Category: Exodus/Shemot

Mishpatim: On Slavery

The same word, avodah, means both “service” and “slavery” in Biblical Hebrew.  Just as today we consider it virtuous to serve a good cause, the ancient Israelites considered it virtuous to serve God.  But is it ever virtuous to serve a human master?  Or to be one?

Jacob and Rachel, by William Dyce

The word avodah first appears in the book of Genesis/Bereishit, after Jacob works for his uncle Lavan for seven years as his bride-price for Rachel.  When Lavan gives him Rachel’s sister Leah as a bride instead, Jacob complains.  Lavan replies that Jacob can marry Rachel in only one week, but then he owes Lavan another seven years of “avodah that ta-avod with me”.  (Genesis/Bereishit 29:7)

avodah (עֲבֺדָה) = service, slavery, labor.  (From the root verb avad, עָבַד = serve, be a slave, perform rites for a god, work.)

ta-avod (תַּעֲבֺד) = you shall serve, you shall be a slave.  (A form of the verb avad.)

When Jacob agrees, he is voluntarily selling himself as a temporary slave, i.e. an indentured servant who has no rights during his term of indenture, but is free once it ends.

Another type of involuntary labor is corvée labor, when a ruler or feudal lord imposes unpaid labor on people for certain periods of time.  In Exodus/Shemot, the Pharaoh decides to impose corvée labor on the resident Israelites.

Slaves making bricks, tomb of Rekmire, c. 1450 BCE

The Egyptians, vaya-avidu the Israelites with crushing torment, and made their lives bitter with hard avodah with mortar and bricks, and with every avodah in the field, all of their crushing avodah that avdu.  (Exodus/Shemot 1:13-14)

vaya-avidu (וַיַּעֲבִדוּ) = they enslaved, they forced to work.  (Another form of the verb avad.)

avdu (עָבְדוּ) = they labored at, they slaved away at.

Yet the Torah accepts that the Israelites themselves own slaves, and it provides laws granting slaves limited rights.  These rights are more limited for foreign slaves (Canaanites as well as people whom Israelites defeat in battle and bring home as booty) than for slaves who are fellow Israelites.  Out of the first eleven laws in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (“Laws”), five concern the treatment of slaves.  The first two laws set terms for Israelite slaves:

      If you acquire a Hebrew eved, six years ya-avod … (Exodus 21:2)

      And if a man sells his daughter as an amah … (Exodus 21:7)

eved (עֶבֶד), plural avadim (עֲבָדִים) = (male) slave; dependent subordinate (such as an advisor or administrator) to a ruler.  (From the root verb avad.)

ya-avod (יַעֲבֺד) = he will work for a master, be a slave, serve.  (A form of the verb avad.)

amah (אָמָה) = foreign or Israelite slave-girl; foreign slave-woman.

Three more laws in Mishpatim address the most egregious abuses of foreign slaves:

      And if a man strikes his eved or his amah with a stick and he dies … (Exodus 21:20)

      And if a man strikes the eye of his eved or his amah and destroys it … (Exodus 21:26)

      If the ox gores an eved or an amah … (Exodus 21:32)

Although the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy upgrade the laws in this week’s Torah portion and grant both foreign and Israelite slaves additional rights,1 the institution of slavery is never outlawed in the Hebrew Bible.2

Temporary slaves

There is no requirement that foreign slaves must be freed.  Unless an owner decides to release a slave in exchange for payment, the condition of slavery is permanent, and the slave is inherited by the owner’s heirs.3

But an Israelite slave is always temporary, unless he himself chooses to make his condition permanent.4

A free Israelite man who is impoverished or indebted, and has sold everything else he owns, may sell himself.  That way he and his family will have food, clothing, and shelter while he works for his master.  In addition, a court can sell a convicted thief if he does not have the means to repay the person he stole from.5

An Israelite girl becomes a slave if her father sells her while she is still a minor.  That way her father receives a payment at once in lieu of the bride-price he would normally receive when she reaches puberty and marries.

Unlike a foreign slaves, Israelite slaves must be given the option of freedom after six years, in the Jubilee year, or when their kinsmen redeem them, whichever comes first.6  Meanwhile, temporary slavery is acceptable as long as the master follows the laws, starting with the laws laid out in this week’s Torah portion.

*

If you acquire a Hebrew eved, six years ya-avod, and in the seventh he shall leave free, without charge.  If he comes alone, he leaves alone.  If he is the husband of a woman, then she leaves with him.  (Exodus 21:2-3)

The slave does not have to repay his master for any expenses incurred during the period of his servitude.  And if he was married when he was sold, his master must also take in his wife and children, so they will not go homeless.7

If his master gives him a woman and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children will belong to her master, and he [the Israelite slave] will leave alone.  (Exodus 21:4)

The Israelite slave’s master can, however, use him for stud service, to breed children with a non-Israelite female slave.  These children will be permanent slaves, like their mother.8

*

The Torah portion Mishpatim also lays out the terms of service for a female Israelite slave.  Even free women in ancient Israel were considered the property of their fathers, husbands, or nearest male kin, but the only Israelite female called a slave (amah) was a girl sold by her father.

And if a man sells his daughter as an amah, she shall not leave like the avadim.  If she is undesirable in the eyes of her master who had designated her for himself, he shall turn her over [arrange to have her redeemed].  He shall not exercise dominion over her to sell her to strange people, since he has broken faith with her.  (Exodus 21:7-8)

Slave-girl and Naaman’s Wife, from Rev. Hurlburt, Story of the Bible, 1904

In the Torah a man can buy a future wife or concubine, for himself or for his son, when she is still underage. Her purchase price is then considered an advance payment of the bride-price that a groom pays before he marries.  By this means impoverished fathers could sell their daughters for cash without waiting for them to come of age.

If the girl reaches puberty and her owner decides not to marry her after all, he must arrange for her family to redeem her by repaying him; he cannot sell her to anyone else.  If her owner bought her as a future wife for his son, the marriage must take place.

And if he designated her for his son, he shall treat her as is the law of daughters: if he marries another, he shall not diminish her [the former amah’s] meals, covering [clothing or honor], or right to marital intercourse.  (Exodus 21:9-10)

Once the girl marries her owner or her owner’s son, she must be treated like any wife and given food, clothing, honor, and sex, regardless of whether her husband likes another of his wives better.

In other words, the amah’s owner is obligated to make an acceptable provision for her when she comes of age. The three things the Torah considers most acceptable are marriage to the owner, marriage to the owner’s son, or a return to her original family.

And if he [the owner] does not do [any of] these three things, she shall leave without charge, without any silver.  (Exodus 21:11)

If her owner does not provide for her in any of the three preferred ways, then he must set her free like a male Israelite slave who has completed his period of service, without charging her anything.  (Non-Israelite slaves would have to pay their owners to be set free.)  Freedom was an inferior option for a young woman in ancient Israelite society, since it was hard for a single woman to make a living, but at least it was better than being sold to an outsider.

*

The Torah’s laws about slavery, in this week’s Torah portion and elsewhere, provide some rights for slaves in a society where slavery is normal.  Does that mean these laws have only historical interest to us today?

Alas, no.  In the United States, for example, the conquering Europeans treated the indigenous peoples the way the conquering Israelites treated the Canaanites, refusing to grant them the same legal rights to life and liberty.  The Americans in power also enslaved people who were kidnapped from their homes in Africa, just like the Israelites enslaved foreigners captured in battle. Although Native and African Americans now have legal equity, they remain at a disadvantage due to earlier injustice and continuing prejudice.

Furthermore, throughout the United States there are still many people who are so impoverished, in terms of finances and/or knowledge, that they “sell” themselves by doing degrading, dangerous, or illegal work in order to feed themselves and their families.  Our “social safety net”  limits the level of impoverishment in some circumstances, but it is currently being reduced rather than expanded.

Those who struggle under a disadvantage should not be left alone to starve.  The Torah’s solution, temporary slavery, is essentially adoption by a wealthier family that can support the impoverished in exchange for their labor.  But with all our resources in the United States, we can do better.  Collectively, through taxes, we can and should rescue the destitute with solutions that give them basic living expenses, health care, and education. Other rich countries today are farther along this path; it is time for Americans to catch up and stop treating disadvantaged people like slaves.

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  1. E.g. Deuteronomy 15:12-14 on Israelite slaves, Deuteronomy 21:10-11 on foreign female slaves (see my post Ki Teitzei: Captive Soul).
  2. The Talmud, Gittin 65a, claims that slavery was abolished when the first temple fell and there were no more Jubilee years when all Israelite slaves were freed and their family lands returned to them. But the books of Ezra and Nehemiah count 7,337 male and female slaves among the households that returned from Babylonia to Jerusalem to build the second temple (Ezra 2:65, Nehemiah 7:67).
  3. Leviticus 25:44-46.
  4. Exodus 21:5-6 in this week’s Torah portion.
  5. Exodus 22:2 in this week’s Torah portion.
  6. Male Israelite slaves are freed in the seventh year in Exodus 21:2-3; female Israelite slaves have the same right by the time of Deuteronomy 15:17. Every fiftieth year all Israelite slaves are freed and their ancestral lands are returned to them (Leviticus 25:10-28, 25:39-43).  A male slave’s kinsmen can redeem him before his term is up by paying for his remaining years (Leviticus 25:50-52), and a female slave’s kinsmen can redeem her when she reaches puberty, providing that her master or his son no longer want to marry her (Exodus 21:7-8).
  7. Rashi (11th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), Rambam (12th-centery rabbi Moses ben Maimon), Ramban (13th-century rabbi Moses ben Nachman), and subsequent tradition.
  8. Rashi and Ramban on Exodus 21:4.

Beshalach & Shemot: Knowing the Name

Six weeks after they leave Egypt, the Israelites grumble that they are starving, and they would rather have died in Egypt with full stomachs.1

Manna rains from heaven, Maciejowski Bible, circa 1250 CE

So in this week’s Torah portion, Beshalach (“When he sent away”), God promises to provide bread and meat in the form of manna and quail every day.

Y-H-V-H spoke to Moses, saying: “I have heard the grumblings of the Israelites.  Speak to them, saying: In the evenings you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be sated with bread.  And you shall know that I am Y-H-V-H, your Elohim.”  (Exodus/Shemot 16:11-12)

Y-H-V-H (yud-heh-vav-heh) = the “tetragrammaton”, God’s most holy and personal name.  (In Jewish tradition this name may no longer be pronounced, and can only be spelled in Hebrew in sacred texts.  When prayers are said aloud, the tetragrammaton is read as “Adonai”)

elohim (אֱלוֹהִים) = God; gods in general.

Being God’s personal name, the tetragrammaton is not a reference to God’s status as a god, or even as a lord, master, or ruler.  The common English written translation of Y-H-V-H as “LORD” can be deceptive.  So can the Jewish practice of saying Adonai for Y-H-V-H in prayers, since Adonai literally means “my lords”.  When God says that people “shall know that I am Y-H-V-H”, God wants them to know that the god they are thinking about is the one named Y-H-V-H.

But surely the Israelites know by now that the name of their god is Y-H-V-H.

The book of Genesis/Bereishit calls God by several different names, including Y-H-V-H.  (See my post Lekh-Lekha: New Names for God.)  But the personal name of God becomes more important in the book of Exodus/Shemot.  In the first Torah portion (also called Shemot), God chooses Moses as a prophet at the burning bush, and Moses asks for God’s proper name:

Hey, I come to the Israelites and I say to them: “The elohim of your forefathers sent me to you”.  And they say to me: “What is his name?”  What shall I say to them?  (Exodus 3:13)

First the voice from the burning bush replies:

… Thus you shall say to the Israelites: “Ehyeh sent me to you.”  (Exodus 3:14)

Ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה) = I am, I will be, I become, I will become.  (A form of the verb hayah (הָיָה) = be, become, happen.)

In the next verse, God amends the answer.

… Thus you shall say to the Israelites: “Y-H-V-H, the Elohim of your forefathers, the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, and the Elohim of Jacob, sent me to you.” …  (Exodus 3:15)

The name Y-H-V-H may also be a form of the verb hayah, which also appears as havah.2  Biblical Hebrew lexicons list no hifil (causative) form of either root.  But if there were a hifil form, one conjugation would use the letters Y-H-V-H and would mean “He/it brings into being.”3

Thus the first name God gives to Moses might mean “I become” and the second name might mean “He makes [things] become”.  God decides to stick with the second name, Y-H-V-H.

… This is my name forever; this is how I shall be remembered forever.  (Exodus 3:15)

Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh, by Marc Chagall, 1931

But the name is unfamiliar to the Pharaoh of Egypt when Moses and Aaron first ask him to grant the Hebrew slaves a leave of absence.

Pharaoh said: “Who is Y-H-V-H that I should listen to his voice to send away Israel?  I do not know Y-H-V-H.”  (Exodus 5:2)

After that, God wants someone to “know that I am Y-H-V-H” nine times in the book of Exodus/Shemot.4  Five times God declares that the Pharaoh or the Egyptians will “know that I am Y-H-V-H” once God has performed a miracle that damages Egypt.5

And four times in Exodus, God declares the Israelites will “know that I am Y-H-V-H”: after God has brought them out of Egypt (Exodus 6:7), mocked the Egyptians with miracles (Exodus 10:2), given them manna and meat in the wilderness (Exodus 16:12), and dwelled among the Israelites after they have made a sanctuary (Exodus 29:46).

After the book of Exodus, the Israelites and their fellow-travelers sometimes disobey or rebel against God, but at least they know the name of the god who has adopted them.  The statement that somebody “shall know that I am Y-H-V-H” does not appear again until the book of Deuteronomy/Devarim, when Moses reminds the Israelites that God took care of them in the wilderness, giving them water, manna, and quail, and ensuring they would not need to spend time on making clothes.

I led you across for 40 years across the wilderness; your clothes did not wear out upon you, and your sandals did not wear out upon your feet.  You ate no bread and drank no wine or liquor—so that you would know that I am Y-H-V-H, your Elohim.  (Deuteronomy 29:4-5)

Plague of Blood, Golden Haggadah, circa 1320

In short, people shall know that God is Y-H-V-H when they witness or remember miracles.  The miracles might be as benign as the provision of manna in this week’s Torah portion, or as devastating as turning the whole Nile River into blood.

If Y-H-V-H means “He brings into being”, then a miracle demonstrates that even though the natural world was created long ago, the god of miracles can still bring major new events into being.

And if Y-H-V-H has a different meaning?  Some modern scholars have suggested that the four-letter name may derive from a more ancient god-name used by nomads living in an area south of the Dead Sea called “the land of Yehwa”.6  Three of the most ancient poems in the bible refer to Y-H-V-H as coming to Israel from an earlier home in the south: the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 33:2), the Song of Deborah (Judges 5:4, part of this week’s haftarah reading), and the Song of Habbakuk (Habbakuk 3:1-3).

If the name Y-H-V-H came from the name “Yehwa”, what did “Yehwa” mean?  It might be related to the later Arabic word hawaya = love, passion.7  And if Y-H-V-H means “He is passionate”, then a miracle demonstrates that this god is deeply emotional about human beings at the collective level, and does extraordinary things to arrange their fates.  In Exodus the God of passion makes the Egyptians suffer and helps the Israelites—except when they enrage him by worshiping the golden calf, and he kills 3,000 of them with a plague.  Y-H-V-H also gets furious over some Israelite actions in the book of Numbers/Bemidbar, and kills many thousands more.  (See my posts Balak & Pinchas: How to Stop a Plague, Part 1 and 1 Samuel: How to Stop a Plague, Part 4.)

Today most people do not believe in miracles, and those who do often apply the word “miracle” to events that do not defy the laws of nature and could just as well happen by coincidence.  They might be awed by the pseudo-miracles they notice, and they might consider God responsible.  But their concept of God is different from the God in Exodus: either more abstract, or milder and kinder.

What would it be like today to believe that God is Y-H-V-H, “He brings into being” or “He is passionate”?

  1. Exodus 16:2-3.
  2. This verb is most often conjugated from the root hayah (היה), but occasionally the bible uses a conjugation of the synonymous root havah (הוה)—for example, in the imperative in Genesis 27:29, Isaiah 16:4, and Job 37:6.
  3. The verb spelled with the letters Y-H-V-H would be the third person singular imperfect hifil.  A more elegant but slightly less literal translation is: “He who brings things into being”.  Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, A Translation with Commentary, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2004, p. 321-322, footnote on Exodus 3:14.
  4. In addition to these nine times, God also wants the Israelites to know that there is none like Y-H-V-H in Exodus 8:6, 9:14, and 18:11; to know that Y-H-V-H owns the earth in Exodus 9:29; to know that Y-H-V-H distinguishes between Egyptians and Israelites in Exodus 11:7; and to know that Y-H-V-H sanctifies them with Shabbat in Exodus 31:13.
  5. The miracles are bringing the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 7:5), turning the Nile and all the surface water in Egypt into blood (Exodus 7:17), releasing swarms of mixed vermin (Exodus 8:18), and eliminating Pharaoh’s army (Exodus 14:4 and 14:18).
  6. The “land of Yehwa” appears in a 14th-century BCE Egyptian list discovered in Amunhotep III’s Soleb Nubian temple.  Israel Knohl, “YHWH: The Original Arabic Meaning of the Name”, www.thetorah.com, 01/01/2019, .  Also see Richard Elliott Friedman, The Exodus, HarperCollins, 2017, pp. 122-123.
  7. Knohl, ibid.

Bo: Minglers or Riffraff?

Exodus from Egypt,
19th century print

After the tenth plague, the Pharaoh lets the Israelites go into the wilderness, just as God predicted to Moses.1  What God did not predict is that many non-Israelites leave Egypt with them.  Near the end of this week’s Torah portion, Bo (“Come”), we read:

And the children of Israel pulled out from Ramses toward Sukkot, about 600,000 adult men on foot, aside from non-marchers.  And also an eirev rav went up with them, and flocks and herds of very impressive property.  (Exodus/Shemot 12:37-38)

eirev rav (עֵרֶב רַב) = “mixed multitude” (King James version), motley crowd.  From the words eirev (עֵרֶב) = mixed or mingled (used for people or thread in fabric) + rav (רַב) = numerous, abundant, great.

Words from the same root as eirev include:

  • erev (עֶרֶב) = evening, sunset (when day and night mix); a weaving term, possibly for the woof.
  • arav (עֲרַב) =Arabs, Bedouins.
  • the hitpael form of the verb arav (עָרַב) = associate with, mingle with.

A negative view of the Eirev Rav

The noun eirev in reference to people (rather than to weaving) occurs only rarely in the Hebrew Bible.  In Jeremiah ha-erev (הָעֶרֶב = the eirev) refers to people of mixed race who are living in other lands, not to those living with Israelites.2  But in Nehemiah, eirev refers to  people from Ammonite or Moabite stock who live in Judah:

Ezra Reads the Law, by Gustave Dore, 1866

On that day they read to the people from the book of Moses, and they found written in it that no Ammonite or Moabite could enter the congregation of God, ever … And they heard the teaching, and they separated all the eirev from Israel.  (Nehemiah 13:1, 3)

In the books of Nehemiah and Ezra, the men who returned to Judah from exile divorce the wives they took from the local population.3  Their leaders sign a written oath “that we will not give our daughters [in marriage] to the people of the land, and their daughters we will not take for our sons.” (Nehemiah 10:31)

Another indication that eirev rav in this week’s Torah portion may be a pejorative is the duplicative rev-rav sound, like “riffraff” and “ragtag” in English, or asafsuf later in the Torah:

And the asafsuf who were in their midst craved a craving, and they sat down, and even the Israelites wept, and they said: “Who will feed us meat?”  (Numbers/Bemidbar 11:4)

asafsuf (אֲסַפְסֻף) = riffraff, rabble.  Literally, “gather-gathered”, from the verb asaf (אָסַף) = gather.

This is the only occurrence of asafsuf in the Bible, and there is no indication here whether the riffraff are of Israelite or foreign descent.  Yet 12th-century rabbi Ibn Ezra assumed that the asafsuf in Numbers were the eirev rav in Exodus, and that the foreign riffraff gathered in order to make trouble.4  Kli Yakar agreed, explaining: “But the mixed multitude, who had originated in the licentious Egypt, did not learn their lesson, and continued to sin, uttering outwardly whatever thoughts arose within them.”5

Babylon

A lack of discretion and self-control is only one of the failings that commentators have attributed to the eirev rav.  The Talmud quotes Rabbi Natan bar Abba as saying that the wealthy Jews of Babylon “… came from the eirev rav … Anyone who has compassion for God’s creatures, it is known that he is of the descendants of Abraham, our father, and anyone who does not have compassion for God’s creatures, it is known that he is not of the descendants of Abraham, our father.  Since these wealthy Babylonians do not have compassion on people, clearly they are not descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”6

In other words, the descendants of the eirev rav who converted to Judaism in Exodus are not compassionate like people with a pure Jewish bloodline.  This is ironic, since judging people by their bloodline is anything but compassionate; that kind of thinking led to the Nazi genocide, with Jews as the victims.

One of the earliest biblical commentators, Philo of Alexandria, wrote that there were two kinds of people in the eirev rav: fellow slaves looking for a better life, and those who wanted to change their allegiance to the God of Israel after witnessing the plagues and recognizing God’s power.8

Pharaoh’s sorcerers also change staffs into serpents; Foster Bible Pictures

But the Zohar, the 13th-century C.E. kabbalistic opus, claimed: “In fact, however, the mixed multitude consisted entirely of … all the sorcerers of Egypt and all its magicians … for they wanted to oppose the wonderful works of the Holy One, blessed be He.  When they beheld the signs and the wonders which Moses wrought in Egypt they came to Moses to be converted.  Said the Holy One to Moses, “Do not receive them!” Moses, however, replied, “Sovereign of the universe, now that they have seen Thy power they desire to accept our Faith, let them see Thy power every day and they will learn that there is no God like unto Thee.” And Moses accepted them.9

According to the Zohar, the new converts let Moses down by instigating rebellions during the journey through the wilderness—and their souls are still being reincarnated in people who make trouble for the Jews.10

In Modern Hebrew eirev rav still means “motley crowd”, and in some circles eirev rav is a pejorative referring to the “wicked that scheme and plot against us”10 and “individuals who do not show their loyalty to the Jewish people.”11

A positive view of the Eirev Rav

In short, much commentary has painted the eirev rav as impulsive and selfish troublemakers who may even be deliberately trying to bring down the Israelites of old and the Jews of today.

Yet the bible only says: “And also an eirev rav went up with them”.  That particular phrase is not used again.  And although the rest of the journey from Egypt to the Jordan River features many complainers, whiners, and panickers, the Torah itself does not identify any of these troublemakers with the eirev rav.

In fact, the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy take pains to distinguish resident aliens who choose to live in Israel or Judah from the foreigners in other nations.  The bible dictates fair and compassionate treatment for resident aliens 52 times.  This week’s Torah portion says that resident aliens may participate in Passover rites as long as the men are circumcised, because:

There will be one teaching for the native and for the geir residing with you.  (Exodus 12:48)

geir (גֵּר) = resident alien; convert.  Plural: geirim (גֵּריִים).

Later in Exodus, God gives the order that:

You must not wrong a geir, and you must not oppress him, because you were geirim in the land of Egypt.  (Exodus 22:20)

The book of Leviticus/Vayikra goes so far as to say:

Ruth and Boaz, Eduard C.F. Holbein, 1830

The geir residing with you shall be like a native for you, and you shall love him like yourself, because you were geirim in the land of Egypt.  (Leviticus 19:34)

Although passages in Ezra and Nehemiah oppose intermarriage, in the book of Ruth a virtuous Moabite woman converts and becomes the great-grandmother of King David.  His great-grandfather, Boaz, is descended from the union of Jacob’s son Judah with Tamar, an Adulamite.12

After northern Israel secede, its kings come from the tribe of Efrayim, who is one of the sons of Jacob’s son Joseph and Asenat, the daughter of an Egyptian priest.13

*

How did the single remark in this week’s Torah portion that “an eirev rav went up with them” lead to so much vilification of those who joined the Israelites on their exodus from Egypt?  Perhaps it is human nature to seize any excuse to shun people who seem foreign, any apparent “proof” that outsiders are bad people and bad people are outsiders.

Yet some of us learn to overcome our primitive fears, recognize the humanity in strangers, and treat them fairly.  This is what the Hebrew Bible urges when it tells us not to oppress a geir residing among us, and even to love the geir without prejudice.

I converted to Judaism several decades ago, when I was 32.  I have experienced both prejudice and welcome from people who were born Jewish.  I did not have the same childhood experiences as those born Jewish, but I am a Jew as well as a stubborn member of the eirev rav.

May everyone treat converts to their own in-groups with fairness, respect, and a little love.  And may everyone treat outsiders as human beings who deserve the benefit of the doubt.  There is no virtue in prejudice.

—

  1. During the era of the New Kingdom in Egypt, when the exodus story is set, the Egyptian Empire included not only the area around the Nile, but also the Sinai Peninsula and Canaan. Moses did not ask Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of the Egyptian Empire, but only to go “a three-day march into the wilderness” (Exodus 5:3), which would get them to the Sinai Peninsula, an area with only scattered Egyptian outposts.
  2. Jeremiah 25:20, 50:37.
  3. Ezra 9:10-14, 10:2-12; Nehemiah 10:31, 13:1-3.
  4. Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra, in Michael Carasik, editor and translator, The Commentators’ Bible; The Rubin JPS Miqra’ot Gedolot, Exodus, The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2005, p. 89.
  5. Shlomo Ephraim of Luntshitz (1550-1619), Kli Yakar, translated in Brachi Elitzur, “You were Rebellious or The Kindness of Your Youth: Parashat Beshalach”, etzion.org.il/en/you-were-rebellious-or-kindness-your-youth#_ftn3.
  6. Talmud Bavli, Beitzah 32b, The William Davidson Talmud, sefaria.org/Beitzah.32b?lang=bi.
  7. Philo of Alexandria (circa 30 B.C.E.-50 C.E.), De Vita Mosis, cited in Munk, pp. 147-148.
  8. Zohar, Exodus, Section 2, 191a-b, Soncino translation, quoted in Gerald Aranoff, “The Mixed Multitude According to the Zohar”, Jewish Bible Quarterly, http://jbqnew.jewishbible.org/assets/Uploads/402/jbq_402_firstborn.pdf.
  9. Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah, translated by E.S. Mazer, Mesorah Publications, 1994, p. 148.
  10. Professor Gerald Aranoff, “Who Were the Mixed Multitude?”, 2015, Arutz Sheva, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/16386.
  11. Rabbi Kenneth Cohen, “What Is Erev Rav”, 2016, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-is-erev-rav/.
  12. Genesis 38.
  13. Genesis 41:25, 41:50-52, 48:8-21.

Va-eira: Taking a Stand at the Nile

Aaron’s Rod Changed into a Serpent, Foster Bible Pictures, 1873

The pharaoh is not impressed when Aaron’s staff swallows the staffs of the Egyptian court magicians.  He will not listen to the request of the two men, Moses and Aaron, to let the Hebrew slaves go on a three-day journey to worship their god.  Probably he suspects they will never come back.  Certainly he does not believe their god has any power.1

It is time for the first plague to prove him wrong.  In this week’s Torah portion, Va-eira (“and he saw”) God tells Moses:

Go to Pharaoh in the morning.  Hey, he will be going out to the water, venitzavta on the shore of the Nile, and the staff that had changed into a snake you shall take in your hand.  And you shall say to him: “God, the god of the Hebrews, sent me to you to say: ‘Send out my people so they can serve me in the wilderness!  And hey, so far you have not listened.’”  (Exodus/Shemot 7:15-16)

venitzavta (וְנִצַּבְתָּ) = and you shall stand, take a stand, station yourself, stand firm.  (A form of the verb nitzav, נִצָּב = took a stand.)

Plague of Blood, Golden Haggadah, c. 1320, Spain

Moses does so, and then Aaron obeys God’s next order.

Then he raised the staff and he struck the water that was in the Nile, in the sight of Pharaoh and his courtiers, and all the water in the Nile changed into blood.  (Exodus 7:20)

Pharaoh and his advisers him see for themselves that the Nile is transformed exactly when the staff touches the water, so they cannot invent another explanation for the plague of blood.  But the Pharaoh still refuses to listen to Moses.

After two more plagues, God tells Moses to catch Pharaoh at the waterfront again.

Then God said to Moses: “Get up early in the morning vehityatzeiv in front of Pharaoh.  Hey, he is going out to the water, and you shall say to him: ‘Thus says God: “Send out my people and they will serve me!”  Because if you are not sending out my people, here I am sending out against you and your courtiers and your people and your houses mixed vermin2, and they will fill the houses of Egypt, and even the ground that they are on!’” (Exodus 8:16)

vehityatzeiv (וְהִתְיַצֵּב) = and station yourself, establish yourself.  (Another form of the verb nitzav.)

There is no obvious reason this time for Moses give his warning on the bank of the Nile.  God does not even tell him to use his staff.  It is certainly more dramatic to interrupt Pharaoh’s regular morning routine than to arrive at the palace with all the other petitioners of the day.  But why is the Pharaoh going to the shore of the Nile in the mornings?

Over the centuries commentators have generated a variety of answers.  According to Exodus Rabbah, Pharaoh always sneaked out to the river to relieve his bladder, so nobody would know he was not a god.3  Others proposed that in the morning Pharaoh went out to exercise.4  The Talmud suggested that Pharaoh was a magician and went to the Nile to do divination.5  Ibn Ezra wrote that the king of Egypt went to the Nile to check the water level during the summer flood season.6

Nilometer

Contemporary scholar Scott B. Noegel has argued that none of these explanations fit what we now know about the New Kingdom period in ancient Egypt.7  In fact, Pharaohs spent the whole morning indoors.  They bathed and performed their ritual duties indoors.  During flood season, officials in the Pharaoh’s bureaucracy measured the level of the Nile, not the Pharaoh himself.8

Noegel concludes that the Torah invented Pharaoh’s morning trips to the Nile in order to set up a literary structure dividing the ten plagues into three sets of three followed by the final catastrophe.  “The first plague in each of these series (1st, 4th, 7th) contains Yahweh’s commandment to Moses to “station himself” before pharaoh, each time employing the Hebrew root נצב.  Each also contains the phrase “in the morning.”9

But plagues #1, #4, and #7 do not agree on the location where Moses should intercept Pharaoh.  Only plagues #1 (blood) and #4 (mixed vermin) call for Moses to catch Pharaoh at the Nile.  Before plague #7 (hail) God instructs Moses to “Get up early in the morning vehityatzeiv in front of Pharaoh.”  But the Torah says nothing about Pharaoh going out to the water; the confrontation could happen anywhere.

I think Moses intercepts the Pharaoh at the Nile because it dramatizes this Torah portion’s contrast with an earlier part of the Exodus story the part in which Moses’ sister stations herself at the Nile to intercept Egyptian royalty.

When Moses is only three months old his mother can no longer protect him from the previous Pharaoh’s command that all Hebrew infant boys must be drowned in the Nile.  So she puts him in a little ark among the reeds at the edge of the river.

Moses Saved, by Marc Chagall

Vateitatzav, his sister, at a distance to find out what would happen to him.  And the daughter of Pharaoh went down to bathe on the Nile, and her girls were walking at hand [along] the Nile.  And she saw the ark in the midst of the reeds, and she sent her slave-woman, who fetched it.  And she opened it, and she saw the child, and hey!—it was a boy, crying.  And she took pity on him and she said: “This is one of the Hebrews.”  (Exodus 2:4-6)

vateitatzav (וַתֵּתַצַּב) = she stationed herself.

Once the princess has expressed sympathy for the plight of the Hebrews, Moses’ older sister Miriam speaks up.

And his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter: “Shall I go and summon for you a nursing woman from the Hebrews, so she can nurse the child for you?”  And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her: “Go.”  And the girl went and she summoned the child’s mother.  (Exodus 2:7-8)

The princess even pays Moses’ mother for the service.  When Moses is weaned, his mother brings him to the princess, and she adopts him.

Miriam stations herself where she knows Pharaoh’s daughter will come down to the water.  She asks the princess to rescue the Hebrew child, and it works.

Eighty years later9 Moses stations himself where he knows the current Pharaoh will come down to the water.  He asks the Pharaoh to rescue the whole Hebrew people, and—as God predicts—it does not work, not even when he confronts the Pharaoh at the Nile again after three plagues.

The difference is that Miriam, her mother, and Pharaoh’s daughter are collaborators, not competitors.  All three women want to save the baby’s life more than they want personal control over him.

Moses and the next Pharaoh cannot collaborate because the Pharaoh wants personal control over his kingdom at all costs, while Moses wants to free the population of Hebrews from any Egyptian control.  Both men were brought up in the Egyptian court, both order the death of both Hebrews and Egyptians without flinching,10 and both are the leaders of large populations.  When the two men face one another at the Nile, they stand as two alternatives for rulership.

Moses keeps taking a stand for the well-being of the Hebrew people, defying both Pharaoh and God.11  His goal is to change the status quo in Egypt through a revolutionary emigration to Canaan, at that time a distant part of the Egyptian empire.

Pharaoh takes a stand against any change in Egypt, or in his way of government.

We all know people who go into denial about the facts when they feel threatened by change.  We know people who are eager for changes that may be improvements, and willing to take the risk of moving forward.  And we  know people in the middle who recognize history in the making and adapt to it, like the courtiers who beg Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go before Egypt is  destroyed, or like the Hebrews who cannot take a stand against slavery until Moses shows up with an alternative.

The best outcome is when Pharaoh’s daughter can join Miriam and her mother on common ground, cooperating to save a child’s life.  But what about when the Pharaoh and Moses stand against one another at the Nile and find no common ground?

The Torah shows that in the long run slaves will be freed, and a kingdom devastated by its own ruler will recover and become great again.

May such a recovery happen to us, speedily and in our own time.

  1. Exodus 5:2.
  2. There is no consensus about how to translate the Hebrew word for plague #4, arov (עָרֺב). It is usually translated as “insect swarms” or “wild animals”.  Arov appears to be related to a root meaning “mixture”, which is also the root for arov spelled עֲרוֹב = becoming evening.  It is hard to imagine a plague of evenings.  Through another etymology, arov spelled עֵרוֹב = mortgaging.
  3. From Midrash Tanḥuma 2:2:14, 5thcentury E.  (Translation from Scott B. Noegel, “Why Pharaoh Went to the Nile”, www.thetorah.com/why-pharaoh-went-to-the-nile/, 04/07/2017.)   This explanation also appeared in Exodus Rabbah 9:8 and in the commentary of Rashi (Shlomoh Yitzchaki, 11th century C.E.).
  4. Rashbam (R. Shlomo ben Meir, 12th century) suggested Pharaoh went riding, Ramban (Moses men Nachman or Nachmanides, 12th century) that he played in the water, Bekhor Shor (12th century) that he went hawking, and Abarbanel (15th century) that he was strolling or playing ball. (Michael Carasik, editor and translator, The Commentators’ Bible; The Rubin JPS Miqra’ot Gedolot, Exodus, The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2005, p. 48)
  5. Talmud Bavli, Mo-ed Katan 18a.
  6. Ibn Ezra (12th century) according to Noegel, ibid.
  7. The Exodus story is set in the New Kingdom period in Egypt, during the 16th-11th centuries B.C.E.
  8. Noegel, ibid.
  9. This week’s Torah portion reports Moses’ age as 80 and Aaron’s as 83 (Exodus 7:7).
  10. Moses kills an Egyptian (Exodus 2:11-12) and orders the killing of Hebrew golden calf worshippers (Exodus 32:26-28). The Pharaoh orders the execution of every male Hebrew infant (Exodus 1:15-22) and refuses to prevent the deaths of every firstborn Egyptian (Exodus 11:4-10).
  11. Moses talks God out of abandoning the Hebrew people in Exodus 32:9-12 and 31-32, after the golden calf episode, and in Numbers 14:11-17.

Shemot: Mixing Fire and Water

Does Moses have the temperament of a Levite?

Simeon and Levy Slay the People of Shechem, by Gerard Hoet, 1933

The original Levi in Genesis/Bereishit, Jacob’s third son, is a ringleader in the massacre at Shekhem.  (See last week’s post, Vayechi: Three Tribes Repudiated.)  When Jacob delivers prophecies on his deathbed, he gives this description of either his sons Levi and Shimon, or the future tribes of their descendants:

Accursed be their af because it is fierce, and their wrath because it is remorseless! (Genesis/Bereishit 49:7)

af (אָף) = nose.  (A common biblical idiom for anger is having a hot nose.)

The first mention of the tribe of Levi in the book of Exodus/Shemot (“Names”) is in the announcement of Moses’ birth.  After the first Torah portion (also called Shemot) describes how the Pharaoh calls for all Hebrew male infants be killed by drowning,

A man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi.  And the woman became pregnant and she bore a son and she saw him, that he was good, and she hid him for three months.  Then she was not able to hide him anymore, and she took for him a ark of papyrus …  (Exodus/Shemot 2:1)

Moses Saved, by Marc Chagall

He is a “good” baby, not an angry one.  Moses cries only when his mother leaves him in a waterproofed box floating among the reeds at the edge of the Nile.1  An Egyptian princess has the little ark fished out, and pays the infant’s own mother to be his wet-nurse.

And the child grew, and she brought him to the daughter of Pharaoh, and he became her son, and she called his name Mosheh [Moses], and she said: “Because from the water meshitihu.”  (Exodus 2:10)

Mosheh (מֺשֶׁה) = a Hebrew variant of the Egyptian word moses = gave birth to him.

meshitihu (מְשִׁיתִהוּ) = I pulled him out of water.  (From the verb mashah, מָשָׁה = pull out of water, which sounds like Mosheh.)

Deep or flooding water is used in the Torah as a metaphor for an overwhelming threat—either from human enemies or from God.2  By adopting Moses, the Pharaoh’s daughter pulls him out of the danger of her father’s death decree.

The Torah uses water as a metaphor not only for danger, but for fear.  When people are afraid, their hearts or knees turn into water.3

As a young adult Moses sees an Egyptian man beating a Hebrew slave. He is outraged and wants to kill the Egyptian.  But fear checks his impulse for a moment.

He turned this way and that, and saw that there was nobody [around].  Then he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.  (Exodus 2:12)

Moses pauses long enough to make sure there are no witnesses (except the Hebrew slave), but not long enough to consider whether killing one Egyptian will do any good.  His rash act does not change any of the customs or institutions regarding the treatment of Hebrews in Egypt.  But it does get Moses into trouble.

And Pharaoh heard of this matter, and he sought to kill Moses.  So Moses ran away from Pharaoh, and he stopped in the land of Midian, and he stopped at the well.  (Exodus 2:15)

Again Moses reacts out of fear. Then the seven daughters of the local priest arrive to draw water for the family flock.

And male shepherds came and drove them away. But Moses got up and he rescued them and he watered their flock. (Exodus 2:17)

Once again Moses is outraged at an injustice and takes action.

The Midianite priest takes him in and marries him to one of his daughters. Over the years, while Moses works as a shepherd for his father-in-law, Moses’ personality changes from watery (fearful) to calm, deliberate, and occasionally fiery.

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

Moses was tending the flock of Yitro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock behind the wilderness, and he came to the mountain of the God …  Then a messenger of God appeared to him in the heart of a fire in the middle of a bush.  And he looked, and hey!  The bush was burning with the fire, but the bush was not consumed.  And Moses said: “I must turn aside, yes, and look at this great sight!  Why does the bush not burn?”  (Exodus 3:1-3)

Calm and deliberate, Moses notices the subtle miracle and stops to study it.  God calls to him from the bush, and for the rest of his life, whether he likes it or not, Moses is God’s prophet.  (In this week’s Torah portion, Moses tries to turn down God’s mission five times.)4

He returns to Egypt to be God’s mouthpiece as God carries out an elaborate plan to free the Hebrew slaves and lead them out of Egypt.  Moses remains impassive during the first nine divine plagues, even though Pharaoh waffles six times, promising to let the Israelites leave and then rescinding his promise.5  But when he tells Pharaoh about tenth and final plague, the death of the firstborn, Moses is finally fed up.

Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh, by Marc Chagall

Moses said: “Thus says God: ‘Around midnight I am going out among the Egyptians.  And every firstborn n the land of Egypt dies …’  Then all these, your courtiers, will come down to me, and they will bow low to me, saying: ‘Go, you and all the people who follow behind you!’  And after that I will go.”  And he went away from Pharaoh chari af.  (Exodus 11:4-5, 8)

 chari af = in anger.  chari (חָרִי) = in the heat of.  af (אָף) = nose.

After that, the Israelites and their fellow-travelers complain and criticize Moses five times during the journey to Mount Sinai, but Moses only loses his temper once, when he tells them not to try to save any manna for the next day (except on Shabbat), and some of them do it anyway, so the divine food gets maggots and stinks.6

Moses does not become angry or hot-nosed again until he comes down from the mountain and sees the people worshiping a golden calf.

And as he came near the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing.  Vayichar, the af of Moses, and he threw down the tablets from his hands and he smashed them at the bottom of the mountain.  (Exodus 32:19)

vayichar (וַיִּחַר) = and it got hot.

Moses loses his temper only a few more times in the books of Leviticus/Vayikra and Numbers/Bemidbar.  He expresses his anger by yelling at people or talking to God.  He hits a rock, but after his youthful murder he never hits another human being.7  God’s anger, on the other hand, burns frequently and causes plagues that kill thousands of people.

Moses even manages to transform the temperament of his fellow Levites.  In the book of Exodus the tribe of Levi is violent when it carries out Moses’ command to run through the camp and slaughter all the golden calf worshippers.8  Yet after that the Torah records only one more violent act by a Levite; he skewers two intruders in the Tent of Meeting.9  Moses ordains five of his Levite relatives as priests, and assigns the rest of them to assist with the work of the sanctuary.  Since they are responsible for the holy work, the Levites are the only tribe he does not muster for battle.

Although Moses begins life strongly associated with water, he overcomes his early watery fear.  He has the fiery heart of a Levite, but his passion is for the underdog and for the Israelite people.  His anger at the golden calf worshippers is fierce and remorseless, like that of his tribe’s founder, Levi.  But then instead of flipping to the dangerous side of water and behaving like an overwhelming flood, Moses succeeds in setting limits on both his watery and his fiery natures.  Like the bush on the dry mountain, Moses is not consumed by fire.

Is Moses simply born “good”, like a placid baby?  Or do his encounters with God teach him to stay patient and level-headed even when outrageous things are happening?

I believe each human being is born with a natural temperament, a tendency to react to adversity with fight or with flight, with anger or fear or melancholy or serenity.  But I also believe that we can gradually modify our own natures if we keep reflecting on our experiences and questioning ourselves.  Moses modifies his nature as he struggles to deal effectively with a capricious and often angry God.

How can we modify our own natures?

  1. Exodus 2:6.
  2. 2 Samuel 22:17 & Psalm 18:17; Psalms 32:6, 69, 88:17-18, 124, and 144.7; Hosea 5:10; and Job 22:11.
  3. Joshua 7:5, Ezekiel 7:17, Psalm 22:15, and Job 27:20.
  4. Exodus 3:11, 3:13, 4:1, 4:10, and 4:13.
  5. Exodus 8:4-11, 8:21-28, 9:27-35, 10:8-11, 10:16-20, and 10:24-27.
  6. Moses becomes angry about the manna in Exodus 16:20. He does not get angry when the people complain in Exodus 14:10-14, 15:23-25, 16:2-8, or 17:1-4.
  7. Leviticus 10:16, Numbers 16:15, and Numbers 31:14. We can also assume Moses is angry in Numbers 20:10, when he yells at the people before hitting the rock.
  8. About 3,000 in Exodus 32:26-29.
  9. Only priests are allowed to enter the Tent of Meeting, and only well-defined holy activities are permitted there. The other Levites have a duty to guard the sanctuary from unauthorized entry.  When a Shimonite and a foreigner enter it to fornicate in Numbers 25:7, Pinchas grabs a spear and runs it through the couple.

Pesach: Miriam the Prophetess

Pesach (פֶּסַח, “skipping”) means Passover.  Seder (סֵדֶר, “order”) means the dinner table ritual following the order in the Haggadah.  Haggadah (הַגָּדָה, “the telling”—a term that came into use in the 19th century) means the book of rituals, prayers, questions, four cups of wine, and stories.  The longest story, told while the second cup of wine sits on the table, is about the exodus from Egypt, up to the point when the pursuing Egyptian army drowns in the Reed Sea, and the newly-freed slaves celebrate on the far shore.

In the book of Exodus, Moses led the people in celebrating by singing a lengthy psalm.1

Miriam’s Song, 1909

Then Miriam the neviyah, the sister of Aaron, took the drum in her hand, and all the women went out after her, with drums and with circle-dances.  And Miriam chanted for them:

Sing to God, for He is high above the high;

horse and its rider He hurled into the sea.  (Exodus/Shemot 15:20-21)

neviyah (נְבִיאָה) = prophetess (the feminine form of navi (נָבִיא) = prophet).

Miriam is the first woman in the Torah to be called a neviyah.  She leads the women in singing as well as in tapping hand drums and dancing.2

Miriam is a character in three dramatic scenes in the Torah.  She is the resourceful young woman who, when the pharaoh’s daughter adopts her infant brother Moses, arranges for their own mother to be his paid wet-nurse.3  She is the leader of thousands of women in the scene above.  And later in the trek across the wilderness, she leads her brother Aaron in a joint complaint regarding Moses’ wife.  (See my post Beha-alotkha: Unnatural Skin.)  The two siblings point out that they are prophets, too:

“Has God spoken only with Moses?  Hasn’t He also spoken with us?”  And God heard.  (Numbers/Bemidbar 12:2)

by Johann Christoph Weigel, 1695

God calls Miriam, Aaron, and Moses to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and speaks to all three from the pillar of cloud—in order to tell them that Moses gets the most direct divine communication.

And [God] said: “Please listen to my words!  When there is a navi of God among you, I make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream.  Not so my servant Moses … I speak with him mouth to mouth, and in seeing, not in riddles, and he looks at the likeness of God.  (Numbers 12:6-8)

God afflicts Miriam with a temporary skin disease to underscore the point.  Nevertheless, in that scene Miriam is indeed a neviyah who hears God’s voice directly!

Miriam is mentioned in passing five times after this, including God’s speech in the book of Micah reminding the Israelites that God sent them three leaders for the exodus from Egypt: Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 4

*

What is a navi or neviyah?  The Torah offers several paradigms.

  • Intercessor

The word navi first appears in the book of Genesis, when God tells King Avimelekh in a dream: “And now, return the wife of [Abraham], since he is a navi, and he can pray for you and you will live.” (Genesis 20.7)

Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, and an unnamed prophet in the first book of Kings are also prophets who have God’s ear and intercede with God to save other people.5

  • Spokesperson

The Torah introduces a second paradigm of a navi after the enslaved Israelites give up on Moses’ idea that God will liberate them.  When God tells Moses to speak to Pharaoh next, he tries to get out it, arguing that he has “uncircumcised lips”, i.e. he cannot speak well.6  But God has an answer for everything.

Then God said to Moses: “See, I place you as a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother will be your navi.”  (Exodus 7:1)

Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh, March Chagall, 1931

In other words, Aaron will act like a navi for Moses, hearing Moses speak and then passing on Moses’ words to the Egyptian court.  Obviously Moses is God’s navi, hearing God speak and passing on God’s words, though the Torah does not bother to say so until the end of Deuteronomy:  And never again in Israel rose a navi like Moses, who knew God face to face.  (Deuteronomy 34:10)

Moses and God have the longest, most frequent, and most direct conversations in the entire Hebrew Bible.  After Moses gets over his initial reluctance to speak, he fluently delivers God’s instructions, warnings, and hundreds of rules.7

Other prophets transmit God’s predictions, or warnings, about the future of kings or kingdoms if they do not change their ways.  These include all the major prophets (Isaiah through Malachi).

  • Ecstatic

The third kind of navi in the Hebrew Bible is one who goes into an altered state of consciousness characterized by an awareness of the divine and obliviousness to the world, and who does not return with any coherent message from God.  The first occurrence of this state in the Torah is when God shares some of Moses’ spirit or ruach with 70 elders.

And the spirit was upon them, vayitnabe-u, but they did not continue.  (Numbers 11:25)

Saul Before Samuel and the Prophets, by Benjamin West, 1812

vayitnabe-u (וַיּתְנַבְּאוּ) = and they acted like prophets, and they prophesied to themselves, and they spoke in ecstasy.  (From the same נבא root as navi.)

In both books of Samuel and both books of Kings, bands of prophets wander around making music, dancing, and babbling.  The bible explains the proverb “Is Saul, too, among the prophets?” first with a scene in which King Saul falls in with a band of prophets on the road and speaks in ecstasy like them, then with a scene in which not only babbles, but also strips naked.8

*

Miraim is the first of only five women called prophets in the Hebrew Bible. After her, two major prophetesses are spokespersons for God (type 2 above): Deborah, who summons a general and tells him to go to war;9 and Huldah, who authenticates a scroll as the word of God and utters two prophetic predictions.10  Two other prophetesses are mentioned only glancingly.11

Miriam is the only neviyah whom the bible reports as engaging in what might be ecstatic behavior: playing a drum, dancing, and singing on the shore of the Reed Sea.  But Miriam leads circle dances in complicated patterns that require concentration and planning.  She leads a coherent chant.  Rather than directing ecstatic worship, she is probably organizing a celebration of God as the victor in a war against the Egyptian charioteers.  Women customarily greeted soldiers returned from a victory with drumming, dancing, and singing.12

Although Miriam hears God’s voice, the Torah does not report her serving as either an intercessor or a spokesperson for God.

by Simeon Solomon, 1860

The Talmud attempts to fill the void by claiming that Miriam did pronounce a prophecy: that her mother would have a son who would save the Israelites from Egypt.  When Moses was born, according to this story, the whole house filled with light, and Miriam’s father exclaimed that his daughter’s prophecy had been fulfilled.13  This is a pleasant tale with no basis in the Torah.

A modern folk explanation is that Miriam must have had foreknowledge of the victory at the Reed Sea, and told the women to bring their drums.  Otherwise they would not have bothered to pack them, since they left their homes in Egypt in such a hurry that the dough had no time to rise in their kneading-troughs.14

This argument for Miriam’s power as a neviyah fails in the context of the larger story in Exodus.  The Israelite women were already packing all the gold, silver, jewelry, and clothing they “borrowed” from the Egyptians; they could easily add their hand drums and any their other sentimental and ritual objects.

*

Miriam may be called a neviyah because of other deeds not recorded in the bible.  Or she may simply be an exceptional person who has a close relationship with God.

A traditional Passover seder includes pouring a cup of wine for Elijah the navi.  Many a modern seder adds a ritual cup of water for Miriam the neviah.  (The water alludes to a Talmudic story that says a well of water followed the Israelites through the wilderness for 40 years thanks to the merit of Miriam.15)

I lift a cup for Miriam at Passover knowing that she may not be a neviyah in the sense of being an intercessor with God, a spokesperson for God, or a religious ecstatic.  I celebrate her lifelong wise leadership, and her ability to listen to God.  May we all learn to be a little more like Miriam the neviyah.

—

  1. Exodus 15:1-18. See my post Beshalach & Psalm 136: Miracle at Sea.
  2. Since the two lines of Miriam’s song are the same as the first two lines of the psalm ascribed to Moses, the women might sing them as a periodic refrain during the longer psalm. Most modern scholars consider either the entire psalm, or at least Miriam’s song, to be one of the oldest poems in the Torah (based on Frank M. Cross and David N. Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1973).
  3. Exodus 2:4-8.
  4. When she dies in Numbers 20:1; in two genealogies listing her with her brothers Aaron and Moses, Numbers 26:59 and 1 Chronicles 5:29; in a warning about skin disease in Deuteronomy 24:9, and in Micah 6:3-4.
  5. Moses for the Israelite people in Exodus 32:9-14, Exodus 33:12-17, Numbers 11:1-2, and Numbers 21:6-9, and for Miriam in Numbers 12:10-15; Samuel for the Israelites in 7:5-10; Elijah to bring a dead boy back to life in 1 Kings 17:20-24; Elisha for the same reason in 2 Kings 4:8-37; an unnamed prophet for King Jereboam in 1 Kings 13:1-6.
  6. Exodus 6:12, 6:30. See my post Va-eria & Shemot: Uncircumcised, Part 2.
  7. The Talmud (Makkot 23b and Yevamot 47b) claims there are 613 commandments in the Torah.  It is hard to decide which rules should count, but 10th-century C.E. rabbi Saadiah ben Yosef Gaon found a way to list 613 in his Sefer Hamitzvot, and Maimonides (12th-century C.E. rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, nicknamed Rambam) came up with 613 for his book by the same name.
  8. 1 Samuel 10:10-12 and 19:18-24.
  9. Judges 4:4-16.
  10. 2 Kings 22:14-20.
  11. The unnamed wife of the first Isaiah (Isaiah 8:3) and Noadeyah, a false neviyah listed in Nehemiah 6:14.
  12. Judges 11:34, 1 Samuel 18:6-7.
  13. Talmud Bavli Megillah 14a.
  14. Exodus 12:34.
  15. Talmud Bavli Taanit 9a.

Vayakheil & Ki Tisa: Second Chance

Moses’ first forty-day stint on Mt. Sinai results in the disaster of the golden calf, which brings out the worst in both Moses and the people.  (See my post Ki Tisa: Making an Idol Out of Fear.)  But then Moses goes back up the mountain for another forty days, and gives the people a second chance.

Two 40-day vigils

During the first forty days and forty nights, God gives Moses the plans for building a holy sanctuary, its furnishings, and the vestments and accoutrements of its priests.  Meanwhile, the people below are afraid that Moses has died in the fire on top of the mountain.  In last week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, they tell Aaron, the deputy leader:

“Get up!  Make for us a god that will go in front of us, because this man Moses who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don’t know what happened to him!”  (Exodus/Shemot 32:1)

During his second forty days on the mountaintop, Moses persuades the God-character to forgive the people for making the golden calf idol, and to reveal more of the divine personality to him. Meanwhile, the people below wait patiently for Moses to return.

When he does, they are afraid of what happened to him.

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

But Moses calls to them, and gradually the people come close enough to listen to his report from God.

Two kinds of assembling

As Moses’ first forty days on the mountain draw to a close, the people assemble themselves and confront Aaron with their demand for an idol.

Vayikaheil, the people, against Aaron, and they said to him: “Get up!  Make for us a god …” (Exodus 32:1)

vayikaheil (וַיִּקָּהֵל) = and they assembled, and they gathered together.

When Moses returns from his second forty days, the people wait until he assembles them.  This week’s Torah portion, Vayakheil, begins:

Vayakheil, Moses, the whole community of the Israelites, and he said to them: “These are the things that God commanded you to do …” (Exodus 35:1)

vayakheil (וַיַּקְהֵל) = and he assembled.  (From the same root as vayikaheil.)

Two things for the divine to inhabit

Gold calf from Temple of Baalat, Byblos

The first time, the people demand an idol, a statue for God to inhabit, and Aaron makes a golden calf.  Nobody remembers God’s prohibition against worshiping idols, i.e. images or statues for gods to inhabit.

Then they said: “This is your god, Israel, the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”  (Exodus 32:4)

Aaron confirms their identification of the golden calf by declaring a festival for God, using God’s personal four-letter name.1

The second time, they make the tent-sanctuary God requested and sanctioned, confident that God will dwell in it.  Moses has time now to repeat what God said during the first forty days on the mountaintop:

“They shall make a holy place for me, and I will dwell among them. Like everything that I show you, the pattern of the dwelling-place and the pattern of all its furnishings, that is how you shall make it.”  (Exodus 25:8-9)

Two uses for donations

The first time, the people donate their gold earrings so Aaron can make them an idol.

And all the people took the gold rings that were in their ears, and they brought them to Aaron.  And he took from their hands, and he shaped [the gold] with a metal-working tool, and he made it [into] a calf.  (Exodus 32:3-4)

The second time, in the Torah portion Vayakheil, the people donate precious metals and gems, expensive dyes, linen and goat hair and leather, wood, oil, and spices—everything needed to make an elaborate portable sanctuary and its furnishings.

Then they came, every man whose heart lifted and everyone whose spirit nadevah him.  They came with the donation of God for the works of the Tent of Meeting and for all its service and for the clothing of the holy.  And they came, the men in addition to the women, everyone nediv of heart … (Exodus 35:21-22)

nadevah (נָדְבָה) = it prompted, urged on.

nediv (נְדִיב) = willing, generous, noble.  (From the same root as nadevah.)

Moses also calls for skilled workers, male and female, to volunteer to make all the sacred objects.

And they took from in front of Moses all the donations that the Israelites had brought for the work of making [the items for] the service of the holy.  But [the people] brought to him more nedevah, morning after morning.  (Exodus 36:3)

nedevah (נְדֶבָה) = voluntary gift, spontaneous generous offering.  (Also from the same root as nediv.)

The people donate so many materials that Moses has to tell them to stop.  Their hearts overflow with the desire to give, and the craftspeople among them are eager to donate their time and skills to make a sanctuary for the God of Moses.

Two pairs of tablets

Moses Breaking the Tablets, by Rembrandt

The first time Moses comes down with a pair of stone tablets engraved by God, he sees the people dancing in front of the golden calf.

And it happened as he drew near the camp: he saw the calf and the circle-dances, and Moses got angry, and he hurled the tablets down from his hands and shattered them at the bottom of the mountain.  (Exodus 32:19)

But when he comes down with a second pair of engraved tablets, the stones remain whole.

What the people want all along is a leader to guide them, and a visible sign of God to reassure them.  They fail to get what they want the first time because, in their fear, they assume Moses is dead and they forget that their God hates idols.

The second time around the people succeed in getting what they want.  They trust Moses to return and he does, more impressive than ever.  Then they eagerly create a new and more impressive visible reminder of the presence of their invisible God.

Furthermore, they now have something they can do to please God, a project that gives their lives meaning and purpose.

All of these rewards result from the people’s change in attitude.  The second time around, they wait patiently for Moses to return from the mountaintop.  They are careful to follow God’s rules and obey God’s prophet.  Relieved that both God and Moses have forgiven them, they become eager to make their relationship with God better than ever.  This leads to an outpouring of generosity.

What causes the people’s change of heart?

After Moses smashes the first pair of tablets, he has a few thousand Israelites killed, and God strikes more of them with a plague.  After that, I suspect, the people are more terrified of Moses and God than they are of being leaderless.

But then Moses forgives them.  The next day, having recovered from his anger and fear, Moses announces that he will beg God to forgive them, and he climbs back up Mt. Sinai.2

Moses also asks God for a different vision of the divine, and the God-character shows him another side of the divine personality: the thirteen attributes of God, which include compassion, tenderness, patience, forbearance, and kindness.3  Finally, God lets the people build the sanctuary for him despite their two-day relapse into idol worship.

After a disaster or a misunderstanding, it takes compassion and kindness from leaders for their followers to respond with trust and generosity.

May we all develop these attributes.

  1. Exodus 32:5.
  2. Exodus 32:30.
  3. Exodus 34:6-7

Ki Tisa: Making an Idol Out of Fear

Mount Vesuvius in Eruption, by Jacob More, 1780, detail

The Israelites give up waiting for Moses to come back down from Mount Sinai in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa (“When you bring up”).  Forty days before they had watched him walk into the fire at the top.1  Now they think he must have died there.

And the people saw that Moses took too long to come down from the mountain, and the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him: “Get up!  Make for us elohim that will go in front of us, because this man Moses who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don’t know what happened to him!  (Exodus/Shemot 32:1)

elohim (אֱלוֹהִים) = gods (the plural of eloha, אֱלוֹהַּ.); a god; God.

The Israelites and their fellow-travelers have run out of hope.  They are afraid they are stranded in the wilderness without their leader, without the man who spoke with God and knew what to do.  And even God’s pillar of cloud and fire, which led them from Egypt to Mount Sinai, is gone.

Out of fear, they ask Aaron to make them an idol or two.  Out of fear, he does it, and calls the golden calf by the four-letter name of the God.2  The next morning they make animal offerings to it, and feast and drink and dance and play.

Moses Breaking the Tablets, by Ephraim Moshe Lilien, 1808

And it happened as he drew near the camp: he saw the calf and the circle-dances, and Moses got angry, and he hurled the tablets down from his hands and shattered them at the bottom of the mountain.  (Exodus 32:19)

The sound of the shattered tablets stops the revelers cold.

And he took the calf that they had made and her burned it in fire, and he ground it until it was fine powder, and he scattered it on the surface of the water and made the Israelites drink it.  (Exodus 32:20)

The people meekly obey.  Moses is in charge.

Then Moses questions Aaron about what happened.

And Moses saw that the people were out of control, because Aaron had let them get out of control …  (Exodus 32:25)

Where there is anger there is often submerged fear.  Now Moses’ fear emerges.  He does not realize that his own appearance has restored order.

And Moses stood in a gate of the camp, and he said: “Whoever is for God, to me!”  And all the sons of Levi gathered to him.  And he said to them: “Thus says God, the God of Israel:  Each man put his sword on his thigh.  Pass through and return from gate to gate of the camp, and each man kill his kinsman, and each man his neighbor, and each man his closest.”  (Exodus 32:26-27)

Did God really issue this order?  Elsewhere in the book of Exodus/Shemot, God and Moses have a conversation first, and then Moses transmits God’s instructions.  Here, God says nothing.  Perhaps Moses, like many insecure religious leaders, is claiming higher authority for his own words.

Spoiling the Egyptians,
Golden Haggadah, 1325-1349

All the Levite men have swords, even though they were slaves in Egypt.  The Torah portion Beshallach notes: And the Israelites went up armed from the land of Egypt. (Exodus13:18)   Perhaps while the Israelite women were taking gold, silver, jewelry, and clothing from their Egyptian neighbors, the Israelite men were stealing weapons, knowing they might be attacked by either Egyptians or new enemies in the wilderness.3  Enough men were armed to wage a battle when they were attacked by Amalek.4

They did not expect to attack each other.

And the sons of Levi did as Moses spoke.  And about 3,000 men from the people fell that day.  (Exodus 32:28)

Is it really necessary for Moses to order his fellow Levites to harden their hearts and kill so many people, even their own best friends and nearest relatives?

No.  Moses forgets that he is no longer the tongue-tied novice he was at the Burning Bush; that he has threatened the Pharaoh in his palace, and commanded thousands of people.  Yes, the Israelites grumbled a few times between the Reed Sea and Mount Sinai.  But they kept following him.  And during God’s revelation at Sinai, the people were so shaken they begged Moses to pass on God’s words to them while they stood at a distance.5  They were happy to trust him.

Moses does not realize that the people are relieved to have their leader back in charge.  He does not see that now he could speak to the people instead of having them killed.  He could remind them that God does not want them to worship any images; the second commandment says so.  He could say that God will not abandon them as long as they did not abandon God.

But Moses does not see it.  He acts out of fear, and 3,000 people die.

Fear begins with personal insecurity.  Moses tried to get out of being God’s prophet by making excuses at the burning bush.6  He grows in the job, but when catastrophe strikes, he still panics.

In America in 2018, many people are living with uncertainty and a lack of confidence.  Some Americans feel insecure because the values they learned from their families, and the work they know how to do, are losing their value in our changing society.

Next, an alarming piece of news ignites personal insecurity and turns it into anger and fear. For Moses, it is seeing his people dance around an idol.  Today, it might be propaganda about immigrants, or news of a mass shooting.

Under the influence of fear, it is hard to assess the facts and draw rational conclusions.  It is hard to call for improving the rule of law, for improving society, for attending to unbalanced individuals.  But it is easy to succumb to panic and call for more weapons to defend ourselves.  And it is easy to panic and demonize the people who oppose us.

We are all afraid of something.  We do not all act of fear.  But it is hard to transcend yourself when you are too angry and fearful to see straight, like Moses when he realizes his people were out of control.

May we all be blessed with the ability to take a deep breath; with sympathy for our fellow human beings; with the humility to change our minds; and with the insight to stop the cycle of fear.

  1. Exodus 24:17-18.
  2. See my post Lekh-Lekha: New Names for God.
  3. Exodus 12:35-36.
  4. Exodus 17:8-13.
  5. Exodus 20:15-18.
  6. Exodus 3:11-4:13.

Terumah: Tree of Light

In February the almond trees bloom in Israel.  They are the first trees to wake up from winter dormancy, and their white flowers appear before their leaves.

Moses receives detailed instructions from God Sinai in this week’s Torah portion, Terumah (“Donations”), for making a tent-sanctuary and each holy item inside it.  God describes the lampstand or menorah in terms of an almond tree.

You shall make a menorah of pure gold.  Of hammered work you shall make the menorah; its seat and its shaft, its bowls, its kaftorim, and its blossoms shall be from it.  (Exodus/Shemot 25:31)

menorah (מְנֺרַה) = lampstand supporting bowls of oil with wicks.

Almond drupes

kaftor (כַּפְתֺּר), plural kaftorim (כַּפְתֺּרִים) = knobs, drupes (fruits with pits, such as peaches, plums, and almonds), capitals of columns resembling almond drupes; natives of Crete.

Since the lamp-stand is hammered out of pure gold, a fairly soft metal, it cannot be any taller than six feet. The Talmud (Menachot 28b) says it was eighteen handbreadths, just over five feet.  At that height, the high priest could easily reach the seven oil lamps on top to refill the bowls and trim and light the wicks.1

(The Arch of Titus in Rome, carved in 82 C.E., bears a relief sculpture of the sacking of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, including two soldiers carrying away a menorah somewhat shorter than they are.)

The overall shape of the menorah, according to this week’s Torah portion, is like a flat or espaliered tree with a central trunk and three branches on each side.  The branches and the central shaft all terminate in oil lamps, so there are seven lamps across the top:

And you shall make seven lamps on it … of pure gold.  (Exodus 25:37-38)

And [it shall have] six shafts going out from its sides: three shafts of the menorah on one side and three shafts of the menorah on the second side.  Three bowls meshukadim on one side, on each a kaftor and a blossom, and three bowls meshukadim on the other side, on each a kaftor and a blossom; the same way for all six of the shafts going out from the menorah.  And on [the central shaft of] the menorah, four bowls meshukadim, [each with] its kaftor and its blossom: a kaftor under a pair of branches from it and a kaftor under a pair of branches from it and a kaftor under a pair of branches from it—for the six branches going out from it.  (Exodus/Shemot 25:32-35)

meshukadim (מְשֻׁקָּדִים) = being made like almonds.  (From one of the two root verbs spelled shakad, שָׁקַד.)

Menorah model at Temple Mount Institute

Each oil lamp consists of a bowl that looks like an almond blossom sitting on top of an almond drupe.  (Unlike a peach, the fleshy part of an almond drupe is a relatively thin covering over the pit, which has an almond seed or nut inside.)  The central shaft of the menorah has the same decorative motif at each of the three junctions where shafts branch out, with the central shaft continuing up from the flower-bowl shape.  At the top of the central shaft the fourth almond flower-bowl is open and serves as the middle lamp.

Lexicons classify meshukadim as a form of the verb shakad (שָׁקַד) = made like an almond, as opposed to the identically spelled verb shakad (שָׁקַד) = watched for, was vigilant, was alert.  Another passage in the Hebrew Bible uses the identical spelling and pronunciation of the two shakad root verbs as a prophetic pun.

And the word of God happened to me, saying: “What do you see, Jeremiah?”  And I said: “A shoot of a shakeid I see.”  And God said to me: “You do well to see it.  Because I am shokeid over my word, to do it.”

shakeid (שָׁקֵד) = almond, almond tree.

shokeid (שֺׁקֵד) = being vigilant, watchful, alert.

The Hebrew Bible also describes God as watchfully attentive to the Israelites, for good or bad.2  Elsewhere in the Bible, the verb shakad that means being vigilant is used to describe people watching for chances to do evil,3 a leopard watching for humans to leave their towns and become its prey,4 and people who stay awake at night.5

*

Lamps are symbols of enlightenment, divine inspiration that casts light so we can see something more clearly.  The menorah in the sanctuary is the size of a human for practical reasons—but perhaps also because it is humankind’s job to receive and spread enlightenment.

It may be shaped like a tree in recollection of in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad in the garden of Eden.  After all, enlightenment is a spark of insight that blooms into new knowledge.

Why is the design of the menorah taken from the almond tree?  I think this is a double symbol, from the double meaning of meshukadim: “being made like almonds” and “from those who are vigilant, watchful, awake, alert”.  Almond trees flower before any other useful tree.  They wake up and bloom when it is still winter.  Similarly, enlightenment can bloom even in the winter of our souls—but only if we keep watch for it, if we stay alert to any sign of holiness.

We can be shokeid, vigilant, by serving as our own high priests, tending the lamps of our own inner menorah.  We human beings are all too liable to sink into a semi-conscious state in which we operate automatically, making habitual assumptions instead of asking ourselves questions.  Yet when we do pay close attention to our own minds, to the people we encounter, and to the teachings we receive, we create our own menorah and find our own enlightenment.

(I published an earlier version of this essay on January 30, 2011)

—

  1. Aaron, the first high priest, has the duty of tending the lamps.  See Exodus 30:7-8, Leviticus 24:3-4, Numbers 8:1-2.
  2. Jeremiah 31:28, Jeremiah 44:27, Daniel 9:14.
  3. Isaiah 29:20.
  4. Jeremiah 5:6.
  5. Psalm 102:8, 127:1, Job 21:32.

Mishpatim: The Immigrant

After the revelation including the ten commandments at Mount Sinai, God gives the people a series of more specific laws in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (“Laws”). One of these laws becomes a theme in the Hebrew Bible:

Slaves making bricks in Egypt, tomb of Vizier Rekhmire. ca. 1459 B.C.E.

You may not oppress a geir, nor may you push him around1, for you yourselves were geirim in the land of Egypt.  (Exodus/Shemot 22:20)

geir (גֵּר) = immigrant, resident alien; (or) a foreign man who has settled down in ancient Israel, has been circumcised, and observes the state religion.  (Plural geirim (גֵּרִים). From the root verb gur, גוּר.)

As far as we know, no other country in the Ancient Near East had a law against oppressing immigrants.  From Exodus to Jeremiah, the Hebrew Bible tells us 18 times to love the geir, to apply the same rules to the geir as to the native citizen, and not to oppress, push, or exploit a geir.2  Four times the bible adds that we were geirim in Egypt.

And the Israelites trace their own ancestry to a geir couple who immigrated to Canaan.

Aramean immigrants in Canaan

Abraham immigrates to Canaan

And God said to Abraham: “Go for yourself, away from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.”  (Genesis/Bereishit 12:10)

Abraham, his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot, and all the people who work for them leave the land of Aram forever and immigrate to Canaan, where they become neighbors, allies, and trading partners with the natives.

Just as most Americans who were born in the United States are descended from immigrants, the “native citizens” of the two Israelite kingdoms traced their descent to Jacob, the grandson of the immigrants Abraham and Sarah.

Israelite immigrants in Egypt

Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, immigrates to Egypt with his entire family.

Exodus from Ramses into the Sinai Peninsula

According to the Torah the Israelites (“the Children of Israel”) live there for 430 years3—but the Egyptians still view them as foreigners.  Two pharaohs worry that if the Israelites become too populous they might rebel and fight against Egypt.4

They finally do rebel, but without fighting.  The Israelites and some fellow-travelers walk away from slavery and out of Egypt, following Moses and God’s pillar of cloud and fire.

God’s plan is to “give” the Israelites the land of Canaan, where their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were once resident aliens.

Immigrants in the two Israelite kingdoms

Later in this week’s Torah portion, God elaborates:

You may not push around a geir; and you know the nefesh of a geir, since you were geirim in the land of Egypt.  (Exodus 23:9)

nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ) = soul that animates the body, state of mind, inclination, appetite.

Does knowing the state of mind of an immigrant help people to treat new immigrants fairly?

Twentieth-century scholar Nehama Leibowitz has pointed out that many people who were oppressed in the past become tyrants themselves if they come into positions of power.5  This, she wrote, is why Ramban (13th-century rabbi Moses ben Nachman, or Nachmanides) interpreted the phrase “you were geirim in the land of Egypt” as a reminder that the Egyptian oppressors thought there was no one to help the Israelites, but God responded to their cries—and destroyed much of Egypt in the process.6  The implied warning is: When you have your own land, don’t imagine that the strangers living among you will be helpless.  God will respond to the cries of any immigrants you oppress, and then you’ll be sorry.

The bible distinguishes between a visiting foreigner, who is not expected to observe Israelite religious law, and a geir, a resident alien who has no other home.  A geir must follow the same rules as a native about holy days,7 burnt offerings to the God of Israel,8 blasphemy9, child sacrifice,10 and procedures regarding dead animals11.

Natives and geirim get equal rights as well as equal responsibilities.  Judges are forbidden to wrong a geir12, and the cities of refuge are available to a geir as well as a native who commits accidental manslaughter.13

Furthermore, employers must let the geirim who work for them take a day off every week, just like the Israelites.14  One law in the portion Mishpatim states:

Six days you shall do your jobs, but on the seventh day you shall cease, so that your ox and your donkey shall rest, and the son of your slave-woman and the geir yinafeish.  (Exodus 23:12)

yinafeish (יִנָּפֵשׁ) = he shall refresh his nefesh, recover himself, reanimate himself.  (See my post Shabbat in Yitro, Mishpatim, and Ki Tissa: Soul Recovery.)

The Gleaners,
by Jean Francois Millet

The bible considers geirim a disadvantaged group, like widows, fatherless children, and the very poor, so there are many reminders that the rest of society must help them.  Every year, land owners must leave behind gleanings for the poor, widows, orphans, and geirim.15  Every third year, they must give a tithe to feed several groups of people who do not own land, including geirim.16

Why were geirim at a disadvantage?  Modern scholars have noted that resident aliens were especially vulnerable to being cheated and taken advantage of, because unlike ordinary Israelites, they had no clan network to protect them, and unlike visiting foreigners, they could not call on the countries where they were born for succor.17  Furthermore, they had no hereditary land in either of the two kingdoms of Israel.  They could buy land, but every fiftieth year the land reverted to the Israelite clan that originally owned it.18

Citizenship for one wave of geirim

All the biblical laws about not oppressing geirim and making sure they have enough to eat apply to geirim who arrive after the Israelites have established their own country in the land formerly called Canaan.

But three times in the bible, when Israelites are preparing to seize the land of Canaan, the geirim who chose to travel with the Israelites are included as regular citizens of the new kingdom-to-be.

In Deuteronomy, Moses declares that all the geirim who traveled with the Israelites from Egypt will be included in the covenant with God.19  Joshua then seizes much of Canaan through war, killing or subjugating the native population (as Europeans did to the native populations in America in order to seize their land).  But when Joshua holds a covenantal ceremony for the new owners of the land, he asks the children of the geirim who traveled with the Israelites from Egypt to join the Israelites in the ritual blessing at Mount Gerizim and Mount Eval.20

During the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century B.C.E., the prophet Ezekiel tells the Israelites that when they finally return to their old land, they will be allotted land-holdings along with the geirim among them.  And they will be for you as native-born citizens, along with the Children of Israel … (Ezekiel 47:22)

In short, the bible dictates that people from other ethnic groups who joined the Israelites in Egypt or Babylon will become citizens just like the descendants of Jacob.  People who immigrate separately to the land of Israel must receive the same rights and responsibilities as native-born citizens.  God decrees that these geirim must not be cheated or oppressed.  They have to be treated with justice and kindness, and if they are poor they must be fed the same way as the poor among the Israelites.

These laws about treating immigrants as equals were so important that they were repeated again and again in the Hebrew Bible.

If the relatively primitive culture of ancient Israel held this standard, I wonder why the United States of America cannot do the same today?

  1. The verb lachatz (לָחַץ) can mean press toward, crowd, oppress, push toward, or push around.
  2. Exodus 22:20, 23:9; Leviticus 19:33-34; and Ezekiel 22:7, 22:29 prohibit oppressing the geir. Leviticus 19:33-34 and Deuteronomy 10:18-19, 24:14 command the Israelites to love the geir or treat him like a brother. Exodus 12:19, 12:48-49, 23:12; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 9:14, 15:14-16, 35:15; Deuteronomy 1:16, 5:14, 16:14, 24:14, 26:11-13; and Joshua 20:9 mandate the same laws and rules for native citizens and geirim.
  3. Exodus 12:40.
  4. Both the first and the second pharaoh in the Exodus story enslave the Israelites by assigning them to corvee labor making bricks, building cities, and doing fieldwork (Exodus 1:8-14, 5:4-9), on the theory that if they have no free time, they cannot rebel. The first pharaoh also tries to reduce the Israelite population through infanticide (Exodus 1:15-22).
  5. We are told not to oppress (inah, עִנָּה) or push around (lachatz, לָחַץ) or subvert the rights of (hitah mishpat, הִטָּה מִשְׁפַּט) or exploit (ashak, עָשָׁק) a geir in Exodus 20:20 and 23:9; Leviticus 19:33-34; Deuteronomy 1:16, 24:14, 24:17-18, and 27:19; Jeremiah 7:6 and 22:3; Ezekiel 22:7 and 22:29; Zecharaiah 7:10, and Malachi 3:5. A reference to the Israelites being geirim in Egypt is included in Exodus 20:20 and 23:9, Leviticus 19:33-34, and Deuteronomy 24:17-18.  God tells native citizens to love the geir in Leviticus 19:33-34 and Deuteronomy 10:19.
  6. Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot, Part II, translated by Aryeh Newman, Joint Authority of Jewish Zionist Education, Jerusalem, 1996, p. 384-6.
  7. 13th century rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, or Nachmanides.
  8. Exodus 12:19 and 12:48-49; Leviticus 16:29; Numbers 9:14; and Deuteronomy 16:11-12 and 16:14.
  9. When geirim make burnt offerings to the God of Israel, they must follow the same rules as natives in Leviticus 17:8 and 22:18, Numbers 15:14-16 (which adds “you are alike before God”), and Numbers 19:10. Geirim are also included in the community that God forgives when it unknowingly makes an error in observance (Numbers 15:16 and 15:29).
  10. Leviticus 24:16 (using God’s name in blasphemy) and Numbers 15:30 (reviling God).
  11. Geirim, like native citizens, are forbidden to offer their children to Molech (Leviticus 18:26 and 20:2).
  12. Geirim as well as natives are forbidden to eat the blood of slaughtered animals (Leviticus 17:10-13) or animal carcasses killed by predators (Leviticus 17:15).  Leviticus 24:21-22 says the law about making restitution if you kill someone else’s livestock also applies to geirim.
  13. For example, see Exodus 12:49, Leviticus 24:22, Numbers 14-16, Deuteronomy 1:16, and Jeremiah 22:3.
  14. Numbers 35:15 and Joshua 20:9.
  15. Shabbat for geirim is mandated in Exodus 20:10 (one of the Ten Commandments), Exodus 23:12 (translated above), and Numbers 5:14.
  16. Leviticus 19:10 and 23:22.
  17. Deuteronomy 14:29 and 26:11-13.
  18. James L. Kugel, The God of Old, The Free Press, New York, p. 109; and W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, New York, 1981, p. 582.
  19. See my post Behar: Owning Land.
  20. Deuteronomy 29:10.
  21. Joshua 8:33-35.