Judges: Chapter 11

 

Who listens?

Who speaks?

And can you return?

The blurt of your mouth

the trace that is gone

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"Let whoever is first to fight the Amorites be chieftain," the elders of Gilead promise, scrambling for leadership. The cliffhanger ending of the previous chapter, where God's response is left uncertain, is resolved here, as we discover the existence of Jephtha, a  "great warrior" who is a son of Gilead. Salvation is at hand. 

Yet the chapter is dense with intertextual allusions, setting up a complex movement between hope and dread. Gilead searches for a leader, any leader, but it is unclear what kind of leader they have found. Jephtha's introduction is replete with parallels to the story of Abimelekh. Like Abimelkh, Gideon is a disenfranchised bastard. Like Abimelekh, his position is defined by his mother: the opening verses are full of references to women "a prostitute woman" "the wife of Gilead" "you are the son of an alien woman". Like Abimelekh, Jepthah leaves his father's home, and his brothers. Is Jephtha to be another faithless, murderous tyrant?

Yet in contrast to Abimelekh's active rejection of his father in favor of his mother's kin, Jephthat's break with his fatheris not a matter of choice. He is forced "to flee," and camps in the outer periphery until the elders of Gilead come to fetch him, like a discarded shoe. "For you have hated me, and banished me from my father's house, why do you come to me now when you are troubled (tz'a'r צר)?" he erupts, defining himself as a rejected exile who still sees himself as linked to his lost family home. 

This loaded accusation parallels two other pain-filled verses, which set into place the thematic matrix of this dense chapter. First, it is a direct syntactic echo of God's own accusation to Israel in the previous chapter: "For you have left me... let the gods you have chosen save you in your time of trouble (tz'a'r צר)." "That is why we have come to return you" the elders of Gilead respond, using the loaded term that also denotes "repentance." This parallel highlights that Israel are mercenary in their appeals to both God and Jephtha; they are using God and man for their own safety, oblivious to the hurt and wrong they have done. Jephtha seems aware that he is aligned with God's role: "God will listen between us" he says, demanding a deeper loyalty. He then takes on God's role in recounting the history of the covenant. In highlighting the role of the divine in salvation, Jephtha links himself to the Father--to Gideon rather than Abimelekh. Like Gideon, he insists that salvation is found not in might, but in divine intervention.  

Jephtha's pain-filled cry also directly echoes Isaac's cry to a different Abimelekh, back in the nation's prehistory, in Genesis 26: 27: "Why have you come to me, and you hated me, and sent me away?" This cry introduces the first human covenant in history, as Isaac and Abimelekh king of Grar "swear" to do no harm to each other, a covenant tied into place by "the blessing of God." 

And indeed, Jephtha is obsessed with the question of vows and human faithfulness. How can language be made binding? The leitwords of this chapter are d'v'r דבר, speech, sh'v, return, repentance, sh'm'a, to listen. Jephath "speaks" (דבר) his "speech" (d'v'r) "before God," trying to give it reality. His first act of war is to send the "speech (d'v;r) of Jephtha" to the King of Amon, fighting with words before he fights with weapons. If Israel, in the previous chapter. had lost their connection Moses and to Joshua, Jephtha here attempts to recreate it by focusing specifically on the power of Moses' words, on the messages that he sent. Yet these efforts are alas, in vain. Just as the kings did not listen to Moses, the king of Amon does not "listen" to Jephtha's words.  In the end, it is physical battle rather than words that matter.

Or is it?

There is a dark side to the attempt to make human language binding. "The first thing that comes out to greet me when I return (sh'v) in peace  I will dedicate to God," Jephtha swears. It is his daughter who comes to greet him, "with timbrel and dance", echoing Miriam's primordial timbrel and circle dance in the aftermath of the splitting of the sea. "You have destroyed me," Jephtha accuses his daughter. "I opened my mouth to God and cannot return" (sh'u'v).

Perhaps rather than seeking to reify language and make it binding, Jephtha would have been better  served by turning to women's speech, and connecting to his rejected mother. "This is the word (d'v'r) that God has commanded: if a man makes a vow... he must carry out all that crossed his lip.. if a woman makes a vow... and her father restrains her... none of her vows shall stand, and God will forgive her." The laws of vows are introduced by making women's vows dependent on relationships--be they with father's or husbands. Here, Jephtha's commitment to the blurting of his mouth overpowers the relationship to his daughter, and undoes the promise of redemptive return that lurks beneath the surface of this chapter.

The redemptive dance and song that could have connected to Deborah's own recreation of the Song of the Sea,  turn instead to a dirge, as the "maidens of Israel go every year, for four days a year, to chant dirges for the daughter of Jephtha". ]

Judges: Chapter 5

Awaken from the dephths

the mother seeking 

the ferocious core

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The chapter reiterates and crystallizes the themes raised in the previous chapter. Reiterated is the spatial dimension, the leitwords "falling" "to go" (l'kh). Intensified is the focus on gender, and on the role and leadership of women.

The intertext of Deborah's Song is Moses' Song of the Sea, continuing the Book of Judges dialogue with the Book of Exodus. Both are replete with water imagery and the downfall of horses and chariots (Then the horses’ hoofs pounded / As headlong galloped the steeds ) . 

Az yashir, "Then sang" open both these iconic songs. In Exodus, the singer is the male Moses, while Mirian "the prophetess" (Exodus 15:21) only takes up the chant at the end with the band of dancing women, declaring "Sing to God." Here, Deborah takes up Miriam's imperative form, but it is "the woman prophetess" who is the primary singer, with the male Barak as secondary. Deborah is the speaking heart, Barak her physical arms: "Awake, awake, O Deborah! Awake, awake, speak  song! / Arise, O Barak; Take your captives, O son of Abinoam!").

The  poem switches to first person, as the prophetess calls on herself to speak: "I (anochi), to God, I (anochi) will sing," The song is a claiming of women's speech: "Awake Deborah...speak (Dabri) song"  as Deborah puns on her name to claim the authoritative speech (dibur) that is usually the preview of men. And the song is indeed structured around  the power of femininity, subverting female archetypes. History itself is redefined in feminine terms (in the days of Yael). It opens with the rise of Deborah, "a mother in Israel" (5:7), and closes with Sisera's mother, sitting and awaiting the return of her son. Between the bookends of these maternal figures is "Most blessed of women Yael, wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of all women in tents" (5:24). These three women are the structuring principle of the song, reaviling the hidden female matrix of warfare. Each woman drives the war in her own way: Deborah by ordering Barak to battle; Yael by seducing Sisera to supposed safety in order to assassinate him; and Sisera's mother, who raised her son to revel in the sexualized violence of war, where he can claim "a womb or two for every manhead (5:30). The male "taking of captives" is the muscle power playing out these deep drives. 

 

Western society has traditionally divided women by different traits: nurturance vs. sexuality, the mother and the whore. In this song, these female paradigms are intermixed, so no woman is one or the other. Deborah the mother is Deborah the speaker, calling, judging, "exploring the heart."  Sisera's mother, sits inside sniveling and worried, but is revealed as ferocious and predatory, reveling in rape. Yael exits the traditional female space of the tent to beckon Sisera in, in language that is sexually suggestive: "Between her legs" Sisera rises, falls, and collapses, rises and falls and collapses again, to be utterly destroyed.  Yet the seductress is also maternal, offering nurturing  "milk" as she soothes him to sleep. Has the rapist between her legs been birthed or undone? 

The maternal emerges as a dangerous, ferocious, and celebrated  power.]

Goodbye to Deuteronomy

So here it goes. I've been wafting and wedging about writing this Siyyum.
Why?
Because doing so would imply that this part is really over. Because it would mean I need to decide what to do next. And also because Deuteronomy was hard for me, on so many levels. How do I sum it up--or some up my interaction with this difficult book?

Deuteronomy means literally "deuter" "nomos"--"second law"--a close translation of the Rabbinic appellation for the book: "Mishne Torah"--"second/ repeated law". Both names focus on the fact that this book is mostly retrospective, a spoken review of the books that came before. In terms of the time frame, this book was indeed, for me, a doubling--it took me as long as the other 4 books put together. It is harder to get a sense of continuity with all the time that passed since starting this book and finishing it. I was forced to do my own "review", going back and looking at the images, to try to feel how this book develops. 

In some ways, the Book of Number leads smoothly and directly into Deuteronomy. The final chapters of Numbers act as a segue, as they begin the review of the desert years that becomes explicit at the opening of Deuteronomy.  More profoundly, if the Book of Numbers focused on learning how to speak, this Book of Words (the literal meaning of the Hebrew name, Devarim) focuses on the next stage of speech: the creation of identity and memory. We move from learning to speak, to learning how to write, and to transmitting this writing to the future. And if Numbers ends with the fear of curses and imprecation, Deuteronomy closes with the giving over of blessing.

  

How does this “book of words” transform speech?

“These are the words the Moses spoke”: we begin with a focus on the role of the narrator. The first chapter of this book can be read as a primer in literary theories of narratology, with a defined speaker presenting reported speech and internal speech, vying with a narrative that has already been told. The literary structure forces an awareness of the presence of the speaker, and how the speaker’s experience and narrative stance affects the story that is told. The review is not identical to the original. The prism of identity stands in the way—an identity formed by the “words” being spoken, which define the timeline, define causality, define responsibility. Experience is translated into a particular frame, and into various narratives that compete with each other. Speech becomes the bearer of identity, the maker of memory. It is words that bind: you are defined by what you swear by, by the words you declaim. History is defined by what and how you choose to remember. Covenant is a story that must be personally and collectively articulated, again and again.  The book ends with a grand scene of establishing a seminal text that will serve as the nexus of identity: "And Moses wrote this teaching (torah) and delivered it to the priests and the sons of Levi...and the elders of Israel" (31:9). From internal speech, we are moving outwards, towards writing that is meant for reading, for sharing: "you will read this teaching before all of Israel, in their ears. Gather the people together: men women, and children and the stranger within your gates, that they may hear and may learn... so that their children, who do not know, may hear and learn" (10-13). 

The focus on speech and its role in creating identity, is accompanied by a focus on boundaries, both literal and metaphysical. The book sets out to differentiate "self" from "non-self."Like all stories, it is a story that also excludes and destroys. There is no room for dual loyalties in the covenant. All that is "not self" must be destroyed or incorporated.  Deuteronomy  continuously moves between a defined center and outer limits and back again--whether by tracing the contours of the country though the tri-annual journey from the peripheral cities to the central "place" that God will choose; or through a judiciary that is placed at "every gate" yet relies on a central authority; or through the network of roads providing refuge for the inadvertent killer. Beyond these etched contours is the space "outside"--a space to which the army "goes out," only to come "back in". The boundaries of the land are echoed in metaphysical laws that define and limit who can "come into" the congregation.  Even the consequence of sin is limited by a boundary, not to exceed the limits of the individual life.

It is Moses, the speaker, who experiences these absolute boundaries most acutely. Barred from crossing the physical boundary of the Jordan River, his life embodies the unbreakable and unmoving limit of God's will. The book opens as he looks out toward the Promised Land, and closes as his final request is once again refused, and he dies "there, in the desert, by the passages of Moab," unable to "cross" the river. It is Moses who embodies the lesson that his "song" comes to teach:  That God is the singularity that holds all opposition,: "I am He...there is none that can deliver from My hands."

In its focus on giving and taking and absolute boundaries, Deuteronomy returns us to the primordial introduction of the speech act: Eden and its aftermath.  Deuteronomy indeed acts as a "second law" in that it returns us to the issues that animated the primal presentation of humanity: : speech, knowledge, possession, and “good”--the adjective that Moses repeats again and again. The first, the only, command given to the humanity is to see and not not to take--to accept the imposed limits, to be a guardian who does not “send forth his hand.” In Moses’ bitter experience standing on Nebo, we return to the human in the garden, staring at the forbidden fruit. And this time, the painful boundary remains unbroken.

Does this perhaps, allow the blessing to answer the curse? 

Deuteronomy: Chapter 27

Trace the line

in earth, in stone

the chasm between

write, 

be silent, listen

declare and answer: 

Amen

We affirm

[For full chapter, click here

This chapter continues the focus on narrative and articulation. If the previous chapter emphasized the need to testify, we now move from the oral to the written. Upon crossing the Jordan, the children of Israel must erect standing stones, engraved with "all the words of this law, very clearly."

Again and again, the word "crossing" (a'v'r, also "past") is emphasized. Crossing the Jordan is not just a change in physical space--it is a change in existential space. The very physicality of the Land becomes a player in the relationship between God and Israel. The stones become new Tablets of Law, and then the basis of a new altar. The two mountains become physical manifestations of the split between "blessing" and "curse."

The embodying of the relationship between  the human and divine in the earth gives the human a more active voice. The new Tablets will be written by human hands: "you shall write upon the stones" (27: 8). Now, Israel does not only need to speak to a witness (as they did in the previous chapter), but to activly affirm the price of covenant, answering each curse with an affirmative "Amen."]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 18

the desire for absence

to be not

to circle the gaps of the unknown "no"

[For full chapter, click here

This chapter is dominated by the same key words as the previous one: k'r'v-- close, within; and d'r'sh, to investigate, analyze; d'v'r--thing, saying. It too focuses on to'eva--usually loosely translated as "abomination"; it too places it in opposition to tamim --pure, without blemish.

Thematically, the two chapters are  related as well, as here we further define the relationship of center to periphery and the space "within". The "chosen" (18:5) tribe of Levi is intimately linked  to the place that "God will choose," and so cannot have "an inheritance amongst / within [k'r'v] his brother" (18:2)--he cannot truly be part of the space between the periphery and the center. Coming into the land will bring a to a new leadership that will come from among (k'r'v) the people: "I will raise them a prophet from amongs (k'r'v) their brothers, like you [Moses]". This leadership will draw directly from Sinai,  the place where all the nation "heard the Lord."

Yet rhetorically, this chapter is dominated by the negative: it opens with a sonorous "no": "lo yihiye--there shall not be."  This negative is balanced by the positive "ze yihiye--this shall be" in the next subsection, but the negative floods once again at the closing, with the return to Sinai. The prophet who will come to replace Moses will come to preserve "not": "let me not hear again the voice of God" "let me not see this great fire." Too much Presence leads to complete absence: "so I not die." 

The coming prophet will straddle the line between the known and unknown, between yes and no: "the prophet who will speak in My name that which I have not commanded, that prophet shall die.... that which the prophet spoke in the name of God and was not (lo yihiye) and will not come (lo yavo), that is the thing which God has not spoken..." Hu ha-davar asher lo davro--that is the thing that God has not--the negative here gains a positive presence, becomes an actual davar, thing, object, speech act.]

Numbers 30: In Writing

Feel density fill

the dental hollows

flitting, flowing

between your lips,

Weave a mesh

around your mind

wrapping, webbing

around your will.

Contours of craving,

caverns of want.

Solidify your soul

to the column of your word,

in bonds the bind

the boundaries of being.

What winds between the twined

the falling flying threads?

Ropes unraveled,

nets unknotted,
rolling on the wind, 

wild in the wilderness 

between bonds 

binding you and me.

Numbers: Chapter 30

What are the ties that bind?

Don't hollow what flees

the hollows of your mouth

Build your bindings
unless bound elsewhere







(For full chapter, click here
"These you shall offer unto God in your appointed Meetings, beside your vows, and your freewill-offerings," closes the last chapter. After detailing all the time-bound, obligatory offerings, we now move to "vows": the voluntary obligations we impose on ourselves. 
In this, we return back to the theme of speech which has dominated this book since the moment Miriam was punished for "speaking" of Moses, which reached its apex in Balaam's curses-turned-blessing. "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: when He has said, will He not do it? When He has spoken, will He not make it stand?"
Here, in imitato dei, Israel is to act as God acts, making their words "stand": "When a man vows a vow to God, or...binds his soul with a bond, he shall not hollow his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds from his mouth." 

Yet even as words are given weight, a woman's words are literally undone, creating a strange bookend of women-and-speech: we open with Miriam being punished for speaking, and end with a father or husband being given a right to "unravel" a woman's speech, literally undoing her own relationship to "her soul": she cannot "bind" without her husband/father allowing her word to stand.  This limitation on a woman's autonomy is seen as definitive of the relationship between man and woman (and the use of ish isha lends this passage primordial Edenic undertones): 'These are the statutes, which God commanded Moses, between a man and his wife, between a father and his daughter..."

Yet even as a husband can limit a woman's binding on herself, it does not undo her relationship to God. The vow still exists--it is simply "forgiven." And if giving words definitive weight creates "bonds" , so that your mouth defines your reality, the possibility of "undoing" and making a bond "void" also introduces an element of freedom. A man may make himself like God by making his word immutable; a woman's word is made untrustworthy, but  paradoxically more free.] 

Numbers: Chapter 25

When metaphor

turn tangible

can you beat it

with a stick?









[For full chapter, click here
This chapter is both a continuation of the previous chapter--and the most abrupt of breaks. We move from eschatology to scatology; from grand visions of a star in the future, to an orgy of here and now. The "nation that dwells alone" "joins" Baal Peor, and "sticks to the daughters of Moab."
It is a jarring shift. Yet lexically, the chapters flow smoothly. Balaam stood by "Peor", and now Israel joins Peor, triggering the last of the "flaring anger" (va-yihar aff) of this story: We begin with God being "flaring angry" at Balaam; then Balaam gets "flaring angry" at his ass; Balak gets "flaring angry" at Balaam (and interesting comment on the nature of the Balak-Balaam relation); and now we return  to the beginning, with God "flaring angry" at Israel. It seems that somehow Balaam has achieved Balak's objective, All the ill-wishing gazing from the highs of Peor has somehow brought to the very destruction that the gazing was meant to achieve. 
If this book has allowed an ever-growing complex relationship with speech, reaching its apogee with the hilltop blessing of the previous chapter, we now return to the wordless "weeping" that followed in the wake of the spies "evil report."
What is more, the solution to the flaring anger seems very anti the growing complexity of speech. A crude physical blow such as the type the doomed Moses,
It seems connected to the complete intertwining of harlotry (znut) and idolatry that open this chapter: "and the people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab. And they called the people unto the sacrifices of their gods; and the people did eat, and bowed down to their gods. And Israel joined himself unto the Baal of Peor." Here is a literalization of the dire  warning in Exodus 34 "lest you commit harlotry (znut) with their gods and do sacrifice unto their gods, and they call you, and you eat...and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters commit harlotry (znut) their gods."
In Exodus, prostitution and idolatry are intertwined; desiring "the daughter" leads directly to "following the gods." Throughout Leviticus and the beginning of Numbers, the literal becomes more metaphorical, and every kind of insistent "straying" is "harlotry." But here the metaphor collapses, tenor and vehicle becoming one. Which is the straying, which is the idolatry?
The answer to that seems another collapsed metaphor. No more does the priest perform elaborate symbolic rituals of purification. Instead, Pinhas takes the phallic spear and thrusts it (with almost ridiculous literalness) into the feminine tent (kuba) which is also a female womb (kubata). 
We being language back to earth. Painfully literalized...]

Numbers 24: In Writing

Face the wild

flow with the  floods

flung  on earth

eyes wide-shut

watching the rain

tear down

Open your mouth to water

Fill to the brim with words

I see, but not now

Behold, but not close

A star streaks the sky

glistening the dew drops

Will they still be there

when morning comes?

Numbers: Chapter 24

Would you could see
What I see

Fallen

With eyes wide-shut









[For full chapter, click here
We arrive at the climactic "third time" here in the series of three attempts. As in fairytales, this third time is fundamentally different: "Balaam saw that it was good in the eyes of God to bless Israel, so he went not, as at other times, to seek out enchantments (nehashim, cognate of "serpents")". Balaam is no longer trying to forces his way through, no longer attempting to find the perfect viewpoint to "cures Israel." Instead, "he sets his face to the  wilderness."
By seeing what is good in God's eyes, Balaam is suddenly able to finally use his own eyes. In contrast to his blindness before, he now can "see": "and he raised his eyes and saw Israel..." With the return of sight  comes the return of speech. No longer is he a ventriloquist dummy, with God's "word places in his mouth." Rather, the "spirit of God" rests upon him, and he speaks: "the oration of Balaam the son of Beor, the oration of the man whose eyes are blocked...who saw the vision of the Almighty, falling, but with eyes exposed."
Here, "blessing them this three time" Balaam returns to and ratifies God's original promise to Abraham: "Those who bless you I will bless; and those who curse you will be cursed."
Implicitly, he also returns to Moses' downfall around the "waters of contention"  Imagining Israel's glowing future in images out abundant water: "as gardens by the river’s side...as cedar trees beside the waters.  He shall pour water from his pail, and his seed shall be in many waters."
The chapter closes with the widest viewpoint yet--an eschatological vision of the nations spanning from the primal brothers, "Shet" and "Cain," extending all the way to "forever." It is a panorama that is overwhelming even for the man of teh "open eye": "Alas, who shall live after God has appointed him?"
The direct contact with God's vision breaks the close contact between Balaam and Balak. Rather than Balak "standing" to await Balaam, the two split their separate ways] 

Numbers 23: In Writing

Stand silent behind the smoking altar

Solidify yourself to a tower of stone

As I swoop, spread-winged , over the wild

A widening gyre with gimlet eyes

What awaits, in airy byways?

Whispers through the haunted heights

Come upon my outspread talons

Breaking claws, with triumphant  song

Numbers: Chapter 23

What do you see 

When the earth-eye
 is covered


staring out 
over the waste?. 

The edge

The part 

The whole?




[For full chapter, click here
This chapter continues seamlessly from the last (and indeed, there is no break in the Masoretic text). Structurally, we continue the the fairytale pattern of triples. The three attempts of the she-ass to avoid the angel are here echoed here by Balaam's three attempts to curse the nation.  (the fairtale element is augmented by the addition of series of sevens).
Lexicaly, the sections share the same leitworts: a focus on sight, a focus on speech, the word "to stand" (nitzav) and "get up" (kum), as well as a triple play on k'a'ra (to call) likrat ("coming towards") and kar ("happen upon").
Once again, Balaam plays lip service to obeying God; yet once again, he makes numerous attempts to circumvent God's will by "trying"multiple angles, until he at last he must  admit "God is not a man, that he should lie / nor a human, that He should change his mind".  
If in the previous chapter, Israel is accused of "covering the eye of the land, here the gaze becomes ominous and predatory. Three times, Balak leads Balaam to a different overlook. In each, he hopes that the "height" will offer a view that will allow him to destroy what is looked upon.: "perhaps you may curse them from there." Yet the searching gaze is not successful. Just as Balaam did not "see" the angel blocking his path, he remains the "man of the blocked eye (shetum ha-ayin)." His gaze cannot define what he grasps out, and he must do what is right in "God's eyes." 
Even as the power of the gaze is circumscribed,  humanity's ability to use language is also  undermined. If in the previous chapter, God "opened" the ass' mouth, granting her speech, here He "puts words" into Balaam's mouth, reducing him to a ventriloquist dummy. 
The power of speech, which has been the focus of this book since the spies "evil speech" regarding the Land, here reaches its crescendo--and its boundaries. From report, to complaint, to parley, to song, to curse, we arrive at high poetry, as "Balaam carries his poem" offering blessings that echo Jacob's primal blessings to his children (he even touches on Israel's contact with the primordial power of speech in their encounter with the "serpents" [nahash]]. Yet here also we arrive at the limits of human language: Balaam cannot "curse where God does not curse." Divine language cannot be undone. The primal promise to Abraham remains, maugre Balak's  protests "Do not curse them and do not bless them." 

Numbers 22: In Writing

Turn and turn and try again
taut-listening for wished words
The narrowing road, is barred before you
Do you see the angel, with outstretched sword?

Numbers: Chapter 22

When roads seem open
What stands in the way?
 
A fence here 
A fence there 
A sword in the middle

What do you do?










[For full chapter, click here
Though there is a distinct change of ambiance, this chapter continues many of the previous chapter's themes. We continue the recreation of the Exodus, with Balak echoing the Egyptian's "disgust" (va-yakutz) with the "multitudes" (rav) of Israel; and a return to seeing the nation as sub-human, animal like. On a deeper level, we continue the focus on narrative. From parley, poetry and dirge, we now come words as warfare. Balak hires Balaam to "curse me this people... that I might smite them." The focus on curse and blessing returns is to the  primal roots of the children of Israel: the promise to  Abraham that "I will bless you...and you will be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless you, and curse him that curses you; and in you shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 12 2-3). 
Indeed, this  almost fairytale like-story, with its talking animals and pattern of threes, has profound resonances. Balaam seems to recreate, in simple, comic, form, the story of the fall of Moses. Moses was condemned to death after a a puzzling scene, in which he "hit" (va-yach) the rock twice rather than speaking to it. 
Here, Balaam is called by Balak. God tells him not to follow the Moabites: : 'You shall not go with them; you shall not curse the people; for they are blessed.'Yet Balaam hopes that God will perhaps be persuaded, telling the messengers to again "stay the night." After the second visit, God indeed seems to give in: "If they have come to call you, go with these men:." Yet at the same time, Balaam s warned: "only the word which I speak to you will  you do."
Balaam jumps at the opening, and follows the men. God sends an angel to block his path. Balaam is oblivious to the angel, yet his ass repeatedly stops, in an attempt to avoid the outstretched sword. In response, Balaam "hits" (va-yach) the ass twice--the second time "with his stick" in a virtual recreation of Moses' "hitting the rock" with his staff.
Balaam, with his repeated "turns" (ve-yet), his repeated attempts to hear something different from God's mouth, his refusal to understand the presence of the angel, exemplifies the desire to force things. His oblivious "hitting" of the ass exemplifies force-in-action.
Balaam, the great magician who is to curse an entire nation, is unable to control his ass with words: "if I had a sword, I would kill you," he says, in profound irony, as an angel with a sword stands right before him. Here, he is exposed as a fool: more blind than his ass, trying to force his way through the world--and God--going "contrary" to the angel, ignoring God's "flaming anger" while getting "flaming angry" at the animal that is trying to save his life.
Moses, in hitting the rock rather than trusting that it would respond to God's command, demonstrated the same failing, if on a more subtle level. He remained in a mode of warfare, trying to force his will on the world. Like the nation he leads, he has not managed to completely free himself from Egypt. Hes till acts as he did when he functioned as the redeemer who "smote" (vayach) the waters, rather than as the "faithful" ones who speaks "mouth  to mouth" with God.]

Numbers 21: In Writing

After

After the loss

lament

the dry desire 

of want

After goodbye

And goodbye

the crashing carcass

of fleeing faith

After no

and nakedness

milk-blue

in bleached light

After  strike

and silence

not-listen

after the  bitter

salt plaint

Can you look

And see it

Wavering above?

Can you stop

And speak

"I have sinned"?

Mine the scalding venom

Mine the sibilant sob

Mine the bitter waters

Dig my own hands

scepter in dust

to bring the surge

That carries me past

the breadth

where I stretch

promise

and sing

Numbers: Chapter 21

Go back to the beginning

and try again

From the desert, a gift

From the depths, the summit

When can you say, 

I have sinned ?

[For full chapter, click here

The chapter continues the last, continuing and intensifying both its central strands:  the perilous approach to the Promised Land on the one hand. and the replay of the desert experience on the other.

In the previous chapter, the generation of the Exodus --as exemplified by Miriam and Aaron--are dying out. Yet the the rise of a new generation does not seem to promise renewal. What we have is rather a replay the aftermath of the Exodus, with the constant complaints about the lack of food and water. Here, though, we seem to go further back. The serpent that played so central a role in Moses' initial interaction with Pharaoh reappears,  In a hermetic, highly poetic section, mysterious "fiery snakes" come and attack the nation (in Hebrew, the language is musically alliterative: "nahash saraf ye-nash-hu""). Echoing Pharaoh's own language, the people beg Moses to "remove" the plague. Here, we return to the aftermath of the first time Moses brought forth water from a stone, in Exodus 27. Echoing the keyword of nes (trial, banner), Moses must make a "nahash nehoshet", a copper serpent, which will play the part of Moses' heavy hands in Exodus. The upraised serpent, like the upraised arms, offers salvation from attack. One change has taken place though: for the first time, Israel admit wrongdoing, seeing a "sin" in the complaints (tluna) that have played so central apart in this book: "We have sinned, in what we spoke about God and about you." (here, we perhaps are going even further back, touching on the primal sin in Eden itself...)

The other strand is the continued approach  to the Promised Land. After being rebuffed by Edom, the Israelites "circle" to avoid Edmoite land, and are attacked, first by the --first by the King of Canaan, then by Sihon and by Og. Here, we do see growth and new beginnings. Initially defeated by the King of Canaan, the Israelites bond together, and for the first time function as a single entity, rather than  a mob that "gathers" (k'h'l). "And Israel vowed to God... and God listened to Israel..." From that point out, Israel is victorious in battle. 

The new independence and cohesion of the nation is perhaps best exemplified by the Song Israel sings. This is the most explicit recreation of the exodus, the language directly echoing the Song of the Sea--except this time, it is the nation rather than Moses that leads the Song: "And then Israel sang this song".  

The preponderance of poetry in this chapter returns us to the previous chapter's focus on speech and narrative. If Moses was unable to "speak to the stone" and could not persuade Edom through narrative, here,  victory  is framed by  growing complexity of speech. The victory over Canaan is dependent on a vow; The battle with Sihon is introduced by the recitative from "the book of God's wars" and the Song, and is followed by the song of the moshlim, which also serves to to introduce the battle with Og.

If the mouth was venomous at the opening of the chapter, it is transformed into the key to salvation.]

Numbers 20: In Writing

Finger the cliff
for cracks and fissures
search, research
the implacable face

speak to stone
and plea for answer
for rushing water
in a world of gray

lick the dust
for bitter moisture
seeping through the
closing lids
cry against
coming nakedness

Numbers: Chapter 20

Speak to stone

And beg for water

Call out

"I mean no harm"

Wait for answer

Can you force it

from the rock?

[For full chapter, click here

A time of closings. In the aftermath of the spies, the entire generation was condemned to die in the desert in the course of 40 years. Now, at this first month of an unspecified year,  the full implications become clear. Miriam and Aaron die, and Moses' death is announced. He too shall die in the desert. Indeed only Joshua and Caleb will enter the Land from the previous generation. 

Again, we seem caught in a re-run of Exodus, but with more deadly implications. As happened before, there is no water; as before, God commands Moses to "take his staff" and bring water from the stone. This time, the command is to "Speak  to the stone." Moses instead "smites" it twice, in language that hearkens back to his role as redeemer in Egypt, when he "smote" the Nile to bring the plagues.

But the use of the staff is a fatal mistake. "Because you didn't believe in Me, to sanctify Me before the eyes of Israel, you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I am giving them" God declares. The water was to have come through asking, not through force. The role of the staff has changed--a indicated by the sudden flowering of Aaron's staff after the battle with Korach. Moses' return to his old role indicates that he can no longer lead the nation.

The limitation on force is highlighted in the next section, where Moses send to the King of Edom to ask for permission to pass through his lands of Edom. There are two attempts at persuasion, reiterating the narratives of Genesis ("Your brother") and Exodus. Yet  speech does not work here, Edom threatens violence, and the Israelites must "turn". What does it mean to ask for something from implacable stone?

We seem to have come to the non-negotiable. Solid stone, death and endings.]