Goodbye to Judges

This has been a book like no other. 

I returned, after a long hiatus, to begin again against the backdrop of war. To work through this book at a time of loss, of chaos and confusion, of dilemmas with no clear answers, every choice murky. 

The Book of Judges became a touchstone. Over the course of this long Bibliodraw project, my pace has gradually slowed. I began with learning, drawing and writing in a single day; then I split the various aspects among different days, so it took 3 days per chapter. Now, with this new start, it could take weeks. Yet throughout these weeks, my mind kept mulling the chapter, so that Judges permeated my days. The written sections changed tone: rather than dealing directly with the text, they turned personal, exploring its intersection with my life. The Book of Judges offers little comfort in this tumultuous time, but it does offer parallels through its archetypal enactment of confusion. This is a book of identity in crisis, of sporadic and broken leadership, of a nation lost, with each doing "what seems right in his own eyes." 

Now I sit between missile attacks and try to review, after book and world together descended to violent self-sparagmos. 

In my analysis of the opening chapter of Judges, I wrote “we move from the individual to the tribe.” In retrospect, this formulation is inaccurate. The focus is tribal, true--but the tribes have always been there, throughout the desert journey: the census was carried out by tribe, ; the Mishkan was inaugurated by the tribal chieftains, the journeys through the desert were taken in tribal formation, each of the spies represented a tribe. The tribes have always been the building blocks of the nation. 

What has changed here is the disappearance of the broader network. In the desert, the tribes were held within the tight national framework of the mahane, of the desert encampment. All were placed around the Ohel Moed--the Tent of Meeting, or Tent of Witnessing, that could refer both to the Mishkan and to Moses’ personal tent. There was one clear leader and one locus of connection to the divine. Each had a set place in a spatial enactment of national interactions. 

Moses foresaw that this tight framework would disappear once the people dispersed to the far-flung tribal allotments. Much of his final address in Deuteronomy revolves around how to create a parallel structure to the Mehane once Israel is embedded in its Land. The Mishkan will be recreated in the “place that God will choose.” Not only a center in place, it will also become a marker in time, as the people will converge there three times a year. The Levite cities, scattered throughout various tribal holdings, will create a vital network connecting the tribes to each other and to the Mishkan. Local courts will also converge, all leading to the one chosen “place".

Judges moves not from individual to tribe, but rather from national encampment to tribal diffusion. 

The transition away from the Mahane begins in the Book of Joshua, which charts the movement away from the cohesive encampment to the new existence in the Land. As we were with Moses, we will be with you…, the tribal leaders promise Joshua.  The "boy Joshua who never left [Moses'] tent" still draws on his teacher's authority, linking the people back to that unifying Meeting/Witnessing.  With the land not yet allotted to individual tribal estates, the people still live in a semi-encapment, with the “elders” and priests readily available. The battles are national battles, fought by all the tribes together, and involve the open presence of the divine. Joshua and Caleb, as sole survivors of the generation of the Exodus, provide a line of continuity, embodying the journey from slavery to the promised land.

As Joshua’s death approaches, he recognizes that he must establish the infrastructure to integrate coming generations. He apportions the Levite cities as Moses mandated. He calls the people together in a final address, narrating their national history and identity. Israel are also cognizant of the coming dissolution, terrified that the nation may fall apart.  The erection of the altar of witness is to serve as a reminder of shared destiny as the people become anchored in their land rather than in the travelling presence of God-within-their-midst.

The Book of Judges opens as all the briges to the encampment disappear: Joshua is dead. So too the elders. The generation has passed, and the people have scattered to their different estates. The tribes are now unmoored from the overarching structure that gave them meaning and placement, and begin to act as agents in their own right. Caleb, the last link to Moses and his encampment, begins the next stage of the conquest--but this time he is defined not as a representative of his generation, but rather of his tribe. Judah shall go up first.

A book about tribes unmoored is also a book about unmoored fathers and sons, and burgeoning Oedipal tensions. For the tribe is the most patrilineal of structures, defined soley "by their father's house." Those who lack a paternal affiliation--from the "son of an Isralite woman"  who blasphemed back in the desert, to the illegitimate Abimelekh and the alienated Jephthah--are left on the margins. 

The primary Oedipal struggle of this book is between the rejected parental God and his rebellious children. Again and again, the Israelites "do not remember" God, symbolically killing their shared history; again and again, God storms against his ungrateful children, abandoning them to their enemies. This primal struggle is refracted in the lives of the individual Judges, from Gideon, who kills his father's scared bull, to Abimelekh, who murders his father's children, to Jephthah, who is banished from his father's home, to the wayward Samson, who is at last "gathered to his father" and the father-seeking Micah. 

The submerged counter-current running beneath this patrilinear framework is the relationship to daughters. The opening story of Ahsa, lifted almost verbatim from Joshua, reads very differently in this new context, as it creates a frame structure with the story of the Isralite daughters that closes this book: Caleb promises his daughter's hand to the conqueror of Debir; the tribes of Israel deny their daughters' hands to Benjamin. Punctuating this overarching narrative of marriage and its denial is the story of Jephthah, who does not allow his daughter to marry at all, so that she “mourns her virginity”.

 For daughters are a destabilizing force, threatening the parilinear tribe and estate. 

Ahsa’s demand of her father places the issue of inheritance front and center. Immediately when Moses introduces the laws of inheritance, he hits this snag, as the daughters of Tzolfhad come to demand their father’s share in the absence of sons. In counter argument, their tribe protests that female inheritance will destroy the boundaries of the tribal allotment, as the land will eventually be transferred to the husband's family,  The solution: to limit women’s marriage. The daughters of Tzolfhad must marry only within their tribe. For the unification of tribe and land to work, daughters' marriages must be controlled and curtailed.

And just as daughters are the wildcard in tribal structure, breaking the boundaries of the allotment, so too are they a wildcard in language: women break the ridgid--and viselike--validity of vows. The laws of vows--like the laws of inheritence--are introduced with a built-in contradiction: a father--and later a husband--may undo a woman's vow, and "God will forgive her." 

"When a man vow a vow to God... he shall not hollow his words; he shall do according to all that proceeds from his mouth" God declares, an act if imitato dei and faithfulness that on the surface seems commendable. Yet in practice, as this book repeatedly demonstrates, giving such weight to the "proceeds" of a fallible mouth is dangerous and destructive. Jephthah cuts off his future; Israel wipes out a city, and almost eradicates an entire tribe. Without an ability to change the mind (nahem) there can be no comfort (nehama). 

Women, in the few instances their voices break through, offer a more fluid and dynamic language model. Achsa speaks the first line of direct dialogue; Deborah sings; Yael cajoles and seduces; Jephthah's daughter and her friends lament; Micah's mother curses, then switches it to blessing.

There are times when the rigid boundaries of oaths and promises are not enough--as God Himself discovers.  For Israel to survive, it must discover a different language. The repeated covenants between God and Israel all clearly demarcate the curses that come with faithlessness. “If you forsake God and serve alien gods, He will turn and deal harshly with you and make an end of you” Joshua warns. And indeed, after Israel breaks their vows and serve every other god but God, the end seems nigh. "No, I will not rescue you again," says God. The promise will be upheld, regardless of cost.

Yet at the very moment, there comes a wildcard, as unpredictable as a woman's fluid vow and inheritance. God, as it were, discovers, almost despite Himself,that the relationship runs deeper than vows-- a life-breath connecting Him and Israel, breaking all boundaries. His nefesh (soul, breath) "cannot stand Israel's miseries." Like a mother with a tantruming child,  God relents. 

To survive, the remnants of the tribe of Benjamin must also break the rigid boundaries of tribal identity. By stealing wives from Shilo, locus of the "house of God," they become a kind of hybrid-tribe. They have ingested the women's wildcard, and begin to rebuild what was destroyed. 

The final section of the Book of Judges brings together the destabilizing forces running through this turbulent transitional era. Here, there is no external enemy to blame. The breakdowns are all internal and emphasize the failure to move the mahane structure into the Land. Rather than a centralized "place that God will choose", there are multiple houses of God: Micah's small temple is later transplanted to the Dannite holding, which remains in force until God's Temple is destroyed, and the "land is exiled." The Levites, far from acting like a connective tissue, are opportunistic and alianted, The city of Geva's Sodom-like attack on strangers demonstrates how far the national structure has unraveled: the Levite's contention that he is going to the "House of God" does not awaken any sense of shared destiny among the Benjimanites. There is no King in Israel--missing also is the final unifying component named by Moses in his description of the future Isralite society: you shall appoint a king over you. 

Yet when the tribes attempts to act as a mahane, and recreate the national structure, they are crude and one -dimensional. If the Mahane held the entire nation together in a carefully balanced structure, the new national structure is based on exclusion and punishment.  The people call themselves "God's assembly," but He is not at the center. 

It is no accident that the protagonists in these final dark stories are all outliers to the tribal structure: the fatherless Micah; the landless Dannites who remain "encamped"; the volatile Levites, who are scattered throughout the other tribes; the voiceless concubine. The implication is that these outsiders must somehow be integrated into the national structure--or they will lead to its dissolution. The answer to the problems of inheritance are not to limit women's marriage and language, but rather to find a way to integrate its freedom, a countervoice of covenant.  

 

Deuteronomy: Chapter 23

What comes in

when you  go out

the redeeming tick of time

[For full chapter, click here
This chapter returns to the theme of inner and outer spaces--this time on a more metaphysical level. We no longer speak of coming in and out of the central space that "God will choose" but rather of entering the sacred space of the kahal, the assembly. Inner and outer spaces here become ingroups and outgroups: who is within the sacred congregations, who at the periphery, who outside.
One can be blocked for a myriad reasons: a damaged sexual organ, a problematic sexual background (mamzer, loosely translated as "bastard"), or a problematic national history. The impact of history becomes measurable, calculated by the shadow it casts over the future:  Moabites cannot enter the kahal "even after ten generations" ; Egyptians and Edomites can be admitted, but only after three generations of purification...
Once again, physical and metaphorical spaces intertwine.  The sacredness of the community is again expressed and reflected when it "goes out" to meet others: the laws of how to keep the army "encampment sacred" (23:15).  Again, and again, the boundaries of inside and outside are reiterated: a ritually impure soldier must "go out of the encampment, he cannot come within" (23: 11). on the physical level as well, time is the key to crossing the boundary: "and the sun will set, and he may enter."
What comes out, what is out of its place, must be covered: "you shall cover what comes out of you" (23:14).]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 11

To live always in response and choice
peaks and the chasms
Consequence arrayed before you.

[For full chapter, click here

From Sinai and the wilderness, Moses moves to the upcoming entrance to the Land, subtly redefining the interaction between them. The path through the wilderness is not simply a literal progression towards the Promised Land. Rather, the exodus and its aftermath are here see as a trial by fire (literally) in the price and rewards of closeness to God: “your eyes have seen all the great works”—be they the devastation of Pharaoh, or the  destruction of the rebellious Datan and Abiram. The uniqueness of the Promised Land is now seen to lie not in its fecundity as a land of “milk and honey” but rather in its borderline sterility. The Land of Israel is a land on the edge, continuously dependent on its relation to the heavens. It is “not like the land of Egypt…where you plant your seeds, and water by foot, like a garden of greens. The  Land that you are crossing over to inherit is a land of mountains and chasms, it drinks water to their fall from the heavens. It is a land that God studies; His eyes are always upon it, from the beginning of the year until the aftermath of the year.” Entrance to the land is to give the wilderness experience of encampment permanence. Just as Israel was continuously “tested” in the wilderness by scarce food and water, dependent on God’s bread that would fall from the sky, so too in the land will Israel be continuously judged, dependent on  God’s rain fall from the sky. No placidity here, but the continued “mountains and chasms” of a roller coaster relationship. “And it will be if you harken to my commandments… I will give rain of your land in its season… Take heed of yourselves, lest your heart be seduced, and you worship other gods… And the anger of God will be kindled against you, and he will shut the heavens, and there will be no rain.”

The land and its rain will become a physical barometer of relationship. “Curse” and “Blessing” will be given concrete form and actually placed on the mountains of the land: “ And it shall come to pass, when God your Lord will bring you the Land that you go to possess, that you shall set the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal.” The land will unfurl before before Israel, consequence incarnate.]

Numbers: Chapter 35

Measure the space

the beaten boundary

Where the land is not yours

And your blood does not

beat within it

[For full chapter, click here

As per the pattern of Numbers, every account of Israel is followed by a different, more intimate account of the Levites. The opening census was two-pronged: the tribes, by "their father's house", from the age of twenty and up; fthe comes a count of the Levites, by their families, from the age of one month.

The closing account of apportioning the Land follows the same  pattern. Whereas the previous chapter delineated the boundaries of the tribes, this chapter defines the cities that are to be given to the Levites. The key word is "give" (n't), reverberating with the initial account of the "doubly given (neturnim netunim)" Levites.

The "command" (tzav) of the Levites inheritance is both a continuation of the previous chapter's "command" (tzav) of the other tribes' inheritance, and also a radical departure. On the one hand, it continues the focus on "boundaries" (gvul); on "inheritance" (nahala); and on the four directions. It even repeats certain phrases, such as "pe'at negev"--the side of the south. But on the other hand, whereas the previous chapter focused on the specific contours of the Land--its rise and falls, cliffs, mountains, and waters--this chapter focuses only on 'measurements" (middot). The cities of the Levites are defined by numbers, not by the specific terrain. There are to be 48, they must be ssurroundedwith 1000 cubits to each side. Other than that, they can be anywhere. They are to some extent extraneous to the intimate landscape defined by the previous chapter. They are mini-encampments within the Land, to be placed wherever the tribes decide to designate them. 
This is emphasized by the conflation of the cities of the Levites with the cities of refuge set aside for the protection of a man-slaughterer.  The involuntary murderer is protected from the "blood avenger" by escaping into the city of refuge. Yet by the same token, the "city of refuge" protects the Land from the murderer: "you shall not take a ransom for one that flees to a city of refuge, that he may dwell in the Land... for blood pollutes the Land and no expiation shall be made to the Land for the blood  shed within except the blood of he who shed it." The intimacy between  nation and land is so deep, that murder is a crime against the Land--not only against humanity.  The involuntary murderer who  cannot expatiate for the blood he has shed, must be quarantined. The city of refuge--which is also a city of Levites-- functions as that  separate space, divided from the land. The blood does not flow through its membrane. And an involuntary muderer who leaves its bounds, suggestively has "no blood."]

Numbers: Chapter 33

Trace your journey 
on the earth 
that holds you 

The writing in the  
remnants of passage











[For full chapter, click here
As we approach the closing of this "Book of Wilderness," the aspect of recap and recreation is highlighted. As Moses' prepares to be "gathered to his fathers," it seems that the book is "gathering" its strands together.  If the previous chapter focused on recapping the narrative path, here we trace the literal , physical passage: the list of "departures and going" in the forty years wandering through the wilderness. 
This is the first time since Sinai that the act of writing is emphasized: "and Moses wrote their goings forth and their passage. according to God's command." For the first time, we find out that the story has been recorded since the initial "going forth" from Egypt. If at Sinai, Moses engraved God's words "into stone", here it seems that the act of walking engraves the earth, so that the land itself holds the story of the passage. 
Here, more important than any act is the character of the land. We say nothing of revelation, but must know that "Etham is in the edge of the wilderness" and that there were "twelve fountains of water and seventy palm trees" in Elim.  
The underlying motif connecting this journey from Egypt to the fords of Moab is the deepest, most primal connection to the earth: burial (k'b'r). We begin the journey as the Egyptians bury the dead from the Plague of the Firstborn; the journey to the "wilderness of Sinai" is punctuated by the "graves (kibroth) of lust"; we close the first part of the journey at Hor haHar, the site of Aaron's death; the journey ends at Nebo, the future site of Moses' death and burial.    
This catalog of forty years journey traces and celebrates the long way that Israel has come since they set forth from the "mouth of freedom".  Yet it is also filled with the aura of endings as we prepare for the "passage" into the new beginning in the Promised Land. This chapter is both a farewell to the desert, and an introduction to the Land, highlighting the deep connection to the earth.]

Numbers: Chapter 31

What goes out

What comes in

Through fire and flood

Inside and out

[For full chapter, click here
"God, the Lord of the spirit of all flesh,set a man over the congregation, who may go out (ts'e't) before them and who may come in (b'o) before them and who may lead them out (ts'e't) and who may bring them in (b'o)" Moses begged, as he asked to appoint a successor. Now, in Moses' final battle--and the first battle to follow the census of those who will follow Joshua to the Promised Land--it becomes clear that "going out" and "coming in" are indeed the key points. This mixed and brutal chapter is united by one theme: the balance and relationship between those who "go outside" and those who "come in."
The soldiers "sent out" to war bring "the booty and the captives and the spoil" back inside: "they brought (b'o)it to Moses, to the encampment." Moses "goes out" (ts'e't) to meet them "outside the encampment", and they must remain "outside" until they can be purified from contact with the dead. The spoil must also be purified before it can be "brought in," in a ritual by fire that echoes the archetypal purification of the Red Heifer--a ritual that also revolves around demarcating "inside" and "outside" after contact with death. The booty itself must be divided equally between those who "went out" to war, and those who remained inside the encampment. From the two halves, each must give a part that goes further in: a tithe to the priests, and a part for the Levites, "the guardians of the Dwelling" that is the core of the encampment. At the closing, the purified booty, "offered to God" is brought all the way, into the heart of intimacy itself: "and Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of the captains ...and brought it into the Tent of Meeting, for a memorial for the children of Israel before God."]

Numbers: Chapters 16

Swallowed in the whole

Or set

 

Apart

Are we all

Or one?

Come up, 

or descend all the way down

 

Gather and separate  

Alive and dead

[For full chapter, click here
The dissolution continues.  The first section of Numbers deals with setting up the encampment:the tribes are numbered; leaders are appointed; Levi is placed at the center, the transitional glue connecting the people to the inner heart of the Dwelling. As the book unfolds, each of these elements leads to breakdown. 
The organic whole of the encampment leads to mob psychology, as "the whole congregation" shifts hysterically from rejecting the Land, to attempting to force their way into the Land. The mob psychology continues in our chapter, which is dominated by the word "congregation" (edah) and "assembly" (khal). 

The "princes" (nessim) of the tribes do not  ease the burdens on Moses. Rather, they are some of the sources of disquiet, fermenting despair as spies; and here joining in Korach's rebellion (which is lead by the elite, despite its claims to speak for "the entire congregation")

And here, for the first time, we come to the breakdown of the "sons of Levi" who instigate and lead the rebellion against Moses and Aaron. "Hear now, sons of Levi... is it small to you, that God separated you from the tribes of Israel, and brought you close, to do service in the Dwelling?" Moses demands.
It seems to be the inherent tension of the encampment that leads inexorably to rebellion. The tension of always being part of a whole leads Korach to demand "the entire congregation is holy...why do you set yourself up over the congregation?" even as he himself seeks to be "the leader." The chapter ends as Moses prays "Shall one man sin, and the entire congregation be punished?" attempting a separation between individual and group. This separation is symbolically enacted when the people move away from Korach's tents. 
Levi's impossible position as neither part of Israel, nor part of the Dwelling, given to both, belonging to neither, can be seen as leading directly to the demands to serve as priests, to break down the rigid structure of inside and outside. "To be sperated but no chosen, consecrated, but no the "holy" is a terrible  tension. 
"We will not come up" say Datan and Aviram, revealing the simmering resentment over the decree that their generation will not see the Lan. Instead they descend to a living hell. Yet that is almost easier than the place of the eternal between.]

Numbers: Chapter 10

Sound the trumpets 

Of motion

Of memory

Of meeting

And the moment of leave-taking

When eyes close

In the vortex

Don't leave me now

[For full chapter, click here
After all the planning and counting and appointing, the encampment is finally ready to travel. This new unity is announced by the command to create the trumpets "of a single solid"--an echo of the previous chapter's opening description of the Manorah, hammered of "a single solid." But whereas the Menorah belongs to the "inside", to Aaron and the Sanctuary; these trumpets are "for you" and serve to call the people. They are the harbingers of "memory" for Israel as a whole, whether in war or in festival.
The joyfulness of this first travel is broken by the description of Hovav/Jethro's leave taking. At the moment of triumphant travel, he prepares to leave. "Come with us" Moses begs.
"No" says Hovav, "I will return to my homeland and my birthplace" --a precise inverted parallel of Abraham's original journey "away from you homeland and your birthplace" to the unknown "land that will be shown." This is an ominous inversion, indicating that travel "to the land that God promised to give us" might not be so simple as Moses thinks. Indeed, Moses, in a rare moment of vulnerability, reveals the pain and anxiety of the journey through the unknown: "Do not leave us. You know how we are to encamp in the wilderness. You have been our eyes!"
Hovav does not answer, and we return to the story of travel]

Numbers 9: In Writing

In a world of have and not

Today and tomorrow

Where night burns to mist

And when the cloud lifts

We move again 

Through shifting sands

Far from solid shapes

of here, of now

Knotted to air and water

Vapor-breath

Fog that catches fire

Where can we feel our fingertips

The cool of solid skin that says

     I am here

     I am here

     I am here

When the wind changes

And They are Us

And Now is Then?

Numbers: Chapter 9

Transformations 

Replacements

The space between

Now and then

Them and us

[For full chapter, click here

In a sudden chronological leap, we return in time to the "first month of the second year." The a-chronology is ironically juxtaposed with the demand to "perform the Passover in its time (be-moado)."

The change in chronology is actually thematic. In the opening section, the Isralites who cannot keep the Passover demand: "we are unclean to the dead; Why should we lose, to not to bring the offering to God in its appointed time among the children of Israel?" God responds by creating a fluidity within the rigid structure: there is to be an alternative time for those who cannot make the first appointment, though those who choose to miss the time "will be cut off from their people."

This idea of replacement and  alternatives within the long-term impact of the Exodus echoes the previous chapter. Just as the Levites replace the firstborn of Israel, who were consecrated during the Plague of the First Born, so the alternate Passover in the second month is an alternative to the consecrated first month. we are in the spaces "between:: the Levites stand between the Kohanim and Israel; Passover is celebrated "between the evenings" (ben ha-arbayim, twilight)

the fluidity of time is heightened in  the final section, where the Israelites' sense of time becomes utterly caught up in the Cloud above the Tent of Meeting. The can encamp for "many days" "two days" "a night" "a month" "a year": "According to the word of God they camped; according to the word of God they traveled." Time becomes defined by relationship]

Numbers: Chapter 8

The spaces between

You and I and Thou

Between the palms of your hands

To be given, 

given,

taken

To be mine, to be yours, to be his

[For full chapter, click here

After the gifts of princes, and the dedication of the altar, we move inwards, literally and figuratively: we speak to the head of Levi, Aaron, the High Priest, and move into the sanctuary to light the Menora. The section of the menora can serve as a symbol for the position of Levi as a whole; "The candles will look to the center (pnei) of the Menora" just as the tribes look inwards towards Levi, who stands before them (pnei) and between them. Just as the Menorah is a single whole (miksha), the set aside Levi nonetheless comes from "within" (be-toch, mi-toch) Israel.

This chapter of consecration repeatedly emphasizes Levi's liminal state as the double "given" (netunim netunim). They come to serve the kohanim, yet here they are unmistakably presented as representatives of Israel. There are the "offering" of Israel (k'r'b) who are brought close (k'r'b). Their symbolic state is emphasized by the fact that Israel "lays their hands" over them, as is done in the case of a literal offering. Levi are the offering, Aaron is the priest, "waving them before God"; Israel are those who bring the offering. "Given to Aaron and his sons from among the children of Israel" Levi is the conduit between inside and outside, the Tent of Meeting and the encampment]

Numbers: Chapter 7

A canon of connection


Distinct


Yet one















[For full chapter, click here"And it was on the day"--we find ourselves suddenly back on that fateful day that closes the Book of Exodus "when Moses established the Dwelling." The chapter draws attention to the intertextual link by using the same key words: the dramatic "vayehi"--"and it was"; "vayakem", --establish; and "vayikal / khalot" completed, finished.
Yet even as it draws attention to the previous presentation of this day in Exodus, it places it firmly within the context of this book that revolves around the Israelite encampment, according to tribe and "father's house". The focus this time is on "the princes of Israel / the heads of their father's house / these are the princes of the tribes / these are they in charge of the count." The anaphora of hem / hem ("they" "they) draws attention to the fact that this version of the story has different heroes: The tribal leaders who do not even appear in Exodus 40, which is the story of how Moses, the liminal figure linking heaven and earth, brings together the disparate parts of the Dwelling.
Now we here of a side drama. Rather than the relationship of Moses and the priests, the focus is on the tribes and Levi: the tribal leaders offer a gift to Levi, which is accepted, and then begin a twelve day dedication of the altar.
The dedication of the altar is a complex literary game, exemplifying the power of repetition and change.The chapter opens by revisiting the fateful day of consecration,, while offering a new perspective;  it closes with a description of the 12 day dedication of the altar, repeating the description, word for word, 12 times, while only changing the name of the prince and  tribe. Sometimes the same event cam seem completely different; sometimes different events can seem the same. On a deeper level, the chapter is exemplifying the cumulative power of repetition. The same words do not have the same impact. The 12-time repetition creates an effect of a canon, the voices overlapping and gaining force. The chapter emphasizes that the whole is different than the parts alone, by summing up all the gifts together, as though they had no just been enumerated separately.
More importantly, the closing of the dedication leads to the appearance of  God's voice: "And when Moses came to the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, then he heard the voice of one speaking unto him from off the mercy seat that was upon the Ark of Testimony, from between the two keruvim: and He spoke unto him." Exodus's scene of a lone Moses erecting the Dwelling creates a space of utter aloness, with no sharing possible--"And Moses was not able to enter into the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud dwelled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Dwelling". Here, the communal gifts create a space of communication. Reptition and change create room--and the root speak (d'b'r) is repeated 3 times]

Numbers: Chapter 5

Unfaithfulness

The things we take

The things we steal

Can there be restitution

 within and without?

[For full chapter, click here

Having set up the encampment "around the Dwelling," this chapter returns to reiterate Leviticus' law of the encampment. If before, the laws of leprosy and ritual impurity were presented from the "inside" perspective of the priests, we now focus on the extended" space of Israel. It is they who are to "send out" (shlakh--a key word of the chapter) the ritually impure to preserve the Dwelling within.

The focus on redemption and restitution (geula) that closed Leviticus is also reiterated and brought down to earth. Geula is now not an absolute right on the land, but rather restitution for  money that was unlawfully taken (maal, lit: unfaithfulness, sin, treachery). 

The  concept of meila--a breakdown of holiness, de-consecration--introduces the final section: the laws of a wife suspected of adultery, who was moel in her husband. The betrayal of the husband directly echoes the betrayal of God. The priest is the one who must settle the marital dispute. This strange section of the Sotah (the wayward woman) creates the basis for the Prophets' central metaphor of the relationship of God-Israel as that of Husband-Wife. Sin is presented as unfaithfulness; the woman's reiteration of her innocence echoes Israel's acceptance of the curses that come from breaking the covenant. The woman is tested within the Dwelling itself.

Yet there is a bitter aftertaste to these "bitter waters," a feel that regardless, the woman will always be in a worse position: "the man shall be clear from iniquity, and that woman shall bear her iniquity."]   

Numbers: Chapter 2

Eternal cycle
of part and whole

to encamp 
 and to move 

Opposed and surround















[For full chapter, click here
This chapter continues directly from the last, with a shared focus on "father's house" "family" "counting/appointing" (p'k'd), "prince/raised one" (n's'o), and "army". Here, the focus on counting/appointing expands outwards, in a continual point counter-point "travel" and "encamp". Who travels first? Who sets up the encampment? Each sections opens with a repeated use of the root encamp (h'n'a), and closes with a description of travel (s'a'a).
Reverberating in the background of the "fathers" are the unmentioned mothers: the encampment is set up according to the matriarchs. The ones to travel "first" are the children of Leah's triumph, Judah ("this time I will praise God"), Issachar ("reward"), and Zebulun ("fertility" "fecundity"). Those who travel "second" are Leah's older children, who embody her struggle with her sister, Reuben ("God has seen my pain"), Simeon ("God has heard that I am hated") and Gad ("betrayal"--the first child of Leah's maidservant). Those who travel "third" are the displaced Rachel's children. "Last" are the  children of the maidservants, 
The only one to avoid these groupings is Levi, again aligned only with the Dwelling. He travels within his brothers, but apart. They oppose (neged)/surround (savuv) him. 
After enumerating the separations and subliminal tensions, the chapter closes by enumerating the entire encampment ("all were numbered according to their hosts'), bringing together the sub-alliances into a single whole]

Numbers: Chapter 1

What is carried

And what carries you

How do you make it count?

Set, established, 

Called by name

[For full chapter, click here

From the pointilistic Leviticus-space of "the Tent of Meeting" and "Mount Sinai",  we pan outwards to the "wilderness of Sinai". The broadening space reflects a broadened audience. No longer do we speak only to the priests. Now the words are addressed to the "entire congregation of Israel," and the first act is to appoint "those called by the congregation" to act along with Moses and Aaron. 

The new focus on nationality is reflected in the fact that this is a military census, "all who go out to the army." Yet even in establishing a military, the underlying conception of the congregation is familial. This is an extended family. "The children of Israel" are numbered by "their families," by "their father's house." The tribes are listed not by size or importance, but by their position in the family: Leah's children, then Rachel's (the children of the maidservants are the wild cards, changing order in the listing. As in the closing of Genesis, they are the glue holding the two sides of Israel's family together.) People are called by name; the focus is on "the head", the face, not the militarized body.  

Yet even as we establish this cohesion of distinct families, one tribe is set apart. Levi is not "counted" (p'k'd) or "carried" (in's'a). In a series of word-plays, Levi is instead "appointed" (p'k's) to carry (n's'a) the Dwelling. 

The focus on inside/outside and the liminal space between that so dominated Leviticus here becomes embodied within the very fabric of the nation, that encamps around the inner core of Levi]