sufficiently strengthened on the spot, and it would be dangerous to remove them for replacement, lest the entire structure collapse? They might then need to be reinforced with an extensive but unsightly network of diagonal supporting cross-beams. And in order not to depreciate the building’s attractiveness, the entire set of supports might have been enclosed within a thickened set of walls. Where does this speculation lead? Let us “fast forward” another 200 years, to the reign of King Josiah, whom Scripture praises superlatively as a model of piety. Like Joash, Josiah is not yet a full adult when he becomes king. Like him, he orders that repairs be made to the House of the LORD. But during these repairs, the high priest Hilkiah reportedly discovers a long lost sacred scroll, on account of which, among other reforms, the proper observance of Passover is restored (2 Kings 22:1–23:24). Was this scroll, already long neglected in Joash’s time (2 Kings 23:21–23), accidentally “walled up” during the earlier renovation? When we connect these dots, what emerges is a sequence in which the Temple’s peculiar structure on the one hand harks back to the Exodus’ emphatic rejection of Egyptian cosmology, and on the other necessitates certain later events that ultimately result in the recovery of some part of the Law, which returns the people to their historical roots and their religious duties. Solomon’s construction of the Temple, we are told, began in the 480th year after the Exodus (1 Kings 6:1), and thus 440 years after the Mosaic speeches recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy. It would be ever so neat had King Josiah’s discovery of the scroll (which some suppose to be Deuteronomy), occurred 440

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years later still. But, alas, the biblical chronology will not cooperate. If architecture is in some sense destiny, we apparently cannot say the same of arithmetic.

XI The “praying contest” between the prophet Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:1–39) is one of world literature’s great scenes of judicial combat. Both rabbinic and Christian traditions treat Elijah as a harbinger of the Messiah, but this passage shows him in what is arguably the essential prophetic enterprise, speaking unwanted truths to those in positions of power. The defining moment, though not the most vivid, comes in a private exchange between Elijah and King Ahab, of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, whose politically advantageous marriage to the Phoenician princess Jezebel has resulted in an upsurge in the worship of the pagan deities Baal and Asherah and a corresponding persecution of prophets of the LORD: When Ahab caught sight of Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?” He retorted, “It is not I who have brought trouble on Israel, but you and your father’s House, by forsaking the commandments of the LORD and going after the Baalim.” (1 Kings 18:17–18)

Elijah tells Ahab to summon “all Israel” to join him at Mount Carmel, together with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah “who eat at Jezebel’s table” (1 Kings 18:19). Ahab complies with this demand, perhaps out of desperation. The land has been suffering from a three-year drought. He may thus welcome either an act of compliance that will bring divine relief to his kingdom or a final showdown with this professional trouble maker. Elijah’s first words to this grand gathering of the nation are a picturesque marvel of ambiguity: “How long will you continue to limp on two legs [lit., “to hop on two boughs”]?” (1 Kings 18:21) The people’s faith is as fickle and fleeting as the movements of small birds. The hopping motion described here has been said to parody the movements of the Baalists’ ritual dance—three or four hops on one leg, then three or four hops on the other, back and forth. The substantive point is that the Israelites’ attempt at syncretism, to combine worship of the LORD with that of Baal and Asherah, is unviable and ridiculous. One cannot serve two masters or adhere to two contradictory sets of religious convictions.


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On this point Elijah echoes a teaching of the Golden Calf story. The people of Moses’ day, anxious at his prolonged absence on Mount Sinai, demand of Aaron that he “make us gods who shall go before us.” But Aaron, the peacemaker and, therefore, the compromiser, makes only one idol and proclaims a feast to the LORD, that is, he tries to combine worship of the two (Exod. 32:1–6). The attempt, of course, fails, because some matters are not susceptible to compromise, and it takes the killing of 3,000 idolaters to restore order (Exod. 32:25–28). Like Moses, Elijah will have none of this shilly-shallying. “If the LORD is God,” he says, “follow Him; and if Baal, follow him.” “But the people,” the text reports, “answered him not a word” (1 Kings 18:21). Apparently, they, like their ancestors in the desert, do not see the problem: Why not serve two masters, or six, or a hundred? Live and let live! The famous contest that Elijah proposes is thus a (perhaps inevitable) fall-back strategy. If the people cannot be philosophic, then at least they can appreciate a good fight. And a stirring fight it is too, with the 450 prophets of Baal vainly invoking their god, leaping about the altar, and gashing themselves with knives until they are covered in blood, as is their custom, while Elijah mocks them mercilessly. And then Elijah, having had his altar and sacrifice drenched with water three times, invokes the LORD, and fire descends from heaven and consumes the offering, the altar, and the excess water in the surrounding trench. The vignette ends with the people, awestruck, proclaiming, “Adonai hu ha’Elohim— The LORD, He is God!” (1 Kings 18:25–39) The rabbinical decision to end the synagogue reading of the story at this point suppresses, or at least obscures, the immediate violent and later enigmatic sequel: Then Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal, let not a single one of them get away.” They seized them, and Elijah took them down to the Wadi Kishon and slaughtered them there. (1 Kings 18:40)

The Rabbis apparently wished to inspire reverence, not frenzy. As stunning as this event is, it is not the complete triumph Elijah had sought. He had called upon Ahab to bring the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah to this event, but only the former group shows up. The Asherite hierarchy remains intact. Elijah is forced to flee for his life into the wilderness, as far as Horeb (i.e., Mount Sinai), in order to escape Queen Jezebel’s wrath (1 Kings 19:1–8). There, he encounters God, not in a great and mighty wind,

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or in an earthquake, or in fire, but in “a soft murmuring sound [alt., ‘a still, small voice’]” (1 Kings 19:11–12). The epiphany on Mount Carmel is not the last miracle reported in Hebrew Scripture, but it is the last to occur by the hand of a prophet of God on so grand a public scale. Prophecy thereafter becomes not exactly quiet or inconspicuous but more reliant on the power of the word, while massive supernatural manifestations of the divine recede from human view.

XII A well-known adage states that desperate times breed desperate actions. A corollary is that such times also generate warped thinking. We see both in a passage from the Book of Kings that describes an incident during the reign of King Jehoram (or Joram), of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (849–842 BCE), whose career is not marked by any great accomplishment: Sometime later, King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and marched upon Samaria and besieged it. There was a great famine in Samaria, and the siege continued until a donkey’s head sold for eighty [shekels] of silver and a quarter of a kab of doves’ dung for five shekels.6 Once, when the king of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him: “Help me, Your Majesty!” “Don’t [ask me],” he replied. “Let the LORD help you! Where could I get help for you, from the threshing floor or from the winepress? But what troubles you?” the king asked her. The woman answered, “That woman said to me, ‘Give up your son and we will eat him today; and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ So we cooked my son and we ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son and let’s eat him’; but she hid her son.” When the king heard what the woman said, he rent his clothes; and as he walked along the wall, the people could see that he was wearing sackcloth underneath. (2 Kings 6:24–30)

The story recalls several other biblical passages: the vivid description of cannibalism in the horrible curses Moses had prophesied for failure to observe God’s commandments (Deut. 28:49–57); the depiction of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem (586 BCE) in the Book of Lamentations: Better off were the slain of the sword Than those slain by famine. . . . With their own hands, tenderhearted women Have cooked their children;


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Such became their fare, In the disaster of my poor people. (Lam. 4:9–10)

and the contrasting story of King Solomon’s ingenious adjudication, in happier times, of the dispute between the two women who claim the same baby (1 Kings 3:15–28). (The natural maternal affection on which Solomon’s apparently daring ploy rests is in the later story negated by the severity of famine.) There is no report that King Jehoram sought to punish the women for infanticide, but neither, of course, does he enforce their infernal bargain. His response, to turn away in grief, doubtless tinged with disgust, implicitly recognizes our observation that inhuman conditions breed inhumane actions. But to apply ordinary principles of justice, such as the need to keep one’s word or to exchange items of comparable value (“your child for mine”), would be perverse. In the history of political thought, classic Social Contract Theory provides some guidance to appreciate cases like this one, in which contracts or implicit social understandings are pivotal. Hobbes seems almost specifically to envision, inter alia, circumstances of famine when he teaches that If the Sovereign command a man (though justly condemned,) to kill, wound, or mayme himselfe; or not to resist those that assault him; or to abstain from the use of food, ayre, medicine, or any other thing, without which he cannot live; yet hath that man the Liberty to disobey.7

On the other hand, he also stipulates: A former Covenant, makes voyd a later. For a man that hath passed away his Right to one man to day, hath it not to passe to morrow to another: and therefore the later promise passeth no Right, but is null. 8

That is, if we have delegated to the government authority to make laws, including laws that oblige us to preserve each other’s lives, then we are not free to absolve ourselves and each other from these obligations by subsequent private agreement.9 Whatever tension may exist between these statements, the conditions that might warrant disregard of the general laws against homicide or that would justify protection of killers would clearly have to be dire indeed. A contemporary analogous situation occurred in 1998, when a member of an Internet support group for problem drinkers confessed

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online to murder. Of the group’s approximately 200 members, only 3 reported the confession to the police, and they were subjected to a “flame war” by many of the group’s other members, who condemned the informants as immoral for breaching the group’s code of confidentiality. A student of politics might describe this phenomenon as a Virtual Social Contract, which, in the opinion of a large fraction of its participants, trumps the ordinary moral and legal obligations that citizens have toward each other, including the obligation to notify the police about evidence of serious crimes. The incident raises a host of questions about social obligation, cybercommunities, and psychosophistries.10 Our biblical story’s postscript provides a glimmer of consolation in these otherwise bleak accounts. The LORD causes the besieging Arameans to hear “the din of a huge army,” and they abandon their camp in a fright. Four Israelite lepers, who had resolved to take their chances on the Arameans’ mercy rather than starve to death, come upon the deserted camp. The men romp from tent to tent, eating and drinking their fill, carrying off and burying quantities of silver, gold, and clothing. It then occurs to them that they should share news of the find with their fellow townspeople, so they send word to the king, who cautiously determines that the enemy has indeed fled. Thereupon, the hungry Samarians plunder the camp with such gusto that they trample one of the king’s aides who had previously sneered at a prophecy of imminent plenty (2 Kings 7). Our sense of justice, as well as relief, resonates to this vignette of four of society’s outcasts getting first dibs on the food and other rewards incident to the siege’s cessation, and also perhaps to the fate of the skeptical courtier who scoffs at the word that even bad things must come to an end. May we hope that, as we come better to understand and master our new technologies, and our well-based fears incident to them recede, the truly needy among us will be served without the general community having to forsake the principles of justice and social obligation that make humaneness practicable!

XIII The biblical history presented in the books of Samuel and Kings displays several principles of legitimacy and aberrations from orderly succession. Saul, Israel’s first king, is anointed by the prophet Samuel and popularly acclaimed (1 Sam. 8–10). David becomes king essentially by conquest (2 Sam. 2–5:3). Solomon is a son of David, but not the obvious successor, as witnessed by the fact that David’s prime


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minister and army chief, Joab, the high priest Abiathar, and much of the country’s political elite initially line up behind David’s then-eldest son Adonijah (1 Kings 1:7–10). Solomon is succeeded by his eldest son, Rehoboam, but this haughty and imprudent man quickly alienates two-thirds of the country, which secedes to become the Northern Kingdom of Israel, under the rule of one of his generals, Jeroboam son of Nebat (1 Kings 12:1–24). For the next 200 years, governance in the Northern Kingdom follows a depressing pattern, in which an able general and king is succeeded by an incompetent son or grandson, who is in turn displaced by another general. The Southern Kingdom of Judah, which outlives its northern neighbor by a century and a half, displays more stability, apparently remaining loyal to an orderly succession from father to eldest son within the David-SolomonRehoboam dynasty, until the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE, with one brief but violent interruption of six years. A figure crucial to the brevity of that interruption is King Joash (or Jehoash), who reigned from 842 to 801 BCE, eighty years after the division of the Davidic Kingdom. But the action begins three generations earlier, when King Ahab, of the Northern Kingdom, marries the Phoenician princess Jezebel, thus cementing the already cordial relations between Israel and its northern neighbor. Scripture records Ahab as a notoriously wicked king, under the influence of his more wicked wife. But he is an able ruler, and his political marriage no doubt produces material benefits, through improved commerce with Phoenicia, a very commercial country. But it also invites Phoenician paganism (1 Kings 17:29–33). In order to effect a similar diplomatic achievement with his southern neighbor, Ahab gives his and Jezebel’s daughter Athaliah to be the wife of Judah’s king Joram (or Jehoram) (2 Kings 8:16–18, 26). Ahab is eventually killed in battle against the Arameans, and is succeeded by his elder son Ahaziah, and then after two years by his second son Joram (whose shared name with the King of Judah may signify the two Kingdoms’ rapprochement) (Kings 22:29–38, 52; 2 Kings 1:17). Joram of Judah dies, and is succeeded by his son Ahaziah (who, in a possible reciprocal gesture of diplomatic courtesy, shares the name of his maternal uncle, the former King of Israel) (2 Kings 25). The following year, one of the northern King Joram’s generals, Jehu, raises a successful revolt, and kills not only his master, but also the Queen Mother Jezebel, all of Joram’s relatives, and King Ahaziah of Judah, who, by ill luck, happens to be in the North to visit his royal uncle (2 Kings 9–10:11).11 This turn of events leaves as king of Judah Ahaziah’s infant son Joash. It also leaves Judah’s dowager Queen Athaliah in an

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uncomfortable position. She is a foreigner, probably not much liked in the Southern Kingdom as a whole, and especially disliked, because of her paganism, by the Temple-based priesthood in Jerusalem. It may not be extravagant to suppose that the Southern establishment would contemplate handing Athaliah over to Jehu, as a goodwill gesture to the new Northern regime and to rid themselves of an unwanted presence. (This would entail disregarding Jehu’s recent killing of their own king Ahaziah, but in politics one must be forward looking and not dwell on harmless errors.) Thus, if Athaliah is to secure her position and her life, she must act as quickly and as ruthlessly as Jehu. So she proceeds to kill off as many of her late son’s relatives as she can reach. But one of the princesses smuggles Joash away to the custody of Jehoiada, the high priest. Joash is raised secretly within the Temple. Six years later, Jehoiada presents the seven-year-old boy to the assembled pious, including the palace guard, as their legitimate king. They accept the story, overthrow and kill the hated Athaliah, and install Joash (2 Kings 11:1–12:2). Like her mother Jezebel, Athaliah is a worshipper of Baal and Asherah. The revolution against her thus not only restores the Davidic dynasty, but also arguably saves the Jewish religion. Some of this story makes political sense, but one feature sounds off key. Granting that the adult members of Athaliah’s late son’s family may pose a threat to her, the same cannot be said of her infant grandson. On the contrary, young Joash is the lifeline that gives her claim to rule as Queen Regent a glimmer of legitimacy. She would thus have an interest in keeping the boy alive under her tutelage. His disappearance and presumed death (plausible in the confusion of the bloodbath she unleashes), exposes her rule to the continuous accusation that it is based solely on force. Another part of this story fits too neatly into the already existing template of princes being concealed for safety in time of peril. The most famous, of course, is Moses, who is raised by Pharaoh’s daughter (Exod. 2:1–10). But there is also King Saul’s young grandson Mephibosheth, who, when David takes over, is carried off by a household servant, who trips and drops the boy, on account of which he is crippled for the rest of his life. When David discovers him, some years later, he treats him kindly but prudently, and places him under a polite house arrest, allowing him the run of the palace compound, but not to venture into the countryside, where he might become the focus of a revolt to restore Saul’s dynasty (2 Sam. 4:4; 9). On the caretaking side of the Joash story, there is the precedent of Samuel, whose mother gives him to be raised by the priest Eli


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(1 Sam. 1). Perhaps the Temple functioned, inter alia, as a haven for orphaned and “dedicated” children. Who, then, is the boy Jehoiada presents as the true royal heir? Perhaps it really is King Joash. Or perhaps it is just a boy of appropriate age, whom he has raised and who is under his sway, whom the country is willing to accept as David’s offshoot because they are ripe to depose the hated foreign despot. If so, then the kings who reign in Judah for the next 250 years are a line of usurpers, David’s entire royal house having been extinguished (in Joash’s case perhaps unintentionally) in Athaliah’s coup d’état. What kind of king does Joash prove to be? The focus of the synagogue selection that deals with him (2 Kings 12:1–17) is that he notices (not surprisingly for someone raised by the high priest) that the Temple needs repair and orders that work be done on it. Twentythree years later, he observes that the repairs have not been made. The implication is that the priests are corrupt, and have been diverting the Temple revenues. So Joash orders the establishment of a separate building fund that will be policed by the aging Jehoiada and his own royal accountants. This plan is successful, and the text proudly reports that no close check was kept on the overseers, carpenters, stonecutters, masons, and common laborers who did the repairs, for they dealt honestly—animated, we may suppose, by the pride they took in the restoration of their worship’s central symbol. The bad news is that it takes Joash twenty-three years to discover that his initial command has not been effectively enforced. The unexplained but jarring time lag suggests that as a ruler Joash is mediocre. But this may be a reasonable price to pay for the long-term benefit of political legitimacy. It would be comforting if the story had a happy sequel, but, alas, it does not. After the death of his mentor Jehoiada, Joash loses his moral bearings. The neighboring Aramean King Hazael goes on the warpath, and Joash averts an attack on Jerusalem by paying a hefty tribute, which not only empties his own treasury but also strips the Temple of its gold and precious sacred objects. He is eventually assassinated, at the age of forty-seven, by two courtiers (2 Kings 12:18–22; 2 Chron. 24:15–27).

Kings of Israel and Judah Southern Kingdom

Northern Kingdom

Rehoboam

Jeroboam I

Abijah

Nadab

Baasha

Asa

Elah

Zimri

Jehoshaphat

Omri Ahab == Jezebel*

Jehoram == Athaliah

Ahaziah

Ahaziah*

Jehu

Joash**

Jehoahaz

Amaziah

Jehoash

Uzziah***

Jeroboam II****

Jotham***

Zechariah

Jehoram*

Shallum Ahaz***

Menahem

Hezekiah***

Pekahiah Pekah***

Manasseh

Hoshea

Amon Josiah***** Jehoahaz

Jehoiakim

Zedekiah

Jehoiachin * killed by Jehu ** boy-king, concealed by priests during Athaliah’s reign; orders repairs of Temple *** mentioned as contemporary of Isaiah **** contemporary of Jonah ***** adolescent-king; (re)discovery of Deuteronomy; most righteous Yahwist persecutor of cults of Baal and Asherah. Josiah and his sons were contemporaries of Jeremiah.

CH A P T ER

5

Five Prophetic Practitioners

A. I I Biblical scholars commonly attribute the Book of Isaiah to at least two writers: chapters 1–39 to the man identified at Isaiah 1:1 as the son of Amoz, who lived in the Southern Kingdom of Judah under Kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, that is, during the latter half of the eighth century BCE; and chapters 40–66 to an unidentified Jewish exile in Babylonia about 150 years later, whom they call Second Isaiah. (Some see a post–Exilic Third Isaiah in some of the latter passages [e.g., Is. 45:1 ff.].) The prophetic synagogue reading (haftarah) paired with the Exodus version of the Ten Commandments consists of three discrete passages from the early chapters, though one would not know it from the way the rabbinic editors spliced together two of them. In the first, describing a vision from the beginning of his career, Isaiah sees the LORD in His glory, seated upon a throne, surrounded by fiery angels who proclaim God’s holiness in terms memorialized by Jewish and Christian liturgy: In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne. . . . Seraphs stood in attendance on Him. . . . And one would call to the other, “Holy, holy, holy! The LORD of Hosts! His Glory fills all the earth!” (Is. 6:1–3)

This epiphany recalls the revelation on Mount Sinai. In addition to the seraphim (from saraf—to burn), the poet reports of the Temple, where his vision takes place: “The doorposts would shake at the sound

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of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke” (Is. 6:4). This parallels the scene in Exodus: “Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the LORD had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently” (Exod. 19:18). Understandably, he is afraid: I cried, “Woe is me; I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips And I live among a people Of unclean lips; Yet my eyes have beheld The King LORD of Hosts.” (Is. 6:5)

Isaiah’s “unclean lips” recall Moses’ protest when God first reveals to him his mission of liberation: “I have never been a man of words . . . ; I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue” (Exod. 4:10). Consider too the sequel in Isaiah’s account: Then one of the seraphs flew over to me with a live coal, which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched it to my lips and declared, “Now that this has touched your lips, Your guilt shall depart And your sin be purged away.” (Is. 6:6–7)

Did the Rabbis have this text in mind when they composed a legend that the child Moses, being raised in the Egyptian court, one day reached for Pharaoh’s crown? The court astrologers, sensing a bad omen, place before him two braziers, one filled with gold, symbolic of rulership, the other with glowing coals. Moses initially reaches for the gold, but the angel Gabriel guides his hand to the coals, one of which he touches to his lips, thus causing his speech impediment (Hertz, p. 219). From this point, however, the two scenarios sharply diverge. Here is Isaiah: Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me.” (Is. 6:8)

FIVE PROPHETIC PRACTITIONERS

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In marked contrast to Moses, Jeremiah, Jonah, and perhaps others, who shy from the prophetic calling, the now-cleansed Isaiah is like the enthusiastic schoolboy who sits at the center of the front row and, to the teacher’s inquiring, “Who knows the answer?” responds, his arm waving, “Me, me, me!” This is not just inspired; it is charming! Also unlike the Sinaitic revelation, and we imagine to Isaiah’s dismay, the mission to which he has been called with such a show of glory foretells sadness, desolation, and destruction for nine-tenths of the Israelite people and the imminent conquest of the Northern K ingdom by the Assyrian Empire (Is. 6:9–13). The next part resumes the story a few years later, at the start of the reign of Uzziah’s grandson, King Ahaz, whom Scripture records as an evil idolater, who practiced human sacrifice (2 Kings 16:2–4). At this time, probably around 735 BCE, the kings of Syria and Israel form an alliance and march against Jerusalem. King Ahaz and the Judahites are seized by fear. The LORD sends Isaiah and his son Shear-jashub (“a remnant will return”) to fortify the king’s spirit and urge him not to fear “those two smoking stubs of firebrands” (Is. 7:3–4). But now the haftarah leaps ahead two chapters and concludes with some very hopeful verses, presumably about Ahaz’ son, the future King Hezekiah, still a boy at this time, making it appear that he will be the instrument of national salvation from the immediate military threat. In so doing, it obscures the actual expedient by which Ahaz saves his kingdom from Syrian-Israelite conquest—he becomes a tributary to the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser. The Assyrians subdue, first Syria, then the Kingdom of Israel, deporting and resettling the ten northern tribes to points now unknown (2 Kings 16:7–9; 17:1–6). These concluding poetic verses are a field day for translators and interpreters. Here is Rabbi Hertz’ version: For a child is born unto us, A son is given unto us; And the government is upon his shoulder; And his name is called Pele-joez-el-gibbor[Wonderful in counsel is God the mighty, Abi-ad-sar-shalom. The Everlasting Father, the Ruler of Peace] (Is. 9:5 [Hertz, p. 305])

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The child’s name proclaims some of God’s attributes. JPS makes it a statement about God’s intention, and the child is an earthly ruler who embodies that intention: . . . He has been named “The Mighty God is planning grace; The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler.” (JPS, p. 634)

The nineteenth-century Isaac Leeser translation makes the name a statement about the child-ruler in the service of God: . . . and his name is called, Wonderful, counsellor of the mighty God, of the everlasting Father, the prince of peace. (Leeser, 2:672)

The Orthodox “Stone” Chumash places the boy’s government in the future, and has God doing the naming: For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us, and the authority will rest on his shoulders; He Who is Wondrous Advisor, Mighty God, Eternal Father shall give him the name, “Prince of Peace.” (Scherman, p. 1156)

Finally, Christian translations, disregarding the context that relates this passage to the events of the final days of the Northern Kingdom, and taking it instead as a prophecy of Christ, identify the child with God: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Is. 9:6 [King James, p. 595])

Obviously, how to translate the text depends on the theological premises one brings to it. Concerning this last version, however, we can say, with Hertz, that no Jewish prophet would ascribe divinity to a human being (p. 305). II On the seven Sabbaths preceding Rosh Hashanah, observant Jews read a set of selections from the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah— “Second Isaiah”—called the prophecies of consolation. Identification


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of two Isaiahs is based on stylistic and thematic considerations. Chapters 1–39, while remarkably expressive, are largely “prophetic boilerplate”—condemnation of the people’s misconduct and calls to repentance. But in chapter 40 the message shifts dramatically: Comfort, oh comfort My people, Says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, And declare to her, That her term of service is over, That her iniquity is expiated; For she has received at the hand of the LORD Double for all her sins. (Is. 40:1–2)

These chapters include passages of matchless poetic beauty. Among the more striking features is the use of female imagery, whether applied to Zion as the LORD’s forsaken wife (Is. 54:6) or to the God Who comforts His people as a mother comforts her children (Is. 66:13). (Lovers of classical music will recognize verses used by George Frederick Handel in “Messiah” and Johannes Brahms in his “German Requiem.”) The longing for comfort and hope is expressed so eloquently and so movingly by the later Isaiah, and touches a chord so universal, as to make him a bridge between the faiths and a voice for all who have experienced spiritual exile. Among the most beautiful of these poems is the first ten verses of chapter 54, which the Rabbis who assembled the weekly readings paired thematically with a Torah passage that includes laws about spousal estrangement (Deut. 21:10–17; 22:13–21; 24:1–4). Various prophets invoke this metaphor. Israel is the LORD’s wayward wife, whom He has cast out but is now taking back with forgiveness. (The starkest example is the book of the prophet Hosea, whom the LORD commands to marry a harlot, and so to live the metaphor personally [Hosea 1:2–8].) Structurally, the poem is a marvel of symmetry and compositional development. The opening verses establish the paradoxical, but not unprecedented (cf. Gen. 18:1–15), dramatic situation. A woman who is identified as “barren” is told to rejoice for the children she will have (Is. 54:1–4). The underlying cultural assumption is that the measure of a woman’s worth is the number of children she can provide her husband (cf. Gen. 30:1). The central verses both explain the reason for her childlessness—not that she is incapable of bearing children,

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but that her husband has forsaken her temporarily in anger—and give the assurance that things will now be different: For a little while I forsook you, But with vast love I will bring you back. In slight anger, for a moment, I hid My face from you; But with kindness everlasting I will take you back in love —said the LORD your Redeemer. (Is. 54:7–8)

We are not told why Israel has been cast out. Perhaps it is for idolatry, for “whoring” with other gods—a standard refrain of prophetic condemnation. But for all the poem explicitly says, what has happened may be divine petulance for an unnamed petty offense. The description may cast God in a less than flattering light, as a callous or abusive husband. But whatever accounts for His earlier rebuke, He is now taking back the bride of His youth. The concluding verses elaborate this theme, in cosmic terms that transcend the spousal metaphor and affirm His everlasting covenant with Israel: For this to Me is like the waters of Noah: As I swore that the waters of Noah Nevermore would flood the earth, So I swear that I will not Be angry with or rebuke you. For the mountains may move And the hills be shaken, But My loyalty shall never move from you, Nor My covenant of friendship [or peace—b’rit sh’lomi] be shaken —said the LORD, who takes you back in love. (Is. 54:9–10)

Hence, the rabbinical pairing of this poem as well with the Torah reading about the Great Flood (Gen. 6–11).

B. J I During the three Sabbaths preceding the holiday of Tisha b’Av, the solemn commemoration of the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, synagogues chant what are called the


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haftarot of rebuke. Tradition also ascribes to this date various other disasters in Jewish history: the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, the crushing of the bar Kokhba rebellion in 135, and the Jews’ expulsion from Spain in 1492 (Kolatch, I., p. 286; TJH, p. 448). Appropriately, two of these readings are from the Book of Jeremiah, the major prophet of the First Temple’s last days, whose career ended with its destruction. The first selection is taken from the beginning of his forty-year mission and provides a very moving glimpse into the prophetic calling. It begins by situating Jeremiah socially and historically (Jer. 1:1–3). He is a kohein from the Benjaminite northern strip of the Kingdom of Judah (the Northern Kingdom of Israel having been conquered by Assyria a century earlier). His career spans the period from the thirteenth year of the reign of the reformist king Josiah through the eleventh (concluding) year of Josiah’s third son Zedekiah, the last Davidic king, 626–586 BCE (Hertz, pp. 710–11). He was only twenty-three or twenty-four years old when summoned to divine service, and the passage registers his understandable reluctance: The word of the LORD came to me: Before I created you in the womb, I selected you; [Alt: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, —B’terem e’tzar’kha vabeten y’da’tikha] Before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet concerning the nations. I replied: Ah, Lord GOD! I don’t know how to speak, For I am still a boy. And the LORD said to me: Do not say, “I am still a boy,” But go wherever I send you And speak whatever I command you. Have no fear of them, For I am with you to deliver you —declares the LORD. (Jer. 1:4–7)

Some antiabortion activists have seized upon the statement “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; / Before you were born, I consecrated you” as a proof text that human life, from the biblical perspective, precedes birth, for in order for something to be known it must already be. But this is clearly not the point. Rather, it is an assertion of God’s omniscience, which defies conventional logic, or at least

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that He knows Jeremiah and what he is capable of doing better than Jeremiah knows himself. (The point could as well be made with the mild vulgarism, “I knew you before you were a twinkle in your daddy’s eye.” Should one, therefore, conclude that human life begins before conception?) We note that the phrase navi lagoyim, which JPS translates as “a prophet concerning the nations,” could also be rendered “a prophet to the nations.” This continues the tradition of Hebrew prophets reaching out to Gentiles that we see in the command to Elijah that he anoint Hazael as king of Syria and in Jonah’s mission to the city of Nineveh (Jer. 46–51; 1 Kings 19:15; Jonah 1:1–2; 3:1). Jeremiah’s mission thus reaffirms from the start the teaching that the LORD is not only the special God of Israel but also the Sovereign of the world, the Arbiter of nations. This is doubtless heady stuff for a man not yet twenty-five, and Jeremiah feels overwhelmed. Accordingly, the LORD attempts both to brace and, in a book not especially noted for its sense of humor, to lighten his spirit with a play on words: The word of the LORD came to me: What do you see, Jeremiah? I replied: I see a branch of an almond tree [shakeid]. The LORD said to me: You have seen right, For I am watchful [shokeid] to bring My word to pass. (Jer. 1:11–12)

Employing a second image, the LORD gets to the point of Jeremiah’s immediate assignment. He reveals a vision of a steaming pot, “tipped away” (i.e., spilling down) from the north, and declares, From the north shall disaster break loose Upon all the inhabitants of the land! For I am summoning all the peoples Of the kingdoms of the north. (Jer. 1:14–15)

To appreciate this warning, one must observe something about the Kingdom of Judah’s political geography. The only great power to the south worth fearing is Egypt. To the west is the Mediterranean Sea, a possible source of nuisance raids by maritime nations, but probably not of wholesale invasion. To the immediate east lies desert. Therefore, any potential invader other than the Egyptians—Hittites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Assyrians, Babylonians—would pour down from the north. Even if they originated in lands that are eastward on the map,


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they would take the circuitous but more easily traversed route along the Fertile Crescent that Abraham and centuries of traders routinely followed in peacetime. As a warning of conquest, this prophecy is not nearly as helpfully specific as one might hope. Also implied is that Egypt, the power against whom King Josiah waged the war in which he was eventually killed, will not be the source of errant Judah’s chastisement and is not a special danger. II Jeremiah generally confirms his reputation as a proclaimer of gloom and doom. The former Jesuit writer Jack Miles, in his provocatively titled book God: A Biography waggishly refers to the “big three” Hebrew prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—as, respectively, “the manic, the depressive, and the psychotic articulation of the prophetic message” (p. 197). Richard Elliott Friedman conjectures, in his equally provocative Who Wrote the Bible? (chap. 5–7), that Jeremiah was “D,” the anonymous author of the Deuteronomic history, comprehending the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. This claim would arguably make him the single most important figure, if not in Hebrew Scripture, then behind it. The haftarah that consists of Jeremiah 32:6–27 tells a discrete story, of interest to students of politics, about leadership in times of great distress, adherence to traditions, even when they may seem pointless or merely formal, public confidence and personal doubt, and the nature of faith. Jeremiah lived in the Kingdom of Judah from about 650 to about 575 BCE, and his ministry spanned the reigns of five kings: the reformist Josiah, his sons Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, the latter’s son Jehoiachin, and Jehoiachin’s uncle Zedekiah. In this very significant period for the Jews of antiquity, the Assyrian Empire, which had destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel a century-and-a-half earlier, was itself displaced by the Babylonians. Egypt also had a flurry of resurgence. Judah, a small country caught between two great empires, vacillated in its allegiance. Jeremiah, among other things an acute observer of politics, early on concluded that Egypt’s revival was momentary, that Babylon was the rising power, and that Judah’s better path lay in becoming a Babylonian tributary and focusing internally on resuming the religious and social reforms begun under King Josiah—that is, reconnecting with their true roots and striving to be their better selves. But Jehoiakim and Zedekiah would not listen. They fomented rebellions against Babylonian authority, which

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King Nebuchadnezzar suppressed with great severity, culminating in the sacking of Jerusalem and destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. Jeremiah, suspected of being a Babylonian agent, spent some part of his career in prison. (This need not mean being chained to the wall of a wretched dungeon, but, more likely for a person of his importance, confinement to the royal guardhouse.) The present passage is set during Judah’s dreadful final days. Jerusalem has been under siege for over a year and is racked by famine and disease. Jeremiah sits in the prison compound of the royal palace, where he has been placed for prophesying the city’s and King Zedekiah’s capture. The desperate military situation has apparently produced a panic wave of selling land. He is visited by his cousin Hanamel, who offers to sell him his family estate on the outskirts of Jerusalem, to which Jeremiah, as a kinsman, has the legal right of first purchase. The offer is likely a mere formality—who, after all, would be crazy enough to buy a piece of land that will soon fall into the enemy’s hands? If, as expected, Jeremiah waives his right, Hanamel will be free to sell it, probably at great loss, to some speculator who enjoys the Babylonians’ favor. But, no doubt to everyone’s amazement, Jeremiah not only exercises his privilege to buy the land, but pays full value, carefully weighing out the seventeen shekels of silver and ceremoniously executing the legal documents before witnesses, as though this were the most enduring of transactions. And he proclaims grandly, “[T]hus said the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Houses, fields, and vineyards shall again be purchased in this land’ ” (Jer. 32:15). Were the reading to end here, we would have a neat, edifying story about one aspect of leadership. Jeremiah, secure in his faith in God’s ultimate benevolence toward His Chosen People, tries to spread that confidence to those around him. But the text continues, and provides a most remarkable glimpse into the public man’s very soul. When the scribe and witnesses have left, and he is alone, Jeremiah utters an anguished prayer that shows him to share the same doubts as his countrymen concerning God’s will and their collective fate. Starting from the reflection that nothing is too wondrous for the Lord GOD who made heaven and earth, he reviews the divine virtues and the great favors that God has done for His people Israel. But he also recalls the people’s waywardness, for which their present misfortune is the consequence. What will happen next could go either way, depending on whether God’s mercy or His justice comes to the fore. Even the meaning of Jeremiah’s just concluded action is not self-evident. Has God told him to buy the land before witnesses, the city being at the enemy’s


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disposal, in order to restore hope? Or is this gesture the prelude to utter despair? If the Babylonians proceed to burn Jeremiah’s newly bought fields and to kill him, what lesson would his conspicuous purchase and his public show of confidence then teach? Into this context of ambiguity and wavering faith comes the word of the LORD: “Behold I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too wondrous for Me?” (Jer. 32:27) With this divine near-echo of the beginning of Jeremiah’s own prayer, the reading ends. By describing Himself, in this marvelously rhetorical conclusion, as “the God of all flesh,” the LORD has shifted the focus from His guardianship of Israel to His sovereignty over the entire world. The answer to Jeremiah’s question and the fate of the Jewish people have become entwined in the affairs of the rest of mankind. To be “chosen” no longer means to be isolated. Although the synagogue selection stops here, the Scriptural story does not. There, God recites, at length, the people’s transgressions, for which the Babylonians’ certain conquest of the city is punishment. But He also promises to gather them again and bring them back, to dwell securely under a new and everlasting covenant, under which “[f]ields shall be purchased, and deeds written and sealed, and witnesses called in the land of Benjamin and in the environs of Jerusalem, and in the towns of Judah” (Jer. 32:28–44). In Scripture, God’s answer is declaratory and parallels the terms of Jeremiah’s prayer. The rabbinical compilers of the haftarot transformed a positive declaration about future events into a rhetorical question about the Divine Being and an implicit teaching about the nature of faith. Doubtless, the latter feature reflects an accommodation to the Diaspora. If some (but not most) of the Jews did eventually return from Babylon, they later still, under the Romans, were again dispersed among the nations. It also arguably represents a maturing of Jewish theology, from one of promise regarding external goods and worldly rewards, to something more introspective, hypothetical, even fatalistic. Whatever God will do—and His will may be ultimately inscrutable—to affirm that He is the Creator of heaven and earth, the God of all flesh, is implicitly also to affirm that nothing is too wondrous for Him. Therefore, in the phrase of a later famous son of Israel, may His will—whatever it is—be done! III Abraham Lincoln is best remembered as the Great Emancipator of the Negro slaves during the American Civil War—though in fact, his

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liberating executive order, a military rather than a legal action, only applied to the States that were in rebellion against and attempting to secede from the Union. Slaves who lived in loyal States would have to wait two more years legally to become free men, through the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Slavery and emancipation are covered in readings from the Books of Exodus and Jeremiah, which often come around, on the Hebrew calendar, proximately to Lincoln’s birthday. At Jeremiah 34:8–22, the prophet calls attention to the Torahidic law, “When you acquire a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years; in the seventh year he shall go free, without payment” (Exod. 21:2). Some 650 years after the Exodus, Jeremiah recalls this command during the period of the final Babylonian attack on Judah. King Zedekiah had persuaded the Judean slaveholders to release their bondmen, and they had agreed under oath. But when the danger temporarily receded, they forced them back into slavery. An indignant Jeremiah predicts the enemy’s imminent return, and therewith “fire, war, hunger, and pestilence” (Hertz, p. 323). Crucial to Jeremiah’s outrage is the distinction between enslavement and reenslavement. Hebrew slaves within the Hebrew polity would, unlike foreign slaves, not have been captives of war, but debtslaves, who offered themselves as security on loans. Their initial enslavement was thus a free act, undertaken in extreme circumstances. The six-year limit authoritatively, if arbitrarily, posits that this term of servitude suffices to make good the initial debt and entitles the bondman to restoration of his freedom. Further regulations in the sequel verses set more limits on the owner’s power, so as to moderate the relation between master and slave (Exod. 21:7–11, 20, 26–27). Quite different is the situation Jeremiah confronts. There, former slaves who had been set free with all the solemnity of public oaths (Jer. 34:18–20) are being forcibly impressed back into servitude. This is a form of kidnapping, which the Torah makes a capital offense (Exod. 21:16). This distinction is also implicit in one of Lincoln’s more famous letters. According to one of his biographers, Lord Charnwood, Lincoln detested the institution of slavery from the moment he first encountered it as a young man.1 We also know that he was willing to tolerate the evil institution’s continued existence if that was the necessary price to hold the Union together. When the Civil War was well into its second year, he wrote to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune: My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without


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freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.2

While the clear rhetorical thrust of this statement is that the Union outranks emancipation in Lincoln’s hierarchy of values, he does not say that he would save the Union by enslaving men who are already free or would be made free by act of war. (He was, at this time, already formulating the preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, which he announced a month later.) Lincoln’s style of speaking and writing is full of “Old Testament” cadences and allusions. One cannot but suspect that he had these passages from Exodus and Jeremiah, and the important distinction they delineate, in mind when he wrote these carefully chosen words to Greeley.

C. E The root of the prophet Ezekiel’s Hebrew name, Y’hez’keil, is the word hazak (stronger). His name thus means “God has strengthened” or (preferably) “God will strengthen.” Ezekiel was a prophet of the Babylonian Exile, a younger contemporary of Jeremiah. He was born and grew up in the Kingdom of Judah during its last few decades of independence, and was carried into Babylonia along with King Jehoiachin and 10,000 of the Judean military and social elite in 597 BCE, eleven years before the final siege of Jerusalem and destruction of the First Temple (2 Kings 24:8–17). He probably spent the rest of his life in Babylonia, and much of his prophecy is seasoned with yearning and hope for return to the land of Israel. He was a kohein of the family of Zadok, whom King Solomon elevated to the position of high priest 350 years earlier, after Zadok’s rival Abiathar fell from grace by backing Solomon’s half brother Adonijah as King David’s successor (1 Kings 1:5–8; 2:26–27). Ezekiel’s status within exilic Jewish society would have been high. His priestly credentials show in some of his prophecies’ concern for ritual purity and ceremonial detail. Ezekiel’s poetry is strikingly imagistic. This may explain his appeal to Jewish and Christian interpreters of mystical inclination. His words may also resonate among Christians because he (perhaps uniquely among the prophets) often uses the phrase “son of man [ben-adam]”

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as the vocative by which the Lord GOD addresses him—a turn of phrase later repeated by Jesus (Matt. 18:11; 24:37; Luke 19:10; 21:27). JPS translates it interpretively, and sensibly, as “mortal.” The immortal God, speaking to the prophet, begins by reminding him of his limitations. Thus too, Psalm 8:4–5: When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars that You set in place, what is man [enosh] that You have been mindful of him, mortal man [ben-adam] that You have taken note of him . . .

Probably his most famous allegory is the Valley of Dry Bones: The hand of the LORD came upon me. He took me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the valley. It was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many of them spread over the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live again?” I replied, “O Lord GOD, only You know.” (Ezek. 37:1–3)

God commands him to prophesy to the bones that the LORD will make them live. He does so, and the bones come together. Sinews, flesh, and skin grow over them, but the re-formed bodies still lack life. But when, at the LORD’s command, he prophesies to the winds, breath enters them, and they come to life and stand on their feet, a vast multitude (Ezek. 37:4–10). Here is a very forceful metaphor about the power of faith. In popular Christian understanding, it is also a proof text about the resurrection of the dead and the promise of personal immortality. This is not a theme much emphasized in Judaism, even though belief in the revival of the dead is one of Moses Maimonides’ “Thirteen Articles of the Faith” (see Siddur Sim Shalom, pp. 326, 327). We also come across it in the second blessing of the Eighteen Benedictions, the central prayer of every Jewish service, where it is referred to five times in a single paragraph: He sustains the living in loving kindness. He revives the dead in great mercies. He supports the fallen, and heals the ailing, and frees the fettered. And He keeps His faith with those who sleep in dust [i.e., with the dead]. Who can compare with You, powerful Lord, and who is like You, king of death and of revival and master of deliverance? Faithful are You in giving life to the dead. Blessed are You, LORD, Who revives the dead.3


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Reform prayer books offer a different version of this prayer, excising references to resurrection, a doctrine the Reform Movement rejects. Also of interest is that the Rabbis of the early Common Era substituted strangulation for stoning as the standard Jewish mode of execution, because they wanted the bodies even of criminals to be intact. This was largely a symbolic gesture, because, as Paul Gottfried points out in an Internet column on Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ, posted in 2004, “[the] ancient Jews had lost their right under Roman rule to execute anyone generations before Jesus’s death” (“The Passion and the Jews,” LewRockwell.com). But whatever support the doctrine of the resurrection and of the world to come may receive from other passages in Hebrew Scripture— and they are quite few (cf. Dan. 12:2–3, 12/13)—it is clear from context that this is not what the “dry bones” vision is about. It concludes: And He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole House of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone; we are doomed.’ Prophesy, therefore, and say to them: Thus said the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves and lift you out of the graves, O My people, and bring you to the land of Israel. You shall know, O My people, that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and lifted you out of your graves. I will put My breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil. Then you shall know that I the LORD have spoken and have acted”—declares the LORD. (Ezek. 37:11–14)

Manifestly, this prophetic text, like numerous others, is a metaphor about the revival of national hope and the prospect of national restoration. We should especially notice that Ezekiel is called upon to prophesy twice, once to the dry bones and then to the winds. It is emphasized that even when the bones are rejoined and covered with sinews, flesh, and skin, they still lack life. The word for wind, ruah, can also mean spirit, as in the haftarah’s opening sentence—“He took me out by the spirit of the LORD [v’yotzi’eini b’ruah Adonai]”—or the traditional translation of the early passage in Genesis: “Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God [ruah Elohim] hovered over the face of the waters” (Ezek. 37:1; Gen. 1:2 [Hertz, p. 2]). Taking the metaphor in Ezekiel at its announced value, the conjoining of bones, sinews, flesh, and skin does not by itself produce living beings. Or, interpretively, the presence of structure (bones), connections (sinews), material

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prosperity (flesh), and the outward appearance of well-being (skin) is insufficient to constitute a vital community. For this one also needs ruah haShem, the inspiriting element that comes from love of the LORD, the desire to fulfill His commandments, and the determination to do justice toward one’s fellow human beings.

D. Z Zechariah was a post-Exilic prophet, who preached to the Jews who returned from Babylon to the land of Israel in 537 BCE, under the permissive decree of the Persian King Cyrus. Zechariah 2:14–4:7 is read in synagogues twice yearly—in late spring and again during Hanukkah, usually toward the end of December. The passage includes a figure whom one does not ordinarily expect in a Jewish service, Satan: And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said unto Satan: “The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan, yea, the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee; is not this man a brand plucked out of the fire?” (Zech. 3:1–2 [Hertz, p. 620])

Modern Judaism does not make much of this character, and his presence here may seem out of place, as though the text had mistakenly wandered in from an evangelical church. The Hebrew hasatan is an improper noun rather than a proper name—not Satan, but the Satan. The word is translated by JPS as the Accuser, which accords with the end of the sentence: “. . . and the Accuser [hasatan] standing at his right to accuse him [l’sitno]” (Zech. 3:1). The root word, sitnah, means hostility or accusation, or perhaps more generally adversity. We find it in an episode in the life of the Patriarch Isaac: And the herdmen of Gerar strove with Isaac’s herdmen [over a well], saying: “The water is ours.” And he called the name of the well Esek [Contention]; because they contended with him. And they digged another well, and they strove for that also. And he called the name of it Sitnah. (Gen. 26:20–21 [Hertz, p. 96])

The haftarah’s Satan is thus not the Devil-in-Chief, the personification of evil popularized by our surrounding culture. He is rather an accusing or adverse spirit, who raises some unspecified objection to Joshua’s credentials to serve as high priest in the Second Temple,


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which is under construction when Zechariah prophesies. The prophet, speaking for God, rebukes the Accuser—and by implication any human accusers—and proclaims Joshua “a brand plucked from the fire”—that is, a redeemed man. The “Stone” Chumash, perhaps pursuing a distinctively post-Holocaust Orthodox agenda, identifies Joshua’s offense as not chastising his sons for marrying Gentile women, explains God’s defense of him as one who “was immersed in the flames of the exile’s physical and spiritual destruction, and as such cannot be condemned for the past,” but admonishes that he must henceforth obey the commandments if his heirs are to succeed him as high priest (Scherman, p. 1183). Hasatan also appears at the beginning of the Book of Job, where he chats amiably with the LORD about just why good people do good, and so instigates the experiment in suffering that tests Job’s faith. When the Tanakh was translated into Greek by the seventy rabbis of Alexandria, in the third century BCE, hasatan became the Greek diabolos, from which we recognize “diabolic” and “devil.” But here too the term simply means adversary—someone who throws himself across (dia ballo) someone else’s path. How, then, did the Accuser of Hebrew Scripture become the full-fledged Satan of Christianity? The likely intermediaries were Zoroastrianism—the religion of ancient Persia—and its derivative in the early Christian world, the Manichean heresy. These belief systems posited two gods—one good, the other evil—whose constant mutual strife was at the base of all contending opposites in the world. Both Judaism and Christianity rejected this cosmology, but it has a certain appeal. It allows one to acknowledge the obvious existence of evil in the world, without either having to blame it all on God or to engage in the often strained, and seldom convincing, apologetics that attempt to show how war, plague, famine, and the suffering of the innocent are part of some inscrutable divine plan, and so are not really evil after all. The Devil, that is, answers in a simple way a serious question for which monotheistic religion must find more complex explanations.

E. J On Rosh Hashanah, Jews read Genesis 21 and 22, in which are described the first confirmations that God has chosen the line of Isaac over Ishmael and all other nations. The Book of Jonah, which is read on Yom Kippur, provides some insight into what it means and does not mean to be “chosen.” The miraculous story of the temperamental prophet who is swallowed by a huge fish is so much a part of

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common lore that it might overshadow this text’s more significant lessons about duty, repentance, and God’s grace. Elie Wiesel has called Jonah his favorite prophet, because he has such conspicuous feet of clay.4 Whether or not Jonah should be anyone’s favorite, two things about him strike our attention: He is the only Hebrew in the very populated book that bears his name, and he is arguably its least morally admirable figure. He is evasive when called to his prophetic duty, peremptory in its execution, and petulant when events do not unfold as he predicts. So pronounced are his shortcomings that Thomas Paine, pamphleteer of the American Revolution and outspoken religious skeptic, proposed that the Book of Jonah was probably of Gentile origin, “written as a fable to expose the nonsense, and satirize the vicious and malignant character, of a Bible-prophet, or a predicting priest.”5 On the other hand, we can perhaps appreciate why Jonah presents an unedifying image by reconstructing his political circumstances. In addition to his famous mission to the Assyrian city of Nineveh, Scripture attributes to Jonah a prophecy to King Jeroboam II, who ruled the Northern Kingdom during most of the first half of the eighth century BCE: In the fifteenth year of King Amaziah son of Joash of Judah, King Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel became king in Samaria—for fortyone years. He did what was displeasing to the LORD; he did not depart from all the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit. It was he who restored the territory of Israel from Lebohamath to the Sea of Arabah, in accordance with the promise that the LORD, the God of Israel, had made through His servant, the prophet Jonah son of Amittai from Gath-hepher. For the LORD saw the very bitter plight of Israel, with neither bond nor free left, and with none to help Israel. And the LORD resolved not to blot out the name of Israel from under heaven; and he delivered them through Jeroboam son of Joash. (2 Kings 14:23–27)

Jonah’s Israelite mission, which apparently unfolds flawlessly, casts him as a prophet of glad tidings: King Jeroboam will lead his people on a course of military success and geographic expansion, restoring Israelite hegemony over the Arameans, whose territory lay between Israel and Assyria. But the full picture is ambiguous. Through God’s grace, the king and his nation will, for the time being, prosper. The bad news is that they deserve to perish, so grievous are their sins. What makes this news bearable, and the prophetic mission so uneventful, is the probability that Jeroboam, like most rulers, cares


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more about real results and his reputation for accomplishing them than abstract speculation about right and wrong. The success of Jonah’s less famous mission, which raises no question about his adequacy, thus depends on his audience’s typically political vice— preoccupation with the practical over the good. The text does not say which of Jonah’s missions is the earlier. Let us assume for now that the easier task of telling a king what he wants to hear came first, as a kind of apprenticeship. This assumption also highlights the Ninevite mission’s difficulty, signaled at the book’s start by God’s command that he go there “at once” (alt.: “arise” [Jonah 1:2; repeated 3:2]). Hesitation and reflection would be a handicap, for Jonah is being sent to proclaim judgment upon a pagan city of the nation that is his own nation’s principal rival in its current successful wars. The danger of mistreatment from the Ninevites is obvious. But if his mission of warning succeeds, he risks being branded a traitor to Israel and an enemy of the Israelite king, who already knows him. Can he get around this dilemma? If the destruction of Nineveh can only be helpful to King Jeroboam’s enterprise, then why talk about it at all? Why not just let it happen, and God’s already proclaimed will be done? But this narrow result-oriented approach reduces God’s will to Israelite success and forgets that the LORD is Lord not only of His Chosen People but of the world. Jonah thinks twice, and he runs. He books passage on a ship bound for Tarshish, a city on the Iberian Peninsula, at the western extreme of the known world—as far from Nineveh as possible. The attempt at flight is, of course, futile. God sends a great storm that threatens to capsize the ship. The sailors jettison the cargo to secure their lives and call upon their gods for protection. The captain, finding Jonah asleep in the hold, rebukes him for not also praying to his god. Even if he is heedless of his own life, he owes this gesture to the others! The men cast lots to determine who has brought this misfortune, and the lot falls on Jonah. So confronted, he identifies himself as a Hebrew, a worshipper of the LORD—“the God of Heaven, who made both sea and land” (Jonah 1:9)—who is fleeing from the LORD’s service, and he advises the terrified men to heave him overboard in order to calm the increasingly stormy sea. But they do not immediately follow this sound advice. Instead, they row hard to regain the shore. Only when this effort proves unavailing do they cry out to the LORD not to let them perish, and not to hold them guilty of killing an innocent man. They then heave him overboard. The significance of this brief incident should not be lost in the larger flow of events. These simple sailors, these righteous Gentiles

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who hazard their lives to save a self-confessed Hebrew sinner, and who in face of their inability to do so engage in gestures of penance before the Hebrew God, are possibly among the noblest characters in Scripture. They embody the Yom Kippur virtues of repentance, prayer, and righteousness, and their action is arguably the book’s moral high point. Now comes the familiar fish story. Should we believe it literally? Perhaps we should pose the proposition thus: If we grant that God could make this miracle happen, if He so wished, it does not especially matter whether He in fact did so.6 Or rather, let us suppose that the point of this experience—certainly the point Jonah makes of it in his prayer—is that he has had a close encounter with death and, by God’s grace, has survived. While not as picturesque as spending three days inside a fish, this explanation is probably as close to the miraculous as any of us is likely to come, and makes the text more accessible. As mentioned, Jonah composes a prayer while in the fish—a good prayer, which shows that he has a way with words. We begin to see why God summoned him, despite his flaws, to the task of awakening a great city to its wrongdoing. We also see the connection to Yom Kippur, when Jews ritually confess to so many sins that involve misuse of speech.7 The prayer concludes with a promise that he will perform what he has vowed. But what has he vowed? Not, apparently, to carry out the mission to Nineveh—this has come as a divine command, and so neither requires nor receives an oath. His only explicit vow is in the prayer’s preceding sentence—to sacrifice to the LORD with loud thanksgiving. We might contrast this with the conduct of the sailors, who, after the storm subsides, fear the LORD greatly, offer a sacrifice, and make vows (Jonah, 2:10; 1:16). Should vows aim at and end in conspicuous sacrifice, or are sacrifices more properly adjuncts to vows? Does Jonah still have much to learn? Returned to dry land, Jonah receives God’s command again, and this time goes “at once” (alt.: “arose” [Jonah 3:3]) to Nineveh. The text notices Nineveh’s great size—it takes three days to traverse. When he enters the city, he neither gives his prophecy at once nor goes to the palace to speak it to the king. Instead, he proceeds one day’s walk into town and proclaims, apparently to whatever crowd is there, the city’s overthrow in forty days. Does this modus operandi—initial delay, then abrupt proclamation—indicate lingering doubts and resentment about his mission? However this may be, the entire city heeds his word. Great and small alike, from the king in his palace to the beasts in the field, undergo a fast and wear the trappings of


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mourning. The people turn back from their evil ways and cry out to God, Who sees their repentance and renounces His punishment. Remarkably, Jonah reacts to this happy turn of events with morbid displeasure—“I would rather die than live,” he says (Jonah 4:3)— born, it seems, from wounded pride. After all, he has risked his life, and staked his prophetic reputation, on a pronouncement of doom. And now God has turned his enterprise into a fool’s errand by being merciful and forgiving! He complains, not quite convincingly, that he knew things would turn out this way all along—that’s why he ran away. Ironically, to the extent that this explanation might be true, Jonah pays unwitting tribute to his own prophetic ability—not as a public predictor of events, but as a seer into the Divine Being. In the book’s final episode, he stations himself east of the city, builds a shelter, and waits to see what will happen next, apparently in the hope that God may graciously change His mind again and destroy Nineveh after all. In order to amend Jonah’s attitude, God causes a shade-giving plant to grow over him, then the next day makes the plant wither and the weather oppressively hot. This petty frustration evokes from Jonah the same immature response as the earlier greater one—“I would rather die than live!” (Jonah 4:8). The book concludes with God stating this trivial incident’s moral lesson: Jonah, in his selfcenteredness, cares for a plant that serves his comfort, an ephemeral being for which he did not labor, but wants the LORD not to care about His creatures the inhabitants of Nineveh, a great city whose innocent include over 120,000 young children (“persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left” [Jonah 4:11]) and many beasts. The tale ends on a note of uncertainty. We do not know whether Jonah learns the lesson or whether the next, unreported, speech is a third sullen “I wish I were dead!” Perhaps, if only to resolve the tension thus produced in our souls, we should revise our assumption and suppose that this was Jonah’s earlier mission. The reference to him in 2 Kings may then offer some consolation to any clay-footed prophets among us: The LORD may yet find some happy use even for cracked and defective vessels.


N 

1

T B  O

More expansive versions of the parts of this chapter were previously presented at the following academic conferences: “The Pre-patriarchal Narrative in the Book of Genesis: Humanity without Chosenness,” Northeastern Political Science Association (2007); “The Abraham Narrative in the Book of Genesis: The Obscure Origins of a World Historical Ethnos,” Northeastern Political Science Association (2006); “The Jacob Narrative in the Book of Genesis: Politics without Law,” New York State Political Science Association (2006); “The Joseph Narrative in the Book of Genesis: A Gem of Several Facets,” Illinois Political Science Association (2004). 1. The Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy: A New Translation with Introductions, Commentary, and Notes by Everett Fox (New York: Schocken Books, 1995); Robert Alter (ed.), The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004); Public Affairs Television, Talking about Genesis: A Resource Guide (New York: Doubleday, 1996); Burton L. Visotzky, The Genesis of Ethics: How the Tormented Family of Genesis Leads Us to Moral Development (New York: Crown, 1996); Alan M. Dershowitz, The Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice that Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Law (New York: Warner Books, 2000); Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Thomas L. Pangle, Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); George Anastaplo, The Bible: Respectful Readings (New York: Lexington Books, 2008). 2. Except as otherwise indicated, biblical translations are from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (JPS) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988). (“Tanakh” is an acronym for the major divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures: Torah [the five books of Moses], Nevi’im [the Prophets], Kh’suvim [the Writings].) Except where common usage requires otherwise, my transliterations follow the Ashkenazic rather than the Sephardic pronunciation. 3. Nosson Scherman (ed.), The Chumash (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 1996 [the ArtScroll or “Stone” Edition—so named because published under the patronage of Mr. Irving I. Stone]), pp. 109, 180–81. Rashi = Rabbi

236

NOTES

4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

Shlomo Yitzchaki (1040–1105), a leading Torah commentator; Nachmanides = Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (1194–1270), commentator and leader of Spanish Jewry (Scherman, p. 1301). (“Chumash” from hamisha [five] = the Torah). With a few exceptions, I follow the common convention of using the capitalized word LORD to refer to the tetragrammaton YHWH, the exact pronunciation of which is no longer known. The division of the Hebrew Scriptures into numbered chapters and verses is the work of early Christian editors, but has been accepted by Jewish translators and is followed here. See, for example, Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Harper & Row, 1989). Pangle suggests that the two different accounts are a deliberate attempt by the Redactor to warn the reader that contradiction is unavoidable and, therefore, that to grasp the meaning of the biblical text requires illumination by divine grace (p. 18). For a more elaborate and philosophic discussion of this pattern, see Leo Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis” and “Jerusalem and Athens,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, edited by Kenneth Hart Green (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 362–67, 382–84. J.H. Hertz (ed.), The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (London: Soncino Press, 1981), p. 2. Jules Harlow (ed.), Siddur Sim Shalom: A Prayerbook for Shabbat, Festivals, and Weekdays (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, United Synagogue of America, 1985), p. 326. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, II.13–24. Moses Maimonides = Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (1135–1204), Aristotelian philosopher and one of the foremost medieval Torah scholars (Scherman, p. 1301). The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon (BDBG) (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1979), p. 912; Fox, p. 11 n 1. Cf. the famous adage at Ps. 111:10, “Reishis hokhmah yiras Adonai— The beginning of wisdom is fear of the LORD,” from which Kass’ book takes its title. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, Translated Out of the Original Tongues; with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised, Conformable to the Edition of 1611, Commonly Known as the Authorized or King James Version (Cleveland: World, n.d.), p. 5; Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures, Carefully Translated after the Best Jewish Authorities by Isaac Leeser (New York: Hebrew, 1909), p. 1; Hertz, p. 2; Fox, p. 13; Scherman, p. 3; JPS, p. 3. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (IDB) (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 2:57–58. Of course, as Hobbes notes, there is scarcely an object or experience that cannot be, and at some time has not been, deified (Leviathan,

NOTES

13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

237

chap. 12). Kass observes that the creation of Man is also not specifically said to be good (p. 31) and explains the omitted praise of the heavens as an implicit rebuff of pagan cosmologies that revere the sky and the awe-inspiring, powerful, and seemingly immortal objects within it (pp. 40–45). We can combine the two omissions. The heavens and man are the likeliest beings to be mistaken for or to lay claim to divinity. This explanation is both less ethnocentric and less taxing on our general credulity than Resh Lakish’s. On the other hand, it still packs much theological content into a single Hebrew letter, which may in the end be no more than a scribal attempt to break the monotony of a four-times-repeated verbal pattern, or to produce a psychic tension in the reader’s soul that prepares us “musically” for the approaching end of the story. That is, flawless. Kass suggests the contrary at this point (p. 37). But perhaps the assumption of a perfect God overburdens the text. What if “good” simply means (however intellectually unsatisfying it may be) pleasing to God? Perhaps the very quality that makes man “in the image of God,” and that accounts for the fact of Creation at all, is the capacity for self-dissatisfaction. Kass later glances in this direction, when he calls attention to the statement at Genesis 6:6 that God “repents” His creation of man and the other animals (p. 162). The Masoretic text is a standardized version of the Hebrew Scriptures including a system of punctuation, vowel points, and cantillation marks that was developed in Palestine and Babylonia between the fifth and ninth centuries CE. IDB, v. 3, pp. 295–99. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: HarperPerennial, 1988), p. 17. Midrash = a selection of legal and narrative rabbinic teachings from ca. 70–ca. 500 CE (Scherman, p. 1300; Johnson, pp. 150–51). Nahum Sarna, Understanding Genesis: The World of the Bible in the Light of History (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), p. 12. For an account of various rabbinical, Christian theological, and literary attempts to deal with the character of Creation, see Pangle, chap. 2 (“Creation and the Meaning of Divine Omnipotence”), pp. 29–47. Vilna Gaon = Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman (1720–1797) (Scherman, p. 1303). The word adam itself is the generic term for human being, and, like the Greek anthropos, is not gender specific (BDBG, p. 9; cf. Gen. 5:1). Kass, noting that this poem is spoken about but not directly to the woman, treats it as an expression of self-centered exuberance (pp. 102 ff.). But the point may be overstated. Eve is present when he speaks these words (Gen. 2:22); love poetry may surely employ indirect communication; and overheard statements are occasionally important in these narratives (cf. Gen. 18:9–15; 27; 42:18–26). The official

238

22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

NOTES

explanation for fashioning Eve is that “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18), which I take to mean that Man would not be happy as a solitary being. Does this observation qualify the statement in the cosmological account that Man is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27)? Does it imply that this solitary Deity, who, unlike pagan gods, has no divine consort, is not happy? See Jules Gleicher, “Moses Rhetor,” Interpretation 31, no. 2 (Spring 2004), pp. 133–34. For what I believe is the standard Christian answer, see Augustine, City of God, XIV. 21–23. Professor Larry Arnhart observed, in a lecture he gave at Rockford College, the poetic justice of the childbirth part of Eve’s fate. What makes human childbirth especially painful is the relatively larger size of the human infant’s head, which is (metaphorically) needed to contain this additional knowledge that our animal cousins lack. Judah Gribetz et al. (eds.), The Timetables of Jewish History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in Jewish History (TJH) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 24, 28, 32. The New Strong’s Concise Concordance of the Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1985), p. 542. For some thoughts on Cain as a great innovator, see Anastaplo, pp. 36–37. But cf. Kass, pp. 103–104 n 7. If Jabal’s identification as “the ancestor of those who dwell in tents” is comprehensive, then he is an ancestor of Noah (Gen. 9:20), and the generations of Cain and of Seth would need to have intermixed prior to the Flood. For an interesting discussion of such intermixtures, see Kass, pp. 156–158. The logical link is that just as kings exercise arbitrary sexual dominion over their subjects’ daughters, so commoners will behave toward the living beings that they rule. This possibility is congruent with the nondestruction of marine life in the sequel catastrophe. Before the LORD God forms Eve from Adam’s rib, He forms and brings to him “all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky . . . to see what he would call them.” But from among them “no fitting helper” to man was found. Apparently, marine nature is so different as not even to be considered a “fitting companion” pervertedly (Gen. 2:18–22; but cf. 1:26–28). On royal conduct being reflected in that of subjects, see Esther 1:10–22; Aristotle Politics 1252b1–9; Jules Gleicher, “Mordecai the Exilarch: Some Thoughts on the Book of Esther,” Interpretation 28, no. 3 (Spring 2001), p. 191. Like the last mentioned innovators of the line of Cain, Noah also has a father named Lamech (Gen. 5:28–29). The word teivah has only two referents in Hebrew Scripture: Noah’s ark and the basket in which the infant Moses is hidden and floated on the Nile to save him from Pharaoh’s decree that all newborn Hebrew

NOTES

32.

33. 34.

35.

36.

239

males be killed (Exod. 1:22–2:4; BDBG, p. 1061). (The “ark” that will later house the tablets on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed is a different word, aron. In modern Hebrew, aron also means coffin—an ironic similarity, as I suggest, to Noah’s vessel.) See, for example, Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative by Herbert Mason (New York: Mentor, 1972), pp. 76–79; the Hindu story of Manu, told in the Agni Puranas; and the Greek myth of Deucalion. Sir James G. Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law (New York: Macmillan, 1927), pp. 48–131, references about 150 Great Flood accounts by peoples of Babylonia, Israel, Greece, India, Eastern Asia, Indonesia, Australia, the South Sea Islands, the Americas, and East Africa. For additional reflections on the significance of Noah’s observation of human mortality, see Kass, pp. 154–55. I admittedly hedge here on my previous reading of the phrase “sons of God.” The reference in the Book of Numbers can be discounted as the hysterical response of the Mosaic scouts to the Canaanites’ impressive fortifications and war readiness, rather than as a genuine giant sighting. (The Septuagint renders nefilim as gigantes [BDBG, p. 658].) But their use of this term is an index of its being a standard idiom at the time of the ill fated spy mission or of the composition of the text. A Miltonian reading would derive Nephilim from nafal, to fall, that is, fallen angels. As noted above, Jewish tradition rejects this concept. But Hebrew script is all consonants. Alternative pointillation yields the rare word nefel—untimely birth, abortion, perhaps by extension a monster or freak of nature? At any rate, beings, perhaps of irregular birth, who do not quite fit into ordinary society but who can perform legendary deeds. Later human examples of this type might be Jephthah or Samson (Judges 11–16). I am informed by Professor Paul Gottfried that the identification of this curse with black descendants of Ham was the view, not only of nineteenth-century Southerners, but also of ancient Babylonian Rabbis, medieval Christians, and others who came across or learned about sub–Saharan Africa and took a dim view of its inhabitants. Professor Eric Pullin has called my attention to Talmudic discussions of the curse of Ham in Midrashim Bereishit Rabbah and Sanh, 108b, and to a description of late medieval–early modern Spanish use of the myth in David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 55, 64–72. Alternatively, the parallel may lie in Ham’s initial boasting to his brothers about their father’s humiliation, which anticipates Joseph’s report of his dream about the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing down before him, in which Jacob, correctly, sees a symbol of his own abasement (Gen. 37:9–10). If so, Noah’s curse of Canaan, one Hamite nation, finds a counterpart in the plagues visited upon

240

37. 38. 39.

40.

41.

42.

43. 44.

45.

46. 47.

48.

NOTES

Egypt, another Hamite nation and Joseph’s people by adoption (Gen. 41:39–52). Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer = a midrash by the school of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (ca. 100) (Scherman, p. 1301). This idea was called to my attention by my fellow parishioner Dr. Stephen Geller. This should not obscure the equally evident fact that all human beings speak some language or other. As Martin Heidegger observes, when we overhear people conversing in a foreign tongue, we instantly recognize their activity as engaging in human speech. Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), p. 130. Kass also suggests that the height of the tower may be a (not irrational) precaution against another Great Flood (p. 221), which would betoken either ignorance of or disbelief in God’s promise against such a repetition, signified in the rainbow (Gen. 9:8–17). A possible precedent is Enoch (of the line of Seth), who, at the tender age of 365, “walked with God; then he was no more, for God took him” (Gen. 5:24). The cryptic phrase could be a euphemism for premature death or denote live ascension into heaven (Scherman, p. 25). I incline toward the former meaning, because there is no suggestion, at this point, of an afterlife. JPS compresses these two terms into one, “native land,” thereby obscuring a fruitful ambiguity that emerges in chapter 24. I have taken the liberty of subscripting the name of the city Haran, even within direct quotations, in order to distinguish it from the name of Terah’s third son, Haran, thus replicating the Hebrew text’s difference in spelling. For an interesting parallel, see Plato Republic 327b, 328b, 330b. Rabbinical commentary, perhaps to absolve Abraham from the sin of impiety, has demonized Terah as a manufacturer and seller of idols (Scherman, pp. 51, 52). In the Christian tradition, St. Paul makes much the same point, but with the very different and emphatic purpose of repudiating the Mosaic Law (Gal. 3; Heb. 11:8–10). See also Jules Gleicher, “Moses Politikos,” Interpretation 26, no. 2 (Winter 1999), pp. 149–51, 164. I believe that the source of this expression is the Sherlock Holmes story entitled “Silver Blaze.” William S. Baring-Gould (ed.), The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Four Novels and the Fifty-Six Short Stories Complete by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1967), v. II, p. 277. While it would be respectable for the king of Sodom to want the return of his own people, there is no reason to assume that his proposition does not also extend to other captives.

NOTES

241

49. Dale v. Boy Scouts of America, No. MON-C-330–92 (Ch. Div. Nov. 3, 1995), at 39–40; resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America and Monmouth Council v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000). 50. Abraham runs out to greet them and bows to the ground, even though, if this encounter occurs soon after his circumcision, these welcoming gestures are physically painful, and he serves them a full meal of curds, milk, and veal (Gen. 17:23–18:2; 18:6–8). Lot also shows respect, insists that they stay overnight in his house—no doubt because he is aware of how the Sodomites would treat them were they to sleep in the town square—and feeds them, but there may be a hint of parsimony in the detail that his meal includes unleavened bread (Gen. 19:1–3). His dedication to the principle of hospitality takes an extreme and bizarre twist in the sequel (Gen. 19:6–8). 51. 287 U.S. 45 (1932). 52. I here translate directly. 53. Vay’aneha can also mean to humble a woman by illegal cohabitation (BDBG, p. 776). 54. But cf. Deut. 24:16: “Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents: a person shall be put to death only for his own crime.” 55. Because we know that God next tells Abraham what he plans to do, we might overlook how convoluted this reasoning is. The Torah scroll lacks punctuation marks. Where to begin sentences, what punctuation to supply, and how to translate prepositions and conjunctions are matters of editorial judgment. With due respect to the Masoretes, Isaac Leeser, and successive generations of the Jewish Publication Society, I would suggest treating verse 18 and half of verse 19 as a parenthesis, moving the end of verse 19 forward, and adding a few unstated phrases for clarity’s sake. This produces the following divine soliloquy: Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do . . . in order that the LORD may bring about for Abraham [i.e., in order not to jeopardize] what He has promised him? Abraham will surely become [must become? –hoyo yih’yeh] a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him. [But by virtue of what?] Because I have singled him out [I have known him—y’da’ti] that he may instruct his children and posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right [to do righteousness and judgment—la’asos tz’dakah umish’pat]. [Therefore, I must reveal My righteousness and judgment to him.] So too, He must risk that Abraham’s faith will be shaken by His judgment’s severity. 56. For most of the passages in this section, I translate directly.

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NOTES

57. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), p. 59. 58. The Yom Kippur liturgy emphasizes the supposed voluntary nature of Isaac’s submission. See Philip Birnbaum (trans.), High Holyday Prayer Book (New York: Hebrew, 1951), pp. 628, 920, 926, 984, 996. 59. Hebron will later gain national significance as the city from which King David ruled before he captured Jerusalem (1 Kings 2:11). In recent time, its cession by the Israeli government to the Palestinian Authority was an especially sore point among those Orthodox Jews who take their political cues from the Hebrew Scriptures. 60. Aharon Yisroel Kahan, The Taryag Mitzvos (Brooklyn, NY: Keser Torah, 1988). “Taryag” is an artificial word consisting of the Hebrew letters TRYG, the numerical values of which add up to 613. Mitzvos (or mitzvot) is the plural of mitzvah—command. 61. This is not to deny the existence of controlling conventions on various matters: the exclusive claim that husbands have to their wives; the formalities that confer public recognition on a purchase of land; the irrevocability of deathbed blessings; the local custom that a younger daughter not marry before her elder sister; the rule of levirate marriage. But as we see, these unwritten laws tend to produce awkward or perverse results. 62. So the King James translation and the Jewish Bible of Isaac Leeser that closely follows it. Some rabbinical sources justify Sarah’s action by interpreting the word m’tzaheik, which can also mean “playing,” to imply sexual misconduct (cf. Gen. 26:8; Exod. 32:6). 63. Rachel’s absconding with her father’s gods has been justified in Midrash as an attempt to rescue Laban from idolatry (Hertz, p. 114). More likely, she and Laban both regarded the terafim as efficacious good luck charms, which, in her opinion, Laban and his sons had forfeited through his trickery, and Jacob and his family had earned through his years of hard labor and devotion to her. The stealing motif recurs much later, when Joseph, by then viceroy of Egypt, cruelly trifles with his brothers by having his silver goblet planted in his brother Benjamin’s bag as false evidence of theft. The parallels to the Rachel episode are several. Like Laban’s terafim, this cup supposedly has magical qualities, associated with divination (Gen. 44:5, 15). The bag in which it is hidden is carried by a pack animal, reminiscent of Rachel hiding the idols in the camel cushion (Gen. 31:34). Joseph is described as “well built and handsome” (Hertz: “of beautiful form, and fair to look upon”—y’feih-so’ar vi’feih mar’eh), the same phrase as was used a generation earlier to describe Rachel (Gen. 39:6; 29:17). And when he reencounters Benjamin, identified textually as “his mother’s son,” he substitutes himself rhetorically for Rachel by addressing him as “my son” (Gen. 43:29). 64. W. Gunther Plaut (ed.), The Torah: A Modern Commentary (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 218. The

NOTES

65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72.

243

name Jabbok (Ybk) is visually similar to Jacob (Ykb). Does the text thereby allude to Jacob’s physical and spiritual “rearrangement”? The text is ambiguous, and perhaps garbled, on who actually sells him to whom (Gen. 37:27–28, 36). Another verbal expression that casts an ambiguous shadow is Jacob’s exclamation when he sees Joseph, after the twenty-two-year interval: “Now I can die, having seen for myself that you are still alive” (Gen. 46:30). Hertz provides what may be the standard Talmudic gloss, that seeing Joseph again joyfully completes Jacob’s life (p. 174). In light of his short self-descriptive speech to Pharaoh, which sounds anything but joyful, perhaps we should hear his words to Joseph as a poignant reflection on a life spent in a state of delusion and deception, and therewith as a reproach: “I died once, believing that you were dead; now I die again, knowing that you lived and prospered while I dwelt in ignorance and sorrow.” I owe this observation to Professor Carmichael. The translations in the discussion of this passage are from Hertz. Other characters in Genesis who name or invoke the LORD are Eve (4:1), men in general (4:26), Noah (8:20; 9:26), Abraham (12:7–8; 13:18; 14:22; 15:2, 8; 21:33; 22:14; 24:3, 7), Sarai (16:2, 5), Hagar (maybe) (16:13), various angels (16:11; 19:13; 22:16), the LORD (18:19; 28:13), Lot (19:14), Abraham’s chief servant (24:12, 26–27, 35, 40 [citing Abraham], 42, 44, 48, 52, 56), Laban (24:31, 50 [with Bethuel]; 29:27; 31:49), Isaac (25:21; 26:25; 27:7, 27), Rebekah (25:22), Abimelech and his retinue (26:28–29), Leah (29:32–33, 35), and Rachel (30:24). Aaron Wildavsky, “What Is Permissible So That This People May Survive? Joseph the Administrator,” PS: Political Science & Politics 22, no. 4 (December 1989), p. 781. I am grateful to Mr. Jack Wild for raising this question, as well as the later one concerning Er’s unstated offense. The role of Providence (or of chance) in Joseph’s career (and in human affairs more generally) is signaled near the beginning of his story, when, having missed his brothers at Shechem, whither Jacob had sent him, he is redirected by someone identified only as “a man” to Dothan, where his sale into slavery occurs (Gen. 37:12–17). The cryptic reference invites comparison to the nameless “man” with whom Jacob wrestles before his reencounter with Esau (Gen. 32:25–30). The brothers’ relocation and this seemingly adventitious meeting incidentally spare Shechem from becoming the site of a second atrocity perpetrated by sons of Jacob (cf. Gen. 34). So too, we might expect, would be laughter, but Joseph is never said to laugh. Indeed, the only characters in the Torah who do are Abraham and Sarah, when God announces that Sarah, who is ninety years old, will bear a son, and then again when that promise is fulfilled (Gen. 17:17; 18:10–15; 21:6). The word yitzhak, “he will

244

73.

74.

75. 76.

77.

78. 79. 80.

81.

NOTES

laugh,” is also Isaac’s Hebrew name. A variation on it, m’tzaheik, indicates either mockery or sexual foreplay (Gen. 21:9; 26:8). See also the Golden Calf episode in Exodus, where l’tzaheik, translated by Hertz as “to make merry” and in the King James version as “to play,” probably refers to idolatrous, orgiastic dancing (Exod. 32:6; cf. 32:19). Elie Wiesel, “Joseph, or The Education of a Tzaddik,” in Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976.), pp. 136–69. One bright student of politics who draws the appropriate lesson from Joseph’s example—“Don’t push absolute power to its limit!”—is Mordecai, who, as prime minister to King Ahasuerus, stocks the Persian royal treasury through the more moderate expedient of raising taxes (Esther 10:1, 3). See Gleicher, “Mordecai the Exilarch,” pp. 196–98. I owe the observation that Mordecai’s tax increase is good news to Professor Carmichael. Alschich = a commentary on the Tanakh by Rabbi Moshe Alschich (1508–1593?) (Scherman, p. 1297). For further remarks on Joseph’s charm, good looks, flexibility, and other qualities that allowed him to win over people in authority and to make the most of opportunities, see Anastaplo, p. 63. That this author feels obliged not just to mention this detail but to explain it in this way clearly suggests, for whatever it is worth, that he writes for a non-Jewish audience. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica in 30 Volumes (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1974), Macropaedia, v. 6, p. 736. Alfred J. Kolatch, The Jewish Book of Why (Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David, 1995), v. I, pp. 49–50, 57. Harold Bloom, The Book of J, Translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg, Interpreted by Harold Bloom (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), pp. 9–55, 220–23. This thought provoking critique was made at the 2004 meeting of the Illinois Political Science Association, under the title “Lies, Cries, and Laughter.”

2

M E

This and the following chapter should be read in conjunction with the author’s previously published pieces on Moses: “The Mosaic Spy Mission: Some Lessons on Political Leadership from an Ancient and Venerable Source,” Illinois Political Science Association Newsletter 2, no. 1 (June 1994); “Three Biblical Studies on Politics and Law,” Oklahoma City University Law Review 23, no. 3 (Fall 1998), Part III: “The Lex Talionis in the Mosaic Law”; “Moses Politikos,” Interpretation 26, no. 2 (Winter 1999); “Moses Dikastes,” Interpretation 30, no. 2 (Winter 2003); “Moses Rhetor,” Interpretation 31, no. 2 (Spring 2004).

NOTES

245

1. See Jules Gleicher, “On Plutarch’s Life of Caesar,” Interpretation 29, no. 3 (Spring 2002). In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII, relying on the best information Renaissance astronomy and mathematics could provide, promulgated a correction of the Julian calendar, which had fallen, during the intervening sixteen centuries, ten days out of sync with the solar cycle. Some non-Catholic countries resisted this change, but eventually everyone came around. In 1988, the scientists who administer the Coordinated Universal Time atomic clock, in Greenwich, England, added a “leap second” to compensate for a discrepancy caused by the earth’s “wobble” on its rotational axis. We can now measure time in nanoseconds, and apparently need to do so for the very precise electronic signals used in space satellite communication. 2. Cf. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Random House, 1939). 3. The “Merneptah Stele,” which celebrates this ruler’s military triumphs, declares: “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.” This is apparently the earliest reference to the Israelite People in an extra-biblical source, and the only one of Egyptian vintage. Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1988), pp. 11–12. 4. Winston Churchill, “Moses: The Leader of a People,” in Thoughts and Adventures (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991 [orig. 1932]), p. 209. 5. George Orwell, A Collection of Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1954), p. 159. 6. Gen. 4:1, 26; 8:20; 9:26; 12:7–8; 13:18; 14:22; 15:7; 16:2, 5, 11; 19:13–14; 21:33; 22:14, 16; 24:3, 7, 12, 26–27, 31, 35, 40, 42, 44, 48, 50–52, 56; 25:21–22; 26:25, 28–29; 27:7, 20, 27; 28:13, 16, 21; 29:32–33, 35; 30:24, 27, 30; 31:49; 32: 10; 49:18. 7. Sarna, Exploring Exodus, pp. 70–73. Khamsin is Arabic for fifty—like the Hebrew hamishim—signifying the fifty-day duration of some of these hazy seasons. 8. Suf means “reeds” or “rushes.” Therefore, yam-suf should presumably be translated as Sea of Reeds. But apparently early Greek translators took the word as a reference to Suph, a town on the western coast of the Red Sea. Thus, yam-suf became the Sea of Suph, that is, the Red Sea. 9. Nahum N. Glatzer (ed.), Passover Haggadah (New York: Schocken Books, 1989), p. 45. 10. A Passover Haggadah: As Commented Upon by Elie Wiesel and Illustrated by Mark Podwal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 51, 55. 11. A contrary view maintains that Jewish thought does not presuppose any moral rules to be discoverable by “unaided human reason,” that the Rabbis regard all commandments, and by extension all moral

246

NOTES

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

conclusions, to be the result of revelation. Consequently, the examples cited in the text would display not innate moral sensibility but tactical maneuvering by the relevant characters. Gleicher, “Moses Politikos,” pp. 162–64. Lincoln drew a similar connection between luxury and slavery in his “Springfield Speech” of June 26, 1857: “The assertion [in the Declaration of Independence] that ‘all men are created equal’ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.” The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1953), v. II, p. 406 (emphasis supplied). Gleicher, “Moses Politikos,” pp. 166–69. Malbim = Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel (1809–1879), a leading Eastern European Torah scholar and biblical commentator (Scherman, p. 1299). I owe this interpretation to Professor Carmichael. See also, regarding this fable and the later one from the Book of Judges (infra, chap. 4, III), David Daube, “Ancestors in the Mist,” in Studies in Comparative Legal History: Collected Works of David Daube (Berkeley, CA: Robbins Collection), v. 3: Biblical Law and Literature (2003), pp. 741–47. Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. XVII, in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, trans. R.H.M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1951), pp. 220–26. See Gleicher, “Moses Rhetor,” pp. 139–41. Gleicher, “Moses Politikos,” pp. 175–77. Cf. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 16.

3

O   M L

1. This statement has been variously ascribed to the cultural Zionist essayist Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg, 1856–1927), Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972), and the anonymous rabbinical tradition contained in the passive voice construction “It has been said. . . .” 2. This thesis, which I hope I do not misstate, was proposed to the seminar on “Law and Religion in Biblical Antiquity” that I attended in the summer of 1994. 3. See also Jules Gleicher, “Three Biblical Studies on Politics and Law,” Oklahoma City University Law Review 23, no. 3 (Fall 1998), pp. 894–96.

NOTES

247

4. Leon R. Kass, The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 207. 5. Walter Kaufmann (ed.), The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 171. 6. I have been told that Maimonides and Nachmanides suggest that honoring parents is the most difficult mitzvah. 7. I am indebted for the inspiration and much of the substance of this analysis to Professor Carmichael, who elaborates it in greater detail in his book Law, Legend, and Incest in the Bible: Leviticus 18–20 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). 8. Cf. Kass, The Hungry Soul, chap. 6—“Sanctified Eating: A Memorial of Creation.” 9. Philip Birnbaum (ed.), Prayer Book for Three Festivals: Pesah, Shavuoth, Sukkoth (New York: Hebrew, 1971), pp. 87–88. 10. The Jerusalem Post reported several years ago that an Israeli beit din (rabbinical court) issued death sentences against three men who had abandoned their wives but refused to grant them divorces or were extorting bribes as a condition for granting them. The court did so, of course, secure in the understanding that their order was legally unenforceable. 11. This interpretation was offered to me by Rabbi Elihu Milder. 12. 508 U.S. 520 (1993). 13. Alfred J. Kolatch, The Second Jewish Book of Why (Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David, 1996), v. II, p. 224. 14. See Gleicher, “Moses Dikastes,” pp. 147–49, 152–55. 15. Rabbi William Fertig called this ambiguity to my attention.

4

T P H

1. See Gleicher, “Moses Rhetor,” pp. 123–26, 139–41. 2. I encountered this datum from a radiotape by Dennis Prager. 3. See Jules Gleicher, “Mordecai the Exilarch: Some Thoughts on the Book of Esther,” Interpretation 28, no. 3 (Spring 2001). 4. See Gleicher, “Three Biblical Studies . . . ,” pp. 871–83. 5. See Gleicher, “Three Biblical Studies . . . ,” pp. 883–90. 6. JPS helpfully identifies “doves’ dung” as “[a]pparently a popular term for ‘carob pods’ ” (p. 575). 7. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), pp. 268–69. So too Locke: “Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully; so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb or goods of another.” John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. Richard Cox (Arlington Heights, IL: Crofts Classics,

248

NOTES

8. 9.

10.

11.

Harlan Davidson, 1982), § 6, pp. 4–5 (emphasis partly supplied and partly removed). Leviathan, p. 198. Thus too, the sovereign may abrogate such private agreements: “And even in Commonwealths, if I be forced to redeem my selfe from a Theefe by promising him mony, I am bound to pay it, till the Civill Law discharge me.” Leviathan, p. 198 (emphasis supplied). “On-Line Trail to an Off-Line Killing,” by Amy Harmon, New York Times, April 30, 1998, pp. A1, A30. For the sequel to this story, see New York Times, May 2, 1998; August 5, 1998; August 10, 1998. Jehu’s coup d’état derails any possibility of the reunification of the two kingdoms implicit in Ahab’s dynastic marriage alliances. Was this on the whole a fortunate development? While a reunified Israel might have been better able to resist a middling power like Syria, it would likely have fared no better against major empires like Assyria and Babylonia than the two separate kingdoms did in the actual event. Their division may thus have been the practical condition for the survival of one part when the other was conquered, and thereby for Jewish survival at all. Might the same be said today? Whatever the importance of the modern State of Israel for world Jewry, is the continued existence of some Jews in Diaspora necessary insurance against whatever ill fortune may lurk in the Middle East? What the theological consequences of this thought might be for the prayers Jews routinely recite concerning their in-gathering from the four corners of the earth, under Messianic auspices, I leave to others who are authorized to speak of such things.

5

F P P

1. Lord [Godfrey R.B.] Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln, 3rd ed. (New York: Henry Holt, 1917), pp. 14, 76. 2. “Letter to Horace Greeley,” August 22, 1862, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), v. V, p. 388 (emphasis in the original). 3. I here translate directly. 4. The statement was made in a lecture Wiesel gave at Rockford College in 1987. 5. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896 [orig. 1794]), p. 147. On the matter of the Book of Jonah’s authorship, Paine arguably fails to appreciate the Hebrew Scripture’s (and the Jewish tradition’s) immense capacity for self-criticism.

NOTES

249

6. I believe that this gentle sophistry was the gist of a short speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury to Queen Victoria, in Laurence Housman’s play Victoria Regina, to which Victoria replies insightfully, “Yes, I don’t believe it either.” 7. See, for example, Birnbaum, High Holyday Prayer Book, pp. 511–15.


B     

E  T B Alter, Robert, ed. 2004. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton. The Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy: A New Translation with Introductions, Commentary, and Notes by Everett Fox. 1995. New York: Schocken Books. Hertz, J.H., ed. 1981. The Pentateuch and Haftorahs. London: Soncino Press. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, Translated out of the Original Tongues; with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised, Conformable to the Edition of 1611, Commonly Known as the Authorized or King James Version. n.d. Cleveland: World. Plaut, W. Gunther, ed. 1981. The Torah: A Modern Commentary. New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Scherman, Nosson, ed. 1996. The Chumash. Stone Edition. Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah. Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text [JPS]. 1988. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures, Carefully Translated after the Best Jewish Authorities by Isaac Leeser. 1909. New York: Hebrew.

C T Agni Puranas. Aristotle. Metaphysics. _____. Nicomachean Ethics. _____. Physics. _____. Politics. Augustine. The City of God. De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Gilgamesh. Hamilton, Alexander et al. The Federalist. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Homer. The Odyssey. Josephus. The Jewish War.

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Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. Livy. History of Rome. Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Maimonides, Moses. The Guide of the Perplexed. Mill, John Stuart. Considerations on Representative Government. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Plato. Apology of Socrates. _____. Euthyphro. _____. Laws. _____. Republic. Plutarch. Life of Caesar. _____. Life of Cicero. Shakespeare, William. Henry V. Spinoza, Benedict de. Theologico-Political Treatise. Talmudic tractates Bereishit Rabbah and Sanhedrin.

S S Anastaplo, George. 2008. The Bible: Respectful Readings. New York: Lexington Books. Baring-Gould, William S., ed. 1967. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Four Novels and the Fifty-Six Short Stories Complete by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Clarkson N. Potter. Basler, Roy P., ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 1953. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Birnbaum, Philip, trans. 1951. High Holyday Prayer Book. New York: Hebrew. _____. 1971. Prayer Book for Three Festivals: Pesah, Shavuoth, Sukkoth. New York: Hebrew. Bloom, Harold. 1990. The Book of J, Translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg, Interpreted by Harold Bloom. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. Boy Scouts of America and Monmouth Council v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000). Carmichael, Calum. 1997. Law, Legend, and Incest in the Bible: Leviticus 18–20. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Charnwood, Lord Godfrey R. B. 1917. Abraham Lincoln. New York: Henry Holt. Churchill, Winston. 1991 [1932]. “Moses: the Leader of a People.” Thoughts and Adventures. New York: W. W. Norton. Dale v. Boy Scouts of America, No. MON-C-330–92 (Ch. Div. November 3, 1995). Daube, David. 2003. “Ancestors in the Mist.” Studies in Comparative Legal History: Collected Works of David Daube, vol. 3. Berkeley, CA: Robbins Collection.

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Davis, David B. 2006. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford University Press. Dershowitz, Alan M. 2000. The Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice that Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Law. New York: Warner Books. Frazer, Sir James G. 1927. Folk-Lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law. New York: Macmillan. Freud, Sigmund. 1939. Moses and Monotheism. New York: Random House. Friedman, Richard Elliott. 1989. Who Wrote the Bible? New York: Harper & Row. Glatzer, Nahum N., ed. 1989. Passover Haggadah. New York: Schocken Books. Gleicher, Jules. 1994. “The Mosaic Spy Mission: Some Lessons on Political Leadership from an Ancient and Venerable Source.” Illinois Political Science Association Newsletter 2, no. 1 (June): 1, 4. _____. 1998. “Three Biblical Studies on Politics and Law.” Oklahoma City University Law Review 23, no. 3 (Fall): 869–99. _____. 1999. “Moses Politikos.” Interpretation 26, no. 2 (Winter): 149–81. _____. 2001. “Mordecai the Exilarch: Some Thoughts on the Book of Esther.” Interpretation 28, no. 3 (Spring): 187–200. _____. 2002. “On Plutarch’s Life of Caesar.” Interpretation 29, no. 3 (Spring): 265–79. _____. 2003. “Moses Dikastes.” Interpretation 30, no. 2 (Winter): 119–56. _____. 2004. “Moses Rhetor.” Interpretation 31, no. 2 (Spring): 119–63. Gribetz, Judah, with Greenstein, Edward L., and Stein, Regina S., eds. 1993. The Timetables of Jewish History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in Jewish History. New York: Simon & Schuster. Harlow, Jules, ed. 1985. Siddur Sim Shalom: A Prayerbook for Shabbat, Festivals, and Weekdays. New York: Rabbinical Assembly, United Synagogue of America. Harmon, Amy. “On-Line Trail to an Off-Line Killing.” New York Times, April 30, 1998. Heidegger, Martin. 1972. What Is Called Thinking? New York: Harper Torchbooks. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. 1990. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Johnson, Paul. 1988. A History of the Jews. New York: HarperPerennial. Kahan, Aharon Yisroel. 1988. The Taryag Mitzvos. Brooklyn, NY: Keser Torah. Kass, Leon R. 1999. The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. _____. 2003. The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kolatch, Alfred J. 1995. The Jewish Book of Why. Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David.

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Kolatch, Alfred J. 1996. The Second Jewish Book of Why. Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David. Miles, Jack. 1995. God: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon. 1979. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica in 30 Volumes. 1974. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica. The New Strong’s Concise Concordance of the Bible. 1985. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. The New York Times, May 2, 1998; August 5, 1998; August 10, 1998. Orwell, George. 1954. “Shooting an Elephant.” A Collection of Essays. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. A Passover Haggadah: As Commented Upon by Elie Wiesel and Illustrated by Mark Podwal. 1993. New York: Simon & Schuster. Paine, Thomas. 1896 [1794]. The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pangle, Thomas L. 2003. Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932). Public Affairs Television. 1996. Talking About Genesis: A Resource Guide. New York: Doubleday. Sarna, Nahum. 1970. Understanding Genesis: The World of the Bible in the Light of History. New York: Schocken Books. _____. 1988. Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel. New York: Schocken Books. Strauss, Leo. 1997. Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. Kenneth Hart Green. Albany: State University of New York Press. The Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. The City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993). Visotzky, Burton L. 1996. The Genesis of Ethics. New York: Crown. Wiesel, Elie. 1976. “Joseph, or The Education of a Tzaddik.” Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends. New York: Simon & Schuster. Wildavsky, Aaron. 1989. “What Is Permissible So That This People May Survive? Joseph the Administrator.” PS: Political Science & Politics 22, no. 4 (December): 779–88.

I 

Aaron, 90–2, 94–8, 107, 111, 113–18, 121–4, 138, 152, 161–2, 171, 184, 205 Abel, 2, 3, 16, 17, 73, 109, 135, 165 Abiathar, 200, 201, 209, 225 Abimelech (of Gerar), 30, 38, 110 Abimelech (of Shechem), 186–7 Abiram, 121–3 Abishag, 199 Abraham (Abram), 2, 24–51, 54–6, 58, 61, 62, 66, 68, 69, 72, 76, 79, 85, 93, 104, 110, 135, 147–9, 163, 190, 221 Absalom, 23, 200 Adam, 3, 7, 11–14, 16–18, 20, 25, 76, 79, 173 Adonijah, 200–1, 209, 225 Agag, 194, 196, 197 Ahab, 127, 144, 204, 205, 209 Ahaz, 213, 215 Ahaziah (of Israel), 209 Ahaziah (of Judah), 104, 209, 210 akeidah (binding of Isaac), 38–43, 149 Alschich, 70 Alter, Robert, 6, 7, 70 Amalek, 100, 180, 183, 184, 194–7 Ammon, 24, 36, 147, 178, 187–8 Amnon, 36, 200 Amram, 84, 86, 148 Anastaplo, George, 139, 238, 244 antedeluvian generations (moral decline), 16–19 Arameans, 32, 44, 53, 60, 69, 70, 208, 209, 211, 220 Aristotle, 2, 22, 139, 158, 165, 198, 199

Asher, 115, 118, 185 Asherah, 204, 205, 210, 212 Assyria, 60, 62, 74, 215, 219, 220, 221, 230 Athaliah, 104, 209–11 Baal (Baalim), 161, 185, 204, 205, 210, 212 Babel, Tower of, 2, 17, 22–5 Babylon, 6, 15, 22, 23, 32, 50, 70, 101, 134, 206, 209, 213, 218, 220–5, 228 Balaam, 125–7, 185 Balak, 125–7 Barak, 183–4 Bathsheba, 200–1 Benaiah, 200, 201 Benjamin, 53, 57, 66, 68, 77, 78, 115, 118, 129, 167, 183, 184, 193, 219, 223 Bethel, 28, 56, 61, 112 Bethuel, 27, 45 Bilhah, 52, 56, 77, 115, 147, 148 Bloom, Harold, 75 Boaz, 116, 182 Caesar, Julius, 84 Cain, 2, 3, 12, 16–18, 109, 135, 165 Caleb, 124 Canaan, 2, 18, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 32, 43, 44, 49, 51, 52, 54–8, 62, 67, 69, 72–4, 80, 99, 100, 102, 103, 118, 124, 125, 127, 132, 136, 146, 147, 149, 160, 161, 173, 181–3, 196

256

INDEX

Carmichael, Calum, 80, 138, 243, 244, 246, 247 Caro, Joseph, 165 Carter, Jimmy, 145 Christianity, 1, 7, 8, 14, 15, 25, 50, 144, 150, 160, 161, 163, 164, 177, 182, 191, 196, 204, 213, 216, 225, 226, 227, 229, 238, 240 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 93 Creation story, 3–9 Cyrus, 228 Dan, 59, 60, 112, 115, 118, 128, 185 Dathan, 121–3 David, 15, 24, 36, 62, 70, 74, 75, 86, 104, 112, 114, 116, 127, 182, 193, 194, 197–201, 208–11 Dead Sea, 13, 36 Deborah, 183, 184, 189, 193 Dinah, 36, 55, 104, 149 Edom, 49, 50, 103, 124, 184 Egypt, 1, 2, 5, 23, 29–33, 35, 50, 51, 56–8, 60, 63–73, 75–8, 83–101, 103–6, 109–12, 114, 119, 122, 129, 135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 146, 149, 152–4, 157, 158, 162, 172, 180, 183, 184, 194–7, 201–3, 214, 220, 221 Eldad, 120 Eleazar, 130, 132, 162, 171 Eliezer of Damascus, 29, 30, 44 Elijah, 106, 127, 161, 204, 205, 220 Enoch (line of Cain), 17 Enoch (line of Seth), 21 Ephraim, 58, 59, 62, 69, 74, 85, 86, 114–16, 118, 128, 184 Ephron, 42, 43 Er, 74, 80, 148, 149 Esau, 47–52, 54, 55, 59–62, 66, 69, 75, 79, 103, 180 Esther, 70, 196, 197

Eve, 3, 11, 12, 14, 16–18, 25, 76 Ezekiel, 221, 225–8 Flood story, 19–22 Freud, Sigmund, 202 Friedman, Richard Elliott, 20, 221 Gabriel, 191, 214 Gad, 59, 115, 118, 128, 132, 185, 187 Gideon, 183, 185, 186, 189, 193 Goliath, 197, 198 Gomorrah, see Sodom Gottfried, Paul, 227, 239 Greeley, Horace, 224, 225 Hagar, 30, 33, 48, 66, 76, 148 Ham, 22–4, 52, 147 Haman, 196, 197 Hamor, 55, 69, 149 Hannah, 191 Haran, 25, 26, 148 Haran (city), 2, 26, 27, 29, 44, 51 Hazael, 211, 220 Hebron, 43, 242 Heidegger, Martin, 240 Hertz, J. H., 8, 11, 40, 71, 79, 84, 88, 94, 116, 117, 118, 120, 140, 153, 157, 166, 167, 168, 171, 172, 176, 177, 181, 199, 214, 216, 224 Hezekiah, 213, 215 Hilkiah, 203 Hobbes, Thomas, 141, 145, 207, 236, 247 Hosea, 217 Hur, 184 Isaac, 22, 27, 29, 31, 33–5, 38–55, 58, 60–2, 66, 68, 69, 72, 76, 79, 83, 85, 93, 103, 147, 148, 190, 191, 228, 229 Isaiah, 15, 70, 133, 212, 213–18, 221 Ishmael, 27, 29, 33, 34, 37, 48, 55, 66, 76, 229

INDEX

Israel (Northern Kingdom), 15, 60, 62, 74, 112, 114, 129, 204, 206, 208, 209, 212, 215, 219, 221, 230, 231 Israel (person), see Jacob Issachar, 115, 118, 184 Jabal, 18 Jabesh-gilead, 178 Jabin, 183 Jacob (Israel), 1, 2, 12, 23, 24, 34–6, 47–62, 64–9, 72–5, 77–81, 83–7, 93, 99, 104, 110, 115, 127, 128, 135, 147–9, 152, 190 Jael, 183, 184 Japheth, 22, 23 Jehoiada, 210, 211 Jehoiakim, 221 Jehoram (Joram) (of Israel), 206, 207 Jehoram (Joram) (of Judah), 209 Jehu, 209, 210 Jephthah, 183, 187–9, 193 Jeremiah, 70, 182, 212, 215, 218–25 Jericho, 129, 181 Jeroboam I, 60, 62, 112, 138, 209, 230 Jeroboam II, 230, 231 Jerusalem, 40, 50, 112, 152, 200, 206, 210, 211, 215, 217, 222, 225, 228 Jesus, 15, 72, 133, 145, 146, 177, 182, 191, 223, 226, 227 Jethro, 88, 90, 104, 105, 162 Jezebel, 127, 144, 204, 205, 209, 210 Joash (Jehoash), 203, 209–11, 230 Job, 14, 15, 229 Jochebed, 84, 86, 87, 148 Jonah, 127, 212, 215, 220, 229–33 Jonathan, 176, 197–9 Joseph, 1, 2, 23, 42, 43, 51, 55–60, 62–79, 83–7, 90, 100, 114, 115,

257

118, 128, 129, 149, 154, 162 Josephus, 202 Joshua, 62, 86, 116, 120, 121, 124, 129, 130, 132, 152, 181–4, 195, 221 Joshua (high priest), 228, 229 Josiah, 203, 219, 221 Jotham (King of Judah), 213 Jotham (son of Gideon), 186 Jubal, 18 Judah, 17, 52, 58, 59, 66, 68, 74–81, 85–7, 104, 115, 116, 118, 128, 129, 148, 149, 185, 200 Judah (Southern Kingdom), 15, 74, 86, 104, 112, 114, 182, 203, 209, 211, 213, 215, 219–25, 230 Kahan, A. Y., 152, 161 Kass, Leon, 141, 237, 240 Keturah, 46 Kierkegaard, Søren, 38 kings of Israel and Judah (table), 212 Korah, 15, 121–5, 172, 173 Laban, 12, 27, 44, 46, 51–3, 61, 62, 79, 104 Lamech (line of Cain), 18 Lamech (line of Seth), 238 Leah, 51, 52, 55, 57, 72, 81, 87, 115, 148 Levi, 23, 59, 77, 84, 85, 112, 114, 116–18, 122, 128, 147, 148, 162, 163, 165–7, 169, 172 Lincoln, Abraham, 223, 246 Livy, 176 Locke, John, 158, 188, 247 Lot, 24, 26–30, 32, 36, 37, 52, 76, 147 Machpelah, 1, 43, 55, 72, 110 Maimonides, Moses, 4, 101, 125, 135, 165, 169, 226, 247

258

INDEX

Malbim, 125 Manasseh, 58, 68, 115, 118, 128, 132, 184, 187, 212 Manoah and wife, 189–91 Mary, Virgin, 191 Medad, 120 Melchizedek, 32, 163 Mephibosheth, 199, 210 Merneptah, 88, 245 Messiah, 73, 164, 165, 204, 217 Midian, 88, 125, 128, 132, 162, 185, 193 Midrash, 8, 42, 242 Milcah, 25–7, 42, 45, 148 Miles, Jack, 41, 221 Miriam, 95, 102, 121, 172, 183 Moab, 24, 36, 103, 116, 125, 127, 128, 147, 187, 188 Mohammed, 168 Molech, 18, 39, 149 Mordecai, 196, 244 Moriah, Mt., 38–40 Moses, 4, 9, 19, 27, 34, 35, 43, 56, 60, 73, 79, 83–184, 190, 195–7, 202, 203, 205, 206, 210, 214, 215, 226 Naamah, 18 Naboth, 144 Nachmanides, 1, 247 Nahor, 25–7, 42, 45, 148 Naomi, 103, 199 Naphtali, 115, 118, 128, 184 Nathan, 200–1 nazir (Nazirite), 170, 190–1 Nebuchadnezzar, 222 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 138, 142, 144 Nineveh, 127, 180, 220, 230–3 Noah, 2, 3, 16, 19–24, 25, 52, 74, 86, 87, 147, 218 Odysseus, 33–4 Oedipus, 86 offerings, see sacrifices Og, 125, 128 Onan, 17, 74

Paddan-aram, 51–4, 58, 67–9, 100 Paine, Thomas, 230, 248 Pangle, Thomas, 236 Paul, St., 9, 240 Persia, 15, 196, 228, 229, 244 Pharaoh, 1, 29, 30, 33, 57, 58, 60, 63–8, 70–3, 83, 87, 88, 90–3, 94–9, 101–3, 110, 129, 151, 158, 183, 201, 203, 210, 214, 238, 243 Philistia (Philistines), 35, 59, 60, 100, 103, 149, 178, 183, 189–91, 194, 197, 198 Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, 23 Plato, 5, 15, 18, 20 Plaut, Gunther, 161 Potiphar and wife, 65, 68, 70, 71, 149 Poti-phera, 70, 85, 162 Powell v. Alabama, see Scottsboro trial (Powell v. Alabama) Prager, Dennis, 141 priesthood (kohanim), 32, 39, 66, 68, 70, 84, 85, 100, 106, 107, 113, 116, 117, 122, 130, 131, 160–5, 171, 172, 189, 193, 194, 200, 201, 203, 209, 211, 212, 219, 225, 228–30 Puah, 87 Rachel, 51–3, 55–7, 64, 81, 87, 104, 115, 148, 242 Rad, Gerhard von, 75 Rahab, 181–2 Rashi, 1, 12, 23, 39, 93, 117, 179, 235 Rebekah, 25–7, 44–6, 48, 49, 51, 55, 58, 68, 69, 72, 76, 79, 103, 104, 148 Rehoboam, 76, 112, 182, 209 Resh Lakish, 6 Reuben, 23, 52, 56, 59, 69, 76, 77, 115, 118, 121, 122, 128, 132, 147, 148, 185, 187

INDEX

Rome, 17, 22, 50, 73, 84, 93, 166, 176, 177, 187, 219, 223, 227 Ruth, 103, 199 Sabbath (Shabbat), 4, 9, 10, 15, 107, 110–11, 113, 132, 135, 137–9, 141, 142, 150, 155, 163, 165, 166, 169, 197 sacrifices, 16, 18, 19, 24, 27, 29, 34, 35, 38–42, 48, 54, 84, 91, 92, 99, 110, 112, 113, 115– 18, 136, 141, 147, 150, 153, 154, 158, 160–2, 164, 165, 168, 170, 173, 188–90, 194, 201, 205, 215, 232 Samson, 59, 170, 189–91, 193 Samuel, 70, 94, 149, 170, 191–8, 201, 208, 210 Sarah (Sarai), 1, 25–7, 29, 30, 32–5, 37, 38, 41–2, 45, 46, 48, 66, 72, 76, 79, 110, 135, 148, 191, 242, 243 Sarna, Nahum, 9, 24, 63, 157 Satan, 14–16, 42, 228, 229 Saul, 70, 104, 149, 167, 176, 178, 182, 191–4, 196–8, 208, 210 Scottsboro trial (Powell v. Alabama), 35–6 Seth, 3, 18, 20 Sforno, Ovadiah, 12 Shechem (city), 1, 29, 55–7, 69, 77, 85, 110, 128, 186, 243 Shechem (son of Hamor), 36, 55, 104, 149 Shelah, 75, 76, 80, 148 Shem, 20–3, 25 Shiphrah, 87 Sihon, 125, 128, 187, 188 Simeon, 57, 59, 68, 77, 85, 115, 118, 128, 129, 185 Sinai, Mt., 2, 56, 105–10, 114, 116, 119, 124, 135, 162, 205, 213–15 Sisera, 183, 184

259

slavery, 2, 10, 11, 22, 23, 29, 31–3, 43, 57, 58, 63, 65, 67, 68, 71, 73–8, 83, 86, 90, 93, 97, 100, 102, 112, 118, 119, 122, 131, 139, 149, 151–8, 165–7, 193, 195, 223–5, 246 Socrates, 5, 15 Sodom, 15, 17, 32–3, 35–9, 43, 147, 149, 163 Soleveitchik, Chaim, 39 Solomon, 70, 76, 112, 182, 193, 200–2, 207–9, 225 Sorenson, Leonard, 78 Spinoza, Benedict de, 130 Syria, 44, 126, 215, 220, see also Arameans Szold, Benjamin, 179 Tamar (David’s daughter), 36, 200 Tamar (Judah’s daughter-in-law), 52, 74–7, 80–1, 86–7, 104, 148 Targum Yonasan, 8, 41 Temple, 40, 42, 102, 152, 164, 165, 202, 203, 210–13, 218, 219, 222, 225, 228 Terah, 25–7, 44 Toqueville, Alexis de, 174 Torah, 47, 51, 55, 56, 69, 74, 78, 94, 99, 101, 111, 117, 131, 132, 143, 145–7, 151, 152, 155, 157, 159, 160, 165, 169, 170, 173, 179, 180, 183, 187, 191, 192, 217, 218, 224 Torquatus, Titus Manlius, 176 Tubal-Cain, 18 Ur, 26, 27, 44 Uriah, 200 Uzziah, 213, 215 Vilna Gaon, 10, 11 Visotzky, Burton, 46, 49

260

INDEX

Washington, George, 198 Wiesel, Elie, 73, 101, 230 Wildavsky, Aaron, 64, 67, 76 YHWH (Yahweh), 60, 90, 93, 96, 136, 141 Zadok, 201, 225 Zarathushtra, 15

Zebulun, 115, 118, 184 Zechariah, 14, 15, 228–9 Zedekiah, 221, 222, 224 Zelophehad, 167 Zeresh, 197 Zilpah, 52, 115 Zimri, 186 Zipporah, 104

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