1. Point
This week's long, double Torah reading (Numbers 19:1-25:9) starts with death and ends with death; even worse, the ritual laws of corpses with which chapter 19 echoes the violent deaths, through acts of force majeur, of chapter 16, and next week's reading bringing the command for yet another round of violence (25:16-18) that will be recounted (31:1-9) in the week following provide a four-week-long framework of violence. And most of this story will be retold and the message reinforced throughout the summer Torah readings from the book of Deuteronomy. There is a a symmetry of symbols: Moses is commanded to take up his rod (20:8), and in the closing verses of the double reading, Phinehas impales the offending couple with a spear (25:7-8).
The scenario that will happen if Israel violates the prohibition against living in peace with the indigenous nations and against allowing them to maintain their rirtuals given in Exodus 34:12-16 (they will invite you to partake of offerings to other gods, that it will lead to worshipping them and then to YHWH's vengeful punishment) thus takes place already in the desert before the entry into the Promised Land. What was is what will be, and there is nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes said; the sea is the same sea, and the Arabs are the same Arabs, said Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to ensure the failure of the Madrid Peace Talks in 1991.
2. Counterpoint
This week's Haftarah (reading from the Prophets), Micah 5:6-6:8, is famous for prefering morality to ritual:
6 6 With what shall I approach the Lord
Do homage to God on high?
Shall I approach Him with burnt offerings
With calves a year old?
7 Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams
With myriads of streams of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgressions
The fruit of my body for my sins?
8 He has told you, O man, what is good,
And what the Lord requires of you:
"Only to do justice
And to love goodness
And to walk humbly with your God."
but what I find even more soothing, "like cold water on a parched throat (Proverbs 25:25)", is the twice-repeated vision of integration with the nations: "The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples (5:6,7)," a direct refutation of Balaam's famous עם לבדד ישכון am l'vadad yishkon, "a nation that lives alone (Numbers 23:9)"
The previous chapter in Micah is also the source of the famous pacifist passage most commonly quoted from Isaiah (nation shall not lift up sword against nation, etc.) so it is not really surprising to find a strong anti-militaristic statement in our Haftarah as well:
"...I will wreck your chariots...and demolish your fortresses" (5:9-10)
3. An inner-biblical Resolution
I got a kick out of Numbers 20:14, when Moses starts out his message to Edom with, "Thus says your brother Israel..." Well, it didn't work -- Edom was not interested in allowing Israel free passage through its land -- but it's good to see some optimism here, even if it comes out of self-interest and not consideration, let alone altruism. If the text imagines brotherly between the descendants of Jacob and Esau ( = Edom) despite the rocky beginning they had in Genesis 25-33, I guess there's hope for all of us.
Shabbat shalom,
Jeremy
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