Parshat Matot / Num. 30:2 - 32:42
What do we do with the parts of the Torah that disturb us, that shock us, that push us to want to close the holy book in sheer disgust? For me, such a passage occurs in this week’s portion. The Israelites are camped on the east side of the Jordan, preparing to enter the Land of Israel and bring their 40-year trek to an end. But first God commands Moses: “Avenge the Israelites people on the Midianites; then you shall be gathered to your kin.” (Num. 31:2)
Will Moses’ last earthly action be his leadership in a military battle of vengeance? True, a few chapters back the Midianite women lured some Israelite men away from the community and into sexual depravity and idolatry. In punishment, the perpetrators and their victims died in a horrible plague sent by God. Why must more revenge be taken? When Moses hears God’s orders does he shrink from complying? His wife Ziporra is a Midianite, and her people, especially her father Jethro, sheltered Moses when he fled Egypt and generously advised the new leader after the Exodus.
Moses does not join the battle himself, but he gives no quarter to his wife’s tribe of origin. Rather, after a bloody battle wherein the Israelites rout the Midianites, kill all their kings and every male among them, and return to the Israelite camp with mountains of booty, Moses rails at them: “You spared every female! Yet they were the ones who… induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord… Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every woman who has known a man carnally… “ (Num. 31:15-17)
How can these be the same leaders - God and Moses—who in Leviticus called the Israelites to perform acts of holiness that they might imitate and raise themselves up to the level of God’s holiness? How do we at one and the same time learn to “love our neighbor as ourselves” and “slay every male among the children”? What do we do with the parts of the Torah that disturb us?
First, we must see this passage in the context of the times and the place, an ancient Near East plagued by tribal warfare. If the killing of civilians had ended at some great moment of enlightenment in human existence, we could leave it there. But the killing continues. Instead, then, when we study this passage we must remind ourselves that we Jews have learned through the millennia that there is not, nor can there ever be an excuse for the massacre of innocents. Attaching God’s name to a massacre makes it no less a massacre, no less murder. The murder of innocents can never be the necessary means to a supposedly justified end, whether it is called “holy war” or “collateral damage” or a “fight for freedom and security.” The euphemisms bring no comfort to the victims and no exoneration to the conquerors.
I think the passage is meant, ultimately, so to disgust us with its brutality that we will work to prevent its repetition through history. We will pledge not to condone such behavior in ourselves or our leaders or our God. May we vow always to imitate God’s Torah vision of holiness, and to render obsolete and anachronistic in our world God’s Torah vision of vengeance.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Judy Shanks
Back