Haftarat Shemini—2 Samuel: Legacy

The obvious connection between this week’s Torah portion and haftarah reading is the message that God might strike dead even people who are doing God’s work, if they don’t get proper authorization for every action.

In the Torah portion, Shemini (Leviticus 9:1-11:47), two of Aaron’s sons who have just been consecrated as priests bring unauthorized incense into the sanctuary; God consumes their souls with fire.¹ (See my post Shemini: Fire Meets Fire.) In the accompanying haftarah reading from the prophets, 2 Samuel 6:1-7:17, King David is transporting the ark on an ox cart to Jerusalem. Uzza, one of the two ad-hoc priests walking beside it, puts his hand on the ark to steady it when the oxen stumble; God strikes him dead “over the irreverence”.² (See my post Shemini & 2 Samuel: Segregating the Holy.)

But Uzza’s death during King David’s first attempt to bring the ark to Jerusalem is not long enough for a haftarah portion. So the reading for this week continues with David’s second, successful transportation of the ark to his new capital. In this story, he dances in front of the ark wearing only a tabard called an eifod, and whenever he whirls his genitals are exposed. His wife Mikhal scolds him, but God apparently does not find David’s half-naked dancing irreverent; God punishes Mikhal with childlessness, but does nothing to David. (See my post Haftarat Shemini—2 Samuel: A Dangerous Spirit.)

The third story

A third story, which completes the haftarah, begins:

And it happened that the king was settled in his bayit, and God gave him rest from all the enemies around him. And the king said to Natan the Prophet: “See, please! I myself am dwelling in a bayit of cedar, and the ark of God is dwelling within the curtains [of a tent]!” (2 Samuel 7:1-2)

bayit (בַּיִת) = 1) house; any building where humans or a god reside at least part-time. 2) household; everyone who lives in the householder’s compound, including slaves as well as family members. 3) dynasty, lineage (like today’s House of Windsor).

Earlier in the haftarah, David brought the ark—considered God’s throne—into a tent he had pitched near his new cedar palace in Jerusalem.³ Now, when he says the ark is “dwelling within the curtains”, we learn that part of that tent is screened off from the main area with curtains, like the curtain that screened off the Holy of Holies in the portable tent sanctuary the Israelites built at Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus.

According to 11^th-century commentator Rashi,⁴ King David thinks it is time to fulfill one of Moses’ commands in Deuteronomy about building a temple:

And you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land that God, your God, is allotting as your possession, and you have rest for yourselves from all your enemies from all around, and you dwell in safety, then it will become the place where God, your God, chooses [God’s] name to inhabit. There you must bring all that I command you, your rising-offerings and your slaughter-offerings … (Deuteronomy 12:10-11)

But 21^st-century commentator Everett Fox wrote: “In the ancient Near East, such a desire would have been prompted not merely by piety; temples were political statements as well, symbolizing a god’s approval and protection of the regime.”⁵

King David’s motivations for building a temple could include a desire to welcome God at a higher level, a need to show everyone that Israel has its own powerful god, and a wish to leave a legacy in a world where he might lose the kingship like his predecessor, King Saul.

But David is foiled when the prophet Natan hears from God that night.

Nathan Tells David, by Jacob Backer, ca. 1633

And that night, the word of God happened to Natan, saying: “Go and say to my servant David: Thus said God: Are you my builder of a bayit for me to stay in?” (2 Samuel 7:4-5)

Midrash Tehillim⁶ adds to the biblical story by adding to what God said, claiming that God refused to let David build the temple because he had “shed much blood”. This is probably not a reference to all the Philistines David killed when he was an Israelite general, but rather to David’s killing and looting when he was the leader of an outlaw band and worked for a Philistine king.⁷

Midrash Tehillim also points out that Psalm 30 begins: “A psalm song of the dedication of the bayit for David”. Therefore, the midrash says, even though David did not build the temple, it was named after him—“to teach you that whoever intends to perform a commandment but is prevented from doing so, the Holy One, blessed be He, credits him as if he had performed it.”⁸

But God gives Natan a different explanation in this week’s haftarah:

“For I have not stayed in a bayit from the day I brought up the Israelites from Egypt until this day; but I have been moving about in a tent and in a sanctuary. Wherever I have been moving about among the Israelites, have I ever spoken a word with one of the leaders of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying: Why didn’t you build me a bayit of cedar?” (2 Samuel 7:6-7)

Once again God has asked a rhetorical question whose answer is “No”.

“Now you must say thus to my servant David: Thus said the God of Armies: I myself took you from the pasture, from following the flock, to become ruler over the people, over Israel.” (2 Samuel 7:8)

When Natan repeats this to David, it will serve as a reminder both of how far he has come, and of how God is in charge. Next God affirms that the people will remain safe from enemies in the land David has finished conquering. Then comes a promise to David:

“And God declares to you that God will make a bayit for you.” (2 Samuel 7:11)

King David has already built his own cedar palace. Now God is promising a different kind of bayit for him: a dynasty.

“When your days [of life] are filled, and you lie with your forefathers, then I will raise up your seed after you, one who issued from your innards, and firmly establish his kingship. He will build a bayit for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingship forever.” (2 Samuel 7:12-13)

Reconstruction of Solomon’s temple,
Bible Museum, Amsterdam

David has not yet seen Batsheva at this time. But eventually David’s second child by Batsheva, Solomon, becomes the next king of Israel. Solomon does build a temple (bayit) dedicated God in Jerusalem.⁹ He is not as effective at building a dynasty (bayit) dedicated to God, and the northern half of his kingdom breaks away shortly after he dies. But kings from his line do rule Judah, the southern half of David and Solomon’s kingdom, until the Babylonian conquest over 200 years later.

Natan’s vision from God concludes with a reassurance that God will not replace David’s son with a new king, the way God replaced King Saul with David.

“I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. When he acts perversely, I will rebuke him with the rod of men and the affliction of humans. But my loyal kindness will not be removed from him as I removed it from Saul, whom I removed [to make room] for you. And your bayit and your kingship are confirmed forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” According to all these words and all this vision, thus Natan spoke to David. (2 Samuel 7:14-17)

In effect, God adopts David’s future son Solomon.

A qualification

What God does not say is that God’s promise to King David is contingent on the next king’s good behavior. In the first book of Kings, King Solomon completes the temple in Jerusalem and God fills it with a cloud of glory.¹⁰ Then Solomon makes a long speech to the assembled crowd, in which he says:

“And now, God of Israel, please let your word be confirmed that you promised to your servant David, my father.” (1 Kings 8:26)

Eight days later, after the people go home, God appears to King Solomon and says:

“And you, if you walk before me like your father David walked, with a whole heart and with uprightness, doing everything that I commanded you, keeping my decrees and my laws, then I will erect the throne of your kingship over Israel forever, as I spoke regarding your father David, saying: No one will cut you off from the throne of Israel. [But] if you actually turn away from me, you or your descendants, and do not keep my commands [and] decrees that I have set before you, and you go and serve other gods and bow down to them, then I will cut off Israel from the face of the soil that I gave them. And the bayit that I made holy to my name I will send away from my presence, and Israel will become a proverb and a taunt among all peoples.” (1 Kings 9:4-7)

Is the bayit that God made holy the temple? God hallowed it by filling it with the divine cloud of glory. But although God stay away from the temple, the physical building cannot be sent anwhere. A couple of centuries later, when the Babylonians loot and burn the temple,¹¹ 2 Kings and Jeremiah consider it a punishment for bad behavior.

What if the bayit that God made holy is the dynasty of King Solomon? Then the appearance of the cloud of glory shows that God has consecrated Solomon. And Solomon’s dynasty is “sent away from God’s presence” when the Babylonian army deports the last two kings of Judah, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, to Babylon.

The yearning to leave a legacy, something that will last long after your death, is part of human nature. Parents hope their children’s children’s children will pass down their genes and their family history. Writers hope people will read their work after they are gone. Founders of businesses hope their companies will go on for decades without them.

The book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) notes:

The living know they will die. But the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, since even the memory of them is forgotten. Also their loves and their hates and their jealousies have already perished; and they have no share ever again in anything that is made under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6)

King David does not get to build a bayit of cedar and stone to be God’s temple, but God consoles him with the promise that he will build a dynasty, a bayit of a royal line. But even that does not last forever.

Leviticus 10:1-5.
2 Samuel 6:3-7.
2 Samuel 6:17.
Rashi is the acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki.
Everett Fox, The Early Prophets, Schocken Books, New York, 2014, p. 454.
Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 62, 11^th century.
See 1 Samuel 27:8-12.
Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 62. Translation from www.sefaria.org.
1 Kings 6:1-8:46.
1 Kings 8:10-11.
2 Kings 25:8-18.

Haftarat Tzav—Jeremiah: The Worst That Can Happen

It was a bad time to be God’s prophet.

Jeremiah first prophesied under King Josiah of Judah, who shared Jeremiah’s opposition to idolatry. Josiah cleared the idols out of the temple and tried to wipe out the worship of other gods in Judah.¹ But when the Egyptian army marched toward Assyria, Pharaoh Nekho II led his troops through the western edge of Judah. King Josiah attacked them at Megiddo, and was killed in battle.

The pharaoh appointed Josiah’s son Jehoiakim as the next king of Judah, and Jehoiakim began his 11-year reign as an obedient vassal of Egypt, sending regular tributes of silver and gold. Then in 605 BCE the new Babylonian empire won a major battle against the Egyptians at Carchemish, in the heart of the former Assyrian empire. King Jehoiakim switched his allegiance.

In his days, Nebuchadnezar, king of Babylon, came up, and Jehoiakim was his vassal for three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him. (2 Kings 24:1)

Rebelling against King Nebuchadnezar II was a big mistake. The Babylonian army conquered all of Judah except its capital, then laid siege to the walled city of Jerusalem in 599 BCE.

Jeremiah prophesied that God was not on Judah’s side any more, thanks to the bad behavior of its people, and therefore the king should surrender and send tribute to Babylon once more. King Jehoiakim was not amused. While Jerusalem was under siege, the king imprisoned Jeremiah and tried to assassinate him.

Two passages from Jeremiah compose the haftarah (the reading from the Prophets) accompanying this week’s Torah portion (Tzav in the book of Leviticus). In the first passage, Jeremiah 7:21-8:3, God warns the prophet about the worst that can happen if people do not obey God. The second passage, Jeremiah 9:22-23, ends this week’s reading on a happier note.

The worst

The haftarah begins with God complaining that the Israelites are still making the standard offerings (the ones required in the Torah portion Tzav), as if that were all they needed to do to please God.

Thus said the God of Armies, God of Israel: “Add your olot to your[other] slaughter-offerings and eat the meat! For I did not speak to your fathers and I did not command them at the time I brought them out from the land of Egypt about matters of olah and slaughter. For with this word I commanded them, saying: Heed my voice, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk on every path that I command you, so that it will go well for you.” (Jeremiah 7:21-23)

olah (עוֹלָה) = rising offering; an offering in which a slaughtered animal is completely burned up into smoke that rises up to the heavens. (Plural olot, עֺלוֹת.)

Ever since the exodus from Egypt, God continues, the people have refused to listen and obey—even though God keeps sending prophets who repeat the message. Then God tells Jeremiah:

“And you will speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. And you will call to them, but they will not respond.” (Jeremiah 7:27)

Burning a child for Molekh at Tofet,
Charles Foster Bible Pictures, 1897

Instead, God predicts, they will continue to set up idols in God’s temple, and they will continue to burn their own children at the shrine of Tofet in the Valley of Ben-hinom, just south of the temple mount in Jerusalem.

“Therefore, hey! The days are coming,” declares God, “when no one will say ‘the Tofet’ or ‘the Valley of Hinom’ any more, but rather ‘the Valley of the Mass Killing’. And they will bury at Tofet until there is no space left.” (Jeremiah 7:32)

Then, God says, it will get even worse. Since there will be too many corpses to bury, the bodies will be desecrated by wild animals. Furthermore, the people’s beloved land, already trampled by the Babylonian army, will become a wasteland.

“And the corpses of these people will be food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the land, and there will be no one frightening them off. And I will make the sound of gladness and of rejoicing cease in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. For the land will become a desolation.” (Jeremiah 7:33-34)

Yet even this is not enough. God is so fed up with the people of Judah that the dead will not be allowed to rest in peace.

“At that time,” declares God, “they will bring from out of their graves the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officers, the bones of it priests, the bones of its prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And they will be spread out under the sun and the moon … They will not be gathered and not reburied; they will become manure on the face of the earth.” (Jeremiah 8:1-2)

The earlier graves would be located outside the city, like the Valley of Hinom. Who would bother to ransack them? The 11^th-century commentator Rashi suggested the Babylonian invaders, called “Chaldeans” at the time.

“And the Chaldeans shall dwell, when they besiege the city, in the graves of the princes, that were as beautiful as palaces.” (Rashi)²

Or perhaps the invading army would desecrate graveyards in order to humiliate the Jerusalemites and move them to despair.

“Exposure of the dead was considered a great dishonor and desecration throughout the ancient world.” (Etz Chayim)³

The horrifying prophecy concludes:

“And death will be more desirable than life for all the remaining remainders of this wicked clan, in all the remaining places where I will drive them,” declares the God of Armies. (Jeremiah 8:3)

Vindictive or kind?

This passage and many others in the book of Jeremiah make God sound like a vindictive ruler with an anger management problem. The message could be summarized: If any of you disobey me, you’ll all wish you’d never been born!

On the other hand, the God of Jeremiah asks the Judahites not only to refrain from worshiping other gods, but also to behave decently to one another. Before the haftarah reading, Jeremiah reports that what God wants the most is for people to eschew injustice; oppression of strangers, orphans, and widows; and shedding the blood of the innocent.⁴

After the first passage in this week’s reading, God continues to rant about how wicked the people are and how devastating their punishment will be. But the rabbis who chose the haftarot over the centuries tried to end on a hopeful note. In the case of Haftarat Tzav, they appended a two-verse poem, the next positive passage in Jeremiah:

Thus said God:
Let not the wise one boast about his wisdom,
          And let not the strong one boast about his strength.
          Let not the rich one boast about his riches.
For only of this may a boaster boast:
          Of insight and acquaintance with me.
For I am God, doing kindness,
          Justice, and righteousness on earth.
          For in these I delight,
Declares God. (Jeremiah 9:22-23)

Communal versus individual justice

If God is kind and just, why does God let the Babylonian army kill so many people, including orphans, widows, and the innocent?

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, God treats people collectively. If enough of the population is at fault, God punishes everyone.

In the book of Jeremiah, the punishment is not the worst-case scenario of the first passage in this week’s haftarah. Later the book describes how the Babylonian army breaches the walls of Jerusalem and burns down the city and its temple. The people who have surrendered are put in fetters and marched off to exile in Babylon. A Babylonian official who knows about Jeremiah’s prophecies lets the prophet himself go free, and Jeremiah spends his final years with a group of Judahite refugees in Egypt.

Even if the outcome is not the worst that can happen, it is still personally devastating for a lot of innocent people. Why does God punish everyone in the community for the crimes of only some of its population?

Collective punishment is not perfect justice. If we think of God as a person who controls our fates, then we must protest, like Abraham:

“Far be it from you to do this thing, to bring death to the innocent along with the wicked, so the innocent and the wicked will fare alike! Far be it from you, the judge of all the earth, to not do justice!” (Genesis 18:25)

But collective punishment is a reality. When enough humans pollute the air, we all suffer from global climate change. When enough humans are inflamed by a demagogue, we all live in fear of terrorism and the seizure of the government. And when humans in power decide to make war, innocent people die.

2 Kings 22:3-23:16.
Rashi (Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), translated in www.sefaria.org.
Commentary edited by Chaim Potok, Etz Hayim, Rabbinical Assembly of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 2001, p. 628.
Jeremiah 7:5-6.

Esther: Playing Vashti

Jews will celebrate the holiday of Purim this Saturday evening. The evening revolves around the megillah, the book of Esther, and we have a wild time with it. We come in costume, often cross-dressing for the night, and drinking is encouraged. When someone reads the megillah out loud, we make loud noises to drown out the name of Haman, the villain, whenever it comes up. Then the Ashkenazic tradition is to perform a purim spiel, a play based on the story in Esther, full of jokes and innuendos and often comic songs. Purim is the merriest holiday in the Jewish calendar.

The book of Esther itself is a fantasy tale revolving around four characters: Esther, a Jew who becomes the queen of Persia through a beauty contest; Achashveirosh, the foolish king of Persia; Haman, his villainous chief advisor who tries to exterminate all the Jews; and Mordecai, Esther’s wise uncle who replaces Haman as the king’s advisor at the end, after Esther gets the king to save the Jews.

Before the king can hold the beauty contest to choose his new queen, his old queen must be disposed of. So the first episode in the book of Esther, and every purim spiel, is the banishment or death of another character: Queen Vashti.

And there is more than one way to play Vashti.

The kings of Persia

And it happened in the days of Achashveirosh—he was the king from India to Ethiopia—127 provinces. In those days, as King Achashveirosh sat on his royal throne that was in the citadel of Shushan, in the third year of his reign, he made a drinking-feast for all his officials and powerful courtiers of Persia and Medea … (Esther 1:1-2)

The opening of the book sets a fictional tale in a historical reality. The empire of the Persians and Medes (the Achaemenid Empire) really did stretch from the border of Ethiopian in Africa to the border of India in the east at its height, during the reign of King Darius (522-485 B.C.E.). Cyrus (the founder of the empire), Darius, and his son Artaxerxes (Artachshasteh in Hebrew) all embraced a policy of religious tolerance, according to both history and parts of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.¹

Nehemiah’s King Artaxerxes I, or Artachshasteh, is decisive, thoughtful, and thorough—the opposite of King Achashveirosh in the book of Esther.

The king who gets drunk

Achashveirosh is probably an alternate name for Artaxerxes/Artachshasteh—although unlike Artaxerxes, Achashveirosh is impulsive, vacillating, and stupid. (See my post Esther: Stupid Decisions.)

The book of Esther says that the king’s drinking-feast for the nobles and top officials of the empire lasts for 180 days, while he impresses them with the gorgeous and expensive splendors of his palace. Then King Achashveirosh invites all the men in the city of Shushan to a drinking-feast that lasts for 7 days, in the palace’s impressively bedecked and furnished courtyard. These commoners drink from golden goblets, as much wine as they like.

And the drinking was according to the rule: There is no constraint! Because this was what the king laid down over every steward of his household: to do according to the desire of each man. Also Vashti, the queen, made a drinking-feast for the women in the royal house of King Achashveirosh. On the seventh day, when the king’s heart was tov with wine, he said to … the seven eunuchs who waited on King Achashveirosh, to bring Queen Vashti before the king, in the royal crown, to let the people and the officials see her beauty—for she was tovah of appearance. (Esther 1:8-11)

tov (טוֹב), masculine, and tovah (טוֹבָה), feminine = good; joyful, desirable, usable, lovely, kind, virtuous.

King Achashveirosh’s mind is “joyful” with wine; Queen Vashti is lovely in appearance. The drunk king wants to show off his queen’s beauty.

After all, he has spent 187 days showing off the beautiful treasures of his palace. Perhaps, in his mentally hampered condition, it strikes him that the queen is the most beautiful treasure he owns.

But Esther Rabbah, written in the 12-13^th centuries, invents a backstory in which the men at the king’s drinking feast argued about which country had the most beautiful women. One man said that Median women were the prettiest, another that Persian women were. King Achashveirosh declared that his own wife, a Chaldean (i.e. Babylonian) was the most beautiful, and added:

“‘Do you wish to see it?’ They said to him: ‘Yes, provided that she be naked.’ He said to them: ‘Yes, and naked.’” (Esther Rabbah 3)²

Why would the king agree that his own wife should display herself naked? One 21^st-century analysis of Esther Rabbah explains: “In this view, Ahasuerus wishes to publicly establish his dominance over Vashti, by forcing the glaring contrast of “queen wearing a crown” and “subservient strumpet.” Such an aggressive act can be understood as stemming from the king’s insecurity, since she is royalty and he is not, for if it was only her beauty that he wished to show off, why was the royal crown necessary? … In other words, Ahasuerus wishes to express with this outlandish demand that Vashti may be royalty but her value to him is only in her beauty.”³

The queen who says no

Queen Vashti Refused,
by Gustave Dore, 1866
(The eunuchs have beards!)

But Queen Vashti refused to come at the word of the king delivered by the eunuchs. And the king became very angry, and rage was burning within him. (Esther 1:12)

The book of Esther does not say why Vashti refused. But commentators—and purim spielers—have been speculating for centuries.

Rabbis in the Talmud tractate Megillah, written circa 500 C.E., proposed that God suddenly disfigured her, with either a skin disease or a tail, so she was too embarrassed to show herself to men in public.³

In the 11th century, Rashi added that Vashti deserved the skin disease, citing another classic fiction: “Because she would force Jewish girls to disrobe and make them do work on Shabbos, it was decreed upon her to be stripped naked on Shabbos.”⁴

A century or two later, three rabbis are quoted in Esther Rabbah as suggesting that Vashti was willing to display herself to the men, but only if she were incognito, so she refused to wear her crown. “She sought to enter with only a sash, like a prostitute. But they would not let her.” (Esther Rabbah 3)

Another invention in Esther Rabbah is that Vashti tried to argue with the king before flat-out refusing to appear.

“She sent and said to him things that upset him. She said to him: ‘If they consider me beautiful, they will set their sights on taking advantage of me, and will kill you. If they consider me ugly, you will be demeaned because of me.’” (Esther Rabbah 3)

Vashti’s argument might influence a man who had the wits to think it over, but is useless on a man who is drunk. Then Esther Rabbah reports a second argument:

“She sent and said to him: ‘Weren’t you the stable-master of my father’s house, and you were accustomed to bringing naked prostitutes before you, and now that you have ascended to the throne, you have not abandoned your corruption.’” (Esther Rabbah 3)

It is hardly surprising that in this insult (also invented by the Talmud and Esther Rabbah) does not make King Achashveirosh change his mind, either.

In the 21^st century, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz did not take a position on whether the king wanted his queen to appear clothed or naked. But he pointed out: “Her refusal to obey the command of the king, whose authority was absolutely unlimited, is indicative of her high status. She was unwilling to humiliate herself by parading her body before an audience.”⁵

In modern purim spiels, when Vashti says no, she often adds a remark about stupid men who treat women like objects and possessions.

Vashti’s fate

In the book of Esther itself, Vashti merely refuses to come, and no explanation is given. Achashveirosh is enraged—maybe because he did not get his way, but more likely to avoid recognizing that he was in the wrong. He asks his seven top advisors:

“According to law, what is to be done with the queen, Vashti, considering that she did not do the command of the king, Achashveirosh, delivered by the eunuchs?” (Esther 1:15)

In the real Persian Empire, the king’s advisors would gently point out these facts:

“Queens do not drink with their male subjects, and thus, in refusing, Vashti is preserving expected power dynamics and behaving as a queen should. And yet, when she insists on her right not to appear before commoners to titillate them, she loses her position.” (Gaines)⁶

And [his advisor] Memuchan said in front of the king and the officials: “Not against the king alone did Queen Vashti act, but against all the officials and all the peoples in all the provinces of King Achashveirosh. Because the news that goes out about the queen will make all wives treat their husbands with contempt, as they say: King Achashveirosh said to bring Queen Vashti to him, but she would not come.” (Esther 1:16-17)

Memukhan suggests a punishment that would make the women of the empire hesitate before disobeying their husbands.

“If it seems good to the king, let him issue a royal edict, and let it be written into the laws of Persia and Media, so it cannot be passed over, that Vashti must never come before the King Achashveirosh again. And let the king give her royal rank to someone who is hatovah than she.” (Esther 1:19)

hatovah (הַטּוֹבָ֥ה) = (noun) the good; (adjective) better. (A form of tov.)

Apparently there is no Persian law about punishing a queen who disobeys the king, no matter how outrageous the king’s request is. So Memukhan thinks of a reason why Vashti should be punished, and then makes up a punishment for her: losing her rank as queen, and losing her access to the king.

In the 11^th century, Rashi interpreted this punishment as requiring Vashti’s execution, so she would be incapable of coming before the king. A century or two later, Esther Rabbah concluded that Memukhan’s proposal in the book of Esther proves the Persian legal system was capricious and inferior to the Jewish legal system. Then it invented three personalreasons why Memukhan had a grudge against Vashti.

But in the book of Esther, we never find out what happens to Vashti. The other six advisors of the king agree with Memuchan, and Achashveirosh, true to form, issues the edict without giving it any thought. Esther Rabbah, elaborating on Rashi’s opinion, adds: “He issued the decree and brought in her head on a platter.”

A 21^st-century commentary follows the book of Esther more literally: “Presumably, the text means to communicate that she lived on in the harem—a king’s consort is never afterward free to marry another—but was never allowed to see the king.”⁷

To make Memukhan’s ad hoc law universal,

He sent scrolls to all the provinces of the king, to each province in its own script and to each people in its own language, that every man should rule his household, speaking the language of his own people. (Esther 1:22)

Rashi explained: “He can compel his wife to learn his language if her native tongue is different.”⁴

And the Talmud noted that the pettiness of this law turned out to be a good thing: “Since these first letters were the subject of ridicule, people didn’t take the king seriously and did not immediately act upon the directive of the later letters, calling for the Jewish people’s destruction.”³

Esther Rabbah commented on this verse without resorting to fantasy: “Rav Huna said: Aḥashverosh had a warped sensibility. The way of the world is that if a man wishes to eat lentils and his wife wishes to eat peas, can he compel her? No, she will do whatever she wants.”

A replacement queen

After these events, as the rage of King Achashveirosh subsided, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her. And the king’s young servants who waited on him said: “They can seek out for the king young virgins of tovot appearance.” (Esther 2:1-2)

tovot (טוֹב֥וֹת) = good, lovely. (Feminine plural of tov.)

In other words, the foolish king remembers his beautiful queen, whom he will never see again, and he feels sad. But his servants remember Memukhan’s advice that Achashveirosh should find another, better queen.

The beauty contest begins. And so does Esther’s story, as she is taken to be a contestant, has her trial night with the king, and wins the queenship.

I want to write a purim spiel in which Esther, waiting in the king’s harem until she is called, meets Vashti, the imprisoned former queen. Vashti would tell Esther all about her last night as queen. Then the two women would suggest increasingly outrageous methods for dealing with a clueless sexist pig. If only I could find the right comic song to go with the dialogue …

Ezra 1:1-11, 5:5-6:12, and 7:11-26 (but not 4:6-24); Nehemiah 2:1-9 and 5:14.
Translations of Esther Rabbah are based on The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022, www.sefaria.org.
Talmud Bavli, Megillah 12b.
Rashi (Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), translation in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Introductions to Tanakh: Esther, reprinted in www.sefaria.org.
Dr. Jason M.H. Gaines, “But Vashti Refused: Consent and Agency in the Book of Esther”, www.thetorah.com/article/but-queen-vashti-refused-consent-and-agency-in-the-book-of-esther.
Dr. Malka Z. Simkovitch, Dr. Rabbi Zev Farber, Rabbi David D. Steinberg, “Ahasuerus and Vashti: The Story Megillat Esther Does Not Tell You”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/ahasuerus-and-vashti-the-story-megillat-esther-does-not-tell-you.

Haftarat Pekudei—1 Kings: A Mystery in Bronze

Ta-da! A new place to worship God, and a new dwelling for God to inhabit!

Moses makes the ta-da moment happen when he assembles the first tent sanctuary and all its appurtenances in this week’s Torah portion, Pekudei (Exodus 38:21-40:38). King Solomon completes the first Israelite temple in Jerusalem¹ in this week’s hafatarah (accompanying reading) in the Sefardic tradition, 1 Kings 7:40-50.

Although both the tent sanctuary and the temple use the same basic equipment for worship—ark, menorah, bread table, incense altar, wash basin, altar for burning offerings—the scale and the architecture are different. (See my post Haftarat Pekudei—1 Kings: More, Bigger, Better.) One outstanding difference is the entrance.

Grand entrance

The entrance of the sanctuary tent is framed in acacia wood. Instead of a door, there is a curtain embroidered with blue, purple, and crimson yarns.²

The entrance to the main hall of King Solomon’s temple has olive-wood doorposts and double doors of carved cypress wood covered with gold.³ But the most striking feature is the pair of gigantic bronze columns that Chiram casts and erects in front.

This is not King Chiram of the Phoenician city of Tyre, who provides Solomon with cedar and cypress wood for the temple. The Chiram who casts all the bronze is the son of an Israelite woman from the tribe of Naftali and a Tyrean bronzeworker.⁴

Model of First Temple,
Bible Museum, Amsterdam
(with capitals that look like single
giant pomegranates)

And Chiram finished doing all the work that he did for King Solomon on the House of God: two amudim, and the globes of the capitals on top of the two amudim, and the two networks to cover the two globes of the capital on top of the amudim, and the four hundred pomegranates for the two networks—two rows of pomegranates for each network to cover the two globes of the capitals that were on the amudim. (1 Kings 7:40-42)

And all these things that Chiram made for King Solomon for the House of God were burnished bronze. (1 Kings 7:46)

amudim (עַמּוּדִים) = columns, pillars, posts, upright poles. (Singular amud, עַמּוּד, from the root verb amad, עָמַד = stood.)

Capital, capital

The Hebrew Bible is not averse to repetition. Shortly before this passage, the first book of Kings describes the impressive columns and their capitals in even more detail:

And he made two capitals to put on top of the amudim, cast in bronze. The one capital was five cubits high, and the second capital was five cubits high. [He made] networks of wreathes of chainwork for the capitals that were on top of the amudim, seven for one amud and seven for the second. And he made the pomegranates, with two rows encircling the network, to cover the capital on top of the first amud, and the same for the second one. (1 Kings 7:16-18)

In other words, the capitals of the columns are globes completely covered with a bronze decorative network in a pattern of chains and pomegranates. Each capital has seven chains and two rows of pomegranates.

The next verse in 1 Kings describes shorter capitals with a different kind of decoration.

And the capitals that were on top of the amudim in the portico were in a lily pattern, four cubits. (Exodus 7:19)

A four-cubit capital in a lily pattern (the design craved into the capitals of smaller stone columns archaeologists have found in Jerusalem) is quite different from a five-cubit capital covered with a network of chains and pomegranates. And the portico would require a number of columns to support its roof, since it extends across the entire front of the main hall, 20 cubits (30 feet), and it is 10 cubits (15 feet) deep.⁵

Is this verse an aside about stone columns of the portico, which are quite different from the two bronze columns Chiram makes? Or does each bronze column have not one, but two capitals stacked one above the other—one in a lily pattern and one a globe covered with chains and pomegranates?

Lost in translation

The next verse should give us a clue, but it is unusually difficult to translate. Since the syntax of Biblical Hebrew is different from the syntax of English, all translations have to rearrange the word order to make the English intelligible. In 1 Kings 7:20, it is hard to know where to place the word for “also”. And although it is a standard move to change “the capital the second” into “the second capital”, what that phrase refers to is ambiguous.

It does not help that two of the Hebrew words in 1 Kings 7:20 that indicate location, milumat and le-eiver, have multiple valid translations.

Here is the verse with the words translated literally and not rearranged at all:

And capitals upon two the amudim also above milumat the belly that le-eiver the network and the pomegranates 200 rows around on the capital the second. (1 Kings 7:20)

milumat (מִלְּעֻמַת) = near, side by side with, alongside of, parallel with, corresponding to, close beside.

le-eiver (לְעֵבֶר) = to one side, across, over against.

Here is the standard 1999 Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation:⁶

So also the capitals upon the two columns [amudim] extended above and next to [milumat] the bulge that was beside [le-eiver] the network. There were 200 pomegranates in rows around the top of the second capital (i.e., each of the two capitals). (1 Kings 7:20)

This translation moves “also” to the beginning of the verse, making it imply “and another thing I want to say is”. It sounds as though the capitals are simultaneously above, and next to, and beside the network on the capitals, which is hard to imagine. And a JPS footnote claims that “the second capital” means “each of the two capitals”, as if the translators could not think of any other explanation for the final phrase.

Here is a 2013 translation by Robert Alter,⁷ who is generally more literal than the JPS and usually provides clear translations:

And the capitals on the two pillars [amudim] above as well, opposite [milumat] the curve that was over against [le-eiver] the net, and the pomegranates were in two hundred rows around on the second capital. (1 Kings 7:20)

Alter translates the Hebrew word gam (גַּם) as “as well” instead of “also”, but it still means little in that location in the sentence. And what does the word “above” mean when it comes before “as well”? The location of the capitals in relation to the bulge or curve (literally “belly”) is phrased differently, but still obscure. Where is this curve, and what is it connected to? Furthermore, Alter’s translation sounds as though the pomegranates were in two hundred rows on the second capital, but not the first. Yet the earlier description of the two pomegranate capitals had two rows of pomegranates on each one.

Here is a 2014 translation by Everett Fox,⁸ who is generally even more literal than Robert Alter:

And the capitals on the two columns were also above, close to [milumat] the bulging-section that was across from [le-eiver] the netting, and the pomegranates were two hundred in rows, all around the second capital. (I Kings 7:20)

Fox’s placement of the word “also” implies that the same two columns also have capitals above the previously-mentioned lily capitals. Presumably these upper capitals are the ones decorated with pomegranates. If so, the phrase “the second capital” is no longer puzzling; it refers not to the capital on the second column, but to the second capital on the same column. But “close to the bulging-section that was across from the netting” remains hard to visualize.

Taking some tips from Fox, here is my best effort at an English translation:

And the capitals on the two columns were also above, next to the rounded molding that was on one side of the network. And two hundred pomegranates were in rows all around the top of the second capital. (Exodus 7: 20)

And here is my explanation:

Each bronze column has two capitals. At the top of each column is a four-cubit capital with a lily design. On top of the lily capital is a rounded molding referred to as a belly. And on top of the molding is a second capital, a five-cubit capital in the form of a globe covered with a network of chains and pomegranates.

In the next verse, Chiram names the two bronze capitals. Immediately after that, the text says:

And up on top of the amudim was a lily design. And the work of the amudim was completed. (1 Kings 7:22)

This confirms that the lily capitals are part of the two gigantic bronze columns, not part of separate stone columns.

Why would anyone stack two capitals on top of a column? For the same reason the Ancient Greeks invented the Corinthian capital, which essential takes an Ionic capital and inserts two ranks of acanthus leaves in between the astragal molding at the bottom and the scrolled volutes at the top, and throws in a few acanthus flowers for good measure. Anything ornamental can be made even more ornamental.

In the case of the capitals on the bronze columns, Chiram began with the six-petalled lily that “served as the symbol of the Israelite monarchy during certain periods”⁹ Then he added the globes covered with bronze chains and hundreds of pomegranates, an unusual and showy design. A bronze artist that skilled could hardly resist showing off.

Chiram the bronzeworker and Solomon the king are well-matched. Every detail of the new temple is designed to look as impressive as possible. Solomon even has the stone walls of the main hall covered with cedar which is carved and then gilded.

His father, King David, fought for the kingdom of Israel and ruled from Jerusalem, but still used a tent as God’s sanctuary. King Solomon inherited his kingdom. He concentrated on building up commerce and wealth, acquiring even more wives and concubines than his father, and building an elaborate palace for himself and temple for God.

Why not erect two gigantic bronze columns in front of the temple, with ornamentation that goes over the top?

The Jebusites who occupied Jerusalem before King David conquered part of it probably had their own shrine. Genesis 14:17-20 mentions a Jebusite priest-king named Malki-tzedek who blesses Abraham.
Exodus 26:36.
1 Kings 6:33-35.
1 Kings 7:13.
1 Kings 6:2-3.
JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1999, p. 724.
Robert Alter, Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2013, p. 638
Everett Fox, The Early Prophets, Schocken Books, New York, 2014, p. 602.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Introductions to Tanakh: Prophets, on 1 Kings 7:19, reprinted in www.sefaria.org.

Vayakheil: Shadow Creator

The first time Moses spends 40 days and 40 nights on the summit of Mount Sinai, God tells him everything the Israelites should make to create a portable sanctuary for God and vestments for God’s new priests. Moses also learns who should supervise the craftsmanship.

And God spoke to Moses, saying: “See, I have called by name Betzaleil son of Uri son of Chur of the tribe of Yehudah. And I have filled him with the spirit of God in wisdom and in insight and in knowledge, and in every craft.” (Exodus/Shemot 31:1-3)

Betzaleil (בְּצַלְאֵל) = In the shadow of God. (Be-, בְּ = in, at, by, with + tzeil,צֵל = shadow, shade + eil, אֵל = God, a god.)

When Moses comes back down from the mountaintop in last week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, he has to deal with the Golden Calf. Then he returns to the summit for another 40 days. This time he learns more about God’s character and gets replacement stone tablets.¹ After he comes back down from this second stint, he finally gets to communicate God’s instructions for the sanctuary and the priests’ vestments to the people in this week’s Torah portion, Vayakheil (Exodus 35:1-38:20).

Moses calls for donations of the materials, and for artisans who are skilled in woodworking, metalworking, weaving, and jewelry-making. The donations pour in, and plenty of male and female artisans volunteer to do the work. Before they begin, Moses appoints the supervisor and master craftsman that God had named.

And Moses said to the Israelites: “See, God has called by name Betzaleil son of Uri son of Chur of the tribe of Yehudah, and has filled him with the spirit of God in wisdom, in insight, and in knowledge, and in every craft—to invent designs to make in gold and in silver and in copper; and in preparing stones for setting and in preparing wood for making; and in every craft of designing. And to give instructions …” (Exodus 35:30-34)

Both God and Moses begin talking about Betzaleil by using the imperative “See!” Everyone can see that Betzaleil is an inspired artist and designer, so it is easy to believe God has singled him out or “called him by name”.

And his name is appropriate for his mission. The name Betzaleil means “In the shadow of God”, but what does it mean to be, or to create, in God’s shadow?

Shadows in English and Hebrew

The Hebrew word tzeil (and its variant tzeilel, צֵלֶל) and the English word “shadow” have the same literal meaning: the dark area cast on a surface by an object between a light source (such as the sun) and that surface. Tzeil can also mean “shade”, which is another description of shadow in English

But when these words are used metaphorically, they have a different sense in English than in Biblical Hebrew. A shadow is usually attached to the spot where the person or thing that casts it touches the ground. (Shadows of birds and other airborne objects are the exception.) So in English, shadowing a person is following their every move.

In English, a shadow is also less noticeable or less significant than the person casting it. Being in someone’s shadow means going unnoticed. The shadow side of a person or institution is the unacknowledged, unconscious, or repressed side. People who have lost status, size, or ability are called shadows of their former selves.

In the Hebrew Bible, the word tzeil or tzeilel appears 51 times. It is used literally 17 times, as a metaphor for concealment and refuge 7 times (perhaps because it is harder to spot someone in dark shade), and as a metaphor for time stretching out like a shadow 3 times.

The word is also used in two ways that relate to Betzaleil’s name: 19 times as a metaphor for protection, and 5 times as a metaphor for transience.

Shade as protection

Those of us who live in more moderate climates might not think of shade or a shadow as protection, but in the deserts of the Ancient Near East shade meant protection from the burning sun and the risk of dehydration.

The first time tzeil appears is in Genesis, when Lot begs the men of Sodom not to sexually molest his two visitors:

“Hey, please, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them whatever is good in your eyes. Only don’t do a thing to these men, because they came into the tzeil of my roof!” (Genesis 19:8)

Here “the tzeil of my roof”, literally “the shade of my roof”, really means “under my protection”. Once Lot has offered the visitors the hospitality of his house, he feels honor-bound to protect them from the mob as long as they stay with him.

The word tzeil also indicates protection by a king, government, city, or nation. And it is used for protection by God. For example:

          God is your guardian;
          God is your tzeil at your right hand. (Psalm 121:5)

Since Betzaleil is “in the shadow of God”, God protects and shelters him. His inspiration for designing all the holy objects and his ability to instruct others come from the spirit of God, and therefore everything will come out right.

Shadow as transience

When the Hebrew Bible comments on the brevity of human life, it often compares humans with grass that sprouts up and then withers. But comparing humans with shadows is even more telling, since shadows outside vanish daily at nightfall, and shadows inside disappear into darkness the moment a lamp is snuffed out. Here is one example:

          A human, like a puff of air, comes to an end;
          His days, like a tzeil, pass by. (Psalm 144:4)

Since Betzaleil is human, his life is very short compared to God’s. By extension, Betzeleil’s creations, however beautiful and holy, are mere passing shadows compared to God’s creations.

Shadows and images

A literal shadow is like a silhouette; you see the outline of the original, but none of the details or colors. Similarly, the Hebrew word tzelem, which usually means image but can also mean “shadow”, has less reality than the original object. The word tzelem may well be related to the word tzeil. It appears in the first account of God’s creation of the universe:

And God said: Let us make humankind betzalmeinu, in our likeness, and they will rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the beasts, and over all the land, and over all creepers that creep on the land. (Genesis 1:26)

betzalmeinu (בְּצַלְמֵנוּ) = in our image. (Be-, בְּ = in, at, by, with + tzelem, צֶלֶם, = image, model, statute, shadow, something shadowy (without substance) + einu, ֵנוּ = our.)

One of the ways humans are shadows or images of God is that we have secondary creative powers. We cannot create a universe, but we can recombine existing elements to create new things within our universe. We cannot create life, but we can create beauty. When we humans are at our best, when we are inspired to create, like Betzaleil, we imitate or shadow the divine.

The entire work of art that served as the portable sanctuary, expanded later into the temple, inspired the children of Israel to keep returning to their God over the centuries. It kept their religion alive until it could metamorphose and survive without a temple.

We humans have more creative power than we think, for good and for ill. May we use it wisely.

See my post Vayakheil & Ki Tisa: Second Chance.

Ki Tisa & Mishpatim: Shattered

Moses and the Tablets
(strangely fused),
by James Tissot, ca. 1900

At the foot of Mount Sinai, the Israelites are worshiping the Golden Calf; at the summit, God is giving Moses a pair of stone tablets. It is a fateful day in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35).

Then [God] gave to Moses, once [God] finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the eidut, tablets of stone written by the finger of God. (Exodus 31:15)

eidut (עֵדֻת) = affidavit, pronouncement, testimony.

Why does God give Moses two engraved stone tablets to carry down from Mount Sinai?

To provide a written record of the laws?

In an earlier Torah portion, Mishpatim, God tells Moses:

“Come up to me on the mountain and be there, and I will give you tablets of stone and the instruction and the command that I have written to instruct them.” (Exodus 24:12)

What instruction and command? The book of Exodus never says what God wrote on the tablets. But in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses recites the “Ten Commandments”, then says:

These words God spoke to your whole assembly at the mountain, from the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the fog, in a great voice; and did not add more. And [God] wrote them on two tablets of stone, and gave them to me. (Deuteronomy 5:19)

However, these tablets are not the only written record of the Ten Commandments. They first appear in the book of Exodus, during God’s revelation at Mount Sinai.¹ After the fireworks of the revelation are over, God adds 24 verses of rules for the people, from Exodus 20:19 in the Torah portion Yitro through Exodus 23:33 in the portion Mishpatim.

And Moses came and reported to the people all the words of God and all the laws, and all the people answered with one voice, and they said: “All the things that God has spoken, we will do!” And Moses wrote down all the words of God. (Exodus 24:3-4)

The next morning Moses sets up an altar, makes animal sacrifices, and splashes some of the blood on the altar.

Then he took the record of the covenant and he read it into the ears of the people, and they said: “All that God has spoken we will do and we will pay attention!” Then Moses took the blood and splashed it on the people, and said: “Hey! [This is] the blood of the covenant that God cut with you concerning all these words!” (Exodus 24:7-8)

So Moses writes a scroll containing the Ten Commandments and the many additional laws God communicated to him, and this scroll counts as a record of the covenant. The two stone tablets are not necessary for that purpose.

To test Moses?

The Torah portion Mishpatim ends with Moses climbing to the top of Mount Sinai alone. Moses spends forty days and forty nights in the cloud at the summit of Mount Sinai, listening to more instructions from God. This time the instructions are for making a portable tent-sanctuary, making vestments for priests, and ordaining the new priests.

Then God tells Moses that the people waiting at the foot of the mountain have made an idol.

Adoration of the Golden Calf, from Hortus deliciarum
of Herrad of Landsberg, 12th cent.

And God spoke to Moses: “Go down! Because your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have ruined [everything]! They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them. They made themselves a cast image of a calf, and they prostrated themselves to it and they made slaughter sacrifices to it, and they said ‘This is your god, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt’!” (Exodus 32:8)

After delivering the awful news, God tests Moses by making him an offer he can refuse:

“And now leave me alone, and my anger will flare up against them and I will consume them; and I will make you into a great nation.” (Exodus 32:10)

I think the God is implying: “If you leave me alone, then my anger will flare up against them and I will consume them.” It is a backhanded invitation to speak up.

Why does God add that if God “consumes” the Israelites, then Moses’ descendants will become a great nation instead? I suspect it is a temptation that God hopes Moses will reject. Moses passes the test; he argues that it would be a bad idea to destroy the Israelites, and God immediately backs off.

However, I think this is only the first part of God’s test of Moses. The second part is more subtle. By giving Moses the two stone tablets, God is handing over the responsibility for the covenant—the one that the people have just violated by making a golden idol.² Since Moses wants the Israelites to become the people God will “make into a great nation”, let him address their flagrant violation of God’s law. God will stand by and watch what Moses does with the stone tablets.

Theoretically, Moses could leave the tablets at the top of Mount Sinai, go down and straighten out the Israelites, then fetch the tablets and present them to the people as a reward and confirmation that they are now on the right track. He rejects this option, probably because he knows he needs a strong visual aid to make the people pay attention to him.

He also needs to reinforce the idea that rewards and punishments come from God. Five times during the journey from Egypt to Mount Sinai, the Israelites blamed Moses for bringing them into the desert, and expected him, not God, to provide them with food and water.³ Each time Moses pointed out that God was the one in charge.

Moses Breaking the Tablets,
by Ephraim Moshe Lilien, 1808

So Moses carries God’s two stone tablets down the mountain.

And it happened as he came close to the camp, and he saw the calf and circle-dancing; then Moses’ anger flared up; and he threw the tablets down from his hand, and he shattered them under the mountain. (Exodus 32:19)

Moses already knows about the Golden Calf. What enrages him now is the sight of the people drinking, singing, and dancing—enjoying themselves, now that they finally have a god they can understand, a god that inhabits a gold statue.

This kind of idol was standard in Egypt. Moses has been trying to get his people to accept a god who manifests only as cloud and fire. He would be angry, but not surprised, that the Israelites feel happy and relieved now that they have an idol. (He does not know that his own brother, Aaron, confirmed that the God who brought them out of Egypt inhabits the Golden Calf.)⁴

I doubt Moses is so completely overcome by his anger that he hurls down the tablets without thinking. After all, he had enough presence of mind to argue with God when he was surprised and frightened by his first overwhelming encounter at the burning bush. Surely he has enough presence of mind now, in a situation he is partially prepared for, to make a deliberate decision to smash the stones.

He may even worry that they will bounce instead of shatter, and fail to achieve the effects he desires: demonstrating that the people broke their covenant with God, inducing guilt, and setting an example regarding idols.

Demonstrating that they broke the covenant

None of the literate Israelites have time to read what is carved on the stones before Moses smashes them. But Moses waits until he is close enough so everyone can see that he is holding two thin, smooth stone tablets with writing carved into them. The Israelites would conclude that God must have given him the tablets at the top of the mountain. In the Ancient Near East, as in the modern world, both parties to a covenant get a written copy. So they would also assume, correctly, that the tablets are related to the covenant they made with God 40 days before.

In other words, the people would know that the stones were “two tablets of the eidut”, of God’s affidavit, pronouncement, or testimony. According to 12^th-century commentator Ibn Ezra,

“He therefore broke the tablets which were in his hands and served, as it were, as a document of witness. Moses thus tore up the contract. As Scripture states, he did this in the sight of all of Israel.”⁵

Inducing guilt

The second effect Moses’ demonstration achieves is to make the Israelites realize they disobeyed God and did the wrong thing. According to 15^th-century commentator Abravanel,

“Had Israel not seen the Tablets intact, the awesome work of the Lord, they would not have been moved by the fragments, since the soul is more impressed by what it sees, than by what it hears. He therefore brought them down from the mountain to show them to the people, and then break them before their very eyes.”⁶

The Israelites, like most humans, have a stronger and more visceral response to what they see than to any words they hear. The first time in Exodus that the people trust God (at least temporarily) is when they see the Egyptian charioteers drown in the Reed Sea.⁷ That is also the first time they rejoice, singing and dancing. The next time they rejoice, again with dancing, is in front of the Golden Calf.

But when they see the stone tablets carved with some words from God, and then see Moses shatter them, they know in their guts that they were wrong.

Setting an example regarding idols

The third effect Moses achieves by smashing the stone tablets is to set an example regarding idols. An idol, in the Hebrew Bible, is a physical object that is treated like a god. The Golden Calf is an idol. But the two stone tablets also have the potential to become an idol. What if the Israelites are so desperate for a concrete god that they adopt the tablets in place of the calf? What if they prostrate themselves before the tablets, make sacrifices to the tablets, and carouse in front of the tablets with the same unchecked ecstasy?

21^st-century commentator Zornberg concluded:

“Moses, therefore, smashes the tablets, not in pique, but in a tragic realization that a people so hungry for absolute possession may make a fetish of the tablets as well.”⁸ When Moses hurls down the stone tablets, they do not bounce, like magical objects. They break, like slate tiles. The people see that the tablets are only stones. God does not inhabit them.

Change is hard. Human beings enjoy a little variety, but a change in employment or a change in address is hard to get used to even when it is an improvement. The Israelites were underdogs doing forced labor in Egypt. Now they have been changed into an independent people traveling toward a new home in Canaan. These changes alone require new habits of thought. But these people must also adopt a new religion.

The Israelites in Egypt still acknowledged the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But now their God is demanding an active—and exclusive—form of religion. Instead of obeying their Egyptian overseers, they must obey an invisible God who manifests sometimes as cloud and fire, but speaks only to Moses. They must follow this God’s rules and do whatever God says. They promise twice that they will do it. But the new covenant is hard to obey.

I have managed big changes in my own life through a combination of stubborn determination to do the right thing and harnessing as much rational thought as I can. But I have advantages the Israelites did not have. I suffered only minor childhood trauma, I have lived safely in the American middle class, and I have an analytical personality and brain.

I want to feel sympathy, not anger, toward people whose choices seem blatantly wrong to me. But what if someday there is a moment when I could jolt people out of their habits of thought by smashing a potential metaphorical idol? If it ever happens, I hope I will recognize it.

See my posts Yitro & Va-etchanan: Whose Words?, Part 1 and Part 2.
The prohibition against making any idols or images of a god appears not only in the “Ten Commandments”, but also in Exodus 20:20, at the beginning of God’s long list of rules following the revelation, the list Moses has written down and read out loud to the people twice.
Exodus 14:11-12, 15:22-24, 16:2-3, 16:6-8, 17:2-4.
Exodus 32:4-5.
Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Don Isaac ben Judah Abravanel, translated by Aryeh Newman, in Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot, Part II, Maor Wallach Press, 1996, p. 610.
Exodus 14:30-31, 15:19-21.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, Doubleday, New York, 2001, p. 424.

Tetzaveh & Ki Tisa: Washing

Two kinds of rituals based on washing with water appear in God’s instructions to Moses about the new sanctuary and priesthood for the Israelites. One is immersion in water for ritual purification; the other is washing hands and feet as either an act of reverence or a form of sanctification.

Immersion in Tetzaveh

In this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh (Exodus 27:20-30:10), God tells Moses to purify the new priests by washing their whole bodies in water.

The instructions for consecrating Aaron and his sons as the first priests of the Israelites begin with some preparations before the ceremony begins. Moses must bring a bull, two rams, and a basket with three kinds of unleavened bread to the area in front of the new Tent of Meeting. Then, God says:

“And you will bring forward Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, verachatzta them with water.” (Exodus 29:4)

verachatzta (וְרָחַצתָּ) = and you will wash. (Also a conjugation of the verb rachatz.)

Washing Aaron and his sons in water is the first step to prepare them for consecration as priests. The next step is to dress them in their vestments, the uniforms of priesthood that the Israelites are going to make out of precious materials.

“Then you will take the clothing, and you will dress Aaron in the tunic …” (Exodus 29:5)

The text is too polite to say so, but Aaron and his four sons must undress before Moses can wash and dress them. The implication is that their entire bodies will be washed, not just their hands and feet.

1st century mikveh under Wohl building,
Jerusalem (photo by M.C.)

As early as the 2^nd century C.E.,¹ the ritual washing in this week’s Torah portion was identified with immersion in a mikveh, a pool of water fed by gravity from “living water”, i.e. a spring or a cistern filled with rain. Archaeologists have found these pools throughout Judea dating to the period the second temple stood in Jerusalem, 515 B.C.E.-70 C.E.. Many Jews today still use a mikveh for certain kinds of ritual purification.

Why does immersion in living water get rid of ritual impurity? 19^th-century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch noted that before God created the earth, there was water.

… and darkness was over the face of the depths, and a wind of God hovered over the face of the water. (Genesis 1:2)

He added that according to the Babylonian Talmud tractate Kelim, vessels made from parts of aquatic creatures cannot become ritually impure, and combining these two concepts, he concluded:

“Thus, immersion in water symbolizes complete departure from the human realm, the realm subject to tumah, and restoration to the original condition. Immersion removes man from his past connections and opens up for his future a new life of taharah. Through this immersion, Moses—as the nation’s highest representative—elevates Aharon and his sons, who are to be consecrated as priests, and removes them from their past connections.”²

Only after Aaron and his sons have been ritually purified by water can Moses proceed with their consecration, which includes anointing Aaron as the high priest by pouring olive oil over his head,³ and dedicating him and his sons to their new positions by daubing ram’s blood on their ears, thumbs, and toes.⁴

Washing hands and feet in Ki Tisa

The instructions for the new sanctuary and its priests continue in next week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35)—until God gives Moses the pair of stone tablets, which Moses smashes when he comes down from Mount Sinai and sees the people worshiping a golden calf.

Model of temple
wash-basin by
Temple Institute

And God spoke to Moses, saying: “You will make a wash-basin of bronze lerachtzah, and its stand of bronze. And you will place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and you will put water there. Verachtzu, Aaron and his sons, their hands and their feet in it. When they are coming into the Tent of Meeting, yirchatzu with water, and they will not die. Or when they come up to the altar to attend to turning a fire-offering to God into smoke, yirchatzu their hands and their feet, and they will not die.” (Exodus 30:17-21)

lerachtzah (לְרָחְצָה) = for washing. (Also from the verb rachatz.)

verachtzu (וְרָחֲצוּ) = and they will wash. (Another conjugation of the verb rachatz.)

yirchatzu (יִרְחֲצוּ) = they must wash. (Ditto.)

Why do the priests only need to wash their hands and feet before entering the sanctuary tent or serving at the altar? And why would they die if they did not perform these ablutions?

Washing in water from the basin⁵ is not entirely symbolic. As Ramban pointed out in the 13^th century,

“This washing was out of reverence for Him Who is on high, for whoever approaches the King’s table to serve, or to touch the portion of the king’s food, and of the wine which he drinks, washes his hands, because “hands are busy” [touching unclean things automatically]. In addition He prescribed here the washing of feet because the priests performed the Service barefooted, and there are some people who have impurities and dirt on their feet.”⁶

But Ramban also noted that washing one’s hands before serving a king expresses deep respect or reverence:

“It is on the basis of the idea of this commandment that our Rabbis have instituted the washing of hands before prayer, in order that one should direct one’s thoughts to this matter.”⁶

Later Jewish commentators added that while immersion in water results in ritual purification (taharah), washing hands and feet before serving God is an act of sanctification—like dressing in the vestments for priests, or donning a tallit and tefillin before praying for Jews in the last two millennia.

“Purification involves the removal of a negative, impure element … whereas sanctification implies a spiritual elevation of an unworthy person or thing to the level required for the holy service of God.” (Elie Munk)⁷

So God’s instructions to Moses for the establishment of a religion with a sanctuary, priests, and procedures for worship include two kinds of washing in water: ritual purification through immersion before a new priest is consecrated, and sanctifying hands and feet by rinsing them before serving God.

I have not been in a mikveh for years. I used to have Shabbat dinner with observant Jewish friends, and say the whole series of blessings before eating, each one accompanied by an action. In between blessing and sipping the wine, and blessing and tasting the bread, was a ritual hand-washing: pouring water three times over each hand, then raising both hands and reciting the blessing that can be literally translated as: “Blessed are you, God, our God, Ruler of the Universe, who had sanctified us with commandments and commanded us about elevating hands.” Now I only do that on Passover.

The old reasons for water rituals no longer seem compelling to me. Yet when I have been exposed to a person shouting ugly things, I wish I could purify myself. And when I am about to teach or speak in public, I wish I could sanctify myself so my speech will be worthy.

I need new ways of performing ritual washing.

Targum Jonathan, a 2^nd-century translation of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic, says Moses will wash them, and adds “in four measures of living water”.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 680.
Exodus 29:7.
Exodus 29:19.
In the second temple, the wash-basin had spigots. Since the bible does not mention a jug for dipping water out of the basin, and the basin was elevated by a stand, the basin in Exodus probably has spigots as well.
Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman) on Exodus 30:19, The William Davidson Edition translation, in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah: Bereishis, Mesorah Publications, Rahway, N.J., 1994, p. 431.

Haftarat Terumah—1 Kings: From Volunteers to Conscripts

And God spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to the Israelites, and they will take voluntary contributions for me. From everyone whose heart makes him willing, you may take my voluntary contributions.” (Exodus 25:1-2)

Hebrew Women Offering their Jewels,
by Bernardino Luini, 16th century

After that opening, this week’s Torah portion, Terumah (Exodus 25:1-27:19), lists the contributions that people can give: gold, silver, and bronze; blue, purple, and scarlet thread made of wool, linen, and goat’s hair; two kinds of tanned leather; acacia wood; olive oil; incense spices; and precious stones.

Then the text says what the materials are for:

“Let them make a holy place for me, and I will dwell among them.” (Exodus 25:8)

Later in Exodus, Moses invites anyone whose heart is moved to bring materials and donate labor to build a portable tent sanctuary for God.

And everyone whose mind was uplifted and everyone whose spirit made him willing brought voluntary gifts for God, for the work of the Tent of Meeting … (Exodus 35:21)

Then all the skilled artisans in the community volunteer to weave and embroider cloth, tan leather, shape wood, forge tools, and assist the master craftsmen Betzaleil and Oholiav in making the holiest objects. When the sanctuary is complete, God moves in.¹

The haftarah (accompanying reading from the Prophets) for this week’s Torah portion is 1 Kings 5:26-6:13, which tells how King Solomon acquires wood and stone to build the first permanent temple for God in Jerusalem. This time the labor is done by conscripts instead of volunteers, but God promises to move in anyway.

The king imposes compulsory labor

And God had given Solomon chokhmah, as [God] had spoken. And there was peace between Chiram and Solomon, and the two of them cut a covenant. (1 Kings 5:26)

chokhmah (חָכְמָה) = technical skill; good sense; wisdom from accumulated knowledge.

The best translation of chokhmah here is probably “good sense”. Solomon exhibits good sense when he maintains the alliance of his father, King David, with one of his richest neighbors, King Chiram. Chiram was a 10^th-century ruler of the city-state of Tyre, on the coast of a forested region called Lebanon (now a nation by the same name). During his long reign, Chiram turned Tyre into the premier Phoenician city by building a vast trade network.

The first trade agreement between Chiram and Solomon calls for Chiram to provide Solomon with all the cedar and cypress logs he can use, and Solomon to provide Chiram with annual shipments of wheat and olive oil. An exchange of labor is also involved.

And King Solomon raised a mas from all Israel. And the mas was 30,000 men. And he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 per month; by turns [each man was] a month in Lebanon and two months at his own house. (1 Kings 5:27-28)

mas (מַס) = compulsory labor, forced labor.

Kings in the Ancient Near East often conscripted their citizens to serve in the military, like governments today. But it was also common for kings to conscript people for mas, a less prestigious form of service.

Solomon exhibits chokhmah,good sense, again in this haftarah by limiting his mas of Israelite laborers in Lebanon to every third month. This arrangement leaves the men free to return home and work on their own families’ farms and businesses the other two months, making the mas a tolerable burden.

The Israelite conscripts working in Lebanon every third month are felling cedar and cypress trees and hauling the trunks to the coastline under the supervision of King Chiram’s men. The men of Tyre then lash the logs into rafts and sail them to a place where King Solomon’s men will pick them up and transport them to Jerusalem.² In Jerusalem, the wood is used in the construction of God’s temple, and later in King Solomon’s palace and associated buildings.

Solomon’s building projects also require a lot of stone, but he can get good stone from the hills of Israel.

Solomon also had 70,000 porters and 80,000 quarriers in the hills … And the king gave the order, and they moved great stones, expensive stones, for the foundation of [God’s] house: hewn stones. (1 Kings 5:29)

The haftarah does not say whether the quarriers and porters working in the hills are paid employees, or conscripted for mas. A king in that civilization was more likely to use conscripts, who would be fed, but would not be free to quit their mas until their terms of service were completed.

After the basic structure of the temple has been erected, but before there are any interior walls or furnishings, God speaks to King Solomon.

Then the word of God happened to Solomon, saying: “This house that you are building—if you follow my decrees and you act [according to] my laws, and you guard all my commands, following them—then I will fulfill with you my word that I spoke to David, your father. And I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will never forsake my people Israel.” (1 Kings 6:11-13)

Israelites as volunteers versus subjects

In this week’s portion from Exodus, God tells Moses: “Let them make a holy place for me, and I will dwell among them.” The people deserve God’s protective presence because they willingly donate their time, skills, and valuables to make a place for God. The relationship is between God and all the Israelites. But in this week’s haftarah from 1 Kings, God tells Solomon: “If you follow my decrees and you act [according to] my laws, and you guard all my commands …” God uses the singular form of “you” throughout the clause beginning with “if”; the contractual relationship is between God and the king. In return, God promises to support Solomon as king, and also to “dwell among the Israelites”. In other words, God promises to be present among the Israelites for the sake of their king’s obedience to God. Perhaps the assumption is that if the king of Israel obeys God’s rules, he will also enforce them among his people.

Who is conscripted?

Later during King Solomon’s reign, well after this week’s haftarah, he adopts the more traditional policy of favoring his own ethnic group over the people the Israelites conquered:

All the people who were not from the Israelites—those who were left from the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizites, and Chivites, and the Jebusites, their children … whom the Israelites were not able to dedicate to destruction, Solomon laid on them a mas of slavery until this day. But Solomon made no Israelite a slave. Instead they became men of war, and his servants, and his commanders, and his captains, and the officers of his chariots and his horsemen. (1 Kings 9:20-22)

Mas hauling stones,
Palace of Sennerachib, Nineveh

According to earlier books in the bible, the Canaanite peoples that were not wiped out were subject to a permanent mas starting with the conquest of Joshua.³ Kings in the Ancient Near East normally imposed mas on defeated enemies, relocating them to wherever brute labor was needed; for example, the Neo-Assyrian King Sennerachib did this when he conquered the northern kingdom of Israel.⁴

The policy of giving conquered enemies either mas or death is laid out in the book of Deuteronomy:

And if [the town] answers you with peace and opens to you, then all the people you find in it will be yours for a mas, and to serve you. (Deuteronomy 20:11)

Ironically, in the book of Exodus God helps the Israelites to escape from Egypt and conquer Canaan because they are suffering so much from the mas two pharaohs in a row imposed on them.⁵

When mas is too much

During the first twenty years of his reign, Solomon completes the temple for God, and God fills it with a cloud of glory to prove that God is in residence.⁶ But during the second half of his forty-year reign, Solomon exhibits less chokhmah. He takes 700 foreign wives, far more than needed to be strategically connected by marriage with every kingdom in the Ancient Near East, and builds shrines to some of his wives’ gods.⁷

Apparently he also institutes harsher mas on the ethnic Israelites—at least on the ten tribes that live more than a day’s journey north of Jerusalem.

Late in his reign, King Solomon appoints a capable man named Yeravam (Jereboam in English) to be in charge of the conscripts for mas from the tribes of Efrayim and Menashe in the north. Then a prophet predicts that someday Yerevam will be the king of the ten northern tribes.⁸ Shortly after that Yeravam flees to Egypt, apparently because King Solomon finds out and orders his execution.⁹

After Solomon dies, his son Rechavam (Rehoboam in English) goes to Shekhem, a city north of Jerusalem, to be anointed king. Yerevam returns from Egypt in time for the ceremony. He and his Israelite supporters tell Solomon’s son:

“Your father made our yoke hard. And you, now, lighten the hard labor of your father and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.” (1 Kings 12:3-4)

Rechavam tells them to come back in three days for his answer. When they do, he says:

“My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke! My father flogged you with whips, and I will flog you will scorpions!” (1 Kings 12:14)

The northern Israelites then renounce any fealty to Solomon’s son.

And King Rechavam sent Adoram, who was over the mas. But all the Israelites pelted him with stones and he died. (1 Kings 12:18)

Rechavam flees back to Jerusalem, where he rules only the southern Kingdom of Judah: the arid territory belonging to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. But Yeravam becomes the first king of the northern Kingdom of Israel, reigning over the more fertile land belonging to the other ten tribes of Israelites—just as God’s prophet had predicted.

When I was a teenager, most of the boys in my high school lived in the shadow of the valley of death. Though they did not admit it to girls, they were afraid of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to die.

Many of their fathers were veterans of World War II, and considered military service something to be proud of—at least during the early part of the roughly ten years when the United States was fighting on the side of South Vietnam. But a large number of younger Americans were morally opposed to sending Americans to kill people in Vietnam.

In the culture of the Hebrew Bible, and in many other times and places, being in the military was an honorable condition. Men returning from war were treated as heroes because they had risked their lives for their cause or their country—whether they were volunteers or conscripts.

But the teenage boys I knew in Massachusetts saw conscription for the war as an ignoble mas, forced labor in the jungle leading to death for no good reason. They would have preferred carrying heavy stones and logs to a construction site for a temple or palace.

The more body bags Americans saw on television, the less popular the war became.

When the pharaoh subjected Israelite men to mas for too many years in the book of Exodus, they cried out to God and God rescued them. When King Rechavam threatened the northern Israelites with a more severe mas in the first book of Kings, they renounced their allegiance and chose a king of them own. When a burden is too severe, it cannot be imposed forever.

Exodus 40:33-38.
1 Kings 5:22.
Joshua 16:10, 17:13; Judges 1:28-1:35.
2 Kings 17:6, 17:23-24, and 18:11 report Neo-Assyrian King Sargon II capturing the capital of the Kingdom of Israel and relocating tens of thousands of Israelites in the eastern part of its empire. Foreigners are depicted doing heavy labor for Neo-Assyrian kings on relief sculptures.
Exodus 1:11-14, 3:7-10.
1 Kings 8:10-11.
1 Kings 11:1-10.
1 Kings 11:26-39.
1 Kings 11:40.

Yitro & Va-etchanan: Whose Words?—Part 2

How did the Ten Commandments get into the two accounts of the revelation at Mount Sinai?

Eruption of Vesuvius,
by Pierre-Jacques Volaire, 1774,
detail

In last week’s Torah portion, Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:23), God manifests on the mountain as fire, smoke, thunderclaps, and horn blasts. The Israelites are terrified.

The story of this epiphany is interrupted by what we call the “Ten Commandments” or Decalogue. When the narrative resumes, God’s manifestation is intensifying, and the people experience synesthesia, SEEING the sounds of thunder and horns.

And they said to Moses: “You speak to us, and we will listen. But may God not speak to us, or else we will die!” (Exodus/Shemot 20:16)

In other words, the people have not heard God delivering the words of the Decalogue. They are afraid of any communication from God, especially in words. So they beg Moses to speak for God. (See my post Yitro & Va-etchanan: Whose Words?—Part 1.)

And the people stood at a distance, and Moses approached the dark cloud where God was. And God said to Moses: “Thus you will say to the Israelites …” (Exodus 20:18-19)

Then God tells Moses a long series of civil and religious laws on a variety of specific topics, a law code that runs from Exodus 20:19 through 23:33.

So why is the story interrupted by the Decalogue?

A later insertion

According to modern source criticism, the Decalogue was written in a different style and vocabulary than the text before and after it, and therefore that section was inserted later by a redactor.

The story does read smoothly if the Decalogue section, Exodus 20:1-14, is simply deleted. Then we have:

And God said to [Moses]: “Go down! Then you may come up, you and Aaron with you; but the priests and the people may not break through to come up to God, lest [God] burst out against them.” Then Moses went down to the people, and he spoke to them. (Exodus 19:24-25)

Then all the people were SEEING the kolot and the flames and the kol of the horn and the mountain smoking. When the people saw, they were shaken and they stood at a distance. And they said to Moses: “You speak to us, and we will listen. But may God not speak to us, or else we will die!” (Exodus 20:15-16)

kolot ( קֺלֺת or קוֹלוֹת) = thunderclaps.

kol (קֺל or קוֹל) = a noise, sound, voice.

Moses goes back up the mountain, where God gives him the law code in Exodus 20:20-23:33.

If a redactor inserted the Decalogue into Exodus, where did that text come from?

Ambiguity in Deuteronomy

The only other place in the Torah where the Decalogue appear is in Deuteronomy, the book in which Moses tells the next generation of Israelites what he remembers of the exodus from Egypt. Moses introduces the Decalogue in the Torah portion Va-ethchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) by saying:

Face to face God spoke with you on the mountain, from the midst of the fire—I myself stood between God and you at that time to tell you the words of God, since you were afraid in the face of the fire, and you did not go up the mountain—saying: (Deuteronomy/Devarim 5:4-5)

The Decalogue follows. In this account, God speaks and Moses either repeats God’s words, or translates God’s communication into words.

The Decalogue in Deuteronomy is similar, though not identical, to the version in the book of Exodus; the biggest difference is the rationale for the commandment about Shabbat.¹ After reciting the commandments, Moses says:

Moses and the Tablets,
by Ephraim Moshe Lilien, 1908

These words God spoke to the whole assembly on the mountain, from the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the dark cloud, a great kol, and did not add more. And [God] wrote them on two stone tablets, and gave them to me. (Deuteronomy 5:19-20)

This sounds as if Moses remembers God speaking all the words of the Decalogue to the Israelites, and identifies them as the text on the stone tablets. (Exodus describes Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with two stone tablets that God had inscribed, but that book never says what God wrote.² After Moses smashes the two tablets at the sight of people celebrating the Golden Calf, God tells Moses to prepare a second pair of tablets. The commandments Moses writes down on these stones include two of the “Ten Commandments” (on idols and Chabbat), but also command observing three annual holidays, redeeming or sacrificing firstborn livestock, and not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk.³)

No matter what was written later on the stone tablets, did the Israelites really hear God speaking the whole Decalogue? After reporting that God inscribed those words on the tablets, Moses says:

And it happened that you heard the kol from the midst of the darkness, and the mountain was blazing with fire, and you came up to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders. And you said: “Hey! God, our God, has shown us his impressiveness and greatness, and his kol we heard from the midst of the fire! This day we have seen that God spoke and humans lived. And now, why should we die because this great fire consumes us? If we ourselves listen to his lips, the kol of God, our God, any more, then we will die! … You go closer and listen to everything that God, our God, says, and then you speak to us everything that God, our God, spoke to you, and we will listen and do it.” (Deuteronomy 5:21-24)

Moses says that God agreed, and then moves on to his next topic. In Moses’ account in Deuteronomy, the Israelites heard God’s kol, i.e. the sound or voice of God. But, as in Exodus, they begged Moses to tell them what God said, so they could avoid hearing God speak in words.

The mysterious source of the Decalogue

In the portion Yitro in Exodus, the transition to the Decalogue is ambiguous, so we do not know whether Moses pronounced them to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. In the portion Va-etchanan in Deuteronomy, the Israelites do not hear God’s words, but Moses does pass on the Decalogue at the mountain.

However, twenty-first century commentator Cynthia Edenburg argued that a redactor spliced the Decalogue into Deuteronomy as well as Exodus.

“In neither … does YHWH indicate that part of the event will be the revelation of laws to the people of Israel. And, indeed, when the day arrives, the text focuses its description on the impressive visual and auditory elements of the theophany.”⁴

In the first two or three commandments (including the prohibitions against “having” other gods or idols) in both Exodus and Deuteronomy, God speaks in the first person. Then starting with the third commandment (on swearing falsely by God’s name), God is referred to in the third person. The Talmud explained the switch by saying that the Israelites heard only the first two commandments before they begged Moses to be the go-between.⁵

But Edenberg pointed out that neither text indicates an interruption in the transmission of the Decalogue. The style of the writing in the first few commandments matches much of the book of Deuteronomy, so the redactor of Exodus could have borrowed them from Deuteronomy. But then where did the rest of the commandments come from?

Edenberg, citing the work of Erhard Gerstenberger,⁶ proposed:

“The basic form of the Decalogue as we now know it came into being as scribes attempted to reinterpret the essence of the Sinai/Horeb revelations in Exodus and Deuteronomy. They accomplished this by adding the YHWH commands now found at the beginning of the Decalogue to a list of moral instructions of universal validity, transforming it into a theological statement of principles for one group—Israel. The rules were now presented as a foundational agreement between Israel and their national god, established in the wilderness period.”⁴

Jews who insist that God dictated every word of the books of Genesis through Deuteronomy—along with everyone who insists that the entire bible is the word of God—have to either overlook the bad transitions and contradictory passages, or resort to forced explanations. I cannot help but believe that the bible has many authors. When possible, I prefer to trust the redactor of a biblical book, and read it as a complete work. But sometimes the seams show too much.

We can notice where the Decalogue is stitched into Exodus and Deuteronomy. We can agree that the first commandments, about our relationship to God, come from a different source than the remaining commandments, about our relationship with other humans.

But none of this reduces the importance of the commandments. Other lists of laws in the Torah are more specific, narrower in scope. Many were suited to ancient Israelite society, but not to our lives today. The Decalogue, on the other hand, presents basic, general rules that still deserve our attention.

Exodus says “Because in six days God made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and [God] rested on the seventh day; therefore God blessed the day of Shabbat and made it holy” while Deuteronomy says “so that your male slave and your female slave may rest as you do; and remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and God, your God, brought you out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm; therefore God, your God, has commanded you to do the day of the Shabbat”. (Additionally, the commandment in Exodus begins “Remember the day of the Shabbat” while in Deuteronomy it begins “Observe the day of the Shabbat”.)
They are called “two tablets of the eidut (pact, written witness)” in Exodus 31:18 and 32:15. Exodus 34:28 reports that “he” (either God or Moses) wrote on the second pair of tablets “the words of the covenant, the ten words”. The Torah does not say what the “ten words” are. Later commentators declared they were the commandments in the portion Yitro, and since then people have labored to turn the information in the Decalogue into exactly ten commandments.
Exodus 34:17-28.
Dr. Cynthia Edenberg, “The Origins of the Decalogue”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-origins-of-the-decalogue.
Talmud Bavli, Makkot 23b-24a.
Erhard S. Gerstenberger, “Covenant and Commandment,” Journal of Biblical Literature 84 (1965): 38–51.

Yitro & Va-etchanan: Whose Words?—Part 1

Moses often hears God talking to him. It begins when God speaks to him out of the burning bush on Mount Sinai:

“Moses! Moses! … Do not come closer! Remove your sandals from upon your feet, because the place where you are standing, it is holy ground.” (Exodus/Shemot 3:4-5)

The Death of Moses, Providence
Lithograph Co. 1907
(Still listening to God)

And it ends with God’s final words before Moses dies on Mount Nevo overlooking Canaan:

“This is the land that I vowed to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying: ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over there.” (Deuteronomy 34:4)

For roughly 41 years in between,¹ the private conversations between God and Moses continue, and God also uses Moses as a middleman. Over and over again, God speaks to Moses and gives him new information or instructions, and then Moses passes God’s words on to the Israelites.

Moses’ brother, Aaron, only hears God speak 18 times.² God speaks only once to their sister, Miriam, and once to Aaron’s son Elazar.³

The other Israelites hear God once, in this week’s Torah portion, Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:23). Following God’s instructions (and God’s pillar of cloud and fire),⁴ Moses leads the refugees from Egypt to Mount Sinai before heading north toward Canaan. After they reach the mountain, God tells Moses:

“Here I am, coming to you in a thick canopy of cloud, so that the people will hear my words along with you, and also [so that] they will trust in you forever.” (Exodus 19:9)

Nevertheless, the Israelites may not hear God speaking in words, the way God speaks to Moses and his brother, sister, and nephew.

The voice of God: thunderclaps and horn blasts

And it was morning on the third day, and there were kolot and lightning flashes, and a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very strong kol of a shofar; and all the people who were in the camp trembled. (Exodus 19:16)

kolot ( קֺלֺתor קוֹלוֹת) = thunderclaps. (Singular kol (קֺל or קוֹל) = a noise, sound, voice.)

shofar (שֺׁפָר) = a loud wind instrument made from the horn of a ram or goat.

Moses leads the people out of the camp and stations them at the foot of the small mountain, which resembles an erupting volcano.

Vesuvius in Eruption,
by Jacob More, 1780 (detail)

And Mount Sinai was smoking, all of it, from the presence of God that had come down upon it in fire. Its smoke rose like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled very much. And the kol of the shofar went on and was very strong. Moses would speak, and God would answer him with a kol. And God came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, and God called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. (Exodus 19:18-20)

So far, the people at the foot of the mountain have heard no words, only sounds like thunder and horns. When Moses climbs to the top of the mountain, he and God have a brief conversation about whether the people below are standing far enough away for safety.

An ambiguous transition

vayomer (וַיֺּמֶר) = and he said. (Less frequently, when there is no object of the verb, vayomer = and he spoke.)

Should vayomer be translated here as “and he spoke”, implying that Moses passed on God’s instructions in the previous verse about who was allowed to climb the mountain? Or should it be translated as “and he said”, implying that the next verse is what Moses said? The answer determines whether the punctuation after “to them” should be a period or a colon.

The next verse is:

Vaydabeir, God, all these words, saying: (Exodus 20:1)

vaydabeir (וַיְדַבֵּר) = and he spoke.

“All these words” turn out to be the basic rules known as the “Ten Commandments” or Decalogue.

So what is the correct punctuation at the end of “Then Moses went down to the people, vayomer to them”—a period or a colon?

The only punctuation in Biblical Hebrew is a sof passuk (which looks like a colon) at the end of a verse. These punctuation marks were added by the Masoretes about a thousand years ago—thus defining the verses, though not assigning any numbers to them. A sof passuk can be translated as a period, a colon, an exclamation point, a question mark, or even a dash.

In the 16^th century, Christian bibles began dividing the text into chapters and numbering the verses in each chapter. Jewish bibles adopted their convenient system.

Exodus 19:25 could end with a colon. But since the next verse was assigned the number 20:1, starting a new chapter, most translations end Exodus 19:25 with a period. And because of the period, vayomer is translated as “and he spoke” instead of “and he said”.

The effect of translating vayomer as “and he spoke”, followed by a period and a chapter break, is to make it sound as if first Moses speaks, reminding the people not to climb the mountain, and then God speaks, telling the people the basic commandments.

But what if there were no chapter break after “Then Moses went down to the people, vayomer to them”? And what if the sof pasuk, the punctuation after this clause, were translated as a colon? Then we would have:

Then Moses went down to the people, and he said to them: “God spoke all these words, saying: I am God, your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, the house of slavery. You will have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 19:25-20:2)

In this version, Moses tells the people the Decalogue, quoting what he heard God say at some unspecified earlier time.

I was attached to this alternative translation, until I started wondering if the Israelites at Mount Sinai heard the words of the Decalogue at all.

Back to the story

Immediately after the tenth commandment, the one about coveting, the Torah returns to the narrative:

Then all the people were seeing the kolot and the flames and the kol of the shofar and the mountain smoking. When the people saw, they were shaken and they stood at a distance. (Exodus 20:15)

In this description the Israelites are not hearing God speak words. They are experiencing synesthesia, seeing the sounds of thunderclaps and horn blasts along with the flames and smoke.

And they said to Moses: “You speak to us, and we will listen. But may God not speak to us, or else we will die!” (Exodus 20:16)

Here the people only know they are afraid of any communication from God, and they beg Moses to speak for God. Therefore they have not yet heard the Decalogue from either God or Moses.

And the people stood at a distance, and Moses approached the dark cloud where God was. And God said to Moses: “Thus you shall say to the Israelites: You yourselves saw that I spoke with you from the heavens. You must not make me silver gods or gold gods; you must not make them for yourselves. You must make me an altar of earth, and slaughter on it your rising-offerings …” (Exodus 20:18-19)

After a few more instructions about sacrifices at the altar, God goes on (in the next Torah portion, Mishpatim) to lay out a long series of civil and religious laws on a variety of specific topics. These are the rules God tells Moses to pass on to the Israelites.

So how did the Decalogue get into the Exodus account of the revelation at Mount Sinai?

See my next post, Yitro & Va-etchanan: Whose Words?—Part 2.

The book of Exodus does not say how much time passes between Moses’ return to Egypt and the departure of all the Israelites for their 40-year journey to Canaan. If all of God’s ten plagues occur during the year preceding their departure, the story is more dramatic and the pressure on Pharaoh is more intense.
To Aaron alone in Exodus 4:27, Leviticus 10:8-11, and Numbers 18:1-24; to Aaron and Miriam in Numbers 12:5-8; and to Aaron and Moses in Exodus 7:8, 9:8, 12:1-20, and 12:43-49, in Leviticus 11:1-47, 13:1-59, 14:33-57, and 15:1-32, and in Numbers 2:1-2, 4:1-20, 14:26-38, 16:20-22, 19:1-22, and 20:12.
To Miriam in Numbers 12:5-8, and to Elazar in Numbers 26:1-2.
See my post Beshalach: Pillar of Cloud and Fire.