Purify Yourselves in the Waters of Lake Tia Tanaka

Old Testament
Book Four: Numbers
The Journey from Sinai to Edom (cont'd)
Chapter 17: The wilderness revolt (cont'd)
Chapter 18: The duties and rights of the priests and Levites
Chapter 19: Purification after contact with a corpse
Chapter 20: The demand for water at Meribah
The Approach to the Promised Land
Chapter 20 (cont'd): Preparation and departure from Kadesh

This section has a little bit of action, but it gets really repetitive. There isn’t much to say about it. I was thinking about how these five books are the most important for Jewish people? They are so boring! One actual thing happens here, Miriam dies. Then they run out of water. Then the Israelis of course start moaning again. This is a strange story, even the note-writers don't understand it. God tells Moses to take a staff and speak to a rock and it will yield water. So Moses does what he said. He gathers the congregation, asks them, "Listen, you rebels, must we get water out of this rock for you?" (Num. 20.10.) Then Moses strikes the rock with his staff, and water comes out and they all drink. Then, are you ready for this? God is mad at Moses and Aaron! "You did not trust me so far as to uphold my holiness in the sight of the Israelites; therefore you shall not lead this assembly into the land which I promised to give them." (Num. 20.12.) What the fuck?!

As I said, even the note-writers didn't understand this. They say it is not clear, but their theory is that Moses kind of acted like he was doing it himself rather than saying God will provide. That still isn't a very good explanation, because God didn't say "how dare you act like you are powerful," he said, "you didn't trust me." Except obviously they DID trust him—they said water would come out and it did. Anyway, God condemns Aaron to death for this indiscretion.

One other point that the notes make is that ultimately Moses does not lead Israel to the promised land. Despite decades of God promising to do something, he fails to do it. They apparently will not reach Canaan until Joshua. (Right after Deuteronomy, another whole book of rules. By the way, it's interesting, isn't it, that these books have Greek and/Latin names? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. As far as I can tell, even Jews, in English, use the Greek/Latin names. There are Hebrew names for the books, of course, but the English names also come from the Greek/Latin.)

So what happens? God makes up a reason to get mad at Moses to explain why he doesn't make it to Canaan. I find this so odd. Obviously the book was not written as it was happening, right? It was written later. Yet for the first 160 pages of the bible God is promising something that he cannot deliver on. But when the books were being written, they already knew Moses wasn't going to make it, right? Why not just change the whole story so God always promised they would make it to Canaan after Moses died? Why didn't God just promise from the beginning, "I will deliver you to the promised land, but it is going to be hard, and it will take many many years"? I honestly don't have an explanation for this anachronism. The notes are constantly (and I do mean constantly) talking about how one chapter doesn't fit in with the rest, or it is a fragment of some earlier tradition. The notes clearly take the view that these books are just a hodgepodge of traditions, knitted together to gather certain people under the tent and exclude others, nevermind the inconsistencies. (And think about that! Nevermind the inconsistencies? Seriously?!) I can imagine, I suppose, that these were oral traditions, the stories had been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years before they were written down, so when it came time to write them down, it wasn't a question of creating a coherent book, it was more just a collection of the oral tradition. That makes sense to me. In fact, I'll go one further, when these books were written, there was no thought that they would be analyzed as a coherent whole, read from cover to cover. I buy that.

But anyway, keeping that in mind, let's get back to Miriam. Now, people do read the book from cover to cover and try to make sense of the obviously bizarre and anachronistic juxtapositions. As I was reading this I got curious what religious people would have to say about these chapters. They were nonsensical to me, who doesn't care. Sure enough, when you stare at anything long enough you can start to make sense of it. I found a web page that actually melded all of Chapter 20 into one coherent whole, and it focused on Miriam! (Here is the whole passage about Miriam in Chapter 20: "In the first month the whole community of Israel reached the wilderness of Zin and stayed some time at Kadesh; there Miriam died and was buried." (v. 1.) That's it.

This commentator asked the question, why was Miriam, such an important figure, not mourned? Immediately after her death the water runs out. The Israelites are punished for not mourning her. They get their water back, then Aaron is killed and they mourn him for 30 days. Apparently there is a full tradition of feminist scholarship on the meaning of the presentation and placement of Miriam's death. It's all surely not true, but still it is interesting what you can find if you stare at something long enough.


—bibletoenail


Some Quotes:

"Listen, you rebels, must we get water out of this rock for you?" —Num. 20.10.

"Strip Aaron of his robes and invest Eleazar his son with them, for Aaron shall be taken from you: he shall die there." —Num. 20.26.