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 2nd 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? 19th-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 13th 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.

  1. Targum Jonathan, a 2nd-century translation of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic, says Moses will wash them, and adds “in four measures of living water”.
  2. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 680.
  3. Exodus 29:7.
  4. Exodus 29:19.
  5. 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.
  6. Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman) on Exodus 30:19, The William Davidson Edition translation, in www.sefaria.org.
  7. Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah: Bereishis, Mesorah Publications, Rahway, N.J., 1994, p. 431.

Haftarat Terumah—1 Kings: From Volunteers to Conscripts

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

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

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

Then the text says what the materials are for:

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

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

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

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

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

The king imposes compulsory labor

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

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

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

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

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

mas (מַס) = compulsory labor, forced labor.

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

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

~ 900 BCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israelites as volunteers versus subjects

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

Who is conscripted?

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

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

Mas hauling stones,
Palace of Sennerachib, Nineveh

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

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

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

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

When mas is too much

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. Exodus 40:33-38.
  2. 1 Kings 5:22.
  3. Joshua 16:10, 17:13; Judges 1:28-1:35.
  4. 2 Kings 17:6, 17:23-24, and 18:11 report Neo-Assyrian King Sargon II capturing the capital of the Kingdom of Israel and relocating tens of thousands of Israelites in the eastern part of its empire. Foreigners are depicted doing heavy labor for Neo-Assyrian kings on relief sculptures.
  5. Exodus 1:11-14, 3:7-10.
  6. 1 Kings 8:10-11.
  7. 1 Kings 11:1-10.
  8. 1 Kings 11:26-39.
  9. 1 Kings 11:40.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why is the story interrupted by the Decalogue?

A later insertion

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

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

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

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

kolot ( קֺלֺת or קוֹלוֹת) = thunderclaps.

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

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

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

Ambiguity in Deuteronomy

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

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

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

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

Moses and the Tablets,
by Ephraim Moshe Lilien, 1908

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

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

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

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

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

The mysterious source of the Decalogue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The voice of God: thunderclaps and horn blasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An ambiguous transition

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

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

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

The next verse is:

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

vaydabeir (וַיְדַבֵּר) = and he spoke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to the story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beshalach: Who Is Like You?

Pharaoh thinks his army of charioteers has trapped the Israelites on the shore of the Reed Sea. The Israelites think they are going to die. Then God splits the water long enough for them cross over on dry ground, and for the Egyptians to follow them onto the sea bed. At that point in this week’s Torah portion, Beshalach (Exodus 13:17-17:16), the water rushes back, and all the Egyptians drown.

The Waters Are Divided, by James Tissot, circa 1900

The Israelites saw the Egyptians dead on the shore of the sea. And the Israelites saw the great power that God had used against the Egyptians, and the people feared God … and they trusted in God and in God’s servant, Moses. That was when Moses and the Israelites sang this song to God. (Exodus 14:30-15:1)

The 18-verse “Song of the Sea” that follows may be the oldest text in the bible; Hebrew scholars date it to roughly 1100 B.C.E. (The rest of the book of Exodus, judging by the language, was written well after 900 B.C.E.) The song differs from the prose account leading up to it, but it does include descriptions of God drowning an army of Egyptian chariots.

This is the first time anyone sings in the bible, as well as the first time a human character addresses God with words of praise (instead of pleading or questions).

In the first part of the “Song of the Sea”, verses 4-10 describe God drowning the Egyptian charioteers (with no mention of Moses). In the second part, verses 14-16 describe the fear of the surrounding kingdoms when they hear about it (a theme that is premature at this point in the Exodus story). In between these two themes, there is a verse that Jews still sing at every morning and evening service:

Mi khamokhah ba-eilim, Adonai!
Mi kamokhah, nedar bakodesh,
Nora tehilot, oseh feleh!

  Who is like you among the eilim, Y-H-V-H!
  Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
  Too nora for praises, doing wonders! (Exodus 15:11)

eilim (אֵלִם) = Plural of eil (אֵל) = a god; the name of the father god in Canaanite mythology; a title of the God of Israel.

nora (נוֹרָא) = feared, fearsome, awesome. (A form of the verb yareh, יָרֵא = fear, be afraid.)

The verse beginning “Mi khamokhah” (often transliterated as mi chamocha) certainly counts as praising God. But what kind of praise is this, comparing God to other gods? Or saying that God is too fearsome to praise? In the book of Exodus, the Israelites who travel from Egypt to Canaan believe that there were many gods, all inhuman and frightening, and the best they could hope for was that their own God was the most powerful, and would help them—if not for their own sake, for the sake of God’s reputation. The straightforward translations of eilim as “gods” and nora as “feared” or “fearsome” match their point of view.

Nobody is like you

The Song of the Sea is not the only biblical text that contain references to other gods—usually serving under the God of Israel, who is the supreme creator and judge. The idea appears in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, and Job. (See my posts Yitro & Psalms 29, 82, & 97: Greater Than Other Gods and Bereishit: How Many Gods?)

However, two biblical books, Deuteronomy and Isaiah, present clear statements of monotheism.1  For example, God says:

And there are no gods [elohim] except for Me.  (Isaiah 44:6)

Because I am Eil, and there is no other.  (Isaiah 45:22)

Jewish theology was almost exclusively monotheistic by the first century C.E., when Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish Platonist, analyzed the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic laws in terms of Greek philosophical categories. Philo dealt with archaic ideas in the bible, such as an anthropomorphic god and references to other gods, by explaining that they were allegorical.

But Talmudic and medieval commentators were more attached to taking the bible literally. They strained to find alternate interpretations for the scattered references to other gods, including the comparison between God and the eilim in the Song of the Sea.

One ploy was to treat the word eilim (אֵלִם) as if it were a misspelling of the Hebrew word ilam (אִלָּם) = mute, unable to speak. This was a legitimate move, since the Hebrew in the bible was written without the diacritical marks commonly called vowel pointing until the Masoretic text was fixed in the 7th-10th centuries C.E. Theoretically, the Masoretes could have misinterpreted a word spelled simply אלם in the Torah scroll.

So the Talmud, extant around 500 C.E., reports:

“The school of Rabbi Yishmael taught that the verse: “Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods” (Exodus 15:11), should be read as: ‘Who is like You among the mute’, for You conduct Yourself like a mute and remain silent in the face of Your blasphemers.” (Talmud Bavli, Gittin 56b)2

Rashi, 16th century woodcut

Rashi (11th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki) went farther afield when he suggested reading eilim (אֵלִם) as its homophone eilim (אֵילִים), which is the plural of ayil (אַיִל) = ram; metaphorically, a powerful man or a mighty tree.

 “באלם means ‘amongst the mighty’, just as (Ezekiel 17:13) ‘and the mighty of (אילי) the land he took away’.” (Rashi)2

Other rabbis chose to consider the eilim angels, i.e. celestial beings who have no existence apart from God. Ramban (13th-century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman) wrote that “among the eilim” means “among those who serve before Thee in heaven”.2

An 18th-century commentator explained the events at the Sea of Reeds as a battle between the God of Israel and the guardian angel of Egypt:

“Israel describes that they had seen the guardian angel of Egypt die; hence they could say that absolutely no celestial force compares to the Lord our God.” (Or HaChayim)3

But in the 19th century, Rabbi Samson Raphel Hirsch identified the eilim as powerful natural forces:

“True, there are אֵלִם, active and effective forces in nature; but though men may worship them as gods, they are subject and bound by powerful bonds to the order You have ordained for them. You alone are free; You are not bound by the was of nature, the work of Your own hands.”4

The “Mi Khamokha” verse in modern prayerbooks is often translated so as not to raise questions about monotheism. Rashi’s proposal, “Who is like you among the mighty?” is a common translation. The traditional Artscroll Siddur goes with: “Who is like You among the heavenly powers?”

I like the approach in Rabbi David Zaslow’s prayerbook, Ivdu Et Hashem B’Simcha, which retains the literal definition of eilim as “gods” but adds a explanatory phrase: “Who is like you among the gods that are worshipped?”5

Too fearsome to praise

After the difficult question “Who is like you among the eilim?”, the rest of the verse extols God by saying:

Who is like you, majestic in holiness,

Too fearsome for praises, doing wonders! (Exodus 15:11)

A strictly literal translation of the phrase “Nora tehillot” would be “fearsome praises”, but the oldest Biblical Hebrew omits many of the connecting words we rely on in English. The consensus of translators is that the sense of the phrase is “too nora for praises”. But does the word nora (a past participle used as an adjective) carry its primary meaning of “feared” or “fearsome”? Or its secondary meaning of “treated with awe” or “awesome”?

Many medieval rabbis analyzed the phrase “Nora tehillot” in terms of being afraid of God.According to Rashi in the 11th century:

“Thou art an object of dread, so that people do not recount thy praises, fearing lest these may be enumerated less then they really are, just as it is written (Psalms 65:2) ‘To Thee, silence is praise’.”2

12th-century Rabbi Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra added:

“However, they are obligated to praise Him because He alone does wonders.”2

In the 13th century, Ramban had another explanation for the use of the word nora:

“In my opinion, nora t’hilot means: “fearful with praises, for He does fearful things and He is praised for them, as when He wreaks vengeance on those who transgress His will, and thereby helps those who serve Him. Thus He is [both] feared and highly praised.” (Ramban)2

But in the 16th century, Rabbi Obadiah Sforno (who lived in Italy during the Renaissance) commented on the verse in terms of awe rather than fear.

“Anyone aware of the marvelous attributes of His cannot fail but recite these praises in awe, not because he is afraid of being punished but because the very nature of God inspires awe and reverence.”2

Yet in the 19th century, S.R. Hirsch wrote sternly:

“Songs of praise to God that do not lead to the fear of God, or that are even intended as substitutes for the fear of God, are nothing but a profanation of God’s Name.”6

Most modern prayerbooks translate nora (נוֹרָא) as “awesome”, rather than “feared” or “fearsome”, probably so as not to make God sound harsh and unloving.

I believe that literal translations of the Hebrew Bible reflect the viewpoint of the original authors, and are appropriate for everyone except readers who do not grasp concepts such as allegory or cultural history, and insist on taking every word in an English translation of the bible as a simple directive from God.

But in a Jewish prayerbook, literal translations of quotes from the bible are more problematic. Some readers are comfortable with the evolution of the religion, and can mentally adapt the ancient words—even while singing them—so that the prayer becomes worthy vehicle for their heartfelt feelings. For other readers, this approach seems unnatural, difficult, or contrary. Why should one sing or recite a prayer one does not believe in literally?

For these people, it might be better to adjust the translations of Hebrew words in prayers so as to avoid raising objections about whether there is only one God, or whether God is kind rather than frightening. Then they, too, might be able to use prayer to express gratitude for the wonders of creation.

  1. Deuteronomy 4:35, 10:14, and 32:39; Isaiah 37:16, 37:20, 41:4, 43:10-11, 44:6, 44:8, 45:5-6, 45:21-22, and 48:12. (Isaiah from chapter 40 on is called second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah, and was written in the 6th century C.E.)
  2. Translations from www.sefaria.org.
  3. Or HaChayim, by Rabbi Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  4. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemot, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2003, p. 247.
  5. Ivdu Et Hashem B’Simcha, compiled and edited by Rabbi David Zaslow, The Wisdom Exchange, 2010, pp. 81 and 82.
  6. Hirsch, ibid., p. 248.

Bo: Plague of Darkness

The days are short and dark now, for those of us who live north of 45o in the northern hemisphere. But even at night we do not experience true darkness. A single lamp, a single flame, generates a lot of light.

Pitch darkness, the complete absence of light, means blindness at first, then death. Without light, no plants can live, and no living thing can survive. No wonder the first thing God creates in the book of Genesis is light.

And no wonder darkness is such a frightening plague in this week’s Torah portion, Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16).

The darkness plague

Plague of Darkness, Haggadah by Judah Pinhas, 1747

Pharaoh does not let the Israelites leave Egypt until God has afflicted the land with ten miraculous disasters or plagues. The ninth plague is darkness.

Darkness is the only plague that does not bring death or disease to any living thing. Yet three days of utter darkness alarm Pharaoh and all the Egyptians more than anything but the tenth and final plague: death of the firstborn children.

And God said to Moses: “Stretch out your hand toward the heavens, and choshekh will be over the land of Egypt, a choshekh one can touch.” And Moses stretched out his hand toward the heavens, and there was a dark choshekh in all the land of Egypt for three days. No one could see his brother, and no one could get up from his spot for three days. But for all the Israelites, light was in their settlements. (Exodus 10:21-23)

choshekh (חֺשֶׁךְ) = darkness. (Like the word “darkness” in English, the word choshekh is used not only for the absence of physical light, but also for the absence of enlightenment or goodness.)

What is a darkness one can touch?

Medieval commentators wrote that the darkness was thick—a thing with its own palpable substance. Ibn Ezra wrote: “The Egyptians will feel the darkness with their hands.”1 Ramban described the darkness as “a very thick cloud that came down from heaven … which would extinguish every light, just as in all deep caverns.”2

And Rabbeinu Bachya explained: “The darkness was not a kind of solar eclipse. On the contrary, the sun operated completely normally during all these days. In fact, the whole universe operated normally; the palpable darkness was as if each individual Egyptian had been imprisoned all by himself in a black box. … Once this stage had been reached, God intensified this darkness to the extent that it was felt physically, preventing people from being able to move without ‘bumping’ into darkness at every move they tried to make.”3

Faced with this kind of darkness, the Egyptians stopped moving. No one got up for three days. People in the same room might speak to each other, but they could not help each other. So each one suffered alone; “no one could see his brother” (Exodus 10:23). If the plague had continued for a few additional days, all the Egyptians would have died of thirst by darkness.

19th-century rabbi Hirsch pointed out: “This plague was the most sweeping, in that it shackled the whole person, cutting him off from all fellowship and from all possessions, so that he could move neither his hands nor his feet to obtain the necessities of life.”4

As usual, Pharaoh asks Moses to beg his God to end the plague.

Then Pharaoh summoned Moses … (Exodus 10:24)

How does he summon anyone, when neither he nor any of his servants can “get up from his spot”? Perhaps the person who wrote down that verse did not think through the implications of the miraculous darkness. Or perhaps Moses has not left the palace courtyard since raising his hand to summon the darkness, and he can hear Pharaoh calling to him. Being an Israelite, Moses could still see and move, so he walks over to where Pharaoh sits. And he finds out whether Pharaoh is at last willing to let the Israelites go.

Darkness as metaphor

The Hebrew word choshekh, like the English word “darkness”, is used as a metaphor for gloominess, death, ignorance, or evil.

Since darkness means the absence of visible light, it also means ignorance, the absence of enlightenment.

Inform us of what we can say to [God]!
    We cannot lay a case before him from a position of choshekh. (Job 37:19)

And in both Biblical Hebrew and English, light is associated with goodness, while darkness is associated with evil.

They forsake the paths of the upright
    To go in the ways of choshekh. (Proverbs 2:13)

Pharaoh’s darkness

When Pharaoh’s father was on the throne (in Exodus 1:8-2:22), he conscripted all the Israelite men to do corvée labor on royal building projects.5 Corvée labor was common in the Ancient Near East, as common as governments conscripting their citizens into military service in modern times. But in the book of Exodus, the Israelites’ term of service never ends, under either the first pharaoh or his successor. Then God gets involved.

Making Bricks, tomb of Vizier Rekmire, 1459 BCE

And the Israelites groaned under the servitude and they cried out. And their plea for rescue from the servitude went up to God. And God listened to their moaning … (Exodus 2:23-24)

The solution God devises is to send Moses to act as a prophet, and the plagues to force the new pharaoh to recognize the power of God and let the Israelites leave Egypt.

With each plague, Moses asks Pharaoh to let the Israelites go for at three-day walk into the wilderness to worship their God. Each time, Pharaoh refuses to give them even a few days off. They might as well be slaves.

If being in the dark is being unenlightened, blind to reality, Pharaoh always lives in darkness. He believes he can mistreat the Israelites without any personal consequences. He believes that their God, who keeps afflicting Egypt with disastrous miracles, cannot really destroy him or his kingdom.

Earlier in this week’s Torah portion, after Moses warns the court about the eighth plague, locust swarms, Pharaoh’s courtiers urge their king to give up.

And Pharaoh’s courtiers said to him: “How long will this be a trap for us? Let the men go so they can serve Y-H-V-H, their god! Don’t you realize yet that Egypt is lost?” (Exodus 10:7) 

But Pharaoh still tries to bargain. He asks Moses which Israelites would go to worship Y-H-V-H, and Moses replies:

“With our young and with our old we will go, with our sons and with our daughters we will go, with our flocks and with our herds we will go, because it is our festival for God.” (Exodus 10:9)

Pharoah insists that he will let only the men go, so he and Moses are at an impasse again, and God sends the plague of darkness.

If darkness is a metaphor for evil, Pharaoh fits the bill. Not only does he refuse to give the Israelites even a few days off from work, he also increases their workload so it is impossible for them to meet their quotas.8 This gives his overseers a reason to whip them at any time.

Moses warns Pharaoh about each plague, but Pharaoh refuses, again and again, to let the Israelites go. This harms the native Egyptians, who suffer from thirst, vermin, agricultural collapse, and multiple diseases.

During the plague of darkness, Pharaoh summons Moses and says:

“Go, serve Y-H-V-H! Only your flocks and your herds must be left behind. Even your little ones may go with you!” (Exodus 10:24)

Pharaoh is still bargaining, but he has made a concession. Although he knows the Israelites will not come back, he is now willing to give up his free labor force—as long as they leave their livestock behind. Of course, he knows that the animals are the Israelites’ wealth and means of livelihood. And he probably doubts that they will get very far through the desert without at least the milk from their cattle, sheep, and goats.

But Pharaoh may also be considering the welfare of the native Egyptians for the first time. All of their livestock died during the fifth plague, cattle disease.5 The eighth plague, locust swarms, consumed the last green leaves in Egypt,6 so the Israelite livestock have nothing to eat (except for any hay the Egyptians might have stockpiled inside barns). But at least the Egyptians could eat the Israelites’ animals. The meat would keep them alive for a while, until Pharaoh came up with another plan.

Moses, however, refuses to make any concession to Pharaoh. He replies:

“You, even you, must place slaughter offerings and rising offerings in our hands, and we will make them for Y-H-V-H, our God. And also our property must go with us; not a hoof can remain behind …” (Exodus 10:25-26)

Then God steps in—or perhaps what steps in is Pharaoh’s pride and the power of habit.

Then Y-H-V-H strengthened Pharaoh’s mind, and he did not consent to let them go. (Exodus 10:27)

Three days of blindness and immobility are not enough to make Pharaoh completely change his mind. With the help of a little mind-hardening from God, Pharaoh holds out until his own firstborn son dies in the tenth plague, the one that God has planned all along as the finale.7

Does Pharaoh deserve the death of his firstborn son? Yes, the classic commentary answered, because Pharaoh is evil. (His son, and the other Egyptian firstborn and their parents, may be innocent. But the tales in the Torah focus on individual characters, using the reset of the people as background.)

Metaphorically speaking, Pharaoh always sits in darkness. No wonder he qualifies his permission to let the Israelites go, even after the life-threatening plague of darkness. No wonder God can easily harden his attitude so he refuses to let the Israelites take their livestock with them.

Darkness itself blinds and paralyzes him, but Pharaoh does not change his attitude. After all, he has lived in darkness his whole life.

One of the participants in a class I am teaching on Exodus pointed out that if you state a position once and get negative feedback, it is not too hard to change your mind. But if you stick with your unpopular opinion, it gets harder to change every time it is questioned. You find yourself fiercely defending your position to others—and refusing to reexamine it yourself.

Pharaoh’s mind keeps hardening because he is human. God’s assistance in hardening it is the human nature we are endowed with.

May we all pay attention to what we are doing, and seek enlightenment lest we slip into utter darkness.

  1. Abraham Ibn Ezra, 12th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  2. Ramban (Rabbi Moshe Nachman), 13th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  3. Rabbeinu Bachya ben Asher ibn Chalavah, 1255-1340, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  4. Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, 19th century, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemot, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, p. 144.
  5. The pharaoh in Exodus 1:8-2:22 also attempted to reduce the population of Israelites in Egypt by commanding the murder of male Israelite infants.
  6. Exodus 10:15.
  7. See God’s speech to Moses in Exodus 4:21-22.
  8. Exodus 1:8-22.

Va-eira: Snake Staff, Part 2

The first time God changed Moses’ staff into a snake was on Mount Sinai, when God was giving him the signs he would use to convince the Israelites in Egypt that he was a genuine prophet. (See last week’s post, Shemot: Snake Staff, Part 1.)

The second time God transformed the staff was at the meeting Aaron set up between his brother Moses and elders of the Israelites in Egypt.

And Aaron spoke all the words that God had spoken to Moses, and he performed the signs in the sight of the people. And the people trusted him, and they heard that God had taken up the cause of the Israelites and had seen their misery and noticed them. And they bowed to the ground. (Exodus 4:30-31)

So far, so good. The next step was to persuade Pharaoh that God had sent them.

And afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh: “Thus says Y-H-V-H, the God of Israel: Let my people go so they will celebrate a festival for me in the wilderness.” But Pharaoh said: “Who is Y-H-V-H, that I should listen to his voice and let the Israelites go? I do not know Y-H-V-H, and furthermore, I will not let the Israelites go.” (Exodus 5:1-2)  

This might have been a good time for the brothers to use the magic staff to demonstrate that they are real emissaries of a real god. But God had not ordered it. Moses and Aaron merely talked a little longer, and then Pharoah decided to increase the workload of the Israelites instead.

The Israelites lost faith in Moses and in the promised rescue from Egypt. The Torah portion Shemot ends shortly after the Israelite foremen complain to Moses and Aaron:

“May God examine you and judge, since you made us smell loathsome in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his courtiers, putting a sword in their hand to kill us!” (Exodus 5:21)

Marvel in the palace

This week’s Torah portion, Va-eria (Exodus 6:2-9:35), opens with some repetitions of the story line and a genealogy.1 Then God finally tells Moses and Aaron to demonstrate the transformation of the staff to Pharaoh.

And God said to Moses and to Aaron: “When Pharaoh speaks to you, saying: ‘Give me your marvel!’ then you will say to Aaron: ‘Take your staff and cast it down in front of Pharaoh!’ It will become a tanin.” Then Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh, and they did just as God had commanded; Aaron cast down his staff in front of Pharaoh and his courtiers, and it became a tanin. (Exodus 7:8-10)

tanin (תַנִּין) = sea monster, crocodile, snake.2

When God transformed Moses’ staff on Mount Sinai (in a tale some scholars attribute to an E source), it became a nachash (נָחָשׁ) = snake, serpent. Now (in the tale from a P source) it becomes a tanin. Different source stories used somewhat different terminology.

And Pharaoh also summoned his wise men and his sorcerers, and they, also they, the chartumim of Egypt, did this with their spells. (Exodus 7:11)

chartumim (חַרְטֻמִּים) = literate Egyptian priests with occult knowledge.

The word chartumim is often translated as “magicians”, but these Egyptian dignitaries were not magicians in the modern sense: people who create illusions and trick their audiences. The ancient Egyptians believed that the gods created and maintained the universe with “heka”, a cosmic power that priests could also tap into and use to manipulate reality.)

Aaron’s Road Changed into a Serpent, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Charles Foster Bible Pictures, 1860

Each one cast down his staff, and it became a tanin. But Aaron’s staff gulped down their staffs. (Exodus 7:12)

The Egyptian priests use “heka” to produce the same marvel that God makes: a staff turning into a tanin. But the magic of the God of Israel proves superior to the magic of the Egyptian priests, since God’s staff swallows their staffs.

This is a significant coup, considering the nature of the crocodile and snake gods in Egyptian theology.

The crocodile in Egyptian theology

Egyptian god Sobek, Kom Ombo temple

The transformation of a staff into a crocodile would remind Egyptians of their crocodile god, Sobek, credited with both creating the Nile and giving strength to the pharaoh. If the God of Israel has power over Sobek, Pharaoh and the whole country are in danger.

The concept of a staff becoming a crocodile would not seem strange to the Egyptians. In an Egyptian tale written as early as 1600 B.C.E., the Egyptian priest Webaoner made a wax crocodile “seven fingers long”, and when his assistant threw it into a lake it became a real crocodile and swallowed up the priest’s enemy. When the king arrived, Webaoner caught the real crocodile, and it shrank and turned back into wax.3

The snake in Egyptian theology

Egyptian Priests Holding Serpent Staffs, Tomb of Sennufer, 15th c. BCE, photo by Scott B. Noegel, detail

The idea of a staff changing into a snake may have come from Egyptian rituals in which priests carried rods with heads shaped like snakes, as depicted in a 15th-century B.C.E. tomb painting.

The sudden appearance of a snake in Pharaoh’s audience chamber would remind the Egyptians of the snake god Apep. Apep was the god of chaos, evil, and darkness, the enemy of the sun god, Ra. Ra was the god of order and light, and crossed the sky from east to west every day. Every night the sun went down in the west and Ra traveled through the underworld to where the sun was due to rise again in the east. During this nightly underground crossing, Ra fought Apep, who lived in the underworld of the dead. For centuries Egyptian priests helped Ra in the battle by making wax models of Apep and spitting on them, mutilating them, or burning them while reciting spells to kill the evil god.4 

Nehebu-kau, Spell 87 of the Book of the Dead of Ani

Another Egyptian snake god was Nehebu-kau, a variant of Apep who had become a benign underworld god by the 13th century B.C.E., when the Exodus story was set. Nehebu-kau ws one of the 42 gods who judged the souls of the deceased. (Another was the crocodile god Sobek.) When souls of the dead passed the test for good behavior during life, Nehebu-kau gave them the life-force ka so they would have an afterlife. (Apep, on the other hand, was called “Eater of Souls”.)

When Aaron’s snake swallows the Egyptian priests’ snakes, it signals that the whole Egyptian cosmic order is in danger. Can Ra defeat a god even more powerful than Apep? Will there be any afterlife if Nehebu-kau is overthrown?

Pharaoh versus his priests

But Pharaoh’s mind hardened, and he did not listen to them, just as God had spoken. (Exodus 7: 13)

The next step is the first of the miraculous plagues that will destroy Egypt, just what God predicted to Moses in the Torah portion Shemot .

We can assume the Egyptian chartumim in the book of Exodus are shocked and alarmed when Aaron’s snake-staff gulps down all of theirs. It is an obvious omen that the God of Moses and Aaron will triumph over their pharaoh, and over all Egypt. But they do not want to believe this omen, so they return to do more magic for Pharaoh. They gamely use “heka” to reproduce God’s plagues of blood and frogs, at least in miniature.5 But they cannot replicate God’s third plague, lice.6 And at that point they acknowledge that the power behind the plagues is a serious danger to their world.

And the chartumim said to Pharoah: “It is a finger of a god!” But Pharaoh’s mind hardened, and did not listen to them. (Exodus 8:15)

Modern Torah readers are familiar with the idea that God is omnipotent. For us, the magic tricks that God arranges with a shepherd’s staff might seem like a sideshow before the main action of the ten plagues begins.

Yet it is necessary for Moses to prove to both the Israelites and the Egyptians that he really is speaking for a powerful god, and that his God is more powerful than any Egyptian god or Egyptian magic. Otherwise the Israelites will never follow him out of Egypt. And otherwise the pharaoh will attribute the plagues to other deities.

Some people are better than others at noticing signs and drawing long-term conclusions. Moses notices the subtle miracle of the bush that burns without being consumed, and walks right over to find out more.

The chartumim a a bit slower. They do not warn Pharaoh that Egypt is doomed right after the snake-staff demonstration; they are probably hoping to uncover an explanation consistent with their world-view. But when they cannot replicate God’s miraculous plague of lice, they give up. After that, the chartumim do not seem to be present at any other confrontational meetings between Moses and Pharaoh.7

But Pharaoh continues to assume that no matter what happens Egypt will go on, he will stay on the throne, and he must keep the Israelites as his slaves. Whenever Pharaoh’s faith is shaken, he recovers—until the final blow, the death of his own first-born son.

The longer you hold a belief, the harder it is to give up. What does it take before you admit you were wrong?

A single unexpected event, like the sight of a bush that burns but is not consumed?

Several demonstrations that the power structure you depend upon has been subverted?

The destruction of your world because of your failure to change?

  1. According to modern source criticism, a redactor of the book of Exodus patched in some material from a different account. The portion Shemot recorded mostly J and E traditions of the tale. Exodus 6:2-7:13 comes mostly from P sources, with some explanatory additions.
  2. The word tanin appears 14 timesin the Hebrew Bible. Half the time it means a sea-monster—or perhaps a crocodile (Genesis 1:21, Isaiah 27:1 and 51:9, Jeremiah 51:34,  Psalms 74:13 and 148:7, Job 7:12, and Nehemiah 2:13). Twice a tanin is a snake (Deuteronomy 32:33 and Psalm 91:13), and twice it is a misspelling of “jackals” (tanim, in Lamentations 4:3 and Nehemiah 2:13). The remaining three occurrences of the word tanin are in the P story about the meeting with Pharaoh. (The word tanim, תַּנִּים, also occurs 14 times in the Hebrew Bible. In 10 of those occurrences it means “jackals”. But it is used as an alternate spelling of tanin in Isaiah 13:22 (snakes), Ezekiel 29:3 and 32:2 (crocodiles or sea monsters), and Psalm 44:20 (sea monsters).
  3. Prof. Scott B. Noegel, “The Egyptian ‘Magicians”, www.thetorah.com.
  4. One of the rituals in The Book of Overthrowing Apep, circa 305 B.C.E.
  5. Exodus 7:22 and 8:3.
  6. Exodus 8:14.
  7. No chartumim are mentioned in the passages about the next two plagues. The story of the sixth plague, boils, says: The chartumim were not able to stand in front of Moses because of the boils. (Exodus 9:11) After that they are absent from the rest of the book of Exodus.

Shemot: Snake Staff, Part 1

Moses hears God speak out of the burning bush on Mount Sinai, and learns that he must act as God’s prophet and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. He tries four times to get out of the job in this week’s Torah portion, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1), and one of his efforts leads to God making his staff magical.

First Moses hints that he is not qualified, saying:

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

Instead of saying why Moses meets the job qualifications, God replies:

“I will be with you, and this will be your sign I myself sent you.” (Exodus 3:12)

In other words, Moses will be frequently reminded that God sent him on this mission, because God will be present for him. As the story continues, God’s presence with Moses is indeed obvious, since God continues to speak to him.

Next Moses asks what name he should call God when he speaks to the Israelites, and God answers at length, giving him more information about his mission as well as about who God is. Then Moses makes his second protest:

“And if they do not believe me, and do not listen to my voice, but say: Y-H-V-H did not appear to you?” (Exodus 4:1)

This time God responds by showing Moses three “signs” he can perform in front of the Israelites to demonstrate that Y-H-V-H1 is with him. The first sign turns out to be the most important.

God said to him: “What is this in your hand?” And he said: “A mateh.” (Exodus 4:2)

mateh (מַטֶּה) = a shepherd’s staff; a staff serving as an official symbol of authority over a tribe or country; a tribe. (Plural: mattot, מַטּוֹת.)

Moses is holding a shepherd’s staff because he has just led his father-in-law’s flock through the wilderness all the way to Mount Sinai. But this is his last undertaking as a shepherd. After he returns to Egypt, Moses will use his staff to signal divine miracles. He will also become the leader of the thousands of Israelites who follow him out Egypt.

From Charles Foster Bible, illustration by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860

Now God demonstrates that Moses is no longer holding a mere shepherd’s staff.

Then (God) said: “Throw it to the ground.” So he threw it to the ground, and it became a nachash, and Moses fled from it. Then God said to Moses: “Reach out your hand and grasp it by its tail.” And he reached out his hand and took hold of it, and it became a mateh in his palm. (Exodus 4:3)

nachash (נָחָשׁ)= snake, serpent. (Words from the same root include the verb nichash, נִחַשׁ = practice divination, the noun nachash, נַחַשׁ = bewitchment, magic curse, and nechoshet, נְחֺשֶׁת = copper, copper alloy.)

Then God gives Moses two more signs for the Israelites. For the second sign, is he puts his hand into the fold at the bosom of his robe, and when he pulls it out his hand looks white and scaly. When he repeats the action, his hand returns to normal.2 For the third sign, God says,  Moses will pour some water from the Nile on dry ground, and it will turn into blood.3

Once Moses has demonstrated the signs to the Israelites, God says, they will believe that God appeared to him.

Moses does perform all three signs in front of the elders of Israel when he arrives back in Egypt, and they believe he is God’s prophet.4 But the only one of these signs he uses in front of Pharaoh is the staff trick. (See next week’s post, Va-eira: Snake Staff, Part 2.)

But the three signs are not enough for Moses, who does not want to be a prophet in the first place. So he makes two more attempts to talk God out of giving him the job. He says he is a slow and clumsy speaker, but God promises to tell him what to say. Finally, Moses simply begs God to send someone else.5 God gets angry, then promises to appoint his brother Aaron to help him. And Moses resigns himself to returning to Egypt.

Moses’ staff could turn into anything surprising, and the transformation would prove that he is a channel for the miraculous power of God. So why does God choose a snake for this sign?

Snake as deceiver

Adam, Eve, and Snake, Escorial Beatus, ca. 950

One explanation is that a snake is the opposite of a staff. A snake is a flexible animal that moves with whiplash speed. It can shed its dead skin and emerge alive. And in the story of the Garden of Eden, the snake is clever and deals in deception and half-truths.6

Some early commentators claimed that the first time God changed Moses’ staff into a snake, it was a personal message to Moses that he had slandered the Israelites when he said they would not believe him—just as the snake in the Garden of Eden had slandered God by implying that God had lied about the effects of eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.7

A staff, on the other hand, is a long stick of dead wood, hard and inflexible. It is reliable, strong enough to lean against without breaking—and therefore a good symbol for a chieftain or a king. 19th-century Rabbi S.R. Hirsch wrote:

“… מטה [mateh] denotes (a) an extension of the hand, upon which man can lean for support as he stands on the ground; (b) an extension of man’s sphere of power; it is a symbol of his authority. This sign in Moshe’s hand will show the people that, if God so desires, the thing on which a person leans for support and with which he wields his authority can turn into the very opposite: a serpent. … 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.”8

Snake as phallic symbol

Both a staff and a snake are obvious phallic symbols. I suspect that when this story was told orally, the verbal image of a snake stiffening into a staff in Moses’ hand drew snickers from the audience.

The staff and the snake represent two aspects of power. The staff stands for legitimate authority. The snake stands for creative subversion—the power of the trickster. Perhaps one way God uses the staff and snake is to demonstrate, first to Moses and then to the Israelites, that ultimate power over everything belongs to God.

Furthermore, God only makes the snake harmless enough for Moses to pick up with his bare hand when a demonstration of Moses’ status as God’s prophet is required. This demonstration happens first to Moses himself on Mount Sinai, then to the Israelites, then to Pharaoh and his court.

When Moses sets off for Egypt with his wife Tziporah and their two small sons,

Moses took the mateh of God in his hand. (Exodus 4:20)

Moses’ staff is now called the staff of God because God has imbued it with the power to miraculously turn into a snake (and to signal or initiate other miracles in the future).

An incident on Moses’ journey to Egypt shows that the snake can also be dangerous as a phallic symbol.

On the road, at a lodging-place, God confronted him and sought to kill him. Then Tziporah took a flint, and she cut the foreskin of her son, and she touched it to his raglayim, and she said: “Because a bridegroom of blood you are to me!” (Exodus 4:24-25)

raglayim (רַגְלַיִם) = a pair of feet, a pair of legs—or a euphemism for genitals.

The Torah does not say how God “sought to kill him”. But since the next sentence refers to a foreskin and genitals, the Talmud and Exodus Rabbah imagined the angel of death swallowing Moses from his head down to his genitals, where Moses’ circumcision stops the process.9 Rashi wrote:

 “The angel became a kind of serpent and swallowed him [Moses] from his head to his thigh, spewed him forth, and then again swallowed him from his legs to that place. Tziporah thus understood that this had happened on account of the delay in the circumcision of her son.”10  (For a fuller discussion of the “Bridegroom of Blood” episode, see my post Shemot: Uncircumcised, Part 1.)

The staff that turns into a snake and back is God’s phallic symbol, not Moses’. Moses is merely another of God’s tools. In next week’s Torah portion, Vayeira, God makes Moses use the staff to impress the simple-minded people in Egypt, from Israelite slave to Egyptian monarch. It would be easy for me, as a feminist, to mock these displays of male power. Yet perhaps they are necessary to get some people’s attention.

And once they are paying attention, they might consider the difference between a man with a staff of office on whom you can depend, and a man in authority who is more like a poisonous snake. Which kind of authority is Pharaoh?

What about our leaders and authority figures today?

  1. For an explanation of God’s personal name, indicated by Y-H-V-H, see my post Lekh-Lekha: New Names for God.
  2. Exodus 4:6-7.
  3. Exodus 4:9.
  4. Exodus 4:28-31.
  5. Exodus 4:13.
  6. Genesis 3:1-6.
  7. C.f. Ramban on Exodus 4:3. (Ramban is the acronym of 13th-century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, also called Nachmanides.) For the snake’s implication that God was lying when God said eating from the Tree of Knowledge would result in death, see Genesis 3:2-5.
  8. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash, Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 50. (Hirsch was a 19th-century German rabbi and commentator.)
  9. Talmud tractate Nedarim 32a, Exodus Rabbah 5:8, both written circa 300-600 C.E.
  10. Translation from www.sefaria.org. Rashi is the acronym for 11th-century Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki.

Vayechi, Chayei Sarah, & Vayishlach: A Touching Oath

Jacob on his Deathbed, 1539 woodcut

This week’s Torah portion, Vayechi (Genesis 47:28-50:26), begins:

And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; and the years of Jacob, the years of his life, were 147 years. The time for Israel to die approached, and he called for his son, for Joseph …  (Genesis/Bereishit 47:28-29)

Jacob acquired a second name, Israel, in an earlier portion of the book of Genesis, Vayishlach, when he wrestled with a mysterious “man” all night before his reunion with Esau, the brother whom Jacob had cheated twenty years before.

Becoming Israel

In Vayishlach, Esau was approaching with 400 men, and Jacob was terrified that his brother would attack his camp for revenge. He prayed, he sent generous gifts ahead on the road, and he moved his whole household and all his possessions across the Yabok River. Then Jacob spent the night on the other side.

And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until dawn rose. And he saw that he had not prevailed against [Jacob], so he touched the socket of his yareikh, and the socket of Jacob’s yareikh was dislocated when he wrestled with him. (Genesis 32:25-26)

yareikh (יָרֵךְ) = loin, i.e. hip, buttocks, upper thigh, or genitals (depending on the context).

One cannot actually touch the socket inside a human hip—unless, perhaps, one is a supernatural creature. Even with the pain of a dislocated hip, Jacob hangs onto his opponent. The mysterious wrestler is the first to speak.

Jacob Wrestles, by Ephraim Moses LIlien, 1923

Then he said: “Let me go, because dawn is rising.”

But [Jacob] said: “I will not let you go unless you bless me!”

And he said to [Jacob]: “What is your name?”

And he said: “Jacob.”

Then he said: “It will no longer be said that Jacob is your name, but Yisrael. Because sarita with God and with men, and you have prevailed.”

And Jacob inquired and said: “Please tell your name.”

And he said: “What is this, that you ask for my name!” (Genesis 32:27-29)

Yisrael (יִשְׂרָאֵל) = “Israel” in English. Possibly he strives with God, he contends with God. (Yisar,יִשַׂר  = he strives with, he contends with + Eil, אֵל  = God, a god.) On the other hand, the subject usually follows the verb in Biblical Hebrew, so Yisrael could mean “God contends”.)

sarita (שָׂרִיתָ) = you have striven with, you have contended. (From the same root as yisar.)

Gradually the “man” who wrestles with Jacob is revealed as a divine messenger. “Jacob was left alone”—away from any other human beings. “A man wrestled with him”—messengers from God often look like men at first, and can do physical things in our world.1 “You have striven with God and with men”—striving with God’s messenger is the equivalent of striving with God. And protesting that “you ask for my name!”—God’s messengers do not reveal their names in the Torah.2

The two wrestlers in this passage also serve as a metaphor for a narrow human frame of reference wrestling with a broad divine frame of reference—both within Jacob’s psyche. The divine perspective touches an intimate spot, and Jacob emerges from the experience with a new name, and a limp to remind him of what happened.

And the sun rose for him as he passed Penueil, and he, he was limping on his yareikh. (Genesis 32:32)

After this story, the Torah continues to use the name Jacob, but sometimes switches to Jacob’s new name, Israel. Why does it switch from “Jacob” to “Israel” at the beginning of this week’s portion, Vayechi?

Requesting an oath

The time for Israel to die approached, and he called for his son, for Joseph, and he said to him: “If, please, I have found favor in your eyes, please place your hand under my thigh. And do with me loyal-kindness and faithfulness: do not, please, bury me in Egypt! [When] I lie down with my fathers, then carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial site!” (Genesis 47:29-30)

This is Jacob/Israel’s first deathbed speech. As the self-centered Jacob, he might want to be buried in Bethlehem beside Rachel, the wife who died in childbirth, the wife he loved and mourned for the rest of his life. Or he might even want his sons to bury him in Egypt, where his entire surviving family has emigrated. His beloved son Joseph is a viceroy, so he could buy a deluxe burial site there.

But Jacob does not mention either possibility. As Israel, he knows it will be best for his future descendants if he is buried in the cave of Machpelah, which his grandfather Abraham purchased for a family burial site. This is where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and (we learn later in this Torah portion) Jacob’s first wife, Leah, are buried. Reinforcing the importance of that site, the only land in Canaan that his family inherits through the generations, will help Israel’s descendants in Egypt remember that someday they must return to Canaan to fulfill God’s prophecies.

Israel begins his speech to Joseph with extreme formality and politeness, addressing him in his role as the viceroy. The consensus among commentators is that the pharaoh does not want his invaluable viceroy to leave Egypt for even a short visit to Canaan, his homeland.  What if Joseph did not return?  So Israel decides to give Pharaoh an extra reason to let Joseph go to Machpelah. If Joseph has sworn the most solemn oath possible, how could Pharoah make his viceroy dishonor himself by violating it?

Precedent for the oath

So Israel requests the kind of oath that Abraham made his steward swear regarding a bride for his son Isaac. Jacob/Israel knows he will be powerless over his own burial; Abraham, at age 137, was afraid he would not live long enough to make sure his son married one of his relatives from Aram instead of a Canaanite. In both cases, the aged father relies on the most serious oath possible. Abraham told his steward:

“Please place your hand under my yareikh, and I will make you swear by God, god of the heavens and god of the earth, that you do not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites amidst whom I am dwelling. Because you must go to my [former] land and to my relatives, and [there] you must take a wife for my son, for Isaac.” (Genesis 24:2-4)

Abraham’s Solemn Charge, by Pedro Orrente, 17th century, detail

Abraham’s steward asked a clarifying question to make sure he understood his mission. Then he complied at once with his master’s request:

And the servant placed his hand under the yareikh of Abraham, his master, and he swore to him on this matter. (Genesis 24:9)

Since the word yareikh could mean any of several locations on the lower body, we can only guess where Abraham’s steward placed his hand. But commentators have noted that the Latin root “testis” appears in words whose English versions are testify, testimony, and testicles, and claim that this may reflect a Roman practice of taking an oath on the genitals. And for at least two millennia, oaths administered by a court have required the person swearing the oath to hold a sacred item in the hand. Before the holy objects were made for the sanctuary, before the Torah was written down, a circumcised penis was the only sacred object available.3

The actual oath

In the portion Vayechi, Joseph listens to his father’s request, then tells him:

“I will do as you have spoken.” (Genesis 47:30)

Instead of immediately placing his hand under his father’s yareikh, Joseph makes a simple verbal promise. Is placing his hand under his father’s whatever-it-is beneath the dignity of a viceroy of Egypt?

Or does Joseph remember Jacob’s famous limp, and feel reluctant to touch the spot that the unnamed being touched?

Jacob does not accept Joseph’s unsupported promise as a bona fide oath.

He said: “Swear to me!” And he swore to him. Vayishtachu, Israel, at the head of the bed. (Genesis 47:31)

vayishtachu (וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ) = and he prostrated himself, and he bowed as deeply as possible. (This verb is used for bowing to a king or to God.)

It sounds as though Joseph brings himself to place his hand under the spot and swear. His father, Israel, accepts Joseph’s response as a duly sworn oath, one that even the Pharaoh could not quibble about. And he bows as deeply as possible for an invalid in bed.

When Jacob limped toward Esau the morning after the wrestling match, he prostrated himself seven times—honoring his brother’s power over his life. Now Jacob prostrates himself as best he can, at age 147, to his Joseph—honoring his son the viceroy’s power.

Pharaoh’s permission

After that Israel rearranges his inheritance by adopting Joseph’s two sons as his own4 and makes two deathbed prophecies, one short5 and one lengthy.6 Then he repeats the instructions for his burial in the cave of Machpelah, and dies.7

Joseph has his father embalmed like an Egyptian nobleman, and then informs Pharaoh:

“My father made me swear, saying: ‘Here, I am dying. In my burial side that I dug for myself in the land of Canaan there you must bury me.’ And now please let me go up, and I will bury my father, and I will return.” And Pharaoh said: “Go up and bury your father as he made you swear.” (Genesis 50:5-6)

So Israel’s plan works.

A speculation

Yet Pharaoh gives Joseph permission to go even though Joseph does not mention the hand position he used for his oath to his father. Why is the placement of Joseph’s hand so important to his father?

I wonder if Israel wants Joseph to touch the same place the divine being touched. He might recognize himself in his favorite son. The first two times Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt, Joseph disguised himself and lied to them in order to get the information he wanted. When Jacob was a young man, he disguised himself and lied to his father in order to steal his brother’s blessing.

How can Israel get Joseph to recognize the manipulative side of his personality, and wrestle with it? Maybe if Joseph touches the spot that the divine being touched, it will shock him into the awareness that he is not as grand and impartial as he thinks. Joseph is the supreme judge of Egypt’s agricultural system, but he is not divine.

Would Jacob/Israel think in those terms? He is not a psychologist, but he is a clever thinker. And humans have always used symbolic acts to make connections between the known and the unknown. There is always more going on inside us than we know. Some people tend to act intuitively, and need to practice thinking and planning. Others are like Jacob, Joseph, and myself: thinking and planning are default behavior for us. We need to step back, take a breath, and take the long view. We need a touch of the divine.

  1. For example, divine messengers wash their feet and eat in front of Abraham in Genesis 18:1-8.
  2. See my posts Toledot & Vayishlach: Wrestlers, and Haftarat Naso—Judges: Spot the Angel.
  3. Talmud Bavli, Shevuot 38b; Rashi (11th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki); Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah: Bereishis, Mesorah Publications, 1994, p. 626. See my post Chayei Sarah: A Peculiar Oath.
  4. Genesis 48:3-11, 48:22.
  5. The prophecy about Efrayim and Menasheh is in Genesis 48:12-20.
  6. The prophecy about the twelve tribes of Israel is in Genesis 49:1-28.
  7. Genesis 49:29-33.

Vayigash: Compassion

Vayigash to him, Judah did, and he said: “By your leave, my lord, please let your servant speak words to the ears of my lord, and do not get angry with your servant, for you are the equal of Pharaoh.” (Genesis 44:18)

vayigash (וַיִּגַּשׁ) = and he approached, and he came closer.

Judah steps closer to the viceroy of Egypt in order to make a plea and an offer at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash (Genesis 44:18-47:27).

Judah’s view

Even at close range, Judah does not recognize the Egyptian viceroy as his missing brother Joseph.1 It has been twenty years since he sold Joseph as a slave to a caravan headed for Egypt.

Joseph Dwelleth in Egypt, by James Tissot, circa 1900

Judah sees an Egyptian nobleman wearing fine linen and gold, seated in a chair on a dais above him, speaking through an interpreter. This is a man with absolute power in Egypt. This is the man who sold Judah and his brothers grain the year before on the condition that they come back with their youngest brother—probably not imagining how hard it would be to meet that condition.

Now the viceroy seems to be playing a sadistic game with the brothers from Canaan. The day before, he welcomed them into his own palace and treated them to a feast. Today, he had them arrested for a crime they did not commit. At least he had one of them arrested: the youngest, Benjamin. Judah had vowed to their father, Jacob, that he would not return to Canaan without Benjamin.

But Judah is desperate. He has to persuade the viceroy to free Benjamin, and to do that he must get closer, and touch the man’s emotions.

Joseph’s view

Joseph Sold for Twenty Pieces of Silver, Bible Stories for Little Children, Benziger Bros., 1894

Joseph sees his brother Judah stepping closer. He does not trust any of his ten older brothers. Twenty years before, they stripped off his clothes and threw him into a pit, then discussed killing him until Judah saw the caravan and persuaded the others to sell him instead.

Back then, his brothers overpowered him physically in order to eliminate him from their lives. But now Joseph has all the power. In fact, when his ten older brothers came to Egypt to buy grain the year before, he imprisoned them all for three days while he figured out what to do.2

With a word, he could have had his brothers killed, or sold as slaves. But he overheard them telling each other that God was (finally) punishing them for their merciless behavior toward Joseph. So he embarked on a series of secret tests to see if his brothers had reformed. (See my posts Mikeitz: A Fair Test, Part 1 and Mikeitz & Vayigash: A Fair Test, Part 2.)

Joseph’s last test

Joseph knew the famine would continue in Canaan, and his brothers would have to return—with Benjamin—to buy more grain. The night before they head up to Canaan again, Joseph prepares his final test by ordering his assistant:

“Fill the sacks of the men with food, as much as they are able to hold, swelling. And put each man’s silver in the mouth of his sack. And my goblet, the silver goblet, put it in the mouth of the sack of the youngest one, along with the silver for his grain purchase.” (Genesis 44:1-22)

At dawn, as soon as his brothers leave, Joseph tells his assistant:

The Cup Found, by James Tissot, circa 1900

“Get up, chase after the men! Overtake them, and say to them: Why did you repay [the viceroy] with wickedness instead of good? Isn’t this what my lord drinks from, and he divines divinations in? What a wickedness you did!” (Genesis 44:4-5)

Then they tore their clothes. And each one reloaded his donkey, and they returned to the city. (Genesis 44:11-13)

The man catches up with them just outside the city and delivers the accusation. He searches their sacks of grain, from the oldest brother’s to the youngest, and pulls the goblet out of Benjamin’s.

Tearing one’s clothes is an act of mourning. Benjamin will never return to Canaan now. And without him, their father will die of grief.

When they are brought before the viceroy, he says:

“The man in whose possession the goblet was found, he will be my slave. And you, [the rest of] you, go back in peace to your father.” (Genesis 44:17)

Judah’s plea

At this point Judah steps closer to the viceroy, and the Torah portion Vayigash begins. After obsequiously begging the powerful man to listen, Judah gives his own version of what happened the year before.

“My lord questioned his servants, saying: ‘Do you have a father or another brother?’ And we said to my lord: ‘We have an old father, and a child of his old age, the youngest. And his [full] brother is dead, so he alone is left from his mother, and his father loves him.’” (Genesis 44:19-20)

This is not quite what happened. Actually, the viceroy accused the ten Canaanite men of being spies. Flabbergasted, they protested that they were all brothers, ten of their father’s twelve sons, and added:

“And hey! The youngest is now with our father, and the other is no more.” (Genesis 42:13)

The viceroy agreed to sell them grain, but ordered them to prove they were not spies by bringing back their youngest brother.

Now Judah decides not to bring up the viceroy’s accusation. He continues his story:

“And you said to your servants: ‘Bring him down to me, so I can set my eyes on him!’ But we said to my lord: ‘The young man is not able to leave his father; if he did leave, his father would die.’ But you said to your servants: ‘If your youngest brother does not come down with you, you will not see my face again.’” (Genesis 44:21-23)

Judah reports that this year, when their father told them to go back to Egypt and buy more grain, they reminded him that they could not go without their youngest brother.

Then your servant, my father, said to us: “You know that my wife bore two sons to me.” (Genesis 44:27)

Rachel is only one of Jacob’s four wives, but he thinks of Rachel and her two sons as if they were his only family. He loved rather Rachel far more than his other wives. After she died, Jacob treated her son Joseph with blatant favoritism—which contributed to the ten older brothers’ desire to get rid of him.3 After they did, and deceived their father so he believed his beloved son was dead, he transferred his attachment Rachel’s second son, Benjamin.

In last week’s portion, Mikeitz, Jacob finally agreed to let Benjamin go to Egypt, but warned his older sons that if anything happened to him, they would be sending his gray head down to Sheol in torment. (Sheol is a vague underworld where souls sleep forever after death.)

Judah phrases his father’s protest this way in his report to the viceroy:

“But the one is gone from me, and I said: Alas, he was certainly torn by a wild animal! And I have not seen him since. And you would take this one from in front of me, too? If a mortal accident happens, then you would send down my gray head to Sheol in misery.” (Genesis 44:28-29)

Then Judah comes to the point.

“And now, if I come back to your servant, my father, and the young man is not with us—and his [own] soul is bound up with his soul—then it will happen when he sees that the young man is not [with us]: he will die. And your servants will send down the gray head of your servant, our father, in torment to Sheol.”  (Genesis 44:30-31)

After this attempt to rouse the viceroy’s compassion for the old father, Judah asserts his own responsibility.

“For your servant pledged himself for the young man to my father, saying: ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I am guilty before my father all the days [to come].’ So now, please let your servant stay instead of the young man as a slave to my lord, and let the young man go up with his brothers! Because how can I go up to my father if the young man is not with me? Lest I see the evil that will find my father!” (Genesis 44:32-34)

Judah’s speech works—in a different way than he hoped. Joseph is impressed and moved by Judah’s choice to become a slave in Egypt himself, rather than see Jacob’s other favorite son in that position.

Without knowing it, Judah has passed the ultimate test, and proved to Joseph that he has reformed.

And Joseph was not able to control himself in front of all his attendants, and he called out: “Have everyone leave me!” So no one stood with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he gave his voice to weeping. And the Egyptians [nearby] heard, and then Pharaoh’s household heard. And Joseph said to his brothers: “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” (Genesis 45:1-2)

Compassion

Judah demonstrates compassion both for Jacob, the father who never loved him, and Benjamin, who swims in paternal affection.

When Joseph recognizes Judah’s compassion, he feels compassion himself. Although only Judah has passed the final test, Joseph is moved to welcome all of his brothers as his own family. And the first thing asks them about is the welfare of his father, with whom he has not communicated for twenty years, not since Jacob sent him off alone to confront the brothers who hated him.4

Both Judah and Joseph feel compassion for people whom they had resented for years. And both men act on it, changing their lives forever.

Feeling compassion does not necessarily mean acting on it. I am not the only person I know who can feel compassion for someone—such as a starving child in a distant land, whose photograph appears when I open my mail—and yet do nothing about it.

I am also not the only person who can doggedly go on doing the right thing, treating people as if I felt compassion for them even when my heart is not moved.

The story of Joseph reminds me that we humans tend to keep on doing whatever we’ve been doing. Like Joseph, we keep on ignoring a resented parent, or manipulating others, or setting a slew of conditions. We do not like to change.

But if compassion suddenly touches your heart, there is a moment when your egotism loses its grip. You might even weep, like Joseph. Then you could harden your heart and return to your old habits.  But you could also change into a more generous person.

I am grateful that humans are capable of feeling compassion. Although the feeling does not last, it may trigger a change that does. And the whole world needs more generosity.

  1. And Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognized him. (Genesis 42:8). Judah’s behavior when he makes his plea in Vayigash does not indicate that this has changed.
  2. Genesis 42:17.
  3. Other contributing factors were Joseph’s reports of dreams in which his brothers were bowing down to him, and the fact the Joseph, encouraged by their father, brought back bad reports on his brothers (Genesis 37:2-14).
  4. See my post Mikeitz: Forgetting a Father.