Analysis
The books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy
form the bulk of the Hebrew law, or Torah. Each text mixes procedural
instructions and legal matters with a variety of narrative voices
and action. The separate books are probably the collected writings
of priests with different interests and perspectives, written sometime
during Israel’s tumultuous exile in the seventh and sixth centuries b.c. The
three works document an important stage in the development of Israel’s
identity as a people and a nation. The prose is frequently arduous
and repetitive, but it functions as a long, concentrated pause in
the narrative of the Old Testament. Israel’s wandering in the desert
can be seen as the nation’s adolescence—a period of education and
growth following the nation’s birth in the exodus from Egypt and
the events at Mount Sinai.
The fact that the Israelites’ punishment for
certain infractions is to isolate or expel the offending individual
from the camp demonstrates the extraordinary desire of the people
to remain part of the community. The Israelite camp is set up in
concentric circles with the tabernacle at its center: Moses and
Aaron are closest to the tabernacle, followed by the Levites who
care for it, and the rest of the tribes surround them. Since uncleanness
bars a person from approaching the sacred religious items, physical
impurity places one farthest from the center of Israel. In this
way, God’s injunctions challenge the Israelites to strive to remain near
the nation’s center. The distinction between purity and impurity helps
promote a distinction between an accepted, privileged “us” and an
outcast “them” who are outside the circle of the community.
Moses’s emphasis on the word “heart” in his sermons
is also critical to Israel’s understanding of itself as a unified
people. Moses describes the physical and external regulations of
the law by using spiritual and internal imagery. He says, “Hear,
O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today
in your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6).
The idea that Israel as a whole has a “heart” or a group of “hearts”
suggests that the nation has developed a set of personal or private
experiences over the forty years of wandering in the desert. This
waiting period distances Israel from Egypt and the laws at Mount
Sinai, forcing the nation to form a collective memory of these events.
When Moses instructs the people, “You shall put these
words of mine in your heart and soul,” he encourages them to internalize
and embrace these collective, national memories (Deuteronomy 11:18).
Moses portrays the religious laws no longer as a list of actions
to be performed in the future but as sacred words and ideas that
are a part of a past and an internal life that is unique to Israel.
The description of God as loving and
compassionate in Deuteronomy is perplexing in light of God’s intense
wrath in Numbers. Moses, however, seems to see God’s violent reaction
to Israel’s complaints and infidelities as an exercise or a test
of Israel’s commitment to the covenant. Indeed, God’s destruction
follows a consistent pattern in Numbers: the people complain and
wish to return to Egypt; God threatens to destroy the people; Moses
or another representative intercedes on behalf of the people; and
God relents, punishing only a portion of Israel’s population. The
climax in these exercises occurs when representatives of the people
speak on behalf of Israel. The moment of intercession when the plague
is stopped by Aaron running into the crowd or by Eleazar’s son stabbing
the man and his foreign mistress are both climactic. Man’s intercession
does not require God to stop his destruction, but it creates the
opportunity for Israel’s leaders to display religious zeal and for
God to show his mercy. God manifests his compassion and love not
by what he does, but by what he does not do. Israel emerges from
these encounters as a nation that has survived trials and hardship—a
resilient people, with its weakest members now weeded out.
