Hitzonim | Outsiders

After an unplanned summer hiatus and the occasional post, I’m back with some weekly parsha commentaries, and I think I’ll do some gospel stuff again, too, through a Jewish and Talmudic lens. We’ll see. Y’all know my style. Thinking Thursdays for Torah and Sundays for Gospels. Two outta three Abrahamic religions aint’ bad. Cheers, fam.

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Parsha Matot (“Tribes”) delves into critical issues for the Israelite community on the cusp of entering the Land, with Moses still at the wilderness helm, but his days are numbered at this later stage in the book of Numbers (pun!) The Parsha begins with the significance of upholding vows, or oaths. In the opening verses, a relatively straightforward instruction for men to keep their oaths (possible English translations: vow, commitment, obligation; prohibition) that they speak (“come out from their mouths”). Conditions are binding between a man and God and between men with each other, given their independent legal status. Following, four case studies are presented involving women and the conditions for oath-keeping, namely, only under the legal authority of a man, either her father, when she is living in his home or her husband after marriage. Unmarried women, single, widowed, or otherwise, are permitted to make oaths under their own volition. 

We must live with the discomfort of this patriarchal society yet not feel bound by it. It most certainly is the case that we, you and me, are not the intended audience for this instruction, and I don’t find it to be faitful to the authors of the text to imagine that this 6th century BCE text (so long as we attribute Priestly authorship, more on that later) somehow applies in a 21st centruy context. The entire socially constructed categories of legal authority is conceptually unlike a contemporary, Western worldview. On this latter point, we should note further that intra-community disagreement at least as early as the first century denied any legal distinction between the oaths spoken by men and those by women. The Damascus Document, also called the Covenant of Damascus or the Zadokite Document, named for its purported composition by the Zadokites, a Second Temple Period Jewish sectarian group associated with the Qumran Community (The Dead Sea Scrolls folks), instructs that women and men are held to the same standards of oath keeping.

As a sort of post-script on these oaths before continuing with the Parhsa, these oaths carry such legal significance in the Torah tradition that later rabbis work out four examples when vows made are not legally binding.

The Parsha turns to recount a conflict with the Midianites, outlining the battle, its aftermath, the distribution of pirated goods, and the burning down of the Midiniate city. Let’s first address the battle, then we’ll see if we can add some helpful commentary before offering a contemporary perspective.

The battle is an atrocity of genocide and ethnic cleansing. All the kings of Midian are killed, including the prophet Balaam, who is purportedly to blame for turning the Israelites toward the worship of Baal. This retribution isn’t satisfactory. After the war, Moses is angry with the commanders for having spared the women of Midian. He instructs them to kill the women who are not virgins and the boys of Midian. In a patriarchal society, the sons of slaughtered men may grow to avenge their fathers.

Men, women, and children killed, livestock and physical property plundered, and the towns and encampments of the Midianites leveled. Yes, this is objectively disgusting. It is a war crime and a violation of human rights by our standards.

The reason given for such slaughter is from an earlier encounter when the Midianite women (really, Moabites, but the Torah affiliates them eight or so chapters earlier in the book) seduced the Israelite men and drew them into idol worship. Notice again how it is the women who are to blame for their act of seduction, a patriarchal outlook.

The Parsha concludes with the tribes of Reuben and Gad requesting their settlement east of the Jordan. The Reubenites and Gadites are renowned for raising livestock and sought the fertile lands east of the Jordan for raising their cattle. Moses consented, but Moshe’s capitulation comes on the condition that they first aid in the conquest of the Land before establishing themselves there. Moshe’s terms for their settlement underscore the earlier themes of commitment, justice, and communal duty. Again, more killing; more displacement, to clear the way for the Israelites. We may wish it weren’t so, yet here is the ink on the scroll.

Now let’s pivot and say a few things about the story through our source-critical lens. Despite several chapters in the Parsha, the time spent on the actual battle is relatively brief. This is a clue to us that more may be going on.

The detailed account for the allocation of loot and the prescribed consecration practices for the Israelites to return to ritual purity following corpse contamination indicate a Priestly composition. The P source here is doing a couple of things: first, establishing their own military prowess, and second, reinforcing precise legal and cultic codes; in fact, the priestly utensils used in the tabernacle (no Temple yet) are carried into the battle to ensure the divine presence is with them.

Oaths frame the narrative that implicitly connect to other duties and obligations under the law, such as purity, and travel through to the tribes of Reuben and Gad making their commitments to Moses in exchange for their desired settlement. These elements underscore a consistent focus on ritual and ecclesiastical governance, matching the known patterns of the P source. Should it interest you, this article discusses layers of composition of the P material in this Parsha, suggesting that a collection of Priestly literature was inserted into the middle of the Parsha. It’s a fairly technical article.

May we take some modern comfort in the idea that this constructed narrative is far from from a documentary history and much more a ideological account that reinforces the Priestly outlook? In effect, “Here is a story about genocide, but don’t worry, upon scholarly examination, it is just that, a story, and not something that actually occured.” Does this palliate our disgust? I’m not so sure, but that question itself, and other rhetorical questions I’ll offer, can be penetrating. I submit that asking these questions gets to the heart of why I think reading Torah still matters. My take goes like this.

The whole ordeal, and I think “ordeal” is too generous a euphemism for genocide, but we are operating under the presupposition that this is a narrative told divorced from matters of fact. I think we have the opportunity to put this story to use. What is justice, revenge, and duty to one’s deity and people, on the one hand, if it comes at the cost of ethnic cleansing and displacement, on the other? This rhetorical question is exactly my point. We read Torah in community because following this practice, we find a shared vocabulary for modern discussion, from an ancient book.

For me, the plausible genocide of Palestinians at the hands of an entrenched extreme right-wing government in Israel is challenging, of course because of the devastation and tens of thousands of murdered civilians, many of whom are children, but it is also challenging for other reasons; because it forces Jewish people to question the very nature of our characters.

Are we a people of revenge, slaughter, nationalism, and Jewish supremacy? God forbid. Yet the war in Gaza has divided our community to such a great extent that I worry our collective identity as a people who promote Tikkun Olam, T’shuvah, and Tzedakah is being hijacked by Maccabean machismo, greed, racism, and corruption.

Do we nod affirmingly when Moses sends the commanders back into battle to slay the women and children? Or do we recoil with disgust, embarrassed that such a scene exists within our sacred text? If discussing the real events in Israel-Palestine is a topic we cannot yet collectively discuss within our communities, maybe the ahistorical ethnic cleansing of Midianites gives us a way into dialogue to clarify our thinking and sharpen our critique.

The P source may have had reason to record this story, and we may never recover exactly what that motivation was, but in some sense, the story serves to rebuke us today and remind us of our oaths: Peace, justice, and loving-kindness, are these not the aspirational dreams of our prophets?