Shemot: Names and Miracles

(This is the third post in a series about the interactions between Moses and God on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv, and how their relationship evolves. If you would like to read one of my posts about this week’s Torah portion, Beshallach, you might try: Beshallach: See, Fear, Trust, Sing.)

Moses Before the Burning Bush, by Domenico Feti, 1614

Moses is shepherding the flock of his Midianite father-in-law when he approaches the “mountain of God”, called Choreiv or Sinai, and turns aside to examine a fire in a thornbush that does not burn the branches. God speaks out of the fire, ordering him to lead the Israelites from Egypt to the land of Canaan. But although Moses feels empathy for the oppressed Israelites, he does not want the job. Either fear or deep humility drives him to find one objection after another.

Who am I?

His first excuse for not going to Egypt, which I discussed in last week’s post, Shemot: Empathy, Fear, and Humility, is: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)

And God replies: “But I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:12) Moses is not encouraged, but he does not argue with God. He moves on to his next question.

Who are you?

Then Moses said to the elohim: “Hey, I come to the Israelites and I say to them: ‘The elohim of your father sent me to you.’ And they say to me: ‘What is his name?’ What should I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13)

elohim (אֱלֺהִים) = god, gods, God. (A general term, not a name of God.)

Many commentators have offered insights about Moses’ request for God’s name, insights based on the assumption that Moses already knows all the names of God that have already been mentioned in the book of Genesis, and so do the Israelites in Egypt.¹ But why should we make this assumption? Moses grew up in an Egyptian household. He did not even go out to look at the Israelite men doing forced labor until he was an adult, and he fled to Midian shortly after that. There is no reason to think he learned any names of God from the Israelites—or that the book of Genesis had been written yet.

The only name of God that Moses might know is God’s four-letter personal name, Y-H-V-H. Some modern commentators theorize that Y-H-V-H was originally the name of a Midianite god.² If so, the author(s) of this story in Exodus could have drawn from a tradition that Moses’ father-in-law, a Midianite priest, taught him the God-name Y-H-V-H.

But even so, Moses would not expect that a Midianite god-name could help him gain the trust of the Israelites in Egypt.

Moses’ request for a name of God to tell the Israelites seems more like an extension of Moses’ first objection: he is not qualified for the job in Egypt, he is out of his depth. He knows the names of a number of Egyptian gods, but he does not know the name of the God speaking to him now from out of the fire in the bush. How can he be the prophet of a God he does not even know?

Another reason for Moses’ request for a name is that he is afraid the Israelites will not believe he is the agent of their God. What could he possibly say or do that would make them trust him?

But Moses, who has already hidden his face from God out of fear, hides his real question behind a more polite one: Suppose he goes to Egypt and the Israelites ask for God’s name. What should he say?

An unhelpful reply

And Elohim said to Moses: “Ehyeh what ehyeh.” And [God] said: “Thus you must say to the Israelites: Ehyeh sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14)

ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה) = I will be, I will become, I have not finished being, I have not finished becoming. (The root verb hayah, הָיָה = was, became. The prefix e-, אֶ indicates both the first person singular and the imperfect form of the verb. Biblical Hebrew often uses the imperfect as a future tense, but it can also mean the action has not been completed.)

Commentators have a field day with this verse. But its theological implications do nothing for Moses’ dilemma. I can imagine him shuddering at the thought of what would happen to a stranger who showed up in Egypt and tried to explain “Ehyeh what ehyeh” to the Israelites.

Perhaps God hopes Moses will ponder “Ehyeh what ehyeh” in the future and learn something about the nature of God. But clearly he needs a different answer to his question about what name to give if the Israelites ask him to identify the God who sent him.

Then Elohim said further to Moses: “Thus you will say to the Israelites: ‘Y-H-V-H, the elohim of your fathers, the elohim of Abraham, the elohim of Isaac, and the elohim of Jacob, sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is how I will be remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3:15)

Y-H-V-H (י־ה־ו־ה) = the four-letter personal name of God (also called the tetragrammaton), spelled without hyphens in the Hebrew bible and Jewish prayers. For less sacred uses, Jews insert typographic marks such as hyphens, or replace the tetragrammaton with a synonym. (For possible etymologies of Y-H-V-H,see my post: Beshallakh & Shemot: Knowing the Name.)

The book of Exodus does not say whether the name Y-H-V-H was passed down among the Israelites during the 200 or more years they live in Egypt. Nor does it say whether the Israelites still tell stories about Abraham, Isaac, and/or Jacob. But even if they were familiar with the tetragrammaton and the three patriarchs, would knowing these names help Moses with his mission?

The God speaking out of the fire in the bush seems to think so, because God continues:

“Go and gather the elders of Israel, and you must say to them: “Y-H-V-H, the God of your fathers, appeared—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—saying: ‘I have definitely noticed you and what is being done to you in Egypt. And I said I will bring you up from the misery of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites …’ And they will listen to your voice. Then you will come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt … and you will say to him: ‘Y-H-V-H, the God of the Hebrews, has met us. So now please let us go on a journey of three days into the wilderness, and we will make slaughter-sacrifices to Y-H-V-H, our elohim.’” (Exodus 3:16-18)

Then God predicts that the pharaoh will not let the Israelites leave until after God has stricken Egypt with “wonders”, and that when they do leave, the Egyptian people will send them off with silver, gold, and clothing.

Moses is not convinced. He is too fearful, and maybe also too humble, to believe God will make everything come out all right.

Trust in miracles

And Moses replied, and he said: “But they, ya-aminu not in me, and they will not pay attention to my voice. Indeed, they will say: ‘Y-H-V-H has not appeared to you!’” (Exodus 4:1)

ya-aminu (יַאֲמִינוּ) =they will trust, they will believe.

Perhaps Moses does not expect any sympathy from the Israelites because he remembers when he returned to the scene of his sole crime (the murder of an Egyptian man who was beating an Israelite), and saw two Israelite men fighting. He asked one Israelite why he was striking the other, and the Israelite replied:

“Who appointed you as an officer and judge over us? Are you going to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14)

How can Moses protest that the Israelites will not believe him when God has just said “And they will listen to your voice”? Listening implies a willingness to believe what is said. The 16th-century commentator Sforno wrote that Moses was not referring to his first speech to the Israelites, but to later events.

“Once the people will see that Pharaoh will refuse to let them go, they will lose faith in me and will not listen to my promises … for they know that when God says something it will be so. They will not be able to account for my failure except by claiming that I am an impostor.” (Sforno)³

The God character in this story is patient, and responds with a new approach. According to 14^th-century commentary by Rabbeinu Bachya: “This is why God had to equip Moses with the ability to perform certain miracles to help convince the people that he was no charlatan.”⁴

Moses’ Rod Is Turned into a Serpent, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

Then Y-H-V-H said to him: “What is this in your hand?” He said: “A staff.” And [God] said: “Throw it to the ground!” And he threw it to the ground, and it became a snake. And Moses fled from its face. Then Y-H-V-H said to Moses: “Reach out your hand and grasp it by its tail!” And he reached out his hand and got a firm hold on it, and it became a staff in his fist. [God said] “So that ya-aminu that Y-H-V-H, the elohim of their fathers, the elohim of Abraham, the elohim of Isaac, and the elohim of Jacob, appeared to you.” (Exodus 4:2-5)

Here God gives Moses exactly what he asked for. Demonstrating this miracle is indeed likely to make the Israelites trust him and believe that their own god sent him.

And Moses, who has been consistently fearful from God’s first words to him until he flees from the snake that used to be his own staff, now summons his courage and grabs the snake firmly. At that moment, at least, he trusts God to protect him.

Why does God pick this particular miracle? 12^th-century commentator Abraham ibn Ezra wrote that God started with Moses’ staff for practical reasons. “God gave Moses a sign via an object that was always with him, the staff, Moses’ walking stick, as is the custom with elders. Moses would not appear as a shepherd before Pharaoh.”⁵

Why does God make the staff turn into a snake? 19^th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote that the transformation of staff to snake and snake to staff will demonstrate to the Israelites that God has the power to overturn both human authority and hostile forces (two different descriptions of the pharaoh).

“You have been sent by the one sole God Who, if He so desires, can cause the very thing on which man relies for support, and which serves him as an instrument of his authority, to turn against him. Conversely, if He so desires, God can take a hostile force that is feared and shunned by man and place it into his hand as an accommodating support and tractable tool.” (Hirsch)⁶

Another line of commentary claimed that both the staff-snake miracle and the following miracle demonstrate that God is in charge of life and death.

And Y-H-V-H said further to him: “Please place your hand in your bosom!” And he placed his hand in his bosom [the front fold of his robe], and he took it out, and hey! His hand had tzara-at like snow! Then [God] said: “Return your hand to your bosom!” And he returned his hand to his bosom. Then he took it out of his bosom, and hey! It was restored as his flesh. (Exodus 4:6-7)

tzara-at (צָרַעַת) = a skin disease characterized by dead-white patches of skin.

16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, following 14^th-century Rabbeinu Bachya, explained both miracles this way: “Here is a staff which is an inert object, and the hand which is something very much alive. I will demonstrate that I can kill that which is alive and bring to life that which is dead. I will make your hand useless and your staff will suddenly come alive.”⁷

Commentators have also pointed out that the second miracle points at Moses’ inappropriate speech even more than the first, since the Talmud considered tzara-at a divine punishment for evil speech.⁸

And Hirsch added: “For it demonstrates that not only the staff, but also the hand that holds and guides the staff, is subject to God’s control. … even if man seeks to withdraw into himself and rely only on himself, he cannot be sure of himself. If God wishes, He can plant discord even within man’s inner self.”⁹

After providing Moses with these two miracles for demonstration purposes, God says that if the Israelites do not believe him after the first sign, they will believe him after the second. But if even that does not work,

… and they do not listen to your voice, then you must take some water of the Nile, and you must pour it out on the dry land, and the water that you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry land. (Exodus 4:9)

Moses does not ask for a fourth miracle to demonstrate his bona fides. Instead he moves on to another excuse to stay home in Midian, another reason why he is not the right person for God’s mission.

To be continued …

For example, Ramban (Nachmanides), Or HaChayim, and Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote that Moses was really asking which attribute of God would rescue the Israelites from Egypt, because that would be important information for the Israelites.
E.g. Israel Knohl, https://www.thetorah.com/article/yhwh-the-original-arabic-meaning-of-the-name.
Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbeinu Bachya (Rabbi Bachya ben Asher), translated in www.sefaria.org.
Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 50.
Sforno, ibid.
E.g. Rashi and 14^th-century rabbi Jacob ben Asher in Tur HaArokh.
Hirsch, p. 51.

Shemot: Empathy, Fear, and Humility

(This is the second post in a series about the interactions between Moses and God on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv, and how their relationship evolves. If you would like to read one of my posts about this week’s Torah portion, Bo, you might try: Bo: Pride and Ethics.)

The pharaoh of Egypt dies, and the murder charge against Moses expires. But Moses continues to live in the wilderness east of Egypt with Yitro, a priest of Midian. He marries one of Yitro’s daughters, they have two sons.

Back in Egypt, there is a new pharaoh, but he is still subjecting the Israelites to forced labor.

And the Israelites moaned from the servitude, and they cried out, and their cry went up to God, from the servitude. And God paid attention to their groaning, and God remembered [God’s] covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. (Exodus 2:23-24)

Divine miracles are necessary, but not sufficient, to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. A human intermediary is also needed: a prophet and leader to speak to Pharaoh and to lead the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan. For this job, God picks Moses.

Why does God choose Moses?

Moses at the Burning Bush, detail, by Rembrandt, 17th century

By the time God calls Moses’ name on Mount Sinai, Moses has already exhibited some character traits that make him a good choice. For one thing, he is curious about why the fire in the thorn-bush does not burn it up, and takes a closer look. (See last week’s post, Shemot: A Close Look at the Burning Bush.) A prophet must be open to hearing from God, and a leader must notice and investigate anything out of the ordinary.

Another of Moses’ helpful character traits is empathy for the underdog. When Moses sees an Egyptian man beating a Israelite, he first checks to see if there is anyone else around (to help, or to witness). Seeing no one, he strikes down the Egyptian and buries him in the sand. Although Moses is an adopted son of an Egyptian princess, he does not try to command the Egyptian overseer to cease. Either he is afraid that the Egyptian will strike him next, despite his apparent status, or he is so humble he does not believe he has any authority over an Egyptian overseer (perhaps because he carries no authority with anyone related to the pharaoh by birth rather than adoption).

When Moses goes back the next day, he sees two Israelite men fighting. He is not afraid to speak up to them, and he asks one Israelite why he is striking the other.

And [the Israelite] said: “Who appointed you as an officer and judge over us? Are you going to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was frightened, and said [to himself]: “Surely the matter is known!” (Exodus 2:14)

Pharaoh condemns Moses to death for the murder of the Egyptian, and Moses is too humble—or frightened—to fight the charge. He immediately flees into the wilderness. After several days he stops at a well where seven female shepherds are beginning to water their flock. When a group of male shepherds arrive and shove them away from the well, Moses fights them off, then helps the women draw water. They take him home to their father, who adopts him into the family. Out of either fear or humility, Moses never mentions that he used to live like a prince in Egypt, nor that he is wanted for murder.

Moses’ empathy for the underdog results in his flight to Midian. His curiosity draws him to the “mountain of God”, and then to God’s manifestation in a divine fire. Another character trait needed for God’s mission is humility, but so far Moses seems to be more motivated by fear of authority. When he kills the abusive Egyptian he is afraid that the pharaoh will find out, and when the pharaoh orders his execution he is afraid he will be found. Naturally he is nervous about the God on the mountain, too. In last week’s post, we saw how God gradually leads Moses up to the point where he can hear God call his name. Once Moses has responded to God’s second call by saying “Here I am”, God lets him know which god is calling.

Moses hides his face

The Call of Moses, by Providence Lithograph Co., 1900

And [God] said: “I am the God of avikha; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, because yarei of looking at God. (Exodus 3:6)

avikha (אָבִיךָ) = your father, your forefather. (The plural would be avoteykha,אֲבוֹתֶיךָ, “your fathers”.)

yarei (יָרֵא) = he was afraid, he was in awe.

Why does God start off by saying “I am the God of your father” in the singular? The classic midrash¹ assumed that God meant Moses’ biological father, Amram.

“The Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘If I appear to him in loud voice, I will terrify him; in soft voice, he will take prophecy lightly.’ What did He do? He appeared to him with the voice of his father. Moses said: ‘Here I am; what does Abba want?’ The Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘I am not your father, but rather the God of your father. … The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’. Moses was joyful and said: ‘Abba is enumerated with the patriarchs. Moreover, he is greater, as he was mentioned first.’” (Shemot Rabbah 3:1)²

But the book of Exodus itself does not depict Moses as so naïve and childlike. Furthermore, Moses might not even remember his father’s voice, since the pharaoh’s daughter took him into her palace when he was about three years old, after Moses’ mother had weaned him. And he would be unlikely to refer to Amram as “Abba”, the equivalent of “Dad”. So I prefer the commentary that says God refers to the collective “forefather” of the Israelites, then elaborates by citing the three patriarchs who are the forefathers of the Israelites: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.³

Why does Moses hide his face in fear (or awe) only when he hears that the God who is addressing him is the God of the Israelites? Perhaps he is not afraid of looking at other gods; he must have done it all the time when he lived with royalty in Egypt. But he takes the God of the Israelites, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, more seriously.

Maybe he is frightened because he believes the God of his birth family has more power over him than any other god would. Maybe he is overwhelmed by awe because he is humble, and knows he is unworthy of being addressed by any God.

Or maybe he is frightened because he intuits that God would not speak to him except to ask him to do something terribly dangerous.

Moses’ first attempt to get out of the mission

Although Moses has hidden his face, God goes on speaking to him, filling in some backstory:

“I have definitely seen the suffering of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their outcry in the face of their oppressors, for I am acquainted with their pain. And I have come down to rescue them from the hand of Egypt and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey,⁴ to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. … And now, go! And I will send you to Pharaoh, and you will bring out my people, the Israelites, from Egypt.” (Exodus 3:7-8, 10)

Despite God’s careful attempt to bring Moses to the right balance of fear and courage to receive the divine message, Moses does not respond with the equivalent of “Yes, sir!” Instead he starts making excuses why he should not go.

But Moses said to God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)

Is this humility, or is it the first excuse that comes to Moses’ mind to get out of what sounds like a difficult and dangerous job?

Some of each, according to Tze-enah Ure-enah: “That is, Moses said: I am lowly and I should speak with a king? Perhaps he will kill me?”⁵

But S.R. Hirsch saw Moses’ first excuse as humility without any thought of self-preservation: “Was he not entitled to doubt whether he had the imposing, overpowering strength of personality required to transform a nation of slaves into a people of God?”⁶

Joanathan Sacks offered a different argument why Moses would be reluctant to give up his life in Midian for the sake of the Israelites in Egypt: “He may have been Jewish by birth, but he had not suffered the fate of his people. He had not grown up as a Jew. He had not lived among Jews. He had good reason to doubt that the Israelites would even recognise him as one of them. … why should he even think of becoming their leader? Their fate was not his. He was not part of it. He was not responsible for it. He did not suffer from it. He was not implicated in it.”⁷

Nevertheless, Sacks pointed out, after he has given God several reasons why he should not be the one to go to Egypt, Moses finally submits and accepts the job, for the same reason he struck down the Egyptian man beating the Israelite laborer. When he sees people suffering, he cannot walk away. His empathy for the underdog is a more important qualification for God’s mission than personal courage.

Moses gets an answer

Then [God] said: “But I will be with you, and this is your sign that I myself sent you. When you bring out the people from Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain.” (Exodus 3:12)

Why does God answer “But I will be with you”? One explanation is that God intends to reassure Moses that he will not have to face the pharaoh alone, or the Israelites (who taunted him when he returned to the scene of his crime).

“One says “I will be with you” only to someone who is afraid.” (Shemot Rabbah)⁸

Adin Steinsaltz explained that God means: “I am not asking you to act on your own strength; you are merely a messenger.”⁹

On the other hand, “God was with him” is a biblical idiom for success. For example:

And God was with Joseph, and he was a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. And his master saw that God was with him and everything that he did God made successful in his hand.” (Genesis 39:2-3)

So when God tells Moses “I will be with you”, God might be promising him that his mission will succeed. And Moses’ very success would be a sign to the Egyptians and the Israelites that God sent him on the mission.¹⁰

Hirsch wrote that God’s “I will be with you” means that God knows Moses is unable to succeed on his own—and this is the very the reason why God chooses him for the mission. He imagined God explaining:

“I need someone who is the wisest and at the same time the humblest of all men. Your marked inadequacy will stamp the work I intend to accomplish through you with a ‘sign’ for all time to come that what you achieved could have been achieved only at My command and by My power. Your very inadequacy will attest to the Divine character of your mission. Without this proof, Israel’s deliverance would be regarded as no different from other events in world history that glorify the power of men.”¹¹

So Moses is the most qualified person to be God’s prophet because he is the least qualified person to face the pharaoh and lead the Israelites.

Moses does not argue with God about God’s reply “I will be with you”. But he does generate another question, as he flounders for a convincing reason why God should not send him to Egypt after all.

To be continued …

Midrash is a type of commentary that makes additions to the text in order to flesh out the story or to connect it with a mystical tradition.
Shemot Rabbah, 10^th-12^th centuries, translation in www.sefaria.org.
E.g. Ibn Ezra, 12^th century; Ramban, 13^th century; Rabbeinu Bachya, 14^th century.
See my post: Ki Tavo: Milk and Honey.
17^th-century commentary Tze-enah Ure-enah, translation from Yiddish in www.sefaria.org.
19^th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 35.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, “Who Am I? Shemot”, reposted Jan. 16, 2025.
Shemot Rabbah.
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, Jerusalem, 2019, quoted in www.sefaria.org.
This is the opinion of Rashi (11^th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), and 16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno. (The Torah is ambiguous about whether the sign proving God sent Moses will be Moses’ success in liberating the Israelites from Egypt, or what will happen when they serve God on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv.)
Hirsch, p. 36.

Shemot: A Close Look at the Burning Bush

(I intended to post this last week, since it examines part of the first Torah portion in the book of Exodus, Shemot, but I didn’t finish it in time because I was sick. Now I am making it the first of a series of posts about how God and Moses interact on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv. Meanwhile, if you would like to read one of my posts on this week’s Torah portion, Va-eira, try this one: Va-eira: Taking a Stand at the Nile.)

Moses is born under the general death sentence that the pharaoh has issued against all male newborns of the Hebrews. His mother hides him, one of the pharaoh’s daughters finds him, and his sister arranges for this Egyptian princess to adopt him. Moses grows up in the safety of the royal palace.

But he knows he is a Hebrew by birth. The narrative of the first Torah portion in the book of Exodus, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1), confirms this by saying that when Moses had grown up,

Moses Kills an Egyptian, by Watson Heston, 1892

… he went to his kinsmen and he saw their forced labor. And he saw an Egyptian man beat a Hebrew man, one of his kinsmen. (Exodus 2:11)

Moses looks around, then kills the Egyptian. The pharaoh finds out, and once again Moses is under a death sentence. He flees the murder charge, walking alone all the way across the Sinai Peninsula to the land of Midian. A Midianite priest gives Moses shelter and marries him to one of his daughters.

Once again, Moses has been adopted and lives in safety—as long as he never goes back to Egypt.

Then God calls and orders him to do just that.

This is the first time Moses hears from God. If the divine call is not impressive enough, he might ignore it. If it is too overwhelming, he might go insane, or at least decide he is seriously ill, and fail to answer. What kind of approach will make Moses at least listen and respond to God’s order to return to Egypt and ask the new pharaoh to let the Hebrews go?

To answer that question, we need to examine the words the Torah uses in the description of Moses’ call to prophecy.

The place

And Moses was a shepherd of the flock of his father-in-law Yitro, a priest of Midian. And he led the flock ahar the midbar, and he came to the mountain of ha-elohim, to Choreiv. (Exodus 3:1)

ahar (אַחַר) = behind, afterward.

midbar (מִדְבָּר) = wilderness, i.e. any area that is neither farmed nor near a permanent settlement.

ha-elohim (הָאֱלֺהִים) = the gods, God.

Choreiv (חֺרֵב) = the mountain on the Sinai Peninsula called “Sinai” in other strands of the story.¹ (From the root verb charav, חָרַב = dried up, made desolate.)

First God waits until Moses has traveled far from his home. Although many English translations skip the word ahar and just say Moses led his flock into the wilderness, Moses’ home (in his father-in-law’s encampment) is probably already in the midbar. The Midianites were nomadic tribes living along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and also closer to the Sinai Peninsula, in the hills north of the Egyptian port of Eilat. Moses would have avoided any Midianite campsites near that port. So he lives in the midbar of Midian.

Now Moses leaves his home in the wilderness and leads the flock even farther away from civilization, “behind” the wilderness, to the mountain of God. Why does he go there?

16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, like many classic commentators, wrote: “He wanted to pray and meditate there in complete isolation and concentration.”²

Since Moses might see another shepherd in the wilderness, he takes the flock behind the wilderness, to the foot of Mount Choreiv: a mountain so dry nothing grows on it except thornbushes. But there is no previous indication in the Torah portion that Moses is a prayerful or meditative man. If anything, he is impulsive, quick to attack in order to rescue the underdog.

An alternate explanation is that Moses is looking for a new grazing site, and accidentally wanders to a place that is poor for grazing, but significant for other reasons.

“Apparently, Moses has never been to this mountain before—it must have been in a somewhat remote area. That is why the passage starts off by explaining the special circumstances that led him to this mountain at this time: he had led his flock ‘beyond the wilderness,’ some greater distance than usual, presumably in search of a good grazing site.” (Kugel)³

A third possibility is that Moses’s father-in-law, Yitro, has told him about this mountain associated with a god. As a Midianite priest, Yitro would know of any numinous sites in the region. Later in the book of Exodus, Yitro says:

“Now I know that Y-H-V-H is greater than all the gods.” (Exodus 18:10)

This implies that he already knew about the God whose personal name is the Tetragrammaton, Y-H-V-H; he simply had not known that this particular god was the most powerful. Moses is a curious man; just as he left the comfort of the palace to observe the forced labor of the Hebrews, he might now decide to check out the mountain of the god (ha-elohim), who turns out to be the God (ha-elohim), Y-H-V-H.

Later God will speak directly to Moses’ mind without preliminaries, wherever Moses happens to be. But for the first contact, God waits until Moses arrives at Mount Choreiv. If Moses already associates this mountain with a god, he will be more inclined to listen when God does speak to him.

The fire

The first thing God does when Moses arrives is to make something appear in a thornbush.

And a malakh of Y-H-V-H appeared to him belabat fire in the middle of the sneh. And he looked, and hey! the sneh was burning in the fire, but the sneh was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2)

malakh (מַלְאַךְ) = messenger. (When a human sends a malakh, it’s another human. When God sends a malakh, it looks like a man but turns out to be God, or it sounds like a human voice but turns out to be God’s voice. Some English translations call a malakh of God an angel.)⁴

belabat (בְּלַבַּת) = in a flame of; in the heart of. (Some commentators derive the word from labah (לַבָּה) = flame, flame-shaped spear-head. Others derive the word from leiv (לֵב) = heart, mind, consciousness; courage; interior, middle.)⁵

sneh (סְנֶה) = thornbush. (This is the accepted translation; it may be the cassia senna shrub, called sene in Arabic. In the entire Hebrew Bible, this word appears only in Exodus 3:2-4 and Deuteronomy 33:16—which is a reference to Exodus 3:2-4. Commentators have suggested that the other name for Mount Choreiv, Mount Sinai, may be derived from sneh—or the other way around!)

What does Moses see in the fire? Is it an image of a man, like many a divine malakh? Or is it the image of a flame in the fire?⁶

19^th-century rabbi Hirsch insisted Moses saw the image of a man, i.e. an angel:

“The angel appeared in the center of the fire, and the fire was in the center of the thorn bush. The thorn bush was not enveloped by flames, and the impression it made was not that of a thorn bush engulfed in flames without being consumed. … Rather, the fire was within the bush and the angel was within the flames.”⁷

Moses and the Burning Bush, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

Another 19^th-century commentator, Shadal, elaborated:

“Now the bush was on fire, but it was not really burning, but was surrounded by flames like a burning object, since the fire was flashing between the thorns, but did not take to them, and thus at first Moses saw the fire amid the bush, and the bush flashing with fire, and then he saw that it was not burnt, and he said: ‘Let me turn aside to see’ why this bush is not burning.”⁸

On the other hand, even if belabat means “in the heart of”, it can be interpreted not as “in the middle of”, but rather in terms of the human heart as the seat of passion. In the mid-20^th-century Menachem Mendel Kasher wrote:

“The bush resembles the heart. It too can burn without being consumed.”⁹

And at the end of the 20^th century Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg added:

“For the angel appears by means of the heart’s fire; he cannot exist without it.”¹⁰

What is the purpose of all these special effects in the thornbush? Shemot Rabbah, a collection of midrash on the book of Exodus from circa 1200 C.E., plays on the meaning of leiv as “courage” when it explains:

“In a flame (belabat) of fire” – to give him courage (lelabevo), so that when he arrives at Sinai and sees those fires, he will not fear them.”¹¹

According to Chizkuni in the 13^th-century:

“God wanted Moses to get used to such a phenomenon so that when the time came for the revelation at Mount Sinai, he would not become frightened by either it or the lightning.”¹²

Why does the messenger appear to him in a sneh? Tur HaAroch gave a simple answer in the 14^th century, pointing out that the area around the thornbush would be uncontaminated by feces, since no animal would risk being jabbed by the thorns. God forbid that God should appear in a contaminated (tamei) place!

Da-at Zekenim, a compilation of Torah commentary from the 12^th-13^th centuries, says:

“The reason that God chose this bush to reveal Himself in was that one could not construct a deity or symbol of a deity out of the bush.”¹³

Even though other religions in the Ancient Near East elevated certain trees to divine status, Moses is not about to start worshiping a thornbush. Another message God might be communicating, according to two medieval commentaries, is that there is no place vacant of the divine presence, not even a thornbush.¹⁴

Passing the test

And Moses said: “Indeed, I will turn aside, and I will look at this great sight; why doesn’t the sneh burn up?” And Y-H-V-H saw that he had turned aside to look, and Elohim called to him from the middle of the sneh: “Moses! Moses!” And he said: “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:3-4)

elohim (אֱלֺהִים) = god, gods, God.

Some commentary suggests that God’s whole set-up is a test of Moses’ patience, curiosity, and power of observation. After all, another shepherd might merely think “Oh, a fire. Better herd the sheep away from it.” This practical but automatic thinking is not suitable for a prophet and leader of people, who must figure out the underlying causes of problems. Only after Moses turns aside to examine the bush does God call to him.

On the other hand, piquing Moses’ curiosity might be just the first step in leading him to accept that he is facing God. Rabbeinu Bachya wrote in the 14^th century that the story shows Moses going through three levels of understanding. First he sees the fire with his physical eyes and goes to investigate. “If he had realized it was a heavenly fire, he would not have approached. Once he saw this fire he became stronger through seeing the angel … This means that first he saw the flame, and only after did he see the angel within the fire. Once he became stronger through seeing the angel, he saw the Divine Presence in a prophetic vision. … Because this was the beginning of Moshe’s prophecy, God wanted to orient him little by little and lift him up from one (spiritual) level to the next until his mind would be strong enough.”¹⁵

Why does God call Moses’ name twice? There are only three other places in the Hebrew Bible where God calls someone and repeats his name. In Genesis 22:11, God calls “Abraham, Abraham” because does not pay attention the first time. In Genesis 46:2, God calls “Jacob, Jacob” because Jacob is hesitant about going down to Egypt. And in 1 Samuel 3:10, God calls “Samuel, Samuel” because the first three times God called his name, the boy assumed it was the priest, Eli, calling for him, and he got up and ran to Eli before God could tell him a prophecy.

At the mountain of God, Moses is open to learning something new about the burning bush, but he does not expect to hear God calling his name. Probably the first time he hears it, Moses is flabbergasted. Only when he hears his name the second time is he able to respond. Or as Rabbeinu Bachya explained it:

“Seeing that a prophet would become frightened when he heard his name called for the first time, and as a result of his confusion he would misunderstand the divine message which was to follow, his name is called a second time in order to give him time to collect his thoughts. After the second mention of his name he would receive the message God wanted him to receive.”¹⁶

Moses’ reply “Here I am” could mean “I am at Your disposal.”¹⁷ Or it could mean he was ready to listen to God.¹⁸ Or he might have said “Here I am” even though he did not know who was calling to him.¹⁹

Holy ground

And he [God] said: “Don’t come closer! Take off your sandals from upon your feet, because the place that you are standing on, it is holy ground!” (Exodus 3:5)

Moses and the Burning Bush, by Gerard Hoet, 1648-1733

Why does God wait until this moment, when Moses has already stepped on holy ground with his sandals on? Maybe the situation at the burning bush has been sufficiently mysterious and daunting up to this point, but now Moses needs an extra boost of alarm. According to Rabbeinu Bachya,

“This was to serve as a warning not to be disrespectful, i.e. nonchalant, when he would be addressed by the Shekhinah, “God’s Presence”.²⁰

Telling Moses to stand barefoot on holy ground could also give him a more subtle message. Bachya wrote:

“He was warned to strip off what the shoe represented, i.e. material concerns. The act of removing his shoes was a mental preparation to ready him to become God’s vessel, His prophet. The lesson was that just as a man can take off his shoe at will, so he can divest himself of material concerns and concentrate on spiritual concerns.”²¹

On the other hand, maybe the important thing about going barefoot is feeling the ground under one’s feet. According to the Chassidic text Itture Torah, “Only when one is barefoot can one feel the little stones underfoot. Moses was to lead his people in such a way that he could feel their smallest sorrows.”²²

After Moses has responded to each step of God’s gradual introduction, from noticing that the bush is not burning up to hearing God call his name, God decides Moses is ready to receive his marching orders. But is he?

To be continued …

Source scholarship of the 20^th century concluded that the mountain on the Sinai Peninsula where God appears is called “Choreiv” in sources E and D, and “Sinai” in sources J and P. However, 21^st-century scholars are questioning the J-E-P-D classification, while continuing to identify different strands in the Torah written by different sources.
Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, 16^th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
James Kugel, How to Read the Bible, Free Press, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007, p. 210.
See my post: Vayeira: On Speaking Terms.
Later in Exodus, God leads the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai by means of a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, and this pillar is sometimes called a malakh. See Exodus 14:19-20 and 14:24 at the Red Sea.
See Rashi (11^th century) and Ibn Ezra (12^th century) for a detailed analysis of both positions.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, p. 30-31.
Shadal is the acronym of 19^th-century commentator Samuel David Luzzatto. Translation in www.sefaria.org.
Menachem Mendel Kasher, Torah Shelemah, vol. 8, p. 123, cited in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, edited by W. Gunther Plaut, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, New York, 1981, p. 407.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, Doubleday, New York, 2001, p. 338.
Shemot Rabbah 2:5, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Chizkuni is the name of a compilation by Chizkiah ben Manoach, mid-13^th century. Translation in www.sefaria.org.
Da-at Zekenim, a compilation 12^th-13^th century French and German commentary, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Shemot Rabbah 2:5 attributes this bit of wisdom to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha, while Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 3:1 attributes it to Rabban Gamaliel.
Rabbeinu Bachya (Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, 1255-1340), translation in www.sefaria.org.
Ibid.
Da’at Zekenim, ibid.
Malbim is the scronym of 19^th-century rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser.
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, Jerusalem, 2019, quoted in www.sefaria.org.
Rabbeinu Bachya, ibid.
Ibid.

Va-etchanan: Only One

The first definite statement of monotheism—that there are no other gods—appears in this week’s Torah portion, Va-etchanan (3:23-7:11), in the book of Deuteronomy (Devarim).

Our god is better than your god

Although the Hebrew Bible repeatedly forbids Israelites from worshiping any other gods, the texts of Genesis and Exodus assume that other, lesser gods exist.¹ On the sixth day of creation, God says:

“Let us make humankind in our image, like our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26)

Neither kings nor God use the royal “we” in the Hebrew Bible. God uses the first person plural only four times in the entire canon.² In Isaiah 6:8, God’s “we” includes the serafim, six-winged angels hovering in attendance on God. But the first three times, all in Genesis, God’s first person plural can only be addressing lesser gods who assist God in acts of creation. The second time, after the two humans have eaten fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God says:

“Humankind is becoming like one of us, knowing good and evil! And now, lest it stretch out its hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever—!” (Genesis 3:22)

And the third time, after humans build the tower of Babel, God says:

The Confusion of Tongues,
by Gustave Dore, 19th century

“Come, let us go down there and let us make their language fail, so that a man cannot understand the language of his neighbor.” (Genesis 11:6-7)

The book of Exodus also assumes the existence of other gods. For example, God tells Moses and Aaron:

“I will pass over the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike down every first-born in the land of Egypt, from human to beast; and against all ha-elohim of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am Y-H-V-H.” (Exodus 12:12)

ha-elohim (הָאֱלֺהִים) = the gods; God.

How could God punish the gods of Egypt if they do not exist?

After Moses and the Israelites have crossed the Red Sea, they sing to God:

“Who is like you ba-eilim, Y-H-V-H?
Who is like you, majestic among the holy,
Awesome of praises, doer of wonders?” (Exodus 15:11)

ba-eilim (בָּאֵלִם) = among the gods. B- (בּ) = among, in, through + -a- (ָ ) = the + eilim (אְלִם) = gods. (Unlike elohim, eilim is never used to refer to the God of Israel.)

Here the God of Israel, addressed by God’s sacred personal name, Y-H-V-H, is compared with multiple other, less awesome gods. This verse (“Mi khamokha”) is chanted or sung at every evening and morning Jewish service to this day. Some prayerbooks translate the first line as “Who is like you among the mighty?”—perhaps so that people who cannot read the Hebrew will not ask embarrassing questions!

Our god is the only god

The book of Deuteronomy was expanded and reframed as Moses’ final speech to the Israelites in the 5^th century B.C.E. after the Persians had conquered Babylon and given the exiled Israelites permission to return to Jerusalem. Second Isaiah, which also includes clear statements of monotheism, was written during the same period.³

The first monotheistic declaration in the Torah appears in this week’s Torah portion, Va-etchanan. Moses reminds the Israelites that their God created the universe, made miracles to rescue them from Egypt, and spoke to them out of the fire on Mount Sinai. He concludes:

You yourself have been shown in order to know that Y-H-V-H is ha-elohim; eyn od milvado. (Deuteronomy4:35)

ha-elohim (הָאֱלֺהִים) = the gods; God. Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) is the plural of eloha ((אֱלוֹהַּ = a god (in early Hebrew), and literally means “gods”. But elohim can also mean “God”—perhaps because the God of Israel had the powers of all the gods that other people worship.

eyn od (אֵין עוֹד) = there is no other, there is nothing else. (Eyn (אֵין) = there is no, there is not, none, nothing. Od (עוֹד) = other, else.)

milvado (מִלְּבַדּוֹ) = alone, by itself.

Technically, the Israelites whom Moses is addressing are not the ones who saw the miracles in Egypt and heard God’s voice from the fire 40 years before, when all but two⁴ of Moses’ present audience were either children or not yet born. Yet Moses speaks as if everyone in front of him was an eye-witness.

He elaborates on God’s deeds on behalf of the Israelites, then reiterates:

And you know today, and you must [continually] put back into to your consciousness, that Y-H-V-H is ha-elohim, in the heavens above and on the earth below; eyn od.(Deuteronomy 4:39)

But does this generation of Israelites really know that their God is the only god? After they pitched camp by the Jordan in the book of Numbers, many Israelite men joined the local women in ritual animal sacrifices to their god, Baal Peor.⁵

And the people ate and they bowed down to their elohim. And Israel attached itself to Baal Peor, and Y-H-V-H’s nose burned against Israel. (Numbers 25:3)

The God of Israel calls for impalements, but also sends a plague that kills 24,000 people. Moses mentions this recent episode in this week’s Torah portion:

“Your eyes saw what Y-H-V-H did regarding Baal Peor: that Y-H-V-H, your Elohim, wiped out every man from your midst who went after Baal Peor. But you who stuck to Y-H-V-H, your Elohim, all of you are alive today.” (Deuteronomy 4:3-4) Perhaps the surviving Israelites do know that there is only one god, Y-H-V-H. Or perhaps they think Baal Peor is a real god, but they know their own God is “a jealous god”⁶, so they avoid worshiping any other gods.

Hear this: God is one

Later in the portion Va-etchanan, Moses pronounces what has become a key Jewish prayer, recited twice a day since the first century C.E., and written on the scroll inside the mezuzah attached to a Jew’s doorpost.

Shema, Israel! Y-H-V-H is Eloheinu; Y-H-V-H is echad. (Deuteronomy 6:4)

shema (שְׁמַע) = Listen! Pay attention! Hear this!

Eloheinu (אֱלֺהֵנוּ) = our elohim: our gods, our God.

echad (אֶחָד) = one as the first of a series, one as singular, unique.

This verse certainly says that Y-H-V-H is the God of the Israelites. But is it also a statement of monotheism?

Some modern commentators have held that echad here merely means “first”, or, as Daniel Zucker expressed it, “the top god”.⁷ If Moses’ declaration appeared in the book of Exodus, I might agree. But since it is in the later book of Deuteronomy, in the same Torah portion that says of God eyn od (there is no other), I favor a different kind of “one”.

The word echad could also mean “unique”, i.e. that God is the only one of its kind. In the 14th century, Rabbeinu Bachya explained: “He is unique in the universe, there is no other God deserving the title. He has no partners, is not an amalgamation of different powers working in tandem.”⁸

18^th century rabbi Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar put it more bluntly: “Furthermore, we express our conviction that He is indeed the only God, there is no other independent power in the universe.”⁹

Whatever the Shema meant when Deuteronomy was rewritten in the 5^th century B.C.E., Jews have long considered it a declaration of monotheism. During the First Crusade, in 1096 C.E., Christians massacred Jews in the Rhine valley as well as Muslims in the “Holy Land”. Some Jews killed themselves before the Christians reached them.

“Over and over, their rallying cry at death is the single verse of the Sh’ma. Like their Sefardic counterparts, and medieval Muslims, Ashkenazi Jews understood the Christian concept of the divine Trinity as a case of polytheism; thus their insistence on God’s unity is a vehement repudiation of Christian doctrine.” (Susan Einbinder)¹⁰

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses tells the next generation of Israelites that they know there is only one God because 40 years ago they saw God’s miracles in Egypt and heard God’s voice in the fire on Mount Sinai. Only God could make those things happen. So according to Moses, they had direct evidence that the God of Israel is the only god; there is no other.

Moses does not mention that he is speaking to the next generation of Israelites, who were either children or not even born at the time. They have to go by what their parents told them, or by what Moses is telling them now.

Anyone who reads the book of Deuteronomy is in the same position. Why should we believe that there is one and only one god?

Some people believe it because their parents or teachers told them. And some believe it because it says so in the Torah. Others have their own mystical experiences, which they interpret as manifestations of a single, universal god. And some people believe it because they find one of the philosophical arguments for the existence of one God sufficiently compelling.

But many people are atheists, unable to believe God is real according to any of the usual definitions of God. When I examine the standard medieval theologian’s definition of God as an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent, and personal being, I always conclude that such a god is impossible. According to that definition of God, I am an atheist.

I have been fumbling toward my own definition of what I mean by “God” for decades, and I might never reach it. Although some scholars claim that the name Y-H-V-H comes from an older god-name and has nothing to do with the various conjugations of the Hebrew verb “to be” or “to become” (which are made up of those four letters in Hebrew), something about God as becoming speaks to me. But I cannot turn it into a tidy definition.

Yet I can recite the Shema with conviction. I am a Jew, and Y-H-V-H is our God, and God is one.

The books of Leviticus and Numbers warn the Israelites against worshiping other gods without saying whether other gods exist.
See my post: Bereishit: How Many Gods?
The portion Va-etchanan also promises that God is compassionate and will ultimately rescue the Israelites (Deuteronomy 4:29-31), which is a constant refrain in Second Isaiah.
Caleb and Joshua, the two out of ten scouts who trusted God to help them conquer Canaan. See my post: Shelakh-Lekha: Mutual Distrust.
See my post: Pinchas & Balak: Calming Zeal.
You must not have other elohim in front of me … You must not bow down to them and you must not serve them, because I, Y-H-V-H, your Elohim, am a jealous god … (Deuteronomy 5:9 and Exodus 20:3-5)
Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker, “Shema Yisrael: In What Way is ‘YHWH One’?”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/shema-yisrael-in-what-way-is-yhwh-one.
Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, a.k.a. Rabbeinu Bachya, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, translated in www.sefaria.org.
Susan L. Einbinder, My People’s Prayer Book, Vol. 1: The Sh’ma and its Blessings, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, VT, p. 90.

Beha-alotkha & Ki Tisa: Calf Replacement

When the Israelites arrive at Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus, they are led by God’s pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, as well as by God’s prophet Moses. When they leave Mount Sinai in the book of Numbers, they are led by God’s cloud and fire, and Moses, and the ark.

It sounds like a net gain. But it was nearly a total loss.

Descent in Exodus

The Israelites, who spent their whole lives under Egyptian rule, are deeply insecure when they head into the wilderness. They cannot believe God will rescue them—from the Egyptian chariot army, from thirst, from hunger. After they reach Mount Sinai, God puts on an impressive revelation including fire, smoke, lightning, thunder, and shofar-blasts. The people tremble as violently as the mountain,¹ and they unanimously pledge to do everything God commands.²

But all they really learn is that God is powerful, not that they can trust God to get them to Canaan and help them conquer it, as promised.

Vesuvius in Eruption, by J.M.W. Turner, 1817

When Moses climbs Mount Sinai for his first forty-day stint, the presence of God at the summit looks like a cloud to him. But it looks like a “consuming fire” to the Israelites.³ How could anyone, even a prophet of Moses’ stature, come back out of that fire alive?

The Israelites below fall into despair in the Torah portion Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:36), just as God finishes giving instructions to Moses and inscribes some words on a pair of stone tablets.

Then the people saw that Moses was delayed in coming down from the mountain, and the people assembled against Aaron and said to him: “Get up! Make us a god that will go in front of us, because this man Moses who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him!” (Exodus 32:1)

The Israelites are afraid to go any farther in the wilderness without Moses. Furthermore, God’s pillar of cloud and fire, which led the way to Mount Sinai,⁴ seems to have disappeared when they arrived.⁵ (Perhaps the divine pillar changed shape and relocated to the top of the mountain?) So, grasping at straws, they ask Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them an idol “to go in front of us”. They would not expect a statue to walk, but they must hope that God would inhabit the idol, as the Egyptian gods inhabited statues in Egypt. Then if the idol were carried on a cart in front of them, God would, in a sense, be leading them. (See my posts Ki Tisa: Golden Calf, Stone Commandments and Ki Tisa: Making an Idol Out of Fear.)

Since the people “assembled against Aaron”, I suspect Aaron was telling them to wait a little longer for Moses to return. But now he caves in, and asks them to bring him gold earrings.

Golden calf figurine from temple of Baalat, Byblos

And he took [the gold] from their hands and he shaped it in a mold, and he made it into a statue of a calf. And they said: “This is your God, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!” And Aaron saw, and he built an altar in front of it. And Aaron called out and said: “A festival for Y-H-V-H tomorrow!” (Exodus 32:4-5)

The Israelites worship the golden calf as if the God of Israel, whose personal name is Y-H-V-H, were inhabiting it. Nobody mentions that God has already prohibited making or worshiping any statue.

On the mountaintop above, God tells Moses what is happening, and threatens to wipe out all the Israelites and make a nation out of Moses’ descendants instead. Moses talks God out of it. Then he carries the stone tablets down to the camp below—and smashes them. The Levites kill 3,000 calf-worshipers at Moses’ command. And God kills additional people with a plague.

After that, God tells Moses that the Israelites should still go north and conquer Canaan.

“And I will send a malakh in front of you, and I will drive out the Canaanites …. But I will not go up in your midst, lest I destroy you on the way, because you are a stiff-necked people.” (Exodus 33:1,3)

malakh (מַלְאָךְ) = messenger. (In most English translations, a malakh from God is called an angel. A divine malakh can look like a man, or look like fire, or be a disembodied voice.)

And [when] the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and not one man put on his ornaments. (Exodus 33:4)

Their human leader is with them again, but the people want their divine leader as well. How will they know that God is with them, and they are going the right way, unless God’s pillar of cloud and fire is in front of them?

Moses knows a malakh would not be enough to reassure the Israelites, so he tells God:

“If your presence is not going, don’t you make us go up from this [mountain]!” (Exodus 33:15)

And God agrees to go with the Israelites for Moses’ sake. Only then does Moses pass on to the people the instructions God gave him for building a tent-sanctuary so God can dwell among them. The people eagerly donate materials and labor. They spend a year making everything, from the courtyard enclosure to the gold-plated ark inside the Holy of Holies. Then Moses assembles the sanctuary.

And Moses finished the work. And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of Y-H-V-H filled the mishkan. (Exodus 40:33-34)

mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן) = Literally: dwelling-place (from the root verb shakhan, שָׁכַן = settle, stay, inhabit, dwell). In practice throughout the five books of the Torah: God’s dwelling-place, God’s sanctuary.

So God is willing to inhabit the tent-sanctuary, but not a gold statue. The book of Exodus ends:

For a cloud was over the mishkan by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the House of Israel on all their journeys. (Exodus 40:38)

Ascent in Numbers

The Israelites finally resume their journey to Canaan in this week’s Torah portion, Beha-alotkha (Numbers 8:1-12:16). Just before this Torah portion begins, the Torah indicates that unlike the golden calf, the two gold statues of keruvim (hybrid winged creatures) rising from the gold cover of the ark are not idols.

And when Moses came into the Tent of Meeting to speak with [God], then he heard the voice speaking to him from above the cover that was on the Ark of the Testimony, from between the two keruvim. (Numbers 7:89)

In other words, God speaks to Moses from the empty space between the two gold statues.

When the Israelites are finally ready to set out for Canaan, the Torah refers back to the end of Exodus.

The Tabernacle in the Camp, Collectie Nederland

And on the day the mishkan was erected, the cloud covered the mishkan for the Tent of the Testimony; and in the evening it was over the mishkan as an appearance of fire, until morning. Thus it was always: the cloud covered it, and appeared as fire at night. And according to when the cloud was lifted up from over the tent, after that the Israelites set out; and at the place where the cloud settled, there the Israelites camped. (Numbers 9:15-17)

The cloud by day and fire by night is not described as a pillar here; its shape is not mentioned at all. But it serves at least one of the purposes of the pillar of cloud and fire that led the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai.

Whether for days or a month or a long time, when the cloud lingered over the mishkan, staying over it, the Israelites were camped, and they did not set out. But when it was lifted, they set out. (Numbers 9:22)

The other purpose of the pillar of cloud and fire was to indicate the direction of travel. This purpose is implied later in this week’s Torah portion:

And they set out from the mountain of God on a journey of three days, and the ark of the Covenant of God traveled in front of them a journey of three days to seek out a resting place for them. (Numbers 10:33)

The ark, as we learned earlier in the book of Numbers, is covered by a curtain, a sheet of leather, a blue cloth, a crimson cloth, and another sheet of leather when the people travel⁶—both to honor it and to make sure nobody sees it. Levites from the clan of Geirshon carry it by the wood poles extending from the bottom of the ark.

The portion Beha-alokha contains two different descriptions of the location of the ark when the Israelites are traveling. First it describes the tribes of Judah, Yissachar, and Zevulun setting out, followed by Levites carrying the ark and other pieces of the mishkan.⁷ Then it says “the ark of the Covenant of God traveled in front of them”. Either way, the ark goes wherever the Levites gripping the poles take it, so how can it “seek out a resting place”?

And the cloud of God was above them by day, when they set out from the camp. (Numbers 10:34)

If the divine cloud hovers over the marching Israelites all day, then it could indicate the direction of travel by veering off. The Israelites would respond with a course correction—just as they did when the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night led them from Egypt to Mount Sinai.

And the cloud can still take the shape of a pillar. When God orders Moses, Miriam, and Aaron rto report to the entrance of the mishkan,

Then God came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called: “Aaron and Miriam!” And the two of them went forward. (Numbers 12:5)

Thus God addresses the anxious insecurity of the Israelites by traveling with them in person, so to speak, in the form of the cloud above them. They also have Moses, the man who arranged their liberation from Egypt and who communicates regularly with God. And they have the ark as a symbol of God’s presence among them even when the mishkan is disassembled and God is not currently speaking to Moses from above the ark.

I have friends who want to believe God is leading them. None of them see pillars of cloud by day and fire by night, as far as I know. But they often notice signs and omens (what I would call coincidences) that reassure them God is in charge and they are being led in the right direction.

I don’t blame them, any more than I blame the Israelites marching toward the unknown dangers of the land of Canaan. The wilderness of this world is frightening.

Exodus 19:16-18, 20:15-16.
Exodus 24:3, 24:7.
Exodus 24:15-18.
Exodus 13:21-22.
So many commentators conclude, since throughout their stay at Mount Sinai no pillar is mentioned until they have finished building the sanctuary. Then God’s cloud by day and fire by night settles on the sanctuary tent, and lifts to signal that it is time for them to travel on (Exodus 40:33-34-38).
Numbers 4:5-8. See my post: Bemidbar: Covering the Sacred.
Numbers 10:13-17.

Bechukotai, Va-eria, & Isaiah: Redeeming a Pledge

“Redeeming” can mean exchanging something less important to you for something more important. Last week’s Torah portion, Behar, prescribed redemption for Israelites who had fallen into poverty and debt. If they were forced to sell the family farm, or if they had to sell themselves as slaves, the sale was never permanent; Israelite land was “sold” as a long-term lease, and Israelite persons were “sold” as indentured servants. Both land and human beings could be redeemed if a family member paid off the remainder of the contract. (See my post: Behar: Redeeming an Identity.)

“Redeeming” can also mean making good on a pledge, through either an exchange or a rescue. When a human being pledges a donation to God, they must give the donated item to the priests at the temple—or else redeem it by exchanging the pledged item for something more valuable. But when God makes a pledge to the Israelites, God makes good on the pledge by rescuing them from a foreign power. No exchange is necessary.

Bechukotai: When an Israelite redeems a pledge to God

A pledge to God is actually a pledge to support a religion’s service to God. Today someone who wants to make an extra donation to their congregation, over and above the membership dues, might send an electronic payment. But in ancient Judah, an extra donation, over and above the mandatory tithes, offerings, and contributions of firstborn animals and first fruits, could only be made by bringing an object of value to the priests at the temple in Jerusalem. So the donor would make a verbal pledge, and redeem it later by traveling to the temple and delivering either the item pledged or its value in silver.

The item pledged could even be a human being. The Talmud tractate Arakhin explains that a person often pledged his or her own value in silver to the temple in Jerusalem. But someone could also vow to donate the value of any person belonging to him or her at the time—i.e. someone the vower owned and could legally sell. In that era, people could sell their slaves or their own underage sons and daughters.

This week’s Torah portion, Bechukotai (Leviticus 26:3-27:34), explains the rules for redeeming a person who has been pledged as a donation to God.

When anyone explicitly vows the assessment of persons to God, the assessment will be: the assessment of the male from twenty to sixty years old will be fifty shekels of silver … (Leviticus 27:2-3)

A list follows giving the assessment in silver for male and female human beings in four age categories. (See my post: Bechukotai: Gender, Age, and Personal Value.) The persons themselves are not being given to God; they stand in as pledges until the donor pays their assessed values in silver to the temple.

But if [the donor vowed] an animal that can be brought as an offering to God, anything that he gives to God becomes consecrated. One may not replace or exchange it, either a better one for a worse one, or a worse one for a better one. And if one actually does exchange one animal for another, both it and its substitute will become consecrated. (Leviticus 27:9-10)

This means that when anyone pledges an animal that can be legally offered at the altar, it becomes temple property at that instant. The donor no longer owns it, so he has no choice but to bring it in to its rightful owner, the temple. If he tries to substitute a different animal, then both the original and the substitute must be brought and slaughtered for God. I suspect the priests knew that people who felt moved to give more to God sometimes had second thoughts later, and tried to skimp when it was time to fulfill their pledges.

If someone pledges an animal that is kosher, but unfit for the altar because of some blemish, the priest assesses its equivalent value. Then the person who pledged the animal to God must donate that amount in silver to the temple—and also leave the blemished but edible animal with the priests.

If the donor prefers to keep the unfit animal, he can redeem it by making a larger payment in silver.

But if definitely yigalenah, then he must add one-fifth to its assessment. (Leviticus 27:13)

yigalenah (יִגְאָלֶנָּה) = “he would redeem it”. (From the root verb ga-al, גָּאַל = redeem, ransom, rescue.)

The same law applies when a donor—perhaps overcome by religious ecstasy or a generous impulse—pledges his house to God, thus making it consecrated property.

And if the consecrator yigal his house, then he must add one-fifth in silver to the assessment; then it will be his. (Leviticus 27:15)

yigal (יִגְאַל) = he would redeem. (Also from the root verb ga-al.)

The donation of a field to God is more complicated, since the procedure must also meet the rules in last week’s Torah portion about land reverting to its original owner in the yoveil year. (See my post: Behar: Redeeming an Identity.) But if the current owner wants the field back before the yoveil year, he must pay silver equal to the assessment for the remaining years plus one-fifth to redeem it.

Va-eira & Second Isaiah: When God redeems a pledge to the Israelites

Israelites redeem their pledges to God by exchanging silver for whatever they pledged. But when God redeems a pledge to the Israelites, God simply rescues them by arranging their liberation from a foreign power and sending them “home” to Canaan. In the book of Exodus, God rescues the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. In the book of Isaiah, God rescues them from exile in Babylon.

In Exodus, in the Torah portion Va-eira¹, God tells Moses:

“And now I myself have listened to the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are enslaving them, and I have remembered my covenant. Therefore say to the Israelites: I am Y-H-V-H, and I will bring you out from under the bondage of Egypt. And I will rescue you from your servitude, vega-alti you with an outstretched arm and with great punishments. And I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. … And I will bring you to the land that I raised my hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you as a possession. I am Y-H-V-H.” (Exodus 6:5-6, 6:8)

vega-alti(וְגָאַלתִּי) = and I will redeem, and I will rescue. (Also from the root ga-al.)

Leading the Israelites
with a Pillar of Fire,
by John Jacob Scheuchzer,
1731

The pledge or covenant God made in the book of Genesis to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by “raising a hand” was that God would give their descendants the land of Canaan. Now God affirms that God will fulfill the pledge. Just as written proclamations in the Ancient Near East ended with the king identifying himself by name, God concludes this statement with I am Y-H-V-H, confirming it as a legal pledge.

Then God makes good on the divine pledge with an elaborate rescue operation. First God stages ten miracles to liberate those descendants, the Israelites, from Egypt. Then God leads them to a new home in Canaan.

Second Isaiah² states that God created the Israelites for a unique role, which implies a pledge to make sure they continue to exist as a people on the land God chose for them.

And now thus said God:
Who created you, Jacob?
	Who formed you, Israel?
Do not fear, because ge-altikha.
	I have called by name;
	You are mine. (Isaiah 43:1)

ge-altikha (גְאַלְתִּיךָ) = I have redeemed you, I have rescued you. (Also from the root ga-al.)

Therefore, the prophet says, God is in the process of rescuing the Israelites from Babylon by arranging the destruction of the Babylonian Empire.

Thus said God,
Your Go-eil, the Holy One of Israel:
For your sake I send to Babylon
	And I bring down the bars, all of them,
	And the Babylonians sing out in lamentations. (Isaiah 43:14)

go-eil (גֺּאֵל) = redeemer, rescuer. (Also from the root ga-al.)

This is one of eleven times that second Isaiah makes go-eil part of God’s title.³

The “bars” in this verse are either the bars of the gates of the city,⁴ or by extension, the borders of their whole territory.⁵ Second Isaiah credits God with sending Cyrus, the first king of the Persian Empire, to conquer Babylon⁶ (a feat Cyrus I achieved quickly in 539 B.C.E.).

Next the redemption of the Israelites from Babylon is connected with their redemption from Egypt. The prophet reminds us that God parted the Red Sea to arrange the escape of the Israelites from Pharaoh’s army of chariots.

Thus said God:
Who placed a road in the sea,
	And a path through powerful waters?
Who met chariots and horses,
	The mighty and the strong?
Together they lay down, never to rise;
	They were extinguished, quenched like a wick. (Isaiah 43:16-17)

When second Isaiah is praying to God for redemption from Babylon, he reminds the exiled Israelites again about how God redeemed the Israelites from Egypt.⁷

Like other biblical prophets, second Isaiah says God let the Babylonians conquer Judah and Jerusalem because its citizens were disobeying God. But now, according to the book of Isaiah, God says:

I have wiped away your rebellions like fog,
	And your misdeeds like cloud.
	Return to me, because ge-altikha! (Isaiah 44:22)

Once God has redeemed the Israelites from their past sins, God can rescue them from Babylon. The book of Isaiah confirms that redemption by God is a rescue, not an exchange:

For no price you were sold,
	And not for silver tiga-eilu. (Isaiah 52:3)

tiga-eilu (תִּגָּאֵלוּ) = you will be redeemed.

But being rescued and liberated is not enough. The Israelites must fall in with God’s plan by taking advantage of the opportunity to leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem.

Go forth from Babylon!
	Flee from Chaldea!
Declare in a loud voice,
	Make this heard,
Bring it out to the ends of the earth!
Say: God ga-al [God’s] servant Jacob! (Isaiah 48:20)

The kind of exchange outlined in this week’s Torah portion, Bechukotai, is good business practice: making a pledge, posting something as security, and then redeeming the security by handing over the required monetary payment. Both the donor and the priests who receive the silver know and follow the rules.

But sometimes we humans imitate God by pledging to do something that has no monetary value. One example is the traditional marriage vow to “forsake all others”.

And sometimes we help another person voluntarily, for no reward, with no expectation of tit-for-tat—not because we have formally pledged to do so, but just out of the goodness of our hearts.

All humans make moral errors. When we do something good, above and beyond what we have promised, we redeem ourselves. So helping someone out of the goodness of our hearts is a double redemption: we rescue the other person from distress, and we also redeem ourselves.

May we all aspire to be voluntary redeemers.

The portion Va-eira is Exodus 6:2-9:34.
The first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah were written in the 8^th century B.C.E., and are attributed in the first verse to the prophet Yesheyahu (Isaiah) son of Amotz. Chapters 40-55 were written in the 6^th century B.C.E., after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and deported its leading citizens to Babylon; this section is often called Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah. Chapters 56-66 were written after Babylon fell to the Persian Empire in 539 B.C.E. and the exiles living there were allowed to return to their old homes. Some scholars include this last section in Second Isaiah, while others call it Third Isaiah, or Trito-Isaiah.
Go-eil is part of God’s title in Isaiah 41:14, 43:14, 44:6, 44:24, 47:4, 48:17, 49:7, 49:26, 54:8, 60:16, and 63:16.
Ibn Ezra (12^th century), citing Lamentations 2:9: Her gates have sunk into the ground, He has shattered to bits her bars.
Adin Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Humash: Isaiah, Koren Publishers, 2019.
See Isaiah 44:1.
Isaiah 51:10-11.

Haftarat Pekudei—1 Kings: A Mystery in Bronze

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

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

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

Grand entrance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capital, capital

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lost in translation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here is my explanation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vayakheil: Shadow Creator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shadows in English and Hebrew

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

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

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

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

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

Shade as protection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shadow as transience

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

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

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

Shadows and images

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

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

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

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

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

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

See my post Vayakheil & Ki Tisa: Second Chance.

Ki Tisa & Mishpatim: Shattered

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

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

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

eidut (עֵדֻת) = affidavit, pronouncement, testimony.

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

To provide a written record of the laws?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To test Moses?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moses Breaking the Tablets,
by Ephraim Moshe Lilien, 1808

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demonstrating that they broke the covenant

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

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

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

Inducing guilt

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

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

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

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

Setting an example regarding idols

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

21^st-century commentator Zornberg concluded:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tetzaveh & Ki Tisa: Washing

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

Immersion in Tetzaveh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Washing hands and feet in Ki Tisa

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

Model of temple
wash-basin by
Temple Institute

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I need new ways of performing ritual washing.

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