CHAPTER 32
This is a procedural point for the Children of Israel to
deal with before moving into the Promised Land, but it’s actually fairly
interesting by those standards. The
tribes of Gad and Reuben have a thought.
Look, were raise animals, and the best land to do that in is the land
we’re already on. We don’t actually
need to go into the Promised Land, so how about we set up shop here? Moses is aggressively unhappy with this and
gives them a verbal smackdown.
Chastised, the tribes make a counteroffer (or perhaps just
clarify their original offer). Look,
they’ll enter the Promised Land swords unsheathed and take full part in the
killing and the genocide of the Canaanites.
They’re down with that. But when
the murdering is done, how about they be allowed into their old land? Well, that’s a horse of a different
color. And Moses says this is fine. They can settle where they want – provided
that they take part in taking the Promised Land.
Why was this included?
Well, the Israelites had a verbal tradition of Canaan being their
Promised Land, and of all of them being descended from Abraham. But they also had some tribes living outside
Canaan. Well, you have to reconcile that fact that this is still Promised Land
with how some tribes don’t actually live there. And that’s what this story does.
Also, it’s apparently 40 years later now. Moses notes how the generation led out of
Egypt is all dead and if the tribes of Gad and Reuben don’t do their part,
they’ll wander another 40 until all of this generation dies out, too. Well, that would actually help make more
sense of the second census in Chapter 26.
More time has elapsed than I expected.
But that still doesn’t explain the complete collapse in numbers of the
tribe of Reuben.
Oh, and the tribe of Mansseh – half of it, anyway – kills a
bunch of people to the north. So
that’ll be part of Israeli land, too.
CHAPTER 33
This is entirely a procedural chapter. It describes the journey of the Israelites
over their 40 years. It’s as boring as
it sounds. Just a list of places they
camped at and repetitive sounding sentences.
This Bible comes with a map, so that’s nice – I don’t feel like I’m
missing anything when my eyes glaze over.
Oh, we do learn something, though. Aaron dies at age 123, 40 years after the Israelis departed
Egypt. Well, given that the entire journey itself took 40 years, he died near
the end. Well, let’s see – he died in
Chapter 20 of Numbers. And the
Israelites left Mt. Sinai in Chapter 10 at Sinai. I believe they left Sinai about a year into the wanderings.
So the Torah tells you a lot about their first year or so,
quite a bit about the last year or so, and the middle 38 years you get
virtually nothing. That period – 95% of
the wanderings, rates about 10 chapters total.
Looking at the map, they did about half of their wandering in the first
and last year, too. In between, they
really didn’t wander much at all, really.
They just sat around, all sitting around there like.
After finishing all that, the chapter ends on a ghoulish
note. God tells Moses to remind the
Israelites that this is their land.
They should “dispossess all the inhabitants oft e land before you,
destroy all their stone figures, destroy all their molten images, and demolish
all their high places.” They are to
then take the land for themselves. God
makes this very clear, and in facts threatens the Israelites if they don’t
engage in a sufficient amount of ethnic cleansing. They are told, “But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of
the land before you, those whom you allow to remain will become barbs in your
eyes and thorns in your sides and they will harass you in the land where you
live, and I will treat you as I had intended to treat them.” Yup, that’s a definite threat there at the
end – drive all them out, or I’ll have all of you driven out.
Aside from discomforting some modern sensibilities, this
passage has even bigger problems for the real world, as this has some definite
(and nasty) implications for the Middle East.
In present day Israel, there is an increasingly strong
mixture of religious fundamentalism and Israeli nationalism. They look to quotes like this and say,
“See? The Bible says this is OUR land,
so we’re right to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and all else!” If a UN charter says the Palestinians have a
claim to the land, who cares? The Torah
trumps it! Things weren’t always this
way. The Zionists and the religious
Jews initially were different group.
The Zionists focused on politics and creating a state, and the religious
Jews focused on the next world, not this one. OK, but now there is a state, and
many fundamentalists live there – so this becomes core to their belief. Politics and religion mix, given greater
certainty – and this is a main founding pillar for the settler movement.
It also explains why many Christian conservatives so
strongly back Israel. It doesn’t matter
what they do – look, the Bible says its there, and what the Bible says is, must
be. So among other things, Chapter 33
of Numbers is used to deny Palestinians human rights.
CHAPTER 34
This is just procedural stuff. You can tell they’re getting ready to enter the Promised Land
because everything going on here is done with one eye at Joshua. (I know there’s an entire book coming up
until we get there, but the J, E, and P authors didn’t know that. The D author – who wrote Deuteronomy –
didn’t come along until much later, and wasn’t combined with the others until
still later.
Anyhow, each tribe picks a representative to determine where
their land will be. And we’re told what the overall boundaries of the Promised
Land are.
CHAPTER 35
Now we get into some details as he approach D-Day of the
invasion.
The Levites get some cities. OK. After all, they don’t
get any land for themselves.
Also, some cities are to be places of asylum. If you kill someone, you can flee there to
avoid being murdered in retaliation – at least right away. Go to a city of asylum, and the community
will judge you. Then you’ll be given
the appropriate punishment. Once you’re
in the city, the family of the murdered victim can’t kill you in
retribution. But, if the community
finds you guilty of intentional murder, then you will be killed – and it’ll be
the relatives of your victim that can kill you. Also, you can’t murder someone and then give money to get out of
it. That’s forbidding.
This is interesting because they’re trying to create a
functional justice system here without having everything devolve into internal
feuding. OK, you can have vengeance on
the person that murdered your brother, but you got to follow the code
first.
It’s a nice code.
It’s about having a system and procedure in place. That way your vengeance killing won’t lead
to another round of killing. You need
some law and order and you’re a people that’s not yet settled down.
Also, if the murder is accidental (manslaughter), then the
community will fix the appropriate settlement between the killer and the family
of the victim. Intent matters. This, I should note, is different from the
tradition in Chinese culture, where the deed matters more than the intent.
CHAPTER 36
We end on a rather odd note, going over a point actually
made once before: daughters and inheritance.
Now, there’s a new wrinkle on it, though. Previously the issue of daughter’s inheritance was about the
family more than anything else. Now
it’s more about the tribe. The short
version is they don’t want daughter’s inheritance and any marriages to mess up
tribal lands. So any daughter who
inherits money must marry within her own tribe. Period.
So there’s both a tradition of personal ownership or
property and also communal ownership.
The land is yours, but it must stay in the tribe you belong to. This is a sense that certainly cuts against
capitalism.
And what an odd note to end a Bible book on. Genesis ends with the death of Joseph. Exodus ends with the completion of the
Tabernacle and God taking up his presence there. Up ahead, Deuteronomy ends with the Moses. Those are all big events in their own
way. But Numbers just ends with some
secondary laws about land.
OK, there is Leviticus ending with some general laws, but
then again Leviticus is pretty much nothing but laws. So it makes sense it would end like that. Sure Numbers has laws in it too, but it also
has some events. In fact, you get a definite sense of momentum toward the end
of Numbers as we’re on the verge of D-Day in ancient Canaan. Then we get some odd laws and it stops. Huh?
My theory: originally, the chapter ended with the death of
Moses. Then, later on – about a century
later – some priests of Judea wrote Deuteronomy and put Moses death at the end
of that. So they didn’t need it here
any more. So you get this awkward, and
abrupt conclusion.
Concluding Thoughts
What can I say about Numbers on the whole? Like Leviticus, it’s part of the Bible that
doesn’t really stick in the imagination.
However, while Leviticus is more consistent throughout, this has some
more ups and downs. The highs are
definitely more memorable and fascinating that Leviticus. But the lows are frankly even more
boring. All that priestly talk gets
old.
I’ll say this much for Numbers: at no point is it ever as
boring as the building of the Tabernacle in the back half of Exodus.
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