Mishpatim: Choreography and Responsibility

After all the Israelites experience the revelation at Mount Sinai,¹ God dictates about 50 specific laws to Moshe (“Moses” in English) in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (Exodus/Shemot 21:1-24:18).

Then [God] said to Moshe: “Go up to God, you and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and bow down from afar. Then Moshe alone will draw near to God. But they must not draw near. And the people must not go up with him.” (Exodus 24:1-2)

Before Moshe carries out this instruction, he shares all the laws from God with the Israelites.

Then Moshe came and recounted to the people all of the words of God and all the laws. And all the people answered with one voice, and they said: “All the words that God has spoken, we will do.” (Exodus 24:3)

Next Moshe writes it all down. In the morning he leads an elaborate covenantal ceremony (without being told to), He builds an altar, sets up twelve standing stones, and orders young men to sacrifice bulls to God. Moshe splashes half of the bulls’ blood on the altar, then reads God’s laws out loud. This time the Israelites shout:

“All that God has spoken, we will do and we will heed!” And Moshe took the blood and splashed it on the people. And he said: “Here is the blood of the covenant that God has cut with you by means of all these words!” (Exodus 24:7-8)

Only after he has done all he can to secure the commitment of the Israelite people does Moshe lead the elders partway up the mountain.

And they went up, Moshe and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel, and under [God’s] feet something like a brick pavement of sapphire, and like the substance of the heavens for purity. And God did not send out [God’s] hand against the eminent Israelites. And they beheld God, and they ate and they drank. (Exodus 24:9-11)

Where does Moshe go next?

Then God said to Moshe: “Come up to me on the mountain. And you will be there, and I will give you the stone tablets, and the teaching, and the commands that I have inscribed to teach them.” And Moshe and his attendant, Yehoshua, stood up, and Moshe went up the mountain of God. (Exodus 24:12-13)

If the party of 74 men is still sitting partway up Mount Sinai when God speaks to Moshe again, where did Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English) come from?

Bachya ben Asher wrote: “Joshua was one of the seventy elders mentioned previously as having had a vision of God. In fact, Joshua was the most senior of these seventy elders.”²

From the book of Judges on, elders are older men who sit in the gate of their town or village and judge disputes and legal issues the residents bring to them. In the previous Torah portion in Exodus, Moshe appointed elders as lower court judges who would refer the difficult cases to him.³

Yehoshua (Joshua) is a young man (see Exodus 33:11 below), and he has a different role. He waits on Moshe, and he also served as the commander when the Israelite men fought off the Amalekites on the way to Mount Sinai.⁴ So although Yehoshua has as much status as an elder, I do not believe he is one.

The next verse implies that not even the elders are still partway up the mountain when God speaks to Moshe again.

And [Moshe] said to the elders: “Wait bazeh for us until we return to you! And hey, Aharon and Chur are with you. Whoever has a lawsuit can approach them.” (Exodus 24:14)

bazeh (בָּזֶה) = here, at this place.

Moshe tells the elders to “wait here” until he and Yehoshua (Joshua) return. Where is “here”?

The rest of the Israelites, including any plaintiffs or witnesses, are forbidden to go even halfway up the mountain. So the elders cannot judge their cases from that spot. Moshe must be instructing them, along with Aharon and Chur, to wait at the foot of the mountain. (It is reasonable to assume that Chur is one of the 70 elders, since he and Aharon supported Moshe’s staff during the battle with the Amalekites.)

Therefore bazeh, “at this place”, means the camp at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moshe must have led everyone back down to camp before he gave the elders their orders.

Moshe’s instructions also reveal that he expects to be at the top of the mountain for some time. If he thought that receiving “the stone tablets, and the teaching” from God would take only a day or two, he would probably say that anyone with a dispute too difficult for the seventy elders could postpone the case until he gets back. Instead, he appoints Aharon and Chur as a high court while he is gone.

Where does Yehoshua go?

Moshe and Yehoshua (Joshua) stand up. Moshe tells the elders to wait “for us until we return to you”.

Then Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. (Exodus 24:15)

If Moshe goes up the mountain alone, where does Yehoshua go?

In the 11^th century C.E., Rashi wrote: “As a disciple he was accompanying the teacher as far as the place where the bounds of the mountain were marked out, whence onward he was not permitted to proceed. … Joshua pitched his tent there and stayed there during the whole forty days which Moses spent on the mountain. For thus we find that when Moses came down from the mountain it states, ‘and Joshua heard the voice of the people that they shouted’— from which we may infer that he was not with them in the camp.”⁵

View at the top

The text says that Moshe went into the cloud (he-anan, הֶעָנָן),not a cloud (which would be just anan). So this must be the manifestation of God that led the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai in the shape of a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. In the next verse, the cloud is explicitly identified with God.

And the kavod of God settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. And [God] called to Moses on the seventh day from the midst of the cloud. (Exodus 24:16)

kavod (כָּבוֹד) = impressive appearance, glory, splendor, weight.

Apparently Moshe climbs up as far as God’s cloud of glory, then waits in front of the blank white fog until God calls him inside.

According to Sefer Olam Rabbah, “This was in order for Moses to purify himself.”⁶

According to Avot de Rabbi Natan, the six-day wait was “So that he could be emptied of all the food and drink that was in his stomach, so that when he was sanctified, he would be like the angels who serve God.”⁷

Bachya ben Asher wrote that during those six days, “Moses prepared himself mentally for meeting Hashem [God] …”⁸

View from the bottom

While Moshe is staring at the divine cloud, the Israelites below are seeing something different.

But the appearance of the kavod of God was like a consuming fire at the top of the mountain in the eyes of the Israelites. (Exodus 24:17)

Moses sees God’s kavod as a cloud, or a wall of fog; it obscures his vision but is not deadly. The Israelites below see God’s kavod as a “consuming” fire.

When I taught a class on this part of the Torah portion in 2024, my adult students came up with a good metaphorical explanation: The first time Moshe climbs Mount Sinai, he sees God as fire in the bush that burned but was not consumed. By the time he returns to Mount Sinai, he has developed a relationship with God, so God appears to him as mysterious, like a cloud, but not threatening. The Israelites below, however, have not been conversing with God, so God appears as a dangerous consuming fire to them.

They see their leader, Moshe, walk into the fire, and they doubt that he will ever come back. (See my post Mishpatim: Seeing the Cloud.) It amazes me that nevertheless the Israelites wait for forty days before going to Aharon and demanding an idol to lead them the rest of the way to Canaan.

Into the cloud

Then Moses entered the midst of the cloud, and he went up the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights. (Exodus 24:18)

Jewish midrash noted that later in Exodus, Moses is unable to enter the newly-constructed Tent of Meeting “because the cloud had settled on it and the kavod of God filled the dwelling-place” (Exodus 40:35). So how does Moses manage to get into the cloud of God’s kavod on Mount Sinai?

According to the Talmud, “This teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, grabbed Moses and brought him into the cloud, since he could not enter on his own.”⁹

Asher Tzvi of Ostrow wrote: “When Moses ascended on high, a cloud came up against him, and Moses our teacher did not know if one rides it or holds it. Immediately, the cloud opened its mouth and Moses entered it, and he walked into the firmament like a man walking on land.”¹⁰ This midrash continues with Moshe encountering angels in the heavens before he finally reaches God.

When I researched this blog post, I wondered if the apparent inconsistencies in the locations of Moshe (Moses), Yehoshua (Joshua), Aharon (Aaron), and the elders were due to a redactor patching together several traditional stories about the same event. But I have not found any support for this hypothesis in modern source scholarship. Friedman views the story as coming from a single source from Exodus 24:1 through “And Moses went up the mountain” (Exodus 24:15); the author does not change until the second half of Exodus 24:15, “and the cloud covered the mountain”.¹¹

When I did a close reading of the text, I discovered that the choreography actually does work if Moshe leads Aharon and the elders back down to the Israelite camp after their vision of God’s feet, and that is where God speaks to Moshe again, and Yehoshua (Joshua) jumps up and accompanies him as far as the foot of the route back up Mount Sinai.

The story would be tidier if after Moshe’s party beheld God’s feet and ate and drank, Moshe continued up the mountainside alone. I can imagine Aharon leading his sons and the seventy elders back down to the Israelite camp, while Yehoshua waits there for forty days.

But I think that Moshe does not want to leave a large group of dazed and excited men, who have been drinking as well as eating, alone on the mountainside. What if they doze off and wake up disoriented? What if they cannot find their way down? What if it gets dark and they stumble?

After God tells Moshe: “Go up to God, you and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and bow down from afar” (Exodus 24:1), Moshe postpones leaving until he has conducted an impressive covenant ceremony with all the Israelites. As their leader, he is responsible for them, and he decides that he should secure the loyalty of all of the people before doing any special ritual with the elders.

When the ritual with the elders is complete,¹² Moshe once again puts his responsibility as a leader first. He makes sure everyone gets home safely before he climbs Mount Sinai again, even though retracing his steps means a lot more physical labor.

Some prophets might be tempted to rush toward God, eager for a personal revelation. But Moshe takes care of his people first.

If only all our leaders were as responsible as Moshe, our lives would be blessed.

“The revelation at Mount Sinai” commonly refers to Exodus 19:13-20:17 in the Torah portion Yitro, which includes spectacular volcanic effects including synesthesia (see my post Yitro & Bereishit: Don’t Even Touch It) and the pronouncement of the “Ten Commandments”.
14^th-century Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 18:24-25.
Exodus 17:8-13.
Rashi, acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomon Yitzchaki, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Sefer Olam Rabbah, 2^nd century C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
Avot de Rabbi Natan, 650-950 C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
Bachya ben Asher, ibid.
Talmud Bavli, Yoma 4b, translation by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, William Davidson Talmud in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Asher Tzvi of Ostrow, Ma’ayan HaChochmah, 1816.
Richard Elliott Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, HarperSanFrancisco, 2003, pp. 160-161.
See my post Yitro & Mishpatim: Four Attempts at a Lasting Covenant.

Haftarat Yitro—Isaiah: The Volunteer

Every week of the year has its own Torah portion, a reading from the first five books of the Bible, and its own haftarah, an accompanying reading from the books of the prophets. This week the Torah portion is Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:23) and the haftarah is Isaiah 6:1-13 in the Sefardic tradition (Isaiah 6:1-7:6 plus 9:5-6 in the Ashkenazic tradition).

I have met a few mystics who savor every numinous experience, and spend their lives trying to get more of them. I have not met any prophets, as far as I know. But since I am a Jew who loves research and analysis, I study the Hebrew Bible, including its many stories of prophets who see visions, hear God, and spend their lives passing on God’s words.

The biblical individual who is most reluctant about becoming a prophet is Moshe (“Moses”), who argues with God at the burning bush before finally succumbing and accepting his vocation.¹ In this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, Moshe has returned to Mount Sinai as the leader of a horde of Israelites from Egypt, and God gives them all a frightening experience of the transcendent. (See my post Yitro & Bereishit: Don’t Even Touch It.) It does not turn anyone else into a prophet.

Most of the biblical prophets after Moses simply hear from God and do what they are told;² we never find out how their vocation began. The exceptions are Shmuel (“Samuel”), who hears a voice as a boy when he is sleeping near the sanctuary;³ Elisha, who is chosen by another prophet, and runs after him;⁴ Yermiyahu (“Jeremiah”), who hears God tell him that he was born to be a prophet;⁵ and Yeshayahu (“Isaiah” in English) in this week’s haftarah.

Starting with a vision

The first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah, commonly called “First Isaiah”, record the prophecies of an 8^th-century citizen of the kingdom of Judah, possibly a priest, named Yeshayahu son of Amotz. (The remaining 27 chapters in the book, commonly called “Second Isaiah”, were added two or three centuries later and feature an unnamed prophet.)

In the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah, and Yeshayahu (Isaiah) tells the story of his call to prophecy.

In the year of the death of the king Uziayahu,⁶ I saw my Lord sitting on a high and lofty throne. And the skirts of [God’s] robe filled the heykhal. (Isaiah 6:1)

heykhal (הֵיכָל) = temple, palace.

What is the setting for this vision? The commentary is divided on whether Yeshayahu (Isaiah) is standing inside the temple in Jerusalem, or seeing a divine palace in the heavens.

Alter wrote: “Since it was believed that there was a correspondence between the Temple in Jerusalem and God’s celestial palace, it is understandable that Isaiah should have a vision of God enthroned in the Temple. God apparently is imagined as having gigantic proportions …”⁷

If Yeshayahu (Isaiah) were indeed a priest standing in the main room of the temple, he would see real clouds of incense filling the hall before he beholds God seated on a throne.

On the other hand, Canaanite religions told of various gods coming to a supreme god’s palace in the sky to decide the fate of human beings. The Israelite religion evolved to reject other gods, but the idea of a palace in the sky persisted.⁸

Or the vision might combine both settings. Rashi wrote: “I saw Him sitting on His throne in heaven with His feet in the Temple, His footstool in the Sanctuary …”⁹

Seraf, mosaic in Haggia Sophia, Istanbul

Yeshayahu (Isaiah) sees not only the figure of a seated man wearing a robe that overflows to fill the room, but also supernatural attendants serving him.

Serafim were standing above, each with six wings; with one pair he covered his face, and with a pair he covered his feet, and with a pair he was flying. And this one called to that one, and said: “Holy! Holy! Holy! The glory of the God of tzevaot fills the earth!” (Isaiah 6:2-3)

serafim (שְׂרָפִים) = burning creatures—either poisonous snakes or fiery angelic beings. (From the root verb saraf, שָׂרַף = burn.)

tzevaot (צְבָאוֹת) = armies. (Singular: tzeva, צְבָא. See my post Haftarat Bo—Jeremiah: The Ruler of All Armies.)

The term “God of Armies” often refers to armies on earth, but in some contexts God is the master of metaphorical “armies” of stars—or perhaps serafim—in the sky. In the first book of Kings, a prophet named Mikhayahu son of Yimlah introduces a prophecy by announcing:

“Thus I heard the word of God: I saw God sitting on [God’s] throne, and all the tzeva of the heavens were standing above, to [God’s] right and to [God’s] left.” (1 Kings 22:19)

According to Kugel, the description of serafim in the book of Isaih affirms that the stars and planets are not other gods, but “actually seraphim, ‘burners,’ who lit up the sky but whose principal function was to praise God, calling out, ‘Holy, holy, holy’ to the Creator.”¹⁰

And the doorposts shook from the sound of the calling, and the house was filling with smoke. And I said: “Alas for me, because I am undone! For I am a man of impure lips, and I live among a people of impure lips. Yet my eyes have seen the King, the God of tzevaot!” (Isaiah 6:4-5)

Yesheyahu (Isaiah) believes he is unworthy of a vision of God. And he identifies his lips as the source of impurity.

Kugel pointed out that “there is no such concept as ‘impure lips’ in biblical law.”¹¹ Ritual impurity comes from contact with corpses, genital discharges, and skin disease. Other commentators have noted that in the book of Exodus, Moshe objects to being a prophet on the grounds that he has uncircumcized lips.¹² But Moshe means that he is a poor speaker, not that his lips are contaminated.

Apparently Yesheyahu (Isaiah) is thinking along the same lines as the prophet in the later book of Zephaniah, who connects purity of lips, i.e. language, with not lying or speaking deceitfully.¹³

At any rate, Yesheyahu’s focus on his lips indicates that he already believes, or hopes, that God wants him to be a prophet. How could he speak for God when he has “impure lips”, like all the other Israelites?

Then one of the serafim flew over to me, and in his hand was a live coal; with tongs he had taken it from on top of the altar. And he touched it to my lips, and said: “Behold, this touch on your lips removes your iniquity and atones for your guilt.” (Isaiah 6:6-7)

Volunteering

Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying: “Whom will I send? And who will go for us?” And I said: “Here I am. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)

This verse, like the one about the tzevaot of the heavens, echoes the vision that the prophet Mikhayahu describes to King Achav of Israel.

“And God asked: “Who will entice Achav, so he will go up, then fall at Ramot-Gilead?” And this one said thus, and that one said thus. Then a spirit went out and stood before God and said: “I will entice him.” (1 Kings 22:20-21)

This spirit plans to entice King Achav by putting lies into the mouths of all the human prophets, so that the king will march on Ramot-Gilead and be defeated.

In Yesheyahu’s (Isaiah’s) vision, God asks “Who will go for us?” without saying what the mission is. Yesheyahu, elated by his purification, enthusiastically volunteers.

A doomed job

Isaiah Accepts Mockery Because of His Faith, by Augustin Hirschvogel, 1549

And [God] said: “Go, and you must say to the people: Keep hearing, but you will not understand; and keep seeing, but you will not perceive!” (Isaiah 6:9)

This message seems designed to make people hate the messenger. Rashi explained that God is frustrated that the people of Judah are making no effort to understand what God wants from them.¹⁴ Plaut wrote: “The transgressors don’t want to be confronted with the truth, and when someone tries to tell it to them, they close their minds and become incapable of listening any further.”¹⁵

Then why does God want a prophet to speak at all? According to Steinsaltz, “… the people were warned so that they would recall the warning sometime later.”¹⁶

Next God informs Yeshayahu (Isaiah) that he must disguise the truth—the very behavior that made him believe his lips were impure.

“Make the mind of this people obtuse, and make its ears dull and its eyes blurred; lest it see with its eyes and hear with its ears and discern with its mind, and turn around [repent] and heal itself”. (Isaiah 6:10)

According to the Talmud, God is referring to the healing of forgiveness.¹⁷ And God does not want to forgive the people yet. Prophets in the Hebrew Bible (except for ecstatics; see my post Haftarat Ki Tissa: Ecstatic versus Rational Prophets) normally warn nations and kings about the bad things that will happen if they do not change their ways; the prophet and God hope that people will heed the warning and change. But in this case, God is determined to punish Judah, and does not want its population to repent and change too soon.

I wonder if Yeshayahu (Isaiah) would have volunteered so eagerly in his vision if he had known God’s plan.

On the other hand, Yeshayahu has already delivered prophecies for five chapters before he recounts what he saw and how he volunteered to be a prophet. Perhaps his failure to get anyone to change has made him conclude, bitterly, that God does not really want anyone to repent, so he tells the story of his vision accordingly.

Then I said: “How long, my Lord?” And [God] said: “Until towns are ruined and there are no inhabitants, and in houses there are no humans, and the ground is a ruined desolation. For God will send the humans far away, and [there will be] many forsaken places in the midst of the land.” (Isaiah 6:11-12)

Will Yesheyahu’s (Isaiah’s) deceptive prophecies result in the desolation of Judah? Or must Yesheyahu keep uttering ineffective prophecies until Judah is ruined and empty?

The idea of being sent far away would occur naturally to Yesheyahu (Isaiah), since while he was uttering prophecies in the southern kingdom of Judah, the Assyrian Empire was conquering the northern kingdom of Israel and forcibly relocating tens of thousands of its citizens.¹⁸

The vision closes with God saying:

“But while a tenth part is still in it [Judah], then it will turn back [repent]. And it will be ravaged like the terebinth and the oak, of which stumps are left when [they are] felled. Its stump is a holy seed.” (Isaiah 6:13)

Steinsaltz explained: “The people who will ultimately survive will be holy. They will have endured everything that was necessary, and they will not fall into decline again.”¹⁹

The northern kingdom of Israel never regenerated after so many of its citizens were deported by Assyria. In the 6^th century B.C.E., the southern kingdom of Judah suffered from similar deportations by the conquering Babylonians. Some of those Judahites did return later to rebuild Jerusalem. So either Yesheyahu’s (Isaiah’s) vision concludes with a long-term prediction, or a later scribe added the last verse to this story.

The prophetic careers of both Moshe (Moses) and Yesheyahu (Isaiah) begin with a numinous experience in which God speaks to them. Both men object that their lips are not suitable for a job as God’s agent—Moshe because he cannot speak well, Yesheyahu because he has been speaking deceptively.

Moshe continues to argue with God, finally saying “Send someone else!” before he gives up and obeys God’s order to go back to Egypt.²⁰ Then he grows in the job, argues with God on behalf of the Israelites, and succeeds in bringing the next generation to Canaan before he dies.

Yesheyahu (Isaiah) embraces his calling as soon as his lips are purified. He spends 38 years conscientiously announcing prophecies, then dies after telling King Chizkiyahu (“Hezekiah” in English) that Babylon will seize his country, his children, and the treasures in his palace.²¹ Despite all his prophecies, Yesheyahu never sees the fall of Judah, nor the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

Yet once someone in the Hebrew Bible starts speaking for God, he or she is not allowed to quit.²²

Today, individuals are called prophets if they have unusually keen spiritual and moral insight and a way with words, and use these abilities to publicly call for change in a society. I wonder what moves them to embark on this difficult path in life. Are they overwhelmed by a vision? Are they volunteers? Are they driven by a feeling that they have no other choice?

See my posts Shemot: Empathy,Fear, & Humility, Shemot: Names and Miracles, Shemot: Not a Man of Words, and Shemot: Moses Gives Up.
Except for Jonah, who runs away, then reluctantly does his job after being swallowed and vomited out by a big fish.
1 Samuel 3:1-10.
1 Kings 10:19-21.
See my post Haftarat Shemot or Matot—Jeremiah: A Congenital Prophet.
King Uziyahu of Judah died sometime between 742 and 734 B.C.E.. Modern scholars believe the prophecies in First Isaiah were recited orally, and not written down until at least a century later.
Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Volume 2: Prophets, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2019, p. 640.
E.g. Micah 1:2-3.
Rashi (acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), translation in www.sefaria.org.
James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible, Free Press, New York, 2007, p. 541.
Ibid.
Exodus 6:12.
Zephaniah 3:9, 3:13.
Rashi, ibid.
W. Gunther Plaut, The Haftarah Commentary, translated by Chaim Stern, UAHC Press, New York, 1996, p.170.
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, Introductions to Tanakh: Isaiah, in www.sefaria.org.
Talmud Bavli, Megillah 17b.
Yeshayahu’s prophecies began around 740 B.C.E., and were recorded around 640 B.C.E. The Assyrian deportations occurred in 734-732, 729-724, and 716-715 B.C.E.
Steinsaltz, ibid.
Exodus 4:13.
Isaiah 39:5-7. This passage may also have been added by a later scribe.
See the book of Jonah.

Beshallach & Judges: Stuck in the Mud

Hittite War Chariot Crushes Enemy, 13th century BCE bas-relief

Prosperous kingdoms in the Ancient Near East had horse-drawn war chariots; before the reign of King Shlomoh (“Solomon” in English) the Israelites had only foot soldiers.¹

In each enemy war chariot stood a driver and one or two archers, all armed with swords in case of close combat. On an open plain, a battalion of chariots could slaughter a large regiment of foot soldiers—unless the foot soldiers have a secret weapon.

And the Israelites do, as in both this week’s Torah portion, Beshallach (Exodus/Shemot 13:17-17:16), and the accompanying haftarah reading, Judges 4:4-5:31: a God who controls the weather.

At the Sea of Reeds

And God caused the people to turn onto the road in the wilderness of the Sea of Reeds. And the people went up armed from the land of Egypt. (Exodus 13:18)

Although God had ordered the Israelites to “borrow” silver and gold objects from their desperate Egyptian neighbors before they left,² God said nothing about weapons. The fact that the Israelites “borrowed” swords as well only shows that they were already afraid of being attacked, not that they knew how to use their weapons.³

A pillar of cloud by day and fire by night leads the Israelites to the shore of an inlet or brackish lake called the Sea of Reeds. Meanwhile, God tells Moses:

“I will strengthen the heart of Paroh [“Pharaoh”], and he will pursue them. Then I will be glorified through Paroh and through all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am God!” (Exodus 14:4)

On the theory that an act of God is an act of nature, it makes sense that after the pharaoh has made a habit of hardening his own heart after each plague God sent to Egypt, now his heart hardens naturally when he hears where the Israelites have gone.

And he harnessed his chariot, and he took his [fighting] people with him, and he took 600 choice chariots, and every [other] chariot in Egypt, every one with a team of three. (Exodus 14:6-7)

The pharaoh’s chariots catch up with the Israelites at the shore of the Sea of Reeds.

… and the Israelites raised their eyes, and hey! Egypt was setting out after them! And they were very afraid. And the Israelites cried out to God. (Exodus 14:10)

Many classic commentators questioned why the Israelites, with 600,000 men,⁴ would be afraid of an Egyptian force of 600 chariots.⁵ Even if every chariot held two archers and was pulled by two horses, how many men can 1200 archers and 1200 war horses strike down before they are overwhelmed by the remaining foot soldiers?

Chizkuni summarized the most common explanation: “Their fear was based on their slave mentality. Every slave is afraid of his master. These Israelites had not yet proven to themselves that they could fend for themselves.”⁶

After crying out to God, the people protest to Moshe (“Moses”in English), who tells them that God will fight the Egyptian chariot battalion, and they should all be quiet.

Then the messenger of God that was going in front of the machaneih of Israel pulled out and went around behind them; the pillar of cloud pulled out from in front of them and stood behind them. And it came between the machaneih of Egypt and the machaneih of Israel … (Exodus 14:19-20)

machaneih (מַחֲנֵה) = camp (as a place with temporary structures for spending the night); camp (as a faction or party of people).

Here, nobody is camping for the night. The sun sets, and the pillar of cloud between the two camps turns into a pillar of fire.

And Moshe stretched out his hand over the sea, and God made the sea go back with a strong east wind all night, and made the sea [bed] dry land; for the waters split. And the Israelites came through the middle of the sea on the dry land, and the waters were a wall for them on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-22)

While the Israelites and their livestock are walking in the dark ahead of the pillar of fire, the Egyptians see the pillar of fire receding down a stretch of dry land.

Then the Egyptians pursued and came after them: all of Paroh’s horses and his chariots and his horsemen, into the middle of the sea. (Exodus 14:23)

The Israelites are climbing the bank of the far shore while the Egyptians are racing across the temporary road of dry land. Then, during the last watch of the night, God acts again.

And God looked down at the Egyptian camp from the pillar of fire and cloud, and yaham the Egyptian camp. (Exodus 14:24)

yaham (יָהָם) = he confused, confounded, panicked. (From the verb hamam, הָמַם = roused, brought into movement and confusion, caused pandemonium.)

And [God] loosened the wheels of his [the pharaoh’s] chariots and made them drive with heaviness. Then [the king of] Egypt said: “I must flee from the face of Israel, because God wages war for them against Egypt!” (Exodus 14: 25)

What is God doing to the Egyptian chariots?

Rashi suggested: “Through the power of the fire of the pillar of fire the wheels were burnt and the chariots were thus dragged along and those who were sitting in them were thrown about and their limbs were all put out of joint.”⁷

Escape Over the Red Sea, Golden Haggadah, ca. 1320, Spain

Others proposed that many of the panicked Egyptian chariot drivers tried to turn around, but then they crashed into the chariots behind them.⁸

But according to Robert Alter, “The simplest explanation is that as the water begins to seep back and before it becomes a flood that engulfs the Egyptians, it turns the dry ground into muck. The chariot wheels rapidly become stuck in the mud … and break off from the axles.”⁹

At sunrise, when all the Israelites are safe on the other side, God tells Moshe to turn around and stretch out his hand again. The water comes crashing back in.

And the waters returned, and they covered the chariots and the horsemen of all of Paroh’s army that was coming after them into the sea; not one of them remained. (Exodus 14:28)

Thanks to God, the entire enemy force is dead.

At the Wadi Kidron

When the haftarah reading in the book of Judges opens, the Israelites have been subjugated by a Canaanite king named Yavin, whose general is Sisera.

And the Israelites cried out to God, because he had 900 iron chariots, and he had been violently oppressing the Israelites for twenty years. (Judges 4:3)

But now the Israelites have a leader like Moses, who was both a prophet (spokesperson for God) and a judge (legal authority).

And Devorah was a woman, a prophetess, a woman of torches. She was judging Israel at that time. (Judges 4:4)

Israelites from several northern tribes routinely come to consult Devorah at her home in Efrayim territory. Now she summons Barak, who presumably has some experience leading soldiers, from his home in Naftali territory.

And she said to him: “Has not God, the God of Israel, commanded you: ‘Go! And you must form a line on Mount Tabor, and take with you 10,000 men from the Naftalites and the Zevulunites. And I will form a line against you at the Wadi Kishon: Sisera, commander of Yavin’s army, and his procession. And I will give him into your hand!’” (Judges 4:6-7)

Mount Tabor was forested, providing the Israelites with both cover and a view of the upper Jezreel Valley, including the streambed of the Kishon River. Devorah communicates God’s promise to bring the enemy to the bottom of the mountain and give victory to the Israelites. But Barak is understandably nervous about the whole enterprise.

And Barak said to her: “If you go with me, I will go. But if you do not go with me, I will not go!” (Judges 4:8)

She agrees, and he rounds up 10,000 men. When General Sisera learns that 10,000 foot soldiers have gathered on Mount Tabor, he takes his 900 chariot crews, along with all his other fighters, to the Wadi Kishon.

The Defeat of Sisera, by Luca Girodano, 1692, detail

And Devorah said to Barak: “Arise, because this is the day that God is giving Sisera into your hand! Does not God go out before you?” And Barak came down from Mount Tabor, and 10,000 men were behind him. And God yaham Sisera and all the chariotry and all the camp toward the edge of the sword[s] in front of Barak. And Sisera got down from the chariot and fled on foot. And Barak was pursuing after the chariotry and after the machaneih … And the whole machaneih of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword. (Judges 4:13-16)

Only Sisera escapes, and he is then killed by a woman, Yael (“Jael” in English)—but that is a story for another post.

What does God do to the Canaanites and their chariots that causes panic and pandemonium? The story in the book of Judges holds no internal clues. But the poem following it does.

In both Exodus and Judges, the stories are followed by poems composed in a more ancient Hebrew than the rest of the Hebrew Bible. The poem that Devorah and Barak sing, known a the “Song of Devorah” (Judges 5:1-31), mentions more Israelite tribes, and describes Yael’s killing of Sisera differently. One line in the poem provides more information about the destruction of Sisera’s army:

The Wadi Kishon swept them away. (Judges 5:21) A wadi is a stream-bed that contains only a trickle during the dry season. A heavy rainstorm at the wadi’s source results in a rushing flood of water. Steinsaltz explained: “The Kishon Stream, which apparently overflowed its banks, swept them, some of the enemy soldiers, away. The ground turned muddy, making it impossible for the chariots to maneuver properly. Thus, the chariot riders became easy prey for the foot soldiers of Zebulun and Naphtali, who gained the advantage of speed.”¹⁰

In both the Torah portion and the haftarah, Israelites on foot face archers riding on chariots. And in both Exodus and Judges, God saves the Israelites by manipulating water so that the chariots will be stuck in the mud, and the enemy will die in the ensuing confusion and panic.

The Israelites are stuck in the role of victims until God strikes. In the portion Beshallach, they believe that they can never escape from the pharaoh. In the haftarah from Judges, they believe they will always be under the thumb of the Canaanite king.

Their enemies feel free to throw their weight around, until the situation reverses and they are the ones who are stuck. The chariot wheels that gave them such mobility are jammed by mud, immovable. And the Israelites are freed.

The English idiom ‘stick-in-the-mud” means someone who resists change, who does not adapt to new circumstances. Although the Israelites in both stories are afraid of the enemy who has long oppressed them, when their prophet—Moshe or Devorah—tells them in the name of God to do something new, they bravely go ahead and do it. The ex-slaves from Egypt walk in the dark between two walls of water, trusting that the ground will stay firm under their feet until they reach the other side. The oppressed Israelites in northern Canaan hurry down toward the chariot riders poised to shoot them.

But their enemies are stick-in-the-mud types even before the real mud arrives. The pharaoh keeps breaking his promises to let the Israelites go, hardening his heart because he cannot bear to give up the status quo. General Sisera is so used to success that he orders his troops into a wadi without thinking about the weather. When the Egyptian pharaoh and the Canaanite general encounter some unexpected mud, they are confused; they do not know how to handle it.

The road to freedom is courage. The road to destruction is the inability to change.

Kings 10:26.
Exodus 12:35-36.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, p. 228.
Exodus 12:37. Numbers in the Hebrew Bible are chosen for emotional impact, and are not meant to be historically accurate.
E.g. Ibn Ezra, Chizkuni, Bachya ben Asher.
Chizkuni, 13^th-century compilation of midrash by Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Rashi, acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki, translation in www.sefaria.org. 14^th-century rabbis Jacob ben Asher (Tur HaArokh) and Bachya ben Asher also expressed this opinion.
E.g. Ibn Ezra, Midrash Tanchuma, Chizkuni, Rashbam
Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2004, p. 395. Also proposed by Rabbi Obadiah Sforno in the 16^th century.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Introductions to Tanach: Judges, quoted on www.sefaria.org.

Bo: The First Passover

Plague of the death of the Firstborn, Spanish hagadah ca. 1490

The midnight death of the firstborn is the last of the ten plagues that God inflicts upon Egypt before the pharaoh lets the Israelites go in this week’s Torah portion, Bo (Exodus/Shemot 10:1-13:16). First Moshe (“Moses” in English) warns Paroh (“Pharaoh” in English) that all the firstborn sons¹ in Egypt will die—

“— from the firstborn son of Paroh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave who is behind the millstones, and the firstborn of every beast. Then there will be a loud cry throughout all the land of Egypt, the like of which has never been, and never will be again. But against all the Israelites, not a dog will sharpen its tongue …” (Exodus 11:5-7)

In other words, all the firstborn sons of Egyptians and their livestock will die, but the firstborn sons of Israelites and their livestock will be unharmed; not even a dog will snarl at them.

In order to make the Israelites exempt from this final plague, God orders a ritual.

Marking with blood

First, God tells Moshe that every Israelite household must acquire a lamb or a goat kid, an unblemished male yearling, on the tenth day of “this month”— Aviv, the first month of spring.² If a household has too few members to eat an entire lamb in one night, it should combine with another small household. The household must keep watch over the animal for four days, then slaughter it on the fourteenth day of the month.

The Signs on the Door, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

“Then they will take some of the blood and put it on the two door posts and on the lintel, on the houses where they will eat it.” (Exodus 12:7)

When Moshe passes on this instruction to the Israelite elders, he provides more details:

“Then you must take a bunch of oregano,³ and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts. And none of you should go out through the entrance of his house until morning!” (Exodus 12:22)

Any firstborn sons inside a house with bloodstains around the door will live through the night. But if any Israelite firstborn sons are wandering around outside, they will be subject to the death of the firstborn. Moshe gives the same explanation that God gave him:

“And God will pass through to strike down Egyptians, and will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and God ufasach the entrance, and will not give [release?] the destruction to enter your houses to strike.” (Exodus 12: 23)⁴

ufasach (וּפָסַח) = will skip, will hop, will limp. (From the same root verb as the name of the annual observance, Pesach (פֶּסַח). Pesach is called “Passover” in English instead of Skipover.)

Why do the Israelites have to paint or sprinkle blood around the entrance of every house where they gather to eat that night?

The simple answer implied by Moshe’s speech is that God could not identify which houses contained Israelites without a sign at the entrance—even though this same God has the ability to identify who is a firstborn son.

Classic Jewish commentators, offended by the idea that God would not already know which houses contained Israelites, offered other answers. Rashbam considered “the destruction”an agent that God releases upon Egypt; the bloodstains “insure that God’s angel killing the firstborn will bypass the houses with the sign of the blood on their door-frames.”⁵

Perhaps Chizkuni was thinking of an “angel” of destruction when he wrote: “The blood on the entrances of the homes of the Israelites should form the equivalent of the letter ח, in order to protect the entrance so that the destructive force which would kill the firstborn inside would not carry out that command. … the letter ח could be a symbol of חיים, life.”⁶

The two doorposts and the lintel across the top do make a shape like the Hebrew letter ח. But according to the Mekhilta DeRabbi Ishmael, it is not necessary to posit an angel; marking the doorframe with blood is simply a commandment, and “… in reward for your performance of the commandment, I reveal myself and have compassion on you.”⁷

Some commentators wrote that performing this particular commandment required courage and trust in God, because the Egyptians worshipped a ram god and would attack anyone who slaughtered a lamb and applied its blood to their doorframes. However, only two ancient Egyptian temples were dedicated to a ram god, both farther south than the Nile delta where the pharaoh and the Israelites live in the book of Exodus.⁸

Furthermore, at that point in the story the Egyptians are desperate to get the Israelites out of their country so that their God will stop afflicting them with plagues. Even the pharaoh is getting desperate. Just before God gives Moshe the instructions for the first Passover, God tells him that once the death of the firstborn has happened,

“… after that he will send you out from here. When he sends you, it is finished; he will absolutely drive you away from here.” (Exodus 11:1)

Then God says that the Israelites must ask their Egyptian neighbors to give them silver and gold objects. The Egyptians hand over their valuables, because—

“… God gave the people grace in the eyes of the Egyptians … (Exodus11:3)

It seems the Egyptians are more afraid of the Israelites than the Israelites are of the Egyptians.

Other commentators have considered the application of lamb’s blood around the doorframe a symbolic act. In the Jerusalem Talmud, “Rebbi Eliezer ben Jacob says, why at the door? Because by the door they went from servitude to freedom.”⁹

Maybe emerging through that bloodstained doorway the next morning is like a birth into a new state of being.

What to eat

After the Israelites paint or sprinkle lamb’s blood on their door frames, God tells Moshe,

“Then they must eat the meat on that night, roasted in fire, and matzot, and on bitter herbs they must eat it.” (Exodus 12:8)

matzot (מַצּוֹת) = plural of matzah (מַצָּה) = unleavened bread: flat sheets of flour and water, baked quickly without sourdough or any other leavening.

Why must the meat be roasted? In the 13^th century, Chizkuni wrote that roasting was necessary “so that the fragrance of the meat will assail the noses of the Egyptians and they will reflect on what is happening to their [ram] deity.”¹¹

But in the 20^th century, Everett Fox wrote: “Not raw or boiled, since what seems to be meant is an imitation of standard sacrifices.”¹² Similarly, matzah was the type of bread offered to God at the altar.¹³

Why must the Israelites eat matzah and bitter herbs with the roasted meat? The Talmud explains:

“The reason for matzah is because our forefathers were redeemed from Egypt, as it is stated: “And they baked the dough that they took out of Egypt as cakes of matzot, for it was not leavened, as they were thrust out of Egypt and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual” (Exodus 12:39). The reason for bitter herbs is because the Egyptians embittered our forefathers’ lives in Egypt, as it is stated: “And they embittered their lives with hard service, in mortar and in brick; in all manner of service in the field, all the service that they made them serve was with rigor” (Exodus 1:14).”¹⁴

Chizkuni wrote: “The bitter herbs symbolize the slavery, the unleavened bread symbolizes freedom, and the meat of the Passover symbolizes … being saved. At the time when the Passover lamb was being consumed the firstborn Egyptians were being killed.”¹⁵

But by the 18^th century, some commentators offered less symbolic explanations. Chayim ibn Attar wrote: “The requirement to eat bitter herbs with it is natural; Egyptians used to eat roast meat with something pungent as this enhanced the taste of the meat and enabled the person who ate it to thoroughly enjoy his meal.”¹⁶

And maybe God, on a night when the Israelites must eat a large dinner and also prepare to leave their homes forever at daybreak, prescribes the fastest way to bake new bread: mix flour and water and slap it in the oven without taking time for kneading it or letting it rise.¹⁷

Ready to go

But God has not finished prescribing how the Israelites must eat their last meal in their Egyptian homes.

“And like this you must eat it: [with] your hips girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staffs in your hand. And you must eat it in trembling haste. It is a pesach for God.” (Exodus 12:11)

Here the word pesach refers to a type of offering, anticipating the annual pesach offerings at the temple.¹⁸

Why must the Israelites eat a large meal in discomfort, standing up with their robes hiked up and tied around their hips, and holding s staff in one hand? They do not need to hurry for fear of the Egyptians, because the Egyptians want them to leave. Nor do they need to leave in a hurry because the pharaoh might change his mind again, since God said that the death of the firstborn will be the final plague.

So I agree with 14^th-century rabbi Bachya ben Asher, who wrote: “The symbolic meaning of “with girded loins and your shoes on your feet” (verse 11), was to depict people who are eager to be on their way to a new destination.”¹⁹

The Israelites must act as if they are in a hurry as a display of eagerness to leave Egypt and head toward Canaan.

Future observance

After repeating that the Israelites should mark their houses with blood so that God will skip over them, God wraps up the instructions to Moshe by saying:

“And this day will be a reminder for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival for God throughout your generations. A decree forever; you must celebrate it!” (Exodus 12:15)

Then God decrees avoidance of leaven, consumption of matzah for seven days, and a holy convocation on the first and seventh day—but nothing about eating standing up. After the Israelites have left their Egyptian homes, God adds that future Pesach meals must be eaten inside the house, without breaking bones, and men may eat it only if they are circumcized.²⁰

The Passover ritual in the Torah portion Bo adds drama to the story of the night before the Israelites leave Egypt. It also provides an opportunity for God to order future Passover rituals.

From the 10^th century B.C.E. to the destruction of the first temple in 587 B.C.E., Pesach was a spring pilgrimage-festival in which citizens of the kingdom of Judah brought lambs to slaughter at the temple and eat there, not at home, with unleavened bread.²¹ This practice was reinstated during the time of the second temple, 537 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.²² The purpose of the festival was to give God offerings in gratitude for rescuing the Israelites from servitude in Egypt.

After the fall of the second temple, Jews began celebrating Passover through a long and elaborate evening ritual at home. The basics of the ritual Jews use today were set down in the Mishnah of the Talmud tractate Pesachim around 200 C.E., and involve symbolic foods, four cups of wine, prayers, quotes from the Torah, and more—including a retelling of the story from the beginning of the book of Exodus through this week’s Torah portion, Bo. Blood is not daubed on doorways, eating lamb is optional, and participants are told to recline, not stand up.

Yet the underlying purpose of the first Passover ritual, the festival in temple times, and the ritual since 200 C.E. is the same: to teach the importance of freedom.

In the portion Bo, the Israelites must pretend to tremble with eagerness for their release from servitude, and stepping through their bloodstained doorways is like being born. In the temple festival, the technology of animal sacrifice is used to thank God for freedom and independence. And the script (hagadah) for the Passover that Jews have been celebrating for almost two millennia, the key statement and theme is “We were slaves; now we are free”.

Of course Jews have not always been free during the course of history, but we can pray to be free again. And many Jews today enhance the Passover ritual with prayers and symbols of hope that other peoples will be freed from oppression.

I pray that it may be so, without bloodshed, and with trembling haste.

Bekhor (בְּכוֹר) = firstborn male, son who was born first—no matter how old. In this case, the firstborn humans include both the first son of a man (such as the pharaoh) and the first son of a woman (such as the female slave).
The lunar month of Aviv (“ripening grain”) was renamed Nisan in the 6^th century B.C.E. It begins in March or April, when barley and wheat planted in the fall are forming ears of grain.
See my post Pesach, Metzora, & Chukat: Blood and Oregano.
In Exodus 12:13 God commands virtually the same thing, but says “and I will skip over you, and for you it will not be a blow to destruction (lemashchit) when I strike down the land of Egypt.”
Rashbam, the acronym for 12^th-century rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni, the acronym for 13^th-century rabbi Chizkiah ben Manoach, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Mekhilta DeRabbi Ishmael, 3^rd century C.E., quoted by Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Shemot (Exodus), translated by Aryeh Newman in 1976, Maor Wallach Press, Jerusalem, 1996,p. 199.
The ram god Heryshaf was worshipped at Henen-Nesut, renamed Heracleopolis. The ram god Khnum was worshipped at Elephantine Island, and in the 5^th century B.C.E., the priests of Khnum wrecked the temple next door, which belonged to a Jewish colony, but the Elephantine papyrus in which a Jewish official recorded this does not say there was any loss of life.
Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin 1:2:31, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni, ibid.
Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, Schocken Books, New York, 1983, p. 315.
See my post Pesach: Being Unleavened, Part 2.
Talmud Bavli, Pesachim 116b, translated by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz in the Koren “William Davidson Talmud”, www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni, ibid.
18^th-century rabbi Chayim ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Tractate Pischa 16:39, translated in www.sefaria.org.
See my post Pesach: Being Unleavened, Part 2 for an alternate explanation.
See Deuteronomy 16:2.
Rabbeinu Bachya ben Asher, 14^th century C.E. , translated in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 13:43-49.
See Deuteronomy 16:1-8. When scribes wrote Deuteronomy, the “place that God will choose” meant the temple in Jerusalem.
Ezra 6:19-22; Talmud Bavli, Pesachim.

Va-eira & Shemot: Patchwork

Sometimes a narrative section in the Torah flows as smoothly as a tale told by a master storyteller. Other times the narrative is a patchwork of different versions of the story, with obvious seams.

Those who believe that God dictated every word in the first five books of the bible to Moshe (“Moses” in English) either ignore the seams, or do some mental acrobatics to explain them away. I like to imagine that God’s dictation is interrupted when God gets distracted by other things happening in the world. But I daresay the single-author stalwarts would never accept a God who has trouble multi-tasking.

I prefer to explain the patchwork parts of Torah by applying a key hypothesis of modern source criticism: that several versions of the same story were circulating in ancient Israel when a redactor¹ combined them to produce what became the authoritative version, the version recorded from then on in Torah scrolls. Sometimes the resulting narrative reads seamlessly. But some seams are definitely showing in the stitching together of last week’s Torah portion, Shemot (Exodus/Shemot 1:1-6:1) with this week’s Torah portion, Va-eira (Exodus/Shemot 6:2-9:35)—particularly regarding the question of who is qualified to speak for God.

Who speaks?

Moses Adores God in the Burning Bush, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

The first time Moshe goes to Mount Sinai, in the portion Shemot, he is a shepherd. He walks over to look at a bush that burns but is not consumed, and finds himself having a conversation with God—the God of his Israelite birth parents in Egypt. He learns that God plans to bring the oppressed Israelites out of Egypt and to the land of Canaan, and that he will be God’s agent.

Moshe tries five times to get out of this assignment. His penultimate attempt is to protest that he is a very poor speaker.

Then God said to him: “Who placed a mouth in the human being? … Is it not I, God? And now go! I myself will be with your mouth, and I will teach you what you will speak.” But he said: “Excuse me please, my lord. Please send by the hand of [someone] you should send!” (Exodus 4:11-12-13)

But God is not about to send someone else to liberate the Israelites. So God compromises, saying:

“Is not your brother Aharon the Levite? I know that he can certainly speak. And also, hey! He is going out to meet you, and he will see you and rejoice in his heart. And you will speak to him, and you will put the words in his mouth. And I myself will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you both what you must do. And he will speak for you to the people. And he himself will be like a mouth for you, and you yourself will be like a god for him. And this staff, you will take it in your hand, because you will do the signs.” (Exodus 4:14-17)

In other words, Moshe will be God’s spokesperson, and Aharon will be Moshe’s spokesperson. Moshe will use his staff to initiate the miracles God has planned to impress first the Israelites, then the pharaoh.

Who holds the staff?

Moshe heads toward Egypt, and meets his brother at Mount Sinai. He tells Aharon everything he knows so far. Then both men go to Egypt and gather the Israelite elders.

And Aharon spoke all the words that God had spoken to Moshe, and he did the signs before the eyes of the people. And the people believed, and they paid attention … (Exodus 4:30-31)

Things seem to be going according to God’s plan. Next Moshe and Aharon go to the pharaoh and request that the Israelites get three days off work to go into the wilderness and sacrifice to their God. The pharaoh doubles their work instead, requiring them to find their own straw while still making their daily quota of bricks. The Israelite foremen blame Moshe and Aharon, and Moshe asks God:

“My lord, why did you do harm to this people? Why did you send me? Since I came to Paroh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people; and you have certainly not rescued your people!” (Exodus 5:22-23)

Paroh (פַּּרְעֺה) =the title of the king of Egypt, “Pharaoh” in English. The portion Shemot ends with God saying the equivalent of “Just wait and see”.

Who memorizes the divine words?

The portion Va-eira then begins with God repeating what Moshe already learned on Mount Sinai. Then God says:

“Therefore, say to the Israelites: I am Y-H-V-H. I will bring you out from under the forced labor of Egypt, and I will rescue you from serving them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. And I will take you for myself as a people, and I will be for you as a God, and you will know that I am GOD, your God, who brings you out from under the forced labor of Egypt. And I will bring you to the land where I raised my hand [in an oath] to give to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and I will give it to you as a possession. I am Y-H-V-H.” (Exodus 6:6-8)

This is quite a speech to memorize and deliver, for a man who knows he is a poor speaker. But the next verse says:

Then Moshe spoke thus to the Israelites. But they did not listen to Moshe, due to shortness of spirit and due to hard servitude. (Exodus 6:9)

In the portion Shemot, Moshe refused to speak to the Israelites without Aharon as an interpreter. But here in Va-eira, Moshe simply tells the people what God said—with no speech defect, no difficulty with Hebrew, no hesitation over the words. Aharon is not mentioned.

Classic commentary does not try to explain this sudden change. But the change makes sense if a redactor has suddenly switched to a different version of the story. Modern source scholarship identifies the story of Moshe’s recruitment on the mountain in the portion Shemot with a non-P (non-priestly) tradition.² The version from the P tradition begins with Exodus 6:2, which is also the first verse of the portion Va-eira.

Clumsy lips

Right after the overworked Israelites ignore Moshe’s message, God orders Moshe to speak to the pharaoh. Moshe objects:

“Hey, the Israelites do not listen to me. Then how will Paroh listen to me? And I have foreskinned lips!” Then GOD spoke to Moshe and to Aharon, and commanded them regarding the Israelites and Paroh, king of Egypt—to bring out the Israelites from the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 6:12-13)

According to Richard Elliott Friedman, these two verses were added by a redactor.³ But why? Moshe and Aharon have already received God’s instructions. “Foreskinned lips” might indicate that Moshe’s problem as an orator is a speech defect, and the Israelites who were overworked and short of breath did not invest the energy to understand him. But there is no need to insert Moshe’s objection here, since he describes his lips that way again after an intermission giving Moshe and Aharon’s genealogy.

And GOD spoke to Moshe, saying: “I am GOD. Speak to Paroh, king of Egypt, everything that I speak to you.” And Moshe said before GOD: “Hey, I have foreskinned lips! So how will Paroh listen to me?” (Exodus 6:29-30)

Who speaks to the pharaoh?

In the P version of the story in the portion Va-eira, it appears that the whole conversation on Mount Sinai recorded in the portion Shemot never happened, because next God reacts to Moshe’s protest as if it were news, and tells Moshe the same solution God gave on Mount Sinai:

“See, I place you as a god to Paroh, and your brother Aharon will be your prophet. You yourself will speak everything that I command you, and your brother Aharon will speak to Paroh, and he will send out the Israelites from his land.” (Exodus 7:1-2)

Does this mean that from now on, God will speak to Moshe, Moshe will speak to Aharon, Aharon will speak to the pharaoh, and Moshe will initiate miracles with his staff—the same arrangement God decided on in the Mount Sinai version?

No.

First Moshe learns that God will harden the pharaoh’s heart after each miracle, so he will not let the Israelites go until God is ready to bring them out of Egypt. Then God gives instructions for a preliminary miracle:

“When Paroh speaks to you, saying: Give us a miracle for yourselves!—then you must say to Aharon: Take your staff and throw it down before Paroh; it will become a reptile.” (Exodus 7: 9)

Already Aharon is the brother wielding the staff.

The first miracle that affects the whole country is turning the water of the Nile River into blood. At God’s command, Moshe warns the pharaoh at length. Then Aharon strikes the surface of the river, and God turns the water into blood (Exodus 7:14-20).

Moses Speaks to Pharaoh, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

The next miracle, frogs, goes the same way, with Moshe speaking to Pharaoh, and Aharon wielding his staff (Exodus 7:26-8:2). Pharaoh summons both of them and promises to release the Israelites if they plead with their God to remove the frogs. With no prompting from God, Moshe asks Pharaoh to name the day of the frog removal, and adds that the death of the frogs on that exact day will prove God’s unique power (Exodus 8:5-7). For someone who claimed in the portion Shemot that he was “not a man of words”,⁴ he is thinking on his feet and speaking eloquently and confidently.

Moshe continues to be the one who speaks to Pharaoh throughout the rest of the portion Va-eira. Aharon stretches out his staff to initiate the miraculous plague of gnats or lice (Exodus 8:12-13), but Moshe holds out his staff to initiate the plague of hail (Exodus 9:22-23). Regardless of who wields his staff, Moshe does all the talking—and continues through the last three miracles—locusts, darkness, and death of the firstborn—in the following Torah portion, Bo.

Throughout the narrative of the ten miracles or plagues, non-P sources alternate with P sources, according to modern source scholars. But the redactor of this section of narrative stitches together the two versions of the story seamlessly, maintaining Moshe as the prophet who speaks directly to the pharaoh, and showing his increasing confidence and authority.⁵

But in the narrative section from Moshe’s call to prophecy on Mount Sinai (in the portion Shemot) to the miracle of turning water into blood (in the portion Va-eira), the redactor hops between sources without harmonizing them.

I wish the redactor had used more care. It is not that hard to redact; every week I write a lot about the weekly Torah portion or haftarah reading, then go back and select which paragraphs I will actually use for my blog post, often rearranging them in the process. If something I have written does not fit the theme, I remove it and save it for another post. If one paragraph seems to contradict the section before it, I add an explanation. And if I actually do contradict myself, I think about it and start over!

However, I am only redacting my own writing. What if I had the job of combining two earlier stories that I viewed as equally sacred? Perhaps the redactor of this part of the book of Exodus could not bear to eliminate either the narrative that views Moshe as unable or unwilling to speak, or the narrative in which Moshe speaks eloquently to the pharaoh.

What would I do, faced with that dilemma? I would include both—but rearrange the passages slightly, and write a little extra material, to show that Moshe is gradually learning how to speak and gaining confidence.

Although the current usage of “redact” usually focuses on making deletions from a piece of writing, biblical scholarship uses “redact” to mean selecting and arranging various pieces of writing to make a single document.
Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), formulated a “documentary hypothesis” identifying different passages in the Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy) as coming from one of four sources: J, E, P, and D. Source scholarship today abounds with disagreements about non-P sources, as well as different theories for dating P and other sources. But the consensus is that the P (priestly) source is different from all other sources and is clearly identifiable.
Richard Elliott Friedman, the Bible with Sources Revealed, HarperCollins, New York, 2003, p. 128.
Exodus 4:10. See my post Shemot: Not a Man of Words.
See my post Shemot to Bo: Moses Finds his Voice.

Haftarat Shemot or Matot—Jeremiah: A Congenital Prophet

(In this post I refer to people by their Hebrew names first, but to books and places by their English names.)

The English word “prophet” means “1. one who utters divinely inspired revelations. … 2. one gifted with more than ordinary spiritual and moral insight. … 3. one who foretells future events: predictor.”¹

The Biblical Hebrew word navi (נָבִיא), routinely translated as “prophet”, means: 1. one who goes into a temporary altered state and experiences God.² 2. one who receives messages from God and communicates at least some of them to other people.³

Even the second kind of navi does not predict the future, but rather warns people about what God will do to them if they do not change their ways.⁴ Everyone in the Hebrew Bible who hears or reads one of these prophecies has a choice: to continue their behavior and eventually suffer the prescribed doom from God, or to stop doing the wrong things and avoid the doom.

Ironically, although the recipients of prophecies have free will (the ability to choose their own actions), the prophets themselves may not.

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, by Rembrandt, ca. 1630

A time for prophecy

Yirmeyahu (“Jeremiah” in English) seems to have no choice but to prophesy, whether he wants to or not. His dilemma is introduced in the haftarah reading Jeremiah 1:1-2:3, which goes with this week’s Torah portion, Shemot, according to the Sefardi tradition.⁵ The book of Jeremiah opens:

The words of Yirmeyahu, son of Chilkiyahu, one of the priests who were at Anatot in the territory of Benjamin. (Jeremiah 1:1)

Already we know that the father of Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) is a priest, perhaps even the high priest named Chilkiyahu during the reign of King Yoshiyahu (“Josiah” in English).⁶ Priesthood is hereditary in Ancient Israel, so Yermiyahu (Jeremiah) is born a priest. He is also born in the territory of Benjamin, close to Jerusalem, the capital city of the kingdom of Judah.

Before he reaches adulthood, he finds out that he is also a prophet.

The word of God happened to him in the days of Yoshiyahu son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirtieth year of his reign. (Jeremiah 1:2)

King Yoshiyahu (“Josiah” in English) ruled the kingdom of Judah from 640 to 608 B.C.E.—after the Assyrian Empire to the north had become weak and ceded some of northern kingdom of Israel to Judah, and before the new Babylonian empire had grown strong. According to 2 Kings 22 and 23, King Yoshiyahu crusaded to get rid of all the shrines and priests serving other gods.⁷

There is not much work for Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) until after King Yoshiyahu dies, since the main roles of a prophet during the time of the Israelite kingdoms are to challenge government policies and to shame or frighten rich citizens into reforming. But then Babylon’s power grows, and the kings of Judah make no changes in policy to address the threat. The word of God happens to Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) more often, and many of his prophesies warn that unless people return to the exclusive worship of God, and embrace God’s ethical rules, the Babylonians will conquer Judah and Jerusalem.

And it happened through the days of Yehoyakim son of Yoshiyahu, king of Judah, until the end of the eleventh year of Tzidekiyahu son of Yoshiyahu, until Jerusalem went into exile in the fifth month. (Jeremiah 1:3)

The reign of King Tzidekiyahu (“Zedekiah” in English) ended in 586 B.C.E. when the Babylonian army completed its conquest of Judah by destroying Jerusalem and exiling almost all of its remaining citizens to Babylon.

A congenital prophet

The narrative in this week’s haftarah then switches to the first person, and Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) speaks.

And the word of God happened to me, saying: “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you; and before you went out of the womb, I set you apart as holy. A prophet to the nations I appointed you.” (Jeremiah 1:4-5)

What is God communicating here?

“Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you.” Psalm 139 is the only other biblical passage that says God gives human fetuses their physical form and some aspect of their personality:

For you yourself provided my conscience;

You wove me together in my mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13)

Furthermore, in Psalm 139 God knows all human thoughts:

God, you have examined me and you know me.

You know [when] I sit down and stand up,

You discern my intention from afar. (Psalm 139:1-2)

The new claim in the book of Jeremiah is that God knows Yirmeyahu even before weaving him together in the womb. This might mean that God knows what certain individuals will be like in the future. Or it might mean that God creates someone’s personality even before creating that person’s body.

“And before you went out of the womb, I set you apart as holy.” This statement could mean merely that Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) was born into the priesthood, since priests are holy in the sense of being set apart for temple service and restricted regarding marriage and mourning.⁸ But it might also mean that God made him, in utero, even holier than a priest, even more set apart from normal life.

“A prophet to the nations I appointed you.” In the rest of the book of Jeremiah, the prophet addresses most of his prophecies to the citizens of Judah, although he does utter some prophecies about other nations.⁹ But the point in this verse is that before Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) was born, God determined how he would spend his entire adult life.

A right of refusal?

That raises the question of whether it is even possible for Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) to refuse to speak as a prophet. (Presumably he cannot help hearing, or otherwise experiencing, God.) Some modern commentators assert that he does have the power to refuse. For example, Plaut wrote:

“The call to Jeremiah may thus be seen to express both predetermination and freedom: the child was born with particular gifts and a high degree of religious sensitivity. But giving his life to a pursuit of the divine call—with all its rewards, difficulties and dangers—was a decision that Jeremiah had to make for himself.”¹⁰

After God’s opening salvo, Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) protests that he does not have the eloquence to be a prophet.

“Ah-ah, my lord God! Hey, I do not know how to speak, since I am a na-ar.” (Jeremiah 1:6)

na-ar(נַעַר) = boy or young man.

He says this, according to Malbim, because he lacks confidence, because he does not know how to speak well in front of a congregation, and because he is afraid people will kill him on account of his prophecies.¹¹

And God said to me: “Don’t you say ‘I am a na-ar’. For you will go wherever I send you, and you will speak whatever I command you.” (Jeremiah 1:7)

Midrash Tanchuma explains, ominously: “That is, against your will you will go, and against your will you will speak.”¹²

Indeed, later in the book Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) complains:

“… the word of God happens to me, for scorn and derision all day. So I thought: I will not mention him, and I will not speak any more in his name. But it [God’s word] happened in my mind like a burning fire shut up in my bones, and it exhausted me to hold it in, and I could not endure.” (Jeremiah 20:8-9)

By the prophet’s own testimony, he has no freedom of choice when it comes to prophecy.

A promise of rescue

After God tells Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) that he must go and speak at God’s command, God attempts to reassure him by saying:

“Don’t be afraid in front of them! For I am with you to rescue you.” (Jeremiah 1:8)

“To rescue you” could mean merely to rescue him if his speech stumbles. But God makes the real meaning clear before the interview is over:

“And hey, I appoint you this day as a fortified city, and as an iron pillar, and as bronze walls, against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, against its officers, against its priests, and against the people of the land. And they will battle against you, but they will not prevail over you, because I am with you,” declares God, “to rescue you!” (Jeremiah 1:18)

Later in the book, the prophecies of Yermiyahy (Jeremiah) are so unpopular that he needs to be rescued from various death threats.¹³ The worst is when he tries to leave Jerusalem on a business trip, and a guard at the gate accuses him of defecting to the Babylonians. City officials beat him, imprison him, and eventually convince King Tzediyahu to put him to death. Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) is lowered into a pit with no water, only mud. But before he dies of thirst and hunger, the king changes his mind and has him pulled up and returned to the regular prison. He remains there until the Babylonians capture Jerusalem.¹⁴ Then, while the city is burned down and its nobles are killed, the Babylonians remove him, give him food, and set him free.¹⁵

The characters in the Hebrew Bible have fewer choices than we do in today’s world, but almost all of them have free will, the ability to choose to do something different. We know this because the prophets who utter prophecies issue warnings about how people will suffer if they do not change their ways.

But do the prophets themselves have free will? It is hard to know, since even reluctant prophets like Moses come to accept their role in the world—except for Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah), who hates being a prophet so much that he wishes he had never been born. He declares:

“Accursed is the day that I was born! … Why did I ever go out from the womb to see trouble and grief, and to use up my days in shame!” (Jeremiah 20:14-20)

Today we have more choices than anyone in ancient Jerusalem, yet our range of choices is still limited by our starting point. A person is born into a family; events can change one’s upbringing as time goes on, but one’s first environment makes its mark. A person is born with predetermined genes; they can be turned on or off by events, but not replaced by different genes.¹⁶Some infants have congenital defects. Some, for all we know, might be congenital prophets.

Do we have more control over our own lives than Yirmeyahu? Or are we just less aware that someone or something is pulling the strings?

www.merriam-webster.com, 2025.
E.g. 1 Samuel 10:5-6 and 10-13.
E.g. Deutereonomy 34:10, 1 Samuel 3:20, etc. There are also false prophets, as in Deuteronomy 13:1-4.
Deuteronomy 18:22 is an exception to this rule; the book of Jonah is a prime example.
The haftarah reading Jeremiah 1:1-2:3 goes with the portion Matot in Numbers according to the Ashkenazi tradition.
2 Kings 22:4ff.
2 Kings 22:1-23:25.
Leviticus 21:1-15.
Jeremiah 9:25, 25:9–29, 27:3–11, and chapters 46–51.
W. Gunther Plaut, The Haftarah Commentary, UAHC Press, New York, 1996, p. 413.
Malbim is the acronym of Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Weisser (1809–1879).
Midrash Tanchuma, c.500–c.800 C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
Jeremiah 11:21-23, 26:8-11, 26:24, 36:26.
Jeremiah chapters 37-38.
Jeremiah 40:1-4.
At least not yet; gene splicing is still in its infancy.

Naso, Bemidabar, & Vayakheil: Reconstructing

(It is a pleasure to type effortlessly and comfortably again! I am glad return to my favorite work: writing about Torah.)

Model of Tent of Meeting in Timna Valley Park, Israel

The Tent of Meeting that the Israelites make as a dwelling for God in the book of Exodus is 10 cubits wide, 10 cubits high, and 30 cubits long. (Ten cubits equals about 15½ feet, or 4¾ meters.) This boxy tent stands in the back half of an open courtyard, slightly smaller than an Olympic-sized swimming pool, with a linen wall stretched between acacia wood posts around its periphery.

Neither the tent nor the courtyard is a permanent structure.

In the first two Torah portions of the book of Numbers, we learn how everything is dismantled, transported, and reassembled at the next campsite on the Israelites’ long journey north from Mount Sinai—and who is responsible for the wood, the fabric, and the holy furnishings.

Exodus: Vayakheil

Neither the inside cloth nor the outside cloth of the Tent of Meeting is sewn into a continuous shell.

And all the wise of mind among the makers of the work, the mishkan, made ten cloths of fine twisted linen threads and blue, purple, and red [dyes]; they were made with a design of keruvim. (Exodus 36:8)

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = (literally) dwelling place. (In the books of Exodus through Numbers, mishkan always refers to the portable tent-sanctuary where God dwells, at least part-time, in the tent’s back chamber, the Holy of Holies. After its first assembly, in Exodus 40:17-33, it is also called the Tent of Meeting and the Tent of Testimony. One common English translation for mishkan is “tabernacle”.)

Keruv, ivory from Samaria, 9th-8th century BCE

keruvim (כְּרֻבִים or כְּרוּבִים) = hybrid creatures with wings. Singular keruv. (Two gold keruvim rise from either end of the gold lid of the ark in the Holy of Holies, the back chamber of the mishkan, and keruvim are woven or embroidered into some of the fabrics of the mishkan as well.)¹

Each of these ten tapestries is 4 cubits wide (about 2 yards or meters) by 28 cubits long (about 14 yards or meters), long enough to drape across the ceiling frame and hang down on both sides just short of the ground. Fifty loops of blue wool are sewn down both side edges of each cloth, and the loops are connected with gold clasps.

And fifty gold clasps were made, and the cloths were joined, each one to the other, with the clasps. And the mishkan became one [piece]. (Exodus 36:13)

Someone has to fasten a row of 50 clasps nine times, every time the Tent of Meeting is assembled; and unfasten them all when the tent is dismantled again. (The open end of the mishkan is covered with a free-hanging curtain, so it serves at the entrance. A hanging curtain also separates the Holy of Holies from the main chamber inside the tent.)

The outside of the framework is covered with similar cloths woven from goat-hair, joined together by bronze clasps. Two layers of leather lie on top of the goat-hair cloth over the roof.

The frame of the tent roof is made from acacia wood bars, but the three walls are solid acacia wood: wide upright planks stabilized with cross-bars. Two tenons at the bottom of each plank fit into silver sockets in wood bases. And even though these wooden elements are hidden by linen inside and goat-hair fabric outside, they are covered with gold!² Each of the 48 upright planks is over 15 feet tall and 3 feet wide, so erecting and dismantling the underlying wooden structure means a lot of heavy labor.

Numbers: Bemidbar

The book of Numbers opens after the Israelites have made the Tent of Meeting and all its furnishings (in Exodus), and ordained new priests for the revised religion (in Leviticus). Before the people leave Mount Sinai and head north, God organizes them for the coming conquest of Canaan.

The first Torah portion, Bemidbar, opens with God calling for a census of soldiers for future combat: the men age 20 and older in every tribe except Levi. The Levites are exempt from battle because they are assigned their own “army” duty: transporting and guarding the Tent of Meeting.

And they will be in charge of all the gear of the Tent of Meeting, and the Israelites’ charge to serve the service of the mishkan. (Numbers 3:8)

Campsites of 12 tribes and 3 clans of Levites

When God signals that the people must pull up stakes, the Levites dismantle the Tent of Meeting. They carry the furnishings, the fabric, and the wood on every journey. When the Israelites pitch camp again, the Levites erect God’s tent in the middle and the courtyard wall around it. They pitch their own tents immediately around the courtyard, and serve as guards to prevent any unauthorized persons from encroaching on the sacred space.

There are three clans of Levites, named after the three sons of Levi listed in Genesis 46:11: Gershon, Kohat (or Kehat), and Merari. Sons in a biblical genealogy are list by birth order, so Gershon was born first, then Kohat, then Merari last.

And the charge of the Gershonites at the Tent of Meeting was the mishkan and the tent: its coverings, and the curtain of the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, and the cloths of the courtyard, and the curtain of the entrance of the gate of the coutyard, which is near the mishkan and near the altar—all around; and their cords, and all its service. (Numbers 3:25-26)

The descendants of Levi’s middle son, Kohat, are responsible for transporting the holy items inside the mishkan, and the bronze altar in the courtyard.

Their charge was the ark, the table, and lampstand, and the altars, and the holy utensils for ministering to them, and the curtain, and all their service. (Numbers 3:31)

The only curtain that this clan is responsible for is the one inside the tent that divides the main chamber from the Holy of Holies.

But why are the descendants of Levi’s middle son responsible for the holiest items of the mishkan? In the book of Genesis, the firstborn son of each extended family becomes responsible for making burnt offerings to God. If the people followed this precedent, the descendants of Levi’s oldest son, Gershon, would be in charge of the holiest things.

However, in Exodus and Numbers, the job of burning offerings for God is transferred to the priests, with assistance from Levites. All priests are descended from the first high priest, Moses’ brother Aaron. Moses and Aaron’s father, Amram, is a descendant of Kohat, the middle son of Levi.³ That means the rest of the Kohatites are Moses’ and Aaron’s closest relatives. No wonder they become responsible for transporting the holiest items in the mishkan.

As for the descendants of Levi’s youngest son:

The Merarites are appointed for the charge of the beams of the mishkan and its bars, and its uprights, and its sockets, and all its gear, and all its service; and the uprights of the courtyard, all around, and their sockets, and their tent-pegs, and their cords. (Numbers 3:36-37)

While the men in the other tribes of Israel are mustered into the army at age 20, the work of disassembling, carrying, reassembling , and guarding the Tent of Meeting is restricted to Levite men between the ages of 30 and 50. (See my post Bemidbar: Two Kinds of Troops.)

When God’s cloud lifts from above the mishkan, indicating that it is time for the Israelites to journey on, the priests enter the tent first. Aaron and his sons Elazar and Itamar wrap up the ark, bread table, lampstand, and gold incense altar inside, and the bronze altar in the courtyard. (See my post Bemidbar: Covering the Sacred.) The embroidered curtain that divides the Holy of Holies from the main chamber of the mishkan becomes the first of three layers covering the ark.

Only after these holy objects are completely covered, so they cannot be seen or touched, may the other Kohatite men pick them up by their carrying poles. And only after the Tent of Meeting is empty may the Gershonites and Merarites begin dismantling it.

Numbers: Naso

This week’s Torah portion, Naso, opens with God’s instructions regarding the Gershonites and Merarites between the ages of 30 and 50—

—everyone who enters to do military service of the military, to serve the service at the Tent of Meeting. (Numbers 4:23 for Gershonites, Numbers 4:30 for Merarites)

They are non-combatants in any future battle because they must be continuously responsible for all the elements of the tent itself, as well as its unroofed courtyard.

Once the sacred objects have been removed, the Gershonites take down all the lengths of fabric and leather, carefully undoing 950 clasps. They handle the lightest objects, so their work requires the least physical strength. But it requires the most patience and delicacy.

The Merarites do heavy physical labor. Furthermore, disassembling and reassembly the wooden structure with its upright plants, cross-bars, and bases, is a team effort requiring coordination between the men so that nothing collapses.

Once the wooden structure is stable, the fabric layers have all been fastened to make continuous walls and roofs, and the holy objects are all in place, only the priests may enter the mishkan. But the Levites remain on duty, assisting in the courtyard, and guarding the sacred space they have rebuilt.

Some people excel at fine detail work, like the Gershonites. Others are good at team projects on a grand scale, like the Merarites, whether they help organize the team or do the heavy lifting. We need both kinds of people to build a community.

And although everyone who has contributed tries to guard their community and keep it going, no congregation, association, institute, or enterprise continues forever unchanged. At some point, it will fall apart—unless the Gershonites and Merarites in the group pitch in to carefully dismantle the old structure, help everyone move to a place that meets the people’s new needs, and then use the elements of the old structure to build a new one. And we need people like the Kohatites to carry the most sacred goals and values of the community into the next stage.

Never underestimate a Levite.

For more on keruvim, see my post Terumah: Cherubs are Not for Valentine’s Day.
Exodus 36:34.
Exodus 6:20.
Numbers 4:5-6. See my post Bemidbar: Covering the Sacred.

Ki Tisa: Apotheosis of Moses?

(This is my twelfth and final post in a series about the evolving relationship between Moses and God in the book of Exodus/Shemot. Next week’s post will be back in sync with the Jewish weekly readings. Meanwhile, this is Passover week! If you’d like to read one of my posts on Passover, you might try: Pesach & Vayikra: Holy Matzah.)

Moses: from fearful loner to authoritative leader

When Moses walks over to look at the bush that burns but is not consumed, he is a curious man who has compassion for the victims of bullies,¹ but he also has a history of anxiety. After a problematic childhood as an Israelite who was adopted by Egyptian royalty, he fled a murder charge in Egypt, then found a home with a Midianite priest. Safe but still wary, the last thing Moses wants to do is return to Egypt.

Moses and the Burning Bush, by Domenico Zampieri, 17th century

Then God speaks to him out of the fire, and Moses hides his face. (See my post: Shemot: A Close Look at the Burning Bush.) God tells him that he will be the human leader of the victimized Israelites in Egypt; Moses must give the pharaoh ultimatums, then conduct the people from Egypt to Canaan.

Moses tries to excuse himself from the job. He is certain that he is not qualified (see my post: Shemot: Empathy, Fear, and Humility); that the Israelites will not believe or trust him (see my post: Shemot: Names and Miracles); and that he cannot speak well (see my post: Shemot: Not a Man of Words). But God patiently answers his every objection, like a parent with a resistant child. Panicked, Moses begs God to send someone else. God coaxes Moses into cooperating by promising that his long-lost brother Aaron will help him (see my post: Moses Gives Up).

Back in Egypt, Moses gradually changes. During his first few negotiations with the pharaoh, he simply parrots the words God gives him, but as his confidence grows he adds words of his own. It helps that a powerful deity backs him up with miraculous plagues, and it helps that the pharaoh and his court treat Moses with increasing respect. (See my post: Shemot to Bo: Moses Finds His Voice.)

When he leads the Israelites across the wilderness to Mount Sinai, they are the ones who behaved like wayward and frightened children. Moses behaves like a nervous new parent. He asks God, his mentor, for advice, but he also acts on his own initiative. (See my posts: Beshalach: Moses Graduates and Yitro: Moses as Middle Manager.)

At Mount Sinai, God pursues a formal covenant with the Israelite people. Between them, God and Moses arrange a covenant four times. (See my post: Yitro & Mishpatim: Four Attempts at a Lasting Covenant.) The third of the four covenants is entirely Moses’ creation, and includes all of the people in a dramatic ritual with standing stones, animal sacrifices, blood splashing, and a public reading of the laws God has told Moses so far. The fourth covenant, God’s idea, is when the elders behold God’s “feet” and hold a feast (the Ancient Near East equivalent of a signing ceremony for a treaty).

Then Moses spends 40 days on the mountaintop listening to God outline a revamped religion, which includes a sanctuary tent where God will dwell in the midst of the people. But the Israelites below think Moses will never return, and they ask Aaron for an idol to follow instead. Aaron makes the Golden Calf, and the people worship it—a clear violation of the covenant with God.

On the 40^th day God offers to exterminate the people and start over with Moses’ descendants, but Moses passes God’s test and remains loyal to the Israelites. He walks down to the camp and smashes the two stone tablets engraved by God, but God recognizes Moses’ right to make decisions and takes no action. (See my post: Ki Tisa: Taking Risks.) The co-leaders arrange a massacre and a plague that kill the worst Golden Calf worshippers.

Then God tells Moses that a messenger will lead the Israelites to Canaan, because God is too angry to go in their midst. Moses presses God to reverse that decision, and also to pardon all the surviving Israelites. God seems favorable toward both requests, but never makes an explicit commitment. (See my post: Ki Tisa: Seeking A Pardon.) A lack of openness between the two leaders of the Israelites continues through the book of Numbers, with Moses pitching arguments designed to flatter and influence God, and God making decisions that are close to what Moses requests but not exactly the same.²

The story about Moses’ second 40-day stint at the top of Mount Sinai illustrates that the working relationship between the two leaders is not the only thing that changes.

Moses and God: shifting commitments

At the burning bush, God was determined to rescue the Israelites from Egypt and give them the land of Canaan. Moses tried to get out of being personally involved, even though he was empathetic toward all victims of bullies.

By the time Moses leads the Israelites to Mount Sinai, he has unreservedly embraced the mission God gave him, and he would do anything to make sure the Israelites as a people get to Canaan, even if individual Israelites have to die along the way. So after the Golden Calf worship, he focuses on restoring good relations between God and the people.

But God views the Golden Calf as a personal rejection, and seems less committed to the Israelites after that episode. God starts calling the Israelites Moses’ people, and shies away from recommitting to God’s earlier plan to dwell among them in the sanctuary tent.³ Twice in the book of Numbers, God threatens to wipe out all the Israelites.⁴

The God character: a new development

Nevertheless, when Moses asks to see God’s “ways”, “glory”, and “face”,⁵ God shows him what Jews now call “The Thirteen Attributes of Mercy”, including compassion, patience, loyal-kindness, and a willingness to exonerate (some of) the guilty.⁶ Although God continues to smite people in sudden fury from time to time, this description of God indicates a change in the God character that was depicted earlier in the Torah.

And right after the revelation of the Thirteen Attributes, when Moses begs God once more to pardon the people, God says:

“Hey, I am cutting a covenant: In front of all your people I will do wonders that have not been created on all the earth and among all the nations. And all the people in whose midst you are, they will see the doing of Y-H-V-H, how awesome it is what I do with you.” (Exodus 34:10)

The only awesome deed God mentions is driving out the six peoples living in Canaan when the Israelites arrive there. This is a promise that God will “give” them the land of Canaan, even though God is still calling them “your people” (Moses’ people) instead of “my people”. In return, the Israelites must refrain from making idols or bowing down to any other god and reject the gods of Canaan by destroying their objects of worship. They must also refuse to make covenants with the natives of Canaan, and avoid intermarriage with them. Then God throws in some of the earlier rules about observing religious holidays and donating firstborn animals and first fruits to God.

Then Y-H-V-H said to Moses: “Write these words for yourself, because according to these words, I cut a covenant with you and with Israel.” (Exodus 34:27)

So even if God does not explicitly pardon the people, as Moses asked, God is now patient and loyal enough to propose another covenant.

Moses: an apotheosis?

Moses on Mount Sinai, by Jean-Léon Gérôme,
1895-1900

The experience of beholding God’s attributes also changes Moses in ways that might be considered an apotheosis: deification or elevation to divine status.

And he was there with Y-H-V-H forty days and forty nights. Bread he did not eat, and water he did not drink. And [God] engraved on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Words. (Exodus 34:28)

Exodus does not say whether Moses went without food or drink the first time he spent 40 days at the top of Mount Sinai, though it is hard to imagine him trudging up to the barren volcanic mountaintop carrying enough food and water on his back to last 40 days. But Exodus does say that Moses lives without eating or drinking during his second 40-day stint.⁷

Shemot Rabbah explained: “What, then, did he eat? He was sustained by the aura of the Divine Presence. Do not wonder, as the heavenly beasts that bear the Throne are sustained by the aura of the Divine Presence.”⁸ This makes Moses like the serafim in Isaiah’s vision or the divine creatures in Ezekiel’s vision, at least temporarily.⁹

Rabbeinu Bachya wrote: “Moses’ nourishment during these forty days was provided by the attribute חסד and the radiation of supernatural light.”¹⁰ Chesed, חסד, is the “loyal-kindness” in God’s thirteen attributes. This commentary implies that God’s new gentle and compassionate approach sustains Moses so that he can live on the supernatural equivalent of light.

At the end of Moses’ first 40-day stint on the mountaintop, God gave him a pair of stone tablets that were already engraved. These were the tablets that Moses smashed at the foot of the mountain when he saw the ecstatic worship of the Golden Calf. For Moses’ second 40-day stint, God tells him to hew out his own stone blanks and carry them up.¹¹ Then God engraves them after revealing the Thirteen Attributes. Moses may even see the words appearing on the stones.

And it was, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai—and the two tablets of testimony were in Moses’ hand when he came down from Mount Sinai—then Moses did not know that the skin of his face karan because of [God’s] speech with him. (Exodus 34:29)

karan (קָרַן) = shone, was radiant.

This verb has the same root as keren (קֶרֶן ) = horn, ray of light. (The Latin translation of this verse in the Vulgate said Moses “sprouted horns”, so for centuries artists depicted Moses with two horns growing from his forehead.)

What makes Moses’ formerly ordinary face start radiating beams of light? The text says it happens because of God’s “speech with him”. Many Jewish commentators wrote that it happens when God reveals the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy to Moses. God said:

“… as my glory passes by, I will place you in a crevice of the rock, and screen you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you will see the back side of me. But my face will not be seen.” (Exodus 33:22-23)

The “back side” of God that Moses “sees” consists of the Thirteen Attributes. Either God’s supernatural hand,¹² or the experience of these divine attributes,¹³ gives Moses an inner light so strong that it shines out through the skin of his face.

On the other hand, some commentators wrote that God gives Moses a radiant face as a strategic move to make sure the Israelites continue to accept him as their leader. The 13^th-century commentary Chizkuni says:

“Seeing that prior to Moses’ return with the first set of Tablets the people had been prepared to accept another leader in Moses’ place, his emitting rays of light on his descent from the Mountain this time made a repetition of such an attempt quite unlikely.”¹⁴

And Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, and hey! The skin of his face karan! And they were afraid to come near him. (Exodus 34:30)

Chizkuni explained: “According to the plain meaning of the verse, when they beheld him, they thought that they were looking at an angel.”¹⁵

And Robert Alter wrote: “If, as seems likely, Moses’ face is giving off some sort of supernatural radiance, the fear of drawing near him precisely parallels the people’s fear of drawing near the fiery presence of God on the mountaintop.”¹⁶

Detail from Terra Sancta, by Willem Janszoon Blaeu and Joan Blaeu, 17th century

Moses himself is not aware that his own face was radiating light, according to the 18^th-century commentary Or HaChayim, because he assumes that the extra illumination came from the second pair of stone tablets he is holding as he walks down the mountain. “As soon as he deposited the Tablets and he became aware that the light had not departed, he realised that he himself was the source of the light.”¹⁷

Then Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the chiefs in the congregation returned, and Moses spoke to them. And after that, all the Israelites approached, and he commanded them everything that Y-H-V-H had spoken to him on Mount Sinai. (Exodus 34:31-32)

According to Chizkuni, just hearing Moses’ voice calling out was enough so that “they realized that he was not an angel”. Then when Moses spoke to Aaron and the chiefs, the rest of the Israelites “noticed that no harm had come to them from his speaking to them.”¹⁸

And Moses finished speaking with them, and he put a veil over his face. And whenever Moses came before Y-H-V-H to speak with [God], he would remove the veil until he went out. And [whenever] he went out to speak with the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see Moses’ face, that skin of his face was karan. Then Moses would put back the veil over this face, until he came in to speak with [God]. (Exodus 34:33-35)

Moses exposes his altered face to God, and he to the Israelites whenever he is telling them the latest batch of rules from God. Who would question the words of someone whose face emits supernatural light? But the rest of the time when he is with people, Moses covers his face with a light-proof veil.

According to Rashi and Ibn Ezra, Moses puts on the veil out of respect for the light God has created on his face; it is not for ordinary use, or for people to gawk at. People should only see it when he is transmitting God’s instructions. According to Kli Yakar, “Moshe, in his great humility, was embarrassed when people gaped at the radiance of his face.”¹⁹

It seems as if God has turned Moses into a semi-divine being. He lives for 40 days on the aura of God’s presence, like God’s divine attendants. When he comes down from Mount Sinai, God’s supernatural fire shines through the skin of his face. Moses might look like one of the gods of other peoples in the Ancient Near East, who radiated an unearthly light called melammu. For example, a story about the Babylonian god Marduk says “With burning flame he filled his body” and “With overpowering brightness his head was crowned.”²⁰ The gods in Mesopotamian myths sometimes gave melammu to their favorite kings.

Or perhaps (if he took off his robe) Moses would look like the celestial being shaped like a man whom Daniel sees in a vision sent by Y-H-V-H:

His body was like yellow jasper, and his face had the appearance of lightning, and his eyes were like torches of fire, and his arms and legs were like glittering bronze, and the sound of his speech was like a roaring crowd. (Daniel 10:6)

But in the Hebrew Bible, the various angelic creatures in the bible are either mouthpieces for God or manifestations of God’s powers, without lives of their own.

Perhaps that is why Moses’ radiant face appears only in Exodus 34:29-35. The authors of the rest of the Torah chose to depict Moses as a human being—one who is especially close to God, but a mortal man with his own thoughts and personality.

In the next chapter of Exodus, Moses proceeds with God’s earlier plan for building a tent-sanctuary, as if God had never refused to dwell in the midst of the Israelites. And God does not challenge Moses’ stubborn human initiative.

Moses Sees the Promised Land from Afar, by James Tissot, circa 1900

When Moses is 120 years old and has finished speaking to the Israelites on the Moabite bank of the Jordan River, God tells him to climb up the heights of Aviram and look across the river at the land of Canaan. God says:

So, after delivering a prophecy about the tribes, Moses hikes up.

“You will die on the mountain where you are going up … because at a distance you will see the land, but you will not enter there, into the land that I am giving the Israelites.” (Deuteronomy 32:50, 52)

And Moses, the servant of Y-H-V-H, died there in the land of Moab, al-pi Y-H-V-H. And [God] buried him in the valley in the land of Moab … and no man knows his burial place to this day. (Deuteronomy 34:5-6)

al-pi (עַל־פִּי) = an idiom meaning at the order of, at the command of, according to the word of. Literally: al (עַל) = upon, over, on account of, because of, by. + pi (פִּי) = mouth of.

Some commentators translate al-pi as “by the mouth of”, and say that Moses dies by a kiss from God.²¹ So although Moses is not permanently transformed into a semi-divine being, he has the the most intimate human relationship with God.

And no prophet arose again in Israel like Moses, whom Y-H-V-H knew face to face. (Exodus 34:10)

Moses has already taken action against an Egyptian taskmaster beating an Israelite (Exodus 2:11-12) and male shepherds bullying female shepherds (Exodus 2:16-19). See my post: Shemot: Empathy, Fear, and Humility.
E.g. Numbers 14:11-35.
See my post: Ki Tisa: Seeking A Pardon.
Numbers 14:11-12, 17:8-9.
Exodus 33:13, 33:18, 33:20. See my post: Ki Tisa: Seeking A Pardon.
Exodus 34:6-7.
At least this is the second time Exodus says Moses spends 40 days and 40 nights on the mountaintop. But some classic commentators claimed it was the third time, the second time being the indefinite period when God and Moses converse in Exodus 33:12-34:3.
Shemot Rabbah, 12^th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Isaiah 6:2-7, Ezekiel 1:5-26 and 10:1-22.
Rabbeinu Bachya (Rabbi Bachya ben Asher ibn Halawaa, 1255-1340), translation in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 34:1.
E.g. Midrash Tanchuma (8^th century), Rashi (11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), and Da-at Zekinim (12^th-13^th century).
E.g. Ibn Ezra (12^th century) and Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (21^st century).
Chizkuni, by Chizkiah ben Manoach, 13^th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni, ibid.
Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2004, p. 512.
Or HaChayim, by Chayim ibn Attar, 18^th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni, ibid.
Kli Yakar, by Shlomo Ephraim ben Aaron Luntschitz, 16th century; translation in www.sefaria.org.
Enuma Elish IV, lines 40 and 58; translation by L.W. King.
E.g. Talmud Bavli, Moed Katan 28a, Bava Batra 17a; Rashi; Da-at Zekinim.

Ki Tisa: Seeking a Pardon

(This is my eleventh post in a series about the conversations between Moses and God, and how their relationship evolves in the book of Exodus/Shemot. If you would like to read one of my posts about this week’s Torah portion, Vayikra, the first in the book of Leviticus/Vayikra, you might try: Vayikra: A Voice Calling.)

Moses Destroys the Tablets, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

On top of Mount Sinai, God gives Moses a pair of stone tablets engraved with laws, and detailed instructions for making a portable tent-sanctuary. At the foot of the mountain, the Israelites despair of seeing Moses again, and start worshiping a Golden Calf. God offers to exterminate the people and start over with Moses’ descendants, but Moses remains loyal to the Israelites. Then Moses goes down and smashes God’s stone tablets without permission, but God takes no action against him. The working relationship between the two leaders, human and divine, seems strong. (See my post: Ki Tisa: Taking Risks.)

Moses, citing an order from God, arranges the massacre of 3,000 Israelites who are presumed to be the worst of the Golden Calf worshipers.¹

Then it was the next day, and Moses said to the people: “You, you are guilty of a great guilt! And now, I will go up to Y-H-V-H. Perhaps akhaprah [with God] on behalf of your guilt.” (Exodus 32:30)

akhaprah (אֲכַפְּרָה) = I may make atonement, appease, effect reconciliation.

Moses does not want the surviving Israelites to think they are in the clear, so he reminds them that they, too, bear some guilt, even those who passively stood by while others engaged in calf worship. But he also wants God to forgive the surviving Israelites, so he tries to get God to commit to a general pardon.

Forgive them or erase me

Then Moses returned to Y-H-V-H and said: “Please, this people is guilty of a great guilt; they made themselves a god of gold! And now, if you would lift their guilt— But if not, erase me, please, from the book katavta!” (Exodus 32:31-32)

katavta (כָּתָבְתָּ) = you have written, you have engraved words on.

According to Rashi, “the book you have written” means “the entire book of the Torah” and the reason Moses asked to be erased from it is “that people should not say about me that I was not worthy enough to pray effectively for them.”²

Yet in the Hebrew Bible, the only part of the Torah that God writes directly (instead of dictating to Moses) is whatever God engraves on the two stone tablets (according to Deuteronomy 5:19, the Ten Words or Ten Commandments).

Other commentators have identified “the book you have written” with “the book of life” in Psalm 69.³ Praying for the downfall of his enemies, the psalmist begs God:

“Erase them from the bookof life, and do not inscribe them among the righteous!” (Psalm 69:29)

Many psalms assume that God grants health and long life to the righteous, but Psalm 69 is the only one in which God keeps a (perhaps metaphorical) account book.⁴

So Moses is asking God to either pardon the Israelites, or give him death. I suspect he hopes that God will quickly opt to preserve the life of God’s favorite prophet, and issue a pardon.

According to Or HaChayim, “… it is one of God’s virtues that He cannot tolerate seeing His righteous people, His ‘friends,’ suffer pain. Accordingly, how could God inflict the pain of destroying His people on Moses? Surely God was perfectly aware of how Moses would grieve over the destruction of his people!”⁵

Yet God’s reply indicates that he does not fall for Moses’ either-or statement.

And Y-H-V-H said to Moses: “Whoever is guilty against me, I will erase from my book. And now go, lead the people to where I have spoken to you! Hey, my messenger will go before you. But on the day of my accounting, I will call them to account over their guilt.” (Exodus 32:33-34)

God is not about to erase Moses, who is innocent. But God refuses to declare a blanket pardon for the surviving Israelites.

When is the day of God’s accounting? Every day, according to a commentary in Yiddish: “The Holy One said: I will forgive the sin. However, I will make Israel pay for the sin a little at a time. No trouble comes upon Israel that is not related to the Golden Calf. That is to say, the Holy One repays Israel for the sin of the Golden Calf all the time.”⁶

Or perhaps God’s day of accounting is the day of a plague in the next verse of Exodus:

And Y-H-V-H struck the people with plague over what they did with the calf that Aaron made. (Exodus 32:35) The text does not say how many people die in this plague, but it certainly counts as a punishment.

Let me know your ways

Then Y-H-V-H spoke to Moses: “Go up from here, you and the people whom you brought up from Egypt! … I will not go up in your midst—because you are a stiff-necked people—lest I consume you on the way.” (Exodus 33:1, 3)

Now God says Moses brought up the people from Egypt, making him responsible even though it was God’s idea in the first place, and it never would have happened without God’s persistence and miracles. God also seems to be ordering an immediate departure from Mount Sinai, even though the people have not constructed the tent-sanctuary God requested so that God could “dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8).

Furthermore, God decides not to dwell among the Israelites as they travel, because God is so angry already that when the stubborn Israelites violate the rules again, God will “consume” them. (This God character is located in only one place at a time.)

The Israelites mourn over the news that God will not go with them. But Moses is determined to get God to both pardon them and travel in their midst. He tries a different tactic, saying:

“And now, please, if I have found favor in your eyes, please let me know your ways! Then I will know you—so that I can find favor in your eyes. And see that your people is this people!” (Exodus 33:13)

Moses asks to learn God’s ways so that he can continue to please God in the future. He does not mention that if he knows how to please God, he can bargain more effectively for God’s pardon and presence.

Moses on Mount Sinai, by Jean-Leon Gerome, 1895-1900
(Divine communion?)

Rabbi Steinsaltz, however, assigned Moses an additional motivation: “Moses requested a deeper relationship with God than he had attained thus far. Until this point, he had mainly received instructions. Now Moses desired the secret knowledge that would enable him to achieve communion with God, as one’s closeness to God is related to the extent of his knowledge of the Divine.”⁷

Moses follows up his polite request to know God’s ways with an imperative: “See that your people is this people!” God must admit ownership of the Israelites. They would not be in the wilderness of Sinai if it were not for God, and they will feel abandoned if God’s presence is not with them.⁸

And [God] said: “[If] my panim goes [with you], will I make you rest easy?” (Exodus 33:14)

Moses exclaims:

“If your panim is not going, don’t bring us up from here!” (Exodus 33:15)

panim (פָּנִים) = face; front surface; presence.

He adds a rationale that he hopes will sway God.

“And how is it to be known, then, that I have found favor in your eyes, I and your people? Isn’t it in your going with us? Then we are distinct, I and your people, from all the people that are on the panim of the earth.” (Exodus 33:16)

And Y-H-V-H said to Moses: “Indeed, this word that you have spoken, I will do, since you have found favor in my eyes, and I know you by name.” (Exodus 33:17)

It is not clear which “word” God is promising to do: to go in the midst of the Israelites, or to let Moses know God’s ways. At this point Moses decides to press his request to learn God’s ways.

Then [Moses] said: “Please let me see your kavod!” (Exodus 33:18)

kavod (כָּבוֹד) = impressiveness, honor, splendor, glory.

All the Israelites have seen the kavod of God as a fire at the top of Mount Sinai, which looked like a cloud to Moses.⁹ But Moses is asking to see more. According to Chizkuni, “Moses asked for a visual appearance of God’s essence.”¹⁰ But according to Rabbi Hirsch, “The perception he now seeks is on a higher level, that of intuition.”¹¹

And [God] said: “I, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of your panim, and I will call out the name of Y-H-V-H in front of your panim. But … you will not be able to see my panim, because a human cannot see me and live.” (Exodus 33:19-20)

Here panim means “face”. Moses’ face is where his physical organs for seeing and hearing are located (if we count ears as part of a human face). God’s face is unknowable.

“… as my kavod passes by, I will place you in a crevice of the rock, and screen you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you will see the back side of me. But my panim will not be seen.” (Exodus 33:22-23)

Next God grants an additional favor that Moses has not asked for.

And Y-H-V-H said to Moses: “Carve yourself two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will inscribe on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you smashed.” (Exodus 34:1)

The first time, God provided the completed tablets. Now God tells Moses to carve stone blanks, which God will inscribe. Abarbanel explained: “For it was Moses’ obligation, since he destroyed the first set of tablets … And the reason for the word ‘yourself’ was to warn Moses that he himself, and no other, should carve the tablets.”¹²

Moses carries two blank stone tablets up Mount Sinai early the next morning. God comes down in a cloud, and as “the back side” of God passes Moses, Moses perceives some of God’s qualities. Either God or Moses calls out:

“Y-H-V-H! Y-H-V-H! Mighty-one, compassionate and gracious, long-nosed [slow to anger], abundant in loyal-kindness and reliability, keeping loyal-kindness to the thousandth [generation], lifting away crookedness and transgression and wrong-doing, and clearing [the guilty]!” (Exodus 34:6-7)

This list is called “The Thirteen Attributes of Mercy”, which are still chanted at services on Jewish holy days. (Most commentators reach thirteen by counting the second “Y-H-V-H” as a different attribute from the first.) Rashbam noted that each of these thirteen “is of relevance when inducing forgiveness and repentance.”¹³ Since Moses wants God to forgive the Israelites, this insight would be encouraging.

Is the compassionate god in this description the same deity who killed thousands of innocent Egyptians without a second thought in the tenth miraculous plague, the death of the firstborn? Is this the god who would angrily “consume” the stiff-necked Israelites along the way to Canaan?

Perhaps the God character has decided to become more compassionate and kind, and is giving an aspirational self-description. Moses seizes the moment to repeat his request.

And Moses hurried and bowed to the ground and prostrated himself. And he said: “Please, if I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, please may my lord go among us! Indeed, it is a stiff-necked people. So forgive our crookedness and our wrong-doing, and make us your possession!” (Exodus 34:8-9)

Moses identifies himself as one of the Israelites, begging God to forgive and accept “us”.

Commentator Jerome Segal detected an additional strategy in Moses’ plea. What if God’s anger overwhelms God’s compassion? “Thus, it appears that Moses prevailed upon God to be in their midst just so he would be able to argue, should the eventuality arise, that God is too closely identified with the Israelites to destroy them. In short, Moses emerges as a canny strategist, subtly manipulating the powerful but less crafty deity.”¹⁴

A year or so later, God is indeed ready to wipe out the Israelites, and Moses persuades God to refrain with an argument along those lines.¹⁵

An ambiguous answer

After Moses has asked God again to “go among us” and forgive the Israelites, God says:

“Hey, I myself will be cutting a covenant: in front of all your people I will do wonders that were not created on all the earth or among all the nations. Then they will see, all the people in whose midst you are, the deeds of Y-H-V-H—that it is awesome what I myself do with you.” (Exodus 34:10)

Once again, God calls the Israelites Moses’ people, not God’s own people. And once again, God’s response is favorable but avoids addressing Moses’ request directly. Instead, God tries to resolve the whole issue with a new covenant. The terms are that God will perform more wonders for the Israelites, through Moses. In return, the Israelites will obey the commandments on the stone tablets, along with some other rules that God dictates to Moses on the spot.

Moses has to assume that God has forgiven the Israelites, and that the new covenant means God will dwell among them after all.

Moses and God respect one another, but Moses resorts to wheedling and subterfuge—because God refuses to make definite commitments. Their relationship has become like an unhealthy marriage.

To be continued …

Exodus 32:25-28. See my post: Ki Tisa: Golden Calf, Stone Commandments.
Rashi (11th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), translation in www.sefaria.org.
E.g. Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 16b; Rashbam (12^th-century Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir), Chizkuni (a 13^th century collection), Tur HaArokh (14^th century), Or HaChayim (by 18^th century rabbi Chayim ibn Attar).
In Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 16b, God writes down the names of the righteous in one book and the names of the wicked in another. People whose deeds are partly good and partly bad are listed in a third book until Yom Kippur, ten days later, when God decides which of these intermediate people to record with the righteous in the book of life. To this day, the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy includes prayers to be written in God’s “book of life” so we will not die before the next Rosh Hashanah.
Or HaChayim (18^th century), by Rabbi Chayim bin Attar, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Tze-enah Ure-enah (17^th century), translation in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, Jerusalem, 2019, quoted in www.sefaria.org.
This may be a misunderstanding. What if the Israelites only want the manifestation of God as the column of cloud by day and fire by night that led them from Egypt to Mount Sinai? God might consider that a divine messenger. When the Israelites leave Mount Sinai, the column appears again to lead them, and when God is dwelling among them in the tent-sanctuary, cloud and fire appear over its roof.
Exodus 24:16-17.
Chizkuni, a 13^th-century collection of commentary, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Samon Raphael Hirsch (19^th century), The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 794.
Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel (15^th century commentator), translation in www.sefaria.org.
Rashbam (12^th-century Rabbi Shmuel ben Meier), translation in www.sefaria.org.
Jerome M. Segal, Joseph’s Bones, Riverhead Books, New York, 2007, p. 134-135.
Numbers 14:11-20.

Ki Tisa: Taking Risks

(This is my tenth post in a series about the evolving relationship between Moses and God in the book of Exodus/Shemot. If you would like to read one of my posts about this week’s Torah portion, Pekudei, you might try: Pekudei: Clouds of Glory.)

After Moses has orchestrated four covenants between God and the Israelites (see my post: Yitro & Mishpatim: Four Attempts at a Lasting Covenant), God tells him:

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

Moses spends 40 days and 40 nights on top of Mount Sinai, listening to God tell him how to set up a formal religion for the Israelites, from the portable sanctuary-tent to the gold-plated ark to the ordination of Aaron and his four sons as priests.

Moses Receiving the Tablets of Law, by Marc Chagall, 1966

Only at the end of the 40-day period does God give Moses any stone tablets.

Then [God] gave to Moses, when [God] finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone engraved by the finger of God. (Exodus 31:18)

Meanwhile, in the camp at the foot of the mountain, the Israelites despair of ever seeing Moses again.

… and the people assembled against Aaron and said to him: “Get up, make us a god who will go before us! Because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him!” (Exodus 32:1)

Blame game

Moses has no idea that the Israelites are worshipping a golden calf below. After giving Moses the stone tablets, God breaks the news to him.

Then Y-H-V-H said to Moses: “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have become corrupt! They have quickly turned away from the path that I commanded them; they made themselves a cast-metal calf, and they bowed down to it, and they sacrificed to it, and they said: ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt’!” (Exodus 32:7-8)

First God says the calf-worshipers are Moses’ people whom Moses brought up from Egypt. Then God notes that they are calling the Golden Calf their gods who brought them up from Egypt.

Yet God was the one who noticed the suffering of the Israelites, recruited and trained Moses, created the ten miraculous plagues in Egypt, led the Israelites with a column of cloud and fire, split the Reed Sea, and fed them manna in the wilderness. God told Moses:

“And I will bring out my ranks, my people the Israelites, from the land of Egypt …” (Exodus 7:4)

But now God seems to be disowning the people and the whole enterprise.

Rashi¹ and earlier commentators claimed that the people whom God calls “your people” are not all the people, but only the non-Israelites who chose to leave Egypt with the Israelites. In this reading, the non-Israelites are Moses’ people because Moses converted them. And the non-Israelite converts are the ones who corrupted the “real” Israelites and persuaded them to demand an idol. (Like most humans, the classic commentators were not exempt from xenophobia.) The Torah itself does say that an erev rav—mixed multitude or riff-raff—joined the Israelites,² but it never says Moses converted them.

To me it seems more likely that the God character says “your people” as a way to pass the buck for the people’s violation of the divine rules. Alternatively, the God character is pretending to assign the blame to Moses in order to see how he will respond.

Moses tosses the blame back at God. After God tells Moses about the Golden Calf, Moses says:

“Why, Y-H-V-H, should your nose burn against your people, whom you brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and a strong hand?” (Exodus 32:11)

(A burning nose is a biblical idiom for anger.)

Moses is confident enough to pass the buck back to God, and God lets it go and moves on to the important item on God’s agenda: making Moses an offer he can refuse.

Taking a risk with Moses

And Y-H-V-H said to Moses: “I have observed this people, and hey! It is a stiff-necked people. And now, hanichah me, and my nose will burn against them, and I will exterminate them! And I will make you into a great nation.” (Exodus 32:9-10)

hanichah (הַנִּיחָה) = allow, leave alone. (Imperative of the hifil form of nach, נעָה = rest, settle, wait.)

It sounds as if God is ready to give up on the Israelites, eliminate them, and start over with Moses’s descendants, who presumably would someday rule Canaan. But first God wants Moses’ permission.

Is God serious? One possibility is that God is asking Moses as a courtesy, but is determined to exterminate the Israelites no matter what Moses says. This is unlikely, however, since Moses has become a full partner in leadership, and would not agree with God the way a subordinate says yes to curry favor.

Another possibility is that God really is leaving the decision up to Moses. According to the Talmud, “Moses said to himself: If God is telling me to let Him be, it must be because this matter is dependent upon me. Immediately Moses stood and was strengthened in prayer, and asked that God have mercy on the nation of Israel and forgive them for their transgression.”³

But it is hard to believe that God has no strong preference. A few hundred years before, God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their descendants would rule the land of Canaan. Recently God created ten miraculous plagues that ruined Egypt. The Israelites have become God’s people as much as Moses has become God’s prophet. It seems unlikely that God would discard them and wait another four hundred years until Moses’s descendants had multiplied enough to occupy Canaan.

A third possibility is that God intends to give the Israelites a sharp lesson without abandoning them altogether—but also wants to find out what Moses would choose. After all, God tests Abraham in the book of Genesis by ordering him to slaughter his son Isaac as an offering, and then calls him off at the last minute.⁴ Now God seems to be testing Moses.

Then Moses softened the face of Y-H-V-H, his god, and he said: “Why, Y-H-V-H, should your nose burn against your people, whom you brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and a strong hand?” (Exodus 32:11)

In order to “soften the face” of God, i.e. reduce the God character’s anger, Moses reminds God of how much God has invested in the Israelites. Next he gives one of the reasons that God went to all that trouble: to prove to the Egyptians that they had better not mess around with a people God chooses to deliver.

“Why should the Egyptians actually [be able to] say: ‘In evil he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains, and to exterminate them from the face of the earth’? Turn away from your burning nose, and hinacheim about the evil against your people!” (Exodus 32:12)

hinacheim (הִנָּחֵם) = have a change of heart; regret, repent, or find consolation. (From the verb nacham, נָחַם.)

Moses knows God wanted to establish a reputation as more powerful than any Egyptian god because God told Moses to pass on these words to the pharaoh before the plague of hail:

“Indeed, on account of this I let you stand: so that you would see my power, and for the sake of recounting my name throughout all the land!” (Exodus 9:16)

In case all this is not enough to persuade God to refrain from wiping out the Israelites, Moses offers a third argument:

“Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, whom you yourself swore to when you spoke to them: ‘I will multiply your seed like the stars in the heavens, and all this land that I said, I will give to your seed, they will inherit it forever.” (Exodus 32:13)

Here Moses is insisting that God must keep promises. This argument is not as convincing, since Moses himself belongs to the tribe of Levi and is a “seed” of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, a.k.a. Jacob. God’s promise could still be fulfilled through Moses’ descendants, although it would take several hundred more years.

But I suspect that the content of Moses’ arguments does not matter. God’s motivation is to test Moses and find out if he will stick up for the Israelites, instead of pursuing his own glory as the founding ancestor of a nation. And Moses passes the test without hesitating for a moment, by arguing against eliminating the Israelites.

Vayinachem, Y-H-V-H, about the evil that [God] had spoken of doing to [God’s] people. (Exodus 32:14)

vayinachem (וַיִּנָּחֶם) = and he had a change of heart; regretted, repented, consoled himself. (Also from the root verb nach.)

From Moses’ point of view, God has a change of heart and therefore rescinds the plan to wipe out the Israelites. The text does not tell us the God character’s point of view. But I think God takes a risk by tempting Moses with an easier path to fame, something he could achieve simply by going home to Midian and having more children. God knows Moses never wanted to be in charge of thousands of frightened, stubborn, and wayward ex-slaves.

Taking a risk with God

Moses turns around and walks down the mountain, carrying the two stone tablets engraved by God. The text emphasizes the divine origin of the tablets, saying:

And the tablets, they were God’s making. And the writing, it was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. (Exodus 32:16)

What could be more precious and holy?

Moses Breaking the Tablets, by Ephraim Moshe Lilien, 1808

Then it happened, as he approached the camp and he saw the calf and the dancing. And Moses’ nose burned, and he threw the tablets from his hands, and he shattered them at the bottom of the mountain. (Exodus 32:19)

The text implies that Moses acts in anger, as God had threatened to do. But much of the commentary assumes that whatever his mood, Moses is not throwing a temper tantrum, but rather acting on a flash of insight.

According to the midrash Shemot Rabbah, “he saw that Israel would not survive, and he joined himself with them and broke the tablets. He said to the Holy One blessed be He: ‘They sinned and I sinned, as I broke the tablets. … if You do not pardon them, do not pardon me …”⁵

According to 12^th-century commentator Ibn Ezra, the stone tablets “served, as it were, as a document of witness. Moses thus tore up the contract.”⁶ (Ibn Ezra considered the stone tablets a contract document because according to Deuteronomy 5:19, God uttered the “Ten Commandments” and later engraved them on the stone tablets. One of these commandments prohibits making or worshiping idols. In Exodus 24:3, Moses told the people all the rules God had handed down, including the “Ten Commandments”, and the Israelites vowed: “All the words that God has spoken, we will do!”⁷)

And according to 19^th-century commentator Hirsch, when Moses saw the dancing, “he realized that the pagan error had already borne its usual fruit—the unleashing of sensuality. He then understood that the nation would have to be re-educated … By this act he declared in no uncertain terms that the people in its present state was unworthy of the Torah and not fit to receive it.”⁸

Whatever Moses’ insight is, he risks retribution from God when he shatters God’s words carved in stone. By taking this risk, he joins his fate to the fate of the people (Shemot Rabbah), shatters the evidence of the covenant so the Israelites are not technically guilty of violating it (Ibn Ezra), and sets himself the task of teaching the Israelites how to behave (Hirsch).

And the risk pays off. God never questions Moses’ dramatic action. The two leaders, Moses and God, work together to punish the Israelites for the Golden Calf.

To be continued …

Rashi is the acronym of 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki.
Exodus 12:38.
Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 32a, William Davidson translation, from www.sefaria.org.
Genesis 22.
Shemot Rabbah 46:1 (10^th-12^th century midrash), translation in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, translation in www.sefaria.org.
See my post: Yitro & Mishpatim: Four Attempts at a Lasting Covenant.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 770.