MAATOT AND MASE’EI
Maatot (Tribes) (30:2-32:42) and Mase’ei Travels (Chap 33-36), is a combined parsha with which we conclude the book on Numbers. This was the end of the story of Moses, until the bulk of the book of Deuteronomy was discovered buried in the Temple floor during the reign of Josiah, a Yahwist only King, in 622 BCE.
Chapter 30 features an extended discussion of under what circumstances a woman can be held responsible for the vows she makes. As we might expect, wives and women still living under their fathers’ roofs can have their vows voided by action of the ranking males. Chapter 31 is the story of the war against the Midianites. Moses is commanded to “get revenge for the children of Israel from the Midianites” (v2) as if the Israelites were not willing participants in the cult of Baal Peor in the previous parsha, as if they were not willing participants in having sex with the Midianite women. This is a particularly ugly marriage of religious and military power . The discussion of how to purify the soldiers from their contact with the polluting corpses of the Midianites and how to purify all the spoils of war actually takes up far more of the chapter than the actual war itself. Chapter 32 is the negotiation over the desire of the tribes of Reuven and Gad (and eventually half of Menasseh) to stay on the east side of the Jordan River. Moses eventually agrees to this after they promise to help the other tribes conquer the Promised Land by being the shock troops at the front of the battle.
Mase’ei give us some of the summary that we would expect in a concluding part of a story. Chapter 33 recounts all the places the Israelites travelled in their spiritual and mythic journey from Egypt to Canaan. Chapter 34 has a list of the leaders of each tribe. This is important because scholars generally see the history of ancient Israel as beginning as a confederation of tribes and then moving over time to a more centralized monarchy and priesthood with King David before the united Kingdom splits following the death of Solomon into two parts, a Northern part called Israel and a Southern part called Judea. Chapter 35 talks about the cities given to the Levites and the surrounding pastureland given to them, since the Levites don’t have a land base of their own. There’s also a discussion of the refugee cities to which someone can flee if they have committed what we might call involuntary manslaughter in order to break a cycle of retribution. Refugee cities and states have been important in the history of fighting back against slavery, in supporting undocumented people, and will be important in fighting back against the restrictions being promulgated by the radical right in the US today. Chapter 36 returns to Zelophedad’s daughters and what happens to the land that is their inheritance because Zelophedad had no sons. This is something I would discuss if we ever have a separate parsha of just Mase’ei.
I discuss four themes, two from each parsha.
The war against the Midianites as the culminating act of Moses leadership
The desire of 2 ½ tribes to stay east of the Jordan River.
The commandment and subsequent inability to destroy the indigenous spirituality of Canaan.
The story so far
“And YHVH spoke to Moses saying, ‘Get revenge for the children of Israel from the Midianites. After that you will be gathered to your people.” (31:1-2) So the culminating act of Moses’ leadership should be a war of revenge against the Midianites? This feels all kinds of wrong.
Moses as a leader is highly protective of his vexatious people. War means more of them will die, (contrary to the text that says none of them die, 31:49) and not because of their own sins, as all the other deaths have been previously. Do we really think this would be what he wants? Further, these people are his kin. His wife, who has disappeared from the text, is Midianite. Jethro, his father in law who contributed much to his leadership right after the Exodus from Egypt is Midianite. His kids, who have also disappeared from the text, are half Midianite and presumably have all sorts of cousins who are Midianites. These are the people who took him in when he fled from Egypt. And the text gives us nothing of what he is thinking. Now are these the same Midianites as Jethro’s clan? Our text is silent. But still. Next, it isn’t as if the Israelites didn’t play as much a role as the Midianites in the mingling of the people. There’s nothing to suggest that the sexual and spiritual connections between the two peoples are anything other than consensual. The text suggests that the Midianites seduced the Israelites, but that’s like blaming a rape victim for the clothing she wore. Lastly, what makes us think Moses is a general? He’s a man with a direct line to YHVH and a judge of the disputes of the people. But general? He succeeds in war through magic (think of holding the staff up as the sea of Reeds parted and then his lowering of his staff to drown the Egyptians. But there’s no magic here. War leadership is much more Joshua, as we’d see if we were reading the book of Joshua.
It seems to me that as you enter elderhood, your last tasks in life should line up with the deepest possible expression of who you are, of what has called you all of your life. The last events of your life should be a kind of capstone to your life, not something radically different and ill suiting. As an introvert and an accidental businessman, I’m not going to become some kind of extrovert who attends every kind of event I can to make a ton of contacts that will help me start a new business.
I recently attended a retreat where we were asked to reflect on what we would do if we knew we were going to die in exactly one year, then if we knew we were going to die in exactly one month, then 24 hours. Anyone here think Moses would kill Midianites?
What do you want your last project to be? You can also answer this question from the perspective of what the last projects of some elders who are in your life should be, in your judgment. If you knew you were going to die in exactly one year, what would you spend that year doing?
The tribes of Gad, Reuven and half of Manassah stay east of the Jordan because the grazing looks good to them. They agree to help the other tribes conquer the promised land in exchange for rights to this land. Moses agrees and hands the implementation over to Joshua and Elazar because he isn’t going to be involved in entering the Promised Land.
Here is what is fascinating to me: the holiness of the very land of Israel is incredibly central to Torah and Jewish history—but it wasn’t central at all at to these tribes. The incredible spiritual power that resides in much of that land that I and countless others have experienced—simply didn’t mean much to these tribes. The promises of YHVH being their God in their land, simply didn’t approach the desire for the good grazing land that they could see. Wandering in the wilderness for 40 years waiting for a generation to die so we could enter the promised land, the whole premise of the holy, promised land—it just doesn’t amount to much to two and a half tribes. Good grazing trumps all. It’s all presented matter of factly, a bargain made and kept as if it were a reasonably simple business deal. It all blows my mind.
I’ve no idea if the tribes were just utterly not tuned into the sacred power of the land? Maybe they weren’t too into YHVH but were careful enough not to say anything? I’m equally not sure what the equivalent would be in our lives. A turn away from the Holy? Only how many of us have consciously just said here’s something holy, but I’d rather stay home and watch something on TV? I’m not even sure we can say they were settling for something lesser, because there was something actively appealing about the grazing land on which they settled.
Have you ever turned away from the Holy? Have you ever turned away from something that everyone else thought you should rush to embrace? What led you to turn away?
“When you cross the Jordan to the land of Canaan, you shall dispossess all the residents in the land in front of you, and destroy all their carved figures, and you shall destroy their molten images and demolish all their high places.” (33:51-52). This is ethnic cleansing, just as was the commandment to kill all the Midianites in Mattot, even though this is apparently a common expression that doesn’t literally mean kill all of them. What captures my imagination here is the command to destroy all the artifacts of their spirituality. It is as if these artifacts could have power even without the inhabitants who worship the carved figures, the molten images, who pray at the high places.
There is, I would argue, a direct line between the murdering of the local manifestations of the divine and the utter desacralization of land that is our unfortunate inheritance as modern westerners. Of course, that’s not what our text is suggesting. Our text is instead commanding the Israelites to replace the sacrality of the indigenous ancestors with the sacredness of YHVH. But I don’t think that’s how it works. The land itself has a certain power that is expressed in the indigenous imagination and the only real way to kill that is to kill the very idea of the land as sacred. There’s a, to my way of thinking, a core truth that the spiritual values of the indigenous culture persisted in the land against all the polemics and actions of the ones who would destroy it.
Maybe that is a message of hope we can carry with us. Maybe we can somehow recover the sacredness that the land seeks to express.
A core related question in my life is how to become native to the land in which I live. This is a question with which our text grapples—how to make Yahweh only native to the land. Our ancestors didn’t succeed and neither have I in my life. I think the answer to this problem has to have an economic component—that is we have to work with the land in some sense. I think the answer needs to have a spiritual component—that is we need to express the sacrality of the land in some sense. I think the answer needs to have a tribal component—that is, we need to do this in community.
How do I, how do you, become more connected to the more than human world? How do we reclaim, without culturally appropriating this material from the Native Americans who once lived on this land, how do we reclaim the equivalent of carved figures, molten images and high places? If we reclaim our connection to the more than human world through practices like gardening, sit spot, tracking, wild foraging, hiking, making local herbal remedies, have we reclaimed the carved figures, molten images, high places that should be our human inheritance in connection with the land?
Stories are hugely influential in shaping who we are. We’ve come to a stopping point in our story, the original end of our exile from the Promised Land. It’s a familiar story. Our tribe came to the land in Genesis from Ur of Chaldees (modern day Iraq) and settled in Canaan with a promise that someday we would be great, a promise that was belied by the mere 70 people who accompanied Jacob down to Egypt in the face of famine and the power of the young brother, Joseph. We became a great nation in Egypt, but we had a slave’s mentality and wandered in the desert for forty years while the people with the slave mentality all died off, a forty year spiritual quest for the people, where, like all spiritual quests, the slave/adolescent/child ego must die if we are to gain a vision to bring back to our tribe. At the end of the quest, we have been, maybe, purified enough, and are ready to fulfill the vision of being YHVH’s people in the land of Israel.
How do you relate to this story? Is this history or myth, as I have argued? Which characters do you identify with the most strongly? Why? Who do you aspire to be? Having read this story, having done this work, how ready do you feel to take the next GIANT step?
QUESTIONS
What do you want your last project to be? You can also answer this question from the perspective of what the last projects of some elders who are in your life should be, in your judgment. If you knew you were going to die in exactly one year, what would you spend that year doing?
Have you ever turned away from the Holy? Have you ever turned away from something that everyone else thought you should rush to embrace? What led you to turn away?
How do I, how do you, become more connected to the more than human world? How do we reclaim, without culturally appropriating this material from the Native Americans who once lived on this land, how do we reclaim the equivalent of carved figures, molten images and high places? If we reclaim our connection to the more than human world through practices like gardening, sit spot, tracking, wild foraging, hiking, making local herbal remedies, have we reclaimed the carved figures, molten images, high places that should be our human inheritance in connection with the land?
How do you relate to this story? Is this history or myth, as I have argued? Which characters do you identify with the most strongly? Why? Who do you aspire to be? Having read this story, having done this work, how ready do you feel to take the next GIANT step?
