Lessons in the Wilderness - A Recent Torah Commentary on Num 30:2-36:13

Numbers, it has been said, simply records the highlights of Israel’s wilderness trek. To that I would respond, (1) it seems to me to be more of a record of Israel’s low-lights (not highlights) and (2) there’s really nothing “simply” or simple about the book. Not long after the Israelites leave Sinai and approach Canaan, trouble begins—and the trouble is relentless, throughout Numbers. Unfortunately, many read Numbers and castigate the Hebrews for their disbelief, for their complaining, and for their forfeiting their rights to Canaan for a season. The problem, for most, becomes those people over there, those Jews. For me, however, this isn’t as much a story about Jews as it is a story about humanity—all of us.

With Egypt in the rear view mirror and with Canaan in the windshield—somewhere out there, way over some distant horizon—distressed human beings who happened to be Hebrews pressed onward, while their eventual bad attitudes went outward and their performances bent downward. They were oppressed and repressed in Egypt, to be sure—thanks to their taskmasters—here now, in Numbers, they are forever depressed, but for reasons of their own, given their inability to master themselves and their tasks. Those who have made their journey through life without ever grumbling or complaining or taking their eyes off their prize have my permission to throw stones at the Hebrews in Numbers. The rest of us who, truth be known, aren’t really much different or better, do well to inquire what we might learn from all this.

Though tempted to offer a variety of reflections, I am forced to narrow my field to this week’s reading in chapters 30-36. There, after exposing readers to various scoundrels and scandals up through chapter 29, in the never-ending drama that is Numbers, the world eventually settles down in chapters 30-36. There, readers learn of vows (30), and wars (31), and of tribal settlements east of the Jordan (32), where readers are given a brief recap of the wilderness trek (33), a summary of the land’s boundaries (34), and miscellaneous laws (35-36), all before we get to the book’s end, where Moses wraps up his ministry with Israel encamped opposite Canaan and ready to take possession of their inheritance under Joshua.

There was one thing Moses was to do, before he finished up and before the conquest fired up. I want to focus on that: “Adonai spoke to Moses saying, ‘Take vengeanceon the Midianites for Bnei-Yisrael. Afterward you will be gathered to your people’” (31:1-2 TLV, italics mine). At one level, it sounds like a mob boss saying: “Hey Vinnie. Before you leave Brooklyn, I’ve got one more job for you. Go down to the docks and take care of so and so.” One of those “so and so’s” in Numbers was the prophet-for-profit named Balaam (30:8), whom Balak acquired to destroy the Hebrews through curses. He didn’t. In 24:25, readers were told Balaam took leave of Balak, that he “turned to his own place” and “went on his way” (TLV) without uttering an imprecation.

Apparently, however, he did not go home, but stayed around for some time—to offer some sage advice to his patron(s). Though he wouldn’t curse Israel, but blessed them verbally (23:7-10, 18-24; 24:3-9, 16-24), he nefariously hatched a plan to undo them personally, by luring them to idolatry through sexual impropriety (25:1-9). It’s an old trick. (Faith-filled parents can spend twenty years raising a religious son and the wrong girl can undo all that in about twenty seconds.) God meted out a judgment, and the cost in lives for guilty Hebrew soldiers amounted to 24,000 dead according to 30:9. What happened? Balaam told Balak that though his boys couldn’t defeat the Hebrews, his girls could . . . and they nearly did. Pinchas’ zeal to summarily judge the malefaction with a bloody spear was awarded by his securing the high priesthood in perpetuity (25:13); Balaam’s reward for hatching the scheme was his death, along with the Midianites, who are now remembered in perpetuity for the brazenness of their seductive girls and the cowardice of their boys. Moses’ last act, if you will, amounted to his leading a campaign to obliterate those Midianites from history, in order to, in turn, remember them in perpetuity through this particular moment in his story.

Wars are never easy to digest. It’s easy to judge Moses negatively, I suppose, and/or to find the ancient Hebrew Bible wanting, on the basis of its message supposedly being incongruent with a version of Christian faith and virtue that places a premium on being forever mushy, nice, sweet, forever tolerant and bending, and willing to get comfortable with and/or to compromise with evil—one being the evil of sexual impropriety. Readers of Number now know where Moses weighs in on that, don’t they? In our modern world, through the miracle that is the internet, a thirteen year old boy can see more naked women in an evening than Solomon saw in a lifetime. Startling though it may be, perhaps this Mosaic no-tolerance policy toward sexual impropriety should get dusted off, and given a life and voice in the modern era.

With Pinchas securing the high priesthood in perpetuity as a result of his halting the debauchery, and with Moses being told to personally lead the campaign against the Midianites and Balaam, who instigated the debauchery, I hear this story speaking out from the pages and through the ages. May you and I, by God’s grace, walk in holiness and extol its virtues in a world where holiness is in high demand but very short supply.

by Dr. Jeffrey L. Seif, Sar Shalom, Plano, Texas