Lawrence Boadt has this interesting comment on
the book of Numbers:
Like the laws of Leviticus, the materials gathered in
Numbers come from many different ages. The oracles of Balaam with their archaic
poetic lines and frozen expressions originated in the time of the judges, and
the poems in Numbers 21:17-18, the “Song of the Well,” and in Numbers 21:27-30,
the “Lament over Heshbon,” may also be quite ancient fragments. These, together
with the story narrative, are from the J [Jahwist] and E [Elohist] sources,
while most of the laws are later and belong to the P [Priestly] source. P also
tied the events in Numbers to the Book of Exodus by listing all of the desert
stopping places of Israel in chapter 33. Altogether, there are twelve major
stages in their journey up to the arrival at the promised land. Six of these
lead up to Mount Sinai, and six lead away from it. P took the first six from
Exodus 12-19, and the last six from Numbers 20-22, creating a single narrative
out of everything in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers.[1]
Numbers 4 reminds us twice more of the closeness
of the divine and the dangerous. The death of Aaron’s sons lies in the
background of the warnings to the Kohathites. “Whatever their intentions,
whatever their moral condition, if these Kohathites touch what they are not
supposed to touch or see what they are not supposed to see, they will die.”[2]
Numbers 5 has the strange instruction of what a
husband is supposed to do if he is jealous and thinks his wife has committed
adultery but he has no proof of the fact. There is, of course, a double standard
in this because there is no procedure for the wife to follow if she suspects
her husband of adultery but has no proof. There is also a magical view of life
wrapped up in this story. Friedman comments,
There have been many attempts to understand what is going
on in this strange case…. I believe that all of the past explanations are
mistaken, and I offer the following explanation of this case:
If we were told that a woman’s “womb is swelling and her
thigh is sagging,” nearly 100 percent of us would understand this to mean: she
is pregnant. So, in this case, it is explicitly about a woman who has had sex
with another man in place of her husband. That is, she has not slept with her
husband recently, and that is why her pregnancy is proof of adultery. The
purpose of drinking the mixture is not to prove her guilt but to bring about
the curse through her pregnancy….
Why are the rabbis of the Talmudic era so unclear about
the actual procedure if it had been practiced in recent memory? Because, I
think, it had not been practiced
since the time of the First Temple in
Jerusalem. It required dust from the Tabernacle floor, and the Tabernacle was
only in the First Temple, not in the Second.[3]
Numbers 6 contains information about the Nazirite
vow; Samson in the book of Judges is an example of one who was bound by this
vow. However, there is a difference in Samson’s case. Friedman explains,
Like Samuel, he [Samson] is a Nazirite from birth, and he
is forbidden to cut his hair—which becomes the key to his story. But he is not
forbidden to have contact with dead bodies—which is also essential to the
story, because he becomes a warrior and personally makes thousands of dead bodies![4]
At the end of Numbers 6 we have the beautiful
Aaronic blessing:
The Lord bless you
and keep you;
the Lord make his
face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
As Friedman notes, we have had examples of people
praying up to this point in the Torah but this is the first time the words of a
formal prayer have been recorded. This blessing has been pronounced from
biblical times down to the present day in synagogues and churches. Friedman
records this intriguing story about this piece of Scripture….
While staying in Jerusalem in the summer of 1978, I
looked out my window and watched a team of archaeologists working below. They
had uncovered Jewish tombs of the Iron Age. I (and they) did not know it then,
but inscriptions in thin silver foil that they discovered were later
painstakingly unrolled and found to bear the words of the priestly benediction.
The silver foil inscriptions are the oldest known texts of a passage from the
Bible. (Their wording differs slightly from the biblical text and from each other.)[5]
You can learn more about that excavation and
their findings here: http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=2725
And here is a photo of one of those silver foil inscriptions, the oldest surviving biblical text:
Numbers 7 contains a lengthy, repetitive list of
the donations that each of the Israelite tribes brought for the dedication of
the Tabernacle. As Friedman notes, this list:
- Establishes the importance of donations for maintaining the religious establishment.
- Conveys that all the people have a share in what goes on at the altar.
- Shows that the tribe of Levi, which takes charge of the donations, does not itself make a donation.
- Reveals that even though each tribe is a different size, they bring the same offering. All the tribes, whether large or small, are equal.[6]
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