Deuteronomy: Chapter 21

What do you bring in

When you go out

And what do you take out from within?

[For full chapter click here

The chapter is a mixed back of disparate laws. Its opening reiterates and intensifies the themes of the previous chapter, while its closing looks ahead, to a time after settling in the land, defining the relationship between parents and children in a society where inheritance is at stake.

The opening section reiterates the previous themes of “coming in” and “gone out,” yet complicates them. If in  the previous chapters, we established a sacred space “within” and then “went out” to war, here what is out is brought in, and what is in is taken out.

The opening returns us to the laws of murder, and the metaphysical responsibility for blood: “you must expunge clean blood from within you.” Yet the movement “out” has changed the responsibilities “within” (a key word in all these chapters). In chapter 19, we dealt with the laws concerning inadvertent manslaughter, and the need to provide refuge for the killer from vengeful relatives who seek to “redeem the blood”—a responsibility to those who fit “within” (k’r’v) the roads and center that define Israel. Here, the responsibility is instead to the anonymous corpse, to the outsider who has no relative to demand “redemption.” Literal closeness, physical proximity, creates a bond: “then your elders and judges shall come forth, and they shall measure the distance unto the cities which are round about him that is slain. And it shall be that the city which is next to he that is slain, the elders of that city shall take a heifer that has not drawn a yoke…”

The ritual of atonement enacted by the elders brings what is outside into the intimate sphere. The unbroken heifer is taken to a wild “river that is not worked,” and what is beyond human habitation comes to atone for human habitation. The ritual shares much in common with the enigmatic laws of the Red Heifer, which comes to purify after contact with death. Here, we restate the connection between inheritance and blood, but a level of primal rituals of contact with the earth.  The stranger is brought “within” the circle of responsibility, and the unmarked spaces beyond the roads are webbed in to the sacred.

After bringing the outside in, we once again move “out” to the laws of war (the two sections are connected by a word play on yi-matze—“find”-- and te-tze—“go out”). Yet if the previous section on war mandated complete destruction, so as to prevent “learning from their abomination,” here, there is a possibility of bringing a captured woman “into your home.” After following a ritual of mourning and symbolic severing “inside your home,” the outside can become intimate: “and afterwards she shall be your wife.”

Uniting these two sections is a focus on seeing and eyes: the elders must swear that “Our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it,” so that they will do “the right in the eyes of God.” The unseeing eyes then open  to see “among the captives a woman of beautiful form” (21:7). 

At the closing of the chapter, the focus on seeing shifts to a focus on hearing, as the breakdown of relationship between parents and children is defined by "he does not listen to us" (21: 20); and the son's death penalty is supposed to make "all of Israel listen." Here, what is closest is expunged, as the parents "take out" (ho-tzi-u) their son to the court.
  
There is constant pulsation between bringing in and going out, between closing the senses, and opening them.]

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: Chapter 19

What is left 
from the conflagration

bone
sinew
blood

Gather and guard

To bring life to death

the outside in

theinterweaved opposites

[For full chapter, click here

After 4 chapters revolving around the position of the priests, we seem to come back to Leviticus, with a detailed description of the ritual for purification after contact with death.

This seems to continue the recreation of the death of Nadab and Avihu during the consecration of the Dwelling. Just as Aaron's two sons were "consumed" for "coming close" and "bringing alien fire" into the sanctuary, Korah's 250 men were "consumed" for "coming close" and "bringing alien fire." What followed in Leviticus was a series of rituals designed to define how one "come close" without being consumed. One cannot "come in" to the inner sanctum casually. There must always be a careful  definition of what is outside, what is in, and how one traverses that dangerous doorway. 

The ritual of the Red Heifer also revolves around "going outside" the camp; and around how one can be "in the presence (nohah)  of the Tent of Meeting" even when one is outside. As in the case of Leviticus, there must be a passage before coming back in: "he must wash his clothes and await the evening."

Here though, it is not only closeness that is being addressed, but also the dangerous mix between death and life that has dominated these chapters: Korah "descends living to the underworld, while Aaron must use the incense to "stand between the living and the dead." ""Behold, we are dying! We are lost, we are all lost," cry the children of Israel. 

Here,the ritual promises purification from contact with death. Yet it also hints that death and life are always touching. The ashes of the Red Heifer, "consumed by fire" as were Korah's men and Nadab and Avihu, is mixed with "living waters"--fiery death intermixing  with watery life. Word games highlight this paradoxical intertwining. "Hatat"--which until now has indicated "sin", or "sin offering" here refers to "cleansing" "purification"; Nidda,  which until now has referred to ritual impurity, now becomes the name of the water that grants purity.

In a final closing for these terriblechapters, the ashes of the Red Heifer, what is left of the fire, are here given to the children of Israel for keeping (mishmeret). If the priests were given the guardianship (mishmeret) of the altar; and the Levites guard (mishmeret) the Tent of Meeting, the children of Israel are here given to guard the ashes of what has been lost. Yet it is these ashes that allow entrance into the Tent from "outside."]

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."]   

Leviticus: Chapter 18

Where you come from

Where you go to

To do
To walk
To guard
To protect

The gagging earth

Whom do you approach?

[For full chapter, click hereFrom an address aimed at the priests, we move to an address aimed at "the children of Israel." The concepts of tahara (loosely, "purity") and "coming close" (k'r'v) move from the locus of the Dwelling into family life. The focus here is on prohibited sexual relations. The care regarding sexuality is presented as simultaneously differentiating the "children of Israel" from the "land they came from" and "the land they are approaching"; as well as ensuring a connection to the earth itself: do no "cause the earth to gag."The chapter is set up in a perfect chiastic structure. It opens with the injunction " do not act like the acts of the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, neither shall you do  doings like the land of Canaan, where I bring you, shall ye not do;do not walk in their statutes." It continues with a list of incest taboos ("where you come from"), then moves to a list of prohibited act that cilminate with child-sacrifice ("where you go to"). It closes: "For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled; That the land not vomit you also, when you defile it, as it vomited the nations that were before you."Sexuality becomes a complex, enfolded identity, beginning with "acts" ("do not act"); then becoming "a path" ("so not walk in their statues" "you shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein"), then transforming into a "safeguard" (mishmeret), something to be actively guarded. ]

Leviticus: Chapter 16

Inside

Outside

Between

The veils of concealment

of closeness

The moment in time 

and what follows

[For full chapter, click here

After the various laws creating a correlation between human body and the Dwelling, we return to the death of the "two sons of Aaron". The leitwords are the same: "closeness" (k'r'v), "fire," "face/presence" (lifnei/ pnei).  Yet this is a return that is informed by the laws that followed. Once again, a doubled sacrifice (an echo, perhaps, of the two lost sons?) that holds within it life and death--here, the scapegoat sent "out" deep into the desert. The focus is still  inner and outer spaces (ve-yetze "to go out", "vayavo" "to come") and the liminal space  between them--the "doorway" of the Dwelling becomes the "veil" setting apart the "holy of holies."

 The ritual that allows for the very "coming close" that destroyed the two children of Aaron also distills and encapsulation the laws that introduce it. By clarifying the inner, the outer, and the liminal, it for the first time allows the Dwelling "to dwell with you within your impurity"--a contrast to the previous chapter's deadly  "Let them not die in their impurity, when they make impure my Dwelling which is within them."

We also introduce a motif of time, a counterpoint to the emphasis on space: "any moment (et) he comes to the holy" "send it with a man of the moment (ish eti)"; an intimation of the future, where a different priest will serve "in the place of his father." Time seems to provide the missing link between  the inner and outer spaces]

Leviticus: Chapter 15

What is inside

seeping outside

extended         circles

touching

Inner and outer temples

Contain                            yourself

[For full chapter, click here
We continue with the laws of tumah and Tahara, ritual purity and impurity, this time focusing on male and female bodily discharges, what "seeps" (zav) out of the body.
Again, the Temple-consecration pattern of seven-days-and-eighth-day-transition; again a duality (two birds in each of the offerings; male/ female; two categories of discharge ). And throughout, the focus on the tension between inner and outer spaces. The zav represents an inner space seeping outwards, contaminating in widening circles, an inversion of the "tent of meeting," whose holiness seeps from the center out. Once again, there seems a strange correlation between the human body and the Dwelling. The human spaces must be contained, in order for the tend to "dwell within you."] 

Leviticus: Chapter 14

 Out                                       In

Dead                                   Live

Till the inner sanctum is destroyed

And you fly free over the field

[For full chapter, click here

The healing of the metzorah (loosely translated as "leper"). At last, he breaks out of the endless cycles of sevens, as he too reaches "the eighth day."

The ritual embodies duality: the living flesh, and the dead tzarrat lesion, the two birds--one slated for death, the other, marked in blood, set free to fly "over the face of the field"; two sheep.

The greatest tension is between inner and out--an echo of the "days of filling" consecrating the Dwelling, which also revolved around "going outside" and remaining in the "doorway." The chapter opens with the metzorah being "brought/ coming in"  and the priest going out (ve-yatza). The metzorah must sit alone "outside" the camp; then can come "in." One bird of the offering is offered "within" the Dwelling, the other flies away outside. The spacial focus comes to the fore in the laws of house-tzarrat, in begins with parts of the inner dwellings  cleared away to "outside" the camp, and closes with the complete destruction of teh houses' wall. the tzaraat experience somehow revolves around a redefinition of inner space)

Leviticus: Chapter 13

See

Be seen

Make manifest

When did flesh

become you?

[For full chapter, click here

The world of the divine  resonates throughout the human encampment, as the chapter continues to discuss the theme of human tumah and tahara (loosely translated as ritual purity and impurity) with the laws of tzaraat (a skin disfigurement sometimes identified as leprosy). 

The key word is "seeing" and "eyes"--the root r'a'a (roe, mar'e, yirah-e) repeats over twenty times. This is a chapter of stripping away, removing what is covered, exposing rot. 

The strange correlation between the human body and the Dwelling persists. We return to the primal language that opened the Book of Leviticus: "Adam," human, earth-creature, rather than the more conman "man"; followed by "nefesh," soul--mirroring the initial description of the Temple service. There is a focus on clothing--the defining characteristic of the priest. Interwoven is also the motif of  fire and burning--an echo of the death of Nadav and Avihu "on the eighth day."  Like the Dwelling, the skin lesion is defined through a seven day process of enclosure. But in contrast to the dedication of the Mishkan--and the purification of a woman after birth-- here, there is no concluding "eighth day", no transition between inside and out, no death and rebirth. Instead there is a trapping within a system of repeated cycles of sevens.

As the chapter enumerates the various ways of diagnosing the skin lesion, there is a continous interplay between the person and the flesh-disease. In the opening section, the subject is "adam"--the person; in the second section, the subject is "tzarrat" --the disease itself. In the closing, the person is defined by the disease. He is a metzorah, an embodiment of tzarrat. It is no longer the lesion that is "tameh--impure" but he. The person has becomes his flesh]

Leviticus: Chapter 12

The human dwelling

dedication

blood

small deaths

To hold multiplicity

[For full chapter, click here

From the laws of food and animals, we move seamlessly into the laws of human purity and impurity. There is a slippage of meaning, with the key words remaining the same, but changing context: tahor (kosher, pure) ta'me (not-kosher, impure); the plant seeds here become human gametes: "a woman who gives forth seed".

In this extension of the holiness of the Dwelling into the human realm, there is a strange confluence between birth and consecration; the woman's body and the Mishkan. Like the Mishkan, dedicated in a seven day ceremony that is completed "on the eighth day," the impurity after birth follows a seven day cycle followed by "on the eighth day". As in the case of the consecration of the Mishkan, the focus is on blood. Here too, there is a focus on duality and separations: the doubling of the days in the case of a female baby; the double offering brought at the end of the birth period.]