CHUKAT 5784
Chukat, Law (19-22:1) is often part of a combined parsha with Balak (22:2-25:9), but not in 5784 which is sweet because it is a rich parsha on its own. Death is the overriding theme of Chukat.
Chapter 19 begins with the ritual of the red cow (often mistranslated as red heifer) who is sacrificed and then whose ashes are used in purifying people who have come into contact with a corpse, a highly polluting event in Biblical imagination. Chapter 20 begins with Miriam’s death (given a measly part of one verse) in Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin. Kadesh has the same root as the word “holy” suggesting that either she died in a sacred place, or the place was made sacred because of her death. This is a potent source for midrash, but that’s beyond the scope of what we do here. Her death triggers a lack of water for the people because Miriam is associated with water, as we’ve discussed before. This leads us to the famous story of Moses and the rock. We’ll discuss this below.
The people then start doing some real travelling. They are turned away from safe passage by Edom, and turn towards Mount Hor where Aaron dies, which we will discuss below. It’s been a bad parsha for the family. The people continue to wander and in Chapter 21, they get frustrated and complain again. This time YHVH sets forth fiery snakes against the people. Scared witless, the people beg Moses to intervene on their behalf and he does. YHVH tells Moses to create a bronze snake and set it on a pole and so everyone who has been bitten and sees the bronze snake will recover. They travel some more, win a series of battles and settle just across the Jordan river from Jericho, in what is today the Kingdom of Jordan.
I want to discuss four themes.
How understand Moses’ punishment?
Aaron’s death
The symbolism of the snakes.
The psychospiritual dimension of wandering
How should we understand the punishment of Moses? Here’s the story. Following Miriam’s death, there’s no water and the people whine, of course, saying “If only we had expired when our brothers expired in front of YHVH! (20:3). Just a bit over the top. Aaron and Moses pray to YHVH who instructs Moses to take his staff and speak to the rock and water will come forth. Moses, thoroughly frustrated the people, says “Listen rebels, shall we bring water out of this rock for you?” (20:10). As we know, he strikes the rock, water flows but YHVH is offended and says to Moses (and Aaron), “because you did not trust in me, to make me holy before the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this community to the land that I have given them.” (20:12)
The punishment certainly seems disproportionate; it greatly bothered the Rabbis who debated why it happened. There is no man as patient as Moses in his tolerance for the incredibly whiny people of Israel whose leadership is a task he did not even want. Rashi says the punishment is because Moses was commanded to speak to the rock, not strike it. Rambam says it was the fact that Moses spoke angrily. Ramban and others say that the punishment is based on the fact that Moses claimed some agency in bringing forth water, rather than having all ability to work miracles belonging to YHVH. We certainly know, as the ten utterances tell us, that YHVH is a jealous God
Yet I wonder here if there is a deeper meaning than don’t usurp the place of YHVH. I argued back at the beginning of Genesis that Adam and Eve’s eating of the tree of knowledge and being expelled from the garden of Eden is a statement of what it means to be human and not some kind of intentional sin of disobedience as is routinely argued. Here I think we are being offered a lesson about Moses’ not making it to the promised land. To be human is to mean that there are projects that we never complete, things we hold dear to us that do not work out as we would wish, things we would have done differently. We are finite, limited beings who cannot be human and remain in the garden of Eden. We are finite human beings who cannot always control if we enter the promised land or when we might die.
Moses’ failure to enter the promised land is a problem for any view that holds that there is justice in the world and people get what they deserve. Certainly, with an all powerful deity in YHVH, this has long been the thrust of Jewish thought—and how could it not be? But what if there is no omnipotent deity ensuring cosmic justice and crap happening is just the human condition? Then this story becomes not one of overreach on Moses’ part or a puzzling punishment by YHVH, but a statement of the random implications of finitude in our human lives.
How do you think about Moses not reaching the promised land?
Aaron, in the lovely Biblical phrase is “gathered to his people” on Mt. Hor. Aaron, his son Elazar and Moses all climb Mt. Hor. Moses takes off Aaron’s priestly clothes, places them upon Elazar to signify that he is now the high priest, then Aaron dies (20:24-28)
This is a good death, to my way of thinking. YHVH says this is because he participated in rebelling against YHVH by claiming agency for the water from the rock. (20:24). But Aaron’s death is a question of when, not if and there’s no particular association of Aaron and the promised land.
This is a good death. Aaron is in good enough shape that he can actually climb a mountain, not a bed ridden elder. Then he gets to see his son step into the leadership role for which he has been preparing. This should be a sweet thing for an elder.
There’s an exercise that I’ve done a number of times called a death lodge, which is based on the idea that in indigenous societies when it is time for an elder to die, he or she goes out of the village with the intent to die in a few days. Everyone gets a chance to say whatever they need to say to the elder, and then the elder dies up on the mountain—just like Aaron. This is a good death.
There’s a distinction between an easy death and a good death. An easy death is you go to sleep and you never wake up. A bad death is one where you linger in lots of pain, or where you can’t take care of yourself or your memory is gone, or you’re completely isolated etc. It’s possible to have an easy death but not have a good death. A good death, to my mind, is a function of a life well lived with a sense of completion. I’d love an easy death—who wouldn’t? But what I pray for each day is a good death.
What do you think of Aaron’s life and death? What would a good death look like for you? What do you think you need to do or be to have a fulfilled life?
Snakes are powerful symbols. Henderson and Oakes in The Wisdom of the Serpent have offered a powerful Jungian view of snakes as symbols of transformation. And isn’t that the role of the snake in the Garden of Eden story whose cunning drives the absolutely necessary process of Adam and Eve becoming human beings, knowing the difference between good and evil?
This short story (21:6-9) is pretty obscure. YHVH unleashes snakes amongst the people in response to the whining of the people. They bite the people, many die, but some are still alive and they confess their sins against YHVH and Moses and ask Moses to intercede. Moses prays on behalf of the people and YHVH tells him to make a bronze snake and set it on a pole. And when a person got bit by a snake, they just had to look at the bronze snake on the pole and be healed.
How does the bronze snake on a pole let people live? Is snake magic somehow associated with Moses? Friedman rightly points out that it is Moses’ staff that is used here, and that Moses’ staff also became a serpent in his encounter with YHVH at the burning bush (Exodus 4:2-3). JPS points out that the Rabbis were bothered by the magical nature of this cure and sought to explain it away. There’s also a connection to a bronze serpent, Nechustan, who was worshipped in Jerusalem in the first Temple until the 8th Century when it was destroyed by one of the Yahwist kings, Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:4). It would seem that the Rabbis viewed the bronze snake as a pagan symbol.
The snake is a symbol. Symbols, following Ricoeur’s The Symbolism of Evil, point beyond themselves. Unlike a sign, once you understand the surface meaning of a symbol, there is always more. So a snake, or the moon, or the desert, or a waterfall cannot be completely captured rationally or with words. Like the sacred, like the divine, there is always an and.
Much of the 5 books of Moses is resolutely unsymbolic in tone. There’s a reason that surface or pshat interpretations are possible for the vast majority of the text. But some texts defy a pshat interpretation. Some texts are obscure and that’s precisely the point. They are designed to stop you, to grab your imagination, to make you go what in the world is going on here, to draw you deeper into the mystery, to lead you to transformation.
What pulls you into the mystery? What experiences stop the rational explanations that for us 21st Century Westerners are so readily available? If you can’t answer this question, go outside, find a place without human noise just sit there with this question.
Our ancestors wander in this parsha. They move to Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin where Miriam dies, are denied passage through Edom, so travel to Mt. Hor where Aaron dies. Then they fight the Canaanites at Hormah, travel to Oboth and Iye-abarim to the wadi at Zered, then to Waheb and Beer and Midbar to Mattanah to Nahaliel to Bamoth. All this before they engage the king of the Amorites in whose territory they end the parsha after beating them. You get the idea.
Wandering is an absolutely necessary developmental aspect of late adolescence. We wander, ideally with guidance from our elders, in order to discover who we truly are and what gifts we can bring back to our community. There are an infinite number of ways to wander. There’s literal wandering of moving from place to place, there’s wandering from one tradition or set of religious practices to another, there’s wandering in terms of career or academic interests, there’s wandering in terms of romantic partners etc etc etc.
The productivity of our wandering varies widely. We can wander and learn next to nothing. That’s the example set by our ancestors who obviously learn precious little in their forty year vision quest in the desert between Egypt and the promised land. We can wander and come to a home with having learned what we are meant to do with our lives and how to do it. Or something in between where we learn about ourselves but wind up settling somewhere based on any possible range of circumstances. We can also get lost wandering and just keep wandering as a way of avoiding any possible commitments.
I think it is critical to wander, critical not to settle too soon, critical to know that the purpose of wandering is to discover your true purpose and the community with whom you will share it, critical to not just get addicted to the wandering and never be responsible for anything.
Think back to your history of wandering. How have you wandered? Did you ever discover your true purpose? Your beloved community with whom to share your true purpose? Are you still wandering? Did you stop before your true purpose was clear? What do you need to do now?
QUESTIONS
How do you think about Moses not reaching the promised land?
What do you think of Aaron’s life and death? What would a good death look like for you? What do you think you need to do or be to have a fulfilled life?
What pulls you into the mystery? What experiences stop the rational explanations that for us 21st Century Westerners are so readily available? If you can’t answer this question, go outside, find a place without human noise just sit there with this question.
Think back to your history of wandering. How have you wandered? Did you ever discover your true purpose? Your beloved community with whom to share your true purpose? Are you still wandering? Did you stop before your true purpose was clear? What do you need to do now?
