Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 14:17, Back into the Desert

Jeremy Rosen | Making Sense of the Bible Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today Numbers 1417, Back into the Desert | 03.27.24

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- We are now on Numbers, We’re going to deal with the aftermath of these 12 men who went into the land of Canaan to scout out the territory and came back with a divided report. 10 of them said, “It’s a great place, but the people there are tough and strong. It’s too difficult, we can’t do it.” And Caleb and Joshua, the two good guys, said, “Look, it is tough, but we can do it.” It’s a question of having the right spirit, the right determination and the guts to go ahead and do it. It’s interesting that we talk about the 12 spies. But here, they’re not described as spies, they’re described as the people who went the tourists. It’s interesting because later on, when we get to the book of Joshua, please God, and Joshua sends spies, he actually calls them meraglim, spies. Spies and not only that, but their aim is, to undermine the place they’re going to. Already start with secret service dirty tricks. So there is this uncertainty as to whether we should call them spies or whether we should call them scouts. But either way, it’s common to talk about the world spies.

But nevertheless, they come back with this report and God decides that frankly, if you’re so upset and if you claim you can’t do it, and if you claim it’s too much, and if you claim you want to go back to Egypt where it was safer and everything like that, in a sense the heck with a lot of you. You’re not ready and you’re not fit to begin the invasion and therefore we verse 34 of chapter 14, for the number of days that you toured the land of Canaan, 40 days, I’m going to turn day into year in order for you to overcome this disaster and day will be a year for 40 years. This congregation is going to travel round in the wilderness until that generation has gone and all those people who complained and said, “We can’t do it, we shouldn’t do it,” they will be dead. Only in verse 38, you’re sure. The two guys who came back and said, “It’s tough, but we do it, we’ve got the right spirit.” They were the ones who will go in to the next generation. And in verse 39, when God made this declaration, then everybody started to mourn in verse 39, they wept and they felt bad and they felt terrible after the effect, after the effect, after the act. So the question is what was their response in practise?

And as we are going to see, their response or some of them was, okay, okay, let’s go, let’s try, let’s prove them wrong, we can do it. And so it says in verse 40. And some of the people got up early in the morning. And they started going up the mountain, to track the path to invasion, saying we’re here, we’re ready, we’re sorry we said no, we’re ready, we’re going to the place where God tells us we have done wrong. To which Moses replied in verse 41. You can’t go back on what God has already said, you will not succeed. Don’t go up. Because God will not be with you. Lest you be smashed and defeated by the enemy. For the Amalekites, the Canaanites are all there. You’ll fall by the sword. And you’ve gone against the Word of God. Just suck it up and accept it. Verse 44. Now those of you who are familiar with Israeli history and the history of the Jews in Israel will know that there were a group of people called Hama Ma'apilim. From this word, to defiantly go up the mountain. The Ma'apilim were people who illegally came to Israel in the 30s and the 40s, despite the ban of the British who did not allow immigration.

They were giving into pressure from the other side. And there were Jews who said, despite that we’re going to find a way of getting there. Illegal, illegal immigration. And they were known as the Ma'apilim. And so if you look up the Ma'apilim you will see the history of that movement. But they take their name from here, those people who dared to go up the mountain, but they were going if like against the wishes of the authorities who were trying to stop them. And so what happened is in verse 45, the Amalekites and the Canaanites who were living there, which in itself raises a question because we thought the Amalekites were down by the sea, but it seems they were moving all around that area. And they came down via Kumvayaktum and they smashed them to pieces all the way a place called Hormah. Hormah is going to be mentioned once again 40 years later when they did actually start going up into the land of Canaan. And at Hormah they reversed the defeat and turned it into a victory. Which shows once again that even if you might be defeated at one moment, that doesn’t mean you can’t win at the next. And that ends the chapter 14. And we now come therefore to chapter 15. And what is interesting is that 15 represents a total break from the narrative of what went on before.

Because this now we’ve ended with you’re not going to go for another 40 years to the land of Canaan. And here we start off in 15, God says to Moses, when you come into the land which I’m giving you, and then you make certain commitments or certain offerings, why now are you suddenly switching to what’s not going to happen for another 40 years, and you’re talking about what you do when you come into the land of Canaan. And we are going to talk about bringing the first fruits or the benefits of the land. And we’re also going to talk about how do you atone for the community when the community does something wrong? ‘Cause we’ve just come away from a situation of a community. It seems to me that what this is saying is, look, we’ve had a setback, we have a delay. But that doesn’t mean to say that our long-term goals are not exactly the same. We shouldn’t give up on our long-term goals. And so I want you to think about or think in terms that this project is still on even though you’ve caused the delay of 40 years. And so I’m going to run through chapter 15 because chapter 15 covers a series of laws that we’ve already dealt with and there’s no point in going over them as to what goes into a sacrifice. Is it only animals or is it other opportunities?

Wine and grain and so forth. And we move on that this includes everybody’s ability to bring a sacrifice. So there will be strangers, non-Jews living amongst you in the land where you are going to obtain. It’s not going to be, shall we say, a land only for Jews. It will be a Jewish state, but it will have other people there. And then everybody will be involved in the community, even the stranger. They will be involved in the place they go to live. It’ll be open to everybody. There will be one rule of law and that will be Jewish law. But everybody who participates is welcome to come along. And then we have the law, verse 18,19 talking about the produce of the new land when you get there, something to look forward to. And then finally in 24 you have this issue of what happens when a community as a community does something wrong, either because they made a mistake, shall we say they made a mistake in the calendar and they celebrated a festival on the wrong day. Or alternatively they gave the wrong sort of advice, the sort of advice that was given wrongly by the people who toured around the country looking to see and then came back with a bad report. So in a sense we are saying this whole episode requires atonement. And atonement is an atonement that community does.

When the community makes a mistake, the community must fess up and deal with it and accept the responsibility. But anybody who defies then has to face the law. And the law is the law. And now I’d like you to turn to verse 32 on Numbers 15, which is one of the saddest problematic episodes that take place in the Torah. We’re now in the wilderness verse 32, They found a man. Who is gathering sticks on Shabbat. In other words, he was breaking Shabbat in public against a law of the Torah that we’ve already seen has been repeated in one form or another five times, let alone in Ten Commandments, but other times outside and beyond and again. And then repeated also in the context of festivals, also described as a Shabbat. So, verse 33. And the people who actually found him doing this. In other words, those who actually saw it, the witnesses. They bring him to Moses and Aaron in front of the community. And they put him in mishmar. Mishmar is somewhere where you keep somebody a keep under detention. Because they didn’t know what to do with him.

His raises certain interesting issues. The first issue that I want to talk about is in a sense the least one. What is this mishmar? The translation is normally something like custody or detention. But sometimes mishmar can sound like a jail. But there is no, if you like law that concerns a jail in the Torah. We have cities of refuge where people could go to protected area while their case was being heard. There were places where one could go to for refuge, but no idea of the jail as we have it in which somebody is removed from family, from children, from wife, leaving them, having to fend by themselves and put together with a lot of other nasty people who might exercise a very bad influence on him or her. So they just had this temporary detention, it wasn’t a jail. And the question is why did they not know what to do if the 10 commands is quite clear about not breaking the Shabbat? And this was in a sense a flagrant and public desecration of Shabbat, why did they not know what to do? And therefore they have to turn to God in a sense for advice. Now of course some people raise the question of, “Look, I thought all the laws were supposed to be given on Mount Sinai, so how come they now claim there’s some they don’t know.”

And this course raises the issue of whether Sinai in a sense was the beginning of the process of revelation or a completed one, that spot. But anyway, they want to know what to do. Now, it’s possible they also want to know what to do because this was an unusual case. The rabbis in the Talmud are very worried about this case and they try to identify who this person was and why this person was flagrantly disobeying the law. And they come up with a name. In fact, it’s Rabbi Akiva who says the name of this man was Tzelophchad. And Tzelophchad is according to the Torah, elsewhere, a pious man. And he had these daughters, he had no sons. And when he came as well seat of dividing up the land, the daughters come forward with a claim, “Look, you are dividing it according to the men, but what happens if there are no men in the family? What about us?” And that’s another example of a law that Moses will not know how to answer. And you’ll have to go back to ask God. And God will say, “The women are right, given 'em the land.” Now Rabbi Akiva then says, “That man was Tzelophchad,” why?

Because when the daughters come and appeal to Moses, they say to him that our father died for whatever he did wrong. But they don’t specify what it is that he did wrong. Rabbi Akiva said this guy was and he was a very good man. And the reason he went and he broke Shabbat in public was because nobody knew what the punishment was for desecrating Shabbat. And he felt he had to make, if you like, an exhibition of himself. He had to in fact take responsibility for making clear to everybody what the punishment was. Now from every religious point of view, if he knew that and knew he was going to be put to death, then that’s like committing suicide. But maybe he didn’t know, maybe he just wanted clarification. And anyway, this is typical of what we call midrash. There’s no actual source for this in the Torah, but it’s the rabbis playing around with the text in order to derive new ideas, new laws or new morals. So this man is brought and God then turns around and He says, “You’ve got to kill him, stone him. And the whole of the community must stone him outside the camp.” And so they took him outside of the camp, they stoned him till he died as God had commanded.

I as I’m sure you do, find it very, very painful to read those words that God should command stoning somebody to death. And as I’ve mentioned before, much of the laws of the Torah have to be taken with a broad brush in order to include other qualifications such as there need to be two witnesses, there needs to be warning in advance. And the question is was this guy warned in advance? It’s very difficult to explain this in our terms, and so I’m not going to even try to justify it, but I’m going to try to see if I can find some reason as to why they responded this way. Here you have a situation where in a sense the whole of the community has defied Moses, defied God and said, “No, thank you. We don’t want this.” And therefore you’ve got a huge crisis of control. How can you control an electorate when they all disagree with you? And this is a major problem being then and it still is now. So faced with a situation in which there’s been total rebellion, there’s been a constant ignoring of what was told to them. And so for example, going up the mountain, the Ma'apilim are ignoring instructions. It seems that there’s chaos and no control.

So you have to reassert control. How do you reassert control? Sometimes by making an example of somebody, of sometimes of taking drastic action. Action that goes beyond the law under extreme circumstances. And that’s the nearest I can get given the context. Given we’ve just had the problem with the spies, we’ve just had them turned away for 40 years. We don’t know if they’re going to accept that or if they’re going to turn around and try to kill Moses and Aaron, which they’ve threatened to do, and therefore they have to assert their strength and their power. And now out of the blue or not so comes the law of tzitzit, the law of these fringes. Now once again, I think it’s important to indulge and go back to archaeology. But if you look at the carvings, both in the British museum and in other museums around the world of the Assyrian Empire and the Assyrian times, you’ll see that where you have the stone throne of the emperor and you have his representatives appearing before him. Those representatives appearing him are wearing tassels. In other words, they’re wearing fringes.

And the priests of the ancient world wore fringed garments. So as with many things in the Torah, we’re taking an earlier custom of fringe garments which illustrate seniority as well as religious status, and we’re applying it now to the Jews. So the statement goes like this in verse 38, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, you are familiar with this. This is the third paragraph of the Shema that we say twice a day that’s part of our liturgy. It’s a very important paragraph. There are two others we’re going to come to later. This is the first one. I want to make fringes on the corners of their garments. And I want you to do this forever. A constant regular thing, not just once but regularly. And amongst these tzitzit, I want there to be a thread of blue, a thread of blue within the tzitzit. And you may turn round to me and say, “Look, all the tzitzit I see are white.” And that’s true. 90% of tzitzit are white. And one of the reasons that it’s given is we lost the knowledge of what , what blue was. We lost the manufacturing process. And because we don’t know what the manufacturing process is, we cannot substitute it with something else, So we will keep all the fringes the way we normally have them, which is white. And again, we don’t make them multicoloured because that would be an if you like, not the way they did it then.

But yet you will also notice that nowadays there are some people and some Hasidic sects that do have a blue thread. And this goes back to a rabbi in the last century, very learned rabbi who claimed he had discovered what tekhelet really was. It was like a blue snails dye found in the sea. And that he insisted that all his now wear this blue thread. And there are some other people who have followed that custom and do, but it still remains, if you like, an example of a custom of a law which is stated in black and white that in practise has fallen out of use, but in a sense was resurrected in recent years and some people adhere to it. So if you see the blue thread, you’ll know where it came from. Anyway, we go on and we say in verse 39. And these fringes should be for you so that you see them, you should actually look at them. And when you look at them. You will remember. At the commandments of God, the and do them. In other words, they’re there to be a reminder. A reminder that you have to live according to certain moral, ethical, religious standards. And this is very important. And you should not go after your emotions and your eyes that can so easily seduce you.

And this is all order in verse 40 that you should remember the commandments and you should be holy. And holy as I said means you should try to be better, try to be good, try your best to be a good person. So what we are saying is that we have a tendency to be seduced by the media, by people, by emotions. And we need to be reminded. You’ll be amused to know that the Talmud has some interesting stories that you might think don’t really find their place in the Torah, but one of them, two of them actually refer to well-known figures in the Talmud who actually went to prostitutes. And this. Comes to the prostitute and he’s beginning to undress when his tzitzit fly up and hit him in the eye. And suddenly he realised, Hey, what am I doing here? I’m wearing tzitzit, they’re supposed to remind me I shouldn’t go to hookers, and so he walks out and leaves them. And a story similar to that is told of some other people again, where having to wear tzitzit is supposed to help them avoid sin. And I think that is also in one sense, one of the reasons why so many do wear distinct dress.

Because if you are wearing this dress and you turn up at a brothel, it will look very strange and it might make you feel embarrassed. Now I don’t know, but I have it on good authority from people who mix in those circles that unfortunately nowadays that is no guarantee whatsoever. And it shouldn’t just be to do with hookers, it should be to do with business ethics or trying to make a quick profit or doing something that you shouldn’t be doing or something that will maybe bring you into disrepute. The purpose of the tzitzit is to try to remind you. But of course nothing works a hundred percent. Humans being what humans are, they could always find a way round things. And the question of tzitzit is an interesting one because originally people wore just one garment in the Middle East and on this one garment they would have their fringes. But then as people moved, let’s say into European society where you had lots and lots of garments, technically speaking every one of them requires tzitzit, but only if they’ve got four corners. What happens if they’ve got round corners?

You don’t have to. And then we have the question of I am working in a German bank or in a French bank and everybody’s dressed in a particular way and they require conformity. And if I don’t conform, then I might lose my job. Am I allowed to put my tzitzit inside where people won’t see? And people came up with various answers. One of them was just to keep the tzitzit wrapping around the belt and the belt is covered by something else and others put their tzitzit completely inside. And nowadays it’s become more fashionable, particularly in Israel, to wear your tzitzit out all the time. And not only that, but you will also find people in Israel who wear tzitzit and don’t wear a kippah on their heads. And that’s interesting. People say, “Look, if you wearing tzitzit, you got to be holy, holy. Why do you wearing kippah hat? And they will say, because there’s no actual law in the Torah commanding you to have a kippah in your head. The whole idea of a kippah in your head comes from a Talmudic era where it was a symbol of having a superior authority.

But maybe it’s possible that before that they were like Bedouin and they covered their hair with a keffiyeh anyway and they didn’t notice. But nevertheless, there is some validity in that except that the kippah has now become such an important and a traditional sense of identification that people are, in a sense are being inconsistent if they are ignoring custom and only sticking to law because that’s part of our tradition. Anyway, verse 41 says. I am the Lord your God. Who took you out of the land of Egypt. To be your God. I’m the Lord your God. Which is another way of saying, "Put up and shut up. I’m the boss, I’ve taken you out of Egypt. I could have left you there. We are still going forward. We are not giving up, but this is the rule. I want you to stick to the rule. I know better than you. I know human nature. Human nature always wants the easy way out and always wants a soft option. And I’m telling you to do something that is going to mark you publicly, define you, and hopefully remind you of what being a good human being and a good Jew is all about.” And that ends the episode of the 10 spies, the 12 spies or the 12 tourists and the guy who broke Shabbat. And now we come to rebellion. So clearly all the efforts to keep people under control, to get them to accept authority has failed. They are still rebelling and Korach is the arch rebel of the Torah.

So let’s start with the story of Korach, which is chapter 16 verse one. This guy, Korach, Ben Izahar the son of Izahar, Ben Kohath, the son of Kohath, Ben Levi, the son of Levi. Hello, he is comes from the same stock as Aaron and Moses. He’s a Levite, so he is leading a rebellion from within the family, let alone within the people. And then we have somebody called Dathan and Abiram. We don’t know who Dathan and Abiram actually are. But tradition has it that when Moses as a young man went out from the royal palace in Egypt to see his Hebrew brothers because he’d been taught by his mother that he was of Hebrew origin and he wanted to see what was happening to them and he saw that they were enslaved and he saw that they were being treated cruelly by the Egyptian taskmasters. And when one of the Hebrews was being beaten, Moses stepped in and killed the Egyptian taskmaster and buried his body in the sand.

He looked around, he didn’t see anybody who was seeing him, but he was seen. The following day, he’s back, if you remember, and he sees two Jews having a fight and he turns to 'em and says, “You’re brothers, why are you fighting each other?” And these two guys turned around to him and said, “Who the hell do you think you are? You are not our boss, don’t you tell us what to do.” And by tradition, those two guys were Dathan and Abiram. So Dathan and Abiram have this reputation of being bad guys. They’re the son of Reuben. And finally you have this unknown character called On Ben Peleth. Who comes from Reuben. But why did it say Benet, the descendants of Ruben, of Ruben, descendants from him? Why not just the descendant or why not do as Korach did, the whole, shall we say, genealogy. Answer would be at least Korach came from a priestly caste. These two didn’t come from anything special. But anyway, verse two. And they stood up in front of Moses. and they gathered with them. Two other people from Israel. Two hundred and fifty, two hundred fifty. Who are princes of the congregation. That means to say they were heads of tribes.

People who would come to the tabernacle, the 72 members of the Sanhedrin the people who were brought there to give advice to Moses on what’s going on. This is the aristocracy, the total aristocracy, the priestly aristocracy, the tribal aristocracy, the judiciary aristocracy. All men with a huge reputation. So this isn’t one or two people standing up in verse three. And they get together the congregants against Moses and Aaron . And they say to them. We’ve had enough of you. Which not we’re against God, all the community is holy. And God is amongst them. Why are pointing yourselves as those in charge of the whole of the community? Who the hell do you think you are? It’s interesting if they say God is with us and God is in the congregation, haven’t they seen everything that’s gone on? Haven’t they seen Mount Sinai? Haven’t they experienced what happened after the spies? Did they not see crossing the Red Sea did not see coming out of Egypt? How do they not realise that this is a divine appointment? Is it just that their memory is so short? Or is it that the experience of being in the wilderness, of having been turned back, of having suffering like this just was too much for them to take?

It’s very difficult to explain what it is. The rabbis like to suggest that it was a religious issue that really Korach was making fun of the whole idea of tzitzit. After all tzitzit came before. And what’s the point of tzitzit? I mean, if we are holy people, why do we need these fundamental garments? What do we want it, what do we wear them for? And do we wear them at nighttime or at daytime? Do we have to put them on our pyjamas? And all kinds of, if you like, religious challenges to the religious authority of Moses in a sense, if you like, you might say it’s the first reform movement trying to make a break away from the main established structures. But that would be an unfair comparison. And I don’t think it stands in this situation. This seems to me to be a question of wanting to take over of simply wanting personal gain, of wanting to lead the community into the next generation. So in verse four. And as always happens when they complain, he falls on his face. Falling on face is a sense of helplessness.

In one sense it could mean he fell on his face in terms of an act of worship, but that doesn’t make sense. He’s not going to make any worship to them. But he replies, he recovers and he says in verse five. He said Korah and his congregation this. Tomorrow morning. God is going to reveal and let you know who He considers holy and who He wants to bring close to Him. And whoever He decides He will bring close to Him. But it seems to me he says that there are two sides to this. One side is that Korach being a priest wants to take over from Aaron and the rest of you want to take over from me. So there’s, if you like the religious leadership and there’s the civil leadership, I’m going to deal first of all with the civil. Sorry, with the religious leadership. And therefore I want you, he says to take your senses, your fire pans, the pans that are used to bring incense into the tabernacle. These are symbols of the priesthood, symbols of the tabernacle worship. And I want you to put fire on them. Sort of set the coals a light. Before God tomorrow. And we’ll see which one God chooses. That will be the holy one. And you, you Levites, who you want to take over from Aaron will see who God chooses.

Now, I find this strange. I find this strange first of all because you might remember that in the dedication of the tabernacle there was Aaron and then there were these two sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu. And after Aaron had brought his incense, they decided to come forward with their incense and they hadn’t been commanded to. And this was something out of the ordinary. And some people took this to mean a sign of rebellion against authority and a desire to replace authority. And whereas when Aaron had brought his censer, his pans with incense, fire came out from heaven and set it a light. But nothing happened to Aaron. But when the two sons came forward, Nadab and Abihu, the fire came down and consumed them. Now everybody saw it. They were watching it. Didn’t these people really know about it? Were they willing to try the same test having seen what had happened to Nadab and Abihu?

Unless of course you may say this was another generation and they’d forgotten about it. This was much, much, much later and they didn’t know. But either way, it seems very strange that they’re prepared to take the test. Maybe that means they were genuine. But if they were genuine, it does seem difficult. Why do they want to challenge God that way? And so he says, Moses says in verse eight, Listen to me, you sons of Levi. Is it such a small thing. That God has already raised you up from the ordinary children of Israel. And brought you near because you serve in the tabernacle and around it. To serve in the tabernacle. To serve the community as their spiritual guides. Isn’t that enough? They brought you. And all the sons of Levi with you. And you also want to be the high priest. Surely enough is enough.

And that is where we will draw it to a close for today. And I will turn to see if there are any questions that anybody has to ask.

Q&A and Comments

I’ve enlarged the screen, Marty, and, Yisrael, thanks. I can always rely on you to ask a question.

Q: Are you aware of the book, “Rare Blue,” by Baruch and Judy Sterman and the organisation, Ptil Tekhelet? They have documented the source and are producing tekhelet as have been accepted by thousands of people who use them on the talitot and arbaʿ kanfot. A: I am not aware of that specific book, but I’m certainly aware of the literature supporting tekhelet. But of course, and I said very specifically, there is a minority who do we tekhelet. And they follow that particular point of view. But at this moment in time, the vast majority of religious Jews only wear white.

Karla says, thank you very much. And as I have no other questions, I will call it a day and please God see you next week. Thank you.