Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian Scripture (Reading the Scriptures) 0268103739, 9780268103736

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction: A Map of the Wilderness
1. The Figure in the Wilderness: Readings in the Book of Numbers
2. Trust and Suspicion: Approaches to a Holy Text That Invites Little Approach
3. “Fraught with Background”: Toward Ascriptive Realism and Figural Reading (Numbers 10–12)
4. “What Did You Go Out into the Wilderness to See?”: Theological Interpretation, the Eyes of the Heart, and Karl Barth’s Reading of Sloth (Numbers 13–14)
5. “It Is the Text That Swallows Up the World”: The Eclipse of Numbers’ Narrative and the Literal Sense of Korah’s Rebellion (Numbers 15–16)
6. “The Rock Was Christ”: Typology between a Rock and a Hard Place (Numbers 20)
7. “‘Peace, Peace,’ When There Is No Peace”: The Zeal of Readers in Defense and in Dissent (Numbers 25)
8. Blessing for an Unfinished Journey: On Reading Numbers as Christian Scripture (Numbers 6; 22–24; 33)
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Scriptural Passages
General Index

Citation preview

Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian Scripture

Reading the Scriptures Gary A. Anderson, Matthew Levering, and Robert Louis Wilken, series editors

THEOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS and the

BOOK of NUMBERS as

CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURE

RICHARD S. BRIGGS

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2018 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Briggs, Richard, 1966– author. Title: Theological hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian scripture / Richard S. Briggs. Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. | Series: Reading the Scriptures | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018012504 (print) | LCCN 2018012582 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268103750 (pdf ) | ISBN 9780268103767 (epub) | ISBN 9780268103736 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268103739 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Numbers—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Bible—Hermeneutics. Classification: LCC BS1265.52 (ebook) | LCC BS1265.52 .B75 2018 (print) | DDC 222/.1406—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012504 ∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and ­durability of the ­Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected]

To Matthew Who has helped me to see each day of the journey we are on as a gift from God

Any effort to understand Christian figural reading as fundamentally a matter of texts and the presence or absence of meaning, rather than a matter of rendering

God’s historical performances intelligible, is doomed to theological irrelevance, however much contemporary theoretical sense it might make.

—John David Dawson,

Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity

Instead of looking through the Bible in order to understand the truth about the

world, eighteenth-­century scholars looked directly at the text, endeavoring to find new, ever more satisfactory frames of cultural and historical reference by which to understand the meaning of the text.

—Michael C. Legaspi,

The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies

It is not regret for a sunken Atlantis that animates us, but hope for a re-­creation of language. Beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again.

—Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil

CONTENTS

Preface Abbreviations

ix xv

Introduction: A Map of the Wilderness

1

ONE

The Figure in the Wilderness: Readings in the Book of Numbers

15

T WO

Trust and Suspicion: Approaches to a Holy Text That Invites Little Approach

35

THREE

FOUR



“Fraught with Background”: Toward Ascriptive Realism and Figural Reading (Numbers 10–12)

53

“What Did You Go Out into the Wilderness to See?”: Theological Interpretation, the Eyes of the Heart, and Karl Barth’s Reading of Sloth (Numbers 13–14)

85

FIVE

“It Is the Text That Swallows Up the World”: The Eclipse of Numbers’ Narrative and the Literal Sense of Korah’s Rebellion (Numbers 15–16)

117

SIX

“The Rock Was Christ”: Typology between a Rock and a Hard Place (Numbers 20)

157

vii

viii  Contents SEVEN

“ ‘Peace, Peace,’ When There Is No Peace”: The Zeal of Readers in Defense and in Dissent (Numbers 25)

EIGHT

Blessing for an Unfinished Journey: On Reading Numbers 223 as Christian Scripture (Numbers 6; 22–24; 33)

Notes Bibliography Index of Scriptural Passages General Index

191

253 301 321 329

P R E FAC E

This book explores the theological and hermeneutical nature of scriptural interpretation by offering readings of certain key narratives and other texts in the book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Jewish and Christian canons. Both books—this one and Numbers—have had long and complex gestation periods involving the assembling and reediting of materials produced in many and varied settings along the way. I cannot comment on exactly how this happened with Numbers, partly through lack of information, but also because it does not seem likely to be the key to reading the book today. I could, by contrast, comment at length on how it happened with the present book, but my hope is that if the editing process has gone well then such an account will not be particularly relevant here either. One feature of that process, however, deserves a brief mention. This book stands in a certain kind of complex relationship to the genre of commentary. It will in due course offer extended commentary of many texts in Numbers, mainly narratives. At one time, I thought I was simply writing a commentary, but two things happened. One was that I became interested instead in rethinking the question of what it actually means to interpret biblical narratives (and other texts) theologically, and realized that the constant interrogation and renegotiation of interpretive commitments and frameworks that such a rethinking involved did not sit easily with proceeding through a whole biblical book from beginning to end with equal attention to all critical matters. The other was that I realized that the kind of commentary I could write on the whole of Numbers was of a kind that already exists many times over: worthwhile works that digest the riches of more probing studies and mediate them to the wider audience. But then, what is that wider audience? ix

x  Preface

A turning point occurred at an SBL international conference when a publisher informed me that they had dropped the UK distribution of one particular commentary series since, after all, “who wants to read a commentary on the book of Numbers?” Apart from the embarrassing moment that followed when they then asked, “So anyway, what are you working on?,” that question stuck with me. I may one day be able to write a widely accessible commentary on the book of Numbers that does not simply repeat what has been done before. In the meantime, I recommend the fine achievement of Dennis Olson’s Interpretation commentary. But in the end I have struck out across rather less well-­charted territory, engaged in the project of attempting to reconceive aspects of the genre of commentary itself. Chapter 1 explores that dimension of the task. All of this to say: that is why this book is not straightforwardly a commentary. Or to put it differently: that is why this book is an attempt to repurpose the genre of commentary for the kinds of task that I think should weigh on critical and reflective readers rather more than one might think given the way that commentaries normally occupy themselves. Portions of the book have appeared elsewhere, though in most cases they were originally designed to contribute to this project. I am grateful to the following for permission to reproduce edited and sometimes extensively reorganized sections of the following: Robin Gill, editor of Theology, for chapter 2’s reuse of about half of “Juniper Trees and Pistachio Nuts: Trust and Suspicion as Modes of Scriptural Imagination,” Theology 112 (2009): 353–63; Andrew Sloane for occasional paragraphs distributed throughout from “Hermeneutics by Numbers? Case Studies in Feminist and Evangelical Interpretation of the Book of Numbers,” in Tamar’s Tears: Evangelical Engagements with Feminist Old Testament Hermeneutics, ed. Andrew Sloane (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 65–83; Matthew Malcolm for chapter 6’s adoption of an edited version of the heart of “ ‘The Rock Was Christ’: Paul’s Reading of Numbers and the Significance of the Old Testament for Theological Hermeneutics,” in Horizons in Hermeneutics: A Festschrift in Honor of Anthony C. Thiselton, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Matthew R. Malcolm (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 90–116, reprinted by permission of the publisher; and Timothy McLay, and Bloomsbury T&T Clark, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc,

Preface  xi

for incorporating into chapter 7 almost all of “The Zeal of Readers in Defence and in Dissent: Phinehas’ Spear, the Covenant of Peace, and the Politics of Hermeneutics,” in The Temple in Text and Tradition: A Festschrift in Honour of Robert Hayward, ed. R. Timothy McLay, Library of Second Temple Studies Series 83 (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 113–39. The front cover shows a detail from Nicholas of Verdun’s altarpiece (twelfth century), at the monastery in Klosterneuburg, near Vienna. The full altarpiece imagines the drama of scripture on three typologically linked levels: at the top is “before the law” (not pictured), the bottom is “under the law,” and the central level is “under grace.” The central set of panels, shown here, includes the typological linking of Christ on the cross (top center) with the spies carrying back the grapes from the promised land (Num. 13; bottom center). According to the inscription around the lower panel, the pole of the wood points to the cross, while the grapes point to Christ’s blood in the Eucharist. The lengthy and unexpected twists and turns of six years’ work on Numbers have accrued many debts, and it is my pleasure to acknowledge some of them here. Durham colleagues who have helped along the way include, first and foremost, Walter Moberly, for once again generously offering much encouragement, wisdom, and detailed critique in various coffee shops around Durham; Lewis Ayres, for sharing in writing trips to Starbucks and dissatisfaction with what can pass for biblical study these days, including pushing me to one final rewrite to make the theological argument(s) clearer; and Jon Parker, who happened to turn up to do a PhD on Numbers at the same time as I was wrestling with the book, and along the way became a good friend and critical dialogue partner on everything from quail in the wilderness to Anglican ecclesiology. None of these good people are responsible for the limitations and failings of what follows, but all helped me see better what I was trying to do. Particular thanks also to Alan Bartlett, Kristian Bendoraitis, Jocelyn Bryan, Debbie Chapman, John Chapman, Mike Chater, Tibor Fabiny, Allison Fenton, David Glover, Wesley Hill, Paul Jones, Stephen Light, Joel Lohr, Gordon McConville, Nathan MacDonald, Ian Paul, Josef

xii  Preface

Sykora, Helen Thorp, Michael Volland, and David Wilkinson, all of whom in a range of different and creative ways have offered wise counsel, constructive caution, or support and friendship. At one low point when I thought I would never emerge from this particular wilderness, Sarah Jay told me that she would pray for me to finish the book, and would remind me of this whenever I saw her. Thank you Sarah: and here it is! St. John’s College Durham provided me with a crucial study leave to enable me to bring the project toward conclusion. Within St. John’s, Cranmer Hall has remained a wonderful environment in which to pursue this kind of theological-­biblical investigation. I am deeply grateful for it and for its staff and students over the years: especially, among the former, Mark Tanner, whose gifts make others’ gifts flourish; and among the latter, my first and most determined Hebrew class, for holding out for the reality beyond this vale of verb paradigms—not least Naomi Barraclough, Jenn Riddlestone, Rachel Sheehan, and Alison Stewart-­Smith, who survived it for two years. As regards your future work with scripture, mî-­yōdēa? The Durham Old Testament research seminar offered helpful feedback on presentations of various parts of this work, including a particularly lively session discussing what is now chapter 1. And then the Mirfield College of the Resurrection became the unexpected location to hide away and finish the book, when I moved there for a term to train for the Anglican priesthood. Through their remarkable deep rhythms of daily prayer, which do so much to hold anxiety at bay and God at the center, the end finally came in sight, and it seemed fitting that I completed my first draft of the whole book on my last day in the college. I am grateful to Stephen Little and all at the University of Notre Dame Press for looking after the manuscript and turning it into this book; to their reviewers both anonymous and subsequently disclosed for encouraging and also constructive feedback; and to Matthew Levering for welcoming the book into the Reading the Scriptures series. In the course of writing, two of our three children have struck camp and left home. This book is dedicated to the one who remains, before he too heads away. Matthew can hardly remember a time before I was writing this book. He must have begun to wonder if “the book that will be dedicated to me” would ever exist, but he has been a great delight and encouragement to me throughout, not least in reminding me always that I

Preface  xiii

needed to finish “his book.” He, Kristin, and Josh have all provided much joy and inspiration, in increasingly diverse ways. Melody, meanwhile, has truly been my rock in the wilderness—to borrow a figure that will come up many times in what follows. This was a long, hard journey above and beyond the difficulties of writing a book that aspires to wisdom. Thank you, Melody, for never settling for less than what is good. Thank you, in fact, for everything. This book would have been still wiser had its author benefited from yet further years of study and reflection. But this is as far as I have come, and so this is what I pass on to you, dear reader: readings from the book of Numbers with full theological, critical, and imaginative seriousness. Caveat lector.

A B B R E V I AT I O N S

AAR

American Academy of Religion

AnBib

Analecta Biblica

ACCS BDB

BETL BHS

CBQ CD

DBWE ESV ET

FAT

FOTL ICC JBL JPS

JSOT

JSOTS KJV

LAB

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture Brown-­Driver-­Briggs

Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. 14 vols., ET. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition English Standard Version English Translation

Forschungen zum Alten Testament

Forms of the Old Testament Literature International Critical Commentary Journal of Biblical Literature Jewish Publication Society

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series King James Version

Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum xv

xvi  Abbreviations

LXX Septuagint MT

Masoretic Text

NETS

Pietersma, Albert, and Benjamin G. Wright, eds. A New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included under That Title. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007

NIV

NRSV NT

OT

OTL SBL

SBLDS SBLSS SOTS

SOTSMS //

New International Version

New Revised Standard Version New Testament Old Testament

Old Testament Library

Society of Biblical Literature

Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series Society for Old Testament Studies

Society for Old Testament Studies Monograph Series Parallel passage

Introduction A Map of the Wilderness

This book sets out to do two things, neither of which comes first or second. On the one hand, it offers a theological interpretation of certain key narratives and other texts in the book of Numbers. On the other hand, and at the same time, it seeks to enrich and deepen our present practices of scriptural interpretation by way of understanding the nature of full-­bodied theological and hermeneutical investigation of the scriptural text. The resulting shape of the book testifies to my conviction that the latter goal—enriched interpretive understanding and practice—cannot be attained without some form of the former goal: sustained attention to an actual scriptural text. The book is also shaped by the sober recognition that those works pursuing the former goal—the sustained attention— frequently fail to arrive at the latter goal at all. The book is therefore part commentary and part theological-­hermeneutical treatise, with the nature of each of those characterizations in turn transformed by the presence of the other one. This introduction seeks to assist the reader of what follows by offering a map of the path that the book will take, with respect both to the approach to reading Numbers (the theological-­hermeneutical project) and the resultant reading(s) of Numbers that emerge (the substantive 1

2  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

interpretation). Neither goal is subservient to the other; each is mutually illuminating. The choice of the book of Numbers as focal text for this project requires only brief comment, since in one sense any substantive scriptural text would serve well, and part of the point is that one has to make a particular choice out of all the possible choices, and then get on with the task of reading the chosen text. The fact that Numbers is an Old Testament text will turn out to offer depth and nuance to the challenges of articulating adequate theological perspectives on its interpretation, bringing in sensitivity to variant Jewish and Christian emphases, and avoiding the pitfall of much generic reflection on theological interpretation where in practice the proposals offered only really make much sense for New Testament texts.1 The fact that Numbers is also a difficult text, in the sense of being obscure to many readers, forces upon us a willingness to dig deep if one is to make any real progress. Whatever the shortcomings of what follows, I trust that it will not be open to the charge of skipping past abundant straightforward alternatives in search of mysteriously hidden depths. Finally, the fact that Numbers is difficult in the sense of being morally and/or theologically problematic allows us to focus on many of the most pressing concerns with biblical interpretation today. There will be plenty of opportunity for reflection on the question of whether theologically engaged interpretation is a matter of evading a moral challenge. Clearly it can be. I shall be seeking to show that it need not be. There are other various contingent reasons why I myself have selected the book of Numbers for such a focus, but in fact they all come down to some combination of the above reasons.2 It is not the whole book of Numbers that will be in view. The narratives that most easily interest readers of Numbers occur in distributed form through chapters 11–25. Chapters 1–10, in many ways, complete the work of Leviticus, and arguably the end of Exodus, in describing the setup of the Israelite camp. Chapter 26 reorients the reader to what is to come by moving on to a second census (after the one at the beginning of the book) and to a collection of texts taking up a disparate range of further matters. My own readings in the book will focus mainly on Numbers 11–25, but not on every chapter, and not equally on every narrative. Even so, these texts will afford substantial opportunity to ground matters of

Introduction  3

hermeneutical and theological reflection in the actual practice of reading scripture. This focus is interwoven throughout—the refining and deepening of the hermeneutical and theological practices in play when scripture is read. The pull toward abstract reflection on such matters is great, and not without its merits. But in this book I attempt to tether such reflection to the rigors of working with the scriptural text. All in all, in the balance of current academic discourse, this is probably where most work still needs to be done. T H E PAT H I N P R O S P E C T

How will the reader be led through this forbidding wilderness? Here I offer some orientation to the shape of the project, and some working definitions of the key terms that will be in focus as we proceed.3 With regard to the shape, it is not self-­evident how to introduce properly a project that has two different focal aims. The book thus begins with an introduction in two parts to the project of a theological reading of the scriptural book of Numbers, with the first two chapters emphasizing, respectively, the text and its readers (or readings). However, as will be clear throughout, it is not possible to deal serially first with one and then the other. Rather, each imposes upon the other. Each therefore leaves its mark upon the other and invites constant renegotiation of what is at stake in discussing the book of Numbers, or in the different ways in which one might approach reading it. But one must start somewhere, and so it is only for the purposes of exposition that the focus passes from text to reader in the initial orientation. The first of these chapters attempts to understand the nature of theological commentary on the book of Numbers by way of Henry James. It constitutes something of an essay in theological hermeneutics, clearing or at least reconnoitering the ground. The second chapter then dips into selected texts from the book to refine certain key ideas in how the book is approached. For example: trust and suspicion turn out to be a key pair of modes of hermeneutical inquiry for our task. By the end of chapter 2, the project of theological interpretation of Numbers is already under way, with self-­reflexive theological and hermeneutical awareness of what is involved.

4  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

The chapters that follow then explore further facets of the task in sustained dialogue with key narrative texts, beginning with two chapters that set out what I take as the key hermeneutical and theological resources for such a reading. Chapter 3 begins by locating hermeneutical significance in the bare and brief narrative of Numbers 11:1–3, which in its underdefined and programmatic nature invites the articulation of a major theological-­hermeneutical issue for this project. The issue is that of reading scriptural narrative as realistic in the sense expounded by Hans Frei. In dialogue with Frei and Erich Auerbach in particular, I attempt to set forth an approach to reading that offers a contemporary take on traditional figural interpretation.4 Although I am about to introduce an alternative label to describe my project, it may be useful to clarify that I take “figural reading” of the Bible, in broad terms, to be interpretation that reads key people, places, events, indeed tropes of any kind, as figures of archetypal ways of being, doing, knowing, . . . conjoined under the unifying divine providence of God. In the manner described by Christopher Seitz: What is at stake in figural reading is the theological conviction that God the Holy Trinity is the eternal reality with whom we have to do, both Israel and God’s adopted sons and daughters in Christ, and this has ontological as well as economic implications for our reading of the two testament canon of Prophet and Apostle.5

The delicate balance this affords between concerns with historical-­critical specificity, on the one hand, and theologically ascriptive attention to truth, on the other, will be key to the whole book, and is explored in this first instance by trying it out in a careful reading of Numbers 11–12. Tempting as it is to reduce the resultant approach to being characterized in a simple sound-­bite (“ascriptive realism” is the nearest I come in this chapter), part of the burden of my account is that one must evaluate the hermeneutical labels with respect to how the reading plays out. Any hermeneutical position worth holding will be subtle and nuanced, and the proving of “ascriptive realism,” let alone clarity with regard to what its actual commitments may be, must be in the reading offered, though I shall offer pointers in a moment.

Introduction  5

Chapter 4 proceeds to the next major narrative in Numbers, the account of the failed entry into the promised land, and engages with Karl Barth’s reading of this passage in the Church Dogmatics. Having set out a hermeneutical approach in the previous chapter, I here turn to what is, in my judgment, the most pressing theologically shaped issue for serious scriptural reading: how to preserve the freedom of the text to speak in dialogue with how to honor the theological convictions and traditions within which Christian (and, differently, Jewish) readers operate. There is no shortage of examples of readings that settle this matter entirely one way or the other: all text without regard to theological tradition; or all the rehearsal of theological prejudgment without due attention to the text. In advance of the detailed exploration of this issue in chapter 4, this is a good moment to sketch out the fundamental convictions and conclusions of this project concerning these core issues. Barth’s reading of Numbers 13–14 in terms of sloth offers a striking example of attending to the text in terms that are not simply read off the surface of the text. Most simply: there is no Hebrew word for “sloth” in the text. So what does it mean to say that this is what the text is about? My conclusion, after the hermeneutical travails of chapter 3, and the theological investigations of chapter 4, may be stated as follows. Among our chief interests as Bible readers is the reality to which the scriptural text attests, a reality that may be described in multiple ways (philosophically, sociologically, psychologically, . . . and historically too), but one of which should be attuned to theological conceptuality. Theological language takes seriously the nature and action of God; indeed it is what allows readers access to ways of talking about the nature and reality of God. However, such language as we encounter it in scripture is not straightforwardly descriptive, since God is not alternatively present to Bible readers in ways that allow one to measure how descriptively accurate the theological language is. Or to be more precise, God is not present in any other less mediated way, even if one may still affirm that God acts in and through the interpretive processes that readers bring to their reading. The mediations of spiritual experience will take different forms in different traditions: perhaps ecstatic phenomena for some; the Eucharist for others; small-­group discussion offering sudden insights . . .

6  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

The value accorded to the accumulated track record of those mediations, the “tradition” as one might call it, will also be evaluated differently, and it will become clear in one or two places that my own location as a reader in the Anglican tradition involves me in a range of judgments both affirming of and at times (in more Protestant fashion) critical of the mediations offered over the centuries. Theological interpretation will benefit from far greater clarity around the question of the nature of God’s ongoing involvement in guiding readers to hear the text well, assuming that there is no real mileage in having any theological account where God abandons the text to subsequent readers with little more than “make of it what you will” and an invitation to fashion various critical methodologies that come and go according to the passing perspectives of the centuries. At various points in what follows these concerns will lead us to articulate and evaluate claims concerning the role of the church, of individual Christian interpreters, of differing Jewish and Christian perspectives, and of the legitimacy and limits of our best critical insights. For now, the point is that there is no unmediated access to God that takes place in language; or equally, that scriptural language is one such mediation of the nature and action of God. But it is important to say that theological language (in the text and today) is still really referring to God’s nature and action. For reasons that will be explored fully in chapter 3, the most felicitous language for holding on to this referential function without collapsing it into description is “ascription”: we are engaged in a mode of reading that one might term “ascriptive realism.” That Numbers is an Old Testament text allows the benefit here that Christian attention to the Old Testament quite clearly involves more than an interest in the text’s historically descriptive function. My theological claim is that the subject matter of such a text (vari­ ously referred to as its Sache or res) has irreducibly theological elements, alongside all its other characterizations (philosophical, historical, and so forth). My hermeneutical claim is then that the text itself is the prime candidate for offering the most trustworthy articulation of its subject matter. One should therefore approach the inevitable attempts to translate the text’s conceptualities into other categories as provisional, and open to the insights of fresh testing. Such translations may work well, I will argue, if they provide suitable access to the reality to which the text witnesses in

Introduction  7

its ascriptive way. They are unlikely to work well if they are in effect the abstraction of thin categories from the narrative portrayal that the text offers, or the reduction of the text to a description of otherwise accessible characteristics. As I hope to demonstrate through chapters 3 and 4, the theological and the hermeneutical claims are related. In other words: attention to the text in its ascriptively realistic sense leads the reader to engagement with its witness to theological reality, or to reality understood in theological categories. My approach therefore operates downstream of the classic understanding of “the literal sense of the text” such as animated Aquinas at the beginning of the Summa Theologiae, such as exercised Hans Frei, and such as is much debated today.6 The definition of “the literal sense” has always circled around some such core claim as “what informed readers think the text most straightforwardly and significantly points to,” or in the deliberately loose definition of Lewis Ayres: “The literal sense is that which results from ascribing to the words, phrases and other textual units the meaning that is commonly given them by reasonably well-­educated readers in a reading community.”7 The many works and thinkers to which these reflections are indebted will be made plain in the substantive chapters that follow. One should sense immediately how much of such an account depends on what these claims mean in practice. It would clearly be of very limited use, if indeed it is true at all, to say, “Numbers 13–14 is about sloth.” The interesting question will emerge only when Barth’s reading of sloth in this text is explored at sufficient length to understand what he is saying about the nature of human interaction before God and the extent to which this is what Numbers 13–14 narrates. (Because of the way that Barth’s reading is balanced by other readings of other passages, I shall adjudge it basically successful on this point in chapter 4.) The advantage, therefore, of pursuing my hermeneutical-­theological project with reference to a specific text is that the language of “ascriptive realism” and “theological interpretation” is put to work. Such language is predicated on the commitment that the reality of God is one relevant factor to assessing the full scope of the reality to which the text witnesses. Sad to say, among readers who would agree with that statement are many who seem to think that such a commitment allows one to bypass all the other careful and critical elements required of us in the reading of scripture.

8  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

One other point touched on here emerges in full force through the explorations of chapters 3 and 4. This is that the hypothetical reconstruction of a world behind the text, a world of “description” or “historical reference” as it might be termed, can play at best only a limited role in allowing access to the reality to which the text witnesses, if such reconstruction is carried out without attention to how the text is seeking to witness to the reality of God. Here my hermeneutical wager is that what the text does not mention is unlikely to be the key to understanding its realistic witness.8 The reader will encounter variations of this claim time and again in what follows. Armed with this overview of the core claims of chapters 3 and 4, readers may then recognize that chapter 5 offers something of a synthesizing presentation of all these hermeneutical and theological commitments, first negatively and then positively. The negative presentation pertains to an extended analysis of Numbers 15, the main nonnarrative text that I consider herein, since it is the first to interrupt the narrative flow begun by the breaking of the camp at the end of Numbers 10. This affords an opportunity to explore in greater detail the vexed questions of how readers either discover or construct cohesion in narratives. Although I am strongly predisposed toward readings that discover cohesion, usually in the footsteps of an editor or redactor as much as any author, my conclusion is that the book of Numbers stands as a (perhaps rare) example of a biblical text that defeats such readings to some extent. It simply is a mixed collection of textual elements, and readerly ingenuity may in the end serve only to construct a cohesion where none previously existed, in the minds of any author or redactor. This opening half of chapter 5 represents the longest sustained engagement with the minutiae of Old Testament scholarship, and will concomitantly be the hardest reading for those whose interests are on the broader theological and hermeneutical level. I signpost certain key moments where such readers may feel free to disengage and then rejoin the book when it returns to attending to narrative, and to broader theological matters, with the arrival at Numbers 16. Here, in the more positive half of the presentation, the themes of the earlier understanding of the nature of interpretation are deployed in an attempt to read the deeply counterintuitive narrative (to modern readers) of Korah’s rebellion. This may be the clearest case study I am able

Introduction  9

to offer of how far the conceptualities of the text do or do not transfer to today, by way of a discussion of the text’s concerns with holiness and priesthood, among other issues. Will the text absorb the world or will the (modern) world absorb the text? Readings in both directions are possible, and I discuss many of them. What is at stake in such readings is, I hope, as clearly stated as possible by the end of this chapter. In short: there is the uninteresting possibility that the reader who encounters such an “alien” text simply consigns it to the category of ancient history and refuses to consider its existential challenge; there is the unsettling possibility that such a reader allows the text’s alien agenda to challenge the presumptions of the modern world from which they read, and thereby to call them into new theological reflection; and there is the awkward possibility that if the challenge of the text is understood then the reader who notes it and rejects it may have come to the end of any meaningful engagement with the reality to which the text witnesses. They may talk on about the text, even at length, but they will have ceased to engage its literal sense, and will therefore have ceased, in a certain sense, to engage in conversation with the text. From this point on, I select only certain key narratives in order to allow discussion of three further substantive points, which I take in roughly the order in which they are provoked by a sequential reading of Numbers in the context of the whole of scripture. First comes Christology. In chapter 6 I turn to the story of Moses striking the rock in the wilderness (Num. 20), in dialogue with the well-­known christological twist on this tale given by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:4. This offers an opportunity to address directly the much-­debated sense in which Christian reading of the Old Testament is (or is necessarily) christological. By way of engaging with the contrast between typological/figural readings and the approach of general hermeneutical theory, I use this story of the rock to suggest that the Old Testament does itself serve as a rock, a stumbling stone, for general hermeneutical theory in its relevance to questions of how to read Old Testament texts. The specific contribution of the two-­testament structure of Christian scripture is thrown into clear relief here, where readings adhering only to the generating horizon of the text will not arrive at the text’s relevance to readings attuned to scripture’s realistic witness to Christ. Multiple readings are possible, but they do include Christian ones.

10  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

Second comes violence, or the troubling nature of texts that seem to validate unethical practices. As a test case here I turn to Numbers 25 and the account of the zeal of Phinehas. In dialogue with interpreters ancient and modern, and in particular indebted to the work of Miroslav Volf, I argue that a “literal” approach to this text clarifies a range of potential readings that include options for taking the text seriously but not in support of violence. It is not possible, I argue, to go further and rule out such “violent readings,” despite the hopes of occasional theologically motivated apologists, but the fact that the text’s ascriptive and realistic witness to God can make good sense in ways that do not condone religious violence is to be taken seriously. I also argue that it is of no benefit to read our present world naively with regard to peace and violence, and that for better or worse—in fact assuredly for worse—we do not live in a world where peaceful ends are attainable always through peaceful means. Likewise, scriptural texts do not in practice always do us good, but again, the point is that this should not foreclose on the search for constructive readings. Third comes blessing. Although it is not unfair to see the book of Numbers as largely a downbeat affair, theologically and spiritually, there is a recurrent interest in blessing. Here I conclude the journey through the book by taking up some of its more significant texts that have not otherwise received attention: the justly celebrated Aaronic blessing of chapter 6; the delightful narratives of Balaam and Balak in chapters 22–24, which really deserve a full treatment of their own for all their literary and theological complexity; and the wilderness itinerary of Numbers 33. This last text is much celebrated in the history of interpretation because it serves as the base text for Origen’s tour de force of theological reading concerning the ascent of the soul toward God. Although I have no interest in suggesting that Origen serves as a model for how present-­day readers should read the text, for reasons clarified in the discussion, I do think that the kinds of issues he raised stand close to the concerns that might properly exercise attentive readers today. The overall shape of the journey to come therefore begins with rehearsing the framing questions of text and reading in two generally theoretical chapters; rises to the core hermeneutical and theological accounts of chapters 3 and 4; explores them in most concentrated form with the paradigmatically difficult narrative of Korah’s rebellion in chapter

Introduction  11

5 (along with extended clarification of how different such approaches are from typical present-­day commentary); and then unwinds through three more thematically oriented chapters pertaining to texts that provoke consideration of Christology, violence, and blessing. Like the book of Numbers itself, this is a journey without a definitive end. The best readings provoke further rereadings. My hope is that readers who have tested the hermeneutical and theological proposals expounded here through the wilderness wanderings of the book of Numbers will in turn then seek to refine them further through the careful reading of other scriptural texts. T H E PAT H I N S U B S TA N C E

It remains rather more briefly to offer some sense of the theological terrain to be traversed, by which I mean: what I will end up saying with regard to the book of Numbers’ own theological contribution(s). Chapter 1 below will discuss at length various alternative proposals concerning Numbers’ “theme” or “message,” as well as the various limitations on our ability to capture such a notion in less time than it takes to spell out everything the book says. But again, readers with an interest in Numbers as Christian scripture may be served by some advance indication of what the core theological impress of the book turns out to be. I have concluded that the most helpful way to express this is in terms of the formational theological questions to which Numbers provides the most illuminating answers for its readers. I highlight four: What is the significance and nature of trust in God? How does holiness (mediated in Numbers through the priesthood) challenge and redefine our sense of what is right, or “fair”? To what extent is it helpful to conceptualize life with God as a journey through a wilderness, of whatever sort? Finally, short of whatever promised land we may be, what is the context and role of blessing? All these matters will be taken up in the book that follows, but I offer here a very short summa on these four topics in Numbers: trust—holiness—wilderness—blessing. As I will argue more fully in chapter 2, trust is one key theme in the book. The reader of Numbers has questions of trust and its absence (suspicion) foregrounded at key moments in the book’s narrative: in the people’s

12  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

failure to enter the land (14:11) and in Moses’ taking into his own hands the provision of water from the rock (20:12). Elsewhere Moses’ position of trust is highlighted (12:7), and in a spectacularly grating legal text, suspicion moves center stage as trust is abandoned (5:11–31). The general unwillingness of the book to define trust will leave the pregnant hermeneutical question hanging: what will it mean for the reader to trust God? That reader must be prepared to be called out into inhospitable territory, to side with Moses against Korah (Num. 16), and to enter the world-­absorbing realm of God’s holiness. This is explored particularly in chapter 5 below. If Exodus 25 through the end of Leviticus relates the struggle to create holy space and holy people to welcome among them a holy God, much of Numbers narrates what happens when that holiness is not honored. The clash of Numbers’ perspectives with those of twenty-­ first-­century readers is nowhere more evident than here, and the history of interpretation is littered with readings that walked away and closed the conversation. The book of Numbers calls such readers to stay, and await the life that is promised on the other side of such challenges to all our notions of what is fair, or normal, or simply to be assumed in daily life. The book offers no hope for thinking that all will be well if we just work harder at learning how to get along. What little peace is envisaged is on the far side of judgment and its concomitant justice. Readers therefore take their place, in the meantime, in the wilderness. Life is lived, in Numbers, between Egypt and the promised land. As Walter Brueggemann once observed, the interest of scriptural narrative is frequently on “wrenching transitions” rather than on the stages where one settles: not the “moment of equilibrium” but “the move from one place or posture to another. This literature knows that the move is neither smooth nor explicable, but is characteristically disjunctive, painful, and hidden.”9 This book, “in the wilderness,” is almost all “wrenching transition.” The reader for whom this is good news is probably not a settled one untroubled by the tensions between the life of faith and the world in which they live. Readers living today, in these typically troubled times (for it has always been a classic myth of sorts that all was well a couple of generations ago), may resonate with the book’s characterization of life as a wilderness. In chapter 7 especially, but in chapters 3 and 4 and throughout, I try to show ways in which the book’s wilderness narrative makes claims upon

Introduction  13

the allegiances and judgments of the reader willing to be transformed by their experience of the book. The fourth question, that of blessing, propels readers to further horizons. Numbers is one book in a canon. Its readers are assuredly readers who will go on to other books, arguably with little need for persuasion. In symbolically bracketing moments, God reaches out through the text with blessing: via Aaron in Numbers 6, and via Balaam in Numbers 23–24. The context for this blessing is precisely the wilderness life sketched out above. Note that blessing comes neither first nor last, but on the way. For Christian readers in particular, but in a sense for all readers, Numbers is read under the promise of blessing, experienced already (after Aaron), but not yet grasped firmly (as per Balaam). The book was not originally about Jesus Christ, and neither did its authors nor editors think that it was. But with the apostle Paul it may be read in dialogue with the claims of Christ, and open itself to figural significance for Christian readers. In chapters 6 and 8 in particular, I seek such a Christian reading of these texts that take their place in the Christian canon. The danger of these brief portraits—of trust, holiness, wilderness, and blessing—lies in suggesting that these are abstract qualities put up for discussion by a disembodied dissertation, qualities that might be distilled as theological themes in the book. Rather these portraits serve as placeholders to orient the reader to what is to come: the slow pursuit of narrative portrayals of life with God that offer access to reality, understood in theological terms, because other descriptions fall short, for the reasons advertised already, and now to be explored at length. Better: these brief portraits are small illustrations on the map. To see what trust, holiness, wilderness, and blessing really look like here (i.e., theologically), one will need to undertake the journey, upon which one will encounter many more theologically probing questions too. W E LCO M E TO T H E J O U R N E Y

This introductory map is not intended as a demonstration or justification of all the points rehearsed above. It is simply a map of the points to come—a map for a journey that we are now ready to begin. Fundamentally,

14  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

I urge a way of reading scripture (and Numbers, specifically) that holds fast to the ascriptive and realistic witness of the text to the ways and nature of God, in and through myriad other germane interpretive questions, in order that readers might be formed and transformed in their engagement with the theological substance of the text’s subject matter. If that sounds like a complex way of saying that we walk a well-­trodden if all-­too-­easily-­missed path of deploying the best resources of tradition and reason in our attentive exploration of scripture for the sake of theologically enriched thinking and living, then so much the better. I might even say: if such a project is worth theorizing about, then how much more is it worth actually doing properly. In the process I have written an account that only looks like a commentary in some ways, or rather that adopts the commentary format and seeks to adapt it to some of the concerns of reading with theological and hermeneutical sensitivity. It also discerns, along the way, various instances where the theological dynamics of the subject matter of the text might in turn reflect back—and be shaped by—the Christian practice of reading the scriptural text in the first place. There is much to learn, and no obvious theoretical order in which to learn it, when it comes to cultivating wise practices of reading scripture, so what better way to proceed than to hitch our theoretical reflections to the project of reading the text, break camp, and set out. Welcome to these Christian readings in the book of Numbers.

ONE

The Figure in the Wilderness Readings in the Book of Numbers

What is the book of Numbers about? This seemingly straightforward question, I shall suggest, requires a couple of clarifications before it can be answered constructively. First, what books are about is an interesting mix of reading strategy and the pressure of the text. In the case of texts such as biblical books, it is often best to express such ideas in terms of reading strategy, at least as much as in terms of an uncovering of what is in the text. Second, Numbers is not really a book in the sense in which it makes best sense to ask such a question. In this opening chapter I shall seek to expound both these clarifications, and then add a third point: that it is the modern genre of commentary that has framed the posing of such questions as “What is this book about?” in biblical studies. This contrasts, I shall suggest, with the kind of appeal made to the text in more traditional modes of reading. The chapter then concludes with a review of various proposals as to what the book of Numbers is about, before proceeding to my own suggestions in the following chapter.

15

16  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

T H E F I R S T C L A R I F I C AT I O N : W H AT A R E T E X T S A B O U T ? T H E F I G U R E I N T H E C A R P E T

Let us begin with Henry James. It might be the case that beginning with Henry James would be all to the good in much theorizing about biblical texts. It is a strange sight to see biblical studies fencing with Stanley Fish and dancing with Jacques Derrida before learning to hear from Henry James that literary theory without works (of literary art) is dead, although a full analysis of that Benjamin Buttonesque phenomenon must await another occasion. James’s “The Figure in the Carpet” is one of the short stories he wrote during the 1890s when he was exploring literary criticism and the nature of literary art through the medium of writing literary fiction.1 It is a delightful piece, told in the first person by a critic who writes a review of a novel by one Hugh Vereker, only to discover that the novelist in question does not think that he (the critic) or anyone else has really grasped the point of his book. This sets the narrator on a journey of discovery to find “the grand intention” of Vereker’s work, which he imagines must be “something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet” (374). The narrator’s ally and sometime editor (Corvick) also sets off in pursuit of the figure, and then reports from abroad that he has found it. But before he can write it up he dies in a car accident while out with his fiancée, Gwendolen, also a friend of the narrator. She pledges never to tell the secret, but then when she too dies, we follow the narrator into a conversation with her bereaved second husband, where the question is finally posed directly: What was the secret? The man in question (Drayton Deane) stares blankly and then says that he has no idea what is being talked about. As far as the narrator is concerned, this just proves that the secret in question was too wonderful to share with Deane, who ends the story troubled that his late wife never mentioned this topic. The question posed, and of course not answered in James’s secondary world, is whether texts such as Vereker’s literary works have a subject matter, or grand intention, that they are about in the same sense that a Persian carpet has in it a “figure” which is there to be beheld by those who gaze upon it. Does it make any difference if the author of the text in question (Vereker in this case) thinks there is such a thing—Vereker

The Figure in the Wilderness   17

says at one point that “To me it’s exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney” (367)—or is the author’s view of the matter just one of many plausible construals of the text? And then, how are the narrator’s and Corvick’s contrasting perceptions of Vereker’s work to be construed in turn by the reader, who is pitched into theoretical reflection of precisely the point at stake? Frank Kermode suggests that James is playing a number of jokes on his readers. Those readers take up the role of the “ineffectual critic” and pursue a meaning that James has himself deliberately hidden from his readers. In the words of James’s own subsequent discussion, the characters are engaged in a test, and on the available evidence, “the reader is left . . . to conclude.”2 The story then takes on a critical afterlife of its own when Wolfgang Iser co-­opts it as exhibit A at the beginning of his book The Act of Reading. James lays out more or less what Iser theorizes as the necessary involvement of the reader in the production of meaning. Iser knows even as he lauds it that James’s preoccupation with meaning is perhaps becoming old-­fashioned. But for himself, James successfully thematizes the key issue, according to Iser: “The text and reader . . . merge into a single situation, the division between subject and object no longer applies, and it therefore follows that meaning is no longer an object to be defined, but is an effect to be experienced.”3 Some have found illuminating the ways in which James’s tale prefigures a kind of Heideggerian and Gadamerian hermeneutical consciousness.4 But critics who have enjoyed finding Iser’s work too comforting and straightforward, most famously Stanley Fish himself, thus find themselves doubly able to ignore James’s gentle probing.5 This brings us back to the penchant for rushing past James to a more theorized suspicion that delights in all the difficulties that undoubtedly attach to the notion of meaning. But I suggest that the move to suspicion here is too far and too fast. James was a practitioner of his art, and a critic alongside being a practitioner. Unlike most critics, therefore, he did not dwell in what George Steiner so memorably called “the secondary city,” drowning the primary text under the “narcotic” of commentary.6 Steiner saw the issues clearly: to take seriously the subject matter of the text—to lay hold of its “real presence”—one might conclude that “the best readings of art are art.”7 And likewise, James wrote criticism as art.

18  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

He wrote criticism too,8 but his position as practitioner gives his voice that view from down among the texts that critics sometimes find it easy to underestimate. What finally triggers my desire to take a cue from James in considering biblical commentary is that his language of “figure” serendipitously chimes with the traditional Christian language of reading Old Testament texts figurally by virtue of their canonical relationship to the New: the New Testament; the new time; the newly revealed Christ. To come back to the book of Numbers—bemidbar, “in (the) wilderness”—the question is whether there is a figure in the wilderness: a subject matter that this text is about, or a discernible pattern or structure that bears that subject matter. I think James knew instinctively what Paul Ricoeur would later theorize as a key to understanding narrative emplotment: that in texts worth working with and worrying over, there is no straightforward “self-­structuring.”9 But James wrote just such worthwhile texts, and he famously worried incessantly over the placement of every last comma and semicolon, at the same time as wanting to draw attention to this very phenomenon of narrative. So it would clearly be bizarre to try to draw the conclusion that if texts are not straightforwardly self-­structuring then they have no meaningful structure at all, which is the kind of reductio ad absurdum argument sometimes foisted upon interpreters by the theoretically conservative. Rather—and here I think “The Figure in the Carpet” comes into its own—texts are structured much as labyrinths, which invite the reader to take certain kinds of path through them. Fish, Derrida, and others, in various incompatible ways, have demonstrated that suitably determined readers can hack whatever path they like through the maze set before them. The conservative response has sometimes been that there is only one way through, and it is the path mapped out by the author. But back at the beginning of the literary maze, Henry James already envisaged these two options: the conservative voiced by Corvick, and the skeptical gradually looming upon the wary reader as it dawns on them that maybe nobody ever knew what Vereker’s work was about, perhaps because the figure was not a feature inherent in it. Texts invite readings. This can be neither secured nor guaranteed, but as with patterns in Persian carpets there are a range of ways in which readings can be discerned.

The Figure in the Wilderness   19

This is as far as I wish to go in arguing this point theoretically— partly because I think James’s own work shows the point rather more successfully than more theorized subsequent accounts manage to tell it. The question is then: How does this relate to the reading of a biblical text? As an initial way of putting the matter, let me suggest that many biblical texts, especially those of a more narrative or literary stripe, invite readings. They are not self-­structuring artifacts, but they are more akin to Persian rugs within which a range, sometimes quite a limited range, of figures may be discerned. But before we can bring this suggestion to bear on the book of Numbers, there is a second area to consider, which is the extent to which we actually have a full-­fledged Persian carpet before us in this case. T H E S E CO N D C L A R I F I C AT I O N : W H E N I S A B O O K N OT A B O O K ? T H E B O O K O F N U M B E R S

What does it mean to call Numbers a book? In ancient times, for as far back as we can see (back to the time of Ezra, let us say), the scroll or book (sepher) of Numbers was always a particular textual unit or collection. It began and ended at fixed points in the overall Pentateuchal narrative, even if it is observed that these points are not entirely obvious key transitional moments in the Pentateuch. Indeed, the complex of texts from Exodus 19 to Numbers 10 is often held together as one continuous set of priestly reflections on the nature of the obedience enjoined upon Israel in the light of Sinai. Such is one of Gordon Wenham’s preferred textual “units” in his Numbers commentary, for instance.10 That would in many ways seem to make a more obvious “book” than Numbers.11 The most usual Hebrew title for our text, Bemidbar, emphasizes wilderness narratives as a key theme. Drawn, as is the way with Jewish titles for books of the Torah, from one of the text’s early words, in this case the fifth word, it translates as “in wilderness of–,” since it occurs in the text as part of the construct phrase bemidbar-­sinai. It is only the link with “Sinai” that would make the word equate straightforwardly to “in the wilderness” (for which one would expect bammidbar, if it stood on its own), but this point is usually obscured in the literature, and I shall take my cue from

20  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

that and simply call the book “in the wilderness” when referring to its Hebrew title. The talmudic title was chomesh happequddim (the “fifth” of—or constituted by—the census totals).12 This is also the emphasis in the titles in Greek (arithmoi) and Latin (numeri), and passed on to us in English translation (Numbers), all of which foreground the counting of the tribes, twice, in chapters 1 and 26. Which is the more helpful title? Does it make a difference to one’s reading? The question before us is complicated by the source-­critical reflections of Wellhausen and those who have followed him. If the Pentateuch was written by J, E, D, and P, then clearly one can ask about the meanings, shapes, and significances of those four written sources, as well as the five canonical books. It is then the work of the final editor(s) or redactor(s), often noted as R, which looms into view and effects the Pentateuch as we have it. Which fivefold structure offers the most illuminating key? Is it the five books of Moses or the four sources plus “R” of modern criticism (albeit that most modern critics have postulated far more than one redactor)? Franz Rosenzweig had some fun with this question. On the one hand he appears to concede the critical point: speaking of R, he says, “Whoever he was, and whatever text lay before him, he is our teacher, and his theology is our teaching.”13 But in the preceding sentence he had subverted the issues at stake: “We, however, take this R to stand not for redactor but for rabbenu,” the Hebrew for “our master” or “our teacher,” but which, for those with ears to hear, has the standard Jewish connotation of being Moses.14 In any case, arguably more attention has been paid to the critically reconstructed five “voices,” not least because critics in the modern age tended to locate structure and significance in the work of authors rather than finished texts. Brevard Childs famously demurred. In his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, he urged that reflection on the shape of the canonical books was one of the pressing interpretive questions, based on the observation that “the five books were seen as separate entities by the final biblical editor in spite of the obvious continuity of the one story which extended from the creation of the world (Gen. 1:1) to the death of Moses (Deut. 34).”15

The Figure in the Wilderness   21

Indeed, with Numbers, it has subsequently become a rather predominant interpretive question due to the work of Childs’s student, Dennis Olson, for whom “the central problem in the interpretation of the book of Numbers . . . is the failure to detect a convincing and meaningful structure for the book.”16 Olson duly set about determining what that shape might be. His published thesis tells all in its title: The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New. Olson begins, of course, by reviewing previous attempts to discern the structure of the book. To his mind they are unsatisfactory. He also attends to the matter of whether he is attempting to answer a well-­formed question in the first place. His own defense of the interpretive significance of the book of Numbers as a textual unit seems to consist in an appeal to the undoubted fact that the Torah was understood as a fivefold collection, combined with some rather inconclusive observations about each book’s opening and closing sentences.17 This is a somewhat cursory treatment, relying on observing that the markers of canonical separation in the Pentateuch are (a) fixed and (b) sometimes significant. The end of Numbers is one such significant marker. But it does not really follow from this that all such markers have to be significant (unless one has simply assumed the very point at issue). It is plausible, for example, that Leviticus 27 is a chapter that is not integrally related to its location in the Pentateuch: it looks rather like a supplement to the rest of the book of Leviticus. Undoubtedly the counting of the tribes is different from the style and substance of the Holiness Code, but is it any more different (or more significantly different) than Leviticus 27 is from Leviticus 26? Thus, Olson’s observations fall somewhat short of a demonstration that “the Book of Numbers” was ever a coherent focus of interpretive interest in ancient times (as against the more modest claim that one can read it as a coherent whole should one choose to). Most likely, it makes little difference how one understands the demarcation of the books either side of Numbers 1–10 (and at least arguably elsewhere in the Torah). In a rather apt phrase, John Goldingay refers here to the “permeable boundaries” of the book.18 The boundaries are permeable, to be clear, in respect of the subject matter. The convenience and time-­honored nature of these boundaries (Num. 1–36) are just that: convenient and time-­honored. What Olson’s survey actually demonstrates, contrary to its own intentions, is that most interpreters have not offered a fully focused analysis of

22  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

his chosen theme (namely, the framework of Numbers) because in fact it is not a particularly self-­evident topic to consider. Once such a question is posed, it can be answered: maybe not in only one way, as can be seen by observing the responses to Olson’s book, but nevertheless the conversation can be had. Indeed if recent literature on Numbers is any indication, the shape of the book is possibly the main focus of scholarly discussion in the book at the present time.19 But here I am merely trying to show that there is no necessity to pose the question in the first place. Why was it posed? Childs’s treatment of the canon in his hugely significant 1979 work shone the blinding light of canonical sense into a fractured and fragment-­preoccupied discipline of Old Testament studies. To this point there had been a strong preference for examining sources and traditions, sometimes even to the exclusion of asking about the finished form of the Old Testament books as we have them. Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of Childs’s approach, on which topic there is clearly much still to be said, it seems undeniable that having such questions at the very least alongside other questions must enrich the discipline, as even relatively unsympathetic critics such as John Barton have allowed.20 Of course, this was not what Childs was aiming for, but we need not resolve that point now. But why does his emphasis on the final form of the text need an accompanying emphasis on the final form of discrete book-­length units within the Old Testament as a whole? Why could the result of Childs’s work not be an entirely proper emphasis on the canon as sacred scripture without the allied need to focus on books as bearers of meaning? I think there may be two ways of answering this question. First, we consider the perspective of how Childs saw the interpretive task. Here this book-­oriented question is answered now in the perceptive analysis of Daniel Driver, that Childs’s concerns were honed in the discipline of form criticism, and that therefore the structure of individual units is a key to their meaning.21 Again, this is not wrong, in the sense of saying that such a perspective offers no insight. It may indeed be tremendously illuminating, in the sense that it offers new perspectives on the text before us, or in other words new readings of figures in the textual carpet. But what it cannot do is thereby furnish a supposedly singular key to unlock the meaning of the text.

The Figure in the Wilderness   23

Before turning to the second reason behind recent interpretive interest in “books,” one might make a further point about the historical question of whether Numbers was ever conceived of as a book. Newer pentateuchal critical perspectives, if anything, deemphasize even further the notion of Numbers as an intentional book. In the line of thinking initiated by Rolf Rendtorff and taken up by Erhard Blum and others, Numbers becomes a text designed to bring together the two nascent literary corpora of the priestly writers and the Deuteronomists. Its role was, from the start, to bridge between preexistent textual complexes, and it was not at any point a literary conception in itself.22 In the words of one textbook review of the issue: “The book of Numbers—which is not really a book, but a literary stage of the Pentateuch—has repeatedly presented scholars with massive problems . . . since it resists location within source theory.”23 Again, the point is not that the reader cannot ask about the book of Numbers, but that the book itself is not going to be a work that encodes a particular authorially intended “figure” in any case. As a result, it is not a more fundamental category than a range of other textual units one might consider. If the figures for which we seek are constructs of the textual focus we have in view, then a range of possible units and figures are plausible. To risk a mathematically inclined aphorism: in the reading of Numbers, one should utilize whatever ad hoc units and figures make the interpretive options add up. This brings us to the second reason why I think we have seen a focus on the shape of the book in recent discussion, although we will need some historical perspective to get it clear. T H E T H I R D CO N C E R N : T H E Q U E S T I O N O F G E N R E — S T R U C T U R E , T H E M E , A N D CO M M E N TA RY I N B IB LIC AL STU DIES

The best argument for looking at the book of Numbers as a unit is that it is a traditional one. From Ezra to the Enlightenment, let us say, Numbers simply was the fourth book of Moses. For those predisposed to respect the traditions of synagogue and church, this is a good argument, in principle. One need not think that there is any particular divine supervision

24  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

of the book divisions to go along with this. It has certainly never been a prominent view that whatever divine superintendence of the text there might have been (as per a doctrine of inspiration for example) has been extended in the same way to the formation of the canon or the specific matter of book division. However, if it were in fact the case that the traditional demarcation of the fourth book of Moses was hermeneutically significant, then one might expect some trace of this in the history of reception of the book in the very synagogues and churches that upheld the demarcation. Yet here there appears to be almost no evidence at all. Consider what is more or less evidence of the opposite phenomenon—disinterest in the canonical demarcation—in three different, if not unrelated, spheres. First, the New Testament itself. When Paul reads the wilderness narratives in 1 Corin­ thians 10, for example, he pays no attention to whether he is alluding to a narrative from Numbers or a verse from Exodus, and he switches between the two without hesitation. Thus 1 Corinthians 10:7 cites Exodus 32:6, while surrounding verses clearly allude to Numbers 11, 21, and 25, and elsewhere.24 Second, the classic Jewish approach to thinking theologically in dialogue with the sacred text does not attend prominently to such concerns as the “book” in view or the canonical location of one’s source text. One could spend a long time finessing this point in general terms—context is relevant, for example, and so forth—but on the level of whether “Numbers” makes any difference the point seems relatively clear.25 And third, the revival of the medieval glossa ordinaria in the form of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series26 makes clear that much of the patristic comment on verses from Numbers occurs in similarly not canonically orientated discussions—mainly in letters and homilies on other texts, as it happens. In other words: people took the text of Numbers seriously as sacred scripture, but the demarcation of the fourth book of Moses was not a significant factor in so taking it. One might venture two refinements of this point. On a practical and heuristic level, of course people would take note of it as a book. Origen offered a series of twenty-­eight homilies on Numbers. Bede wrote on particular sections of Numbers. Rabbinic literature could be organized around canonical divisions. But once one turns to the content of these works, the selection is driven by theological and interpretive concerns

The Figure in the Wilderness   25

which are part of the broader conceptualization of the world of the reader ( Jew or Christian), and not by the supposition that “the fourth book of Moses” has something specific to tell us. Thus Sifre Numbers offers “a miscellaneous reading of most of the book” but in the process omits many chapters (e.g., 1–4; 13–14): it is in itself a work very difficult (almost impossible) to describe.27 Origen dwells at length on Numbers 1–4, finding what to the modern reader may seem unlikely depths of eschatological significance in the arrangement of the twelve encamped tribes, but after five such homilies he skips straight to Numbers 11. Other chapters (most markedly Num. 16) also receive no direct attention.28 Bede’s work on Numbers is prompted by specific questions concerning particular issues.29 We may note in particular that even Calvin, the Reformation commentator on biblical books par excellence, did not write on Numbers, but on “a harmony of the four last books of Moses.”30 This was the more basic unit for him, and in turn it leads on to a further point. It may well be that the level on which one could make a case for saying that a subset of the canon is key to interpretive significance is on the level of the Torah as a whole. It is “Moses” which matters, not Numbers, in other words.31 So it is not that there is no concept of its making a difference where a text comes from, but that insofar as such a concept does appear to have mattered, it did not exist on the level of something like the book of Numbers. The result of all this is that the nature of the interpretive question about structure and theme in a biblical text is shaped significantly by the reader’s framework. Thus the question “What figures are to be discerned in a text such as the book of Numbers?” is a question that will generate its own range of answers, and these will be to varying extents helpful for the interpreter of the book. But they are unlikely to be part of any “recovery” of the role of such texts in earlier times, because these were not the questions of earlier times. The earliest record we have of a sustained attempt to read Numbers is Origen’s homilies, twenty-­eight in all, now conveniently available in an English translation.32 In his most famous homily, number 27, the list of way stations in the wilderness (Num. 33) is construed as an elaborate allegory for the stages of the Christian life, almost a kind of “Pilgrim’s Progress.” This is a tour de force of sustained reading, which even Origen

26  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

admits may seem “contrived and violently forced” to those not aware of the workings of the Hebrew language (27.13.1), and doubtless today even to those who are. One can see his approach clearly in many places. His reading of Moses’ taking a second wife in Numbers 12, for instance, sees Moses as the law, Miriam as the synagogue, and the second wife as the gentiles. The week of Miriam’s punishment (12:14–15) is the present age, after which, according to Romans 11, the synagogue will also turn to Christ (6.4.1–2). Origen’s conclusions about divine self-­revelation in the law and in Christ are varied and wide ranging. They also obviously represent a different set of interpretive priorities than those of, say, Baruch Levine’s Anchor Bible commentary on Numbers, or even those of the Christian theological reading offered by Dennis Olson in his Interpretation commentary. There is no neutral standpoint from which to ask which of these interpretive frameworks is right. Individual attempts to read texts or books bear with them their own criteria for whether they are done well. But since Origen and Olson are engaged in different pursuits, there is no single set of criteria against which we can measure them both at the same time. Or rather: each may indeed be measured against the other’s set, but this will not tell us anything particularly remarkable (or helpful). We would learn that Origen does not operate with the same kinds of historical consciousness as Olson, or that Baruch Levine does not interpret with a working doctrine of the Trinity as a hermeneutical factor . . . and one does not need hermeneutical sophistication to tell us that. My conclusion is that it is the genre of commentary itself that drives us to asking about the theology or perspective of a particular book. There was no necessary reason why the genre of commentary had to end up matching book for book, whereby a single commentary by a single author had to match a book-­length division of sacred (biblical) text, but that is largely what has happened (with the intriguing semiexception of Calvin, as we saw, and occasional recurrent oddities such as Zechariah 9–14 being paired with Malachi, or other such reconstructive arrangements). It is striking that biblical studies has been so heavily weighted toward the commentary genre in recent decades that the arrival of theological interpretation as a topic of concern has led—almost without pause for reflection—to the introduction of “theological commentary” series. Might

The Figure in the Wilderness   27

one suggest that the entirely proper concern to engage with specific texts both exegetically and theologically need not necessarily lead to the genre “commentary” as it is known today? In some ways the commentary genre risks the very kind of censure we have already seen offered by George Steiner in his analysis of the “secondary city” that swallows up the encounter with the “real” in much written work.33 Arguably the need facing wise engagement with scripture today is the need to combine critical acuity with a sense of the artistic vision and purpose of genuine theological work. Perhaps theological interpretation will lead to a loosening of the genre of “commentary” to incorporate substantive theological reflection that takes seriously the biblical text in all its technical complexity. The Brazos commentary series is probably best understood in this framework. The entry on Numbers, by David Stubbs, is in fact a very good example of this.34 Unlike some volumes in that series, his manages to hold together sustained attention to the dynamics of the text with serious and wide-­ranging theological reflection. Possibly the strengths of the book are less as commentary and more as theological essay in dialogue with Numbers. One wager of the present volume is that it is further down this path that there is a real chance of connecting the interpretive endeavor of biblical scholars with the theological heritage of the great tradition to which so-­called theological interpretation often aspires. Or again, this may be a matter which takes on different forms for different biblical books depending on the significance or otherwise of their status as discrete canonical units. Nevertheless, a goal of the present volume is to offer one model of how we might reconceive the genre of commentary in theologically engaged biblical interpretation. The result has one similarity (and probably only one) with Origen: considering in detail some passages that serve particular theological inquiries, while passing relatively swiftly over others. That my selection of focal chapters does not match Origen’s tells us, in turn, something of interest about the kinds of texts that most pointedly intersect with the reading horizons of different times and places. It has been a rather artificial exercise of the modern commentary genre to obscure that somewhat obvious point by paying more or less equal attention to all texts.35

28  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

T H E C R OW D O F W I T N E S S E S : W H O S AY S W H AT A B O U T F I G U R E S A N D N U M B E R S

Circumscribed by the conventions within which they write, modern commentators on the book of Numbers do without fail offer reflection on “what Numbers is about,” even if, as we saw, Olson was able to demonstrate with ease that the attention paid to this question is somewhat casual and unfocused. Olson divides his review of modern research on the question of the framework of Numbers into three periods, each overshadowed by particular exemplars of critical inquiry. Standing at the end of the preceding period is Keil’s work (1865)—the first sounding of what was to become a traditionalist trumpet that sought to defend the pietistic value of the text by arguing against the new perspectives of critical work. Olson’s own evaluation is that Keil seemed more concerned to refute the critics than to interpret the text.36 The same could be said of all too many subsequent works. The first era-­defining figure is Wellhausen, followed by a half century of works (1861–1912) that reflect source-­critical concerns.37 The paradigm source-­analysis was and remains George Buchanan Gray’s ICC commentary (1903) with its wondrous attention to detail and frequent expressions of despair with regard to the hope of reconstructing coherent understandings of what each source was doing.38 Second, Olson considers work in the form-­critical mold by Gunkel and his student Hugo Gressmann, whose 1914 commentary was perhaps the only fully form-­critical approach, but the influence of which was that most models of how we got the book of Numbers became altogether more complex and nuanced.39 Olson used Martin Noth to head a third phase, working under the rubric of tradition criticism (1966–84), though it is perhaps clear in retrospect that this period can equally be seen as simply an intensification and development of the second, working with various aspects of Noth’s great “themes” that bound the Pentateuch together.40 The high point of this section is found in de Vaulx’s theologically sensitive use of critical reconstruction,41 operating with an approach not unlike von Rad’s attention to the kerygmatic shaping and function of the passing down of traditions in Israel’s history. In effect, Olson himself initiates a fourth phase: one which operates in the shadow of Childs and the canonical impulse.

The Figure in the Wilderness   29

The heuristic benefits of Olson’s model of stages of modern inquiry should not be allowed to set it in stone as the one correct account of how such scholars thought they were operating. Map-­making exercises in the history of scholarship often tell us as much about the map-­makers as the scholarship. I suggest that each stage of this development is probably best understood as an addition to the previous ones rather than a replacement of them. Commentators today operate across a wide range of aspects of Olson’s classification, and there remains much lively discussion of matters of both theme and structure in Numbers. Most commentators continue to divide the book geographically, even while not always agreeing on the key division markers. Apart from the various more or less standard attempts to map the book temporally or geographically, three major proposals may be noted briefly. The first is Olson’s own view: the book of Numbers is a consciously defined unit of the Pentateuch, with the two census lists of chapters 1 and 26 being the primary structural indicators. The resulting structure of the book of Numbers concerns generational transition between those who failed to enter the promised land and those who will do so; hence Olson’s title: The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New.42 His 1996 commentary picks up the theme of continuity amidst transition, finding ongoing theological resonance from his discernment of the central theme.43 Second, the work of Won Lee offers a proposal based on the approach of “conceptual analysis” developed by his own teacher Rolf Knierim, where the “infratextual conceptual system, whose presence is implicit, is responsible for the organization of the extant text in its linguistic-­ semantic aspects.”44 The result of Lee’s conceptual clarification of what he calls “Israel’s migratory campaign” is that it is the conquest of Canaan which serves as the decisive criterion for clarifying Numbers 10:11–36:13, and, “more precisely, Israel’s failure to conquer the promised land from the south reported in chapters 13–14 is the fundamental conceptual basis.”45 This approach represents a derivative of form criticism that has in turn influenced the practice of form criticism. Thus Lee’s analysis is imported in large measure into the FOTL (Forms of the Old Testament Literature) volume on Numbers.46 Third, Mary Douglas offers a reading of Numbers informed by the concerns of anthropology, and in the process discerns a pattern of

30  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

alternating law and narrative in a twelve-­or thirteen-­step “ring” structure, an idea she develops in the light of the calendrical indications of Numbers 28–29, and in view of the Jewish lunar calendar of twelve or thirteen months: “His book would be arranged in a circle, like the circle of the seasons, the circle of the years, and like the other great poems which are known as ring compositions.”47 None of these “macro-­proposals” has persuaded a large number of people, though my own sense is that Olson’s has at least shaped the discussion even amongst those who disagree with it.48 Many commentaries still offer fairly brief and bland comments under such a heading as “theological themes” or “religious issues,” indicating a tendency to persist in finding the book to be—in a phrase attributed to Klaus Seybold—the “junk room of the priestly code.”49 For some sample efforts, one may summarize briefly: Budd sees the key issues as Israel, land, authority and its rejection.50 He also discusses questions of freedom and autonomy as part of the theological witness of the book.51 Davies thinks that the “religious contribution” of the book focuses on themes such as land, priesthood, and purity. He takes a loosely geographical approach to the book’s structure.52 For Noth: the book does not have a theme.53 Some seek to develop one or other of the macro-­proposals. Thus Ashley develops Olson’s view via a utilization of the work of Walter Brueggemann to suggest an interesting threefold structure of orientation–disorientation–new orientation, which has its three new sections beginning at 1:1, 10:10, and 22:1.54 Others aim more for a statement of overall reading intent: Numbers is a book about a journey, but it is also a book fundamentally about God;55 while Stubbs offers a reading whereby “Numbers is a book that focuses on the vocation of the people of God and the sins that constantly work to keep Israel from fulfilling it.”56 This last option seems to offer the best way forward, although it is perhaps generally offered as an attempt to capture some sort of authorially governed sense of “what the book is about.” Insofar as we can talk meaningfully about authorial intent, and insofar as we can discern what it might be in the book of Numbers, it seems entirely plausible that a list of themes would be the best we can do for grasping what the book is about. It may be significant that one recent full-­scale attempt to locate plot and/or structure in the book ends up arguing for an overarching rubric

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of “composite artistry,” which combines a range of themes in a mix of continuous and discontinuous ways.57 While presented as a thesis about the overall coherence of Numbers, the result seems strikingly to confirm that from the point of view of intentional input, there is actually rather intermittent and underdetermined structure or theme. But to return to our opening image: we might consider this text as a Persian carpet with various figures in it. What is needed is a reading that discerns some key aspect(s) of the text, remaining open to other readings, and yet seeking theological coherence with whatever broader canonical collection is in view. It is to such a theme, in a Christian context, that we shall turn in the next chapter. S U RV E Y I N G T H E T E R R A I N

Let us rehearse the four theses of this opening chapter, before glancing ahead to what follows: 1. W hat texts are about can be as meaningfully understood as a matter of reading strategy as of authorial intention. There may be reasons to prefer one or another in any given case. The pressure of the text and the role of the reader are related much as the image of the “figure” in the carpet suggests. 2. In the case of Numbers, authorial intention is complicated by the fact that the book is not a book in the sense in which readers today tend to think of books. 3. Once the unit of text is delimited, one can of course consider what themes and topics occupy the subject matter of that text. In this sense readers construct themes out of the warp and woof of the Persian carpet that is the text. I have suggested that modern commentary forces upon us the question of theme in ways not unconstructive but not altogether attuned to the traditional manner in which biblical texts were read in centuries past. 4. Commentators find the theme or selected themes of Numbers in correspondence to the structure or lack thereof which they perceive in the book.

32  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

It is time to reorient our discussion and approach the text explicitly from the position of the reader of the text, drawn back as that reader will be, time and again, to the specific nuances with which the text constrains its readers’ imaginations. In particular, since our project is one of theological interpretation, we will need to consider how the reader is shaped by theological commitments. Such a move is sometimes held to prejudge the important matters of interpretation, and to conform the text unhelpfully to prior (often theological) convictions. In the words of John Barton: “One cannot establish what the Bible means if one insists on reading it as necessarily conforming to what one already believes to be true—which is what a theological reading amounts to.”58 Such conformation, or taming, of the text, is certainly a possibility, and certain kinds of Christian reading may easily be shown to be guilty of it. However, the real work at hand is not to decide methodologically for or against theological interpretation per se, but to investigate specific texts in specific readings and evaluate whether or not theological reading is in practice what Barton says it is.59 And surely any serious theological engagement with the book of Numbers should find that the path ahead is not easy, and conforms rather little to what one already believes. In fact, divine action in the world is rarely—if ever—straightforwardly perceived. Divine intention in texts is also not straightforwardly perceived. The narratives of Numbers give up their world-­refiguring ways only cautiously, if at all, to critical engagement with texts that are consistently morally and theologically difficult. It would be easy to let one’s reading become governed by suspicion that the ways of God cannot be trusted in these texts; to suggest that the problems of the text are like Nephilim and that we are but historians of religion in their eyes. But the book of Numbers is difficult because God is difficult in the book of Numbers. Can the reader hold their nerve confronted with such difficulty? Is the promise of this “book” that one must destroy the “idols” represented by Egypt, and that these are so deeply ingrained in us that we barely see them? There are many reasons not to trust God and, derivatively, not to trust the text. All kinds of interpretation are possible should one take that path. But are there ways of construing a life-­giving figure in this particular carpet?

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The theological interpreter will press on from the first census to the second census—from the first naiveté to the second naiveté—construing the texts’ trials and tribulations as part of the purifying of the interpreter’s imagination.60 Along the way we shall doubtless see the destruction of various idols, en route to a promised land only distantly discernible in the figure in the wilderness. This collocation of hermeneutical theory and wilderness calls to mind a suitable citation to bring this opening chapter to a close; a saying or pensée that casts long and penetrating glances both backward and forward, from a master traveler through the world of texts. Hear afresh this word from Paul Ricoeur: “Beyond the desert of criticism we wish to be called again.”61

T WO

Trust and Suspicion Approaches to a Holy Text That Invites Little Approach

In the past, at different times, faithful readers have read the book of Numbers in many and various ways. But now, in these last days, or at least in the early days of the twenty-­first century, a faithful reader schooled by immersion in the great masters of suspicion—Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche—might find their reading drawn ineluctably into suspicious territory. Numbers is one parade example of a biblical book that arouses the question: Is this text not deeply problematic? Readers are pressed very quickly to the present hermeneutical horizon. It is one of the most unsatisfactory aspects of modern critical study of the book that so much can be (and has been) written that appears to sidestep the almost overwhelming challenge of the moral troubles that this text casts before us. It is hard sometimes to avoid the impression that this kind of “thin criticism,” with its relentless focus on matters of philology or geography or literary composition, manifests a scholarly denial in the face of a scriptural text that propels its interpreters out from the library and into the court of popular opinion. Surely . . . , one wants to say, surely commentators are beholden to address the hermeneutical and ethical problems of having a book like this in holy scripture? As we shall have 35

36  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

cause to note time and again, the ways in which the challenge is ducked testify to some remarkably dogged decisions about what to discuss, and they run right across the theological spectrum. This chapter offers an alternative angle of approach to the project of theological interpretation of the book of Numbers. After our text-­ oriented rehearsal of options in chapter 1, we turn now in a more focused manner to the hermeneutical processes at work. “A H O R R I F Y I N G S T R I N G O F V E RY U N LOV I N G PA S S AG E S ”

Although my own goal lies with Christian theological engagement with Numbers, it may be beneficial to start with a Jewish exemplar of wrestling with these hermeneutical questions. Christian handling of the Old/ New polarity in scripture, which will recur in the studies that follow, risks clouding the theological horizon by subsuming the moral or ethical challenge of Numbers to a theological scheme that moves on by changing the subject to Christ. Although the Old/New theological structuring of Christian scripture will be an important aspect of the present study, it is in no way intended to suggest that Jewish scripture was morally problematic but then Christians came along and resolved all the problems by appealing to a fundamentally different standard or framework. As one would imagine the apostle Paul responding to this claim: By no means! 1 A frank and quick way in to the issues is provided by Menachem Kellner’s contribution to a symposium on the problem of the land and the fate of the Canaanites in Jewish thought, suitably entitled “And Yet, the Texts Remain.”2 Indeed, in a rhetorically striking move, Kellner uses this title phrase (or variants on it) as his only and recurring subheading through the piece: in other words, no matter what one may be able to say, one always comes back to the point: “And yet, the texts remain.” Judaism, says Kellner, “is not a fundamentalist religion and . . . it reads the Hebrew Bible (not the ‘Old Testament!’) through the lenses of the rabbinic texts that greatly modify the apparent ferocity of the Bible.”3 There is then a tension between Jewish practice, focused on praying to a loving God, and the nature of the rather bloodthirsty texts that detractors like to cite. Kellner turns to the book of Numbers to illustrate: “We

Trust and Suspicion   37

find a horrifying string of very unloving passages”; and he proceeds to itemize them in a manner that reads unnervingly like the contents page of this present book. Rather disconcertingly, he then adds: “Jews read these passages every summer in the synagogue and, it is safe to say, pay almost no attention to them.” Kellner’s interest is in probing why Jews do this, rather than offering a historical or critical analysis of the texts. The answer, of course, is hermeneutical: “Thanks to the writings of the rabbinic Sages, we do not focus on these texts, we read them in a very nonliteral fashion, we say that they are no longer applicable—in other words, we background them, turn them into backdrop noise, into static, as it were, and foreground other texts.” The details of Kellner’s review of Jewish options down through the ages do not directly concern us, since he turns then to focus on the reception of the texts about the Canaanites and the seven nations to be destroyed on entering the land. While his review of Maimonides, Nahmanides, and others is illuminating, and points out pitfalls with standard attempts to marginalize the texts by way of reducing them to polemics that do not transcend their context(s), he remarks that “unless one is simply willing to say that the Torah reflects a primitive morality, we are stuck with a religious/moral problem: The texts remain.”4 His conclusion is that the most satisfying Jewish approach to these texts is in the context of recognizing that messianic hope longs for peace and for the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (cf. Isa. 11:9). Hence, insofar as the ends determine the means, it is the study of Torah—and not wars of extermination—that brings about the fulfillment of that hope. And thus: “The texts will remain, not as any sort of ideal, but as a permanent reminder of the dangers of idolatry: replacing God with humans or human artifacts.”5 Note that the shape of Kellner’s response to these texts is not that different from a Christian theological response. Historicizing (or develop­ mental) “explanations” pay too high a price in saying that the texts are effectively written off as a bad debt to times when scripture simply got it wrong. Rationalizations that seek underlying principles tend to result in arguments about how far modern cases match ancient cases, which does not seem to get to the heart of the matter. What is needed is a broader theological account where what has been received in the past is brought into theological dialogue with what is required in the present. The ancient

38  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

text remains holy scripture, but the import of that statement is factored through a theological perspective on what it means to affirm that God was speaking then and that God is still speaking in and through these texts today. Where Kellner appeals to the fulfillment of messianic hope, Christians will make some sort of christological turn. Both approaches may still be seeking to do justice to the figure of (or in) the text, rather than redrawing it as something else. This then is the theological nature of the hermeneutical task before us. We wish to engage with the book of Numbers with a theologically and critically informed imaginative seriousness, across at least the two horizons of the ancient text and its present-­day address. We will need a diverse hermeneutical tool-­kit to undertake such an inquiry, and many of those tools will have a theological element to them. In general, we shall acquire them as and when they are needed, in the specific readings of particular passages that follow. However, one hermeneutical rubric seems particularly well suited to the overall challenges of the book of Numbers: the question of the nature of a hermeneutic of suspicion that might rightly be deployed in the reading of these texts, along with the concomitant, though arguably less appreciated, hermeneutic of trust. It is, for example, one mark of a hermeneutic of suspicion to wonder how we may make the text fit with other commitments that we already hold: the framework involved is less surrender to the text, and more negotiation between the text and the world in which we live. It should be clear therefore that suspicion is not to be viewed entirely negatively. But how is one to handle suspicion—and trust—in a theologically constructive manner? My own view is that the book is written with some awareness of the dynamics of this problem, though not of course with an awareness of the particular form it takes in our suspicious age. This is not the place to rehearse theories of the book’s origin, but it does seem plausible to suppose that it was written into a contested environment where claims to priestly authority (and other especially religious forms of authority) were very much at issue.6 In this light, and put most simply, I would like to make the claim that the book of Numbers engages the reader with the question: “Can God be trusted?” As a prelude to our sustained reading of particular passages

Trust and Suspicion   39

in the chapters that follow, in this chapter I wish to explore the dialectic of trust and suspicion as it is illuminated in various ways in the book. Good theological hermeneutical thinking with regard to holy scripture is, in my judgment, always played out in dialogue between the horizons of text and reader, and this extends to the shaping of the hermeneutical models in use. In other words, just as our reading of scripture is shaped by hermeneutical perspectives, so our hermeneutical perspectives should be shaped by our reading of scripture.7 With regard to the project before us, trust and suspicion will inevitably shape our reading of Numbers, but equally the book of Numbers will shape our reading of trust and suspicion. The two remaining sections of this chapter therefore explore the hermeneutical interplay of trust and suspicion. We start with a general consideration of their role in a scripturally shaped imagination, before turning to the contribution that the book of Numbers might make to such thinking. J U N I P E R T R E E S A N D P I S TAC H I O N U T S : TRUST AND SUSPICION AS MODES OF S C R I P T U R A L   I M AG I N AT I O N

Trust and suspicion are the yeast that makes our readings rise. Too much yeast, and too much rapid rising, is usually the prelude to a fall. Too little yeast, and the words will never get off the page. Appropriate trust and appropriate suspicion, therefore, are key ingredients in the reading mix.8 Trust and suspicion in biblical interpretation should probably best be understood as modes of imaginative engagement with the biblical text. Many interpretive traditions have been stronger on either trust or suspicion, but generally without the imagination. On the one hand the dull predictability of turning up a historical or theologically orthodox trump every time the scriptural deck is cut. On the other, the relentless smoking out of motive, marginalization, or misplaced faith: every text an error, of one sort or another. It is striking to consider, in this connection, the characterization of Christianity offered by Yann Martel in his Man Booker Prize–winning Life of Pi:

40  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level, that’s creation in a frenzy. To one born in a religion where the battle for a single soul can be a relay race run over many centuries, with innumerable generations passing along the baton, the quick resolution of Christianity has a dizzying effect.9

The constant pressure to “get to the point,” to reduce the biblical text to a meaning-­bearing device, leads to a dull, flat hermeneutic. The agnostic, says Martel, “if he stays true to his reasonable self,” will, “to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.”10 And then, when Pi’s fantastic tale is told, weaving allegory around Jonah on his boat and around the fruit of the tree on his island Eden, Martel returns to the refrain of how narrative is to reshape us, as he conjures with the unverifiable, scarcely credible testimony of mighty deeds: I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.11

Might this almost be a description of aspects of the long slow flood of biblical commentary that has quietly seeped over the scriptural text over the past centuries? The unimpressive fruit of such a hermeneutic is fully grown in Richard Dawkins’s chapter on the Bible in The God Delusion.12 Here the argument boils down to (and I simplify barely at all): “Have you read this? Do you know what is in the Bible?” Those who live and work with the text may find themselves provoked to a dry smile, a recognition of familiar problematics put with a rare sound and fury. But most likely they will not sense much attempt at fresh light on the text. Rather there is an insufficient interpretive sympathy to permit proper judgment, a veri­table rush to a conclusion well signposted long before the text has even been probed or pondered. A flat and immobile story indeed. Thus far yeastless factuality. Let us add the yeast, and see what rises.

Trust and Suspicion   41

Trust in the Bible

The identical English noun and verb forms of “trust” allow us a useful ambiguity: to what extent is a hermeneutic that implicitly trusts scripture an appropriate framework for a text (or set of texts) that itself has concerns about the merits or limitations of trust? The very framing of such a question requires multidimensional evaluation. Appropriate to what? How does one evaluate the concerns that a text itself has, assuming that this is in turn a convenient hermeneutical shorthand way of saying “the concerns that emerge from reading with the grain of the text,” or what we might call, following a suggestion from Mark Allan Powell, an “expected” reading?13 The basic question of the status afforded to an “expected” reading of scripture gets right to the heart of many important disputes about biblical hermeneutics, especially in the domain of ideological (or, perhaps more helpfully, “ethical”) criticism of biblical texts. What is one to make of such a concern? Is some aspect of the job of biblical hermeneutics, rightly speaking, to render value judgments on what one discovers in the text? There is a long and honorable tradition of thinking otherwise, and those who afford some weight to the traditions of the church might be appropriately reluctant to abandon it without asking some serious questions. This tradition embraces the slow and patient hermeneutical task of seeking to render coherence in ancient and strange texts. If the text is inherently trustworthy, then the interpreter has the task of seeking a way of reading it that allows its voice to emerge in and through its surface features, and to say what it would want its readers to hear. Again this is shorthand. When we talk of what a text “wants” someone to hear, in the case of biblical texts, we must mean something like “what its authors, transmitters through tradition, redactors, and canoni­ cal compilers would have wanted readers to hear.” There is of course no reason to suppose, either in theory or in practice, that they all had the same communicative aims in mind at various points along this trajectory. Further, we might also mean to include here what the God of the biblical tradition wants to communicate, though perhaps this too is not always going to be a fixed message. Nevertheless, all this indeterminacy aside, and the hard graft of exegesis ahead, this is a hermeneutical framework

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that implicitly presupposes that once one gets to where the text is doing its work, it will prove to have been a worthwhile journey. On this understanding, the interpreter’s job is memorably described by C. S. Lewis as first of all “surrender”: The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)14

Not for the only time, one might suggest, Lewis exaggerates: after all there must be some sort of range of moral judgments in place (at least provisionally) before one is willing to go as far as “surrender” to the persuasive pull of a work of art. But still this is a helpful point about the nature of one’s engagement once willing to sit before the work in question. We shall symbolize this approach to the text not with C. S. Lewis, but with an image drawn from a famous story about T. S. Eliot, recounted by someone who heard him questioned as to the meaning of a certain line from his Ash Wednesday: Eliot could be less than helpful if one tried to “explicate” him. In 1929 there was a meeting of the Oxford Poetry Club at which he was the guest of honour. . . . An undergraduate asked him: “Please, sir, what do you mean by the line: Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree?” Eliot looked at him and said: “I mean, Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree.”15

Eliot seems to want his reader to lean their weight entirely on the text, and not to replace that text with some functionally equivalent explanation that will do the work of rerendering his own image in a different conceptual framework. Does it help if one knows what a juniper tree is? In some ways, perhaps. Arguably the job of the critic is to furnish just sufficient information about juniper trees, their desert-­like habitat and long spindly reach, their appearance of fruit which looks good to eat, especially in context, and so forth, to enable the reader to come back to the text afresh,

Trust and Suspicion   43

and see with a new clarity the icy poise of this dry scene. Eliot’s readers, in this case, are about to read of God asking, “Shall these bones live?,” as the narrator’s own body, devoured by the “satiated” leopards, is brought into focus.16 This is scene setting for an exploration of repentance, and Ash Wednesday will not do its work if we are still stuck at asking about the juniper tree. Trust the text, Eliot seems to say, and it will only then be free to go about its various and engrossing tasks.17 John Barton, citing the above story, turns its focus upon the Bible thus: Taking a leaf out of Eliot’s book, we may say that the meaning of “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth . . .” is “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth . . .”18

But this is a somewhat interesting example to pick, albeit that Barton is not in fact in the process of commending this as the be-­all and end-­all of biblical hermeneutics. Readers of Genesis 1:1 will know that already there are multiple interpretive options, as a quick comparison of a range of translations can verify.19 Five words into the Hebrew text, and already variant possibilities are being propelled forward in their varied and not altogether harmonious ways, toward wider readings that produce others, each according to its kind; and these beget commentary, each according to its kind, and so on through all succeeding generations. So to say that one approaches the text with trust, and that the juniper tree is a juniper tree, is not by any means to foreclose on the need for interpretation or on the sifting of commentary. To read any biblical text alongside almost any other biblical text is already to enter a world requiring some form of imaginative engagement if one is to see the way the text is at work. Even to read with imaginative sympathy, then, is a statement of intent rather than a prescription of conclusions. Trust opens up worlds in front of the text, many of which are not well seen when one reads at speed, when one reduces Christianity to a religion in a rush, with sacred scriptures of yeastless factuality. As for trust within the Bible, a wealth of material suggests that trust is a virtue, which will lead the reader on straight paths (e.g., Prov. 3:5–6), through to the great biblical narrative about trust that occurs

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in Hezekiah’s showdown with the Rabshakeh at the wall during the Assyrian siege of 701 BC (2 Kings 18–19). If ever a narrative wanted to pin its reader against the wall and ask where they place their trust, that is the one.20 Suspicion in/of the Bible

Trust, however, is not the only mode of imagination, and the seeds of its shadow side, suspicion, are already present in the Hezekiah narrative in 2 Kings. The hermeneutics of suspicion are better known than the hermeneutics of trust. I have argued elsewhere that this is partly because trust usually operates as a default setting for readers until problematized by the arrival of grounds for suspicion, and once that hermeneutical conscientization has taken place, all the focus is then on suspicion, rather than the trust that facilitated it.21 For suspicion to have its day, we need to ask whether “trust” can sometimes be an inappropriate form of credulity. Which brings us to the pistachio nuts, the image with which Voltaire ends his famous Candide, a book tellingly given the alternate title “Optimism.” In the wake of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Voltaire assaults Leibniz’s idea that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, by inventing the character of Dr. Pangloss, the tutor of the Baroness’s household, who teaches “metaphysico-­theologico-­cosmo-­cod-­ology,” or in other words, a theory of everything. All duly goes wrong, repeatedly, disastrously, and batheti­ cally, before Pangloss concludes by pointing out the awful deaths of various Old Testament kings (and others more recent), concluding that it is a good thing that Candide ended up neither rich nor of high rank. And thus: All events form a chain in the best of all possible worlds. For in the end, if you had not been given a good kick up the backside and chased out of the beautiful castle for loving Miss Cunégonde, and if you hadn’t been subjected to the Inquisition, and if you hadn’t wandered about America on foot, and if you hadn’t dealt the Baron a good blow with your sword, and if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from that fine country of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be here now eating candied citron and pistachio nuts.22

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Throughout the tale Voltaire never once lets up on his dual goal of painting the brightest of all possible pictures while all the while communicating the darkest of all possible analyses, and philosophers who have come after him may have wanted to offer exactly the same analysis but have never achieved half its elegance and depth. Candied citron and pistachio nuts: can we not ask whether some of the Old Testament characters just listed by Pangloss (Eglon, Absalom, Nadab, and so on) might serve to make wary the credulous reader of the biblical narrative and suggest that a hermeneutic of suspicion might be justified by the nature of the text itself ? In point of fact very few biblical narratives explicitly foreground issues of suspicion. Even where suspicion is present (such as with the serpent’s interaction with Eve in Gen. 3:1) there is not much that one can say about it above and beyond the fundamental point that it is the denial of—or countermeasure against—trust. But the book of Numbers contains just such a focused narrative, arguably a paradigm text of suspicion in the whole Old Testament. And in turn, it offers a far-­reaching narrative account of trust and its failings as the main part of its tale unfolds. So in the remainder of this chapter, I offer a brief overview of this theme as it is handled in the larger part of the book. In the process, I wager, we are in turn invited to refine the hermeneutical lens through which we read the book. SUSPICION AND TRUST IN THE BOOK OF NUMBERS The Woman Suspected of Adultery (Numbers 5)

The clearest narrative analysis of suspicion in the whole Old Testament, I suggest, is the strange story of Numbers 5:11–31, the startling and problematic legislation concerning a jealous husband who suspects his wife of adultery. This text is often referred to as the sotah text, from the verb for “turning” (sth), since the woman concerned is one who is suspected of “turning aside” or “going astray.” The text in fact incorporates two parallel scenarios, as a careful reading of verse 14 indicates: the spirit of jealousy may rush upon the man either because his wife has been unfaithful or

46  THEOLOGIC AL HERMENEUTICS AND THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

because he is simply jealous of her (though she is in fact innocent). In either case, he is to take her before the priest, who shall make her swear a curse, which is then written down and dipped into a mysterious drink (“the water of bitterness,” v. 24),23 which is mixed also with dust from the tabernacle floor (v. 17). The logic of the passage is that if she is innocent then nothing will happen as a result of this ordeal (“she shall be immune and be able to conceive children,” v. 28), but if she is guilty, she will suffer “bitter pain, and her womb shall discharge, [and] her uterus drop” (v. 27). The passage ends by saying that the man will suffer no penalty for bringing any unjustified charge should she turn out to be innocent. Few texts in the whole of scripture are as difficult as this. I have written elsewhere on the various hermeneutical issues at stake in this passage and in most attempts to interpret it, so shall restrict myself to a brief summary of points of relevance to our present task.24 Most commentary devolves quickly (and understandably) to gender-­ sensitized considerations. Thus Martin Noth, not a commentator noted for his lightness of touch, closes his account with: “There is no indication of any punishment for the man who, in the case of the woman’s being innocent, has entertained, out of ‘jealousy,’ an unjustified suspicion (v. 14b); perhaps he simply went free.”25 Feminist interpreters are (rightly, I would say) deeply troubled by this text. The passage serves as a “case history” of interpretation in the anthology Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, edited by Alice Bach,26 and Bach herself offers as strong an account as a feminist will likely be able to manage concerning how one might read this “glass half empty” text as a “glass half full” one. The outcome, she suggests, is that the text “reflects the potency of male imaginings,” and all a reader can do is jump from this to the recognition that there are other ways of looking at things than the supposedly universal or normative male perspective herein assumed. At best, perhaps, the awfulness of the procedure described in Numbers 5 might backfire on the male perspective, and allow the female voice to emerge in critique.27 Numbers 5 provokes even self-­described evangelical commentators to take up a certain critical distance from the text. “Modern practice of the ordeal would obviously be indefensible,” says Budd; Ashley talks about “the unjust treatment of women that this passage prescribes”; Bellinger

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concludes that in comparison to defenses of the procedure, “a more honest approach to this text is to admit the gender inequity here” and search elsewhere for a more “appropriate” gender perspective.28 Yet even in this interpretive tradition a focus on background issues remains striking, as in Ronald Allen’s “The text is of special interest to those who search for what they believe to be remnants of primitive rites within the books of Moses.”29 Also much in evidence in this approach is the strong desire to find enduring theological value in the framework of judgments that go to make up the case. Thus Ashley includes in his discussion the thought that the limitation to the punishment of any woman involved here is “an operation of divine grace”;30 Irvin, who acknowledges that the passage seems “peculiar and harsh,” ends up making the deadpan remark that “this law must have been reassuring to women in those days”;31 and perhaps the most startling example, a little overstated I think, is Gordon Wenham’s comment that “Numbers 5, Paul and Revelation make the same point: unfaithfulness in marriage is incompatible with membership of the people of God.”32 Even so, one notes a certain caution, among such relatively conservative Christian commentators, about simply appropriating the presenting intentions of this text. It is one of the oddities of this particular text and its reception that in fact here, where one might expect to find feminists at their most strident in denouncing the text, one encounters instead a whole raft of feminist approaches wondering what to do with this passage without simply abandoning it.33 My own view is that this text—as a contribution to the canonical book of Numbers—is in fact fundamentally about the problem of unchecked suspicion rather than gender.34 In other words, there are reasons to suspect that the reader (of Numbers) is supposed to be suspicious of this passage.35 It is to be noted that the man’s accusation of the woman can proceed without witnesses, which marks the text out as unusual in the Old Testament; that the ritual described looks more like ancient quasi-­magical practices than any other Old Testament text; and that the result of the ritual—the forced abortion—is self-­evidently deeply problematic within the overall scriptural framework. Such observations should make the reader wary. But furthermore, the problem foregrounded in this text, which is self-­described as a “law of jealousy” (e.g., v. 29), simply is suspicion.36

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This links in strikingly with the prominence of the theme of trust (and the disastrous failure to trust) that recurs at key moments in the book of Numbers, as we shall see presently. My own conclusion: it is a mistake to read this text as restricting a privilege of suspicion to men. Rather it is the according to men of a disastrous prerogative. Readers are invited to be suspicious of this text since it requires them to evaluate untrammeled suspicion. In short, this unusual text celebrates the untamed exercise of suspicion, in ways that are morally and theologically problematic, and yet also canonically evaluated as inadequate.37 Sometimes suspicion is the appropriate mode of engagement. The People Who Struggle to Trust (Numbers 14, 20)

If the foregoing analysis has merit, then readers of the canonical book of Numbers may be alerted to questions of trust or its breakdown as they come to the chapters that make up the core narratives around the failure to enter the land and the resultant wandering in the wilderness. Two pivotal moments in these chapters do indeed turn on questions of (the failure of ) trust. The first key text is the spies’ report in chapters 13–14. This passage will merit a full consideration in a later chapter.38 Won Lee even suggests that it is the failure to conquer the land, related in these chapters, that generates the entire structure of Numbers 10–36.39 One need not go quite so far to take this text with full seriousness. The basic story of chapters 13–14 is straightforward: the spies go in to spy out the land. They discover that it is a land overflowing with grapes and pomegranates (13:23), which they report as milk and honey (13:27), but they claim that the land is fortified and populated by strong people (13:28). The conclusion: they are themselves like grasshoppers in the eyes of the Nephilim (13:33). In the argument and soul-­searching that follow this defeatist report, YHWH speaks to Moses: “How long will this people despise me?” (or, as in the NIV, “treat me with contempt?”), followed by we’ad-­ānāh lo’-­ya’amînu bî—“And how long will they refuse to believe in me?” (14:11). Note the crux of the matter in the divine speech: the refusal to believe, or trust (the hiphil use of he’emin),40 that propels the narrative in its new direction, away from the land to come.

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Earlier, in chapter 12, Moses was singled out as “entrusted” with all God’s house—a niphal participial version of the same verb (ne’eman, 12:7). Numbers works out its relationships between God, Moses, and the people in theologically suggestive ways with regard to trust. The second focal text is the story of the water in the wilderness, in chapter 20, again to be considered in more detail at the appropriate point. Here, subsequent to the death of Miriam and the discovery that there is no water (20:1), Moses and Aaron attempt to satisfy the quarreling people by drawing water from the rock. As is well known, Moses strikes the rock twice (v. 11), and the congregation all drink, along with all their livestock. However, for Moses the outcome is far less happy. God announces to the two leaders: “Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I am giving them” (v. 12). It is the same word for “trust,” now in plural form, which is used here (the hiphil second-­person plural he’emantem). As we shall consider in due course, the passage does not tell us what Moses has done wrong, but it does say that, whatever else it was, it was at heart a failure “to show [God’s] holiness before the eyes of the Israelites.” Perhaps this is what the passage intends us to understand as the essence of not trusting God? But in any case, there is an interesting hermeneutical function of the underdetermination of the text here. The careful reader is led to wonder what counts as failure to trust, or failure to show God as holy. Since the text does not tell us, but only says that it was enough to exclude Moses from the land, the reader is left to wonder in what sense they might be guilty of the same lack of trust. Underdetermined texts such as this can draw the reader in to self-­examination. Does the reader trust God? More precisely: What is the reader doing that may or may not count as trusting God? Or as showing God’s holiness? Perhaps the most that can be sustained here by way of claiming an appropriate reading strategy for the book of Numbers is to claim that its central section lends itself to this theme.41 But arguably certain features of the earlier and later chapters continue to invite this line of thinking for the book as a whole, even while we note that there need be no special reason why the limits of Numbers 1–36 should be the precise text at stake in describing this theme. In short, one way of reading the book, in our current situation, is focused around the dialectic of trust and suspicion as

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this weaves its way through the book. The book asks such a reader: “Do you trust God?”—frequently by way of negotiating the claims of differing construals of divine activity, but on occasion (and significantly) in the more direct manner we have been considering. Overall, the “figure” outlined here may best be understood as the furnishing of the tools of suspicion and retrieval within the narrative of Israel, suitably ordered in the broader economy of life before God within which the book of Numbers takes its (canonical) place. This is to be contrasted with those varieties of hermeneutical suspicion that import their value judgments and substantive concerns from elsewhere (usually from the modern world, or indeed the postmodern one). There is inevitably and rightly a dialogue to be had between those hermeneutical approaches brought to the text and those derived from the text, and indeed one might say, in a case such as this, that that dialogue reflects a stimulus coming in large part from the current interpretive context rather than deduced—at least initially—from the text. But still there remains an important difference between a hermeneutical perspective overlaid on a text without regard to its congruence with the text’s concerns and one which, even if stimulated by the readers’ context(s), turns out to illuminate matters already at work in the text’s imagined world. Theologically inclined biblical scholarship has much to learn here from Garrett Green’s project to pursue “a Christian theology of suspicion and trust” in his book Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination.42 Green’s own resourcing of such a Christian theology points to the cross: away from general hermeneutical concerns with history, fact, or morality, and toward “a hermeneutics whose suspicion stems from an underlying trust in the crucified Messiah.”43 One drawback of his own account is its lack of engagement with actual biblical texts, especially any real awareness of the particular issues raised by Christian theological concerns with Old Testament texts. Nevertheless, theologically speaking, the substantive concern with suspicion and trust that we have rehearsed in the book of Numbers lends itself to figural appropriation in a Christian frame of reference. It will remain to be seen how far such a reading offers genuine insight as we proceed in more detail through the book. Finally, on this point, the “figure” of trust and suspicion is not put forward as the solitary key to what the book is about. In due course as we

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work through the scriptural text in the chapters to come, we shall encounter other far-­reaching and persistent thematic emphases that in turn can also shape the hermeneutical processes at work. In our longer study of Numbers 13–14 below we will explore questions of how to construe the events (and in turn the texts) that play out before our eyes: what can be seen with the eyes of faith? This too will reflect back insight into the theological hermeneutics that permit the reading in the first place. A third emphasis will be blessing: the nature of blessing in this intermittently priestly text, and the nature of the blessing that the text might offer its readers. We will encounter this in various places, before bringing it into focus in our own concluding chapter with reference especially to Numbers 6:22–27 and Numbers 22–24. Other themes come into focus in other texts, as was explored briefly in the introduction to our own study. The reader formed by the book of Numbers will be alert to much more than trust and suspicion, without a doubt. Even so, taking trust and suspicion as one overarching rubric remains a constructive initial orientation. A N D S O TO T H E T E X T . . .

On a bad day, hermeneutics is the art of endlessly deferring the moment of interpretation. With perhaps a nod in the direction of Schleiermacher’s original treatment of hermeneutics by way of a series of aphoristic remarks, Jeffrey Stout has offered two (uncomfortably) striking ways of making the point, characterizing much of the apologetic of modern theology as “endless methodological foreplay,”44 and remarking that “preoccupation with method is like clearing your throat: it can go on for only so long before you lose your audience.”45 But now our throat is as cleared as it needs to be. It is time to turn to the text proper, though with due attention to the need not to foreclose on one or the other of our modes of imaginative engagement: just as suspicion presupposed trust, so trust presupposes suspicion, or at least their respective possibilities and potentials. We arrive at the “double” hermeneutic so famously characterized by Paul Ricoeur: “Hermeneutics seems to me to be animated by this double motivation: willingness to suspect, willingness to listen; vow of rigor, vow of obedience.”46 Part of the purpose

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of the present study is to bridge the gap between those who accept this point and those who write commentary on the biblical text. Much more could be said in preparation for our journey through the book. For example, one key issue that arguably deserves prior attention is the interplay of narrative and nonnarrative sections of the book of Numbers and the question of what is at stake in mainly offering readings of the narratives in what follows. I choose instead to offer extended reflection on this in chapter 5 below, where we come to the first interruption in the reading(s) offered: that of the collection of various legal rulings in Numbers 15, just before the story of Korah’s rebellion (Num. 16). Arguably one could benefit from a preemptive rationale for deviating from the canonical sequencing of the finished book, but as discussed already, that book is not the focal unit of the present treatment, and the analysis of Numbers 15–16 that will occur later will show why it is attention to the specifics of Numbers and its collected texts that pulls the reader away from a need to take every chapter in (canonical) turn. In any case, the gravitational pull of foreplay or throat-­clearing is at this point to be resisted, for better or worse. In fact, one of the intriguing insights of the beginning of Numbers 11 in its role of following on from the epic preparations of chapters 1–10, to which we shall turn in a moment, is that no amount of peaceful preparation—no amount of setting up the hermeneutical camp—will ensure smooth progress once one is under way in the trials and tribu­ la­tions of actually reading the text. Thus, just as the present chapter has incorporated some of the substance and texture of Numbers into its account of hermeneutical approaches to the text, so subsequent chapters will incorporate the ongoing refinement and articulation of hermeneutical reflection into the practices of reading the text. We therefore move not from prolegomena to exegesis, but from one to another vantage point on the single integrated task of reading-­the-­ biblical-­text-­in-­theological-­engagement with the God to whom both the text and its present-­day reading bear witness. A long time ago, in a wilderness far, far away . . .

THREE

“Fraught with Background” Toward Ascriptive Realism and Figural Reading (Numbers 10–12)

The Hebrew text of Numbers 10:35–36, the so-­called song of the ark, is marked off or bracketed in the manuscript tradition by two inverted nun’s, repeated upside-­down letter n’s, which make it clear that this is some kind of transition point in the progress of the book’s unfolding tale. We shall come to its specifics below, but the single point to make here is that the text itself thus appears to indicate a transitional break. In fact, our initial point of interest lies on the other side of that break, at the beginning of Numbers 11. Here we have another small and, at least in some ways, self-­contained text. Readers will always access it en route from the story of breaking camp in chapter 10, which in turn completes and moves beyond the detailed account of the camp in chapters 1–10, to the narratives of wilderness wandering and complaint that follow. But Numbers 11:1–3 stands as a strange but thematically significant interlude, in which the lack of detail underscores its schematic nature. This brief passage provokes two responses in the present chapter. First it offers a way in to our consideration of these initial narrative chapters in the book, and in due course allows us to draw some pertinent observations 53

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about the book’s opening and set our sights on the journey to come. Numbers 10–12 offers a certain kind of rich characterization of the nature of these narratives: engaged with the inseparable mix of the positive and the negative, of the long-­term perspective and the short-­term troubles, and depicting a people moving rapidly toward complaint and disillusionment. Second, and of more overarching significance for our own particular project, it triggers a turn to a mode of reading that is appropriate to the underdetermined nature of this schematic short narrative. That mode of reading will be explored as a figural and ascriptive commitment to realism, though “figural,” “ascriptive,” and “realism” are all terms that will need defining as we go, and as we observe how such theological reading implicates the reader in a journey that has theological, hermeneutical, and transformative dimensions. N U M B E R S 11:1–3 — A R E A L I S T I C OV E RV I E W

This three-­verse cameo serves as a generic description characterizing the people in the wilderness. It offers in miniature a portrait of all that is to come: human complaint, divine anger, intercession, and a resolution of sorts. As if to suggest that this is offered in mainly schematic terms, there is little attempt to locate these dynamics in a particular time or place. The place named in verse 3, “Taberah” (“burning”), is less of a reference point in the context of reading Numbers 11, and more a way of characterizing the story being told. It is an otherwise unknown place in any case.1 Scholarly attempts to locate it with reference to the wilderness itinerary of chapter 33, or in other historical-­geographic terms, engage the text unhelpfully as a puzzle of historical description. As Angela Roskop has shown, that is not the most helpful approach to reading the geographical markers of the text in general, and in this case there is no external data to complicate matters.2 Numbers 11:1–3 sets out instead a character portrait of the key relationships that will occupy the next section of the book. It highlights questions concerning the triangle of relationships between God, Moses, and the people. These first three verses offer a benchmark against which to read the narrative in the rest of Numbers 11, and in some ways the next

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several chapters. It is instructive to compare the resulting two parts of the chapter, unequal in length but marked by striking structural similarities: People grumble God is angry Moses is caught in the middle “So that place was called . . .”

11:1 11:1 11:2 11:3

11:4–6 11:10 11:11–15 11:34

Obviously there is a lot more material in verses 4–35, but its plot outline corresponds. What this little table does not indicate is that the concluding phrasing is rare in Numbers,3 marking these two verses out as a pair. Not only does each draw its section of the narrative to a close, but the parallelism points toward the function of the opening mininarrative as a kind of blueprint for what is to come. Within the first few words, complaining is in view, and it will remain so for some time. The specific wilderness vocabulary of “murmuring” or “grumbling” (the verb lun), common in Exodus 15–17 and to reappear in chapters 14–17 below, is absent in Numbers 11, though the thrust of the passage is largely comparable with it. So for example the Septuagint translation uses the same verbs in Numbers 11 as in the other murmuring passages.4 The actual wording of 11:1 uses the rare verb ’nn, in a construction most likely to mean “the people were like those who complain about evil.”5 So the people whose preparations have been explored at length in chapters 1–10 are not slow to call attention to their misfortune, or hardship (ra’). The narrator is likewise not slow to call attention to the divine anger it provokes, and then immediately to Moses’ effective intercession. The fire abates, and gives its name to the place where all this happened. The text does not invite moralizing along the line of “How could they complain?” or “Let us make sure we do not complain.” It gives no information about the reasons behind the complaint or the circumstances which occasioned it, as if to ensure that we do not begin our reading of these narratives by getting lost in details. If anything it is, typically of the Old Testament, an antimoralizing text: people do complain, God does get angry, prayer can make a difference. These are factors of the world in which the reader lives. It is no use wishing that one lived in a

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different world, or that setting up the camp properly would guarantee that all would go well with God’s people. Evidently it did not and does not. In this world such guarantees are not available: no matter how remarkable the divine initiative, there is always shortfall in the human response. The rest of Numbers will certainly bear out such a claim. Toward a Realistic and Ascriptive Reading

Before we move on to those more wide-­ranging narratives, there is an important hermeneutical point already at stake in how these three verses function. Reading them on their own terms, as just outlined, draws the reader to their ascriptive function. This is an important—if not widely understood—category, and it is worth mapping it carefully for the sake of what follows. Descriptive narratives describe what happened (or what is happening): their function is to communicate the world as it would be found by an observer. All descriptions are thus to some greater or lesser extent observer dependent, and much ink can be and has been spilled in biblical studies on assessing the relative merits of the Bible’s various descriptive achievements in connection with matters of history and ideological commitment. Fundamentally, however, descriptive narrative makes the text (the “script” in question in “descriptive”) subservient to the world as the primary object of investigation, and so “what happened” becomes significant for our reading of the text. This could conceivably be called “world-­to-­word” hermeneutics, and has indeed been so called by those interested in the various performative dimensions of biblical texts, but in fact this way of putting the matter obscures the key conceptualities, as we shall see, because the “world” in question is precisely the point at issue. Ascriptive narratives ascribe what happens to a logically different kind of world, what J. R. R. Tolkien felicitously called a “secondary world.” The secondary world is the result of an author’s “sub-­creation”: “Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter.”6 Tolkien’s interest lay along particular fantasy-­oriented lines that need not concern us here.7 Suffice it to say that on such an understanding, narratives are occupied with the work not of fundamentally describing the world as it was, but ascribing to a secondary world the key qualities,

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characteristics, and evaluations that are urged upon the reader, even while the secondary world looks like and functions as the one in which we (author and reader both) live. The resultant question, then, is whether biblical narratives are best read as ascriptive or as descriptive narratives. Here we turn to Hans Frei for the argument that in the past, at least before the rise of historical consciousness in the Western world, this question would not have occurred to the average reader of holy scripture.8 As Frei affirmed, “a realistic or history-­like (though not necessarily historical) element is a feature, as obvious as it is important, of many of the biblical narratives that went into the making of Christian belief.”9 But the confusion of “history-­like” and “historical”—once these are understood as two logically distinct categories—is different from the prior assumption that there was only one real world and that the biblical text referred to it. In attempting to articulate the precise difference at stake, Frei parses “history-­likeness” as relating to the text’s “literal meaning,” and “history” as to its “ostensive reference.”10 The former, relating to “history-­likeness” and “literal meaning,” is what he has in view in the above-­quoted affirmation concerning “realistic narrative,” and it is the subject of the positive aspects of his inquiry into biblical hermeneutics. There is a whole industry of explorations of how all this worked out in Frei’s own later work, or in the work of those influenced by him.11 For now it is enough to operate with the simple (indeed simplified) but crucial distinction between reality, under which we might gather up all that is true about the world in which we live, and history, which is the account of all that happens. What Frei affirms is that reality is history-­ like. In turn, realistic narrative looks like historical narrative. But realistic narrative’s relationship to the world of history is fundamentally reversed: rather than describing that primary world, it is ascribing the primary world’s features to a secondary world, which in turn exists for the purposes of helping us to reimagine our primary world more truthfully. Frei only comes later to use the language of ascription as opposed to description. It is not in his account in Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, but it does prove to be precise and illuminating in showing what is at stake.12 To summarize, then: one may adopt the classic Christian affirmation of the truthfulness of biblical narrative as a claim about its realistic nature.

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This undoubtedly implicates a Bible reader in all sorts of judgments about history—about what happened—and in turn arguments about the historical truth of the biblical narrative depend upon the judgments one makes in going down that particular hermeneutical road. But for as long as one is primarily engaged in the activity of trying to read the biblical text in order to engage with the truth to which it witnesses, it is the reality of the text, and not its historical reference, that is really at issue. My shorthand for this whole approach to biblical narrative is that it is concerned with a realistic and ascriptive reading. The next few paragraphs of caveats and clarifications may be skipped by those who wish at this point to move on to a realistic and ascriptive reading of Numbers. A whole interlocking network of hermeneutical issues revolves around Frei’s point, even if it remains something of a minority report in current biblical studies. I consider seven such issues, in a loosely chiastic arrangement, as follows. First, it is an approach to biblical narrative that need judge neither for nor against historical “accuracy”—the scare quotes around which are to indicate that part of what is at stake is the question of what counts as “accuracy.” But in principle one could conclude that the narrative does report what happened (or does not) and still aspire to read it ascriptively. Second, the exercise of historical imagination is essential to the disciplined reading of biblical texts, precisely because they are “history-­like.” Aspects of historical-­critical enquiry therefore remain ineluctably bound up with an ascriptive realist approach to the text. Third, the troublesome word “literal” might constructively be sorted into two categories: literal-­literary, referring to the real world accessed only in the narrative itself; and literal-­factual, referring to the historical world behind the narrative. No end of confusion in biblical studies has derived from these two logically distinct (though in practice overlapping) categories being taken as one. As James Barr pointed out in many different places, expressed concerns with reading the Bible “literally” are often about reading it with reference to factuality.13 Fourth, though this point really lies along a different trajectory, it is not a useful Christian theological response to Frei to say that Christian interpretation relies upon historical reference with regard to Jesus’ resurrection, in some form of dependence on 1 Corinthians 15 (especially vv.

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1, 3–5, and 13–15), and that therefore Christians go down this ascriptive route at too high a price.14 One need not agree with Frei’s handling of the resurrection narratives necessarily to see that the relationship between divine action in the resurrection and the rest of human history is not necessarily a paradigm for understanding biblical narratives. Obviously this point is what motivates Karl Barth to see the resurrection as a real event but not straightforwardly a historical one. Frei of course agrees with Barth: indeed in some sense his whole project here is to fill in the hermeneutical gaps in Barth’s theological account of reality. It is worth having a full discussion of that project, and one need not doubt that Christian theologians will come down in a range of contrasting evaluations of it, but it is not overly problematic to take Frei’s account of ascriptive realism and ally it to a belief in a historical resurrection if one wishes to do so. Fifth, and to return to the issues closer to hand in our reading of the Old Testament, one of the guiding lights of Frei’s approach to biblical narrative is Erich Auerbach, and in particular his famous reading of Genesis 22, which occurs in “Odysseus’ Scar,” the opening chapter of his hugely pertinent literary study Mimesis.15 Auerbach offers another range of ways of putting the core issues, most notably by saying that—in our terms—realistic stories are “fraught with background,” or in other words that they conjure up depths of character and questions of judgment that are demanded of the reader in ways that flat and on-­the-­surface narratives (for which he adopts Homer as parade example) do not. We shall return to this understanding at the end of our reading of Numbers 10–12. Sixth, Frei notes that the eclipse of biblical narrative that he relates is tied precisely to the collapse of figural interpretation: the two are related as opposite sides of the same coin. In the context of the present study, it is therefore of a piece with his analysis that our own interests lie in a figural reading of the book of Numbers. And seventh, to be clear, my own view is that much of what is related in the book of Numbers probably does correspond to some degree or other with events that did happen in the wilderness. But how much and how precisely we shall never know, and more to the point, do not need to know in order to read the book. Such concerns will therefore remain properly (i.e., theologically) marginalized in the readings that follow.

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The (In-­)Significance of Time in Numbers

A good example of the usefulness of this category of “ascription” may be considered in connection with Numbers’ relatively light use of temporal markers. Apart from relative indicators such as “three days’ journey” or “while they were at . . . ,” only a few key moments orient the reader with respect to time. They are all dated according to a scheme that measures from the year the Israelites came out of Egypt. In the list that follows I standardize the variant forms in which such dates are given. Putting the list in chronological order gives us the following: The 1st year after the exodus 1st month/15th day original exodus (recalled in 33:3) The 2nd year after the exodus 1st month/1st day completion of tabernacle (7:1; cf. Exod. 40:17) 1st month regulations for passover (9:1) 2nd month/1st day beginning of book (1:1; 1:18) 2nd month/20th day setting out into the wilderness (10:11) An indeterminate year 1st month

arrival in Kadesh (and death of Miriam) (20:1)16

The 40th year after the exodus 40 years given as time period of wandering (14:34; 32:13) 5th month/1st day death of Aaron (33:38)—narrated in 20:28 [11th month/1st day Moses’ speeches in Deuteronomy (Deut. 1:3)]

Two things may be noted about this, just reading at face value. First, there is clearly an oddity with the divine speech to Moses at 9:1 taking place before the one described in 1:1, an oddity that might be described in terms of different sources (under one interpretive paradigm), or disinterest

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in chronology (which seems a little unlikely, given the specific nature of these notices), or as a result of the growth of the text through various stages.17 More strikingly, though, once the Israelites get under way in 10:11, there is very little by way of chronological marking. The narrative pursues a path to the promised land up until chapter 14, at which point the result of failing to enter the land is said to be forty years in the wilderness. In fact, remarkably little detail is given of these forty years, with the long list of places visited in chapter 33 perhaps being an indication that this was a nomadic forty years rather than a falling back to some other habitat for the duration. If Aaron’s death at 20:28 is to be understood as indicating that the narrative has reached its fortieth year by chapter 20, then the intervening six chapters have covered 38 years, with very few incidents actually to be located therein. Attempts to locate a structure of the book of Numbers dependent upon time markers are therefore unlikely to be illuminating. In a discussion of the absence of a year indication at 20:1, Mark Smith suggests that this is a deliberately “partial” reference. It shifts the frame of reference toward a geographical demarcation of the book. Thus while 20:1 (“in the first month”) stands in apposition to 7:1 (the “earliest” point in the book) in terms of chronology, it stands even more in apposition to 9:1 in terms of geography (albeit with chronological indicators): the wilderness of Sinai contrasted with the wilderness of Zin.18 However, what should be emphasized in this discussion is that such mapping exercises relate to the world as it is drawn out ascriptively in these texts.19 No further attempt will be made, nor is it necessary, to inquire as to when the events portrayed in these texts might have taken place. In this we are following the lead of the text, which invites us to locate them only with respect to the exodus, and not to further external reference points. The book is not trying to measure time as per modern interests in dating events in the world. The interpretive significance of its chronological scheme probably lies more simply in the symbolic fullness of the forty-­year period in the wilderness. Indeed, part of the point may be to underline that after the turning away from the land at the key moment in chapter 14, very little happens for a long time, except the long, slow unfolding of death.

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The appropriateness of this discussion in connection with Numbers 11:1–3 is that this short passage clearly invites a realistic and ascriptive reading. This is because it is not encumbered with references to historical happening that we are in any position to decode, but it is at the same time a piercing (realistic) analysis of the main dynamics of the narratives of the books of Numbers. With little by way of background explanation, in fact almost nothing at all in this short section, the juxtaposition is effected of lengthy, divinely ordered preparation for the journey and instant human recalcitrance and complaint. The phrase that such a brief episode positively invites is that this is a tale “fraught with background,” which will continue to be the case as we make our way through these mysterious opening narratives. It is to these that we must now return. N U M B E R S 10

We step back to the transitional chapter that leads into these wilderness wanderings. Chapter 10 completes the accounts of preparation for the Israelites’ journey to the land and focuses on the breaking of camp and initial movement. Many accounts of the book stress the change at 10:11, which brings us into the narrative proper that will dominate the next section of the book, albeit with various nonnarrative sections interwoven. This change was clearly not prominent for those who demarcated the chapters in the text, and its significance can be overplayed, but the chapter as a whole is certainly transitional. 10:1–10 YHWH tells Moses to make two silver trumpets, and then gives instruction on how and when to use them. This strange paragraph seems incomplete in some respects. It clarifies the difference between assembling the congregation (two blows), assembling the leaders of the tribes (one blow), and sending out the eastern camps (one “alarm”) and southern camps (two “alarms”), though not the other camps. Alarms may also be sounded in wartime, and trumpets blown in festivals. The sons of Aaron are charged with doing this as a “perpetual institution” (v. 8; l echuqqat ‘olam), and in verse 10 the suggestion is that the trumpets remind Israel: “I am YHWH your God.” This all seems straightforward, and on the face of it quite significant, but the only reference to these trumpets

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(chatsotsrot) elsewhere in the book is at 31:6, and this is not the word used for trumpet anywhere else in the Pentateuch (or Joshua–Samuel either). The point may be as simple as clarifying a mechanism for camp movements. Verse 9 hints, though, that it is also specifically military movements (in the future?) that are at issue, with its ominous note beginning “when you go to war in your land . . .” 10:11–28 This passage opens with one of the rare date markers in the book, creating a literary effect—by comparison with 1:1—of a twenty-­ day time period for all the previous chapters, although that obviously does not make sense of the disparate materials encountered already, or the general absence of narrative development. In other words, as we have discussed above, time does not function descriptively in this book, but ascriptively: we are in the realm of what some like to call “chronography,” where the text uses time structuring for other purposes than to order events historically. Of more significance in verse 11, the cloud previously described in chapter 9 (9:15–23) lifts, and the Israelites set out (v. 12). The bulk of the text then lists tribes and their leaders, some with standards being carried out to lead the way. The listing of the tribes follows the logic and order of the description of the camp in Numbers 2. The Levites are divided into those who carry the tabernacle (v. 17) and those who transport the holy things to be placed in the tabernacle, which arrives ahead of them (v. 21). They all set out “at the mouth [= command] of YHWH, by the hand of Moses” (v. 13), indicating the dual leadership of God and Moses. 10:29–34 Presumably one is to take the dialogue that follows here as preparatory to the setting out, which is recapped in verse 33 (or co-­opted from another source, as some might say). Moses urges Hobab here to come with them on the basis that Hobab will know where to camp in the wilderness.20 Hobab declines, pleading family responsibilities. Perhaps that is typical Eastern politeness, and Moses presses the invitation, promising divine blessing. According to the Septuagint of Judges 1:16 Hobab and his family duly went with them, though such a judgment is complicated by the confused textual witness as to who was who in Moses’ family. More significant for the narrative of Numbers is Moses’ acute characterization of Hobab’s task: “You will serve as eyes for us” (or, literally, “you will be our eyes,” v. 32). What Moses is alert to is the need to see

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rightly the way ahead through the wilderness. What is and is not seen, or discerned, as they make their way forward will turn out to be crucial to the book, albeit a book that makes no further reference to Hobab. According to verse 33 they set off for three days, “to seek out” a resting place, the verb for seeking out (tor) being the same that is later translated as scouting (or spying) a dozen times in chapters 13–14. With them goes “the ark of the covenant of YHWH,” which has been mentioned before in the preparations for traveling (e.g., 4:5) but which plays little subsequent role in the book—indeed it is only noted again at 14:44, and then with respect to its nonuse. The mention of the ark here leads to the following: 10:35–36 “The Song of the Ark.” As we have noted, this two-­verse fragment is marked off in the Hebrew text by inverted nun’s (the letter n), an unusual and unexplained marker.21 It is common to suggest that the nun’s function like brackets, alerting the reader to the possibility that the text is not organically part of this particular text, but is simply inserted here. If so, then what we have here is a record of an independent “song” sung in Israel on many occasions and incorporated into the text here. In fact it is relocated to one verse earlier in the Septuagint, bringing it even closer to the mention of “ark” in verse 33 (and with the result that v. 34 [MT] is left hanging rather oddly as 10:36 [LXX] at the end of the chapter, embellished with a reference to the cloud “coming” and “overshadowing” them). The so-­called song envisages the Israelites carrying the ark with them en route as a cause for a rallying cry to scare away YHWH’s enemies and secure YHWH’s presence with Israel. The text is quoted in synagogue liturgy whenever a Torah scroll is removed from the ark, and perhaps as a result it has become a measure of a “book” in rabbinic tradition, its eighty-­five letters serving as a standard for measuring whether a scroll can count as scripture (in the rabbinic idiom of whether it “defiled the hands,” m. Yad. 3:5). The logic seems to be that this minitext served as scripture and was incorporated into the canon, therefore anything this long can count, but anything briefer might be the chance collection of scriptural words.22 In its present location it serves as an interim portrait of God’s people making their way through the wilderness with God. The detail of verses 33–36 is brief but envisages the kind of pilgrimage for which the previous

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chapters of the book have been preparing. Possibly the reference to “three days” in verse 33 is simply to suggest that this ideal picture lasts only a short time. There is trouble ahead, as 11:1–3 amply indicates. N U M B E R S 11 ( F R O M V E R S E 4 O N WA R D)

In Numbers 11, things begin to unravel. The order and structure that have characterized chapters 1–10 do not entirely disappear, but it is immediately clear that they do not suffice to maintain the appropriate relationships between God and the people. Perhaps pointedly, the only mention here of anything happening “by clans” (lemishpechotāv; “throughout their families,” NRSV) is the weeping of the people in verse 10. A second point of contrast with chapters 1–10, and especially with the immediately preceding chapter, is that there is no mention of the details of the camp being on the move. References to chronology (10:11) or to the markers of the people’s movement (e.g., “the cloud of YHWH,” 10:34) are absent, and will remain absent until chapter 20. The present chapter does take place in the camp (v. 26), with reference to the tent of meeting (v. 16) and the manna (vv. 6–9). But the contextual (and specifically temporal) specificity, which has been in evidence to this point, recedes. Most significantly, the imaginative impact of this and succeeding chapters is dramatically heightened by the switch to the predominantly narrative form of the account. As we have seen, though, the hermeneutical function of these narratives does not depend on being able to locate them in specific moments of Israel’s journey. Rather they occupy the reader with descriptions of complaint and bitterness, of trust and suspicion, of blessing and curse, and of an ongoing attempt to work out the actions required of those following YHWH through the wilderness. Whatever function these narratives once had in rendering an account of how murmuring Israelites navigated the desert long ago, their primary function for the reader of the finished book is to probe the kinds of issues that arise in attempting to live faithfully with the God of these stories. Both for its first readers and today, the account of the wilderness wanderings suggests that one might think of life with God as occurring in a barren and inhospitable

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place, with conflicting voices calling the way ahead in various incompatible ways. How is one to discern whom to believe and how to act? It is such questions that will occupy us as we hitch our hermeneutical wagon to the traveling masses. 11:4–10 These verses establish the setting for the two intertwined themes that are developed in this chapter. This time, in the light of the programmatic nature of verses 1–3, we are given much more detail about the complaint. First, the “rabble among them” complains: if only they had meat, instead of just manna (vv. 4–6). This “rabble” is sometimes understood with reference to Exodus 12:38: “A mixed crowd also went up with them.” It perhaps suggests that the complaints begin at the edges of the gathering. We are also treated to a glimpse of what counted as a desirable menu: fish with a side of a somewhat tangy fruit salad, although one suspects that this might be a wistful misremembering of what was, for a slave population, an altogether less varied diet (described as simply “bread” in Exod. 16:3). Nevertheless, in verses 7–9, such a menu is contrasted (almost parenthetically) with a description of the manna in question, the point of which is perhaps to indicate both that it was a genuine foodstuff, rather than a symbolic (though significant) token of divine provision,23 and simply that it was tasty, and therefore they should not have been complaining. This time it is Moses who hears rather than YHWH, but it is still YHWH who is angry (comparing v. 10 with v. 1). We saw how this was resolved at the beginning of the chapter. With Moses now apprised of the problem before the divine anger is unleashed, as it were, the stage is set for the dialogues that lead into the main issues. Moses raises two points, and in return YHWH gives two instructions. The resulting two emphases of the passage thread their way through the rest of the chapter. 11:11–23 First, Moses cannot lead these people all on his own. This is the gist of his complaint in verses 11–15, culminating in the extreme plea that if he has found favor in YHWH’s sight then surely he deserves to be put to death rather than suffering this impossible burden. In response to this, YHWH commands the gathering and appointing of seventy elders, so that Moses “will not bear [the burden of the people] all by [himself ]” (v. 17). This theme in the story will move center stage in verses 24–29, where it will develop in a markedly different direction from the second theme.

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The second point of discussion, raised by Moses more or less as supporting evidence for his claim that he is unable to lead such a multitude, is the problem of where one might find meat sufficient for the task of feeding all these people (v. 13). In response YHWH commands them to “make themselves holy,”24 so that they will eat meat, and indeed eat so much of it that they will be sick (vv. 18–20). Moses’ reply (vv. 21–22) is effectively: “Now this I must see . . .” YHWH’s, in turn, is “You will” (v. 23). Moses is typically robust in intercession. We already know from verse 2 that he is able to secure for the people remission from divine anger. He is arguably motivated by the weeping he hears all around the tents as the family units settle down to another meal of manna (v. 10). It is perhaps hard to entertain the imaginative possibility, in such a situation, that one could be sick of meat. Maybe they think that if only they were in charge of the economy, rather than YHWH, then all would be well, and they cannot imagine that their own desires could result in a worse situation than they already have. They would not be the last to think this way. But nothing will be left to the imagination here. 11:24–30 The first emphasis is now back in focus with the story of the delegation of prophetic leadership to seventy elders, and in particular to Eldad and Medad. The sharing of leadership turns out to involve the distribution of some of “the spirit that was on [Moses]” to the seventy, who promptly prophesy around the tent. Eldad and Medad do likewise in the camp. Clearly the resultant activity was more characterized by enthusiasm than orderliness. Joshua, Moses’ assistant last mentioned back in Exodus 33:11, asks Moses to stop them, but Moses replies, famously, “Would that all YHWH’s people were prophets!” (v. 29). Several issues are raised by this short passage. First, what does it mean to say that the spirit was shared in this way? Some have read verse 17 as suggesting that in the taking of the spirit from Moses to give to others, the presence of God’s spirit in Moses was diminished.25 However, the point is probably that the spirit distributed to the others is the same one present in Moses. Thus as far back as Origen (and some rabbis before him): the Spirit of God on Moses was like a lamp so bright that God could illuminate seventy others from it without diminishing it.26 Eldad and Medad, therefore, operate as prophets in continuity with the way in which Moses leads. By extension, so do the other seventy.

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A second point is whether this is a one-­off occurrence or the institution of a longer-­term arrangement of shared leadership. We read of the seventy in verse 25—“When the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, but they did not do so again”—and indeed we do not read of “the seventy” again in Numbers. Nevertheless the notion of a council of seventy survives intermittently in the Old Testament, and is eventually found in the Sanhedrin: the court of seventy elders entrusted with judging Israel.27 Clearer in the text is that somehow this prophesying is understood as an appropriate response to Moses’ problems with solitary leadership. This may shed some light on one other matter. Third, then, this passage has been of interest to those concerned with matters of leadership and order and with their relation to the work of the Spirit. In Pentecostal and charismatic traditions, for example, some have discerned here an indication of early manifestations of ecstatic prophetic behavior: “Numbers 11 should be viewed as the foundational Charismatic/Pentecostal passage in the Old Testament.”28 But is it? The majority view of commentators is that the seventy, and in particular Eldad and Medad, underwent some ecstatic prophetic experience, indeed “what the New Testament terms speaking in tongues,” according to Wenham.29 The passage is often related to the various unusual prophetic experiences of Saul in 1 Samuel 10, 18, and 19, and the particular word for prophesying used in verses 25–26 is understood as connoting something wider than just prophesying; it can also mean acting in the manner of a prophet, or in an ecstatic state.30 But John Levison has argued persuasively that the prophesying in Numbers 11 is presented as an ordered development of Moses’ own status. As a result, Levison suggests that what is at stake “is not frenzy and catatonic behavior but a visionary experience within a controlled cultic setting intended to support Moses as he leads the Israelites.”31 Perhaps, then, the emphasis of Moses’ dictum in verse 29 is that one should desire all God’s people to have “vision” in the sense of discernment. In the context in which Numbers was written it is eminently plausible that there may have been an agenda about priestly leadership. For readers today, the implications may be more wide ranging, but also challenging with regard to the need to learn the wisdom to discern God’s ways.

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All of this takes place while the other element of the narrative is paused. The people may now be well governed, but in their own opinion they are not yet well fed. Or at least, it is still manna for dinner . . . 11:31–35 Suddenly the second emphasis of the chapter is reprised, with the apparently hopeful opening comment that a ruach went out from YHWH (a “wind,” but the same word as “spirit” in v. 29), and the camp is covered with a vast number of quails. But there is a shocking twist at verse 33: with the meat still between their teeth, the anger of YHWH which has been hanging over the passage since verse 10 is finally kindled, and he strikes “the people” with a very great plague.32 As a result, this place was called Kibroth-­hattaavah, “graves of craving”—suggesting that the character note for this section of the narrative is the insatiable desires of the people. In this instance, the name does recur in the later itinerary narratives, at 33:16–17 (as well as Deut. 9:22), marking this as the first place they stopped after Sinai. Unlike in verse 3 above, then, there is an indication here of a particular specified place in view in verses 34–35, but the literary function of verse 34 still works ascriptively as characterization rather than as descriptive reference.33 The bleak finale leaves only the image of such widespread death that the place is to be remembered for its graves. It is not hard to understand why source critics found in this chapter two different sources in the two interwoven themes of the central part of the narrative, relating to the matters of shared leadership/prophesying and the provision of meat: “That they once existed apart will hardly be doubted once they have been read separately,” as Gray put it.34 Some have attempted to make a virtue out of the juxtaposition of two sources, and argue that the redactor thereby creates an unstable portrait of Moses which resists “interpretive closure.” In one tale Moses is a complaining prophet deserving judgment. In the other he generously wishes that all God’s people would be prophets. The reader is left to wrestle with the literary puzzle thereby created.35 Others attempt to read the whole as a beautifully coherent, smooth literary narrative, all its elements pulling together.36 However, while it is clear that two stories have been woven together here, even if we cannot reconstruct their original textual forms, the interpretive question is what effect this has on the reader of the finished whole.

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If we are correct to see one of the stories as basically “positive” (the leadership/prophesying one) and one as basically “negative” (regarding the quail and judgment), then the result of juxtaposing the two is to urge the reader away from construing life with God in only one of these frameworks. Regardless of the independent status of the supposedly prior texts, the result is that the ways of God in Numbers 11 resist being understood as all blessing or all judgment. In and around moments of spiritual breakthrough (whether ecstatic or not) come incidents of trial and disaster. Just at the moment when leaders attain to vision and insight, they may also decide to relieve God of the task of caring for the people, thinking they can do better. The provision of quail looks like blessing if one overlooks the framework which generated it: the complaining. Are readers invited to question their understanding of whether God is blessing one activity just because another is clearly flourishing? Conversely there may be wisdom even in the midst of behavior which earns judgment. The complexity of human experience of God requires a complex text to offer an articulation appropriate to it. Numbers 11 is such a text. A second way of putting the point about how the two tales are intertwined is to suggest that the quail story demonstrates precisely why prophetic leadership is needed in Israel. Ellen Davis points out the link in this chapter between greed and prophecy, and suggests that the spirit of prophecy challenges Israel here “to focus on God’s faithfulness instead of their wants,” and to learn that God’s provision is sufficient.37 It is the negative dimension of the story that subsequently moves center stage in later (inner-­biblical) interpretation. Thus Psalm 106:14– 15—“They had a wanton craving in the wilderness, and put God to test in the desert; he gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them”—as well as the longer telling of the tale, alongside other wilderness events, in Psalm 78:17–31. Correspondingly, the generally upbeat recital of Psalm 105 moves conspicuously quickly past this incident with only “They asked, and he brought quails, and gave them food from heaven in abundance” (v. 40). This is such a selective point that one is driven to wonder whether Psalm 105 absolutely requires to be read in dialogue with Psalm 106, in which light of course it does prompt the reader to look for more than simple judgment.

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The story surfaces too in 1 Corinthians 10:6—“These things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.” In Francis Watson’s words, “Paul derives from the story of the quails the motif of illicit ‘desire,’ which he takes as the key to all the post-­Sinai episodes of rebellion in the desert (1 Cor. 10.6).”38 In Numbers 11 the people long for Egypt, YHWH is angry, Moses is displeased, and the established relationships between YHWH, Moses, and the people begin to crumble. The narrative is conspicuously without resolution, ending only with a move on from a place called “graves of craving.” But going on to Hazeroth will not resolve the problems: they reappear closer to home in the very next verse. N U M B E R S 12

This brief chapter takes place while the people are encamped at Hazeroth (vv. 1, 16).39 Taken as a place name, this invites much pondering of the links between its occurrence in the itinerary of Numbers 33 (vv. 16–17) and its location beyond the Jordan as the place of Moses’ farewell speeches in Deuteronomy (cf. 1:1). However, more than likely, hatsērōt means some variation on “(the) enclosure,” and is not a specific map reference at all.40 Here they are, fundamentally stuck at some way station, pondering the disastrous incidents that have so recently befallen them. The complaining that marked the previous chapter now strikes into the heart of Moses’ own family, with startling consequences for Miriam, and along the way providing significant clarification of Moses’ own role before YHWH. Some more or less incidental features of the text also provoke considerable interest: the question of who Moses’ wife is in this story, and the matter of his humility (v. 3). 12:1–3 Perhaps the reader is invited to see the problems of chapter 11 as the trigger for the familial dispute about to break into the open. Certainly one imagines Miriam and Aaron in some frustration about Moses’ leadership as just experienced. It may well then be the angry logic of frustration that unravels in the opening verses, as a complaint about whether YHWH only speaks through Moses follows directly (though not self-­evidently) from an attack on his choice of wife: “a Cushite woman.” If

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Cush is Ethiopia, which seems most likely, then this black woman is not Zipporah, who was the daughter of the priest of Midian in Exodus 2:21. And it would be odd in any case for such a complaint to be raised here against a woman Moses has been married to for so long. It seems clear that this is a different woman.41 As to whether this is because Moses has taken a second (additional) wife, divorced his first wife (“sent her away,” in the idiom of Exod. 18:2) and acquired a new one, or just that the literary traces of Moses’ marriage(s) are as unclear as the explanation of who his father-­in-­law is, we cannot say, though this has not stopped considerable exegetical ingenuity from being expended on these questions.42 The path of wisdom, though, is to leave these matters where they properly belong, in the “background” with which this passage is suffused, if not “fraught.” We will reflect on the significance of that point at the end of the reading, but in the meantime this allows us to take in turn several points about the details of the text, rather briefly, before following the passage on to its focus on the significance of Moses’ unique status before YHWH. First is the matter of skin color. Although nothing is spelled out, interpreters have suggested significance in Moses’ unnamed wife being a black woman criticized by Miriam, who in due course will be “white as snow” in punishment.43 However, skin color really is not mentioned in the text, and all that is actually said of Miriam in verse 10 is that she is kasheleg, “like snow.” The whiteness appears to be in the eye of the interpreter, in more than one way. Second, questions of gender. Although verse 1 reads, “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses,” the verb “to speak” here is a feminine singular (vattedabēr, she spoke), suggesting that she is the leader of the complaint, which may be why she bears the brunt of the punishment later in the passage. In a significant article Phyllis Trible described the need to “bring Miriam out of the shadows” when reading this passage (and selected other texts).44 The results, however, are not unequivocally positive from a feminist perspective. In the biblical accounts Miriam is only ever called a prophet (nevî’ah, prophetess) in Exodus 15:20, in respect of which Burns concludes that the biblical portrait of Miriam is in fact of a leader, and the label “prophetess” in Exodus is a loose marker of identity rather than a description of her role in particular.45

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A third topic of interest raised by this brief passage is the delightful characterization of Moses as “very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth.” This somewhat strange description (since humility can hardly be a characteristic at which one could excel competitively) was a source of some embarrassment to traditionally minded interpreters who sought to defend Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. More substantively, one may suggest that the way the passage develops the comparison of Moses with others, and thus perhaps the way that he is uniquely “humble,” is in terms of his unique standing before God, as recipient of his words directly from YHWH. In other words, the characteristic that Numbers 12 explores is Moses’ reliance upon God for his own words and also for his own perspective on matters. This is an appropriately robust sense of “humility” which means above all “dependence upon God,” a long way from the KJV (and now the ESV) translation of ‘anaw here as “meek,” with all that that connotes. Such humility can still encompass, as we are about to see, forceful intercession.46 Note also that in the midst of all Moses’ various forms of incomparability in this chapter, he is specifically described as “the man Moses,” lest any false conclusions be drawn about his supposedly exalted status. 12:4–9 We move to a scene where YHWH calls the feuding family out to the tent of meeting, appears to them in a pillar of cloud, and then addresses Aaron and Miriam directly. The subject of the address returns us to the theme of prophets, which Moses has just wished would be a description of all God’s people (11:29). Verse 6 now characterizes the normal way in which prophecy works—through visions and dreams47— before verse 7 clarifies that Moses is unique, being “entrusted with all [YHWH’s] house,” in YHWH’s words. “Entrusted” here (ne’eman, the niphal participle of he’emin, to trust) indicates a key dimension of Moses’ status between God and the people. He models supreme trust, and therefore is entrusted by God with responsibility for all the people and their well-­ being. Moses’ trust in God will sustain him through the troubles ahead all the way up to the disastrous events of chapter 20. The next verse then makes the strong claim that YHWH speaks with Moses “face to face,” although both NRSV and NIV obscure here the unique language of speaking “mouth to mouth.” Perhaps this suggests that whatever words come out of Moses’ mouth were put there by YHWH,

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or one might simply see it as a synonym for “face to face.” Moses may wish that he would be joined by a great multitude in being a prophet, but according to Numbers 12 YHWH wishes to underline Moses’ uniqueness. The interpreter must maintain a balance here, nicely expressed by Olson’s comment: “The legitimacy of other prophetic voices is here affirmed but also subordinated to Moses’ voice.”48 With Moses God speaks clearly, “not in riddles.” Mark’s gospel will later use a similar demarcation to describe how Jesus speaks to those “outside”—in parables—as against to his disciples—explaining everything (Mark 4:34). Christian readers of Numbers might then see Mark calling to mind the relationship with God that Moses has in this chapter. The implication is clear: Miriam and Aaron should not have protested, and in so doing they have kindled YHWH’s anger. In particular the contrast between God trusting Moses on the one hand and Moses’ brother and sister being suspicious of his status on the other is particularly telling. It provokes YHWH into directly addressing more than just Moses for the first time in the book. Indeed this is the only instance of God addressing Miriam. Of course, there is something of an irony here: the very thing God says to Miriam on this unique occasion is that it is only with Moses that he speaks “face to face.” Even this direct communication, in other words, underlines her brother’s unique access to God. Interpreters may have all kinds of reasons for being suspicious of such a text (though fewer than perhaps they did when it was thought that Moses had written it, since this could then have been seen as a self-­serving text par excellence), but it is clear that such suspicion would ally the reader uncomfortably with Aaron and Miriam in this story. Obviously this does not rule out such a reading, though interestingly even Aaron seems about to realize what is at stake (v. 11). However, such a reading does indicate some aspects of the roles that trust and suspicion are to play as elements of the portrait—which the text itself is building up—of the kind of life to be lived for God. The particular aspect of suspicion in view here is to “speak against” God’s servant. To fail to discern God at work in someone’s actions is a serious shortcoming, and one which lies at the root of much of the New Testament’s concern with rightly discerning the Spirit.49 12:10–15 YHWH withdraws, and the resultant judgment becomes apparent: Miriam is diseased, like snow. The traditional understanding

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of tzāra’ was that it indicated the suffering of leprosy, and in verse 12 the effects are described as eating away half a person’s skin. It is not difficult to read the passage as inappropriately apportioning blame for the incident to Miriam alone rather than Miriam and Aaron, although Sakenfeld suggests that the writers of Numbers 12 could not imagine or allow the high priest Aaron to have such an affliction, and this may be why only Miriam is punished.50 For a verse and a half we switch to Aaron’s own perspective by way of verse 10’s second use of wehinnēh (traditionally “behold!” but perhaps more helpfully captured here by some such perspective marker as “and this is what he saw:”). Aaron repeats the narrator’s appalled realization: he “saw that she was leprous.” He immediately labels their own actions as “sin,” and appeals to his brother to intercede for them. If he feared that he would be next, he would certainly have had reason to urge such intercession. After all the trials of the chapter, Moses finds himself having to intercede for the very people who have caused him such trouble. His terse prayer in verse 13 may be read in a variety of ways: ‘ēl nā’ rephā’ nā’ lāh, literally: “God, please, heal her, please.” But it is perhaps best to take it robustly, pleading with God to heal Miriam. In the process he indicates that being the most humble man on the earth does not stop him standing up to God to urge a change of course, which highlights another reason why “meek” does not seem to be quite the word to describe him in verse 3. The dialogue which follows is not edifying but it is to the point. If Miriam had been shamed by being spat at, she would have had to be excluded for seven days.51 Leprosy usually required longer, according to the various regulations of Leviticus 13, but this is clearly not a normal case, so the point is simply that in comparison to spitting, this situation also requires at least seven days’ exclusion. The only small hint of accommodation is the note that the rest of the camp will wait for her to serve out her sentence before they move on. 12:16 The incident at Hazeroth has not been anyone’s finest hour. It indicates the incursion of the grumbling and complaining of chapter 11 into the very family of Moses. It suggests that all Israel would do well to follow his example of a relationship with YHWH predicated on a trust that YHWH is then willing to reciprocate. As they camp in the wilderness of

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Paran, which will be given as the location of Kadesh in 13:26, just to the southwest of where they are headed, one could imagine that the lessons have been clearly communicated and now the people are ready to go into the land. On such a trajectory Numbers could have been a somewhat shorter book than it is. As we are about to realize, though, there is considerably more grumbling to come. “ F R AU G H T W I T H B AC KG R O U N D ”: THE JOURNEY UPON WHICH THE READER IS INVITED

So much that the interested reader wants to probe about these chapters is not actually resolved by the chapters themselves. This does not make the questions worthless, nor necessarily render their exploration unproductive. But it does suggest that the tasks of theological interpretation that pertain to reading these chapters as (Christian) scripture may need to hold an appropriate balance between a focus on what the text does say and what it does not. Auerbach’s image for this characteristic feature of biblical (Old Testament) narrative is that it is “fraught with ‘background’ and mysterious, containing a second, concealed meaning,” and that as such “the text of the Biblical narrative, then, is so greatly in need of interpretation on the basis of its own content.”52 Just before this he writes: “The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy. . . . The Scripture stories . . . seek to subject us and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”53 This anticipates a theme to which we shall return in later studies, especially in connection with Numbers 16. We have already seen in an earlier chapter how C. S. Lewis made use of similar language to describe the reader’s required submission to the work of art.54 Perhaps literary critics understand these dynamics more naturally than biblical critics tend to. Or perhaps, sailing on the wider seas of great literature, literary critics perceive that unless they offer themselves up to the currents of where the texts intend to take them, the purpose of any of this critical voyaging will be somewhat lost. Why submit to reading

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literature at all if one is not at least interested in considering the kinds of journey it offers to its reader(s)? The Bible pulls harder and further than any other text, at least if Auerbach’s characterization is to be believed, although Dante will turn out to offer a challenging test case of this point. But do biblical critics evince comparable interest in the journey? Beholden to its own wilderness of critical hypothesis and counterhypothesis, biblical commentary sometimes gives the impression of aspiring to survey the text with no existential commitments in view. But to summon Auerbach’s image to its particular purpose: this is to try to read the biblical text without noticing its “background.” One particular gift of the book of Numbers at this point is that it foregrounds the idea of journey, while at the same time inviting its readers to undertake a journey that is background suffused. What I earlier parsed as a realistic ascriptive reading indebted to Hans Frei may now be seen further as a form of Christian figural reading, drawing on the way in which Frei himself offers an account rooted, further back, in Auerbach’s work and other traditional modes of encounter with narrative. The remainder of this chapter is an attempt to clarify what this means. First, it is helpful to disentangle some of the ways in which Auerbach is and is not directly taken up in Frei’s work, for which purposes we need to read Auerbach a little more carefully than is sometimes done by those biblical critics who dip into “Odysseus’ Scar,” like what they see, and appropriate it without staying to see where it leads.55 For one thing, we might note that Auerbach’s substantive points about biblical literature do not in fact rely upon any particular contrast with Greek myth. While he presents his argument as a contrast between Homer, whose stories he describes as all foreground, and the Bible, fraught with background,56 it is quite possible to argue the opposite, depending on the purposes for which one is probing the text in question: “Many classicists have pointed out that Auerbach’s value judgments on Homer and the Old Testament are, in purely literary terms, spurious and entirely reversible.”57 Auerbach’s assertion is that Greek myth shines its light on who is doing and saying what in the frame of the story, and everything the reader needs is uniformly illuminated right there in front of them. The Bible, on the other hand, and exemplified in Abraham in Genesis 22, in the story of Saul and

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David, and in various other biblical narratives, is so piercingly illuminated by the bright light of the foregrounding narrative that in the process it creates deep, dark, and mysterious shadows in which lives the multi­ layered­ness of human character or, to get to Auerbach’s real point, the truth of human existence. As he sums it up at the end of the comparison, scriptural narrative is marked by having certain parts brought into high relief, others left obscure, abruptness, suggestive influence of the unexpressed, “background” quality, multiplicity of meanings and the need for interpretation, universal-­historical claims, development of the concept of the historically becoming, and preoccupation with the problematic.58

But the precise point that one needs to take from this is the positive characterization of biblical narrative: the role of negative foil need not be played by Greek myth, and arguably is not well played by it. Indeed it would not particularly matter if the negative foil were never perfectly instantiated. It is conceptually clear, and the opposite role is the one we are trying to clarify.59 Second, even in the above-­cited summary of his argument, Auerbach’s account muddies our waters slightly by averring that biblical narratives make “an absolute claim to historical truth.”60 This makes good sense on his own account, but does not transfer straightforwardly, if at all, to our own discussion, or to the way Frei handles these terms. The terminological confusion is worth teasing out and clarifying. It arises because Auerbach’s own frame of reference is different, and is aimed at the study of “the representation of reality in Western literature,” as his own book’s subtitle puts it. The most straightforward way of reading the vast scope of Mimesis is that it tells the tale of the fate of this scriptural way of representing reality.61 This is a story with a vast number of reference points, but it has a beginning (in the Old Testament, and arguably its New Testament appropriation), a middle (in Dante), and an end (in—to simplify slightly for the sake of clarity—Virginia Woolf ). The first half of the tale is the story of the rise of this approach, which peaks in Dante, and then the second half is the story of its decline.62

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The role of history appears to differ in the two halves, and it may be that the complications this bequeaths are sufficient to explain Frei’s choice of a noncommittal “history-­like” in his own account. What Frei finds helpful in all of this is the hermeneutical lens of reading the text as a figure that provides sole access to the reality being described: the figure really is the thing being written about, and as soon as one moves away from the language of the text to another account (as, for instance, in a figurative reading), it is no longer the same (“real”) thing in view.63 Reality is thus the whole frame of reference against which it makes sense to read the text. With the Old Testament, Auerbach reads this to be all of history from the creation up to the reader. In one sense, of course, that must be true. But in another, it leaves the word “historical” doing somewhat different work as compared to how it normally functions in biblical studies. Thus, in his reading of Genesis 22, Auerbach sees the text powerfully excluding all wider frames of reference, and thus making its “absolute claim to historical truth,” but note that on the same page he can say that the story of Abraham and Isaac is just as legendary as a Greek myth. “Historical” appears to be referring to the reality in view in the text, not the reference of the text to what happened.64 What marks out Jewish scripture, for him, is its universal claim to truth, from creation to the present pressing claim made upon the reader.65 But as a result, interpretation of that scripture has to keep adapting, as the whole of time and human experience keeps growing. The most startling re-­adaptation of all, as he notes, is when the early church takes up what is then becoming the “Old Testament” and appropriates it as “a series of ‘figures,’ that is of prophetic announcements and anticipations of the coming of Jesus and the concomitant events.”66 This is a particularly generous but also apposite point given that Auerbach, as a Jewish scholar, would demarcate the reality attested to by “scripture” (i.e., Jewish scripture) from the ongoing appropriation of it by the Christian New Testament, yet as a phenomenon of text and interpretation this makes no difference—indeed is no more odd than the way his own book wends its way on in due course to the literature of Rabelais, or Shakespeare, or Proust, all of whom can also be read as engaged in the literary representation of reality. As one might say: it all depends on what reality is.

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But regarding the point about scripture, Mark’s gospel, for example, cannot aspire to “a factual, objective portrait of, let us say, the character of Peter,” but can only narrate “what matters in relation to Christ’s presence and mission.”67 This only continues and intensifies in the interpretations offered by the fathers, especially Augustine, who keep seeking to show how the singular totality of human history (what is “real”) is approached by scriptural texts that draw all their particularized historical reality into this one overarching scheme. The language Auerbach adopts for this approach is that of “figures,” or “figural interpretation,” developed in his studies of Dante and other great poets of the full height and depth and breadth of human existence. In his remarkable extended piece on this phenomenon, bearing the title “Figura,” and reviewing the multiple uses of the word in classical antiquity and then in the great writings of the early church, Auerbach arrives at the need for a precise definition of figural interpretation, and offers this: Figural interpretation creates a connection between two events or persons in which one signifies not only itself but also the other—and that one is also encompassed or fulfilled by the other. The two poles of the figure are separate in time, but they both also lie within time as real events or figures. . . . Both figures are part of the ongoing flow of historical life. Only the act of understanding, the intellectus spiritualis, is a spiritual act. But this spiritual act must deal with each of the two poles in their given or desired concrete reality as past, present, or future events, respectively—and not as abstractions or concepts.68

In this essay, the whole focus is on exemplars of figural interpretation as they occur in biblical interpretation, perhaps blurring the question of how far this works as a general literary trope, although since our own interests lie with scriptural interpretation, we may not need further clarity on this point. As he stops off for a brief theoretical pause in the midst of the historical progression of examples surveyed in “Figura,” Auerbach thus offers clarity on how figural interpretation is not figurative (because it links two “events or persons,” both of whom are real, as against mapping one event/person to a spiritualized point of comparison). He also makes a clear statement on the forward orientation this gives to acts of

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interpretation: “And whereas in the modern notion of linear progression facts are always guaranteed in their autonomy, but their meaning is always fundamentally incomplete, in figural interpretation facts are always subordinated to a meaning that is fixed in advance; they orient themselves according to a model of events that lies in the future and that thus far has only been promised.”69 It follows that interpretation is always implicated in the twin tasks of attention to detail of the particular text and attempt to conceptualize the overarching scheme within which this focal point of reality is unfolded. It really does all depend on what one thinks reality is. In the account in Mimesis, Dante is credited with surveying human reality from the heights of paradiso to the depths of inferno via all purgatorial stations in between, and thereafter the expanding horizons of reality start to head off into a range of other directions, or perhaps better, dimensions. This is perhaps clearest in the twentieth and final chapter of Auerbach’s lengthy study (written between 1942 and 1945), which arrives at an extended reading of Virginia Woolf ’s To the Lighthouse and Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, with a passing nod to James Joyce’s Ulysses. Three more “realistic” texts than these could not, in one sense, be imagined. But the sense in question is the literary probing of the multilayeredness of human experience: of the measuring of a stocking, the memories triggered by the eating of a small madeleine at the taking of tea, or the navigation through one day in the life of a man in Dublin. Reality defined in these terms involves plumbing the depths of the human psyche—of mind, memory, and imagination—precisely because only so is the twentieth-­century literary reader invited into the “background” that Auerbach has been so careful to draw attention to in his reading of scripture. Where, then, does this leave the reader of biblical narrative today? Removed from Auerbach’s concern with isolating scripture among other literary texts, Frei is able to reorient the account of the narrative pursuit of reality around the specific person of Jesus Christ, who in Frei’s scheme turns out to be both one figure of reality and also the fulfillment of all reality.70 For in Frei’s judgment, the most profound way to read reality is not, remarkably enough, from the top of Dante’s heaven to the bottom of his hell, but is in and with and through Jesus Christ, whose identity is truly (i.e., figurally) present to us in scripture.71

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Once one makes that judgment, or whatever precise variation on it the Christian theologian makes, then scripture is operating as witness to the reality of God in Christ, both before and after Christ, that is, in Old and New Testaments, figurally related. It then becomes clear that whatever hermeneutical tools one uses are to be deployed within this overarching conception of the purpose of reading (and commenting upon) Christian scripture. One feature of Auerbach’s scheme that Frei does take up, though, is the one highlighted in our discussion earlier in this chapter, where I labeled it the practice of ascriptive realist reading. For both writers (once we have isolated Auerbach’s positive concerns from their originating context), the text determines the reality impressed upon the reader, rather than the determinative feature being some historical reality. And as a result, it is indeed only possible to investigate scripture in this way if one is willing to submit to immersion in its narrative flow. In the end, this is one of the major conclusions of Dawson’s masterly study of Christian figural reading. Having concluded that it is “too complex and subtle a practice to be . . . unqualifiedly celebrated or condemned,” mainly on account of its difficult involvement in the relative merits of Christian appropriation of Jewish texts, Dawson draws the following positive conclusion: Imbedded in figural practice is all the drama of discerning the point of existence and identifying one’s place in it, figured as a journey from a former mode of existence through various states of transformation toward some ultimate end. There are, of course, other ways of imagining existence and one’s place in it, many of which are profoundly unrelated to the journey motif, or its literary analog, narrative. But the Christian imagination, at least as it expresses itself in the tradition of figural reading, is structured in just that way.72

In other words, the reader who is to engage with reality in and by way of these texts must be willing at the very least to consider embarking upon the journey that they portray, ascriptively, and realistically. The argument of the present chapter is that Numbers 10–12 serves both as an exemplar of the way in which ascriptive and realistic narrative works and as (the beginnings of ) an ascriptively realistic portrait of what

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the resultant interpretive journey looks like. It turns out that the chapters from Numbers 10 onward serve as a peculiarly appropriate set of texts for figural reading. Interpreters are invited on the journey of “discerning the point of existence and identifying [their] place in it.” Fraught with background as this text inevitably is, interpreters will perforce make judgments about how to read that depth dimension of the text against a reading (theological or otherwise) of reality. The resultant reading, especially as a Christian figural project, is fully committed to saying that the text discloses truth, but cannot prejudge what that truth might be other than through the careful and analytical attention to detail at which—to give it its due—biblical commentary has long since excelled. Finally, readers may be interested to note that when Auerbach examines an initial Christian figural reading for the purposes of illustration in his majestic piece “Figura,” it is to Numbers 13:16 that he addresses himself: Tertullian’s reading of the Septuagint text as it relates Moses changing Hoshea’s name to Joshua, that is, “Jesus.”73 The nonliteral reading of the exploits of “Joshua” to which that move points marks out a path long since closed off to most biblical critics. Although we shall not linger with Tertullian on that particular example, we turn next to that very passage and to one particular biblical commentator less inclined to think that the path was closed: Karl Barth. The manner of his exploration will bear further witness to the point that convictions about the overarching theological framework by no means prejudge the interpretive moves one will make.

FOUR

“What Did You Go Out into the Wilderness to See?” Theological Interpretation, the Eyes of the Heart, and Karl Barth’s Reading of Sloth (Numbers 13–14)

The narrative of Numbers 13–14 brings us to the heart of the book. Israel scouts out the land and then fails to enter. The penalty is forty years wandering in the wilderness (14:33–34). Insofar as Numbers is all about the time in the wilderness, this is the trigger incident that accounts for most—if not all—of what follows. I shall take it also as the occasion to explore what is arguably the key theological question pertaining to scriptural interpretation today: How does one understand the subject-­matter of the text and answer the simple question “what is the text about?” In what sense, if any, do theological interpretive categories facilitate good engagement with this subject matter? And rather than pursue this question in the abstract, we shall consider it in close consideration of Numbers 13–14. It is a memorable narrative, and one of the less bleak focal narratives of the book, albeit with certain problematic elements entering in by the end. Even so, compared to what is to come, this is not an instantly troubling tale. There is also a reason why it provides a nicely focused test case 85

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for considering the nature of the task of theological interpretation before us: it is the only extended narrative in the book of Numbers to receive treatment in Karl Barth’s majestic exegetical excursuses in the Church Dogmatics, a reading located at the end of his intriguing treatment of sin under the rubric of “sloth.”1 One does not necessarily head out into the tasks of theological interpretation in connection with Numbers in order to see one of the church’s greatest dogmaticians pondering the text in dialogue with some of the theological agendas of the twentieth century, but such an occasion offers the chance to probe in detail the dynamics of our task. The approach in this chapter is therefore to begin with a theological reading of the text itself, from within our developing sense of the theological horizons of the book; then to turn to Barth’s reading for an alternative perspective; and finally to negotiate the troubled waters between the two approaches to see what light is reflected back on each. By the end of the chapter, and by way of this extended case study, we will have answered in the affirmative the question of whether theological interpretation can facilitate rather than obscure the readers’ engagement with the subject matter of the text. N U M B E R S 13 –14

These two chapters form a key incident in the unfolding narrative of the book, and indeed in the overall Pentateuch. They are easy to summarize in broad outline: twelve scouts (NRSV: spies2) go up to the land and inspect it with a view to entering it, but ten of them report that it will be too difficult a task. YHWH is angry with the people for the resulting unwillingness to proceed, but Moses intercedes and averts the possibility of YHWH’s wiping them all out and starting again with Moses. When the people realize that divine judgment is upon the ten scouts, they make a belated attempt to go up and take the land anyway, which fails because YHWH is not with them (14:42). The text as we have it seems likely to be the product of various developments and reworkings of old traditions, but our own project regarding Numbers 13–14, given any such textual prehistory, is to attempt to read it as a coherent (“canonical”) whole. In a thorough analysis of this passage,

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Widmer shows elegantly what is at stake in contrasting the source-­critical analysis with a final-­form reading that focuses on the logic of the text as we have it.3 Both approaches have their merits—we shall restrict our use of the former mainly to those points where it illuminates the latter. A key claim of Barth’s account of this narrative is that “the purpose of Num. 13–14 is to show how dreadful and dangerous is the retarding role played by evil anxiety in the transition of Israel from the wilderness to the promised land.”4 This is deeply involved with the fundamental notion of why the scouts bring back their variant reports and what this reveals about the people and their relationship with God. Chapter 12 has set us up already to see these issues in terms of trust and sight,5 and indeed to relate the two together: what one “sees” is a function of one’s basic orientation toward YHWH, whose self-­revelation is recounted here by Moses as “eye to eye” (‘ayin b e’ayin, 14:14; “face to face,” NRSV). The choice before the Israelites was to see God or to see the world as an empty stage awaiting their action, and the majority defaulted to this latter position. The consequence is forty years of wilderness wandering. 13:1–16 The majority of this opening section of the story is a listing of the twelve tribes and their “leaders” (each a nasi’, which may mean a range of things, but clearly pinpoints them as representative leaders). We note that the Ephraimite Hoshea, son of Nun (v. 8), is renamed by Moses as “Joshua” (v. 16), under which name we have already met him in 11:28. This is typical of the kind of inelegance in the finished text that has often pointed commentators toward recognizing a less than smooth textual prehistory, and sometimes indeed to the pursuit of prior stages of redaction. It may be noted that one benefits relatively little from any further identification of such stages beyond this baseline remark that the finished text has signs of redactional inelegance. Here, as elsewhere, the text before us is good enough to sustain the points of theological interest.6 A more striking oddity for the reader of the Pentateuch is that the opening claim, where YHWH tells Moses to “send men to scout out the land of Canaan,” sits uneasily with the way in which Deuteronomy 1 recounts the same incident. In Deuteronomy, Moses relates YHWH announcing that Israel was to go up and take possession of the land, in response to which the Israelites ask permission to send men on a scouting trip (1:21–22). The Hebrew of Numbers 13:2 suggests perhaps that the emphasis is, “Send

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for yourself men to scout . . .” (shelach-­leka . . .), and Jewish scholars in particular have suggested that some nuances of the text indicate that the organizational details of verses 1–3 are designed to show that it is really Moses (and the people) who is sorting out the scouting party.7 The substantive issue raised by holding the two pentateuchal texts in parallel is that of correctly discerning divine initiative and human initiative. One can of course point out that the two texts have different views of the matter, a conclusion facilitated by assigning the Numbers text to J (or JE) and the Deuteronomic one to D, but this is really just a more specific description of the problem rather than an account of how to read the resulting texts.8 The point is that, granted the different perspectives, there is still the possibility that the canonical tension may be theologically productive. Arguably, direct divine speech in the Pentateuch (and though less common, elsewhere too) represents a construal of YHWH’s purposes. I have suggested elsewhere that “reporting” YHWH’s speech is a matter of correctly “seeing” what YHWH is “saying.”9 Perhaps Numbers 13 and Deuteronomy 1 offer different construals of YHWH’s purposes with regard to the necessity or otherwise of spying out the land, and they thereby indicate that understanding God’s will is rarely a straightforward matter. Deuteronomy’s is clearly a retrospective view. Had the scouting of the land gone differently, with a more positive outcome for Israel, then of course it would have made little difference whether it was understood as divinely mandated or conceded to human concerns. 13:17–20 Duly assembled, the twelve are commissioned by Moses. They are to enter into the Negeb and the hill country, that is, the southern edges of the land. Moses gives them six aspects of life in the land to look for: two pertaining to the people who live there (are they strong or weak? few or many?), three concerning the land itself (the extent to which it is good, or “rich,” or full of trees), and one as to whether the towns are fortified (walled) or not. Only two of these points (the ones we have listed first and last) are addressed directly in the subsequent report (v. 28). Is there significance in the divergence between Moses’ establishment of criteria for assessing the land and the somewhat more vague and impressionistic criteria that control the scouts’ report? Does the chapter suggest that Moses understood what they were to look for and what they were likely to be preoccupied with instead, whereas the scouts failed to follow his lead?

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13:21–25 “So they went up . . . and at the end of forty days they returned.” This brief report of the scouting trip lists several of the places they visited and includes two other details. First, “the Anakites were there” (v. 22). The significance of this observation is deferred to a later stage in the report. Second, they obtain such a large cluster of grapes on their travels that it requires a pole supported by two men to carry it back to the waiting Israelites in the wilderness. We are also told of pomegranates and figs as the spoils of the journey. What little the reader has to go on is therefore positive: the land is rich, if nothing else. “Forty days” may well be idiomatic for a lengthy trip; of more than just a few days. In 14:34 it will turn out to have much-­longer-­term significance. 13:26–29 Returning to the camp, where the people have been waiting since 12:16, the scouts show the fruit they are carrying and offer their report: verses 27–29 are presented as a kind of corporate direct speech, perhaps therefore a carefully worded report on behalf of (most of ) the twelve. It begins with the familiar language that the land “flows with milk and honey.” This is the first of four occurrences of some version of this description in the book of Numbers.10 It is possibly the clearest indication that the phrase serves something of a conventional function in the Old Testament: they show off their grapes and pomegranates and effectively say, “Look: milk and honey!” As MacDonald notes, “milk and honey” in Old Testament descriptions of the land rarely seems to mean actual milk and honey.11 But the point is clear: the land is full of good things. Thus far so good. “However . . .”12 The report switches briefly into the categories Moses gave them: the people there are strong, the towns are not only fortified but “exceedingly big,” and the Anakites are there. The scouts list various peoples who live in various parts of the land. Although this is not yet a full-­blown negative report, it is clearly heading that way. 13:30–33 Caleb tries to intervene (v. 30). He silences the people (rather than the other scouts) “before Moses,” possibly alert to how this report is being received and what sort of response such a reception might in turn provoke before Moses. Caleb then speaks emphatically, as is indicated by way of various repetitions of the verbs in what he says. We might almost translate him saying “We should definitely go up . . . we can definitely do this.”

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The immediate effect is to harden the resistance of the other scouts. They thus bring an “unfavorable” report on the grounds that the people are not just “strong” (v. 28) but “stronger than us.” They make two points: first, the land “eats” (‘achal, to eat; “devours” in the NRSV) its inhabitants, and second, we finally learn the significance of the reference to the Anakites, who are said here to come from the Nephilim, and thus are indicative of the great size of the land’s inhabitants. Indeed, the scouts now say that they actually saw Nephilim, which might make one wonder whether they are beginning to exaggerate their story as the stakes are raised concerning what action will be taken on the basis of their report. The identity of the Nephilim is left unclear in the text, though of course the resonance with the antediluvian offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men in Genesis 6:4 is unmistakable for today’s reader.13 We are no longer talking sober report; the issue has instead become what it seemed like “in our eyes” (b e’ēynēynu; cf. NIV). In the perspective of the scouts, governed as much by their desire to stay home and eat pomegranates as by the actual data of the scouting trip, it is a case of giants versus grasshoppers. The reader is aware that the scouts’ report has by now departed from the evalu­ ative framework Moses offered and become an exercise in the rhetorical pursuit of not entering the land. Nevertheless the people, unlike the reader, do not see through the rhetoric, and the report determines the direction of the subsequent narrative. This is a particularly clear case of one of the recurrent themes of these narratives in Numbers: what people see is in part a function of what they are willing to see. The narrator has clearly portrayed the contrast between the land as seen by YHWH (v. 2) and the land as seen by the scouts (vv. 28–33). And meanwhile the reader is aware of the striking irrationality of the people implicitly preferring the desert, to which they have in some sense become accustomed, over the richly fertile (albeit dangerous) land that has just been scouted out. 14:1–4 The people cry loudly, and weep (as they did in 11:20, bakah), and once again compare their fate with their time in Egypt (cf. 11:5, 18, 20), except this time the complaint is intensified to the point of wishing that they had died there. In fact, the hysteria of the complaint is laid bare by the rambling lack of logic of what is said here: they wish they had died in Egypt, and then promptly announce that it would be better

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to go back to Egypt. “Let us choose a captain” (“leader,” NIV; or “head,” ro’sh)—which rather suggests they no longer recognize those leading them thus far—“and go back to Egypt.” By the end of the chapter, YHWH will be promising death to those who have longed to have died (v. 35). Another interesting reversal by the end of the chapter is the strange mention of falling by “the sword” in verse 3. There have been no swords in the report of chapter 13—indeed the point about the giants of the land rather suggested that swords were not necessary, for there were enough problems with being physically overwhelmed. Numbers 14:3 is the first mention of a sword in the book, but there will be plenty more, beginning in 14:43, where Moses declaims that if these self-­same people do finally go up into the land without YHWH’s blessing, they shall indeed fall by the sword. Both these links between the beginning and the end of the chapter hint at the ways in which the skewed vision of the people plays out. They have not trusted that the land is theirs to take, and as a result it in fact is not. Rather, their fears are realized. It is possible not to trust YHWH. In so doing, one will construe all sorts of situations as hostile to the promises of YHWH. This will be supporting evidence for those who are skeptical, albeit evidence of a self-­fulfilling kind. As Kierkegaard frequently insisted, one cannot learn trust by hedging one’s bets.14 14:5–10a Until now the reader has had no indication of the responses of Moses, Aaron, and Joshua to the report or the outcry it has provoked. Now Moses and Aaron fall on their faces, presumably in grief for the people’s lack of faith,15 and Joshua joins his voice to Caleb’s in entreaty.16 “The land is good . . . very . . . very” (. . . me’od me’od), they urge, and then they make something like the selfsame point about trust and perception: YHWH will indeed bring them into the land if YHWH is pleased with them, but their refusal to believe that YHWH can do this is primary evidence that YHWH will not be pleased with them. That would mean there would be plenty to fear, but Joshua and Caleb claim directly that there is not, because, regarding the people of the land, “their protection is removed from them” (in an idiomatic phrase saying that their shadow is gone). On the logic of the overall narrative, this presumably is simply a way of saying that no gods of the land shall stand against YHWH.17 The people side with the construal of the situation that factors out YHWH. As a result they seek to factor out quite literally the messengers

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reminding them of this other way of looking at the situation, and talk of stoning Joshua and Caleb. 14:10b–12 YHWH appears. In fact it is YHWH’s glory which appears, at the tent of meeting, which from here on in the book of Numbers remains one element of the background location for the unfolding narrative, in a relatively low-­key way. The “glory of YHWH” appears three times in the narratives of Numbers, here and in chapters 16 and 20. All are key turning points in the book, indicating divine presence manifested in the midst of disbelief. On this occasion, there is a combination of appearing before the Israelites, but speaking to Moses. YHWH brings two charges, relating to how long the people’s behavior will endure. First, regarding their despising of YHWH (from the piel of na’ats, to hold in contempt). Second, regarding their refusal to “believe” (NRSV, the hiphil form he’emin, to trust), in relation to which reference is made to “all the signs” that have been given by YHWH, which makes the important point that there were plenty of grounds for putting trust in YHWH to this point in the story. These are two central claims to the subject matter of Numbers’ narratives, and arguably they are two sides of the same coin. The point is clearly that YHWH is charging Israel with contempt and refusal to trust. But to hold God in contempt is to refuse to see God’s action in the world; and to refuse to trust is in effect to hold God in contempt. The underlying logic here is that had the people been able to trust YHWH, they would have responded differently to the scouts’ report. Their response is already the indication that they do not see divine purpose and action in their world. The immediate resultant threat is disinheri­ tance (v. 12), perhaps to be understood as effected through the “pestilence” (deber, possibly “plague”) which is mentioned first, followed by the startling offer to begin again with a new people, replacing Abraham with Moses as the father of a new nation. Disinheritance is the result of inability to see God as their “captain” (ro’sh; cf. v. 4). If these people will see the world without reference to God, then God will bring it about that his purposes in the world will proceed without reference to them. The dynamic of trust and divine provision is played out throughout scripture. Jesus’ ministry is directly involved in addressing the question of what works are attributed to God (e.g., in their different ways, Mark

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3:20–27; John 7), and the stakes are high when the works of God are attributed elsewhere (so, correspondingly, Mark 3:28–30; John 8). Here the failure to trust has blocked any vision of the entry into the land. 14:13–19 Moses’ mighty prayer in response is a theological focal point of the book, and one of the key passages in the whole of scripture for understanding both the nature of God and the nature of prayer. Some oddities in the language have led many scholars to suggest that the prayer is a later insertion in the narrative, articulating what is clear in any case, that Moses has somehow interceded before YHWH (perhaps as per v. 19 in the first instance), with the result that YHWH will go on to forgive. Certainly some of the details of the prayer seem strange: that the Egyptians have heard that YHWH is “seen face to face,” for instance, an odd construction in the mouth of Moses, who is the sole recipient of such appearances (even if 12:8 actually said he was the sole recipient of “mouth to mouth” revelation). But the rhetorical point at issue in the text is presumably not whether or in what sense Israel thinks this with regard to its own internal organization before YHWH, nor even whether actual Egyptians have been known to think this, but rather that this is the question with regard to how Israel is/will be perceived among the other nations. On this international stage, YHWH is deeply implicated in how things turn out for Israel. Whatever the complexities behind the formation of the text, it is still possible to read the major claims of this prayer as germane to the present moment in the narrative.18 Moses’ basic argument, in true full-­blooded Old Testament style, is that God should desist from wiping out the Israelites because this will look bad for God in the eyes of the Egyptians (and by implication, as v. 16 suggests, any other nations watching Israel at any subsequent times when the narrative was being compiled or read). The point is made relevant to the present moment by Moses’ suggestion that the Egyptians would relay this information to those in the land, for whom such a divine punishment would effectively be the wiping out of the putative invasion force. The rumors have been abroad that Israel moves by day and night with their God in a pillar of cloud and fire. But if this judgment goes ahead, the nations will be able to conclude straightforwardly that YHWH “was not able” (v. 16). In one sense the nations would be right. What YHWH would not have been able to do, to be precise, would have been to effect a people who were

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willing to trust him and follow his lead, or indeed his gift (13:2), into the land. Doubtless the nations would actually think that the inability in question was related simply to divine power. Gods who are not troubled by the character of the people they command would, shall we say, have an easier time of it in commandeering their people to do their bidding. But what is a merciful God to do? Even so, for all that YHWH is slow to anger, the divine speech of verses 11–12 is clearly angry, so it will be a brave interlocutor who will probe the logic of the situation. The only way for such intercession to work, in fact, is for the intercessor to restrict themselves to the task of holding up God’s action to God’s own measure of the divine character, and the only person who can perform such an act as that is one who speaks face-­ to-­face with God. So Moses is the man, and the content of his prayer is a reflection back to God of the divine self-­revelation he first heard in Exodus 34:6–7.19 Verse 18 captures around two-­thirds of the creedal affirmation of Exodus 34:6–7, which in traditional Jewish interpretation was understood as articulating the thirteen attributes of God.20 Around eight of those attributes are recounted. The divine name is not repeated on this occasion (the repetition “YHWH, YHWH” in Exod. 34:6 being unique in scripture), and interestingly the “abundant” qualities of YHWH are reduced to hesed (steadfast love), whereas in Exodus 34:6 this was coupled with ‘emet (faithfulness), an omission here in Numbers that perhaps relates to the people’s lack of faith at this crucial juncture in the narrative.21 This hesed then serves as the precise motive to which Moses appeals in verse 19: its greatness underpins YHWH’s long history of forgiving his people, and Moses asks God to forgive again. The “forgiveness” at stake here should not be understood as the removal of the sin or its consequences, given how the narrative develops, but rather concerns the nonrejection of Israel as God’s people: in other words it is the specific point at issue in verse 12 about which Moses is wrestling with God.22 To summarize the function of this important prayer as the turning point of the narrative: at this crucial moment, and faced with an apparently overwhelming challenge, it is to the core self-­revelation of God that Moses turns.

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14:20–25 YHWH now responds to Moses’ prayer. At first glance the text presents two divine speeches, one here and one immediately following in verses 26–35, which leads some to suppose that we have here the amalgamation of the divine response from two different accounts, especially given the emphasis on Caleb in the first (v. 24) and then on Joshua and Caleb in the second (v. 30),23 and given the different concluding emphases of the two sections. This may not be implausible as an account of the prehistory of our text, but, first, that does not make it entirely determinative of how Numbers 14 should now be read,24 and second, it is at least arguable that the repetition of speech introductions (of the form “and YHWH spoke to X”) serves more as the marking of “paragraphs,” or indicators of sense units, in Hebrew prose consisting of reported direct speech. This would then explain why different elements of the speech seem to occur in separate reported accounts. But in either case, the task remains to read the resultant text in a manner that does justice both to each individual emphasis and the final whole. We shall return to this point after reading each section. The first response is double edged. First, in a delightfully simple opening sentence of just two words in the Hebrew, YHWH says “I forgive . . . according to your words” (sālachti kidbārekā, v. 20). Second, before there is any time to appropriate and appreciate the remarkable grace exhibited by YHWH in such forgiveness, or even the stunning achievement of Moses in securing this divine forgiveness, the text moves on with a lengthy “never­theless.” Here YHWH announces that as surely as the earth will be filled with his glory—which is currently on display during this very dialogue according to verse 10b as a doubtless rather impressive visual aid—those who have tested and not obeyed him in the wilderness shall not see the land. One can take this to mean: they will die in the wilderness. But the text does not spell that out until the later sections of the speech (v. 29), and at this point it is just as compelling to reckon with the point of this “nevertheless” as linking what the people will not see with what they have so far not seen: YHWH’s leading and provision that would have sufficed. What the people have lacked is the right “spirit” (ruach) and “wholehearted” (or “full,” so ESV) following—two terms which are now applied to Caleb as the exception to this “nevertheless” judgment. The conclusion

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must be that with the right spirit and a full willingness to follow, the people would have seen what Caleb had seen, and then indeed would have gone on to see the land. Verse 25 commissions the people to head off by the way of the “Red Sea,” in other words effectively to turn around and head southward, traditionally understood as a route that would have taken them southeasterly to circumnavigate the hill country that lay ahead of them. It clearly indicates that they are not about to enter the land from the southwest. The people are going to see a whole lot of land, but it is not going to be the land they were looking for. Two final notes on this paragraph. We have skipped past one detail of this speech that invites puzzled reflection: the reference to the “ten times” of testing God in the wilderness (v. 22). Ten is not a number of great symbolic significance in the Old Testament (which makes the ten commandments rather striking), and one might have expected the more standard Hebrew idiom of “seven times,” so it is not obvious that it should be read as meaning simply “many times,” although this is the way most modern commentators take it. On the other hand, neither is it clear how one should understand the wilderness narratives to this point as constituting ten testings. One can enjoy trying to match up Exodus 16–18, 32–34 and Numbers 11–14 (as the prime candidates) into ten such incidents, and indeed this is what later rabbinic tradition did,25 though of course there is no way of knowing what prior narratives would have been in view to those who articulated verse 22 here. Second, at this first of four mentions in the book, we should note that the Hebrew for “Red Sea” (yam suph) is “Sea of reeds.” What significance this observation has for interpretation (if any) can be addressed elsewhere.26 14:26–35 As noted above, verse 26 on its own reads like an introduction to the divine response to Moses’ prayer, though in context it serves to mark a further divine reflection subsequent to the one just considered. Rather than testing and disobeying, the emphasis here is on complaining. The language of complaint (from the verb lun) is intense in this passage, and is repeated in a variety of forms, having only been introduced into the accounts of Numbers in 14:2 (though characteristic of Exod. 15–17).

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The thrust of YHWH’s response here is admirably captured by the NRSV: “I will do to you the very things I heard you say.” To wit: they wished they had died in the wilderness (v. 2), and so they shall. The census of chapter 1 shall turn out to have been a census of those who will die short of the land, a point that underpins Dennis Olson’s significant proposal about the structure of the overall book regarding its two censuses at the point of generational transition.27 But almost as if to emphasize that the people’s complaint was entirely misjudged, YHWH then turns the tables on it and states that whereas they had feared that their offspring would “become booty” (v. 3), it is in fact these same offspring who will make it into the land. Meanwhile, the children will become shepherds for “forty years in the wilderness,” suffering for the “faithlessness” of this generation (as almost all modern translations put it, reading zenut here as a broad charge of faithlessness rather than specifically to do with sexual morality, as it can be taken, hence the KJV’s abrupt “they shall bear your whoredoms”). The forty-­year period in the wilderness, noted only here and in 32:13 in Numbers, though common elsewhere in other traditions, is explained in verse 34 as correlating to the forty days of scouting in the land, though it is hard to see that as more than a poetic attempt to sketch out the logic of YHWH adopting a “you shall be repaid for what you have done” approach in this speech. Unlike the number ten, discussed above, forty is of course a highly symbolic number in Hebrew texts, and thus one should doubtless read this threat as indicating a long period of wilderness life, to continue until “the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness” (v. 33). There is a strong emphasis on the wickedness of the congregation at the beginning and end of the speech (vv. 27, 35), and the conclusion is as final as could be imagined: “In this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die” (v. 35). Unlike the first section of the speech, which spared Caleb, this one spares Caleb and Joshua; and unlike the previous emphasis on trekking the way of the Red Sea and not seeing the land, the emphasis now is on death and the replacement of the first generation with another. Further, as we have seen, the characterization of what went wrong is different: testing and lack of obedience in the first case; complaining and “despising” (v. 31; cf. v. 11 above) in the second. How might the reader understand

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these two sections in a way that takes seriously their juxtaposition in the canonical text? Direct divine speech in the Old Testament is, I have suggested, best understood (with perhaps certain particular exceptions in theophanic situations) as a construal of the divine will at moments of seeking God. The two different sections of divine speech here both seem to be faithful construals of God’s response to the people’s sin, but draw out different aspects of what will happen next. The first construal notes divine forgiveness, but effectively gives no space to celebrating it, pressing on to emphasize the way in which “sight of the land” has been forfeited. It would make sense to see this element of the text as a response not overly focused on the death of the wilderness generation, whereas the second construal works with the perspective that the long-­term implication of what has happened is indeed the death of all those involved. The point is not that one could account for the final form of the text by postulating a growth of the tradition from faithful Caleb to the realization that in fact Joshua has survived too, even if one can indeed (if so minded) offer such an account. The more theological point is that the divine will requires a range of faithful interpretations that can develop over time, and that to see God rightly (and thus, ex hypothesi, to “see what God is saying”) is not a once-­for-­all construal. There is no way of untangling when these various emphases have been articulated in Israel’s consciousness. The task of reading the final form of the text before us must not be lost in the pondering of such behind-­the-­text variables, even as one is always alert to what such considerations might contribute. But here the long section of divine speech, considered in its two separate “paragraphs” (vv. 20–25 and then vv. 26–35), results in seeing two equally important divine emphases held together. In the first, despite trouble, forgiveness ensures the continuance of Israel—of the covenant—though this is only barely presented as good news. In the second, this turns out not to equate to individual Israelites surviving the crisis: they will all die. We shall return at various times in our study to one of the key theological points at stake here: the ability to see theological tensions held together, and the refusal of the option of collapsing them into one simple theological affirmation or—and this turns out to be the same thing—of believing that it would

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not have been possible for ancient Israelites to see more than one nuance at a time, and therefore insisting on parceling out the insights to discrete authors and redactors. To read the resultant text as scripture is to reckon with the fact that God’s punishment can both be congruent with forgiveness and at the same time result in death. Failure to see God led to failure to see the land. But in the long run, failure to see God is inseparable from death. 14:36–45 Verses 36–38 recount an initial realization of the promise of death: the scouts apart from Joshua and Caleb are killed by a plague (maggēphāh; fatal trouble of some sort, not the same word as in v. 12). They are the only two scouts who remain alive. But the remainder of the chapter tells of a bizarre and depressing coda to the narrative thus far. Moses relays the deaths of the scouts to the people, who mourn and then, as if finally realizing that YHWH’s word was after all reliable and is now being played out before them, decide that they will go up and attack the land after all. Their declaration in verse 40 is preceded by hinnenu, translated literally as “Here we are” by the NRSV, but which basically shifts the perspective of the declaration that follows to their own view, to be understood as removed from any reliance upon what YHWH now requires of them. Moses says as much: this new desire to enter the land is too late, and YHWH is no longer with such a venture. The people have been told to head south and avoid the Amalekites and the Canaanites (v. 25), but now, heading north into the land, they duly run into precisely these people, who will put them to the “sword” (v. 43), much as they feared in the first place when refusing to go up. In fact the account stops short of spelling out that this happens, and fades out with the Amalekites and the Canaanites “defeating” and “pursuing” them (NRSV) as far as Hormah, though this is a weak translation for an action that clearly involves military aggression.28 Hormah appears to have been somewhere southwest of their starting place, though commentators regularly note the odd detail that it has a definite article here and a root from herem, destruction, perhaps suggesting that they were pursued to “the annihilation” which their doomed enterprise provoked. In its last mention in the book, the ark serves as one small pointer toward a broader perspective on what has happened: it was not involved

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in the disaster (v. 44). Perhaps the reader is to conclude that there remains hope for those who rely on the presence of God, with the absence of the ark serving as a symbol of the fact that this belated enterprise did not. This intense chapter has set up the framework for the remainder of the book.29 The “wilderness wanderings” that ensue are the direct result of the failure to discern that God was leading them forward at this point. Twenty-­two chapters later the people will once again be poised on the edge of the land that God is giving them, but it will not be the same people; rather it will be their descendants. The significance of the tale told here is reflected in its presence in multiple other texts and traditions within the Old Testament, beginning already in the book of Numbers itself where Moses briefly recounts the episode at 32:8–13, as some of the tribes argue that they would still prefer to remain outside the land. This passage neither diverges from nor adds much to the substance of the account in chapters 13–14, although such comparisons are more complex—as always—when Numbers is read against Deuteronomy, especially chapter 1.30 How should today’s reader respond to these texts? If every generation is to think of itself as the one that came out of Egypt (as the Passover liturgy has it), and if Christian readers are to take their lead from the book of Hebrews’ typological reading of the hardening of hearts in the wilderness as a word to those who follow Jesus Christ (Heb. 3:5–19, reading through the lens of Ps. 95:7–11 as another significant canonical construal), then these chapters speak to Christian readers of the prime significance of trust in the Lord in moments of transition—discerning the way ahead on the path of discipleship. The Hebrews 3 reading represents the key New Testament presentation of these issues, and its tone stays close to its Old Testament source(s).31 Moses was faithful (Heb. 3:5), but those who followed him did not benefit. In Hebrews’ characteristic form of argument, how much more is Christ faithful (cf. 3:6), and thus how much more do those who follow him stand to benefit, or, alternatively, to suffer the consequences if they harden their hearts, the Psalm 95 passage being cited as evidence. The well-­known warning and exhortation passages of Hebrews (such as 3:12–19 or 6:1–8) are also embroiled in the difficulty of articulating confidence in a forgiving God alongside a clear

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understanding of suffering the consequences of one’s actions anyway. In Hebrews, as in Numbers, there is no cheap grace. But is there good news? As so often, this probably depends on where one locates oneself in the narrative. For those who would learn from Moses, this is a hard calling to intercede before God for the sake of a people who are not on the whole willing to trust God. But the more general picture of Numbers 13–14 is bleak for those who lead or have responsibility for others, and indeed for those who are so led. The passage gives a strong sense of people getting what they wish for and this not being a good thing (for them). There is a life beyond death for Israel, in the promise to the next generation, but this takes a broader perspective than looking out for God’s blessing to be realized in one’s own life or experience. The good news is not for the individual reader, one might say, but for the church (or, comparably, the synagogue). And what of the ethical problems of the conquest of a land occupied by others? It is notable that in the terms of this account, there is no sense that Israel is to take the land by driving out anyone else. In fact, the focus of Numbers 13–14 turns the spotlight away from the ethical, and looks instead towards Israel’s ability or willingness to live in dependence upon its God. There will be time for the trials of the ethics of warfare in later chapters, but actually the Old Testament consistently demarcates between ethical concerns and awareness of sin. The point is put rather well in Yehezkel Kaufmann’s classic study of Israel’s religion: The God of the Torah is just and moral, and the Torah is filled with his social-­moral injunctions. Yet, when the Torah speaks of the causes of national punishment and exile, these are not explicitly mentioned. The archetypal national sins of Israel are the cultic defection of the golden calf, and the lack of faith in YHWH shown in the episode of the spies (Num. 13–14; Deut. 1:22 ff ).32

In this, Kaufmann says, the Torah is as one with the prophets. Here again we see the significance of being able to hold important theological emphases in tension. Ethical concerns will come to the fore later in our journey through Numbers. But here we are concerned with chapters that cash out the

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deadly price of fundamental suspicion. To the theologically inclined reader they urge instead the virtue of trust, predicated upon an awareness of what God has done. In turn, the cultivation of this trust will enable the eye to see, and in particular to see rightly the God in whom the reader trusts. I N T H E W I L D E R N E S S O F S LOT H W I T H K A R L B A RT H

Let us set aside for the moment the above reading, and sketch out another one. The links between the two, though several, will also be held to one side, since our next goal is to see how the passage works in Karl Barth’s account of it—on Barth’s terms, insofar as possible. Barth’s account of Numbers 13–14 occurs in an interesting set of extended Old Testament readings as illustrations of his doctrinal discussion of sloth as archetypal human sin, in volume IV of the Church Dogmatics. We need to set this reading in a certain amount of context in order to see what he is doing and why, before turning to an analysis of his actual reading, and concluding with evaluation, in particular with regard to the relative merits of his approach in comparison to other interpretive options. The architectonics of Barth’s discussion of the church’s dogmatic confession has arrived in volume IV at “The Doctrine of Reconciliation,” in which christological concerns are related through the threefold discussion of Christ as the God who is humbled (IV/1), Christ as the man who is exalted (IV/2), and Christ as the God-­man who seals reconcili­ ation (IV/3). Equally, the focus of exposition is on Christ’s high-­priestly, kingly, and prophetic roles, respectively. If Christ is then the exalted Son of Man, at the beginning of IV/2, the corresponding second section of that discussion is the human antithesis of this exalted human nature of Christ, a chapter (§65) entitled “The Sloth and Misery of Man.” In Barth’s view, according to his usual logic, what is revealed in the resurrection and exaltation of the man Christ is precisely the nature of what is overcome in fallen human beings: in other words, Barth’s account of sinful humanity proceeds from a starting point in the divine revelation of its opposite in the resurrection. What is thereby revealed is “the man who would not make use of his freedom, but was content with the low level of

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a self-­enclosed being . . . subject to his own stupidity, inhumanity, dissipation and anxiety, and delivered up to his own death.”33 When Barth arrives at what he calls the “material” question of the nature of sin as seen from this angle, he names it “sloth” (403). This is parsed as “sluggishness, indolence, slowness or inertia . . . evil inaction” (403). It is worth noting that the category is generated by the particular stage reached in the overall christological account. In IV/1, where the focus was on the obedient Son of God—who, in Barth’s extraordinarily pregnant phrasing, “made his way into the far country”—the corresponding human sin was pride: what was revealed in the crucifixion (as well as the resurrection) was the man thereby set aside, “who willed to be as God, himself lord, the judge of good and evil, his own helper.”34 Barth illustrates a range of dimensions of sin-­as-­pride with excursuses on various Old Testament passages: Exodus 32–34, Genesis 3, 1 Samuel 8, and the descent into exile as attested by Jeremiah. All of these are relatively high-­ profile accounts of human sinfulness in the Old Testament, and all serve his purposes well. Sloth, on the other hand, is a rather less well-­established dogmatic category, and correspondingly, the material available for scriptural reflection is considerably less well explored. This time Barth offers a fairly tight conceptual categorization for his discussion. Again four passages illustrate four dimensions of the doctrinal discussion, but whereas in IV/1 these four categories proceed serially through a range of loosely related aspects of the one discussion, the four categories in IV/2 are neatly explicated, concerning “man’s refusal (1) in his relationship with God; (2) in his relationship with his fellow-­men; (3) in his relationship with the created order; and (4) in his relationship with his historical limitation in time” (409). This is an order Barth has used before, in his analysis of the human creature in their web of relationships in the created order (particularly in CD III/4). Here it leads to a fascinating and thought-­provoking treatment of sloth in dialogue with some Old Testament texts. First, sloth with respect to God leads Barth to the picture of “the fool,” in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, as well as being narratively embodied in the account of Nabal (literally “fool”) in 1 Samuel 25 (424–32). Second, sloth with respect to fellow humans is exemplified by way of Amos’s critique of Israel’s failure to look after “those who are oppressed and in

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darkness” (449; cf. 445–52). Third, sloth with respect to the created order is “illustrated” for Barth in the “strange” story of David and Bathsheba (464–67).35 Finally we come to sloth in regard to human finitude in time: where human existence is essentially limited in time, in contradistinction to Christ’s exaltation through crucifixion and resurrection. “All evil begins with the fact that we will not thankfully accept the limitation of our existence” (468). Barth’s discussion here probes aspects of human existence and longed-­for autonomy that render sloth as a form of ultimate anxiety over against the persistent desire to transcend human finitude. It is a subtle discussion whose specifics lie beyond our immediate purview. But Numbers 13–14 is adduced as the biblical passage to bring out a concrete example of the phenomenon. As we arrive at Barth’s reading of Numbers, then, it is easy to see that the passage is chosen to illuminate a particular aspect of a well-­mapped theological terrain. Its substantive role is thus heavily predetermined to make the point about sloth that Barth has been expounding over the previous eighty pages and more. Even so, what we find in the reading of the text remains subtly attentive to the dynamics of the narrative from Numbers. A lengthy opening paragraph offers a hermeneutical reflection on the importance of reading “history” with a “tested and critical naivety” (479). The testing in view relates to receiving the biblical stories in terms of the “kerygmatic sense in which they were told” (479), an approach that resonates with the ways in which von Rad handled Old Testament narratives.36 The turn to the text is to “consider the picture which it gives,” neatly sidestepping any further reflection on historical rootedness, even as the reasons why Israel subsequently reflected on this episode of failing are pondered in passing (479). The “setup” of 13:1–24 is handled by Barth under the rubric of confirming the promise of YHWH by way of the testimony of the spies, who are to act as “authentic witnesses to the people” (479–80). Barth insists that the whole progression from the exodus to this point has presupposed that God’s people are constituted by the divine promise (of land), and thus that what is at stake in Numbers 13 and succeeding chapters is not the content or fulfillment of this promise, which is secure in the identity of the God who promises, but its “appropriation.”

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Numbers 13:25, then, represents the sudden “invasion of anxious care.” Although the spies faithfully traversed the land, even the haul of fruit did not overcome the problem: “What they feared was incomparably greater than what they desired” (480). The spies’ judgment was based on what they saw in the land, not what they already had seen of YHWH’s faithfulness: “They had not really seen as witnesses of Yahweh, and therefore they could not speak as His witnesses” (480). By now in fine rhetorical form, Barth goes on to rehearse how the report of the ten is taken up by the people, despite the countervailing witness of Joshua and Caleb, and with regard to the expressed wish of 14:2 that they would rather have died in Egypt, Barth writes: “From the future, in which they do not see Yahweh and His promise and its fulfilment and His faithfulness and power, . . . death reaches into their present in the form of this mad desire” (481). The ensuing plan actually to head back to Egypt is summarized by Barth’s “The madness is complete. Panic knows no limits” (481). Moses and Aaron’s (“majestic”) response, to fall on their faces before the assembly, hinges on the observation that “when the people of Yahweh holds back, the only hope for this people is Yahweh himself ” (481). Barth carefully traces how actual intercession does not arrive until after “the two faithful witnesses Joshua and Caleb” have intervened, noting that this is a surprising delay after the wording of 14:5. The two witnesses, meanwhile, are “perhaps” referred to in Revelation 11:3. The crux of the narrative is the interaction between YHWH and Moses in 14:11–20. On Barth’s view, the rejection of YHWH is “the annulment of the covenant and promise,” and therefore in effect “nothing less than their [i.e., the Israelites’] destruction” (482). Moses’ intercession secures pardon, which is to say that it averts the destruction, but not without consequences. Barth reads 14:29 as pointing to a death that is not in Egypt—“for the will and act of God cannot be reversed”—but in the wilderness, that is, “without experiencing the fulfilment” (482). The coda of the tale is taken as illuminating the circumstance that the people “are not ready to accept the destiny which now impends in consequence of their own guilt” (483), since—in Barth’s terms—“the courage of those who are anxious is no more pleasing to Him than their cowardice.” Barth reads a note of hope in the absence of the ark from this belated

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campaign: this is “the only note of comfort at the end of the story,” since the ark lives to fight another day, one may presume. The reading ends with no general reflection or review of the point. It is clear here, as elsewhere, that Barth thinks that the relevance of his reading is self-­evident, or, to put it in different terms, his point was already made in parallel with the act of bringing the passage into view, but the explication of the passage highlights, nuances, and illuminates how sloth works out in human life with God. W H AT H AV E W E S E E N B A RT H D O I N R E A D I N G N U M B E R S  13 –14 ?

A positive account of Barth’s reading might highlight, first, that it models his famous cry of “exegesis, exegesis and yet more exegesis!”37 He attends to the details of the text, pausing, for example, to consider the unexpected gap between “falling on their faces” (14:5) and intercession (eight verses later). Second, and more pointedly, he attends to the hermeneutical framing of the purpose of reading the text. On this occasion such framing occurs by way of explicit discussion, but also it is modeled in terms of what qualifies for comment and why. What the spies are able to see (and/or trust) is key, whereas, for example, all matters of historical reference or textual detail that do not contribute to the focus of his account are marginalized or absent completely. Third, then, the theological focus both shapes the nature of this engagement and emerges from it, in a seamless narrative arc that either justifies the choice of angle of approach or else casts considerable suspicion on whether the passage was forechosen with the interpretive ends already in view. Among the theological articulations brought to bear in the reading are the emphasis on the indefeasible word of promise from YHWH that constitutes the people of God, who, if they are truly themselves, cannot but see the land as ripe for the taking, but who—since they do not see the land this way—must therefore reap the consequences of their sin. None of these seem to be substantively alien to the text, but the manner of their articulation is perhaps more familiar to readers of Barth than to readers of Numbers. One question is: does that matter, in exegetical, hermeneutical, or theological terms?

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There are plenty of readers, of course, and perhaps especially among biblical scholars, who are inclined to say that it does matter, and that it requires a negative evaluation of Barth’s approach. The more astringent have no compunction in charging Barth with ignoring proper procedure in the reading of the Bible in such a way as to render his work effectively valueless. James Barr is probably the most notable example: “The countless pages of wearisome, inept, and futile exegesis in the Church Dogmatics, especially in the later volumes, were only a testimony to the fact that the Bible cannot be used theologically when the work of biblical scholarship is brushed aside. Barth offered nothing to that scholarship, and in the end achieved nothing for it.”38 Even among those less inclined to “embarrassing ad hominem attack,”39 the suspicion lingers that Barth is not really letting the selected scriptural passages shape his theological engagement, but rather finding in them the resources he needs, to say what he wanted to say anyway. Furthermore, since Barth is in many ways the leading light in much recent work in theological interpretation, either by way of explicit influence or implicit shaping of the kinds of questions asked,40 it is worth considering whether the particular example before us sheds any light on the strengths and weaknesses of his approach. I suggest that what is at stake in part in Barth’s reading of Numbers 13–14 is the question of how one evaluates a proper ordering of human interpretation in dialogue with divine revelation. As Donald Wood summarizes rather neatly: Barth’s view was that “the task of biblical interpretation involves going beyond a recognition and exploration of the historical and cultural distance between the biblical text and the contemporary interpreter to a responsible restatement of the text’s subject matter.”41 Since the subject matter, as Christian scripture, must concern somehow the interplay of God’s multifaceted address and its human reception, whatever else it may also concern, then Barth’s concern with Numbers 13–14 is drawn ineluctably to questions of how the text witnesses to God’s nature and action, along with the concomitant human responses. Even so, on these terms, one should note that Barth’s reading takes seriously the location of this passage in the finished form of the Pentateuch, at the culmination of the journey to the land long since promised; and it takes seriously the significance of the spies’ (and then in turn the people’s) inability to see rightly the God in whom they are to trust.

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As a matter of observation, some of Barth’s emphases overlap with the reading offered at the beginning of this chapter. The difference is that our reading sought to take its bearings from the categories presented in the text and by virtue of the text’s location in the book of Numbers (and resultantly, the Pentateuch, and so forth), whereas Barth’s reading is propelled explicitly, in terms of its location and function in the finished text of the Church Dogmatics, by dogmatically derived theological categories. The reading of Numbers 13–14 exists to serve the discussion of sin, structured as it is by christological concerns, and of sloth-­as-­sin, as directed by the argument about sloth being the form of sin revealed in the raising up of the human Christ. We noted above that sloth is not an overly familiar dogmatic rubric for the consideration of sin, and this must inevitably raise questions regarding particular reasons for Barth’s alertness to sloth as sin. Could this be related to his own remarkable propensity to work prodigiously and prolifically at his labors of theological study and writing? In other words: Might it not be rather convenient that a man who works to the exclusion of other obligations in wider family life, let us say, feels free to expound for eighty pages on the sin of failing to respond to God adequately or energetically enough?42 Nevertheless, such surface-­level suspicion does not survive the recognition that the discussion of sloth-­as-­sin is structurally parallel to his previous volume’s discussion of pride-­as-­sin. In terms of the architecture of the argument, sloth and pride are twin characterizations of humanity in sin just as Jesus is both very God and very man. One may thus dispense with the superficial argument that sloth is simply a category convenient to Barth for which he is in search of scriptural support. The real question remains, however: Does this manner of engagement with the biblical text foreclose or facilitate real interpretive work? Enough has been said, I hope, to indicate why there is no formal, a priori answer to this question.43 The benefit of considering a specific example is that it allows us to see what a particular substantive answer to the question might look like. Here it comes down to the following core theological judgment: Is it true that human sin is rightly characterized in terms of pride and sloth? (In fact, one would need also to consider whether Barth intends pride and sloth between them to be an exhaustive account of sin, and on one level he clearly does not, since the third christologically driven

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category of sin, corresponding to what is revealed by Christ the God-­ man who is faithful to reconcile, is humanity’s negatively corresponding unfaithful witness, or “falsehood.”44 But to answer the direct question about how to read Num. 14, it is sufficient to have both Barth’s category for it, “sloth,” and one alternative option, “pride.”) If it is true that human sin is appropriately characterized as pride and sloth, then reading Numbers 13–14 under these rubrics, or in conscious dialogue with these rubrics as options for interpretation, is likely to be both illuminating and compelling. If it is not true, and we would be better off understanding human sin in some other way, then the dogmatic categories in view distort the text and deliver it into an inadvertent manner of addressing a topic not within its purview. There are then two things to say at this point, one hermeneutical and one theological. First, regardless of whether it is true or not, it is highly significant that this theologically evaluative judgment is called for in determining whether the manner of handling scripture is productive. There is no shuffling the theological judgment to the back of the pack and proceeding in the meantime with methodologically neutral matters, since that is to take the path of not bringing the text into dialogue with the relevant theological categories. Of course that is a possible procedure in terms of coming up with an interpretation of Numbers 13–14, but if the question is whether in fact pride and sloth work as illuminating categories, then a judgment has to be made about the extent to which they rightly characterize human sin. Second, as to the theological judgment itself, whether pride and sloth are right characterizations: all that is available to us as readers of scripture is to try them out as hypotheses (or to refuse to try them out), and here the results of the reading seem illuminating in this case. I take it as posi­ tive for such a view that much that Barth ends up talking about coheres with and overlaps with what concerns any attempt at reading the passage, including our own, a good example being his nuanced handling of the particular sense of “forgive” at 14:20, for example. It also seems plausible that the dialectic between pride and sloth is a step beyond tendencies to characterize pride as the root of all sin, if only in that human failing can involve underreaching as much as overreaching. Indeed, my own view is that the key in securing the success of Barth’s interpretation here is

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precisely the combination of appeal to the category of “sloth” for this passage in tandem with the careful location of this particular exegetical excursus within the structure and architectonic design of the Dogmatics (in general and in particular here in volume IV’s treatment of the doctrine of reconciliation by way of christological categories). As a result, the appeal to Numbers 13–14 is held in tension with other ascriptions of theological reality to other texts, and in the way this is done Barth is able to avoid the standard problem of simply translating one passage into another conceptuality as if its subject matter has been distilled without remainder. To go further than this, one would need to invest in further refining the categories and conceptualities of one’s doctrinal understanding of sin.45 At the same time, there are also less positive aspects of Barth’s reading, in the sense that some important elements of the text recede somewhat from view: among those discussed earlier in the chapter one might suggest that Barth’s reading is surprisingly uninterested in the character and logic of Moses’ intercession in 14:13–19. So it is clear that the scriptural text exceeds Barth’s characterization of it, which one can say while still affirming that certain key aspects of the text are deeply illuminated in his reading. In short, theological interests may afford the interpreter a way to articulate the subject matter of the text that can be more felicitous than attempts to do so that remain entirely within the conceptuality of the text. (Or arguably, they can be at least equally useful, or indeed less useful though still in a worthwhile manner.) If it is true that the slothful characterization of sin is germane to the reading of Numbers 13–14, then Barth offers a quick way to get at the subject matter. Correspondingly, working with the categories of the text as primary may indeed be recommended as an excellent course of interpretive action, but the ability to discern coherent larger patterns within which those categories make sense requires an imaginative step toward grasping at ways of characterizing the reality to which the text attests. The result is that the two ways of considering the matter—from the text “upward,” as it were, and from the dogmatic convictions “downward”—are not in fact two separate or separable ways of thinking about scriptural interpretation. They serve as useful heuristic simplifications for

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the sake of articulating specific points in a clear way. But they are no more separable in reality than divine action and human response are in general. To put it another way: for as long as one is asking how to relate exegesis and dogmatics, one has rent asunder that which God has joined together, and the question will admit of only incomplete and partially persuasive answers at best. Perhaps there was a clue in the work of Barth himself, where “Exegesis!” was his threefold cry, but behold the fruit it produced: fourteen volumes of an unfinished dogmatics. It remains only to assess why such an account is so much a minority report in the academic endeavors of the twenty-­first century. Most of those who have scouted out the hermeneutical land see it differently. If only there were some scriptural narrative that might illuminate our topic regarding how to see rightly the prospects before us, when so many report that it cannot be done! A TA L E O F T R U S T A N D I N S I G H T: R E A D I N G W I T H T H E   E Y E S   O F T H E H E A RT

As a matter of observation, biblical scholars writing commentary on Numbers may cite all manner of fellow biblical scholars doing the same thing, but none of them—with a single slight exception to be noted below—cite Karl Barth. To be fair, Barth’s reading of Numbers 14 does not attract much attention among Barth scholars either. A partial exception to this latter judgment is the published thesis of Benoît Bourgine: L’Herméneutique Théologique de Karl Barth.46 This is a careful philosophical-­theological navigation of the role of dogmatic Christology in the reading of the scriptural text, with specific reference to Church Dogmatics IV. While he is alert to the various issues raised by Barth’s reading of the Old Testament, his discussion of the relevant Old Testament exegetical sections is relatively brief (chiefly 57–61). He notes that Barth relies heavily on Augustine’s conceptuality with its rubric of “New hidden in the Old; Old revealed in the New” (58), and in terms of the four actual Old Testament exegeses contained in §65, he is content to list them as examples of “serious biblical theology,” wherein the Old Testament is handled as “the most powerful commentary on the

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New Testament” (70). His only comments with regard to the reading of Numbers are that it concerns “the fear of death such as is manifested in the passage,” and a passing reference to the reading’s opening “brief hermeneutical remark” (70). That hermeneutical remark leads Bourgine into an interesting point about how Barth orients his Old Testament reading. On the one hand, he lets the thread of the narrative determine the subject (skopus) of the text, but on the other, his intertextual two-­testament commitments have their impact. Old Testament passages thus serve to illuminate themes that are seen simultaneously as properly interior to the Old Testament itself and also as vindicating a christological dialectic between the two testaments. In a footnote Bourgine goes further: Why then does Barth not appeal to traditional Jewish interpretations of his selected Old Testament passages? Methodologically, such approaches operate similarly; but in substantive terms the Jewish alignment is no longer christological, but may be, for example, the merit of the patriarchs, or the gift of the Mosaic law, or indeed the figure of Moses (70n189). In the long run, Bourgine’s thesis is indeed that a dialectical hermeneutical balance between exegesis and dogmatics runs through Barth’s work (507–16).47 Such a view is largely congruent with the position taken in the present chapter. However, it is striking that even here, few of the actual examples of Old Testament exegesis are explored in any detail (with the partial exception of §70’s reading of Job). It is thus hard to see how Bourgine’s analysis could persuade biblical scholars, whether or not that was his aim. And yet if this is still the nearest we have to a thoughtful account of what Barth was doing in this section of the Church Dogmatics, it becomes easy to understand why Barth’s reading of Numbers 13–14 has left almost no mark on the academic landscape, either theological or biblical. David Stubbs’s avowedly theological treatment of Numbers is the one slight exception to the above observation about the disinterest of commentary writers in Barth’s reading. Barth is mentioned maybe half a dozen times in his overall commentary, but, perhaps surprisingly, in regard to this one extended exegesis, Stubbs restricts himself to a footnote acknowledging the congruence between his own reading and that of Barth, and noting that the classical terminology for sin in this regard is acedia.48 In fact, Stubbs offers a reading of the overall narrative that is

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almost entirely aligned with Barth’s emphases, and also traces the language of sloth back to Aquinas. His is the first commentary on Numbers since perhaps de Vaulx’s fascinating theological reading of 1972 to engage at all with voices from the theological tradition. For de Vaulx, it was the fathers whose interpretations most interested him.49 He pointed to Cyril of Alexandria reading the story of the land and the spies typologically in terms of the kingdom of God, into which few enter, while Caleb’s being called the “son of Jephunneh” (13:6; 14:6; etc.) is read as a symbol of being the son of “conversion” (from pānāh, to turn), and therefore represents the church—the people of God—who must be on guard lest they too perish in the desert.50 Elsewhere de Vaulx attends to various typological readings of the ten unbelieving spies: Bede rather strikingly sees them as the scribes and the Pharisees, for example; or Ephrem sees them as prophets and teachers of the church. In either case they drive the true believer forward to Jesus, or, as Origen has it, they drive the believer to battle the giants and follow Joshua—that is, Jesus.51 It is then of some note that Childs singles out de Vaulx’s commentary, in the review he provides in his Introduction, as follows: “With regard to the theology of the book of Numbers, credit is due to J. de Vaulx, who among all the recent commentators, stands virtually alone in attempting to develop a theology of the book in relation to the history of exegesis.”52 While one may now add Stubbs’s work, the two remain rare theological voices in this particular wilderness, since otherwise there is little evidence of scholars in the modern (or at least twentieth-­century) period being willing to consider the scriptural text(s) of Numbers in any kind of dialogue with such christologically or ecclesiologically opened eyes. Interesting as it is to reflect on the theological significance of “two witnesses” in the Judeo-­Christian tradition, two witnesses do not really constitute a crowd. Perhaps one might ponder the oddity that the standard critical rebuttal to such readings does not seem to have all that many exemplars to hand of the kinds of readings being opposed.53 In fact, Numbers 13–14 seems to offer quite an interesting parallel to the very points at issue in these hermeneutical debates. The text’s urgent concerns with trust and sight, as they are related in conjunction to the fate of the Israelites in the story, are intriguingly comparable to relevant readerly categories.

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We recall the key turning points in the narrative as discussed above, when YHWH speaks to Moses: “How long will [this people] refuse to believe [or: trust] in me?” (14:11). Why do the spies bring home the “unfavorable report” (13:32; 14:37)? What makes them offer a report that will cause the people to complain (14:36)? Although the text, as we have seen, dwells more on the complaining itself, we have also seen that the refusal to trust is at the center of it all. What the ten spies see in the land is itself a function of whether they have eyes to see. If they had believed, they would have understood . . . a formulation not found in such a direct form until its negative articulation in the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:9 (“If you do not believe you shall not understand,” NETS), but already apparent here in Numbers 14. The theme will recur explicitly when we come to Numbers 20 below, and as I have suggested in an earlier chapter, it lurks in and through much of the book as a whole. Readers who would wish to see how the narrative works with regard to the values and virtues it enjoins upon those readers are well advised to reflect on how their reading is or is not implicated in the very virtues at stake. This is not to say that Numbers is “about” trust and suspicion, as if b emidbar were an exercise in Ricoeurian time and narrative. But nevertheless, it is part of the figural weave of this book of the wilderness, for those with eyes to see. The eyes in question, perhaps, are the self-­same “eyes of [the] heart” enlightened in Ephesians 1:18. In her suggestive study of a range of comparable biblical words and phrases, Alison Searle concludes that the conceptuality that best captures this notion of the “eyes of the heart” is in fact the imagination: the ability to see, or indeed to see as. She highlights how “imagination is one significant, inextricable part of the complex that makes up our humanity in biblical perspective. . . . In the words of Ephesians it is ‘the eyes of [the] heart’ (1:18).”54 There may be many ways to read Numbers 13–14 without reference to God, and they are not necessarily without merit. But what I have tried to show is that one cannot draw a straightforward line between such ways and more theologically interested readings, and claim that one has thereby separated between exegesis and some other less worthy or reputable pursuit, whether that pursuit is characterized by avowedly negative terms such as “eisegesis,” or by dismissive attempts at distancing, such as “homiletical reflection.” In reading texts, as in so much else, the

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eyes of the heart need all the help they can get. And where will that help come from? A M E D I TAT I O N , N OT ACCO R D I N G TO T H E L E T T E R

God has given to God’s people the gift of holy scripture. It stands before them as a vast territory of text, to be explored and appropriated, as gift, as a textual world overflowing with literary milk and theological honey. But the critics who live in the land are strong, and their interpretive paradigms are fortified and very large. Still a lone voice here or there protested, “Let us go up at once . . . for we are well able to read it.” Only for the majority report to respond, “We will not be able . . . it is a text that devours its inhabitants . . . the people there are descendants of Spinoza, and have grown to a great size.” Then the congregation of those who would read holy scripture raised a loud cry, and complained against their leaders and accredited interpreters, and said, “Would that we had died in the land of factual cataloging! Or in wrestling with this very book, In the Wilderness!” Did the voice of the Lord return: “How long will they refuse to trust in me, in spite of all this text that I have given them?” In due course, on the far side of much trial and tribulation and long years of critical standoff, the people decided they would go up after all and seek to make good their lack through the appropriation of blessed thoughts and practical applications after the critical sifting of the text. But the faculty who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them. Let the reader understand. Or better: let the reader with eyes to see be a reader whose eyes of the heart are opened. For what does one go out into the text to read, after all?

FIVE

“It Is the Text That Swallows Up the World” The Eclipse of Numbers’ Narrative and the Literal Sense of Korah’s Rebellion (Numbers 15–16)

And now for something completely different. One can without too much difficulty read Numbers 10–14 as a continuous narrative of the breaking of camp, the development (or resumption) of the hardships of trekking through the desert, and the great opportunity—not taken—to enter the land at the first time of asking. Chapter 14 ended with failure and destruction, in the shadow of the promise/threat of forty years to be spent wandering the wilderness (14:33). But as soon as one turns to chapter 15, the narrative breaks down, to be replaced without explanation by legislation about offerings made by fire, or the restitution for unintentional sin, along with many other matters. In 20:1 there is a sense of return to the travails of the wilderness, with its opening arrival of the Israelites in the wilderness of Zin, but for reasons to be explored more fully at that point, 20:1 probably brackets off

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the forty years’ wandering by bringing readers to the point at which the people are gathered ready to cross the Jordan. Even if 20:1 is less chronologically determinable than that, a good part of chapter 20 concerns the death of Aaron, which by way of comparison of 20:28 and 33:38 can be taken to be in the fortieth year of wandering.1 The result is that Numbers’ account of forty years’ wandering in the wilderness consists of a small number of nonnarrative sections pertaining to matters of legislation and organization, and one single substantial narrative, which occupies chapter 16 (and, with respect to its aftermath, chapter 17). The narrative in question is the story of Korah’s rebellion. In moving on from chapter 14, then, we are to encounter “complete difference” in two ways. One concerns the departure from continuous narrative development, which diverts us to consider the vexed question of how and why the book of Numbers comprises its distinctive mixture of narratives and nonnarrative sections. The other concerns the startling and unnerving “difference”—or perhaps better, “otherness”—of the subject matter of Numbers 16. The story of Korah’s rebellion is an obvious stumbling block for many (if not most) readers of holy scripture today, and confirms the suspicions of most (if not all) unsympathetic readers that the Old Testament is best left where it is thought to belong, that is, in the past, as a reminder of how not to live, or at least how not to think of God. I will not quite try to argue that this stumbling block should become the cornerstone of a renewed theological appreciation of scripture, but I will explore the case that in its striking incongruence with the modern (or postmodern) mind, Numbers 16 propels attentive readers to reach for altogether other ways of thinking that might yet turn out to offer a word of life to the world in which today’s readers live. Those whose interests rest with this second line of inquiry, concerning Christian readings of narratives in Numbers, are invited to proceed posthaste to the second major section of this chapter, entitled “Approaching Korah’s Rebellion.” Those pondering the first matter, the book of Numbers’ intertwining of narrative and other texts, are invited to take their seats for a consideration of what is, perhaps unexpectedly, among the most lively of current academic discussions concerning the book of Numbers: the question of its structure and organization.

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D E AT H A N D PA R ATA X I S : P R O D U C T I V E D I S A R R AY I N   N U M B E R S 15 –19

Attentive readers of the first chapter of the present book will already be able to anticipate the main point to be made here: that there is no discernible deliberate authorial purpose in juxtaposing the sections of text that now make up Numbers 15–19, which is not to say that one cannot now read these chapters asking questions about their literary and intertextual resonance and coherence. To put the first part of that claim another way: Numbers 15–19 consists of a range of texts placed alongside one another (for which I extend slightly the literary term “parataxis,” which usually refers to sequences of sentences rather than short passages). Furthermore, there is little to be gained from intricate analyses of why or how this was done, since fundamentally we do not know why or what stages were involved, and cannot recover an underlying rationale. The second part of the claim moves to the canonical level of the finished text and ponders whether readers might nevertheless determine thematic emphases from the resultant collection of texts, and when this is done the conclusion is usually that death is at the heart of Numbers 15–19. Hence the twin focus of the discussion that follows here: death and parataxis. This claim is a focused example of the concerns rehearsed in chapter 1 above, regarding the perhaps surprising way in which the structure and literary organization of the book of Numbers has become such a focus of attention in recent scholarship. Recall that this is sometimes the pursuit of the proposed authorial and redactional moves that led to the book of Numbers that we now have.2 At other times, and I think more usefully as regards questions about reading Numbers today, this is phrased in terms of literary structuring without necessary recourse to deliberate authorial organization, although of course if the discerned literary structure is sufficiently complex then one would most likely posit some form of deliberate intent either at authorial or redactional (or canonical) stage. Thus Mary Douglas’s proposed “ring-­structure” of the book, for instance, is explicitly offered as a contrast to “finding parts of the text disjointed,” and involves saying “that the book has been very carefully constructed.”3 An example of a proposed intricate literary structure that sits quite

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light to claiming substantive deliberate input is Thomas Brodie’s map of “diptychs,” nineteen in all, centered on the atonement-­themed passage 17:12–19:22.4 It is possible to read his proposal as pertaining to how various “panels” of text appear on the page—the nearest he comes to intentional language is a remark about the phenomenon of “placing the central essence of a book literally at its centre”—and in fact one could evaluate his somewhat complex map of the book entirely with respect to whether the text as it stands fits these classifications. As long as readers are clear about their standard of “measurement,” there is no reason why unintended consequences of juxtaposition should be less significant than intended consequences for the reading of the resultant text.5 Brevard Childs’s canonical approach to scripture makes much of this distinction, and tries out the label “canonical intentionality” to capture the sense of the text’s thrust without prejudice as to who, if anyone, did the intending. James Barr’s repeated retort that the label is incoherent turns out to be nothing other than the claim that an author-­centered hermeneutic must take priority.6 On this general level, the sympathies of theologically oriented interpretation tend to lie with Childs, since it is the final form of the text that does the work of exerting its pressure on readers down through the centuries. Parade examples of where Childs’s point brings light to bear on texts with complex redactional histories include books like Deuteronomy and Isaiah, where there is evident gain from adding the canonical question to all the other critical and analytical tasks of biblical interpretation. And yet, when we turn to Numbers 15–19, predisposed as I might be to find interpretive significance in its juxtaposition of law and narrative, or particular mutually illuminating insights from comparing the specific judgments of Numbers 15 with the narratives of Korah, or Aaron’s budding staff, it does not in fact seem to be the case that much further light is shed by asking these canonically shaped questions. Perhaps this evaluation should be phrased more carefully: such canonical approaches to these particular texts do generate insights, but my own view is precisely that they “generate” them in the sense of “constructing” them rather than “uncovering” them, and while I take the drift of Childs’s overall argument to be that that need not matter, on this particular occasion I think the resulting insights are at best interesting

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possibilities for which any language of “intention” (canonical or otherwise) seems overly confident. One needs to address specifics in order to demonstrate or evaluate such a claim, so we turn to some examples: first with respect to Numbers 15 in its canonical location, and second, with regard to a couple of attempts to read literary coherence into this (sub-­)section of the book as a whole. A third reflection relates this discussion to James Watts’s signifi­ cant proposal about the general issue of law and narrative as constituent genres of the finished Pentateuch.7 Numbers 15

The content of Numbers 15 consists of a series of laws presented as instances of divine speech to and through Moses: the former (to Moses) in the cases of verses1, 17, 37, and the latter implicitly all the way through. Thus in one sense they are given a narrative presentation that could be understood as simply continuous with the story so far, although 15:22–23 appears to interpose a narrator between YHWH and Moses on the one hand and the reader of the finished text on the other, thereby “apparently ascribing legislation to the narrator.”8 This is simply the most obvious pointer to the evident fact that Numbers 15 has something of a miscellaneous (and nonnarrative) nature. Levine even titles his discussion of it “Unfinished Cultic Business.”9 To summarize: the first 16 verses describe rules for offerings in a manner that is supplementary to those described in the early chapters of Leviticus; verses 17–21 relate to the practice of offering a loaf of bread from the first batch baked once the Israelites have settled in the land; verses 22–31 switch abruptly to the topic of unintentional failure to observe “all these” commandments, which is clearly not a reference back to the preceding verses about bread offerings, and in fact is also addressing a matter taken up in Leviticus (esp. 4:13–31);10 verses 32–36 offer a case study about Sabbath breaking; and finally verses 37–41 relate to the wearing of “fringes” (tsitsit) on the corners of garments “throughout [the] generations” as a reminder of all YHWH’s commandments. Now clearly it makes sense to ask why these laws are here, at this point in the text. Traditional Jewish exegesis developed a range of reasons, usefully summarized by Achenbach: (1) by providing legislation

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pertaining to life in the land straight after the narrative that consigned the wilderness generation to die before they reached it, Numbers 15 serves to comfort and assure the Israelites that at least their children will enter the land; and (2) the new situation of being forced to develop the infrastructure for living outside the land, such as regarding agriculture, points either to the need for new legal provision at this juncture, or perhaps anticipates how such rulings will have to be developed in the future.11 In general terms this makes good sense, especially the first point, although note that it is really talking about the impact of this chapter on readers, as much as any attempt to discern its purpose (or, one might say: it is an account of its secondary purpose).12 The most sustained attempt in modern commentaries to derive interpretive purchase from the specific context of these laws is that of Dennis Olson, whose work is always alert to these kinds of canonical resonance. In a thoughtful interlude in his commentary, he explains the traditional Jewish view, and then addresses “many other connections” that chapter 15 has both with the preceding narratives and with chapter 16 (and indeed he also stresses the “internal cohesion” of the series of laws that makes up chapter 15 itself ).13 A lot of these links are of a general nature: legal concerns about “aliens” relate to the narratives’ concerns with specific non-­ Israelites; rules about offering by fire draw the reader back to “the fire of YHWH” in 11:2; the emphasis on divine speech exclusively through Moses in chapter 15 anticipates the substance of Korah’s complaint in 16:3; and so forth. All of these highlight real features of the text, and might indeed point toward reasons why compilers of the book gathered these materials in this formation, but they do not go further and shed interpretive light on either the narratives or the rulings; and if they do point to reasons for juxtaposition, then those reasons are of a relatively vague and inconsequential nature. The law of the tassels (or fringes; tsitsit) may serve as an example of the nuanced judgments at stake here. In 15:38 the Israelites are commanded, by YHWH, through Moses, to put a blue cord at each corner of the fringe. James Kugel’s review of the passage in his magisterial survey of early interpretation notes Pseudo-­Philo (LAB 16:1) highlighting the “unbearable” law of tassels as the provocation for Korah’s revolt. The link is drawn by Rashi and other premodern interpreters too.14 In Targum

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Pseudo-­Jonathan 16:2 there is a tradition of Korah leading a counterpractice of making entirely blue prayer-­garments, as a test to Moses’ authority. In large part this link appears to be an attempt to address the otherwise apparently unprovoked conflict between Korah and Moses. Olson mentions this interpretive tradition, but then suggests that it is not the (burden of the) law of tassels that provoked Korah’s rebellion, although “the literary juxtaposition of the laws of Numbers 15 and the story of Korah’s revolt implies something akin to the Targum’s interpretation.”15 I think that what Olson inadvertently demonstrates here is that once two texts are juxtaposed, it is always possible to address oneself to the question of what constitutes the link between them, and often possible to do so in more than one way. Olson disagrees with the more traditional interpretation, but offers another one to the same end. The status of these interpretations is no more nor less secure than saying that Numbers 16 offers no indication of what causes the rebellion. Such views are not thereby rendered worthless. Indeed, Olson draws a theologically compelling conclusion at this point: if the words of Numbers 15 did serve to assure the distressed Israelites that life would go on for the new generation, then Numbers 16 shows that it was also possible that those words could be heard as threat (and indeed bring death to the old generation).16 One need not be suspicious that this reading fits entirely with his suggestion for the structure of the book, which it does. But I think one should be suspicious of any suggestion that we have uncovered the logic of composition of the text (or the section of the book), and by implication any suggestion that this is the single reading that carries weight. Two final ways of making this point are to hand. One is to note that scholars given to reconstructing the text along source-­critical or other lines find that their resultant reconstructions—unsurprisingly—invite different construals of what the plot and purpose of their text turns out to be. Thus Joel Baden avers that the priestly manna story (which he isolates as now found, quite extensively, in Exod. 16:1–3, 6–25, 31–36) “originally” stood between Numbers 15:16 and 15:17, neatly leading into the law about presenting a fresh-­baked batch of bread. All becomes clear! Indeed, “had the compiler of the Pentateuch left this . . . sequence as it stood, it is likely that scholars would have had no difficulty in recognizing . . . the logic

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underlying [the] additions,” instead of struggling over “the considerably messier and more confusing canonical text we read today.”17 My point does not concern whether Baden is right (which does, admittedly, seem rather a faint possibility), but rather that it is no surprise that with a different text the underlying logic looks different; and hence no wonder that in turn readers looking at the tassels/Korah juxtaposition can find a logic to fit it. Second, highly divergent “logical” or contextual links are discerned by different readers.18 The “high-­handed” sin of 15:30 may serve to illustrate. This unusual phrase, literally “with a high/raised hand [beyād rāmāh],” is used uniquely here; on its two other occurrences (Exod. 14:8; Num. 33:3) it is typically translated something like “going out boldly,” though the ESV offers “defiantly” in Exodus 14. This may be a helpful way to take it here: one who sins defiantly. Such a person is to be “cut off ” (karet), since they have “despised” the word of YHWH. The word for “despised” here is not the one used in 14:11, 23 (nā’ats), but is bāzāh, a word that is mainly evident in later texts, which might arguably point toward this legislation being a later addition to the Pentateuch. Although the point of the ruling is clear, it is less obvious why it has become attached to the consideration of cases of unintentional sin. Here the multiple options come into view. Several commentators, trying to make sense of where the chapter goes next, suggest that what follows in the next five verses—the illustration of breaking Sabbath by wood gathering—“provides an individual case of sin ‘with a high hand.’ ”19 Others, particularly those embroiled in drawing conclusions about the forward link to Korah, see Korah’s defiance as illustrative of 15:30.20 Jean-­Pierre Sonnet reads 15:30 in conjunction with 20:11—“Then Moses lifted up [vayyārem; from the same root as 15:30] his hand and struck the rock”—to attempt a resolution of the vexed question of what Moses did wrong in chapter 20, to which we shall come in due course in a later chapter. Sonnet argues that the link, which one might characterize as conceptual, verbal, or intertextual, highlights Moses’ fully aware act of defiance and rebellion.21 And so it does, at least intertextually, because of course intertextual links do not rely on anyone’s intention, but on the juxtaposition of texts and the presence of alert readers. So what does all this show? It shows that one can make excellent points about plausible and even illuminating readings that draw attention

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to the ways that juxtaposed (“paratactic”) texts function. What it does not show, because it cannot, is that one must read such agglomerated texts this way, or that in so doing one is necessarily offering a better reading than is attainable by attending solely to a particular narrative within them. If we knew that the text in question (e.g., Num. 15–19) were a carefully compiled whole, then of course such readings would be better, but since that is one point at issue, it hardly counts as a reason to prefer such reading strategies. It is all a question of hermeneutical frameworks and appropriate measures for what is claimed for a reading, not instead of, but as well as, disciplined attention to the details of the text. The Unfolding of Death

More briefly, we turn to a second angle of approach: attempts to read extended sections of these texts as coherent wholes. The most prominent such attempt is Thomas Mann’s fine study of “holiness and death” as they are linked together in Numbers 16–20.22 Mann actually has a secondary focus (arguably his own primary focus) on how his findings relate to the redaction of the finished book of Numbers, and so he spends quite some time discussing how to identify a suitable unit of text for discussion and discussing the implications for how to explain the thematic emphases he discerns across the redacted book. Our interest is different: he begins by probing conceptually the link between holiness and death, “the danger which is intrinsic to holiness,” and then traces how these themes are highlighted through what he calls “a skillful and sensitive shaping of the material.”23 In particular the confrontation with the demands of holiness calls forth from the people a longing for death, as seen in 17:27–28 (= 17:12–13 in ET’s) and 20:3. A more recent reading, and this time explicitly self-­styled as a reading, is Adriane Leveen’s overlapping study of more or less the same section of the book from the perspective less of those responsible for the trouble (Korah et al., in chapter 16) and more of those who suffer the consequences (the people as a whole). As a result, as she notes by way of comparison with Mann, the theme of holiness recedes, and her focus becomes the centrality of death—the experience of it, legislation concerning it, and especially the red heifer passage in chapter 19 that deals

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with impurities arising from it—finishing with the death of Aaron and the promised death of Moses.24 The result is “a sustained reflection on the presence of death in the wilderness camp,” in which the individual chapters “poignantly come together as a whole.” But whereas Leveen attributes this to “careful and skilled editing,” I cannot help but wonder whether the “sustained reflection” arises from careful and skilled reading, which rightly highlights one important aspect of the resultant text, without prejudice to whether this is an uncovering of what really drove anyone to bring the final text together this way. Of course on one level, it is relatively easy to observe that there is a lot of death in this section of Numbers, and that it is a theme that occupies our text(s). But is it death explored via the rubric of holiness? Is it, as Francis Watson has suggested, death as correlated with desire that is the unfolding agenda of Numbers?25 Is it death that seeks to overwhelm boundaries, which is a point that leads Leveen even to claim that the admittedly “awkward” discussion of actual boundaries in the land in “the middle of Num 20” is an attempt to mark off a new area free from the encroachment of death—to which one wants to say: “perhaps,” or “it could be so,” but maybe there are some parts of the text that are simply left over from messy redactional processes? The central section of Numbers is about death: lots of people die, and even wish for death. But as soon as one moves to the level of asking why Numbers develops this theme, different readings emerge, and one observes the tendency (not for the first time in biblical scholarship) to seek to extend illuminating reading hypotheses beyond their useful scope. Such a move can end up seeking to fit recalcitrant texts into schemata for which they were never designed and, more importantly, which they do not really serve even if the question of their design is not the right one. One might have wished it were different (as I myself did when I started work on this project), but it does not appear to be so. Reading Law and Narrative: Yes, but in Numbers 15–19?

I believe that our discussion so far has demonstrated the point under consideration, that in the case of Numbers 15–19, and arguably a little more widely around this central section of the book, there is no clear rationale

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for saying that we must attend to the mutual interplay of narrative and nonnarrative (e.g., legal) texts in interpreting specific passages. I am open to the suggestion that this is a relatively unusual result in the case of biblical texts. Hence it has been important to argue the point by consideration of actual details, rather than on principle. For not only does the conclusion pull against the more canonically oriented approach characteristic of Childs and others, which has so much to offer the theologically interested interpreter, but it also pulls in a different direction from the most interesting and persuasive current perspectives on the general question of narrative/law mixtures in the Pentateuch. In an influential 1999 book on the subject, James Watts argued that interpreters need to pay attention to how laws are embedded in the overall narrative of the pentateuchal text. Given that the texts were intended to be read through—and Watts rehearses a range of Old Testament instances that point to such public readings (e.g., Deut 31; Neh. 8)—“it is reasonable to hypothesize that much Pentateuchal law was written or at least edited with such public readings in mind.”26 It follows, says Watts, that “laws” have rhetorical features and play their literary role within wider narrative contexts. This setup positively invites interpreters to ask how legal texts interact with their surrounding narrative texts—precisely the question that has been occupying us. One very significant long-­range conclusion of the study is that “in broad terms, the Pentateuch seems to be shaped by deliberative intentions to motivate future behavior,” which in turn points toward what one might call narrative features of its legal texts.27 I take it that this is exactly right with regard to how to read all sorts of pentateuchal “laws.” Consider the stoning of the man who gathered wood on the Sabbath (directed in 15:35; narrated as carried out in 15:36). The purpose of this text, on Watts’s account, is to enforce future Sabbath behavior. Of course, one needs to probe the theological tensions between the righteous requirement of the law (to borrow a phrase) and the ability of anyone to live under it without condemnation in the face of inevitable failure. But the hermeneutical function of the Sabbath text in Numbers 15 seems rightly perceived. Equally, as Watts puts it on the final page of his study, “theological interpretation of Scripture should therefore pay attention to legal hermeneutics.”28 In general terms, Watts redraws the

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map of how to engage with pentateuchal texts that are the well-­known mixture of legal and narrative elements. In the face of this highly persuasive work, one must again emphasize that the reasons for not following this argument with respect to Numbers 15–19 and its surrounding chapters are specific to these texts, as considered above. Here I find that a careful reading of Watts’s book actually agrees. In delineating the legal passages that he is considering, he writes of three main blocks of text: Exodus’s covenant code, the Levitical legislation that extends into Numbers 1–9, and the book of Deuteronomy. Spot the gap! In Watts’s precise words: “The rest of the book of Numbers mixes legal rulings into its narratives at various points.”29 Although he reserves occasional comments for texts such as those relating to Zelophehad’s daughters (Num. 27; 36) and others, he makes almost no substantive comments at all about any of the legal texts and narrative texts conjoined in chapters 13–21 (or indeed on up to chapter 26).30 These texts are probably the clearest example of rapid alternation of narrative and legal texts anywhere in the Bible, certainly in the Pentateuch, and yet they seem more or less to fall outside Watts’s purview. On the other hand, they are precisely the subject of Olivier Artus’s study of Numbers 13–20, with its subtitle of “Narrative, History and Law,” and its conclusion that “narratives and laws contribute to the same theological project,” narratives being intended to exemplify the perseverance enjoined upon the hearer or reader and being used to support the laws to which they are linked and from which they take their normative significance.31 All I can say here is that I would reorient the findings of Artus’s study around the rubric of “readings” that show ways in which readers can see such links, and I would challenge the word “intended” (destiné) in the above conclusion, for all the reasons set out above. In any case, Artus operates with a range of conceptual tools to hand that are not especially congruent with Watts’s (subsequent) argument, and interestingly Artus does not in fact attend equally to every chapter in his focal range, with particular attention given only to chapters 13–14, 16–17, and 20:1–13. A commentator like Olson is keen to distance the “canonical cohesion” of Numbers from what he occasionally refers to as the “junk room” view of the book: that “the book’s editors simply threw miscellaneous bits

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of tradition randomly into the text without much thought or meaning.”32 But in this case the “junk room” metaphor is being allowed to do too much work. What I think we have shown is that the book of Numbers is more like a storehouse of treasured texts, guarded and valued as comparable to any other of the texts that made it into the Pentateuch (and beyond). Each is valuable; all are significant; and certain thematic elements cohere, here and there, from time to time, of which “death” is one such element (and priesthood is another, as we shall shortly see). To bring this lengthy diversion to a close, we have now—among other things—explored the rationale for not needing to attend serially to every consecutive text in the book of Numbers in order to pursue serious and exegetically attentive theological interpretation. As a matter of procedure, we shall no longer be doing so in this book, at least after turning our attention to Numbers 16, which awaits, and where we will meet those readers who skipped ahead because their interests were in narratives anyway. We conclude that theological interpretation is in certain respects very much a canonical sort of approach to the text, in its interest in the final form of the text and its attention to the overarching narrative (where such is present). But in the end the juxtaposed—or “paratactic”—nature of Numbers 15–19 and beyond releases the theological interpreter from the need to explain matters of order and structure in detailed terms from chapter to chapter. A P P R OAC H I N G KO R A H ’ S R E B E L L I O N

It would be a stretch to say that the narratives of Numbers to this point have been uplifting in any straightforward sense. But Numbers 16, the story of Korah’s rebellion, is one of the Old Testament’s parade examples of a difficult text, standing in shocking and sobering contrast to more or less any horizons of today’s readers.33 It is not hard to see the problem. In Numbers 16, Korah leads a delegation to complain to Moses and Aaron that all God’s people are holy, not just Moses and Aaron, who should therefore stop “exalting themselves” (v. 3). But this leads to a showdown between Moses and his followers on the one hand and Korah and his followers on the other, in which

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the Israelites are forced to take sides. In the face of a growing revolt, Moses determines to let YHWH decide who will be acceptable in his sight. The outcome of the resultant gathering before YHWH is dramatic: Moses is vindicated, and “the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up” (v. 30)—the “them” referring to Korah, the other leaders of the rebellion, and all their wives, children, and little ones (v. 27). Death and destruction then follow on a massive scale, with upward of fourteen thousand dying (v. 49). We are concerned here with an angry God, a partisan sense of justice—for some but not for others, it might seem—and a conspicuous lack of egalitarianism in the text. Many modern readers find that their sympathies lie with Korah and the claim that all God’s people are holy; or, among readers less sympathetic to the biblical account as a whole, at least their sympathies lie with Korah in the sense that he seems to take a stand against a leadership that reserves privileges and status for itself. In any case, all readers are confronted with two key categories that remain almost impenetrable to the modern mind: holiness and priesthood. In our account, we will be pursuing the question of what sort of theological questions this text raises, as against more specifically historical or literary questions, whether those are to be understood in general terms or specifically in connection with historical reconstruction or literary history.34 It is the theological subject matter of the text that is so problematic, and it is incumbent upon interpretation of this text to arrive at discussion of this issue. This seems a rather obvious point to make, and yet, oddly, impossibly even, commentary after commentary traverses the textual terrain without any apparent theological difficulty, and this is achieved partly by the expedient of allowing no space to theological concerns of any sort. The temptation is clear: one can understand the desire to amble around an anacoluthon or linger with a literary leitmotif; to write a brief history of everything anyone ever wanted to know about fire pans; in short, to retell the story and then to move on while the going is good. Such “first-­ horizon” interpretation is in general excellent at elucidating the details, but remains rather disengaged from the pressing concerns of the second horizon: that of today’s reader. The question before us, then, is what happens when we read across the two horizons? One obvious point will be that the theological

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categories that make sense of the text are not ones that operate comfortably for many readers today. Numbers 16 is something of a stumbling block to the modern reader, and in many ways our reading will draw us precisely into the issue of what to do with a text that is a stumbling block. There is a simpler way, which is not to engage at all with the conceptualities of holiness and priesthood, and so forth, and presumably then to write the text off as at best an interesting historical relic, and at worst a reminder of precisely why we should move on from those categories. That is indeed one option. But instead we shall persevere and ask what sort of reader can read Numbers 16 comprehendingly, and what sort of vision or insight lies beyond the experience of stumbling over a text such as this? C H A P T E R 16

Our first task is a careful reading of the chapter. The Hebrew text counts only verses 1–35 as chapter 16, but English translations, following the Septuagint, extend chapter 16 to verse 50, with the result that 17:1–13 in English translations = 17:16–28 in the Masoretic Text. Little of substance hangs on the precise demarcation of chapters in what follows, but we shall consider here the longer narrative to get a fuller picture of how the story unfolds. The text as we have it appears complex, which has prompted modern critics to spend as much energy on identifying source-­critical fault lines as on reading the chapter as one coherent narrative. Source-­critical analyses tend to focus on the following features: (1) verse 1 is incomplete in Hebrew, as we shall see; (2) “they confronted Moses” (v. 2) contrasts with the assembling “against Moses and against Aaron” (v. 3); (3) the passage adverts to the names of characters who play no further role once identified (e.g., “On son of Peleth,” v. 1), possibly suggesting an edited final product whereby character development has been lost; (4) differing gatherings of people are noted at different points: Korah, his coconspirators, his family, the 250 men (vv. 2, 35), and so forth. It is thus not hard to see what sorts of data propelled critics down the path of looking for sources, although most would accept that the redactor has at minimum made it difficult to

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succeed in such a task. Indeed, in a rare moment of source-­critical poetry, Baruch Levine describes the putatively demarcated JE and P sources in Numbers 16 as “braided accounts of internecine strife.”35 However, chapter 16’s status as a patchwork of sources has seemed less secure and a good deal less significant since Robert Alter’s use of this chapter as a showpiece of his analysis of “composite artistry” in Hebrew literature, in his justly celebrated book on “the art of biblical narrative.”36 In Alter’s words, “The biblical account actually seems devised to confuse the two stories and the two modes of destruction . . . the writer’s own editorial maneuvers indicate that he would prefer us to see the two . . . as one, or at least as somehow blurred together.”37 We shall return to the significance of Alter’s perspective after our reading of the text. 16:1–4 “Now Korah took . . .” The opening description of Korah and various others is notoriously lacking an object. Thus it is unclear what he/they took: men or umbrage, in some sense. Either way the opening verses set out a clear confrontation. Korah, the third-­generation Levite, and Dathan and Abiram, Reubenites (and On, who is not heard of again), end up amassed with 250 well-­known men, or “well-­known community leaders” as the NIV puts it, in one of those despairing moments when gender-­inclusive translation makes the text sound like a modern press release. They confront Moses (v. 2), or possibly Moses and Aaron (v. 3), with the accusation “You have gone too far!” (rab-­lākem, “it is too much to you,” i.e., “you both”—plural). The core of the complaint, given in verse 3, is that all the congregation are holy, each last one of them, and therefore Moses and Aaron have inappropriately set themselves above the gathered people. When Moses hears this he falls on his face, à la Numbers 14:5. When the reader of the Pentateuch hears such a claim as Korah and company are making, however, a more likely response is to call to mind Exodus 19:6, where Israel is described as being both a holy nation and a kingdom of priests.38 And when the reader in question is a twenty-­first-­century reader, it is hard not to have a certain sympathy for Korah. After all, and in light of Exodus 19, Korah does seem to have a point. But the narrative will develop here in such a way that it is clear that this text and its assumptions judge him to be grievously mistaken. In due course we will have to consider how Numbers 16 understands the vocation of Israel as

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priestly in the light of Exodus 19:6, and in what sense, if any, it might be embodied in all people. 16:5–19 The narrative is now propelled forward through a series of speeches either by or to Moses. First, Moses tells Korah and his people that YHWH will sort out who really belongs to him, which translates in Moses’ speech as saying that such a person is holy and able to approach YHWH—clear priestly conceptuality. Verses 6–7 describe the test that will happen the next morning. Although Moses does not explain exactly how it will work, Korah and his men39 are to take censers with fire and incense, and see whom YHWH chooses. One should probably understand this as the taking of pans for gathering ash from the altar, filling them with coals (rather than fire as such) and incense, and seeing whose pan’s contents catch fire as a sign of YHWH’s favor.40 The final flourish highlights the tautly written final form of the narrative: Moses now returns the insult to Korah and company with “You . . . have gone too far!” (v. 7; rab-­lākem, “it is too much to you”). A second Mosaic speech in the same setting (vv. 8–11) expounds some of the background to why Korah’s request is unacceptable. It accuses the Levites involved (thus including Korah) of ingratitude for their separate status of serving in the tabernacle, and pinpoints the politics of the dispute: “Yet you seek the priesthood as well!” Moses defends Aaron (v. 11) and thereby launches the interpretive trajectory that sets many commentators wondering what was at stake in disputes over priestly status in later years in Israel as this text was formed and/or heard. Perhaps Moses intended a third speech, directed to Dathan and Abiram, but they refuse to come and hear it, and so instead we get their perspective (vv. 12–14), bracketed by the repeated explanation “we will not come!” And just as Moses turned Korah’s words back on him, so Dathan and Abiram mimic Moses’ “Is it not enough?”(compare v. 9 with v. 13). They describe Egypt as the land flowing with milk and honey, from which Moses has now led them to the wilderness, where they will die while he “play[s] the prince” (v. 13).41 Strikingly, they also suggest that Moses is set to gouge out the eyes of those who have now been led to a land conspicuously not flowing with milk and honey. As we recall the persistent emphasis of chapters 13 and 14 in terms of what was and was not seen with respect to the land, this is a turn of phrase that helps the speech to

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set out as clearly as possible the two fundamentally different perspectives on what is happening here. What is at stake is clear: Is Moses the priest, as he should be, or is he merely playing the prince, at the cost of everyone else’s well-­being? Which way should the situation be seen? As a kind of interim conclusion to the series of speeches at this point, Moses addresses YHWH (v. 15) and vents his anger. A complex whirl of emotions is evident in his speech at this point: he implores YHWH to ignore the forthcoming offerings of “them” (which may be more than just Dathan and Abiram), he asserts that he has not taken advantage of them or harmed them, and he is, as the text tells us, “very angry.” His speech in verses 16–17 then adds little to the narrative thus far. Maybe it is a repetition of verses 6–7 from a different source or tradition?—or at least that is the opinion of those who seem perhaps to have never experienced anger. For it reads as just the kind of unnecessary and overly assertive repetition that one might expect from a man driven to distraction in his anger. Either way it does not much advance the underlying narrative of the test to come. Verses 18–19 then recount that the test is in place, the congregation is gathered together, and—in an ominous reminder of 14:10—“the glory of YHWH appeared to the whole congregation.”42 16:20–30 The divine judgment comes immediately, although, rather oddly, the narrator offers no account of any fire blazing up in any censer, despite the threefold setup of this very issue in the chapter thus far (and the assumption that fire does indeed blaze up, which is assumed in v. 37 below). Instead, it is a direct address of YHWH that delivers the verdict. However, it is unclear whether this should be read as a public address audible to all, since the phrasing of the text rather suggests that YHWH is now informing Moses and Aaron of (a) the verdict and (b) what they are to say to everyone else by way of passing it on (cf. v. 24 especially). The judgment finds in favor of Moses and Aaron. On one level, this is presumably not a surprise to the average reader: Moses and Aaron are the long-­running lead characters in the book, whereas Korah and company have only come to prominence in this story (although Korah was mentioned in the family tree back in Exod. 6:21; cf. 6:24). It would be a striking twist for this newcomer to the narrative to set Moses and Aaron straight on such a major matter. Yet in terms of the substance of Korah’s

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complaint there remains much to ponder. Anyway, Moses, Aaron, and all those who stand with them are to separate themselves immediately, so that YHWH may “consume” everyone else at once. Verse 22 is an oddity. Assuming that “they” refers to Moses and Aaron, there is no hint of rejoicing in this vindication. The two men instead intercede before YHWH, falling again on their faces and addressing God with an odd phrase: “God, God of the spirits of all flesh” (‘ēl ‘elohēi haruchot l ekol-­bāsār), which is only elsewhere found in the Old Testament at Numbers 27:16, where Moses uses it as an epithet of YHWH. It reads as an appellation peculiarly appropriate to a moment when YHWH is about to divide some people (flesh) from others. The intercessors leave before YHWH an open-­ended question, literally: “One man sins but against the whole congregation you will be angry?” The one man is presumably Korah, even if Numbers 16 as we now have it has him as one of many in the rebellion. Although verse 19 might be read as emphasizing that Korah is the head of the “opposition,” verse 24 and others to come suggest that more than one man is at the heart of what has gone wrong. Finally, even though this intercession looks like an example of the recurrent theme of Moses sparing the people before YHWH’s anger, the narrative continues in such a way that it becomes apparent that the full force of divine judgment is neither averted nor even modified by this prayer. So maybe the idea is that because God rules over all flesh (and spirit), God can simultaneously vindicate Moses, Aaron, and their followers and deliver Korah over to judgment? The God of the spirits of all flesh is capable of delivering life and death at the same time.43 Verses 23–30 articulate the relentless buildup to the enacting of YHWH’s judgment. In outline: the people are separated, and unnatural death is threatened to those who have rebelled. The details of the text are notoriously difficult. It is unclear who is where. In particular the notion of a mishkan44 of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram in verse 24 is sufficiently odd that the Septuagint removes the last two names from the text to simplify it to Korah’s tent. In any case, Moses announces to some hard-­to-­define righteous element within the congregation that they must separate themselves from “the tents of these wicked men” (whoever they are exactly, but the general point is clear), since YHWH is about to sweep away the sinful. The buildup is given intensity by the detail that Dathan and Abiram’s

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“wives, children and little ones” were among the judged (v. 27, although the precise difference between children and little ones is obscure). Moses announces that the proof that he is the one on the Lord’s side will be, spectacularly, that “YHWH will create something new” (v. 30, emphasizing through repetition the language of creation, bara’). The rebels will not die a natural death. Instead, the earth will open her mouth and swallow them up, and they (and all that is theirs, perhaps including the aforementioned family members) shall “go down alive into Sheol.”45 This strikes the modern reader as poetic, if gruesome, language, to which we shall return in a moment. 16:31–35 The words are barely out of Moses’ mouth before “the ground under them [splits] apart,” and the imagery of the threat of verse 30 is redeployed almost word for word to describe what happens. The earth opens her mouth, swallows the rebels, and then closes over them, as they perish “from the midst of the assembly” (v. 33). Unsurprisingly, panic and chaos ensue. All Israel flees for fear of being likewise swallowed, and in the midst of it all “fire [comes] out from YHWH,” and the 250 men who have lurked around the margins of the narrative since verse 2 are now shown to be offering incense and then summarily consumed in the heart of the blaze. The question of how to understand this language will occupy considerable attention below, but whatever one concludes, it should not move the reader away from the startling sense of death and destruction on a major scale, meted out to all who have rebelled, and to their families too. The chapter ends here in Hebrew, at a resolution of sorts, though English translations follow the Septuagint in incorporating a further and different resolution. But this does at least invite a brief pause to ask the theological question at this point: What is God doing here? The text tells us that God is sending the rebels straight to Sheol without a “natural death” (“the death of every man,” as v. 29 puts it). This may be the way to read the puzzling adjective “alive” (chayim) in verse 33: perhaps it is simply to indicate that these people were being brought to Sheol from the midst of life rather than as those who had reached the end of life. Levine points out that “being swallowed up by the earth is a known description of catastrophe in epic poetry” and elsewhere.46 Presumably one is not to think of Sheol physically lurking just beneath the

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earth’s crust, to be uniquely opened up to impartial viewing by those in the vicinity, any more than other idioms for death should be interpreted with reference to physical fact. She’ol, as several recent studies have emphasized, is not a casual reference to a location but “a term of personal engagement” relating to the destiny of oneself or one’s enemies.47 Although in the Old Testament it is the normal place to which the dead progress after this life, it is not a universal destination, but is rather, in Levenson’s perceptive analysis, “the prolongation of the unfulfilled life.”48 Perhaps this opens the way to imagining that Numbers 16 simply tells us that the rebels fall away, as it were, into death; “received” by the earth (possibly en route to she’ol). Arguably, though, it is more straightforward to read this passage as imagining something like an opening (an “orifice,” as Levenson suggests49), through which they are brought in an unusually conscious descent to Sheol, even if such a paraphrase is still language in need of further interpretation, to which we shall come in due course. Readers for whom these narratives are descriptive rather than ascriptive have been much exercised by the question of what might have actually happened in the world behind the text, though of course this is impossible to resolve when all one has is the text. This has not stopped considerable speculation. In a much-­cited article from the Australian Biblical Review for 1959, Greta Hort argued that the land would have been full of “muddy bogs” which looked dry and solid, owing to climatic conditions, but that it would be susceptible to splitting open if it rained.50 Thus the earth “eats up” the rebels. I am inclined to think that 16:32, with its claim that the land swallows them (bāla’, swallow) is less concerned to refer outward to some putative world behind the text, and is designed more to call to mind the nervous report of the scouts in 13:32: “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants.” While the vocabulary is different (13:32 simply uses ‘achal, to eat), the conceptuality seems suspiciously congruent: the scouts who with lack of faith imagined a land that was devoid of promise and devoured its inhabitants prefigure a people who with lack of faith have refused to enter that land but now find their own (temporary) territory consuming them. In the narratives of Numbers, with their recurrent themes of who sees with eyes of faith and who sees only threat and difficulty, one could imagine that some such point as this is part of the agenda. Furthermore, perhaps the fire

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that goes out in verse 35 is an important element of the overall picture of destruction—a thought possibly supported by the sequel in the next few verses. If fire blazed everywhere then one might imagine it “dragging to Sheol” the various protagonists. But the theological question hereby posed surely concerns divine action that leads to death. This is an action of YHWH that is severely destructive in judgment. The language of the story may be designed to indicate not only that rebellion against God or against God’s appointed priests leads to death, but that the death in question is close to hand. If the overall narrative of this section of Numbers depicts a people gradually approaching death as they wander the wilderness, here is an urgency about death that will intimidate any attentive reader. The map of possibilities appears blunt: one is either for God or against God. But more fully, as the sequel will demonstrate, it is the priest who can stand between God and the people and offer protection from this death. It is toward further reflection on priesthood that the book now moves. Indeed, to revisit our earlier discussion of the focal role of death in these texts, another candidate for thematic emphasis in chapters 16–19 is priests or priesthood. Earlier in the book it was prophecy and its spread (or otherwise) among the people that was at issue (cf. 11:29), which is arguably an easier issue for the modern mind to grasp. We shall be returning below to this emphasis on priesthood as one basic interpretive category. 16:36–40 [= 17:1–5 Heb] A speech from YHWH begins to address the disaster and, in the process, to reiterate what has gone wrong. The censers (or fire pans) are evidently now ablaze. Eleazar is commanded to “scatter fire far and wide,” because in some way the fire pans of those who have now died have become holy. Moses is to hammer them into an altar covering, to make a sign to the Israelites. The next two verses report its being done and affirm that what Israel is to remember is that only the descendants of Aaron can approach to offer incense. What is made abundantly clear in this coda to the main story is the link between the awful (and indeed deadly) intensity of holiness and the need for appropriate mediation between God and humanity. In a perceptive analysis of this passage, Adriane Leveen draws out the links between what has happened in Korah’s rebellion and the deaths of Nadab and

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Abihu in Leviticus 10:1–2: “All who come too close, seeking holiness, are in mortal danger. . . . [The] drama of Korah’s rebellion establishes a warning against the attempt to usurp the prerogatives of priestly holiness.”51 The “strange fire” that consumes Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10 is surely to be understood as corresponding to the fire that burns in this passage of Numbers, and the result is a holiness that now inheres in the fire pans, but that no human participant in either story could withstand. At the end of Eleazar’s action, the altar is now plated with a reminder of the cost of attempting improper access to God’s presence. Again, this will require comment below. 16:41–50 [= 17:6–15 Heb] The next day the “murmuring” resumes, though the intensity with which it was doubtless expressed after the horrors of the day before leads most translators, rightly, to suggest a stronger term such as “rebelled.” The whole congregation accuses Moses and Aaron of killing YHWH’s people. Intriguingly, neither man seems able or willing to respond. The ball is in YHWH’s court, and so they wait for his word at the tent of meeting. When it comes, YHWH’s word seems to offer nothing except a repeat performance: the leaders are to separate themselves so that YHWH may consume the congregation. Again they fall on their faces, and this time Moses gets Aaron to obtain a fire pan, light it from the altar, and carry it to the congregation to make atonement for them. The way the passage is written, we seem to be back in the earlier setting of chapter 16, seeking pans that will catch fire, but combining this with the new status of the postrebellion pans as holy and therefore capable of effecting atonement. The urgency is underlined by the grim words of verse 46: “Wrath has gone out from YHWH; the plague has begun.” The word for plague here (negeph) is the noun version of the verb for being struck down from 14:42, where it referred to the work of Israel’s enemies. Israel has in effect turned God into its enemy through its “murmuring,” in the sense that the refusal to see God at work constitutes the reality that God is against them. Although Aaron’s mediation is successful on this occasion, and the plague stops where he stands, the reader is confronted by the notice that 14,700 people died that day. At face value this figure points to a catastrophe over fifty times the scale of the actual rebellion recounted earlier in the chapter, albeit that the interpretation of such a large number is

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particularly difficult, as elsewhere in the book.52 Nevertheless, once again the text presents this as death at YHWH’s instigation on a grand scale. The text’s agenda may well be to illustrate that the same fire pans that caused disaster to the rebels earlier in the chapter now prove effective in the hands of Aaron, and thus that an appropriate approach to YHWH may yet prove effective.53 Removed from the framework of priesthood and holiness that permeates the horizon of the text, however, such a narrative seems likely to remain morally incomprehensible. Before directly addressing that issue, we turn briefly to the conclusion of this narrative section. C H A P T E R 17 O N WA R D

Numbers 17:5, 10 tie this short story of Aaron’s budding staff in to the previous account of rebellion: Aaron’s staff is “to be kept as a warning to rebels, so that you may make an end of their complaints against me” (v. 10 NRSV).54 In effect, this is a final test in the tumultuous progression of tests of leadership and priesthood, but “a quiet public test free of the atmosphere of crisis we have seen until now.”55 17:1–7 [= 17:16–22 Heb] Moses is commissioned to obtain twelve staffs, one from the leader of each tribe. Each leader’s name is written on his staff. With Korah now dead, it is Aaron’s name that is written on Levi’s staff. The goal of the test is simply stated: YHWH will choose one man, and thus (though how is not clear) “will put a stop to the complaints of the Israelites that they continually make against you” (with the “you” being plural). The passage indicates that the staffs were duly gathered and placed before YHWH “in the tent of the ‘edut,” which is a word meaning “testimony.” As Milgrom explains: “It refers to the chief function of the Ark as the receptacle for the Decalogue,” thus located in the holy of holies.56 How would the choosing of one leader stop the complaints of the Israelites? Presumably this is shorthand for saying that if YHWH’s choice is made clear in some incontestable way, then all Israel will accept the choice. It must be said that the evidence thus far in the book of Numbers makes this logic sound optimistic. Perhaps, therefore, it should be read as

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aspiring to carry such a conviction in the face of some doubt. But it seems to work on this occasion: “By the end of this episode, both the community and the Levites recognize and accept the need for the hierarchy set up by Moses and God: sons of Aaron—Levites—Israelites.”57 17:8–11 [= 17:23–26 Heb] Another day, another development. Moses arrives to see that Aaron’s staff has sprouted: buds, blossoms, and almonds. Commentators note that this appears to be three stages of sprouting represented as all having occurred together. The test is effective in that all the Israelites see what has happened, and eleven leaders then take back their staffs. The exception is Aaron, whose staff is left before the ark, with a reiteration that this will lead to the complaints stopping. It is a narrative markedly devoid of contest after the drama of chapter 16. In Hebrews 9:4 we read that the ark once resided in the holy of holies, where it contained three things, including “Aaron’s rod that budded.” A different view, in 1 Kings 8:9 (//2 Chron. 5:10), sees only the two stone tablets in the ark, as placed there by Moses according to Deuteronomy 10:5. The Deuteronomists may have had their reasons for expressing the unique significance of the written word in their account, and possibly the priestly writers had their reasons for emphasizing the symbol of Aaron’s priesthood in theirs. The staff is clearly a potent symbol, in Israel and beyond, of leadership and authority.58 Whether or not one can unpick the order in which all these various traditions about Aaron’s rod were put together, the import of Numbers 17 is relatively clear: Aaron is chosen by God, and priestly authority is thereby granted and not sought. Those suspicious of priesthood will of course find it possible to be as suspicious of this text as of chapter 16, but nevertheless its logic is retained in its canonical reappropriation in Hebrews, where Hebrews 5:4 affirms that one does not presume to take the honor of priesthood, “but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was.” 17:12–13 [= 17:27–28 Heb] The Israelites make representation to Moses that they are “perishing,” using a variety of verbs to make the point. One is tempted to call this a complaint, except that the by-­now well-­ established vocabulary of complaining is absent, and that the whole point of the preceding narrative is that they will no longer complain. However, the more specific wording of verse 13 (“everyone who approaches the tabernacle of YHWH will die”) does suggest that this is a rehearsal of a

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standard problem/complaint, albeit one particularly appropriate to the aftermath of Korah’s rebellion. As set up by 17:12–13, chapter 18 goes on to address some of the functions of the Levites and the priests in standing between God and the people. It also represents a kind of high point in the trajectory of Aaron’s story, as he is singularly addressed by YHWH in verses 1, 8, and 20, which elsewhere in the Pentateuch only happens at Leviticus 10:8. The final section of chapter 18 (vv. 25–32) is somewhat separate both in terms of content and in that it is addressed to Moses (v. 25)—the book is now moving on in just the kinds of difficult-­to-­discern ways that we discussed in connection with chapter 15. This is our cue to take our leave of the ongoing story, waving farewell as we do so to a host of commentators pressing on to the delights of further rulings about priesthood, offerings, and the truly remarkable passage about the red heifer in chapter 19.59 We will instead turn our attention directly to the myriad hermeneutical and theological issues raised thus far. What can the theologian say at this point, and what, as a matter of observation, do commentators in fact say at this point? T H E S E A R C H F O R I N T E R P R E T I V E C AT E G O R I E S TO H E L P R E A D T H I S T E X T

There are two steps in the inquiry to be pursued here. The first attempts to map the options that lie before the interpreter who is willing to do more than simply give up on the text based on the noted disparity between modern and ancient interpretive horizons. The second step will then seek to work constructively with the option that I adjudge to be most helpful. The first, map-­making stage is of course open to the rejoinder that exercises in interpretive map-­making always tell one more about the interpreter than the text to be interpreted. Although it is liable to various forms of misunderstanding, I wish to pursue what might be called the “literal sense” of Numbers 16. This notoriously slippery term, with its long life in both church and academy, let alone the synagogue, can stretch sufficiently far that all the interpretive options we are about to canvas can probably be understood as attempts to clarify the text’s literal sense,

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according to the perspectives of the various interpreters to be discussed. It is pointless to try to claim that only one such construal of “literal sense” is permissible—the phrase simply is used in a wide range of incom­patible ways. All that one can do is specify what is in view when one uses it; or in other words, one cannot do the work of argument by appealing to the “literal sense” of the text short of specifying what exactly is being discussed. A second recognition about the map-­making step is that one must strike some sort of compromise between faithfully reproducing the categories people use and appropriating various accounts into one’s own categories.60 Otherwise all that can be achieved is either enumeration of views or, alternatively, the laying out of such views on some kind of Procrustean bed. As it happens, it was only after developing the succeeding analysis that I wondered if the three main categories it uses relate to the worlds “behind,” “in,” and “in front of ” the text.61 This is an approximate correlation only, not least because I would like to attempt a taxonomy of three and a half options, based on fairly wide (but not exhaustive) reading of the commentaries. It will at least serve to clarify the discussion that follows it. Three and a Half Options

(1) Ask what happened. This is basically the view that the text says what it does because in one way or another it records events—that is its purpose (or at least one significant purpose if not its only one), and ours is not to reason why. It is tempting to call this fundamentally “descriptive” approach the “muddy bogs” option, in honor of the prevalence of Hort’s 1959 analysis of the physical phenomenon of muddy bogs, to which we drew attention earlier. We shall not linger on this option (since those who linger are susceptible to the possibility of a sudden rain shower opening up the ground on which they stand . . .). Suffice it to say that the best of the commentators who take this option are willing to point to the logic of the text, even if, in general, they do not stop to explore it. Thus Gordon Wenham comments that the passage demonstrates “frighteningly the dangers inherent in being called to be a holy nation,” and the survivors “cry out for a priestly ministry.”62 But since on this reading that is simply

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what happened, little energy is spent on evaluating it or probing what is at stake in such a cry. (2) Track the theological significance of the text to Second Temple disputes over priesthood and leadership. This has the merit, historically speaking, of immense plausibility combined with sufficiently little evidence that most thoughtful variations of this view are more or less unfalsifiable. It seems to me overwhelmingly likely that the book of Numbers is serving as a vehicle for a range of postexilic maneuvering on the politics of priesthood. Indeed this is probably a majority option in critical commentaries and monographs, particularly since its influential expression in the watershed ICC volume of George Buchanan Gray in 1903.63 The view is deeply embedded in the way Gray handles the point of—and evidence for—source divisions, though his handling of Numbers 16–17 actually makes relatively little of specifics,64 in striking contrast, for example, to his discussion of the Levitical legislation in Numbers 18.65 Such a view remains very much in evidence down to the present day. It is given fresh energy, with many focused insights, in the various writings of Mary Douglas, especially her discussion of priestly editors as “politically subversive” in the context of Ezra and Nehemiah.66 For all its merits as a putative account (or range of putative accounts), one might nevertheless note that it largely succeeds in deferring the moment of evaluation. Whether intentionally or not, theological or indeed any evaluation is frequently pushed back beyond the bounds of the discussion. Unless I have missed the evaluative dividends, one could read a fair number of studies of Numbers that follow this path and be none the wiser as to what to think theologically about the text or even, in fact, about postexilic priesthood. The temptation with this option, then, is to call it the “historical displacement” option. Thus Katharine Doob Sakenfeld offers an elegant explanation of this view, and does so with pastoral sensitivity: Numbers 16 relates to Second Temple disputes about leadership, which have become confused in the textual tradition, and it is to be balanced by a story like 11:26–30. It shows us that “God designates leadership for the community and expects the community to honor rather than overthrow it.”67 Or consider the example of Philip Budd’s comments, which he evidently sees as effectively ending the discussion: “The author’s main concern in

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this section is to substantiate his vision of the priestly hierarchy. . . . The author of Numbers uses the theme of disaffection in the wilderness in the interests of establishing the post-­exilic hierarchy.”68 Both of these might be exactly right (though how one would ever know seems problematic), but even if they are, they have effectively switched the subject, and we have arrived at community leadership—either today or in postexilic times— with no help given to the reader in understanding what to do with what the text actually says about people dying as a result of standing up for equal status for all beyond the confines of the priesthood. (2b) An interesting variation, that might occupy position two-­and-­ a-­half on our taxonomy, is to work with such a view of historical displacement, but to mark it up to literary artistry. This is the essence of Robert Alter’s reading, which, as we noted earlier, is alert to the strong likelihood that “the biblical account actually seems devised to confuse the two stories and the two modes of destruction” via “careful aesthetic and thematic structuring.”69 Asking why such issues might have resonated down through Israel’s history, and allowing that all sorts of theological, social, and political ramifications might have been felt, Alter concludes in the end that “while the Hebrew writer may have known what he was doing . . . we do not.”70 It is a lively and fascinating study, perhaps representing the limit of a first-­horizon approach. That final “we do not” serves, of course, to transfer the focus to the second horizon, and will lead in turn to our third possibility. To underline the inherent vagueness of any such attempt to classify possibilities, it is appropriate to note that Mary Douglas’s work on Numbers also sees considerable literary artistry in the service of various priestly agendas, historically reconstructed as those might be in her account. At one point she suggests that the “ferocious God” of Numbers is a feature driven by the book’s conception as an epic, with its need for heroes to be heroes and body counts to be high in the heat of battle: “It is the epic style of Numbers that requires the pitiless slaughter, not God’s character. Suitably for an epic, the grandiose display of force demonstrates his power and glory.”71 One might contest the literary judgment, though it is offered with suitable awareness of the flexibility of its key category, but here is literary artistry tied to historical agendas, all read in the service of thinking through the theological implications for today’s reader. The

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significance of this is only accentuated by the striking absence of any comparable endeavor in so many commentaries, across quite a range of critical and faith-­oriented perspectives. The direction in which Douglas points is the one to which we now turn. (3) Focus on the transition from what the text says to how we are to account for it, or respond to it, today. This is a focus that Alter heads off with the remark that there are aspects of such texts that “we cannot confidently encompass in our own explanatory systems.”72 It is easy to sympathize with that lack of confidence, but let us enter this somewhat underpopulated area. This third possibility reverses the direction of hermeneutical flow, and presumes that the interpreter’s task is to fit the explanatory system to the contours of the text, which—as Alter is strongly hinting—has its own reasons for being what it is. Hermeneuts will recognize here the well-­established aphorism of George Lindbeck: “It is the text, so to speak, which absorbs the world, rather than the world the text.”73 Although one can overemphasize the links between Lindbeck’s approach and that of Hans Frei, discussed in chapter 3 above,74 this does bring us squarely into the area of attempting to read Numbers 16 as an ascriptive, realistic narrative. The text refers, but it refers neither in the first instance to what happened, putatively, in the wilderness, nor to Second Temple infighting over priesthood. It refers instead ascriptively: to interpretive categories that the text impresses upon the reader from “the world in front of the text.” One could conceivably call this the “narrative identity” approach (although the label is inadequate), in that it is concerned to say something like: our understanding of the identity of God in the light of this passage is nothing other than an understanding of God’s narrative identity, in terms of what God does here. And likewise with the other theological topoi that we might have in view. But I shall eschew further theoretical reflection on this model, and perhaps short-­circuit considerable further discussion, by dubbing this approach the “theological ascription” approach.75 One side effect—a predictable one—of taking this route is that we find ourselves in dialogue with various voices from the history of interpretation. Thus here we find Ambrose affirming that the rebels “were willing to exercise the priesthood unworthily,” and that in their being swallowed

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up the creation could no longer be contaminated by them. Likewise Basil, also writing “concerning baptism”: they “dared to enter the priesthood without being called to it and by the severity of the wrath which came upon them to their utter destruction, we see how grave a thing it is to do that which is unsuitable as regards the person.” Or Augustine, averring that the rebels “separated themselves from the divinely ordered community. They were swallowed alive by the earth, as a visible token of an invisible punishment.”76 We also saw earlier, in our discussion of attempts to relate Numbers 15 and 16, how Pseudo-­Philo and others were wrestling over the question of whether what was at stake was Moses as true purveyor of Torah. It is not quite true to say, based on these small samples, that the early history of interpretation fits with what I have called the “theological ascription” mode. Rather, as one would expect from a careful reading of Frei’s analysis of the “eclipse” of biblical narrative, this history basically does not separate our three angles of approach—all of which are seen as part of the integrated task of reading scripture. The point is simply that from the vantage point of today it is this third approach that at least opens up a dialogue with the history of interpretation. To engage in that dialogue is not the same as ceding the interpretive ground to the earliest traditions. These then are our three (and a half ) categories: historical description; historical displacement, with the added possible dimension of literary artistry; and theological ascription. Without at this point wanting to enter into a lengthy discussion of the notion of the “literal sense” in various traditions, I suggest that proponents of all of these approaches have actually thought of themselves as pursuing the text’s literal sense. Readers in pursuit of historical facts tend to construe “literal” as factual. Approaches more beholden to the text’s function of reflecting back upon its conditions of production (e.g., in Second Temple times) want to say that they are reading the text for what the author intended, or at least most such approaches do. Literary readings too have claim to be “literal,” as finally do theological approaches. All construe the text in some framework or other, within which it makes some degree of sense to say that “this is what the text says.” This is not the place to try to sort out this messy, but hugely significant, category.77

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However, it may profit latter-­day interpreters to dwell a little longer with ancient interpretations that did not rend asunder the modes of historical and literary description and (theological) ascription, since in those preeclipse days the task was still to say, “This is what the text says,” albeit with a rather more flexible sense of what counted as the prevailing contexts within which to work. All I can do here is point to one construal of Korah’s rebellion found in the Mishnah, where m. San. 10:3 parses “the earth closed upon them” as death in this world, and “they perished from among the assembly” as exclusion “in the world to come.” Thus its conclusion: “The party of Korah is not destined to rise up.” The judgment is attributed to Rabbi Aqiba, as part of a long-­running series of typically rabbinic point and counterpoint theses modifying the main heading: “All Israelites have a share in the world to come” (m. San. 10:1). Well yes, say the rabbis, with a large number of exceptions, some of which are debatable, largely depending on the degrees of wickedness. But our interest lies in the parsing of this form of being swallowed by the earth as, in effect, having the world to come closed off, denying resurrection. We should take this as an attempt to capture the “literal” or “plain” sense of the text. The point is not that this is the right reading, as if there were only one right way to read such a probing and troubling text, but rather that it represents one serious attempt to understand the nature and purpose of these words.78 I think one could hold this view alongside a sense of the intrusive and indeed destructive action of God removing Korah and company from a “natural death,” as the text of Numbers 16:29 has it. Theological reading today is in part the attempt to recover this ability to see what the text is “really” (or indeed ”literally”) saying. Working with Theological Categories

To wrestle with the theological categories of the text moves us forward to asking constructive, though difficult, questions about how one might best respond to this text as scripture. In theory, one might have anticipated that the category that would occupy interpreters’ attention with Numbers 16 would be judgment. There is indeed some willingness to ponder it. We might call as witness here Calvin, not—I hope—to caricature, but because even he seems aware that this category only gets us so far.79 Thus

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Calvin writes of “a most conspicuous judgment of God,” a “horrible retribution” whereby “memorable punishments pass into proverbial instances of God’s wrath,” and that “it is needful indeed that even the pious should be alarmed by God’s judgments . . . [to] instruct them in his holy fear.” All this fear, however, he concludes, “profited them but little,” and “God’s judgments, which ought to remain in full remembrance in every age, straightaway escape.” Judgment there is in the passage, but it is not at the heart of the text’s theological pressure: to be blunt, it simply does not seem to work to any positive end as the book of Numbers proceeds, and thus a focus on it ends up oddly unsatisfactory. Arguably, the striking appellation of 16:22, “God of the spirits of all flesh,” highlights something altogether different: this is a God who acts to bring about life, even in the midst of the right deserving of death. From this angle, somewhat unexpectedly, Numbers 16 is a text that celebrates the divine provision of life rather than death. How could one defend such an apparently counterintuitive claim? I suggest that in fact the theological categories that lie at the heart of this passage, and which therefore facilitate the interpreter in understanding what is going on, are holiness and—both derivatively and especially— priesthood. But crucially, to read ascriptively, one would actually have to ask about the nature of holiness, as well as what priesthood actually is and what it is for, in theological terms. Why is this line of inquiry so rarely pursued in the literature on Numbers? I wonder if the reason is not unrelated to the fact that the vast weight of modern biblical scholarship is, in certain key respects, a Protestant Christian enterprise that has not known what to do with the category of priesthood in meaningful theological terms. Protestant scholars, and in due course scholars with no particular affiliation across the spectrum of Christian or Jewish faith, talk easily and meaningfully of “P,” tracking him (or it) across extraordinary swaths of space and time. Truly P has proved to be a worthy subject for investigation, via the complex operation of pursuing the sources of the text, as we have noted at various points in our account. But it remains remarkable that all this talk of P—of priestly sources, of priestly emphases, of priestly classes, castes, traditions, texts, tendencies, and so forth—circles around a strange void: the actual investigation of the nature and identity of priestly ministry in the first

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place. An interesting illustration of this general sense of distance from the realities of such questions about its nature and identity might be taken from Gray’s slightly bemused discussion of the phenomena of holiness, offered as an aside in order to help the reader follow what is going on in our passage.80 While he may be applauded for at least pausing to consider this issue, he basically writes as much about cultural parallels far and wide—from the Mikado to Tongan chiefs—as he does about Israel’s own categories of holiness. In particular, he does not really consider the relationship between holiness and life before God; and one wonders whether much of his discussion of the priestly throughout his commentary labors under a similar disengagement. In the light of this startling lacuna, it is all the more striking to come across the treatment of the passage by Thomas Dozeman, in the New Interpreter’s Bible commentary. As he states it upfront, “The office of priest is often misinterpreted and ignored in the contemporary church.”81 He rightly traces this neglect to a loose understanding of the Reformation rallying cry of the priesthood of all believers, which in practice leaves no real emphasis on the notion of priesthood at all. As Dozeman notes, “Priestly mediators . . . stand between the dead and the living and transmit God’s holiness and health to the community (Num 16:48).” Korah’s position, in contrast, is like the more modern Protestant one: all are priests, based on an overrealized interpretation of Exodus 19:6, one which in particular seeks to appropriate the gift of priesthood to the nation Israel distributively to individuals within it. Such a view might be articulated as the distinction between the priesthood of “all believers” and of “every [i.e., individual] believer”—a distinction that is still poorly understood.82 Dozeman goes on to discuss the spiritual significance of ordination and sacraments in the conflict between the church and evil, and indeed has subsequently written an entire book on this subject, which uses the call and commission of Moses as keys to understanding both priestly and prophetic perspectives on ordination.83 That book is arguably overly beholden to finding variant traditions jostling for position one against another, and as such is perhaps too quick to play off “priestly” perspectives against, for example, Deuteronomic ones, such as when Dozeman writes, “Korah, Dathan, and Abiram state the position of the book of Deuteronomy.” But when it comes to the substantive issues, he has it exactly right: “We often

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think of the separation between holy priesthood and a profane laity as hierarchical and, as such, an instance of power and privilege. But biblical authors view the separation differently. The office of priest results in a loss of freedom for the sake of the larger community.”84 A rare example of a commentary willing to pause over this very point is Olson’s discussion under the heading “Pro-­Priestly Texts and a Healthy Hermeneutics of Suspicion.”85 Here he argues strongly that built into the Old Testament notion of priesthood is both a recognition of its frequent failings in human terms and a critique of human abuse of power by way of sin. Healthy suspicion is indeed called for, though one can sometimes wonder if the inherent nature of priesthood is well understood before such suspicion sets to work. One could put such claims about priesthood in potentially neutral terms by rephrasing them as drawing out the hermeneutical logic of reading Numbers in late modernity. Thus one cannot serve the claims of both Numbers (and in particular, but not exclusively, Num. 16) and late modernity: if one wishes to wrestle with the subject matter of Numbers (and in this particular case—with a subject such as holiness), one is going to have to consider the theological merits of priesthood. In terms of the book’s status as problem text (and in particular Num. 16’s status), I would say that shorn of a meaningful concept of priesthood, much of the book of Numbers will indeed appear arbitrary, partisan, and needlessly vindictive. But what if one were to think that priests stand between God and the people to help protect the people from improper access to God—a holy God whose nature is too much to bear for those not ordained to serve within its forbidding presence? Then much of this charge simply falls away. It is clear which horn of this dilemma is the preferred one for (a) the academy and (b) the uncommitted reader and, indeed, (c) many Protestant and/or low-­church readers—interesting hermeneutical bedfellows. A relatively standard Christian theology of priesthood, however, should not find the way ahead here too difficult to articulate.86 At the risk of oversimplification—in fact in the sure and certain knowledge of oversimplification—the one priesthood is Christ’s, as the one atoning sacrifice is Christ’s, uniquely effecting reconciliation between God and humankind. To be “in Christ,” to use the Pauline language, is to be part of the church, sharing in that one priestly ministry: hence the priesthood of “all

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believers,” that is, corporately. No individual is a priest, pure and simple, without a backup network of assumptions and definitions. Here Paul Althaus’s fine statement on Luther’s understanding may still be helpful: Luther never understands the priesthood of all believers merely in the “Protestant” sense of the Christian’s freedom to stand in a direct relationship to God without a human mediator. Rather he constantly emphasizes the Christian’s evangelical authority to come before God on behalf of the brethren and also of the world. The universal priesthood expresses not religious individualism but its exact opposite, the reality of the congregation as a community.87

All Christians are thus distinguished by being part of the “royal priesthood.” Calvin too can affirm that “the whole church” is “the inheritance of the Lord”—or indeed in this sense the whole church is “clergy”—while he is in the midst of a discussion of appointed offices, lamenting the terminological confusion that can make it sound like only those appointed to office can be priestly.88 As for the ordained priesthood today, then, this is representative: ordering the church in the world to God, and “representing” God to the church and the world—at which point a veritable explosion of interpretive options crowd in for explaining how that “representing” is to be understood, which lies rather beyond our present purposes. George Sumner puts the point eloquently: priests “exist, within the Church, as an order charged to remind of and defend something definite, something so central as to be indispensable—the real presence of the risen and reigning Christ Jesus in the midst of the community.”89 In an insightful discussion, Sumner draws a straight line between this and the Old Testament emphasis on the priesthood protecting and guarding the atoning sacrifice, in fact with explicit reference to Numbers 18:19 and its obscure reference to a “covenant of salt forever” in the midst of discussing priestly offerings.90 The sacrifice is now Christ’s alone, but the logic is the same. One can suggest that the church would have been well advised to drop the language of “priest” for its clergy—as Calvin and others argued—given the propensity of that language to suggest that it is the priests of the church who sacrifice, but the required explanation to make sense of the concept

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under the new covenant is not so very difficult, and of course the reason why it might matter to keep the language is precisely to hold on to the importance of priestly conceptuality in the logic and grammar of talking about God in the world in which we live and move and (at least some of us) interpret scripture. If the atoning sacrifice of Christ is not guarded in this world, then the prospects of life in the world to come seem grim, or, in other words, the chances of being “swallowed up by this earth” loom large, and thus the church’s ministry must always include this central priestly element. Here we arrive at the frontiers of theological commentary in the early days of the twenty-­first century. We have as our guide in this somewhat uncharted territory the Brazos commentary on Numbers by David Stubbs.91 His focus allies the textual pressure in the area of priesthood with an engaged Christian theology, and thus the rubric under which he treats Numbers 16 from the second, readerly horizon is Christology. The logic of his argument, which moves via the Sistine Chapel’s Botticelli fresco of this story and thus raises the question of whether the questioning of the papal office is comparable to Korah’s revolt, suggests that the narrative itself offers principles for resolving the question of where the emphasis on priesthood lands today. Key for Stubbs is in fact 16:22, the appeal on the part of Moses and Aaron to God’s own nature as the basis for asking whether mercy and righteousness can be met together. Stubbs finds his answer in Christology, not as a lever against the Old Testament, but as a fulfillment of the emphases of two-­testament scripture (following Barth, in this particular instance). For what it is worth, my own judgment is that the merits of Stubbs’s proposal derive elsewhere than the pressure of the text, and that the fine line between “theological interpretation of the text” and “theology in dialogue with the text” has perhaps been crossed here. In other words, critical evaluation of Stubbs’s proposal will not devolve primarily onto exegetical or hermeneutical reflection about Numbers 16, his appeal to verse 22 notwithstanding, but rather will concern one’s judgments about just how far the Old Testament’s portrait of priesthood can be handled in solely christological terms. Having said that, I am also inclined to think that this technical classification of his argument is really only a form of ducking the substantive issues he raises, the merits of which seem striking. His is after

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all only a brief discussion, with little scope for engaging with earlier interpretive traditions. There is one further point to make here, especially if there is any merit in characterizing certain aspects of professional biblical studies as manifesting something of a low-­church Protestant ethos. For one may anticipate the rejoinder: even if what has been said has merit with respect to reading Numbers, any attempt to take Numbers as Christian scripture needs to reckon equally with the book of Hebrews, which is clearly (also) on occasion taken as a kind of low-­Protestant mandate for bracketing exactly the kind of priestly analysis being offered here. Obviously we cannot go on to defend a particular reading of all of Hebrews at this point, but I note only that in his somewhat comparable exploration entitled “Melchizedek and Modernity,” Douglas Farrow offers a powerful double characterization: “It is because Jesus is Melchizedek, the eternal priest-­ king, that all earthly priests and kings are undermined. . . . On the other hand, it is because Jesus is Melchizedek that real human community is possible precisely and only as a royal priesthood. . . . It is by no means possible to have a society that lacks priestly and kingly ambitions.”92 More modestly, if interpreters think that the way to respond to Numbers is by engagement with Hebrews, then I suppose that at the very least one central interest of the present argument, that we might interpret Numbers as Christian scripture, has been granted. A N O N CO N C LU S I O N

We have by this point come a long way from muddy bogs. I have sought to track the ways in which commentators respond to Numbers 16, in a pursuit of appropriate theological moves that the reader might make in taking the text seriously in the light of scripture as a whole, of tradition (both interpretive and theological), and of reason (in terms of what can or cannot be said accurately about the text). Of the three theological cate­ gories we have considered under our final rubric—judgment, priesthood, and Christology, with the concerns of holiness folded into our discussion of priesthood in the end—I have suggested that the first is insufficiently close to the heart of the matter, the second is key, and the third moves

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beyond the text in ways that begin to move us away from the project of reading the text, although not in overly problematic ways. None of these evaluations is beyond contesting. I conclude with three questions that may arise upon further reflection. First, what if Robert Alter is right, and some biblical texts show us that there are fundamental matters of divine action that we do not understand? What light might that cast back on the hermeneutical challenges of reading scripture well? Second, what if the reader inhabits a horizon that really is incommensurable with that of the text? In other words the fusion of horizons is understood, offered, and then declined. This happens with regard to priesthood quite often, for example. What further role is there then for the text to play? Or is that—almost by definition—the end of the conversation? Third, let us grant just for a moment that priesthood is indeed one key category for understanding this text across the horizons. Should one then be surprised, suspicious, or simply bewildered that such an interpretive insight (if such it is) occurs most likely to those already predisposed to take the theological category of priesthood seriously? Do texts best disclose their secrets to those who are sympathetic, or does such a suggestion sell the pass, such that the critic should protest, “You have gone too far! All readers are equally well positioned to read, every one of them . . . so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the hermeneuts?” Let me note that I do not anticipate any spectacular hermeneutical vindication in this case—a case I have characterized, hermeneutically, as the text opening up to swallow up the world to which it referred, and in theological terms still refers, ascriptively, and remarkably realistically. But the questions are worth asking.

SIX

“The Rock Was Christ” Typology between a Rock and a Hard Place (Numbers 20)

We cut to the wilderness of Zin, skipping over the best part of forty years (probably) at high speed, but passing over only the “red heifer” chapter that is Numbers 19.1 Numbers 20 turns out to be a locus classicus for Christian theological interpretation, owing to Paul’s christological appropriation of its rock motif in his account in 1 Corinthians 10. Its first thirteen verses give us an opportunity to explore the extent to which our approach in the present book does and does not match up to traditional concerns with typology. It is worth saying immediately that the word “typology,” derived from the Greek word typos, which Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 10 and which we will discuss later, may be taken for our purposes to be interchangeable with the phrase “figural reading/interpretation,” which derives from the Latin equivalent figura, which we met in our earlier discussions of Auerbach and figural reading.2 The gravitational pull of discussing Pauline language in this chapter will lead us to talk more easily of typology here, but nothing is at stake in this terminological choice. I also have no intention of entering into the complex debates about the extent to which Paul’s language relates precisely to later 157

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typological/figural reading—clearly there is both continuity and discontinuity here since Paul does not use the term in quite the way that more modern appropriations of typology would suggest, not least because he is working from his single written testament’s scriptural text to Christ and vice versa, whereas later readers are also reading Paul in a second, “new” testament, which, as we shall see, carries significant freight for subsequent typological reading. As with every one of our studies, one challenge is to balance the best of traditional approaches with the best of what counts as “critical” inquiry in the modern era. In this case, there are some interesting parallels between those wider theological and hermeneutical debates about biblical interpretation and current discussion of Paul’s approach to scripture, which are germane to our task in the light of the 1 Corinthians 10 passage. The explicitly Christian and indeed christological concerns of typological and other approaches invite a careful clarification. I do not intend to suggest that the kind of Christian reading pursued here is the only way to ponder and probe the texts appropriately—rather that it is one way that is appropriate for certain kinds of Christian interpretation. One need not think that there is only one right or productive way to engage with a text. Many angles of approach will generate many important insights. In this chapter, the point is that such an awareness of multiple interpretive interests not only accommodates, but positively invites, each such approach to pursue its own line of inquiry in as much depth and rigor as possible, all the while careful to avoid excluding other approaches simply on principle. At the same time, obviously, one must make sure that the chosen approach deals critically and carefully with the actual details of the text. As with most if not all serious and challenging texts, biblical texts are hospitable towards more than one reading, without thereby offering a free pass to any and every interpretive agenda. This chapter will therefore explore aspects of the theological interpretation of scripture in dialogue with Paul’s reading of Numbers. We start with consideration of the text of Numbers 20 itself. There is heuristic benefit, and hopefully clarity, in discussing the text coherently at the beginning of the analysis, but in practice note that the textual reading is always already in dialogue with a range of other judgments about interpreting the

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text. Thus, as with previous chapters, a careful critical reading is a matter of opening up certain questions and angles of approach that require interpretive (and theological) comment and judgment, in the light of which a rereading of the chapter may well look rather different. Indeed, a rereading of Numbers 20 once it is placed in dialogue with 1 Corinthians 10 does look different. Full discussion of all these points awaits.3 N U M B E R S 2 0 :1–13

The Israelites come to the wilderness of Zin, where Miriam dies. Immediately, there is no water, the people quarrel with Moses, and in a scene strikingly reminiscent of Exodus 17, an incident ensues with Moses taking Aaron’s staff out to a rock where YHWH will provide water. There the similarities between the two narratives end abruptly: in Exodus 17 Moses went out and struck the rock with the staff, as commanded, water flowed, and all was positive. Here Moses is commanded to speak to the rock (v. 8), but strikes it twice (v. 11). Water flows, “abundantly”: a result for the people, but not, as it turns out, for Moses, who is punished by God and told that he will not lead the Israelites into the land. This short narrative contains all manner of interpretive issues in itself, let alone in its wider scriptural resonances and context(s). 20:1 The first verse alone brings to the fore matters of time and space, as well as death and symbolic significance. It may be treated as a separate piece of the narrative, given the way verse 2 picks up the theme of “no water,” although, for reasons to be explored, it is tied in thematically with what follows. But for the purposes of discussion, we take this first verse on its own. First, as we have had occasion to note already, the date marker in this verse is incomplete: “in the first month” (using the Hebrew expression bachōdesh hāri’shōn, in the first new moon). There is no textual evidence that an indication of the year has dropped out, which may seem like an entirely plausible guess but cannot really be determined. The passage as a whole (vv. 1–13) fits with reaching the end of Moses’ journey, and obviously that journey ends at the end of the forty-­year wandering, but again it is not possible to be conclusive. Perhaps the point is that some

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time has elapsed in the narrative world since we last engaged with events. Possibly there is a sense in some Hebrew narrative that significant events are dated anew or afresh—hence the preponderance of things that happen in the first year of a king’s reign, for example—and perhaps the “first month” indicates therefore a significant event. But ultimately, temporal location is blurred here, and all that can be said for sure as a result is that the narrative moves on to its next focal point, which may be significance enough. Second, the verse also invites geographical orientation, as the people come into (or arrive at) “the wilderness of Zin.” The place name Zin (tsin) is found eight times in the Old Testament, the first of which already occurred in delineating the land that was spied out in 13:21.4 Two further references occur at 27:14, in which YHWH rehearses the very incident we are about to consider here in chapter 20, as is recounted again at Deuteronomy 32:51. That leaves the mention of the wilderness of Zin at 33:36, as part of the epic list of way stations in the wilderness, the itinerary of which occupies that whole chapter. It also occasions the scholarly project of matching up the geography of the overall narrative of the book with the list in chapter 33, and in turn with reconstructions of ancient maps of the world.5 The merging of this name with Kadesh (attested in variant ways in 27:14 and 34:3) and the use of the name to indicate the southernmost extensions of the land (i.e., of Canaan) locate the wilderness of Zin to the southwest of the land, toward the north and east of the Sinai Peninsula. This whole topic has, however, proved complex to explain clearly, since many scholars deduce different geographical maps at work in variant sources (P and JE, in standard terminology), and as Levine puts it: “The geography of the various sources seems to move or slide in more than one direction.”6 It is the achievement of Roskop’s historiographically sensitive study of these issues to point out that texts such as Numbers 33 serve as ideologically oriented “annals” that seek to engage with other map-­making constructions of the world (such as can be studied from Egypt and Assyria), albeit constrained by the referential functions of some of its source material, for example if those sources include military lists. The result is “geography as artistry.” In fact, as Roskop goes on to show in her detailed study, Numbers 33:37–47 can be matched up relatively— though not completely—straightforwardly with place names mentioned

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in chapters 20–21.7 In a compelling epilogue to her study, Roskop specifically links her findings to Hans Frei’s point that history-­like language may not actually be functioning as historical reference, in this case with respect to geographical reference.8 My own interests in an ascriptive and realistic reading of Numbers require us in the end to be no more specific than this: recognizing that we are somewhere between the failure to enter the land and the arrival in the land. Linking this with the temporal discussion above suggests that Numbers 20:1–13 is set in this liminal place, with the suggestion that the entry to the land is imminent. Readers whose interests in historical reconstruction lead them to wish for more than this will not find themselves disappointed by the volume of literature available. A third aspect of this verse is its explicit focus on death, which once more comes to the fore in Miriam’s death notice here. The story of Miriam seems to hover around the edges of the ongoing canonical narrative, or, to use Phyllis Trible’s image, in its shadows: “Buried within Scripture are bits and pieces of a story awaiting discovery. It highlights the woman Miriam.”9 There are relatively few texts that mention her: beginning, without her being named, in Moses’ birth narratives in Exodus 2; incorporating the famous Song of the Sea in Exodus 15; and culminating (canonically) with a reference to Israel’s threefold leadership of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam as divinely appointed to lead in Micah 6:4.10 In Numbers, her main appearance is by way of her complaint about Moses and subsequent punishment, which occupies chapter 12. The next mention of her is this notice of her death at 20:1.11 In scripture Miriam is called a prophet (nevî’ah, prophetess) only in Exodus 15:20, in respect of which Burns concludes that the biblical portrait of Miriam is in fact of a leader, and the label “prophetess” in Exodus is a loose marker of identity rather than a description of her role in particular.12 Feminist commentary on Miriam and her significance extends down through the centuries from early Jewish sources to a veritable explosion of writing in recent decades.13 Much of this writing is in the mode of hermeneutical recovery, à la Trible, or in other words is seeking to dig behind the canonical presentation of Miriam to find a more significant figure than the final text seems to present, hence “bringing Miriam out of the shadows.” The argument is that even the best efforts of

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patriarchal redactors have been unable to erase the trace of her remarkable influence, whether as putative originator of the Song of the Sea, now attributed to inarticulate Moses, or as a female leader now obscured by her two famous brothers.14 In a fine account of these issues, Susan Ackerman notes that the results of (and prospects for) positive reconstructive scholarship regarding Miriam, and others, are mixed, and that what such scholarship has recovered is exclusion and marginalization as often as it is significance.15 However, interestingly, the symbolic significance of Miriam’s death is taken up in wide-­ranging ways in early interpretation, and will play into our own discussion in due course in terms of how the overarching narrative of Numbers is understood. To ask the question that leads to this line of inquiry: what is the significance of juxtaposing her death in verse 1 with the mention of there being no water in verse 2? In a chapter that will go on to recount the death of Aaron (vv. 22–29) and the disqualification of and shadow of death over Moses in the main narrative of verses 2–13, we find that we have arrived at a turning point in the narrative where the “leaders” of Israel (cf. Mic. 6:4) are being replaced, and correspondingly the ways of the wilderness generation are coming to an end. We shall return to this discussion after considering the rest of the passage. 20:2–8 The lack of water occasions another situation where Moses and Aaron have to take their stand against the people. According to verse 3, the people “quarrel” (rîb, strive, contend16) with them and wish for the death that they escaped from in chapter 16’s account of the assault of death on the camp after Korah’s rebellion. With verses 4–5 we are back at 11:20 and (specifically) 14:2–3, with the people wishing that they had never entered into this great adventure of leaving Egypt. The menu options of 20:5 are different from 11:5, but the complaint is the same. In turn, 20:6, as the response of Moses and Aaron, calls to mind 14:5 and 14:10, as well as 16:4 and 16:19—in each prior case we have had Moses (with or without Aaron) falling on his face and the ominous appearance of the glory of YHWH. Readers are thus prepared for an all-­ too-­familiar sequel: the judgment against the Israelites and the grim vindication of the interceding Moses. But this is not what happens. God’s speech in verses 8–9 instead transports the reader first back to Exodus 17. God commands a threefold action: first the scene is to be set

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with Moses taking the staff, which could be Aaron’s rod from 17:10 or Moses’ staff as used in Exodus for various dramatic purposes (including the conflict against the Amalekites in 17:9, which had followed on from its use for striking a rock in 17:5–6). The people are to be gathered for the event, with the same “communal” sense of “people” used here as in verses 1 and 2 of the present passage (‘ēdāh; “congregation,” NRSV, or “community”). It is possible that the people here are to be understood as a genuinely motivated community of people in need of water, rather than the proud wearers of the mantle of Korah, as it were, although the vocabulary overlaps, with 16:2–26 using the same word multiple times.17 Second, with the scene set, Moses and Aaron are to command the rock to bring forth water. The verb used is simply dibbēr, “to speak”: they are to address the rock verbally. In a moment of recalling earlier emphases in the book, the narrator adds “before their eyes,” and the alert reader may recognize how much in these narratives has depended on having eyes to see what God is doing. Third, and in this way, Moses and Aaron thereby provide the water that the people need; indeed not just the people but their livestock too (v. 8). This divine speech is highly reminiscent of Exodus 17:5–6, with the notable difference that the Exodus version had God say, “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb.” The sense of that theophany is something we will have to return to in the light of the denouement of the present Numbers passage. Also of note is Exodus 17:6, with its “Strike the rock” (using the hiphil of nāqāh, “to strike,” which is a long way from simply “speaking”). By this point in our own account the reasons for not entering into the ruminations of the source critics have been well established, though one can certainly see why even sympathetic readers might see variant readings of one putative original source here. However, it is Moses’ critical approach to a different kind of source, the source of water, that will interest us in what follows. 20:9–11 Verses 9–10a report Moses’ following the setup stage of enacting God’s commands: he takes the staff (“from before YHWH”— though whether this serves to identify a particular staff in terms of the reader’s understanding of the preceding narratives remains unclear), and with Aaron he gathers the people together (this time with a repetition of qhl; thus one might say “they assembled the assembly”).

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Verse 10b, however, deviates from the plan, as the anticipated “and he spoke to it” (the rock) instead turns out to be “and he spoke to them” (wayyō’mer lāhem). Nor is his purpose to encourage: “Listen, you rebels . . .”—using a word for “rebel” (the participle form of mārāh, to be contentious or rebellious) that will in turn occur at various key moments of the narrative. So it seems that something has gone wrong here. Although verse 11 will have Moses strike the rock (twice) and bring forth water, and the congregation and livestock do indeed drink their fill, some important details are worth noting along the way. One is indeed that Moses struck the rock, which was the commanded action of Exodus 17, but not here. And the other is that in his address to the people (rather than the rock, as commanded), he says, “Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” The clear indication is that Moses presents himself, along with Aaron, as the one bringing the water.18 Of course, he is intended to be the cause of the water coming out, in one sense. The difficult issue for the interpreter is to discern whether one can see in the text any real indication of how he may have used this role to usurp the role of God. Exegetes have long been exercised by what precisely Moses did wrong here: “Moses our Teacher committed one sin, but the exegetes have loaded upon him thirteen sins and more, since each of them has invented a new sin.”19 In a thorough treatment of this topic, Jacob Milgrom reviews ten options canvassed by medieval Jewish commentators and relating to Moses’ character or his actions or his words here, and adds an eleventh: the modern view that the sin of Moses has been removed from this passage in the interests of preserving Moses’ reputation.20 Milgrom’s own view is that the problem lies in the assumed emphasis in Moses’ question, “Shall we draw forth water from this rock . . . ,” since—he argues—a silent miracle would have underlined the distinction between this divine provision and the kind of miracles known from Egyptian magic practices from before the exodus, where the magician’s incantation would have been understood to be efficacious. That is plau­ sible, as is his “modern” theory that the text deliberately does not tell us, as are perhaps a range of other interpretive options.21 Gray, thinking perhaps that there is indication of Moses’ “ill temper,” nevertheless concludes that “the truth is, the story is mutilated; and as any attempt to reconstruct

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it must be tentative, the exact nature of the sin of the leaders must remain doubtful.”22 Levine, as often, updates Gray’s view, and leaves it slightly less definite: “The reader has the sense that he is missing something. . . . Is it because of this imprecision [striking not speaking] that Moses was denied entry into Canaan? The criticism levelled against Moses and Aaron is unclear.”23 My own view is that Levine is partly right, but that there is something more to be said as a result, to which we shall turn after seeing what happens next. 20:12–13 What is clear is that the narrative logic of the passage now proceeds on the assumption that Moses has indeed done wrong. YHWH’s response to Moses and Aaron is immediately and unqualifiedly negative. It remains in the plural throughout verse 12; that is, the whole reproach and punishment is addressed to both Moses and Aaron. It consists of saying that (a) they did not trust YHWH, returning us to the core issue of trust, which we have rehearsed before;24 (b) in some way, to be discerned, this consisted of not demonstrating YHWH’s holiness “in the eyes of ” Israel, which returns us also to the questions of sight and perception that we have encountered before; and (c) the punishment is that they will not lead the people into the land. While (c) is not technically a death notice—there is neither mention of death nor any direct threat of death—it will become clear in due course that the effect is as blunt as 20:1 was with respect to Miriam. Hers was indeed a death notice. By 20:24, Aaron is being served with a death notice as a reparsing of this speech here in verse 12: he will not enter the land because he rebelled here, and he dies before the end of the chapter. Numbers 27:13–14 extends precisely the same analysis to Moses—he will die outside the land because of this rebellion here in chapter 20.25 So the stakes are high in 20:12. Verse 13 wraps up this section of the narrative. It reminds us that the people quarreled, by repeating the terminology of verse 3: rîb. And hence the name of the place: Meribah, the place of quarrel. It is arguable that this functions only partly as a proper name, and just as much as “the place where we argued with God.” It is used at the end of the corresponding story in Exodus 17:7 too, where the place concerned is doubly named as “Massah” and “Meribah,” terms that are then both taken up in parallel in Psalm 95:8. This certainly foregrounds the question of the similarity

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and difference, and perhaps the purpose, of the two water-­from-­the-­rock accounts, in Exodus 17 and here. One could explore that question for a long time without drawing substantively useful conclusions. There is plausibility in seeing Exodus 17:1–7 as a JE account (or whichever similar label delineates the non-­Priestly version) and Numbers 20 as a P parallel.26 One can then perhaps draw conclusions about Priestly emphases in the differing account, although in fact rather few do so.27 There is plausibility in thinking that the Numbers version represents a second occurrence, with Moses inappropriately recalling a specific command from the former occasion and striking now when he should have spoken. But of course, as so often, we do not know how the text ended up in its present configuration. What can be said is that the Exodus 17 version of the tale takes place in the interlude between the exodus and the arrival at Sinai to receive the gift of Torah and, as such, is characterized by a tone or general orientation of positive experience of divine grace, in a manner markedly absent from most of the Numbers narratives we have been considering. A comparison of the canonical emphases and the logic of the intervening narrative appears to suggest that the gift of Torah brings with it obligations and consequences. (Parallel observations may be made about the experience of manna in the two blocks of text too, comparing, for example, Exod. 16 and Num. 11.28) We return now to Levine’s comment above that readers may be “missing something” with regard to Moses’ sin. Readers are indeed not privy to what aspect of Moses’ (and Aaron’s) actions caused the severe judgment of verse 12, and it remains possible that the specific aspect or act is not even articulated in the text. But the text does articulate a theological rendition of what it was: they failed to trust YHWH, and thereby did not show YHWH’s holiness before the Israelites.29 The net effect of this juxtaposition—lack of data but with theological evaluation—is interesting. It means that readers are left clear that trust and the appropriate response to holiness are paramount, but no specific judgment or ruling is offered as to what constitutes lack of trust or inappropriate response. Thus the text stands as a probing challenge to all who would receive it, to examine themselves and their conduct to see what may pass as lack of trust or failure to respect the holy. I take it that such a self-­examining reader is

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not thereby promised judgment. Rather, such a reader is driven to practices such as the confession of sin and humility before the holy. This is the hermeneutical effect of the combination of precision and vagueness, and indeed operates wherever scripture leaves matters asserted but unexplained. In the nature of such a case, the results are for reflection, rather than to be taken overly directively. To some extent this would remain true even if a specific proposal such as Milgrom’s were correct, but it is not clear how readers will ever be in a position to know that it is. Two concluding comments on verse 13: The verse functions to draw the reader’s attention back to the odd realization that while the people, almost stereotypically, were the ones to quarrel against YHWH, the story has ended with the people drinking the water they wanted, while Moses has been the one to be opposed. The story signaled oncoming judgment with its mention of the “glory of YHWH” in verse 6, but previous chapters of Numbers have not led readers to expect that it would fall on Moses rather than the people. Verse 13 also finally adds that, in contrast to Moses and Aaron failing to show God’s holiness (cf. v. 12), YHWH did precisely that anyway. The outcome of this narrative is then an almost complete reversal of the outcomes of chapter 16, and in some ways earlier narratives too: Moses and Aaron will die, while the people have their complaint met and their need for water satisfied. It is almost as if Moses has once more stepped into the gap between the people and God, but this time to appropriate to himself the judgment that one might have anticipated would be meted out to the people. I N S E A R C H O F I N T E R P R E T I V E F R A M E WO R K S : B E T W E E N A R O C K A N D A H A R D P L AC E

No interpreter need ponder this passage in a vacuum, wondering how to make progress toward offering an account of it from a standing start. There is almost an embarrassment of riches in terms of the options offered by those who have gone before. Some of the issues raised in all this interpretive tradition are familiar from our earlier studies. Other interpreters

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focus questions more directly on christological concerns, owing to the New Testament reading of the passage in 1 Corinthians. Throughout our reading of Numbers we have had the experience of operating between the pull of (at least) two contrasting frames of reference in our work with the biblical text. On the one hand, there is the disciplined and serious attention to the many historical, literary, and cultural factors that are embodied in the text and in part at least have provoked it into existence. These many and various dimensions of the interpretive task attend to a wide range of considerations, in dialogue with all sorts of perspectives. This is the “hard place” of various kinds of historically and critically informed scholarship, without which it is barely even possible to obtain purchase on the details of the text before us, but with which, as we have seen, scholarship can all too easily find it pos­ sible to defer perpetually the moment of existential engagement with the text. The result, we have noticed, can be theologically thin commentary, preoccupied with freestanding or “decontextualized ‘problems’ ” in the interpretive tradition rather than with “a dialectical process of motivated, directed, contingent question and answer,” such as might engage matters of substantive inquiry regarding the theological substance of the text.30 The rock, on the other hand, is Jesus. Paul says as much in 1 Corin­ thians 10:4, in a hermeneutical tour de force that will occupy us in the remainder of this chapter. More generally, theological hermeneutics seeks to relate the claims of the text in some manner to the claims of (or for or about) Christ. Of course, how to do that well is precisely the question in discussions of theological interpretation. For much of the time under the reigning paradigms of various sorts of historical-­critical enquiry, there was an uneasy standoff whereby some sort of objective analysis of the text was posited as a separable endeavor from a subsequent stage of “application,” where one might (if pastoral or pietistic impulse dictated) show how the text in hand related to Christ and the Christian life. It is scarcely possible, after the magisterial discussion of “application” in Gadamer’s Truth and Method, to sustain such a model.31 Gadamer devotes considerable energy in that book to arguing that application is not a separable and subsequent stage: “We consider application to be just as integral a part of the hermeneutical process as are understanding and interpretation,” and “Application does not mean first

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understanding a given universal in itself and then afterward applying it to a concrete case. It is the very understanding of the universal—the text—itself.”32 Arguably this sort of recognition is what we saw at work in our handling of the lacuna regarding the identification of Moses’ sin in Numbers 20: there is a reading of the text that “knows how to go on,” even without first sorting out all the details prior to a moment of interpretive judgment.33 The theological dimensions of the interpretive task are bound more closely to the very act of reading the text in front of us than such a two-­ stage model is willing to admit. But the question is how to embrace this insight without falling into the very problem that a “transcendental, independent, critical” hermeneutics was designed to counter in the first place: the methodological predisposition to reduce the text to fit “a prior system of theology.”34 As always, one can only make progress on such questions by way of a specific example. The foregoing reading of Numbers 20 may serve as a case in point, since it has been developed only through a repeated process of interaction with questions from wider horizons, and in dialogue with a range of other interpretations. The manner in which such interpretations are presented often serves to disguise that fact, but most interpreters know that in practice one does not strike out into the text with no recognition of how others have either found profit or encountered dead ends along certain lines of inquiry. On the theoretical level, however—that is, explored at some remove from actual examples—discussion of this matter seems rather stuck at the level of accusation and counteraccusation that theological commitments do or do not serve as a distortion in interpretive practice. In fact, this discussion has some interesting parallels with current debates about the role of scripture in the theological vision (or system, or narrative) of Paul. Thus we shall consider 1 Corinthians 10 as an exemplar of a critical theological hermeneutic in practice, after first orienting ourselves to the general discussion regarding Paul’s reading of scripture. Our goal, with Paul as it has been with Numbers, is to let scriptural exemplars influence our own practices of negotiating between the claims of texts and the claims of theological commitments, in this case quite specifically concerning Christ.

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R E A D I N G S C R I P T U R E W I T H PAU L

It is clear that at no point in his letters does Paul’s handling of scriptural texts look like modern exegetical study. One conclusion sometimes drawn from this rather obvious observation is that Paul is an unhelpful model of how to handle scripture. Appeal might be made to Richard Hays’s delightful characterization: “Let us not deceive ourselves about this: Paul would flunk our introductory exegesis course.”35 Hays’s landmark study begins with a rehearsal of just some of the interpreters in modern times who have thereby faulted Paul for failing to make appropriate use of the Old Testament.36 Of course, fueled not least by Hays’s own book, the tide has turned, and it is now clear that there is much to be learned from understanding Paul as an interpreter of scripture, both with respect to Paul and with respect to interpreting scripture. Among more recent studies of this theme, Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith helpfully draws out this discussion in a way that allows us to articulate the dialectical understanding of the relationship between theology and hermeneutics today. Watson finds a comparably dialectical understanding at work in Paul himself, as he considers the fundamental question of whether Paul appeals to scripture merely to shore up arguments he has derived from elsewhere (as much recent scholarship has averred) or whether scripture itself “exerts pressure” on Paul’s theological formulations.37 The problem is that this latter option has all too often been reduced to a struggle over the right interpretation of the canonical (OT) text, whereby in general only one interpretive proposal can be right, and all others are thereby wrong. Since Paul is manifestly not a graduate of the kind of introductory course to which Richard Hays has referred us, he has come off badly in such comparisons. However, Watson argues that when we observe Paul’s actual interpretive practice, we find a more subtle picture: There is for Paul a difference between a scriptural interpretation which proceeds deductively on the basis of the texts (Gal. 3.6–9), and one that proceeds inductively on the basis of the actuality of Christ (3.14a). The two approaches complement each other, and neither can exist in a pure form without the other. The deductive approach keeps the inductive one

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from interpretative arbitrariness by insisting that it remains accountable to the texts; the inductive approach keeps the deductive one from abstraction by insisting that it remains accountable to the actuality of Christ. Both together constitute the twofold hermeneutic whereby Paul as a Christian rereads Jewish scripture.38

It is significant that the texts in view in this discussion are scriptural texts: richly multivalent in ongoing significance and uniquely entwined with a complex and contested history of reception, not least the reception by those “in Christ” of texts relating to Israel’s life in earlier times. These scriptural texts, especially once they function as a collection, are startlingly unlike many other sets of texts of less interesting or remarkable semantic potential. I suggest that much energy has been wasted in biblical interpretation by attempts to draw substantive conclusions from the applicability of general hermeneutical theories to everyday sample texts that bear little if any real relationship to the functioning of scriptural texts in the lives of their readers. If there does turn out to be such a thing as a “semantics of biblical language,” then we can be sure, if the qualifier “biblical” is to do any significant work, that it will not look like the semantics of everyday chitchat: “The rock was big” and “The rock was Christ” are operating in language games so different that the transferable insight from one to the other will do little (if any) hermeneutical or theological work for us.39 Scriptural texts generally (always?) offer many interrelated possibilities for reading, possibilities that exist in a range of dialogues with other factors relevant to those for whom the texts are scriptural. They therefore allow readings, which are “neither the exact reproduction of a given content nor the product of alien, nonnegotiable dogmatic convictions.”40 The result is “a less confrontational and more dialogical hermeneutic” that is not held captive by “a struggle for the meaning of the [text’s] own statement.”41 Watson’s own case concerning Paul is that, whatever else may be said about him, he is at minimum a reader of (scriptural) texts. What are the hermeneutical assumptions that drive Paul’s concerns regarding faith, the law, human obedience, divine action, and so forth? It is not, in the first instance, a dogmatic scheme, but “the unfolding narrative of the Pentateuch.”42 Hence the title of his work regarding “the hermeneutics of

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faith.” So “Paul’s view of the law,” far from being a freestanding problem to which students might be led on an annual academic pilgrimage, required to rehearse arguments for and against such supposedly self-­contained entities as “the new perspective on Paul” or “the Lutheran view of Paul,” is—according to Watson—“nothing other than his reading of Exodus, Leviti­ cus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.”43 Paul the theologian is, therefore, irreducibly, Paul the reader of scripture. But the pursuit of this Paul offers a rather interesting insight: that while it may be true that he reads scripture and Christ in a mutually illuminating hermeneutical circle, these two focal points of his inquiry are not equally significant. Watson’s striking conclusion: “Paul reads the scripture in the light of Christ only in order to read Christ in the light of scripture; scriptural interpretation per se is of no interest to him.”44 It is important, in fact hermeneutically important, to recognize that none of these observations about Paul’s reading of Torah occur in the abstract. Watson’s book is not the execution of a theological program in the language of interpretive practice. His point about the priority of reading Christ occurs in an analysis of 2 Corinthians 3 for the light it sheds on Paul’s reading of Exodus, while his observations about the “hermeneutical dialectic” emerge in a treatment of Paul’s reading of the promise to Abraham in Genesis. Likewise he does not in turn discover a Paul who marshals scriptural texts to his own predetermined theological scheme. Thus while theological commitments are clearly at work in Paul’s reading, they do not reduce down to using the text as a mirror to reflect what he already believed. Rather, Paul’s theological commitments about God, and in particular about God’s being at work in the world opened up by the text, lead him to new ways of articulating his own theological understanding. This brings us to his reading of Numbers in 1 Corinthians 10, which shall serve both as a test case for this understanding of Paul’s reading and as a return to our own focal text in this chapter. 1 CO R I N T H I A N S 10 : PAU L’ S R E A D I N G O F N U M B E R S

In 1 Corinthians 8–10 Paul is considering how the congregation at Corinth should understand their responsibilities in the exercise of freedom

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in Christ, in particular with regard to “the everyday practical problems of social and religious life at Corinth in relation to pagan cultural or cultic backgrounds.”45 In chapter 10 the discussion turns to the spiritual danger they may be in if they persist in eating food offered to idols, and Paul explores this issue first by way of an extended set of parallels between the generations who wandered in the wilderness and those in Corinth in his own time. The chapter thus opens with a range of references to the narratives of Exodus and Numbers, and is laid out here in a manner that presumes upon the discussion which follows: I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5  Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. 6 Now THESE THINGS OCCURRED AS EXAMPLES FOR US, so that we might not desire evil as they did. 7 Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” 8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-­three thousand fell in a single day. 9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. 10 And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11 THESE THINGS HAPPENED TO THEM TO SERVE AS AN EXAMPLE, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. (1 Cor. 10:1–11 NRSV) 1

There is only one direct quote, that from Exodus 32:6 in verse 7, but clearly a considerable “pressure” is exerted here by the Torah narratives of Israel in the wilderness. Gary Collier offers a perceptive account of

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the structure of the passage46 and helpfully indicates its various scriptural resonances, which we can summarize as follows: Verse 1 refers the reader to the narrative recitals of Psalms 78 and 106. Verses 1–4 set up a fivefold characterization of the “all” (pantes) in the wilderness. Verse 5 nevertheless highlights the negative judgment passed on (most of ) them (cf. Num. 14:16). Verses 6–11 then offer a chiastic analysis of how these things serve as “examples [tupoi] for us” (v. 6) or happened “to serve as an example” (v. 11, using the same word), bracketing four ways in which “some of them” (tines autōn) failed: through being idolaters, or pornoi, or putting Christ to the test, or complaining (vv. 7–10). The allusions informing this chiasm Collier maps thus: v. 6  types—desiring evil Num. 11:4, 34 v. 7  some of them—idolaters (“as it is written”; gegraptai) Exod. 32:6 v. 8  some of them—pornoi Num. 25:1 v. 9  some of them—put Christ to the test Num. 21:4–7 v. 10  some of them—complained Num. 11:1 v. 11  types—to instruct us cf. Wis. 16:2–14

Collier’s specific contribution to the long-­running discussion of this passage is that it reflects a possibly pre-­Pauline midrash on Numbers 11, drawing links between the desiring of evil (v. 6) and the ways in which the underlying Old Testament texts relate to eating and its various ways of demonstrating failure in the wilderness, thus tying the overall discussion into Paul’s main topic of food sacrificed to idols.47 It is not my purpose here to evaluate the details of this approach to 1 Corinthians 10 in the context of Pauline studies, where one might profitably pursue questions of specific attributions of intertextual allusions or argue over which texts in particular are the bases for such midrashic development.48 One can acknowledge the dispute over such details while still affirming that something like this kind of engagement with scripture is at stake

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in 1 Corinthians 10. Likewise it is not necessary to enter into the discussion of whether this passage retains pre-­Pauline elements in part or even in large part. It suffices to note that—as they stand—verses 1–13 do indeed represent a more or less self-­contained discussion of the blessings of and judgments upon Israel in the wilderness. Paul uses this to address the question of how the Corinthians should learn from that wilderness example, before returning directly to the topic of food that has been sacrificed to idols in 10:14. This sense that 10:1–13 is a relatively discrete passage may strengthen the case for taking these verses as a focus for our own inquiry, but whether it does or not, our purpose is to ask what light 1 Corinthians 10 sheds on the reading of scripture, and in particular of Numbers. We start with some straightforward observations about what Paul is not interested in with regard to Numbers. Paul is not concerned with who wrote it. This matter is largely settled in any case by his undoubted conviction that this is a book of Moses and by his assumptions regarding authorship that it pertained more to moral authority over what is affirmed in the text than to questions of who either produced or originated the text. Such background questions hold no significant interest for Paul. Neither, second, do more literarily oriented questions regarding how one might set any particular text of Numbers in its literary (or even canonical) context. We have seen that such studies occupy center stage in the study of Numbers today.49 But it is not clear that Paul thinks of Numbers as a literary unit at all. For him it is part of the ongoing narrative of the books of the Torah. Paul does of course recognize key transitional moments in the development of the Torah’s narrative as having significance for what subsequent interpretation may or may not do: the transition from promise to law is fundamental, for example, as is the evidence of hardness of heart in the golden calf incident, or indeed the persistent narratives of desire and death in the wilderness that we find in the book of Numbers.50 But the transitional moments that matter to Paul do not correspond to the demarcations between the five books of the Torah, any more than other major thematic divisions do, according to the approach presented in our first chapter. Francis Watson’s treatment of the Old Testament narrative does draw striking conclusions about separate Torah books playing different roles in Paul’s thought, but this

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argument really requires only identifiable sections of the overall Torah narrative to play different roles, and those sections need not correspond to canonical book divisions. In fact, as one might have anticipated, Numbers 1–10 could as easily be taken with Leviticus on Watson’s account, since it is actually Numbers 11 onwards that serves as the focal text for the “death and desire” theme. In short, for Paul, it makes little difference how one understands the demarcation of the books either side of Numbers 1–10 (and at least arguably elsewhere in the Torah). Correspondingly, it turns out that the kinds of literary analysis focused on the canonical text and its intricate structuring seem to hold little or no interest for Paul. Not for him the analytical maps of the contents of biblical books . . . and thus ultimately, not for him any particular concern to cite sequentially from different Torah passages: in fact he dips into Exodus as well as ranging quite freely over Numbers. So what is key for Paul? It seems that the key is simply that in the text of Torah he finds the living voice of God carried through the voice of Moses, and it is the same God now known in Christ. Thus, in 1 Corinthians 10:9—“We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did”—Paul’s point is that what it means for the Corinthians to put Christ to the test is to be understood in terms of how the Israelites put God to the test. This need not be read as a complex claim about the presence of the second person of the Trinity in the wilderness, although clearly it could be read that way. Indeed the textual history of 10:9 betrays the fact that there was some confusion on this point, since there is manuscript attestation of “the Lord” rather than “Christ” in this text, in part because it was thought too problematic to have Paul affirming some kind of christologi­ cal presence in the events narrated in Numbers.51 But, as verses 6 and 11 say explicitly, these things serve as tupoi—“examples” or “types”—for us (i.e., for the Corinthians and Paul). Hence, one can receive all the blessings of God, as the Israelites did in the wilderness (vv. 1–4), but still earn God’s displeasure. And this is true of the Corinthians. Equally one can, in the midst of such blessing, “desire evil as they did” (v. 6, illustrated in vv. 7–10), though the purpose of recognizing this is that it might not happen among us. If one might then suggest that there are basic differences between the experiences of the Israelites in the wilderness and that of the Corinthians in the meat markets, Paul’s use of “tupoi” seems designed to

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draw those two contexts into a fairly strong relationship, such that the blessings experienced back then are now understood as comparable to the blessings of Christ. What aspects of Numbers are in view here? As theological interpreters like to ask (rightly), what is the Sache of the text that is at issue in Paul’s appeal to it? One key issue is that he seems to draw upon Numbers (and Exodus) in order to highlight the warning that awaits the faithful and blessed people should they stumble as the Israelites in the wilderness did. Theological interpretation of Numbers today should perhaps be particularly alert to this point. The warning to those who “think they are standing” (1 Cor. 10:12) is couched in terms of what was long ago said to the overconfident complainers and murmurers that we have met so often on our journey through Numbers. For Paul, the Corinthian Christians inhabit the same skeptical space. Although the language of trust and suspicion is absent, clearly this is about a tendency to be suspicious rather than trusting that Paul traces from the wilderness all the way to Corinth. For present purposes, however, it is a slightly different angle that I want to pursue. Part of Paul’s concern is with specific textual details that, he can now see, illuminate the reality he wishes to describe. It is precise points in the text that serve to shape his understanding. First Corinthians 10:4 offers an illuminating case study of this more focused phenomenon. “ T H E R O C K WA S C H R I S T ”: PAU L A M O N G J E W I S H R E A D I N G S O F N U M B E R S

In his reference to “the spiritual rock that followed them” in 1 Corinthians 10:4, Paul is assuming the broad contours of a well-­established midrashic tradition about the rock in the wilderness, as Peter Enns among others has shown.52 Two key texts are Targum Neofiti 21:1, which speaks of the Canaanite king of Arad hearing “that Aaron, the pious man for whose merits the clouds of glory used to lead Israel forth, had been removed; and that Miriam the prophetess, for whose merits the well used to come up for them had been removed . . . ,” and Pseudo-­Philo, who seems to develop this thought:

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And after Moses died, the manna stopped descending upon the sons of Israel, and then they began to eat from the fruits of the land. And these are the three things that God gave to his people on account of three persons; that is, the well of the water of Marah for Miriam and the pillar of cloud for Aaron and the manna for Moses. And when these came to their end, these three things were taken away from them. (LAB 20:8)

The assumption at work here is that the death notices of the three main figures can all be correlated with the cessation of some of the remarkable phenomena encountered in the wilderness trek: Death Notice Miriam 20:1 Aaron 20:24–29 Moses Deut. 34

Cessation of . . . Water—20:2 Pillar of cloud—last noted in 14:14 Manna—cf. Josh. 5:12

The logic of the midrashic claim is straightforward, but it is a long way from the logic of “most plausible historical reconstruction.” It is rather the reading of the details of the text to see where they exert their own pressure upon the interpreter. How does it work in this case? The Israelites are in the desert, following the exodus, and they find themselves without water (Exod. 17:1). Provision is made for them by Moses’ striking the rock (17:6) so that water comes out from it. In the obscure detail that we noted earlier, we read that YHWH says to Moses, “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb.” It is unclear whether this is to suggest a theophany on the rock, or an invisible presence, or some sort of personification of this rock, such that God could be understood as a rock. This tradition is apparently evoked in Deuteronomy 32: God is “the rock” whose work is perfect (v. 4), who is the people’s (“Jeshurun’s”) salvation (v. 15), and who is described as “the Rock that bore you” (v. 18). God the Rock—in the wilderness—provides water for the people. But, on reflection, if the people are moving around, then so must the rock be. For the rabbis (and presumably also for Paul, although we do not have any record of his view of this matter) this is confirmed by careful attention to the next occasion when the Israelites are described as being without water, in Numbers 20:2. Here, what is clear in the text

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is that it is the death of Miriam (in v. 1) that immediately precedes the absence of water, and from this juxtaposition comes the targumic interest in “Miriam’s well,” thought to have traveled with the Israelites rather as the rock did.53 The topic of water in the wilderness is next broached by YHWH in Numbers 21:16, where the Israelites are urged to sing, “Spring up, O well” (the singular reference to “well” here being understood as indicating that it is the same well that they have been used to). In the past Miriam’s merits secured the water supply, but with Miriam gone they need these further divine interventions—which, as we saw, was how Pseudo-­Philo read it. How does Paul’s reading compare with the “matrix” of Jewish interpretations sketched here? First, Paul does indeed see the provision of water (and also food) in the wilderness as a spiritual reality: note the repeated “spiritual” in verse 3–4. Second, he works with the midrashic assumption that the rock “followed” the Israelites in the wilderness. This does not look like an assertion of Paul’s (cf. v. 4) so much as an identification of the rock he is talking about that he takes to be uncontroversial, for the more controversial part of the identification then follows: “and the rock was Christ.” Third, he seems to presuppose the midrashic understandings that the narratives of the wilderness in Numbers are occupied with matters of divine testing and provision, in particular with the provision of life-­giving water. The notion that the rock followed the Israelites in the wilderness, which is not so much explicit in Numbers as deduced by the kind of reading we have sketched above, already invites the consideration that something miraculous occurs in the way in which God is present to the Israelites in the rock (and perhaps lends weight to a certain reading of Exod. 17:6a). Paul now sees that this divine presence is what he, from his own vantage point this side of the resurrection, would call the presence of Christ. Just as God’s presence in Numbers brought about both blessing and a mixture of testing and punishment for failure (with Num. 11 standing as one immediate and obvious example of the inseparability of narratives emphasizing these two factors), so God’s presence in Christ to the Corinthians can be narrated as a presence of blessings (1 Cor. 10:1–4) and/or testing and potential punishment (10:5–11). Numbers, written about the Israelites, is written for the Corinthians. When reality is mapped in this ascriptive way, the rock is Christ.

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That last claim may also be rephrased as saying that the rock was “literally” Christ, but in a sense of “literal” to be determined. Richard Hays, for example, suggests that “the metaphorical identification should not be pressed too hard,” and that Christ was not hereby to be understood as “igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary.”54 Clearly so. Neither is it the case that historically Christ was present in the wilderness—he was not. It is not hard to find theological articulations that risk blurring this point in the desire to emphasize that Christ was genuinely present to Moses in the wilderness, ranging from Chrysostom’s “Christ, who was everywhere present with them, and was the author of all the wonders” through to R. P. C. Hanson’s “For Paul, when Moses wrote ‘Rock’ he meant Christ present then and there.”55 But on theological grounds, one does need to beware of losing the particularity of the incarnation in positing the presence of Christ in the Old Testament. One implication of the doctrine of the incarnation may well be that Christ is not to be understood as straightforwardly present everywhere in the same way, or to the same ends.56 We will find ourselves returning to some familiar themes about the nature of the reality that is in view when we discuss this point further below. Paul’s reading could be characterized as offering a christological twist on Jewish frames of reference for reading Numbers. Certainly it is hard to see that much sense could be made of it removed from the midrashic tradition upon which he draws. In this connection it is appropriate to recall Jon Levenson’s pertinent observation that “the rough functional equivalent in Christianity for the Oral Torah of Judaism is the New Testament.”57 Paul’s reading of Numbers, therefore, draws some of its key conceptualities from the Jewish tradition in which it operates, in particular in seeing the voice of the text speaking to an ongoing living tradition in his time. In other respects, his reading makes a bold new theological move, in understanding the tradition in view in connection with Christ. There is no neutral option, as if one could ask how the text speaks to no tradition in particular: it can only speak to a particular listener (or listening tradition).58 Christian readings are not attempts to annex the text as only appropriate within a Christian frame of reference, but they are attempts to explore how the text presses upon the reader when one is interested in that frame of reference. John 7:37–39 may be

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inviting its readers to hear Jesus’ words about the living water as drawing a link between Moses’ striking the rock and Jesus being “struck” or pierced in John’s gospel, for instance.59 That may be an important point for reading Numbers 20 as Christian scripture in ways that go beyond its original and originating contexts, without for one moment suggesting that all readings of Numbers must have the same end in view. H OW C A N PAU L’ S R E A D I N G O F N U M B E R S I N F O R M A   T H E O LO G I C A L R E A D I N G O F S C R I P T U R E ?

How might we today best articulate the categories at work in Paul’s reading of scripture? One key issue is that the reading of the Numbers text is framed for Paul by the twin poles of (a) the text’s ongoing life in the interpretive tradition (the midrash) and (b) the reality of Christ that is now known through the experience of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. If one were to focus on the first of these poles, it might lead to an interesting discussion of the constructive role of questions of reception theory and interpretive tradition in interpretation. In terms of insights for today, it would also, as Margaret Mitchell has shown, lead to reflection on how Paul’s own texts are then taken up as scripture that in turn develops its own interpretive trajectories.60 Mitchell is also concerned to argue that Paul can inform a Christian reading of scripture today, though her focus is on Pauline texts rather than his use of Old Testament texts. It would take us too far afield to demonstrate various points of congruence between her thesis and my own, but it is noteworthy that she strongly rejects the claim that allegorical or figural interpretation is arbitrary. Rather, Paul upholds a careful balance between “three cardinal virtues of ancient textual interpretation”: precision, or keen attention to the text; an awareness of its benefit for its readers; and “clemency” which seeks to balance the first two points. In particular, being rigorous and being useful are not to be opposed. One attends to the text as wholeheartedly as possible in order to prepare it for wider consumption.61 However in regard to our present concerns, it is to the second pole that we turn our attention: the new reality brought about in Christ. This new reality sets up a hermeneutical tension in the reading of any

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scripture that comes from before that time, a tension that persists today whenever Christians read “Old Testament texts.” To put the point most simply: in addition to all the general hermeneutical concerns that rightly occupy any careful reader of scriptural (and other) texts as they are passed down any interpretive tradition, a particular additional stumbling block lies between general and theological hermeneutics in biblical interpretation—the nature of the Old Testament as Christian scripture. Several aspects of this argument deserve fuller articulation, and here I offer brief clarification of four of them, all interrelated. In doing so I am conscious that in each case a far longer discussion would be needed to do justice to what is at stake. First, and most simply, the prevalence of the word “type” (tupos) twice in the Corinthians passage seems inevitably to urge the interpreter to take up a notion of “typological” reading as if it were the name of a particular kind of hermeneutical approach.62 In one sense this intuition is helpful: it highlights the unique old/new relationship that pertains between scriptural texts from the two testaments. However, as Frances Young has clearly demonstrated, the problem is that most accounts of “typology” describe modern constructs, where an unhelpful view of historical particularity is used to separate out such a supposed “typological approach” from the more general characteristics of allegorical interpretation.63 But the notion that types in the text required some sort of historical reference “behind them” almost certainly obscures the categories with which ancient texts operated. In Young’s account, allegory and typology are both basically concerned with a kind of mimetic resonance from one account to another: “A ‘type’ is a mimetic ‘impress’ or figure in the narrative or action described. . . . It is not its character as historical event which makes a ‘type’; what matters is its mimetic quality.”64 Allegory and typology are therefore in the same business, but what that business is requires careful attention to what texts were about in ancient times, which we might call their “literal sense,” except that, as we saw in the previous chapter, this label requires some clarification. Second, therefore, the “literal sense” in view is to be understood as the kind of realistic and ascriptive project that we have been pursuing in this book. There is no need to rehearse once again Hans Frei’s categories,

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except to say that what we are concerned with here is how Numbers would have been understood, by Paul, as a realistic narrative describing the way one was expected to understand the world. It is a reading of the text “according to the letter,” or ad litteram, as one might put it.65 Or a reading that is “historical” but not “historicist.”66 A wide range of vocabulary is available for trying to characterize the key issues, but as long as interpreters are clear, there is no need to think that one manner of capturing the point is essential. One can choose to say that Paul reads Numbers literally, as long as it is understood that “literal sense” is used here in this traditional way. In this ascriptive sense the rock is “literally” Christ, or, in Young’s terminology, the mimetic impress of the Numbers text is the same as that of Christ. Such concerns do of course take one a long way from modern concerns with author’s meaning and so forth, concerns motivated at least in part by an awareness of the pitfalls of being overly beholden to interpretive traditions of various sorts. It is too easy to see the alternatives as polar opposites here: to postulate an interpreter who must pursue either theological or historical interests. But one should not press for an either/or in describing best hermeneutical practice in the reading of scripture. Disciplined historical imagination and creative theological conceptualization may be mutually reinforcing. Third, and perhaps most important, the word “new.” It is central to the above argument that the hermeneutical and theological resonances of the word “new” are understood as distinct, even if they do in practice overlap from time to time. The Numbers text is caught up in a theological understanding that human history is now uniquely divided into two distinct (though not entirely discontinuous) periods: the “old,” before Christ, and the “new” (or perhaps better “renewed”), in Christ. God’s revelation, in and through the written texts of old, is therefore open to being understood in new ways that are fundamentally to do with Christ rather than with a general theory of “newness.” By this last phrase I mean to indicate all those hermeneutical theories that rightly emphasize that texts are open to new readings with the passing of time, or the changing of context, or the development of new horizons of reception, or the progress (or otherwise) of human thought and experience. All that is true, and biblical texts, like any other texts, give themselves up to new readings in

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such ways every time an advocate of some new perspective or construal comes along. But the newness that pertains to being newly in Christ is a once-­for-­all newness that is hermeneutically similar to the general case only in some limited formal ways (since it is after all a kind of newness), but that is driven by a set of theological convictions about divine presence and divine revelation, now newly understood in Christ.67 In particular, too general a hermeneutical account lacks theological traction on what makes the Old Testament unique: this is a text (or set of texts) that is sprung into a new and theologically determined tension by what takes place in Christ. Hebrews 1:1–2 structures its understanding of revelation and time around this basic polarity: “in the past”/“now in these last days.” The Old Testament, in its many and various voices, is set in tension with the new revelation: “God has spoken in Christ.” Understood in this theologically determined way, “old” and “new” remain essential to an adequate description of the nature of the Christian Bible, which is of course a constructed entity, but is primarily theologically constructed. This leads directly to reflection upon the nature of the “Old Testament as [Christian] scripture,” in Childs’s profound book title,68 in which its specificity as the scripture of Israel is taken up and recast in the new theological understanding brought into being by the existence of the new testament. On a hermeneutical level, by way of contrast, newness works through such categories as reception history or literary notions of “canon” wherein any new work or interpretation may be added in at the end of the chain of texts, which is in principle open ended and capable of ongoing revision. One sees plenty of attempts to make theological capital out of this hermeneutical phenomenon in cases where appeal is made to the New Testament’s relativizing of the Old as a mandate for our own relativizing of the New, usually, it might be said, in ways that seem suspiciously conformed to the culture in which we live. Now it is of course true that the hermeneutical phenomena of canon and reception can illuminate many and diverse aspects of biblical texts. I have always enjoyed the comment of Frank McConnell in his editorial introduction to The Bible and the Narrative Tradition: “You can make a movie called Star Wars, and it will be a good or a bad film. But, then, what if you make a sequel? Are you continuing the story, or are you, in fact, reinterpreting the story by extending

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it?”69 In some ways this illuminates the position of the Old Testament in our time. But it does not illuminate it in a manner sufficient to the theological significance of Old and New in Christian Scripture. One of the most evident corollaries of this line of thinking is that those more traditional modes of interpretation that were deeply influenced by the biblical figuration of time into old and new, such as the allegorical/ typological/figural approaches characteristic of a former age, continue to offer profound insights into the tasks of biblical interpretation, alongside newer approaches that are somewhat bereft of any sort of reflection on the significance of time. Matthew Levering makes this point in his call for a mode of interpretation that acknowledges “participation” in Christ as a way of transcending the nonchristological, linear understandings of time that have predominated in the modern era.70 Christopher Seitz puts matters sharply: modern or late-­modern approaches to Scripture can leave us lost in time, adrift from any meaningful doctrine of providence, and susceptible to whatever “new” theological vision captures the day. The two-­testament Christian scripture, in contrast, figures our own time into the scriptural narrative.71 Fourth, and lest the above argument should be misunderstood, does this mean that it should not be possible to interpret the book of Numbers (or indeed any OT text) without reference to Christ? By no means! Clearly one would have to nuance the presenting question here in any case: perhaps it is whether one can interpret Numbers “well,” or “correctly,” or “as a Christian,” without reference to Christ, and the answers to these questions might not all be the same. But it is not just empirical observations about the evident wisdom of much Jewish interpretation that should give the enthusiastic Christian interpreter pause here. If what we have said about the “mimetic impress” of the texts is right, then the Christian theological perception of that same impress in Christ is not the only way of describing the Old Testament text ad litteram. Rather, the Old Testament turns out to model Christian ways of speaking of reality that are not articulated in explicitly Christian terms (while also, to labor the point, offering Jewish ways of speaking of reality, and other, more general, literary ways, and so forth). Ellen Davis puts the matter helpfully in a discussion of Christian preaching of the Old Testament, a discussion that may be especially

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germane to our reading of Paul reading Numbers: “The freedom to preach Old Testament texts christologically is, in my judgment, just that: a freedom that the Christian preacher may exercise at any time and should exercise sometimes, not a requirement for preaching any particular text responsibly.”72 In point of fact, the New Testament itself pursues this interpretive path only occasionally. Certain key texts in the tradition have brought attention to the christological dimensions of reading Old Testament texts: 1 Corinthians 10 is one, and Galatians 4 and arguably Ephesians 5 (esp. vv. 31–32) are others. In general, such texts pursued allegorical means of linking the ancient text and the present theological reality under discussion. Indeed, Robert Wilken suggests that “the term allegory is used so loosely today that it is sometimes forgotten that it is primarily a technique for interpreting the Old Testament, the Jewish Scriptures that the early Christian community made its own.”73 Notably, Wilken thinks that it is precisely the specificity of our two-­testament scripture that requires a recovery of allegory today in the church as “indispensable for a genuinely Christian interpretation of the Old Testament.”74 Again this underlines our point that, for any theological interpretation to take place, the Old Testament is not so much a generic “text” to which any hermeneutical approach might be applied as it is a specific case requiring its own unique set of hermeneutical moves. In concluding this section of the discussion, one might also wish to point out that, on balance, the book of Numbers has not been well served with careful allegorical (or figural or christological) interpretation in recent times. Arguably some aspects of Mary Douglas’s work on Numbers indicate such dimensions.75 But for a rare direct example one might consider Nathan MacDonald’s striking reading of the sotah text of Numbers 5:11–31 in terms of “the relationship between YHWH and Israel and, within the context of a Christian two testament canon, between God and the church.”76 MacDonald’s article offers exactly the combination of attention to the text and to the theological dimensions of the literal sense that we have been discussing. It would be a pity if the rhetoric of a supposed need to “liberate” the biblical text from overzealous Christian allegorical interpretation obscured the fact that all of one article, and that a careful one, represented the countervoice in recent scholarly discussion.77

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G E N E R A L H E R M E N E U T I C S R E CO N S I D E R E D

I have suggested that the basic limitation of general hermeneutical theory with respect to its usefulness for reading Christian scripture is its insufficient attention to the particularities introduced by the unique two-­ testament structure of the text at hand. Now on one level this may be put (at least to some small degree) in a positive sense. It is a hermeneutical observation that we need to pay sufficient attention to the text at hand. But to make such a general point is not the same as allowing one’s interpretation to be substantively shaped by the specifics of Christian scripture as a frame of reference for interpreting biblical texts. Schleiermacher, not insignificantly, developed his hermeneutical thinking with respect to the New Testament, and much of the subsequent pull of hermeneutical thinking, toward the so-­called universality of hermeneutics,78 derives its logic from the ways of thinking he set in motion. Now clearly there is a tremendously valuable sense in which such thinking challenges any easy overassimilation of the New Testament text at hand into prior dogmatic theological systems. The present argument is not an attempt to contest the gains of hermeneutics, nor suggest that its insights into interpretive tasks are not worthwhile. But all that said, my contention is that there was an alternative route to the same challenge to dogmatic foreclosure on New Testament interpretation, and that it lay nearer to hand than hermeneutical philosophy: the route of taking seriously the status and function of the Old Testament as Christian scripture. The conclusion I would like to draw from this is as follows: the Old Testament is a stumbling block for the application of general hermeneutical understanding to the tasks of reading biblical texts well, and in particular with respect to their theological voice. How then does hermeneutical theorizing work?79 It offers at best a via negativa, ideal for showing up the problems of unexamined frameworks and assumptions. It successfully demonstrates that there can be no simple “objectivity” in the reading of texts. It forces productive reflection on the nature of embodied assumptions and commitments in the reading of the texts before us. On these terms, the New Testament may then be able to take care of itself.80 The Old Testament, however, is a stumbling block to the application of general hermeneutical thinking to the tasks

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of biblical interpretation. It is intriguing to recall Origen’s comment on the divine provision of problems that require the reader to take roads less traveled: The divine wisdom has arranged for certain stumbling blocks and interruptions of the historical sense to be found therein, by inserting in the midst a number of impossibilities and incongruities, in order that the very interruption of the narrative might as it were present a barrier to the reader and lead him to refuse to proceed along the pathway of the ordinary meaning. (On First Principles 4.2.9)

Perhaps the Old Testament itself is the great stumbling block to the generalized hermeneutical projects of modern theology. It is I think no coincidence that Schleiermacher found little constructive role for the Old Testament in his work. Neither is it coincidence, I suggest, that a resurgence of interest in the interpretation of the Old Testament as Christian scripture (after Childs and others) propels us to a place where theological interpretation becomes a major concern of Christian interpreters, and where the hermeneutical thinking in play may thus become appropriately theological. T H E O LO G I C A L I N T E R P R E TAT I O N A N D T H E L I M I T S O F H E R M E N E U T I C A L T H E O RY: A CO N C LU D I N G U N S C I E N T I F I C  A L L E G O RY

What then should we say? That general hermeneutical theory is a waste of time? By no means! For without hermeneutical theory I would not have known what it meant to read scripture more probingly than by way of reflecting back my own assumptions and theological preferences. But hermeneutics, seizing an opportunity in the consideration of method, produced in me all kinds of proliferating prolegomena. I was once a happy reader apart from hermeneutics . . . Or again: Why then hermeneutics? It was added because of inadequate readings. Is it then opposed to the promises of God? Certainly

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not! Hermeneutics was our disciplinarian until Christ is revealed in the impress of the text . . . And so: A proper theological understanding of general hermeneutical theory may be as simple as grasping Paul’s view of the law, which is to say, not simple at all. Which would befit an account of the dynamics of reading a text that is playing its part in the mysterious divine economy of action, presence, judgment, and blessing. Against such things there is no law.

SEVEN

“ ‘Peace, Peace,’ When There Is No Peace” The Zeal of Readers in Defense and in Dissent (Numbers 25)

P R O L E G O M E N A TO A P R O B L E M T E X T F O R T H E T W E N T Y- ­F I R S T C E N T U RY

We are heading toward Numbers 25 for our next case study. There are two matters to sketch out briefly before we get there. One concerns the intervening developments in the book of Numbers since we last had YHWH speaking in judgment on Moses and Aaron in 20:12 and the narrator wrapping up the incident in 20:13. The other is a rationale for attending to Numbers 25 as the last of our major case studies in the book. Much could be said regarding both of these, but I will restrict the discussion to highlights. Previously in the Book of Numbers . . .

The intervening four and a half chapters may be taken in two very distinct sections. The first concerns Numbers 20:14–21:35, reaching the end of chapter 21. The second is chapters 22–24. 191

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The first is a series of travel-­oriented episodes interspersed with some relatively random materials. First Moses attempts to lead the Israelites on a direct path from Kadesh through Edom toward the land (20:14–17). They announce that they will even bring their own water with them, so as to cause as little trouble to the Edomites as possible. Moses recounts various reasons why things are hard for them at this juncture, but it reads rather as if he anticipates that with this standard deployment of ancient Near Eastern flattery there will be no problem. Edom, after all, is Israel’s “brother” (v. 14)—a reference that resonates with Genesis 25:30 and 36:1, with Edom being “Esau,” Jacob’s brother. Numbers 20:18–21 indicates that Edom is unmoved. Interestingly the text works with a personified Edom—a masculine singular speaking subject—and perhaps this “Edom” recalls that Jacob’s treatment of Esau was rather less than honorable.1 “It is only a small matter,” urges Moses. But Edom speaks as Gandalf: “You shall not pass.”2 As a result Israel cannot take the direct route, and what follows is intricately complicated to unravel from a geographical perspective. Indeed, Levine opens his discussion with, “It would be hard to conceive of a single chapter of the Hebrew Bible that poses more complex historical and literary problems than Numbers 21.”3 Numbers 20:22–29 seems to see Israel progress along the now barred route as far as Mount Hor, where Aaron is “gathered to his people,” specifically because of his rebellious failings earlier in the chapter. Numbers 21:1–3 then has the king of Arad, perhaps yet further down the route that has been closed off, fight against Israel, except this time they take up arms and pursue their enemy to destruction. The probable wordplay here draws out a point we made in connection with 14:45 concerning “Hormah.” On the one hand Israel’s declared intention to “destroy”—or put under the ban—the relevant Canaanite towns, with Israel speaking in the first-­person singular much as Edom just did, uses v ehacharamtî, from the verb chāram, to “devote,” or to “render as cherem.”4 Then the place that is treated in this way is called “Hormah,” chormāh, “destruction.” It thus seems plausible that there would be more than one option for locating on any map a town described in the narrative as “Hormah.” In any case, 21:4 then sees Israel set off “by the way to the Red Sea,” which (a) is a very long southward detour, occasioning the almost

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inevitable complaints en route (21:4–9), and (b) in due course has places such as Oboth and others (21:10–20) listed as way stations, by which time the Israelites already seem to have circumnavigated Edom and arrived at the borders of Moab, on the east of the Jordan, from where of course they will duly make their much-­delayed entry. None of this is easy to map, but that does not stop people from trying. Most of the little I have wanted to say about geography and the agendas of geographic artistry has been said in earlier chapters. It would lie beyond the needs of our own project of interpretation to attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the details of these notices.5 Here the main point relevant to the ongoing development of the book is that there is conflict between the traveling Israelites and the various groups of people they encounter on their way, with the conflict sometimes manifesting itself in costly circumnavigation, and other times in military engagement. It is important to know that Israel goes on to engage with the Amorites when they are refused passage under the same terms they tried with Edom in chapter 20 (i.e., keeping to the Kings’ Highway, carrying their own water, and not stopping to sample local delights, the repetitions of which lead to the inevitable pondering over whether these are parallel or variant accounts). In military conflict with the Amorite King Sihon (21:21), who runs affairs from Heshbon after driving out the Moabites (21:26), Israel wins, and celebrates in song (21:27–30). The result, by 22:1 and after further battles, is that they are encamped “in the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho.” The other result is that they now have potential problems with a range of other people who have watched their progress with some consternation. Israel’s tactical successes and geographic advance, in other words, guarantee further military trouble to come. Both these results combine to set up the events of chapter 22. In trying to bring the account above to the completion of the journeying to this point, we have skipped over many other elements of the text. The story actually told in 21:4–9 has all the elements of another classic Numbers tale of the people complaining and longing for Egypt, divine punishment (this time in the form of “poisonous serpents,” v. 6; in fact hannchāshîm hasserāphîm, “serpents—seraphs”), and Moses having to intercede. The solution YHWH offers Moses is to make a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole, and then anyone who looked at it would live, even if

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they were bitten. According to verse 9 it works exactly as planned, which marks an interesting simplification of the pattern of complaint and judgment stories that we have been encountering throughout. This story lives on in tradition, and in the canon, in various ways. One aspect is found in traditions of ascribing to bronze (or at any rate fabricated) snakes mysterious powers, which may explain why such an object appears in the temple in Jerusalem: the problematic Nehushtan of 2 Kings 18:4. The point in Numbers, however, could also have been that YHWH used this object to symbolize the healing of the Israelites. In other words, perhaps it was not the snake itself that healed them; but God healed them. Wisdom of Solomon 16:7 opts for exactly this alternative in the midst of its somewhat grim recitation of those who did and did not deserve pestilence and plague in the desert. At least with this particular “symbol of deliverance,” Wisdom says “the one who turned toward it was saved, not by the thing that was beheld, but by you, the Savior of all.” Of course this does not prove what the writers or editors of Numbers 21 thought, but is witness to one way the story was received. The theme turns up again in John 3, where Jesus uses this image to describe himself being lifted up—this time to bring not just life but eternal life to everyone who believes ( John 3:14). In the context of John 3, this “lifting up” of Jesus seems to be a reference to his death on the cross. Jesus, and/or John, see this story in Numbers as describing exactly how God rescues from the midst of trouble. It may be worth noting, in that connection, that the Israelites who are healed in the incident with the snake remain in the wilderness, beset by troubles. Perhaps John 3 therefore also indicates that any such “rescue” need not be understood as delivering the “rescued” one from all trouble. The other point to make about Numbers 20–21 is that it includes various other elements such as songs of praise, ballads, cross-­referencing to “the book of the wars of YHWH” (21:14), . . . all mixed in among the travel notices and accounts of military combat. There is some sense of underlying progress, which I have tried to outline above. But more than we have even experienced in a chapter like Numbers 15, it does seem that this is a collection of materials that roughly cohere, but do not add up to much of a tight literary, historical, or even theological presentation. All

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this material is important in its way, but it would not serve much purpose to seek out deeper rationales for all the details we encounter here. That brings us, for our second set of texts, to Numbers 22–24, the celebrated narratives of Balak and Balaam, the cursing or blessing of Israel, and the famous cameo of Balaam and his talking ass. We shall offer some selected elements of a reading of these chapters in our own final chapter. All that is required here is a brief rehearsal of the reasons why it makes sense to treat them at that point, rather than to see them as requiring analysis before moving on to Numbers 25. Of course there is no problem with treating them in canonical order before chapter 25, but as we have just shown, and as was argued at length with respect to Numbers 15, the progression of the narrative through the book of Numbers is no longer a governing rubric by this point. The reasons for isolating chapters 22–24 do of course go deeper than that, and may be rehearsed briefly here. First, there is a surprising unanimity that these chapters, known from as early as rabbinic tradition as “the book of Balaam,” “constitute an independent work that was later inserted into the text of the Book of Numbers.”6 If so—and we shall see that this is probable—then 22:2 becomes read as a redactional link to chapter 21, while the reference to Peor in 23:28 is seen as one reason why the section makes sense immediately before 25:1–3. Certainly attempts to delineate anything like standard J or E sources in this section are widely regarded as unsuccessful. Most notably, the name ‘ēl (“God”; NRSV), generally associated with more generic ancient conceptions of deity than are usually found in the Old Testament, occurs eight times in this section, and only twice elsewhere in Numbers.7 Reference to God in Numbers is almost always via the divine name YHWH. The statistics for the use of ‘elohîm also make interesting reading: it is much rarer than in the preceding three Pentateuchal books, occurring only twenty-­four times in all, of which eleven are in the book of Balaam.8 In fact these statistics are often put to work in attempting to delineate sources within the book of Balaam, and are then further complicated by the fact that on some twenty-­two out of fifty-­one or fifty-­two occasions when any divine name is used here, the Septuagint disagrees with the Masoretic Text.9

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A second, and perhaps more straightforward, observation is that the perspective of these narratives is very different. The narratives read as if they pertain to Israel from the perspective of Balak and the Moabites, portraying their attempts to get Balaam to curse Israel. The narrative perspective thus seems to be from outside Israel. These three chapters alone in the book of Numbers do not mention Moses.10 A third factor concerns the discovery, during the 1960s, of some texts at Deir ‘Allā that concern Balaam. These texts are now studied as two “combinations” of fragments, and their subsequent publication has rightly occupied scholars of Numbers 22–24 ever since.11 The net effect of the these texts has been to multiply the number of hypotheses and reconstructions of ancient Balaam traditions. What is clear is that such traditions were well established across a wide range of contexts, probably—though not certainly—including outside Israel. What is less clear is how they relate together, and how the ancient practices of divination to which they and Numbers 22–24 attest should be understood. One subsidiary consideration is that the Deir ‘Allā texts on the whole render it more likely that Numbers 22–24 circulated as an(other) independent “Balaam text,” prior to its incorporation into the book of Numbers. Nothing is certain, but this does seem plausible. A fourth and major concern for our own kind of approach is the notorious problem of the divergent evaluations of Balaam across the Old Testament (and New Testament) canon, beginning already at Numbers 31:16, and the general sense that this positively viewed prophet of “the book of Balaam” becomes a cause of stumbling in later traditions. We cannot enter into this discussion here, except to note that it too seems to presuppose a certain discrete status of Numbers 22–24 as one source to be compared and contrasted with others in due course.12 All of these points add up to the conclusion that while there is much of interest and theological relevance to study in “the book of Balaam,” it is not straightforwardly read as a continuous part of any overarching narrative. This should not stop interpreters from asking the canonically shaped question, how does it function now as chapters 22–24 of the book of Numbers that we have?, and I shall offer some reflection on this in our concluding chapter. The section is clearly important—hence its inclusion at all—and it has something to say about blessing as well as

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many other topics, but the point at which we will consider it will be as we step back from the book as a whole and look at its overall sense (or lack) of cohesion. A Problem Text for as Long as It Is Called Today

The second element of our introductory reflections concerns the choice of Numbers 25 as a focal text for exploring further aspects of the difficulties of scriptural interpretation in the twenty-­first century. Such interpretive work operates in the context of a notable splintering of interpretive traditions, within and beyond the academy. It is possible that there have never been more interpretive options for the reader of a biblical text than there are today. Perhaps in part this is because the passage of time and the burgeoning of tradition(s) simply multiplies the range of reading trajectories—past and present—that can come into play in any given reading. But it is clear that in among the resultant options today lie hermeneutical frameworks that may or may not be Christian, may or may not be Jewish, and may or may not avail themselves of standard critical perspectives such as characterized the nineteenth-­and twentieth-­ century modern West. Then in turn, in hot pursuit of such diversity, come the exercises in hermeneutical map-­making, which seek to lay out all the options (with or without evaluation, according to preference). Some of these exercises succeed in clarifying many key issues. Two of the best, and indeed most prominent, in recent years have been John Collins’s The Bible after Babel and John Barton’s The Nature of Biblical Criticism.13 Both these works, and of course many others, are at least in part wrestling with the extent to which the interpretive map has or has not been redrawn by the arrival of self-­consciously theological interests in interpretation. Both of them are cautious about any such move. Yet hermeneutics, while always with us, can be a rather self-­defeating focus for those whose real interest lies in actually reading the biblical text. The focus on one particular text and its potential readings always seems more likely to illuminate the way ahead. And it turns out that Numbers 25 is a particularly suitable candidate for this role of being a focal text in such discussions.

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The chapter concerns Israel camped in Shittim, engagement with Moabite gods, divine judgment, and in particular the actions of Phinehas in response to unfolding events, and then God in response to Phinehas. This description of the text attempts to prejudge as little as possible, since how one describes what the text is about (or indeed how it is “titled” in one’s reference to it) may well be a judgment that makes a difference to the resultant reading. “Numbers 25” will suffice as a convenient label for our purposes.14 It was this text in particular that served as exhibit A for none other than John Collins’s 2002 SBL presidential address on the Bible and violence.15 Here Collins offered a particularly clear argument in favor of saying that one should not let the Bible go unchecked by the rigors of critical analysis—an analysis that needs to be on guard against justifying religious extremism (and, in particular, violence) by appeal to the text. Numbers 25 (particularly as interpreted in 1 Maccabees 1) proved to be something of a test case for his wider thesis. We shall proceed in three steps. First we offer a largely surface-­level reading of the text—a form of literary-­historical reading that is critically attentive to detail and alert to various social, ethical, and theological implications, without particularly moving to an evaluation of them. Second, we explore some readings of the text—drawn mainly from the modern era—noting that in fact it is hard for almost all interpreters to avoid a certain zeal either for or against the text that is being read. Whereas, traditionally, Jewish and Christian scholars have zealously defended the merits of the story and its manner of addressing faithful readers, more recent critics have zealously sought to contest what is taken as the text’s ideological/theological support of violence. Third, we consider the ways in which the evaluation of all these approaches takes one beyond matters of exegesis to questions of theological and hermeneutical frameworks. To anticipate: many readings of the zeal of Phinehas are possible. It will be no more possible to prove that one must take Numbers 25 as legitimating violence than to prove that one cannot read it that way. The result is, at minimum, an engagement with the politics of hermeneutics. On this score, I contend, there remains scope for a considerable “thickening” or “deepening” of the quality of our interpretive disagreements, even if the prospect of agreement remains slim.16

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NUMBERS 25

All readings, of whatever theological commitments or none, need to take seriously the details of the text they are reading, although in principle one cannot settle the question of how to describe what is in the text without also making hermeneutical judgments about what counts as relevant observation. Likewise, and as always, the reading that follows has not been written without some awareness of other—more hermeneutical—matters to be discussed below. But contested understandings of the nature of the exegetical task need not be a cause for despair, since what counts is not in principle objectivity, but sufficient clarity to sustain a meaningful discussion about matters of import as they are construed differently from one interpretation to another. With this in mind, we proceed to a reading of the text designed to draw attention to matters that raise interpretive possibilities. 25:1–3 The first three verses set out the context within which the rest of the chapter takes place. Israel is camped (“dwelling,” yāshab) at Shittim. This is “Abel-­Shittim,” perhaps the “meadow” of Shittim, “in the plains of Moab” according to Numbers 33:49, the last of Israel’s resting places on its wilderness wanderings. While we have seen that it is not in general possible to offer straightforward correlations between locations in Numbers and the itinerary in Numbers 33, the incident recounted here is just before the entry to the land, and thus comes last, which in this case is probably germane. The setup of the story is as follows: waiting in the desert, in the plains of Moab across the Jordan, some Israelites follow the path of sex with Moabite women until it leads to involvement in Moabite sacrifice and worship. The result is divine anger against Israel. Depending on how one holds together the chapter that follows, it may be that this anger is to be understood as the plague mentioned in verse 8 below. Some of the details are obscure. The two verbs describing the people’s actions in verse 1 suggest the general sense of defilement (chll) and the sexual content of that defilement (zbh). The Masoretic Text takes vayyāchel as a hiphil of chll, hence “began (to have sexual relations . . .),” while the Septuagint reads its prevocalized form as a niphal of the same verb meaning “to defile oneself,” and hence the NETS translation: “The

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people were profaned by whoring after . . .” The awkward “these” at the beginning of verse 2 marks the feminine plural form of qr’ (to call); hence “they [these women] invited . . .” The reference to “gods” uses the normal grammatical plural ‘elohîm here, though Milgrom translates it as “their god” on the basis that only the deity Baal-­peor is intended, as the next verse shows.17 The notion of “yoking” at the beginning of verse 3 (tsmd l–, to bind or join oneself to) is a term mostly used in the Old Testament in connection with this incident.18 The strength of this “yoking” may indicate something of a covenantal attachment. In any case, it fits with the understanding that this is a sexual involvement.19 25:4–5 At long last Moses reappears in the book (last mentioned at 21:34). Note though that both these verses begin with waw-­consecutives, perhaps suggesting that the narrative is continuous. Each represents a reaction to the story of verses 1–3 by way of direct speech. Rather strikingly, however, the two reactions are not the same. YHWH’s response is to call for the heads (ra’shîm; i.e., chiefs) of the people—or the “ringleaders,” as Milgrom calls them20—to be hung out in the sun, as it were. Their implied deaths will avert YHWH’s anger (with “fierce anger” being an attempt to capture the repeated emphasis on the anger). This again fits with the idea that the anger is the plague, as yet unmentioned. Moses’ response is not the same: it is hardly a relaying of YHWH’s words in the preceding verse. For Moses, all those “yoked” in the manner described in verse 3 (from which he repeats the key verb tsmd) are to be killed by their “judges,” presumably their respective leaders. Although the nature of the divine anger is not yet told in the text, YHWH says that it will stop with the sacrifice of the responsible leaders (the ra’shîm), while Moses thinks that anyone involved is to be put to death, by the relevant leaders (the shophetîm). Before considering which, if either, of these scenarios actually plays out, it is worth asking how significant it is that they are different. The basic understanding of the pentateuchal narratives is that the voice of Moses is the human relaying of the voice of God. We saw this most clearly in Numbers 12, where YHWH’s defense of Moses’ priority as a prophet (12:6)—one through whom YHWH speaks (12:2)—was that with Moses he speaks peh ‘el-­peh, “mouth-­to-­ mouth.” Clearly, much of the story of Exodus and Numbers (and much of the legislation of Leviticus and Deuteronomy) relies upon the logic of

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saying that what YHWH has said to Moses, Moses is faithfully relaying to Israel. If Moses is substituting his own conceptions of truth and justice for those revealed to him mouth-­to-­mouth, then the nature of these texts is altogether a different one. There is little room to develop a theory that as of the turning point of Numbers 20—with Moses’ disqualification from leading the people into the land (20:12)—we have a new kind of relationship in which Moses has ceased to be the reliable mediator of God’s word. The rhetoric of the latter part of the book of Numbers still seems to suppose that the earlier logic of faithful relaying is in place. So it is probably best to read 25:5 as unusual, if not unique. Milgrom posits that the change in the command might be a form of intercession, but then has to add that there is a “quali-­ ta­tive difference between Moses’ attempt at intercession here and his other intercessions. . . . Here Moses attempts to alter God’s decree.”21 So something goes wrong with Moses’ mediation here. Whether this is to be read as indicating that Moses is inherently and/or culpably dissenting from God’s judgment is unclear. One reason why it is hard to draw firm conclusions from this turn of events is that it remains unclear whether Moses’ command is enacted or not. The reading of the passage as turning fundamentally upon Phinehas’s response (to come) and not Moses’, as is clear in Psalm 106:30, might suggest that it is not enacted. But the lack of clarity is because what follows seems almost to interrupt the action. In the terms of source-­critical analysis, which rather startlingly has tended to take no notice of the disjunction just noted between verse 4 and verse 5, the end of verse 5 was held to be the end of the JE (or J) account, and verses 6–18 were taken to be from P.22 Although this division is often noted, either positively by those who affirm it or negatively by those who believe it to be unjustified, it may suffice to note that the decision to read the oddities of the finished text in the light of—or rejecting—the source-­critical hypothesis generates two different kinds of reading, both of which may be of interest for different purposes. 25:6 “Just then” is wehinneh, either indicating a focusing of perspective, if this is a continuous text, or possibly evidence that verse 6 now interrupts the previous account. In either case, what happens is a startling focusing of the trouble brewing thus far in the story, literally bringing

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matters into the heart of the “congregation” (‘ēdāh). An Israelite brings a Midianite woman “into his family”—a stoic attempt by the NRSV to offer an inclusive-­language translation of “to his brothers,” which seems rather misplaced in the atmosphere of this particular verse and this particular narrative. Although English translations read smoothly as “a Midianite woman,” there is in fact an unexpected definite article—the Midianite woman—here. Commentators wonder whether this indicates a generic class, a specific individual,23 and/or indicates that the woman thus defined has been previously introduced in the now-­lost section of the P account that, ex hypothesi, preceded this verse. The view that there is reference here to the notion of “the Midianite” leads some to explore the possibility that this is a narrative engaging with what is effectively a symbol of foreign deity, rather than a particular woman. It may at least be interesting to bear that level of symbolic significance in mind alongside reading the text as simply referring to a woman.24 The alternation between “Moab” and “Midian” that is effected here was characteristic of Numbers 22–24 also (e.g., 22:4, 7). The two do not seem to represent clearly distinguishable groups of people. On the whole this seems unlikely to be evidence of separate strands or sources in the text at this point. Nevertheless, scholars do on occasion argue that this is a major shift in identification, and that the story does not then hang together. Rather oddly, the second half of the chapter is then somehow deemed an unsatisfactory or unjustified resolution of the problematic setup in the first half, whereas of course if what has been discerned is two separate stories melded unhelpfully together, there is probably little reason to expect verses 6–15 to be offering any resolution at all to verses 1–5. Although there is nothing in verse 6 to specify any particular activity that would trouble Israel, perhaps the very appearance of “the Midianite” in the middle of the camp is sufficient sign of the trouble to come. Milgrom rehearses various rabbinic answers to the question of “For what purpose?”—and suggests that they all agree that whatever purpose was in view, it nevertheless was a clear escalation of the sin being described earlier.25 25:7–9 Enter Phinehas, previously mentioned only in the genealogical notice of Exodus 6:25, the gist of which is repeated here: he is

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the son of Eleazar, Aaron’s son and now high priest (as per 20:26). He takes matters—and a spear—into his own hand, and kills the Israelite and the woman once they have entered into a tent. Here the implication that people are dying because of God’s anger (v. 4) is spelled out in verse 8, as the reader learns of a plague that has, clearly, been spreading. However, the act that stops the plague is neither the punishment enjoined by God in verse 4 nor the more wide-­scale retribution envisaged by Moses in verse 5, but instead the startling action of one man, Phinehas, who attacks the man and the woman identified in verse 6. By verse 8, this couple have arrived in “the tent”; thus the text presumably ties this development to the theme of sexual promiscuity noted back in verse 1. As most commentators note, the details of the text rely on a wordplay between “tent” (qubbāh) and “belly” (qēbāh), probably referring to some inner part of the tent (a “bedroom”?) and an inner aspect of the woman (variously understood as down her throat or through her genitals). Fox attempts to catch the wordplay with “into the private chamber . . . in her private-­parts.”26 The rarity of these words (with the root found elsewhere only at Deut. 18:3, “the inner parts”) certainly draws attention to the link here, and may suggest that there is more of symbolism than description at work. Meanwhile, twenty-­four thousand are said to have died by this plague. The “twenty-­four thousand,” as with all large numbers in the book, is a figure that defies readers as to whether to take it in straightforward quantitative terms (i.e., actually indicating twenty-­four thousand people) or symbolically. In this case, Paul’s recounting of the incident in 1 Corinthians 10:8 adds the odd twist that he gives there the figure of twenty-­ three thousand, which once led Calvin to note, rather delightfully, that the figure was somewhere between the two and could be rounded either way, and that with Moses rounding up and Paul rounding down, “there is in reality no difference.”27 More significantly, this dramatic intervention from Phinehas rather forces the question: Given that this is neither YHWH’s nor Moses’ proffered solution in the earlier part of the passage, is it to be understood more as a return to the kind of solution that YHWH envisaged (or a compa­ rable alternative), or is it another apparently independent initiative in the manner of Moses in verse 5? The halting of the plague points toward the

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former. This view is now underlined by a divine intervention resuming the channel of communication from YHWH through Moses, and in no uncertain terms defending Phinehas’s action. 25:10–13 God’s response to Phinehas’s act affirms that it is his act, and not the unimplemented punishments of verses 4–5, that has averted God’s “wrath” (chamāh; anger, rage). The characteristic of the act that is picked out is “zeal” (qin’āh; zeal or jealousy): three times in verse 11 in fact, which reads something like, “in being zealous with my zeal among them, . . . so that in my zeal I did not . . .” It could be interesting to explore the fact that the rare other occurrences of this term in Numbers are negative: in 11:29 with reference to Moses’ rebuke of those worried (“jealous”) about Eldad and Medad prophesying, and in 5:14, 29 with reference to the “jealousy” of the suspicious husband in the case of the sotah. Are zeal and jealousy an unstable two sides of the same coin? Milgrom attempts to bridge the positive and negative connotations of zeal and jealousy by translating “displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion.”28 The consequences rather raise the stakes of the story as a whole. What has to this point been an exercise in Numbers’ familiar routines of trust and suspicion with respect to the Israelites’ sporadic progress toward the promised land suddenly becomes a story with “perpetual” or “everlasting” (‘olām) consequences for priesthood and the occasion of the granting of a personal covenant: “my covenant of peace.” The covenant is personal both to Phinehas and to God, whose “my covenant” seems to underline the divine self-­involvement in the gift. The trigger for these gifts is Phinehas’s zeal (v. 13), either as well as, or shown forth in, his making atonement for the Israelites. The drift of the text’s argument is clear, if open to discussion: Phinehas killed the Midianite (in fact he killed both the Israelite and the Midianite, but it is her body that is described as slain) and thus made atonement for Israel’s sin with the Moabite/Midianite women. The intervention, as it were, of “peace” at this point is striking. The text’s silence over how or why this works creates some interpretive spaces to which we shall return. However, the rhetorical effect of the divine approval of Phinehas’s action is clearly intended to settle the question as to whether this was a disastrous act of vigilante aggression: according to the text it was not.

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25:14–15 The entire tale has unfolded to this point without the information given here: that the couple killed29 by Phinehas were Zimri and Cozbi. Neither is mentioned again in scripture, although Cozbi’s name is repeated in verse 18 in what looks like a saying that may have circulated separately from the story told so far, although clearly deriving from the same or a similar tradition. Perhaps it is appended here for completeness. 25:16–18 The information just given is repeated as part of a divine speech, but then the passage heads off into some unexpected final reflections. In this speech, the “affair” (dābār; thing, matter) of Peor is perceived as the Midianites’ “tricking” Israel, with a repeated use of nēkel (“craftiness, deceit”; occurring as noun and verb). Most commentators appear to have wearied by this point, and make only cursory remarks to the effect that the story is hereby summarized. But in fact these two verses offer a host of nuances and alternative possibilities for construing what has happened. The verses have a somewhat different feel as compared to the rest of the story. The opening “attack” (tsrr) in verse 17 is often rendered (as by the NRSV) as the rather quaint “harass”: “Harass the Midianites and defeat them, for they have harassed you.” This is doubtless an attempt to find a word for tsrr that can be repeated in verse 18 to describe the imposition of the Midianite “affair.” The perspective of verse 18 is that the Midianites are culpable for tricking Israel, although the story told in the chapter simply recounts how Israelite men went off and had their way with Moabite women. It is a striking twist to see this as “trickery” simply because the end result was that they worshiped Baal along with the women involved. The other main switch in this coda is toward an aggressive retaliation of some kind. The obscure “their sister” in verse 18 may suggest that with Cozbi’s death, her kinswomen, and more widely her whole people, might take up arms on account of Phinehas’s aggression.30 Is this why the passage moves toward attack? The resultant attack is deferred by several chapters: one finds it eventually in 31:1–12, where all the Midianite men are killed, and then in the deeply disturbing sequel, where Moses becomes angry that the women were allowed to live (31:15), since they were the cause of the problem at Peor (31:16). In fact, it probably makes more sense to see these final two verses in chapter 25 as part of the narrative of chapter 31. Here Milgrom makes

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a valiant effort to suggest that the half-­verse at 25:19 (“And it was after the plague . . .” = 26:1 in English versions) was to lead into the account of chapter 31, but that it thereby raised the question of where a standing army could be found, and thus diverted the narrative to the second census in the book, now found in chapter 26.31 The problem with such a view, of course, is that chapters 27–30 bear little relevance to any aspect of the military account hereby interrupted. By this stage in the book of Numbers the sense that there is a clear, discernible purpose to the canonical juxtapositions of material is, as we have seen, a difficult argument to maintain.32 R E C E I V I N G T H E T E X T: VO I C E S R A I S E D I N D E F E N S E A N D I N D I S S E N T

We turn now to two differing lines of reception of the text in modern critical commentary: those who seek to defend the text by upholding its values, suitably construed and transposed to the present day, and those who dissent from the text by way of moral or ethical critique of its values and perspectives. In principle, somewhere between these two kinds of evaluative approach, one might anticipate that there lies a third option, whereby critical commentary is constrained to the discussion of what the text means or meant, as an exercise in elucidation rather than evaluation. In fact, as we shall see, Numbers 25 ends up provoking almost all its readers one way or the other. Perhaps it is true in general terms that critical commentary can be slow to evaluate ethical or ideological matters, but this does not seem to be the case all that much with Numbers 25. An unexpected exception is the generally excellent theological reading of the book by Dennis Olson in his commentary. Olson’s focus is so much on the role of chapter 25 in the overall structure of the book (marking the final disintegration of the “old” generation prior to the census of chapter 26 as a new start) that he makes no comment at all on the moral/ethical aspects of the text for today’s readers.33 But in general, evaluation is not in short supply. Ideally, one would wish to explore this area in dialogue with a wide range of voices across the history of interpretation, perhaps to triangulate one’s reading of the text via a third horizon of the text’s reception in

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conspicuously different times and contexts other than our own. When one does this, an interesting point emerges. I illustrate by way of Robert Hayward’s elegant review of ancient Jewish options about an intriguing feature of this passage: the suggestion that Phinehas was, in some sense, the Elijah who was to come.34 Hayward traces this rabbinic tradition to a probable origin in the wake of John Hyrcanus. It is a tradition that circulated in Hasmonean circles and is first given voice in the Palestinian Targums, most often in Pseudo-­Jonathan. Hayward concludes with an intriguing suggestion that in Pseudo-­Jonathan’s identification of Phinehas as the one who would be the messenger of the covenant at the end of the dispersion, we see the kind of logic in play that leads Matthew to argue that John the Baptist was Elijah (cf. Matt. 3:2 with Matt. 11:7–15; 17:12).35 One striking aspect of such readings for us, however, is how much the kinds of questions that occupy the rabbis are removed from the preoccupation with violence as a problem that dominates discussion of this text today.36 There may be food for thought in recognizing that readers without strong interests in the priesthood or the nature of messianic expectation may well simply pass over such questions, and default to talking about their own concerns, drawn from their own contexts rather than those of the text or its interpretive traditions. Nevertheless, we must press on to the question of violence as it arises in dialogue with our text. Readings in Dissent from Numbers 25: The Legitimation of Violence

Texts like Numbers 25 are at the forefront of current concerns about the role of scripture in supporting or justifying violence. One might even venture the suggestion that it is only because a text like this is rather poorly known, even among communities of faith, that it does not provoke greater consternation.37 Nevertheless, the passage is of course well known to professional Old Testament scholars, and it is in this capacity that it became something of a parade example for John Collins’s analysis of the Bible’s support of violence.38 Collins’s remarks are brief but may be held to be representative of a key contemporary analysis of both this text and others like it. Collins’s main argument is that the Bible is on occasion guilty of legitimating violence, which he defines in terms of “the most obvious,

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even crude, forms of violence—the killing of others without benefit of judicial procedure” (4). His first test case is the well-­known problem of herem (4–10), leading to the relatively familiar observation that the exodus is good news for Israelites, but not so for Canaanites.39 His second area of inquiry is in the ideological function of stories, allowing that the conquest narratives, for instance, are not records of what happened, and assuredly date from long after the time when the Canaanites existed as a people who could be opposed. But, says Collins, this does not alleviate the problem, since we still have examples of these stories being appealed to for the legitimation of violence. Here he moves to 1 Maccabees 1:26, which tells the story of the Maccabean uprising against the notorious Antiochus Epiphanes. While allowing that much of this uprising could be construed as self-­ defense under horrendous persecution, Collins observes that this is not the dimension of the act singled out in 1 Maccabees: “Mattathias, we are told, ‘burned with zeal for the law, just as Phinehas did against Zimri the son of Salu’ (1  Macc 1:26)” (12).40 Collins notes two key parallels: like Phinehas, Mattathias first kills a compatriot, and then he participates in the violent attacks on those perceived as “enemies” (Midianites and Gentiles, respectively). “A primary purpose of violence in the biblical texts is to enforce conformity within the people of Israel,” says Collins (12). In the conclusion to the piece, entitled “Violence and Hermeneutics,” he rejects what he notes is a traditional Christian approach to the problem, that of allegorizing, since “it is hardly viable in the modern world” (19), and affirms instead that one must take on board the whole diversity of the biblical witness, good and bad. The strength of this approach, he suggests, is that it presents an “unvarnished” portrait of human thinking, appropriate to this side of the eschaton. One implication is that when scripture falls short of the “worthy” standard of the God of the philosophers (20), it needs to be rejected as offensive. In passing, Collins makes the interesting comment that the Bible does not “claim that the stories it tells are para­ digms for human action in all times and places” (20), to which we shall return. His own conclusion is perhaps unambitious with regard to how biblical scholars should respond to all this: the problem is that the Bible has been taken to confer a degree of certitude which bypasses the need for human deliberation, but “perhaps the most constructive thing a biblical

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critic can do toward lessening the contribution of the Bible to violence in the world, is to show that that certitude is an illusion” (21). It is of course true that Collins is not seeking primarily to offer commentary on Numbers 25, but rather is using it to point to the kinds of problems that can arise when readers acquiesce uncritically to the presenting perspectives of the text. There is probably then a debate to be had as to whether a focus on violence lends itself to the most productive readings of Numbers 25, but even if one were to be entirely successful in offering an alternative account of the subject and purpose of the chapter, it would not really meet the objections that Collins raises. One might end up saying that while various kinds of illumination are available to readers of Numbers 25, the text must nevertheless be adjudged morally culpable on the matter of violence. Collins’s choice of the verb “legitimate” in his title is, I think, a precise 41 one. At stake is not the largely unprovable or unfalsifiable claim that Numbers 25 provokes readers to violence. It seems prima facie unlikely that readers avowing a love for God and a passion for God’s cause, but unwilling to consider that such love or passion should eventuate in the killing of those who think differently, will read Numbers 25 and as a result decide to take up arms against a sea of troubles. What seems far more plausible is that readers already predisposed to think that violence might be a way of furthering God’s cause will find legitimation for their beliefs in this text. Collins gives several examples of just such legitimating use of scripture down through the ages (13–18), though none in fact draw upon this passage. Even so, sad to report, there is apparently a white supremacist group afoot that engages in violent acts in the name of God and that has precisely taken Numbers 25 as justification: the so-­called Phinehas Priesthood, named somewhat indirectly after just this passage.42 In one sense, the Bible might be held culpable for such a group simply because such a group exists. On the other hand, the fact that most readers of Numbers would find this an extreme and implausible construal of the significance of the text is not irrelevant, and clearly, furthermore, one would be hard pressed to find any detail in the text that supports white supremacy. Let us then grant Collins’s point that a real issue of violence is raised by this text, even while this does not lead most of its readers to violent

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acts. Violence may not be the only offense found in Numbers 25, but it is probably a part of most readings that are troubled by this text. One might consider arguing that an analysis such as Collins offers does little more than report that a twenty-­first-­century interpreter finds their own moral system simply incompatible with that witnessed to by the ancient text. As Walter Houston has pointed out, this is a fairly unsatisfactory way of proceeding with matters of serious ethical import: “We cannot simply take our ideas for granted as the yardstick of the Bible’s. . . . It leads to a simple condemnation of the stance of the text from a stance entirely foreign to it, rather than a productive dialogue.”43 Certainly, Collins’s reading is rather brief, and one could suggest a range of nuances that might make a difference. But Collins is not simply registering his own disapproval. One of the key yardsticks in question (if not the key one) is presented by Collins as an intriguing mixture of his own view of what one should expect of the “God of the philosophers” in the abstract and what he regards as the insights of scripture itself when at its best (19–20). That the perceived problems with reading Numbers 25 can sustain more than this one brief treatment is interestingly attested by the papers arising from the SBL’s texts@contexts project, which deliberately foregrounds questions of the reader’s identity and (sociocultural) location. In the resultant 2013 volume on Leviticus and Numbers, no fewer than four of its thirteen essays were concerned with Numbers 25.44 Thus one is invited to lament its violent overtones in conjunction with subsequent colonial violence in the history of Australia (Anthony Rees) or look for hopes of “A queer womanist midrashic reading of Numbers 25:1–18” (Wil Gafney) in a way that more or less contents itself with taking the offense of the text as a spur to meaningful reflection, but does not offer much hope of resolving the issues. The passage is also treated in terms of the feminization and sexualization of the “other” (in this case island women in the South Seas) and rejected through an indictment of YHWH (by Nāsili Vaka’uta, who closes, indeed, by citing Collins). We shall consider a fourth paper below. These kinds of reading foreground questions of specific cultural context, but in so doing they bring to the surface what is latent in any reading: that the interpretive framing and questions are always from a specific vantage point or perspective. Such a framing characterization of

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contemporary critical inquiry is not always apparent in the vast project of critical engagement with this text, partly—of course—because one of the defining features of modern critical inquiry is its tendency to think of itself as neutral with respect to matters of religious or faith perspective. What we have seen thus far, though, is examples of moves beyond such dispassionate analysis, toward (hermeneutical) engagement. There are corresponding moves among many of those for whom the problematic dimensions of the text do not in the end close down the hermeneutical options. Readings in Defense of Numbers 25: The Recovery of Significance

Commentators on Numbers 25 typically make a range of moves in response to the text. It is clear that its positioning immediately after the Balaam cycle offers a further instance of the familiar pattern in the Torah whereby a high point in the story is promptly followed by a low point. Gary Anderson has shown how this pattern permeates several different levels both of P and of the finished Torah: setting humankind in Eden is followed by the expulsion from the garden; the giving of the law by the apostasy with the golden calf; the completion of the sacrificial system by the offering of “strange fire” that occasions trouble in Leviticus 10.45 Many then effectively observe that chapter 25 is Numbers’ own version of a fall from grace, the “grace” in question being the high point of Balaam’s blessings in chapters 22–24 (and esp. 24:15–19). Levine, for example, also makes this observation, even while problematically needing to add the view that the Book of Balaam has been interposed before the JE account of 25:1–5, so that it is not in fact apparent in what sense he would see this text as “responding” to a preceding high point.46 Levine offers something of a test case of the concerns that can occupy a commentary of this chapter, and represents perhaps a reading that is caught midway between looking at the problems and seeking a way of making sense of them. While not itself a reading “in defense” of the text, it frames ways of looking at Numbers 25 that will lead us on to consider readings that do lean that way. Four appended notes to his verse-­by-­verse commentary take up, in turn, the message of the text ( JE’s agenda that “living in Transjordan

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leads to idolatry”),47 the real sin of Baal Peor (where Levine attempts to pull back from the standard sexualized interpretations of the passage and settles instead for the view focused on cultic involvement), a note on Aaronide priesthood in later debates, and a comment on “retribution and expiation through the death of the offenders.” This last is a thoughtful attempt to deal with the central problem as Levine sees it: that priestly expiation is attained through the killing of the prime offenders. The goal of the reading is therefore, in a sense, positive, even if the articulation of it dwells on the negative: “Without being too literal about this report, its impact is horrendous in the light of the etiological function it has in the ongoing narrative.”48 Likewise, when Levine notes the oddity that the resulting covenant from Phinehas’s violent act is one of shalom, he adds, with regard to the averting of wrath through killing: “One wonders what historical reality generated such an evaluation.”49 This note of quizzical struggle to make sense of the text permeates those commentaries that attempt any such theologically reflective maneuver. Stubbs’s generally probing theological account of the book notes that “there is something disturbing about holding up this act of violence as exemplary,”50 and “there is something a bit jarring . . . that peace is highlighted as a result of such a jarring act.”51 He is not alone in referring the reader to Milgrom’s coverage of the details, with its strong note that Jewish tradition was also troubled by Phinehas’s potential to serve as a model of zeal in his killing. Milgrom thus notes that the text’s affirmation of Phinehas is what permits the passage to work: Israel on her own would have condemned such an act, so it needed a counterintuitive word of divine affirmation to let the story make sense.52 Stubbs meanwhile goes on to consider the early church’s desire to see “Jesus Christ as the true Phineas,” through the lens of atonement.53 Perhaps most assertive in the theological stakes is Gordon Wenham, who writes that Phinehas’s execution of “the sinner” properly expressed the appropriate priestly need to represent God’s anger against the sin, and only thus could atonement be made.54 In this he goes a little further than even Calvin, who does say, “No wonder, therefore, that God should have exercised such severity, when things had come to this extremity,” but the burden of whose account is actually focused on trying to ensure precisely that no one takes it as a paradigm for emulation: “Now, if any private person should in his

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preposterous zeal take upon himself to punish a similar crime, in vain will he boast that he is an imitator of Phinehas. . . . Zeal . . . must be tempered by spiritual prudence.”55 Several of these approaches are circling around a discussion of the possible links between Phinehas and his violent act on the one hand and Christ and his violent death on the other.56 The piercing with the spear— which is common to both—is noted by several. Dozeman addresses the core theological judgment here by affirming that there is “an irresolvable tension” at the heart of the Christian life: between radical inclusivity and radical exclusivity. Thus the (canonical) juxtaposition of Numbers 24 and 25.57 This brings us to perhaps the most striking attempt to offer a Christian theological reading of this text, and the only one to which Collins refers in his JBL article, the attempt of Waldemar Janzen to see this text not just as informative of, but as a particular priestly paradigm for, Christian ethics.58 Janzen’s book attempts to read various Old Testament stories as a series of paradigms for Christian ethics, not in the sense of there being multiple competing paradigms, but in fact as showing that several different paradigms (priestly, royal, prophetic . . .) all cohere within and support one overarching paradigm, the “familial” (3, 20). He seeks to avoid portraying Old Testament characters as either “saints” or “sinners,” but represents them, rather, as exemplary in certain dimensions in a way that offers a model character portrait. The combined portrait created by the canonical presentation of various paradigms ends up being related by Janzen to the New Testament’s picture of Jesus as bringer of the kingdom of God (a kind of canonically resonant “familial paradigm” in Janzen’s terms) (187–216). In this context, the “priestly paradigm” of Old Testament ethics is exemplified by Numbers 25. This is certainly a bold choice for a Mennonite commentator: in response to verses 12–13 Janzen writes, “The modeling aspect is clear. Phinehas has acted as an exemplary priest” (13). In his longer, though still brief, discussion of this text, now imbued with rather a striking significance in his overall scheme, Janzen suggests, “The exemplary dimension of his act was not its violence, however, but Phinehas’s zeal for the Lord and his atoning for the people” (108).59 The point—for Janzen—is that Phinehas’s priestly action stops the violation

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of the sanctuary and preserves Israel’s holiness (108). That he sees this as subservient to a broader paradigm of preserving family life is probably a result entirely determined by the structure of his book’s argument about paradigms, and need not concern us here. Much is commendable about Janzen’s account overall. It is an interesting and suggestive canonical reading of certain Old Testament stories with an eye on the question of how they may illuminate Christian thinking. One need not agree with his argument about interlocking or subservient paradigms to see that this is indeed one way of handling certain aspects of the Old Testament’s witness. Nevertheless, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the governing approach to Numbers 25 is determined by Mennonite convictions, whereby the exemplary dimension of the act simply could not be read as anything close to a positive evaluation of violence in any way. It is now time to assess the hermeneutical commitments we have been surveying through this discussion and to consider what sort of prospects there might be for theological interpretation of Numbers 25 today. PA S S I O N AT E D I S AG R E E M E N T: THE POLITICS OF HERMENEUTICS

Interpreters do not agree. On some accounts, this is an interim state of affairs to be overcome by the offering of a reading that trumps all others, as the correct interpretive option. The evidence of biblical studies as a discipline suggests, to put it no more strongly than that, that most interpretive disputes are not resolvable in such final terms.60 But the stakes are high, with regard to matters such as the legitimation of violence. Part of the evidence for that is that few interpreters, as we have seen, are able to restrain themselves from evaluative comment. For a text about the “passion” of Phinehas mirroring the passion of God, it is perhaps appropriate that the result should be a passionate hermeneutical engagement from one side or the other. Is there, nevertheless, a way beyond a simple standoff between those who defend and those who dissent from the text? The views we have been considering operate under one of the following hermeneutical models:

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(1) Numbers 25 is about actual violence and commends such zealous violence when it is in support of God, and this is a theology (or ideology) to be resisted—as per Collins. (2) Numbers 25 is about actual violence, and can be appropriated in nonviolent ways by faithful readers today who recognize that violence is a problem—as per Janzen and others.

A third approach might argue: (3) Numbers 25 tells a story of actual violence, but from within a framework that indicates that actual violence is already understood to be a problem, and thus the “literal” sense of the text already points to readings that seek nonviolence as ways of taking the text seriously.

Such an approach is “literal” in the traditional sense of that word that we have discussed on various occasions throughout this book: according to the letter. There is some evidence that the text may be operating in these terms. For a way in to such an understanding, consider the question of the odd construction of Midianite identity, both in this passage and also more widely in the Pentateuch. Here we return to the fourth paper in the texts@contexts project, where Yonina Dor offers a lengthy analysis of this oddity.61 In Exodus 2:15–22 Moses marries Zipporah, a daughter of the priest of Midian.62 How does one explain the development from that point through to Numbers 25, with its desire to wipe out the Midianites, along with its troubling coda in Numbers 31? Dor concludes that the Bible (in fact the Torah itself ) is unsettled on this issue, perhaps due to variant sources and traditions, but more plausibly because the view of intermarriage is itself contested within Israel. In short, Numbers 25 represents one end of a spectrum of views, concerning which only a patient working with the full canonical range of options can offer a perspective. This chimes with John Goldingay’s discussion of this issue too: “It is impossible to produce a coherent picture of the First Testament’s stance in relation to Midian, and that is part of its significance.”63 Goldingay goes on to say that Midian is no longer a real people by the time of the Old Testament’s first readers, and thus “its function is to illustrate the inherent

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ambiguity that may attach to a people, especially a marginal one.”64 Elsewhere Thomas Dozeman correctly notes that juxtaposition without harmonization is a key insight of the canonical approach of Brevard Childs, and then suggests that the Midianites, in the different perspectives from which they are viewed in Numbers, reflect these tensions in particularly acute form.65 The point is that the text(s) of Numbers, and in turn the wider Torah and larger canonical collections, are apparently already working with a category such as “the Midianites” as bearing symbolic significance. The first readers of Numbers 25—to adapt Goldingay’s point—already realize that this is not a text inciting them to behave one way or another in interaction with Midianites, because the Midianites are no more. Thus the text is portraying a symbolic map of interpretive possibilities: be led astray and suffer the consequences (for which sexual liaison with Midianite women is the textual cipher), or take a stand for YHWH. Arguably Numbers 25 goes further: where even Moses seems to attempt to regulate and modify the requirements of God, Phinehas succeeds in the definite and dramatic act of obedience to the requirements of living for YHWH in the midst of competing passions. Other pointers to the symbolic level being the “literal sense” may include the wordplay of “tent” (qubbāh) and “belly” (qēbāh) in verse 8, the deliberate reciprocity of “zeal” or passion (qin’āh) in verse 11, and perhaps most probingly of all, the core dynamic of YHWH’s dealings in defense of Phinehas whereby his act produces the personal gift of God’s “covenant of peace.” All of these features, observed in the careful “literal” reading of the passage, operate on the plane of the literal sense as the literary, realistic portrayal of the text. As we have seen before, one need not judge the factual referents in history one way or another to make this (ascriptive) point: indeed, one wise course of action is for the interpreter to avoid getting caught up in that question. The argument here is not that option (3) trumps the first two, although it is probably a considerable advance in terms of a fruitful hermeneutical framework. But the reason why this is not the inexorable march toward the right answer, in the fashion sometimes so beloved of academic biblical studies, is that of course option (3) breaks further into (at least) two ways of evaluating the possibilities it brokers for the text’s readers. Briefly:

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(3A) The text’s use of a violent story is at best an irresponsible way to promote either obedience or peace; or perhaps the text’s perspectives on violence as a means to such an end are to be resisted. (3B) The approach outlined above demonstrates the enduring positive value of the text for nonviolent purposes.

More simply, one can offer the account sketched here as option (3), and still divide over its merits, or the merits of the text seen this way. This is because we do not live in a world where there is only one plausible way to think about violence, any more than we live in a world where significant texts admit of only one reading. The entirely proper passion with which readers comment on Numbers 25—proper not least in the sense that this text carries the freight of scriptural significance for many different communities—needs to be complemented by a rich understanding of what we might call “the politics of hermeneutics.” Here interpreters must necessarily step outside of the practices of exegesis, without thereby losing sight of all that exegesis indicates of the text. This discussion cannot, of course, resolve the questions of what counts as an appropriate view of violence—whether the view in question be Christian, Jewish, nontheological, or whatever. That there could be one uniquely compelling view over and above any specific tradition seems unlikely—most traditions themselves include multiple perspectives. Some Christians are pacifists, others will fight. The history of the church includes examples of the latter approach that seem inadmissible to Christians today, although perhaps largely to Christians living in liberal democracies. And inhabitants of (let alone proponents of ) liberal democracy can also be averse to any practice or legitimation of violence, at the same time as the modern world has seen such democracies sponsor greater carnage in military conflict than has ever been seen before. That there could be some self-­evident position on violence and today’s world therefore seems startlingly naive. Those of us who think and interpret in the heart of some peaceful polis probably need to hear over and again the challenge of a theologian such as Miroslav Volf, himself scarred by the warfare in his native Balkans, who reflects on how the bloody and violent imagery of the book of Revelation seeks to bring life to those without

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hope, and how, fundamentally, “the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance.” Volf argues that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind.66

The book to which this is a concluding statement works at length with an analysis of justice indebted to Alasdair MacIntyre, but alert in particular to the ways that one can never be neutral, or aspire to a comprehensive single narrative that makes sense of justice, even while one must seek justice in individual cases all the time.67 In a more recent work that also probes these issues with theological sophistication, in dialogue with studies of Jacob and Job among other biblical texts, Lytta Bassett writes, “We must be attentive to the true anger that lies hidden beneath false words of a feigned peace. Underlying the outburst of anger, we will discern the desperate quest for justice.”68 Compared to these more conceptually orientated theologians, biblical studies seems to have some way to go in terms of probing the hermeneutical self-­reflexivity that such engagement with issues and texts of violence provokes. There are, for example, many perceptive exegetical studies in a recent volume entitled Encountering Violence in the Bible, and the desidera­ tum of such reflections at the present, violent time is noted by the editors, but the level of hermeneutical engagement, let alone the wrestling with political framing such as one finds in Volf ’s discussions of Richard Rorty, Jeffrey Stout, and others, is somewhat muted.69 As biblical scholars we often appear to be unnervingly more like the overly sanguine prophets of Jerusalem confronted by Jeremiah, treating the burdens and wounds of a complex world a little carelessly at least in our written expressions of scholarship, and “saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” ( Jer. 6:14; 8:11). There is certainly very little interpretive peace. Perhaps we do well to ponder that Paul Ricoeur’s troubled times as prisoner of war, and in due course finding himself at the center of student violence in Paris in 1968, resulted in work that focused unerringly on the conflict of interpretations

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and the means necessary to mount genuine dialogue between entrenched, passionate viewpoints.70 If there is a world in which God’s peace is brought about through peaceful means only, then we do not live in it. In which case, the symbolic patterning of Numbers 25, which finds peace emerging out of competing passions in ways that seem beset by compromise, may be just the kind of text that can speak realistically and challengingly to a world where the majority of (if not all) Bible readers are deeply implicated in lives, life-­styles, and cultural patterns that cannot be characterized straightforwardly as nonviolent. Volf again: “Religions advocate nonviolence in general, while at the same time finding ways to legitimate violence in specific situations.”71 In a striking reflection on how we hear the biblical testimony about violence today, Anathea Portier-­Young suggests that the way ahead lies in taking scripture’s violent passages and imagery more seriously rather than less seriously, as texts to be worked with and through rather than avoided or skirted.72 In other words: the task is not to attain to a disembodied position from which one passes judgment on the violent posturing of biblical texts, but rather to accept that the violent world these texts portray is indeed the real world in which we live. “In these Scriptures God’s Spirit has chosen not to hide the worst of our humanity from us—even those horrors of killing, wounding, and shaming in God’s own name—and instead brings us to these texts to wrestle and struggle with our sinfulness and limitations.”73 There are in turn limitations with that point—wrestling and struggling are admirable hermeneutical processes, but they are not ends in themselves; and Portier-­Young is to some extent willing to take these “texts of terror” in historically referential terms in ways I have avoided above—but she tells some striking stories that underline the key point. She writes of US soldiers returning from combat convinced that their deeds have put them beyond redemption. However, their subsequent discovery of scriptural texts that relate comparable acts of outrage and horror offers them a word of life. Such texts suggest to them that their deeds too can be brought within a greater narrative, one that grows to a telos different from unredeemable violence.74 Perhaps in hermeneutics as in certain other well-­known theological debates, what is unassumed cannot be redeemed . . . ?

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Many readings of the zeal of Phinehas are possible. Does Numbers 25 as a scriptural text offer legitimation for violence? Some will say yes and act violently. Some will say yes and resist both the violence and also the appeal of the text. Yet others will say no, and may point to the vast number of readers down through the ages who have not thought to turn to violence upon reading of Phinehas and his zeal. One cannot prove that only one of those options is right. Instead, readers are forced to engage with the politics of hermeneutics. The prospects of large-­scale agreement on such political and hermeneutical matters seem remote. But it is a little disheartening that the kinds of disagreement that divide zealous readers of the text are often so poorly conceptualized in terms of what texts do or do not promote, and how they are or must be read, with little recognition of the specific contexts and commitments from within which they are being read. Any move toward thick description of our disagreements will be a positive step, and likely in turn to lead to a deepening understanding of the various grammars of theological and hermeneutical understanding at work. On one level, to be fair, none other than John Collins makes a simi­ lar kind of appeal at the conclusion of his account in Bible after Babel.75 Unfortunately, the form his argument takes seems to imagine that politically self-­reflexive interpretation, such as occupies his discussion of postmodernism and ethics, will be an alternative to theological argument, rather than in dialogue with it. It is rather unclear quite how that contributes to the critical analysis of actual embodied commitments that people (particularly readers of religious texts) have in our world. Rather more engaged with what needs not to be ruled out is this comment from Jon Levenson: To the extent that Jews and Christians bracket their religious commitments in the pursuit of biblical studies, they meet not as Jews and Christians, but as something else. . . . A method that studiously pursues neutrality [should not] be mistaken for the key to a genuine and profound dialogue between these two great religious communities.76

Or, indeed, any other interpretive communities that wish to enter into discussion and can demonstrate patient attention to the text.

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In short, given the contested and complex politics within which all our interpretations are embedded, any corresponding hermeneutical subtlety will be all to the good. I zealously commend the pursuit of better-­quality hermeneutical disagreements, in the hope—perhaps eschatological—that a covenant of interpretive peace might yet flourish.

EIGHT

Blessing for an Unfinished Journey On Reading Numbers as Christian Scripture (Numbers 6; 22–24; 33)

“After the plague, YHWH said to Moses and to Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, ‘Take a census of the whole congregation of the Israelites’ ” (Num. 26:1). Turning the page to Numbers 26, we arrive at the second of the book’s two censuses. In Dennis Olson’s terms, the significance is that this is a counting of the new generation that will finally enter the land, with the trials and manifold defeats of the old generation, counted all the way back in chapter 1, now to be placed behind us.1 For reasons rehearsed at length in various places already, I find this an illuminating comment on the progress forward of the book without thinking that it offers us the key to its structure or purpose. It does however, more mundanely, draw us toward a conclusion of our present study. The interpretive trials of Numbers 27–36, framed (though how significantly?) by two stories about the daughters of Zelophehad and their inheritance (chapters 27, 36), are many and varied, relating to matters of sacrificial calendar (chapters 28–29), the making of vows and oaths (chapter 30), vengeance on the Midianites in the troubling sequel to

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chapter 25 (chapter 31), the distribution of land to the tribes who choose to remain on the east of the Jordan after all (chapter 32), the description of the stages of Israel’s journey (chapter 33), and matters pertaining to the organization of life in the land (chapters 34–35). With all the positive will in the world this does not add up to a deeply satisfying conclusion to the book, and most attempts to explain why it is all still important and richly appropriate end up betraying the very fact that provokes such attempts: that all this does not appear to be more than a collection of miscellaneous texts. Important, yes, and significant in their own ways—this need not be denied—but the narrative development of the book is by now submerged completely. So it is time to take our leave of our own journey through the book of Numbers. But at the same time, this was a journey through theological and hermeneutical engagement with (Christian) scripture, so it is also time to take our leave of that project, by way of some concluding reflections. Of all the texts in Numbers that we have not studied, three stand out as significant in their own various ways, not least for the striking interpretive trajectories they have launched down through the centuries. Rather, therefore, than strike out into a theoretical or abstract summing-­up of the manner and mode of theological interpretation as we have attempted to practice it in this book, I choose to develop three closing thoughts in dialogue with three final passages from Numbers: the Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6; the Balaam and Balak narratives of Numbers 22–24, which we briefly looked at in the previous chapter; and the strange case of the itinerary of the wilderness in chapter 33, which we have had cause to refer to from the vantage point of some of its intervening way stations. In their various ways, and from their various locations in the book, these passages invite us to reflect on themes of blessing, of journey, and of the fundamentally unfinished and unfinishable project of living with scripture. The recurrent earlier themes of trust and suspicion, and of what may or may not be seen through the eyes of faith, are integrally woven into all these concerns. The discussions that result in this final chapter turn out to be quite strikingly wide-­ranging, but this seems appropriate to a scriptural book of such generous and, in some ways, undisciplined scope.

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N U M B E R S 6 : 2 2 –27: T H E P R E S E N T R E A L I T Y O F B L E S S I N G

Perhaps the most famous text in the whole book is this brief addendum to chapter 6: 22

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 23 Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the Israelites: You shall say to them, 24 The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. 27 So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them. (NRSV)

The passage follows twenty-­one verses that address the subject of Nazirites: their vows and commitments with regard to being “separate” to YHWH (6:2). Given that there are very few Nazirites in the Old Testament (Samson is the main exception, with brief mentions occurring also in 1 Sam. 1 and Amos 2), and given the relatively low profile of Nazirite tradition in general, it is quite striking to find this lengthy text here about their vows.2 The passage includes the well-­known point about not cutting their hair, which is of course pertinent to the Samson story. Perhaps there is loose thematic cohesion between the generally priestly concerns of chapter 5 and this passage, as well as the blessing we are about to consider, but it is doubtful whether this is really all that illuminating with regard to the blessing itself. Verse 23’s “you shall bless” is tebārakku, thus a plural imperfect and/or jussive (likewise, correspondingly, “I will bless” in v. 27): the text is open to being construed as a command, or perhaps better a commission, or as a description of future priestly activity. Moses is to address this word to Aaron and his sons, or, in other words, the Aaronic priesthood. The priests will bless the Israelites with the threefold calling upon YHWH to act. The “you” of these three verses is singular: the blessing is to be offered upon each individual Israelite; or is it that all Israel is addressed as one here?

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The elegant structure of the ensuing three lines in Hebrew is difficult to capture in English translation: each line follows the same simple pattern but gradually unfolds more elements of it, perhaps underlining a sense of blessing working its way out in ever-­widening ways. This is roughly how the three-­word, five-­word, and seven-­word lines ramify, with the subject (YHWH in each case) following the opening verb, in accord with normal Hebrew grammar, and the “you” therefore referring to the object of YHWH’s actions in every line: Bless-­you YHWH Enlighten YHWH Lift YHWH

and-­keep-­you his-­face to-­you his-­face to-­you

and-­be-­gracious-­to-­you and-­place to-­you peace

The second and third lines (vv. 25–26) are indeed identical in several words in Hebrew, a point rather obscured in traditional English translations that choose to vary between “face” and “countenance” in the way done by the KJV (as followed by the NRSV, for example). The NIV and many others translate both as “face”: it is all a question of whether one values stylistic variation or clarity about repetitive detail. The widespread use of this prayer in both Jewish and (at least since Luther) Christian tradition testifies to its much-­loved power and simplicity, although in fact the manner in which the prayer is adopted and adapted by Luther raises some interesting theological questions, to which we shall refer below.3 Rather less widespread, I suggest, is real theological wrestling with what it means to bless.4 To bless is to convey some kind of benefit, but the focus is less on the benefit and more on the life or relationship thus benefited. Indeed, blessing can sometimes be the enriching of a life by the very act of stating or emphasizing a relationship. Thus in their dynamic celebration of “theology as praise,” Hardy and Ford write movingly of the closely related activity of humans blessing God: Blessing is the comprehensive praise and thanks that returns all reality to God, and so lets all be taken up into the spiral of mutual appreciation and delight which is the fulfillment of creation. For the rabbis of Jesus’ time, to use anything of creation without blessing God was to rob God. Only the person receiving with thanks really received from God.5

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Several aspects of blessing are in the foreground here, mutuality and receptivity among them. To receive a blessing may involve material things or offspring, but even these would only be a blessing if accompanied with the transformation of spirit and attitude that allows them to be received with thanks. In a later work, David Ford works up a kind of poetic coda to this thought: “God blesses and is blessed, we bless and are blessed, creation blesses and is blessed, and a glorious ecology of blessing is the climactic vision of the Kingdom of God.”6 If this is right, then rather a lot hangs on one’s ability to construe circumstances and situations as divine blessing. In general, whether something or some event is a blessing depends significantly (though not exclusively) on how it is perceived, and this is even true of those archetypal elements of Old Testament blessing: land and offspring. In this sense, the logic of blessing is not dissimilar to the much-­discussed logic of gift, and the complexities of how one may be freely blessed and/or indebted by the receipt of the good wishes or good gifts that “bless” is worth probing. In Old Testament terms, we can at least note that “blessing” serves as an overarching perspective within which the pursuit of a life oriented toward God can be considered.7 Thus if one prays the words of Numbers 6:26 over someone, this is in part the expression of a desire that the person prayed for will receive peace (shalom) as they go through the day. Obviously this is not an automatic guarantee of peace, but in the very invoking of it upon someone it does contribute to the possibility of their experiencing peace as they go on their way, and of recognizing their experience of peace as peace. The Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6:24–26 locates the prerogative to perform such blessing with the priesthood, and this dynamic is retained in those church traditions today where only the (ordained) priest may pronounce a blessing in the context of a church service. In this text, YHWH ties his own blessing to the words of the priests, and thus the logic is that only those with the publically acknowledged role of representing YHWH can enact his blessing. Conversely, this paradigmatic version of the human act of blessing draws all Israel back to its dependence on God. This divine-­human balance in blessing is the source of much reflection in the theological (and especially liturgical) tradition. Arguably, Numbers 6 inaugurates, or at least exemplifies, a period of “Old Testament time” in

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which the divine word is mediated through priestly blessing.8 Some might suggest that this can be contrasted, first, with the more family-­oriented setting of blessings from father to son in Genesis, and then second, with the new situation that arises in Christ in the New Testament. But the converse point, that all blessing draws one back to dependence on God, is constant throughout. The argument that the blessing found in Numbers 6 is no longer the Christian option is made by (among others) Karl Barth, whose engagement with the book of Numbers in the Church Dogmatics is largely restricted to this passage and the narrative of chapters 13–14, which we explored earlier. Here, in the midst of his discussion of humanity’s “allotted time” under the rubric of “the doctrine of creation,” Barth diverts to a consideration of blessing as he reflects on how Israel situated itself with respect to its own traditions being handed down, in terms of “from whence” Israel came.9 “A blessing is the word which has divine power to pass on good things. It is thus clear that originally and properly the Word of God alone can be a blessing.”10 He then cites Numbers 6:24 as emphasizing this dependence upon God. But Barth is insistent that the practice of passing on blessing one to another is fundamentally altered in the New Testament. After considering a range of verses that do reflect practices of blessing there, he adds, “We look in vain in the New Testament for a parallel to the Aaronic blessing of Num 6:22ff, or for the adoption of this blessing, or for any blessing of one Christian by another.” And the reason, he avers, is (“probably”) that “the divine word of blessing, as the New Testament sees it, has been uttered once and for all in the incarnation of the Word of God . . . and cannot therefore be repeated (as in Israel).”11 This argument seems to go hand in hand, conceptually, with thinking that the notion of priesthood is a problematic one that the New Testament relegates to history. But as I urged in our reading of Numbers 16, this is not the only option open to interpreters. Indeed, it seems to me that Barth’s concerns might be met by the recognition that priesthood in Christian terms is always Christ’s, represented by the human priest. Priestly blessing, therefore, is indeed, in New Testament terms, Christ’s blessing. It would take us too far afield to explore why Barth does not go down this route, though one can imagine reasons that are not unconnected to his particular theological commitments. In this case

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those commitments do seem to allow his supreme christological focus to drift over into the “Christomonist” approach of which he is sometimes accused, and to do so particularly at the expense of other ecclesiological concerns. More complex is the negotiation of how far Christian practice can utilize the language and conceptuality of Israelite Old Testament practice without thereby being implicated in any negative assessment of that Jewish practice.12 Luther’s move to introduce a form of blessing based on Numbers 6 at the conclusion of the Christian eucharistic liturgy reads Numbers 6 in Trinitarian form; but does that mean that Numbers 6 is therefore “superseded” in being extracted from the manner in which it serves ongoing Jewish practice?13 Surely such a Christian practice both need not but on occasion may imply such supersession, and that it is Luther’s innovation that is in focus here may heighten the significance of this issue, given the infamous nature of some of his last writings concerning the Jewish people. But assuming one is not constrained by thinking that there is only one proper reading of a text, it should be straightforward to see how Numbers 6:22–27 can have at least two different functions depending on the context(s) in which it is read. Further, that it should nourish and sustain both Jewish and Christian practices of blessing might be something to be celebrated rather than viewed as a problem. On the other hand, readers who do feel themselves constrained by a rubric such as “authorial intent” or even “original editorial intent” may have to work a good deal harder to explain why a Christian worshiper might be not just appropriating an Old Testament blessing, but thereby diverting it from any longer fulfilling other functions outside Christian worship.14 In any case, the specific blessings of grace and peace, in the presence of (or before “the face” of ) God are surely widely taken up in the New Testament, and it is difficult to understand why the practice of enjoining such blessings upon Christian worshipers would be frowned upon by Christians. Again, I wonder if the root of such concerns might in some respects lie with a failure to grapple imaginatively with the conceptuality of priesthood, not least in the general sense in which blessing is a fundamental priestly activity, and hence a way of thinking that commends itself quite naturally to those for whom priesthood remains a lively theological category.

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Finally, what of the role of this text of blessing in the early stages of this book of Israel “in the wilderness”? Very simply: Numbers 6:22–27 offers an unusual and unexpectedly straightforward positive moment in the book’s demanding collection of texts of various kinds. As noted already, I am disinclined to pursue tightly argued reasons regarding why it is precisely here, at this point, amidst these particular surrounding texts in chapters 5, 6, and 7. But on a broader level, one point might be considered. There is evidence that this text of blessing precedes the composition of the book of Numbers. This kind of argument, so often eschewed in the present work, is for once at least plausible if only because of the discovery in 1979 of two small silver amulets, each containing text close to that of Numbers 6:24–26, and datable to the seventh or sixth century BC.15 Some form of this blessing therefore circulated in ancient Israel in a form distinct from its appearance in the book. Now admittedly there is the remaining question of which came first, the blessing or the book (or the relevant “layer” of the book), but it is at least not hard to imagine a prior priestly blessing here incorporated into the book of Numbers at this point. It would not be possible to answer the question of why this was done—that is lost in the world behind the text. What can be addressed is the effect such a placement has upon the reader, which is indeed our familiar canonical question with regard to the results of textual juxtaposition, in this case bolstered by the recognition that some kind of placing appears to have been undertaken. While I have not wished to explore detailed possibilities down this path regarding this text, one general point seems clear. In a book notably given to troubling tales of judgment, grim characterizations of Israel as recalcitrant and generally complaining, and presentations of Israel beset on all sides by unsympathetic and/or dangerous other nations, it would be easy to conclude either that God is not present or that God’s presence is only for Israel’s undoing. But this startling and uplifting blessing affirms divine presence “here and now,” as it were. If we take blessing as the (priestly) invoking of God’s good presence—and its various signs—upon the blessed one, then this text draws its readers into the positive aspects of YHWH’s presence: a presence that “shines” and gives a “peace” that might be imagined as light in the midst of darkness. It is a present blessing in the midst of troubles.

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Perhaps then such a text serves to provoke the reader to wonder whether they might look for signs of that blessing in all the surrounding texts and in and through the tales of wilderness wandering that follow. In other words, the Aaronic blessing shines the light of God’s presence on the book of Numbers and its readers and invites them not to locate blessing only elsewhere in self-­evidently uplifting texts, but in the experience that is to follow of reading about manna and quails; humility and complaint; suspicion and rebellion; and wandering, drought, and death in the wilderness. Being able to construe such demanding and difficult texts not as alternatives to blessing but as vehicles of blessing—that is a task that lies a long way down the road of critical and imaginative engagement with the book of Numbers, but it is precisely one core aspect of the task undertaken in this present book, to read these scriptural texts as intended for the good of their readers, which is to say, to read them willing to look for blessing. I would put the point no more strongly than that. The reader is “provoked to look for,” and is “invited to locate,” blessing in and through the reading of Numbers. But this text in chapter 6 is certainly no more determinative than that. If ancient readers already knew it as a blessing with a life of its own outside the book, then it seems not unreasonable to imagine that they might be encouraged and fortified by finding it here. Likewise, there is some evidence that readers of the book today, perhaps on their way past in pursuit of “reading the whole Bible,” and finding themselves in the midst of these unfamiliar texts, may likewise be encouraged here. The point is simply that this is not hermeneutically insignificant. Its plausibility for making a difference to a canonical construal of the succeeding chapters would be heightened if there were some other focal point concerning blessing at some further horizon of the narratives of Numbers. As it happens there is: the story of Balaam in chapters 22–24. N U M B E R S 2 2 –24 : S E E I N G T H E F U T U R E P R O M I S E O F B L E S S I N G .   .   . B U T N OT Y E T

In our previous chapter we explored some aspects of the “book of Balaam” from the point of view of why one need not consider it integral to the

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unfolding of the narrative of Numbers (although of course one may). Its status as a separate text enfolded into the finished book that we now have before us is almost as secure as that of 6:22–27 considered above. Interestingly, it too places front and center the question of blessing. It is by no means possible to do justice to all that this remarkable sequence of three chapters invites by way of discussion. I begin with a brief outline of the story of Numbers 22–24, sidelining for a moment almost all the myriad critical and contextual questions that attend any attempt to read these chapters well. After a selective account of some attempts to read them, I then conclude with two observations about the role of these chapters in the dynamics of blessing as they pertain to the reading of the book of Numbers. Numbers 22:1 is a perplexing redactional link between the account of Israel’s military campaigns through chapter 21 and the ensuing tale of Balaam and Balak. It is perplexing because it roots the Balaam narratives precisely in this moment of the unfolding story of Numbers, whereas the content, style, and external reference points of chapters 22–24 suggest a text from some other tradition, location, or perspective. Once we are past this verse, however, the narrative artistry takes over, and as long as one can read with a little imagination, there is not much need to pause and ponder over whether 22:4 (“Balak . . . was king of Moab at that time”) was added by a worried redactor who thought verse 2 needed linking to verse 1 or whether the narrative about Balaam and his ass (22:22–35) is a separate source/tradition and, if so, to what end. Although these and other questions have their own lively interpretive histories, we set them aside. Essentially, Balak sees the onward military march of Israel and is concerned about the Israelites encamped around him. Nor can he be much comforted by the thought that their intention is to go on over the Jordan and trouble the Canaanites rather than the Moabites. So he sends messengers to recruit “Balaam son of Beor at Pethor” (22:5), who is not introduced to the reader as such, but is clearly—as it turns out—a prophet available for the business of blessing and cursing (22:6). They try to hire him. But God (‘elōhîm) ascertains from Balaam what is going on (22:9–11) and then says that Balaam is not to take the assignment: “You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed” (22:12). And so

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Balaam declines. Things get more complicated as Balak makes a bigger offer, Balaam prevaricates, and eventually God tells him to go but only do what God says. The nature of the prevarication is one interpretive crux: Is Balaam a good man checking with his deity what to do, or is his return to await further divine instruction evidence that he is in reality holding out for prophecy-­for-­hire in the hope of financial gain, even though he should know better?16 Either construal of the text is possible, though the latter option does lead more plausibly into the later reception of Balaam as a sinner, which comes to predominate in the biblical tradition at least.17 It also arguably offers more helpful purchase on the celebrated incident of the ass in the rest of Numbers 22, where the now-­commissioned Balaam finds his way blocked en route to Moab by a sword-­wielding angel who is only visible to his ass. Balaam is keen to get on to the job in hand, but YHWH’s perspective seems to be that this is a mission with much potential to go wrong, and YHWH is far from persuaded that Balaam will actually be a faithful envoy. The irony is evident: the prophet-­for-­hire—the would-­be seer—is governed by his contract for business, but it is his ass who can see what is really at stake. What is at stake is whether YHWH’s word will have its way. This is the repeated emphasis of both chapter 22 and the oracles that follow, and also the outraged response they provoke from Balak. “Do I have the power to say just anything?” asks Balaam (22:38). In other words, the newly constrained prophet, chastened by the incident with his ass, will now do as he is told (which, incidentally, further troubles the waters of how he is received so negatively in the tradition, but that cannot be our concern here). And as a result, though he steps up apparently to fulfill King Balak’s request to curse Israel, three times, he ends up delivering blessing in oracle after oracle, because, as he puts it after the first such encounter, “Must I not take care to say what YHWH puts into my mouth?” (23:12; more or less repeated at 23:26 after the second oracle). It seems as if Balak prompts Balaam to greater oracular efficacy each time by way of letting him see the prospective recipients of his curse/ blessing. There is probably a continuing play here on seeing, building on Balaam’s own inability to see in comparison to his ass in the setup of chapter 22.18 Oracle 1 (23:7–10) is uttered from seven altars where he can “see part of the people” (22:41). Oracle 2 (23:18–24) moves on to where

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he can also see “part of them,” though, at least plausibly, rather more than before. Oracle 3 (24:3–9) overlooks all Israel camping tribe by tribe. But it is to no avail for Balak: Balaam blesses Israel anyway. As his relationship with Balak falls apart completely, and the contract is torn up and thrown away (24:10–14), Balaam moves to his conclusion with a truly stunning oracle of future blessing for Israel that is, from almost any perspective, a climactic highlight of the whole book of Numbers. First he emphasizes that he is now a man with “open eye,” eyes uncovered, and truly seeing, further drawing out that particular theme (24:15–16). Then we read: I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near — a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Shethites. 18 Edom will become a possession, Seir a possession of its enemies, while Israel does valiantly. 19 One out of Jacob shall rule, and destroy the survivors of Ir. (Num. 24:17–19) 17

There is scope to argue over aspects of the translation, but the poetry shines through in any case. (For specifics: the choice of “him” as the object of the first two lines leans toward a personalized interpretation of the “star” in the third line, and might otherwise be “I see it, . . .”; the word for “borderlands” is difficult and can mean “head”; and “territory” can be taken figuratively or even emended to “crown.”19) The star of Jacob is interpreted messianically in due course, and echoes of 24:17 are found in the star of the nativity story that guides the magi from the East (Matt. 2:2), as well as in reference to Christ as the “morning star” in 2 Peter 1:19 and Revelation 22:16. The language was also applied to the “son of the star” (Simon bar-­kochba) who led the Jewish revolt of the early 130s AD. Whatever its later appropriation, it is clear that in Numbers 24 this is a visionary oracle of extraordinary proportions and also, one notes, succeeds in bringing to a striking completion the

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theme of “seeing” with its opening “I see him, but not now”: the emphasis here being on what will one day be plain even if it is presently hidden. The words of this blessing will remain ringing in the ears of its hearers/ readers long after the cursory end of the tale in 24:25, which simply has Balaam get up and go home, and Balak depart. It is as if the story in part exists in Numbers to reach this climax, and once that is achieved, there is no further point in staying with it. Dennis Olson describes these chapters as offering “a crescendo of hope,” even if this does seem to render it a little difficult for him to explain how this interlude fits with the prevailing drift towards “the death of the old generation.”20 If anything, it rather demonstrates that the distinction between “old” and “new” is not as neat as he might be suggesting. For Olson the point is that the blessing is future, and thus not actually experienced in the “old” epoch, which is a fair point, although I shall pursue the alternative case that the book of Balaam deliberately muddles the separation between failure and hope by locating hope in the midst of failure, right before the disasters of chapter 25. Had there been design afoot to indicate “the death of the old sinful generation of the wilderness and the birth of a new generation of hope on the edge of the promised land,”21 surely the order of these chapters would have been fairly straightforwardly different? In other words, on Olson’s reading, the book of Balaam would presumably have occurred after the census of chapter 26. Let it be acknowledged that this story of Balaam, in his various dialogues with his ass, with Balak, and with God, is a wonderful story, and is fully worthy of a literary-­theological study of its own that assimilates the complex historical and literary-­critical questions that surround this text, and then presses on to articulate some of the full range of matters that occupy the world in front of the text. I cannot offer that study here, and in fact neither can I really locate any study that quite manages to do this. The best we seem to have is selected aspects of constructive readings that indicate just some of the many interpretive angles possible with this text. It may be worth asking why that is. Among commentaries there is an excellent account of theological substance offered by Thomas Dozeman, in rather more substantial detail than is often found even among commentators who specifically attend to more historically oriented critical questions. He is particularly alert to

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the ways that this tale from beyond the borders of Yahwistic faith speaks quite directly to interfaith issues today.22 Mary Douglas offers a strong literary reading of the text, which has features I shall draw upon below, though it is tied to specific proposals concerning the historical reconstruction of authorial intent, which may be a little more problematic.23 A probing pointer particularly with regard to chapter 22 is Walter Moberly’s reading noted above, which examines issues of character and potential self-­interest in Balaam’s words and actions.24 Monographs on Balaam typically seem to have their interests elsewhere, and recent contributions to symposia on Numbers seem to struggle to get beyond the difficult question of how 22:1 might link the book of Balaam to its surrounding text in terms of redactional linkage.25 Perhaps there is a real possibility that the book of Balaam, either in itself or in dialogue with the surrounding texts in the book of Numbers, is simply too diverse and disparate to invite a clear theological reading. The critical issues, rehearsed in chapter 7 above, render complex almost all forms of interpretive judgment, and literary readings have struggled to grapple with the switching between lively narrative and declamatory oracles. The reception history of the text is then so remarkable that it may be little wonder that interpreters find it hard to avoid the gravitational pull of these multiform issues that attend any serious attempt actually to read the text in its received form in the Bible.26 We are in the presence not so much of a great cloud of witnesses as of a great cloud of onlookers remarking that they did not quite see what happened, but noticed the crowd and so gathered around.27 One option is to cut the Gordian knot by chalking up the effervescent carnival of the text to irony, and drawing all Balaam’s supposed insight down to the level of unreliable testimony from a man only concerned for himself. The blessings cease to be blessings, the hope is sucked from the text, and instead this “antiprophetic” sketch becomes a polemical indictment of an Israel about to collapse into the apostasy recounted in chapter 25. This is not an impossible reading, not least because irony generally does do an excellent job of driving a wedge between what the text says and what the reader is to realize, often making these two points polar opposites; and it is also not an impossible reading in the prosaic sense that it has actually been done: Carolyn Sharp reads the book of Balaam,

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in its location as Numbers 22–24, as probing the “inescapable accountability” that comes with “abundant blessing,” and concludes: “In diaspora, the threat of destruction from enemies without is more than matched by the community’s proclivity for destruction from within. The hyperbolically blessed Israel ignores that ironic truth at its peril.” Israelites reading Balaam’s blessing as actual blessings miss this “extraordinarily impressive product of ancient Israelite ironic art.”28 Sharp’s reading develops and offers some refinement of David Marcus’s brief account of the Balaam story as a satire, packed with the fantastic, with ridicule, and with parody as well as irony, and whose purpose “is to belittle Balaam and expose him to ridicule.” The result is an antiprophetic satire (the first of several in the Old Testament): Balaam is no match for the angel of the Lord.29 There are satirical and ironic elements to the Balaam story. Sharp’s and Marcus’s readings offer a way of construing the text tied somewhat to concerns with what the authors/editors of Numbers intend to do with the story in placing it just before Numbers 25. And perhaps it is plausible to imagine the satirical thrust undercutting entirely any real sense of blessing among those who first read the finished book, which would certainly be more significant than the demonstration that such a reading is indeed one literary possibility among many for today’s theory-­nourished readers. But there may be reasons to be cautious. In a parallel case with Jonah, another text that invites a classification such as “anti-­prophetic satire,”30 Phyllis Trible offers an exemplary literary reading finely attuned to just such features as irony and satire, and then acknowledges: Although satiric elements mark Jonah, whether they confirm it as satire opens up unsettled and unsettling problems, first between authorial intention and reader response and then among different readers. What authorial indicators secure satire as the genre of the book? Do generally agreed-­upon satiric features become a license for inventing others? To what extent is satire in the eye of the beholder? For example, some readers find Jonah’s prayer inside the fish an expression of genuine piety, but others deem it distortion and farce. Some readers chuckle to picture animals clothed in sackcloth and sitting upon ashes, but others see pathos and poignancy. How much satire does the book yield and how much do readers contribute?31

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Readers may find the story of the ass in chapter 22 a masterpiece of satire without thereby thinking that satire accounts for the oracles without remainder. Or one might say, adapting Trible: “For example, some readers find the oracle of 24:15–19 fully worthy of its later messianic status, but others deem it hyperbole and delusion.” One need not say that Sharp’s reading is impossible in order to suggest that it will only commend itself to those making certain types of judgment about the constitutive and appropriate role of suspicion, or at least ironic suspicion. I have argued in chapter 2 above that such judgments may well be problematic. Another reason for caution is that recognition of ironic and satirical features in this tale of a talking ass and his greedy prophet can be handled in ways that do not result in such wholesale recasting of the text’s function for its readers. Mary Douglas finds the Balaam story to be “a narrative summary of the main themes of the book,” reading it as a political satire in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, and she even proposes something of an allegorical reading: Balaam (a name perhaps to be parsed as “Lord of the people”) is an Ezra-­Nehemiah-­type figure attempting to manipulate imperial backing to his own ends; Balak (“destruction”) is that imperial ruler; and the ass is Israel, ridden against her will until vindicated by direct encounter with a God who overrules the political machinations of leadership.32 Douglas’s reading allows the blessings to be blessings, though constrains them within the factional disputes of postexilic politics. Her reading can certainly be read as an interesting thought-­experiment concerning how the text might have been heard at subsequent times. If the text is allowed free rein as both blessing and ongoing visionary address to those who read it, then perhaps two points may be allowed to come into focus. The first, already intimated, is that, pace Olson, this is a wonderful and uplifting text located in the midst of disarray and— as chapter 25 makes clear—impending dissolution. One of the doubtless unintended implications of the pursuit of tight literary structures for mapping narrative development in biblical books is that it can give the impression that human hope and experience fall neatly into times of failure or faithfulness, blessing or despair, aimless wandering or focused progress toward a goal. It could in principle be true that a literary work such as Numbers holds out a schematized narrative of death-­and-­then-­ new-­life precisely to draw Israel toward a clearer grasp of what is at stake

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in the messiness of human experience, but in fact, reading the ups and downs of these chapters as we have them, it looks more like the book of Numbers shares a certain messiness of human hope and experience with the actual lives that human beings lead and have led down throughout the ages. The “climax” of which I have spoken above is a climax of hope, but not of narrative. . . . The story goes on, and the hope is brought low to new trials, new failings, and the complexities of legal and familial rulings that make up everyday human existence. That Numbers 24 is followed by twelve more chapters of sacred text, then, may just be a way of pointing to the fact that “the end is not yet.” I will return to this point at what seems an opportune moment: the end of my own discussion, below. A second point concerns the central notion of the Balaam story, noted above, that the word of God will have its way. Here one might rightly pause and sort through several appropriate critical concerns: about the alternation of YHWH, ‘elohîm, and ‘ēl as markers of the “God” involved and how far the Yahwistic concerns of 22:22–35 can be correlated to the various interactions between Balaam and “God” in chapters 23–24, all of which (and more) perhaps add up to reasons why it is relatively rare to find substantive theological concerns adduced from these texts.33 In light of this, I offer only a modest wager that a reading that learns about the dynamics of the word of God from Numbers 22–24 might yet have merit. And what does such a reading learn? Well, if one can make the translations just noted, and if the text is allowed its free rein with blessing, then it seems that Numbers 22–24 offers the claim that, in the end, the word of God will succeed in being rendered faithfully, over against the schemes of those opposed to it (Balak), the at-­times mixed motives of those entrusted to proclaim it (Balaam), and the persistent failings of those to whom it offers life and blessing (the encamped Israelites). One might go further and suggest that no matter how partially sighted any of the main players are in the “staging” of God’s word,34 it still succeeds in its purpose, even if its deliverers are forced to concede ultimately that they “do not yet see it.” It is (theologically) interesting that Jacqueline Lapsley cashes out this point in terms of warning rather than blessing: this implication of the Balaam story “concerns the dangers of our exegesis becoming self-­serving.”35 She certainly sets out enough context of some past and present failings in the worldwide church to suggest why she

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chooses warning as the appropriate mode of address, and perhaps there is scope for both approaches. Though I do wonder whether a text of blessing might appropriately also be heard as a blessing, risks and all. The entry of this narrative almost from elsewhere—it often being noted that the perspective of these chapters views Israel from the outside—perhaps encourages the reader of the book of Numbers to recognize that here we have God saying what God would most dearly wish to be heard saying, even though no human participant in the story can really fully comprehend it. The one who might have done, Moses, is not present, and even then it is worth noting Leveen’s interesting comment: “The exuberance of the non-­Israelite Balaam versus the anger and weariness of Moses is striking.”36 But Balaam’s exuberance in itself is not enough, and Moses is not mentioned. Even so, in the absence of human exemplars of discernment, the text holds out the daring claim: the word of God is neither defeated nor distorted, and cannot be co-­opted to human ends. I have given time above to an altogether more suspicious reading of these chapters, in Carolyn Sharp’s account of their “extraordinarily impressive” and indeed “hyperbolic” irony, in part to acknowledge that there is more than one way of taking the text, even when one’s concerns are indeed with the world in front of the text.37 So it may be fair to acknowledge that the word of God submits itself to a precarious fate once entrusted to these complex ancient texts, especially if this is indeed a case of a co-­opted non-­Israelite tradition appropriated in the book of Numbers from its other, wider purposes. But surely one must recognize that God has no other option, or in other words God cannot bypass human understanding in revealing God’s word, since that would in the end not be the revealing of God’s word to humans.38 So the most one could look for is a story that insists that God ends up saying what God wants to say, and that it is not for others to determine who gets to be blessed or cursed. This too, to bind our two points together a little, seems like at best a truth that is only partially glimpsed in the warp and woof of human experience. If the word of God truly does not fail, in whatever its blessing and/or cursing purposes might be, then perhaps that will only be clear on some final day. In the meantime, all an interpreter might aspire to say

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is, “I see that; but not yet.” On the other hand, if one were to look for a context in which such a recognition were grounded in texts that fully acknowledge the major failings of the human reception of that word, the concomitant complaint and grumbling, and the ways in which danger, disease, and death stalk human endeavor, well—could there be a better candidate than the book of Numbers? N U M B E R S 33 : O N R E A D I N G C H R I S T I A N S C R I P T U R E — “IN THE WILDERNESS”

The premise of theological interpretation is not an attempt to turn the clock back and restore the practices of patristic or medieval times, as even that great historian and theologian of medieval exegesis Henri de Lubac acknowledged, with some insistence.39 But it does involve an openness to considering such interpretation, alongside more modern or contemporary theological work of whatever particular tradition. It is also committed to integrating all the insights thus gained with the best critical insights of “biblical studies”—that semi-­independent discipline of modern times. One may learn interpretive wisdom from wherever it may be found. While much has been written about such theological projects— their needs, their desirability, their problems and pitfalls—I have instead attempted to model such an engagement through extensive attention to one particular scriptural text, and a difficult one at that: the book of Numbers. The limited extent to which programmatic conclusions may be drawn is rehearsed in the succeeding, final section. As one last foray into the text and its interpretation, I wish to turn briefly to the long chapter of place names that constitutes a summative account of Israel’s journey from Egypt to the promised land: Numbers 33. Forty-­two names are packed into fifty-­six verses, mostly, in fact, into verses 5–49. While historical and geographical concerns abound on any reading, theological interests are rather harder to locate in the average commentary. Such a relatively uncontroversial claim, however, reckons without one of the most remarkable scriptural homilies to have survived from the early centuries of the Christian church: Origen’s twenty-­seventh homily (out of twenty-­eight) on the book of Numbers, “concerning the stages of

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the sons of Israel.”40 This tour de force may serve as our final exhibit of theological interpretation from an altogether different horizon from that which occupies interpreters today. Origen has preached his way through much of the book, though with various gaps, and when he comes to Numbers 33 he is already fully convinced of its relevance to his contemporaries—his congregation. But perhaps even he can see that chapter 33 might look unpromising at first sight, and so he begins with quite an extended “preface” for why a text that looks so difficult might yet be designed for the flourishing of the faithful (27.1.1–7). Just because a text like this seems obscure is no reason to abandon one’s theological convictions that there must be spiritual illumination available. Turning to the text itself, Origen perceives a spiritual sense of a “double exodus,” the departure from Egypt perhaps symbolizing the leaving of the pagan life, or the soul ascending from its dwelling in the body (27.2.2). Then a key move consists of noting that the forty-­two way stations correspond numerically to the forty-­two generations of Matthew’s genealogy of Christ, and thus “the one who ascends, ascends with him who descended from there to us,” and so Origen arrives at a plan: “Let us now strive to go forward and to ascend one by one each of the steps of faith and the virtues” (27.3.1–2). After a brief digression on the importance of understanding the soul’s journey (27.4), Origen then turns to the names of each stage and insists upon how important it is to understand each (named) stage in this spiritual sense. He begins with the passage’s starting with the departure from Exodus (Num. 33:1–4; cf. 27.8), before moving on to his celebrated attempt to derive meaning from the Hebrew name of each of the forty stations in the wilderness and map it to corresponding issues in the Christian life. Select examples must suffice. Sometimes the work is done by etymology focused solely on the word: “Pi-­hahiroth” (Num. 33:8) is “the mouth of Iroth,” and “Iroth” means village, and thus as the soul sets out, it “does not yet come to the city . . . but first and for the moment [to] some small things” (27.9.3). On other occasions, perhaps a little more recognizably for many subsequent readers, the work is done by attention to names that do indeed characterize aspects of the journey, so that the journey from Marah to Elim (Num. 33:9) is parsed by Origen as a movement on from “bitterness” (Marah) to the springs and

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palm trees of Elim, and thus, “See, after bitterness, after the hardships of temptations, what pleasant places receive you” (27.11.1). Eventually even Origen realizes that this approach will take too long, and he speeds up (27.12.2) and makes brief comments about every remaining name, including a particularly intriguing reflection on Almon-­diblathaim (Num. 33:46), “contempt of figs”: “that is, where earthly things are completely scorned and despised” (27.12.13). The journey in view ends on the banks of the Jordan, prompting this final thought: “The reason this race takes place at all and is run is so that one may reach the river of God” and dwell near its flowing wisdom (27.12.13). A short conclusion admits that this may all seem a little forced (27.13.1), but assures listeners that prudence will see the merits of meditating on these points (27.13.2), thereby leaving that work to those who have heard the homily. How is a twenty-­first-­century reader to respond to such a homiletical voyage? The reason for mentioning de Lubac in the introduction to this section is that it is de Lubac who has given us the most thorough and incisive appraisal of Origen’s hermeneutical processes, in his remarkable study History and Spirit.41 As noted, de Lubac does not think that anyone’s goal is to return to doing what Origen did, but he does think that one might attain to a sympathetic understanding of what he did in light of working out his overall theological and hermeneutical commitments. His account recognizes the supreme significance of mystery in Origen’s work, as well as his particular commitments to the literal and spiritual senses of scripture and to the significance of its two testaments. Here one sees some of the themes that would later dominate de Lubac’s Medieval Exegesis already finding articulation.42 Sadly, there is no extensive study of Homily 27 in History and Spirit. The only major comment de Lubac makes is that Origen’s mysticism is a commitment to Christian mystery and “has its source in Scripture.”43 As a result, if one wishes to expound “the theme of a mystical route or quest,” then one should expect to find it in scripture, and lo and behold, Numbers 33 serves to articulate what Origen could say is one clear theme in a proper understanding of the witness of two-­testament scripture. The result is a happy union of the wisdom of the scriptural whole and—or so Origen would have us believe—the pressure of the specific text (though these phrasings are my own, not de Lubac’s and not Origen’s).

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One need not say that this is incumbent upon any interpreter; rather one might say that this is one option for reflecting creatively on how a text such as this might function. It is certainly a striking (and perhaps even a modestly well-­known) example. How might one evaluate it? I offer four brief reflections. First, there is a question of genre. Origen wrote many works, a large number of which do not survive, and they vary across the genres of theological argument, commentary, and homily. The present example concerning Numbers 33 is a homily. Interestingly, de Lubac does not make much of this generic distinction, but it is at least worth asking whether what passes for appropriate homiletical reflection is not in general going to be identical to all other forms of hermeneutical engagement. Preachers presumably have goals that are in part determined by theological convictions about the purpose of gathering believers together and addressing them from scripture, and these appropriate goals are not the same as those of an exegetical seminar. The relationship between the two is a fascinating question, and has in some ways sponsored the rise of hermeneutics on the theological syllabus in the modern era: the consideration of how (if at all) to construct a bridge from the text to a word for today, across two horizons and under heavy fire from all sides. Tom Greggs has made the point that one must be cautious in extrapolating solely from Origen’s sermons where pastoral concerns may couch certain theological convictions in ways that he would not then adopt in other contexts.44 I take it then that one may appreciate what Origen does with Numbers 33 in his homily without thinking that he intends it as a model for other modes of reading. In fact I think that the way that Origen develops his reading is not entirely persuasive for reasons that are more incisive than restraint concerning the applicability of the genre in which he offers it. Hence a second point: a careful reading of Homily 27 does in fact rule out the appealing option of saying that Origen was offering a reading attuned to broader theological concerns without thereby thinking that he was telling his hearers what Moses himself was trying to say. One can imagine this apologia with little difficulty: “Of course Origen is not saying that Moses meant his description of Israel’s journey to be a description of the stages of the soul’s ascent to virtue, but we are free to read it that way.” But actually Origen more or less says that this is

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precisely what Moses meant to say, and part of the purpose of his preface concerning the difficulty of this text is that we must not think it a text that “is hard to understand and seems superfluous to read” (27.1.7), or dare to suggest that it “merely narrates an event that happened, and which, to be sure, passed on by back then” (27.2.1).45 Names are given to the stages because it is not fitting for the stages of the soul’s ascent to be unnamed (27.5.1), and in the end, what Origen is offering is “faithful interpretation” (27.2.1). So on the whole, I think one must say that Origen thinks Moses meant his account of life in the wilderness to address the journey of the soul, or at least that that is the rhetoric of the homily. However, this does not necessarily settle the question of whether one can appropriate Origen’s hermeneutical moves in just the manner I have suggested he did not do himself: in other words, perhaps the nature of the sermon invites a rhetorical trope of affirming that Moses spoke of the soul, even while interpreters today (and perhaps even preachers) would accept a certain gap between hermeneutical effect and authorial intent, not least in that we no longer claim to know who wrote this text. Throughout this book I have been unpersuaded that authorial intent is a category that offers much help to today’s readers of the book of Numbers. The way is therefore open to take from Origen what he did not offer: a reading of Numbers that need not be beholden to authorial intention in order to be of interest. Of course, third, much will in the end depend on how persuasive or otherwise one finds the overall theological framework in play in terms of how far it does or should impact on the hermeneutical processes at work. One need not be detained by the recognition that Origen was condemned by a sixth-­century emperor and council, given the extensive discussion and widespread recognition that what was at stake in 543 and 553 was not particularly the theological beliefs held by Origen himself.46 It is not my intention at this point to seek to expound or defend Origen’s theological commitments, not least because subsequent reaction to his approach did cultivate a certain amount of restraint in such interpretations as they developed over the centuries, and in any case de Lubac’s study explores many aspects of Origen’s approach for the interested reader. The only point I would make is that it is no longer self-­evident, if it ever was, that biblical studies as widely practiced in the modern era makes for a better

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hermeneutical framework for discussing points of interest in dialogue with the text. Nor is it entirely clear what the word “better” would mean in such an evaluation. The framework is “different” and offers different domains for the investigation of issues that arise once one has accepted some initial premises. At minimum, theological, historical, and literary frameworks must be allowed their full expression of what is at stake in reading a text like Numbers 33 in order to see what arises, and in order that then in turn a productive dialogue might be had. With regard to Numbers 33, ostensibly unpromising text as it is, we have had occasion before to applaud Angela Roskop’s perceptive account of “wilderness itineraries” in the Torah. She argues persuasively that the Numbers 33 itinerary “is not neutral. It offers a definitive version of the wilderness sojourn that corrects it back to the shape of the Priestly wilderness narrative as much as possible.”47 But what role does it then play as readers read it as part of the finished book of Numbers? Or of the Torah? Or in due course of the Jewish Bible, the Christian Old Testament, and the Christian Bible? We may agree with de Lubac that the goal here is not to return to Origen, but equally the goal is not to forget Origen. I suggest that one may disagree with the specific construction of this homily, but still find the broader reading aims it exhibits to be of value. The present book has attempted to go on and read Numbers with Origen in one hand and Roskop in the other, as it were. Clearly, my own view is that this is worth doing. A fourth point, taking its lead from that last reflection, might trade on the immense spiritual resonance of the image of “wilderness” in much Christian writing over the centuries.48 Is some part of the value of an approach like Origen’s that it factors wilderness right into the heart of spiritual life? The benefits of this are both profound and wide ranging, especially at a time when religious commitment in today’s world is so often received as zealous overconfidence in the undiluted blessings of one particular set of convictions and practices (whichever set is actually in view). Christian writers have long known that the spiritual life is not one blessing after another, or to put the point differently, that blessings are not unremittingly life-­affirming and comforting. They might conceivably be always hopeful, if one is willing to stretch the notion of hope to include the effects of truth on behalf of those in despair. In short, the spiritual life

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embraces “true wilderness,” to borrow the title of one celebrated modern exposition of the difficulty of following Christ.49 This is probably a helpful note on which to draw toward the conclusion of our study of this book: “in the wilderness.” Harry Williams actually preached his sermon on “the true wilderness” during Lent, and this invites one to consider whether in certain respects the book of Numbers is a Lenten book.50 Indeed, perhaps there is further mileage in recognizing the significance of Origen’s interpretation being a homily. Every sermon has its own context, and one of the oddities of biblical studies in the modern era has been its loss of a sense of readerly context, resulting in the focus on matters of interpretation of a text to no specific end above and beyond reading the text. The benefits of such an approach notwithstanding, not least of which has been critical clarity on many issues, this is something of a historical anomaly in the history of Bible reading. The loss of any constructive sense of liturgical time has real knock-­on hermeneutical effects, chiefly in the flattening of readerly horizons into one ongoing uniform mode of reading “now,” perhaps for as long as it is called today. The liturgical year relieves readers (and also especially preachers) of carrying such a burden. Not all readings of all texts have to achieve everything. One important thing about Lent is that sometimes it is Lent and sometimes it is not. Numbers may have its full and generally sobering say. No one will have Numbers as the word permanently addressing their “now.” In Williams’s terms: “Accept your wilderness.” Williams’s own preacher’s rhetorical flourish allows him to conclude, “Lent, we discover, is Easter in disguise.”51 In terms of self-­evidence this may rank alongside some of Origen’s attempts to turn the geographical vocabulary of Numbers 33 to the task of tracking the soul’s ascent. But there may be wisdom in it nonetheless. THE FIGURE IN THE WILDERNESS

This book has had a twofold overall focus. First, insofar as my attempt to reconceive the genre of commentary is reducible to a particular thesis, it is that the practice of Christian reading of scripture requires a constant

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interplay of questions driven by engagement with wider theological concerns alongside critical engagement with the standard literary and historical questions of biblical scholarship. I have attempted to work out such a program in some depth by way of sustained attention to a focal biblical text, in dialogue with a range of conceptual resources, drawn from the work of theologians and literary critics as well as biblical scholars. Second, as regards the narratives of Numbers, I have suggested that at least three core theological issues are presented to today’s reader. One is the question of trust in God, as compared to the standard modern hermeneutical default to suspicion (modeled, disastrously, in Num. 5). At crucial points in the narrative (especially chapters 14 and 20), we have seen that failure to trust is the reason the text gives for Israel’s and Moses’ wider failure. A second and related motif concerns what can be seen with the eyes of faith—“the eyes of the heart”—as against what is seen by those who do not trust God. I have drawn selected parallels between what is before the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness and what is before readers of scripture in their journey through various critical and hermeneutical wildernesses. Such parallels indicate one aspect of the figural dimension of the reading deployed. Other figural elements have included consideration of how this Old Testament text relates, directly or by way of hermeneutical and theological reappropriation, to Christian theological claims articulated in the New Testament and understood in connection with Christ. The third theological issue, drawn out more fully in this concluding chapter, has been the somewhat priestly-­oriented claim that the book offers a promise that blessing prevails in the end, notable in the way that the central sections of the book are framed by the significance of the Aaronic blessing of 6:24–26 and the theme of unquenchable blessing in the Balaam narratives of chapters 22–24. As has been noted here, though, one point that is in part reflected back by the form of Numbers that we have is that—in this life—we do not straightforwardly arrive at that end. Instead, all readers, of whatever convictions, theological or otherwise, read the text of Numbers as part of an ongoing journey through the various way stations of the interpreting life, with levels of understanding that may detour through quite long periods of perplexity or encounter

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occasional jarring transformations or, just occasionally, glimpse far-­off blessings brought near. The final word on how the book of Numbers is read by human beings cannot be written until the final day, an eschatological point that may in one (theological) sense be a tautology—nothing is finished until the end—but is perhaps a tautology worth noting in the context of scholarly work that sometimes gives the impression that the promised land of interpretive rest is just around the corner, one monograph away, or one thesis short of being fully beheld. But then again, if one subscribes to a theological scheme in which that final day is already inaugurated in Christ, there remains hope for truthful, if only partial, apprehension of the text and its workings upon attentive and suitably critical and careful readers, just as, likewise, there will be comparable Jewish theological claims about truthful apprehension of the texts of torah within Jewish theological schemes. Some kind of theological account of the appropriate scheme within which talk of truth can be coherent would certainly seem to be a desideratum in the reading and interpreting of scripture, and is yet another pointer to the consideration that one cannot first and independently pursue truth about the text and only then turn to the pursuit of frameworks for evaluating such interpretations. One of the intermittent hermeneutical wagers throughout the present study has been that sometimes a little literary imagination might count for a great deal in helping readers handle the text well. We started with Henry James in chapter 1 and have visited various literary intertexts in the intervening studies, sometimes without explicit acknowledgment, as seems appropriate to such a mode of literary figuration. Sometimes, I like to imagine, biblical writers and even their redactors and compilers might have attained some small measure of the kinds of finesse in the ways of words that readers down through the centuries have enjoyed with Shakespeare, or Don Quixote, or with James himself in works such as What Maisie Knew. And this need not be heard as the claim that biblical writers were literary connoisseurs before their time. As literary critic Stephen Prickett once observed in his striking analysis of the “literary turn” in philo­sophical and theological work, it is a little startling to find philosophers (and likewise theologians, perhaps even biblical critics) animatedly muscling in on the irreducible importance of narrative and eagerly disavowing

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metaphysical claims to truth in the name of saying that all one can do is tell stories . . . It is sometimes as if they have never actually read a serious novel or understood its ways.52 Such ill-­advised claims frequently “betray a fundamental lack of understanding of what literature is and how it works,” and “a novel that is unrelated to any recognizable truth at all is boring, if not downright unreadable.”53 The authors/redactors of Numbers, I suggest, might have managed to combine a little attention to both truth and elegance—and this in a book that we have noticed is not among the Hebrew Bible’s most pointedly literary or sharply arranged texts. Even so, Prickett’s point, that any novel has some claim on truth if it is a novel worth the time it takes to read it, should be a simple and salutary reminder that the “truth” in view is really not much at all to do with “what happened,” wherever or whenever, and is much more concerned with questions of the realistic, ascriptive impress of the text upon the reader. The presenting question will thus continue to be: What sort of figure is there in this book, “in the wilderness”? At least, it will be the question for as long as the book is read—every year in the synagogue cycle; perhaps rather less frequently in the Christian church; and perhaps it has long since stopped being read by anyone else. The one thing needful is the eyes and ears with which to see and hear the figuration that draws this book out into wider networks of probing and challenging judgments, relating to matters of trust, suspicion, judgment itself, hope, priesthood, blessing, and all the many other topics that we have considered. Our final intertextual exhibit is David Mitchell’s 2006 novel Black Swan Green.54 Mitchell has offered various literary creations that demonstrate multilayered figural ramifications between one narrative and another, of which Cloud Atlas may be his most famous,55 but in Black Swan Green he pulls off the Henry James trick of narrating an adult world through the eyes of a child, in this case the troubled thirteen-­year-­ old Jason Taylor, living his way through a realistic (though not of course thereby factual) portrayal of England in 1982. Along the way Jason’s family falls apart, England goes to war (as actually happened in 1982), and thus some characters die, while others descend into disarray, anger, and despair. His youthful buoyancy keeps him going, even via occasional bursts of poetry or genealogical digression, in his own narrative of life in

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a kind of wilderness. There are hints of hope, of future blessings beyond his present vale of tears, but the book does not end with all that much optimism. As the final scene plays out, Jason’s big sister Julia tries to comfort him in the face of one more downward turn, as they are moving out of the family home: “It’ll be all right,” Julia’s gentleness makes it worse, “in the end, Jace.” “It doesn’t feel very all right.” “That’s because it’s not the end.”56

There are many reasons to lose heart with a book like Numbers. But the end is not yet. In the meantime, we are invited to take up and read. Behold, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear: the figure in the wilderness.

N OT E S

INTRODUCTION: A Map of the Wilderness

1.  This will emerge most fully toward the end of chapter 6 below. For further reflection see my “ ‘ These Are the Days of Elijah’: The Hermeneutical Move from ‘Applying the Text’ to ‘Living in Its World,’ ” Journal of Theological Interpretation 8 (2014): 157–74. 2. To be precise, I found myself writing a range of papers on specific chapters in the book, for details of which see the bibliography at the end. These included studies specifically attuned to obscurity, moral complexity, and the need for specific textual focus in developing hermeneutical proposals. 3.  Full documentation of all the writers and approaches mentioned here will be offered in the relevant chapters that follow. 4.  As well as the various writers discussed in the body of the book, I am indebted here to the wide-­ranging stimuli of the essays in Stanley D. Walters, ed., Go Figure! Figuration in Biblical Interpretation, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 81 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2008). 5.  Christopher R. Seitz, “History, Figural History, and Providence in the Dual Witness of Prophet and Apostle,” in Walters, Go Figure!, 5. 6.  See initially Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1.10. 7. Lewis Ayres, “The Word Answering the Word: Opening the Space of Catholic Biblical Interpretation,” in Theological Theology: Essays in Honour of John Webster, ed. R. David Nelson, Darren Sarisky, and Justin Stratis (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 41, with various caveats, and noting indebtedness to Frei. The last major section of chapter 5 below will offer a fuller discussion of this “literal sense,” which can in the end only be defined with theoretical precision in light of attending to its possibilities in practice. Clearly such a literal sense is not a singular phenomenon, without it thereby following that “anything goes.” I intend to pursue this question of what might be called “the vulnerability of 253

254   Notes to Pages 8–17

scripture” to multiple readings in a forthcoming project. A succinct pointer to the value (and indeed inevitability) of this multiple literal sense is Stephen E. Fowl, “The Importance of a Multivoiced Literal Sense of Scripture: The Example of Thomas Aquinas,” in Reading Scripture with the Church: Toward a Hermeneutic for Theological Interpretation, ed. A. K. M. Adam et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 35–50. The drift of the above discussion in my introduction is that the evaluation of the differences between various proposals in this area, such as those of Ayres and Fowl, will necessarily have some ecclesiological component. 8.  Interestingly, of course, cases of polemical omission of data would serve as a counterexample to this kind of claim. I cannot engage with that matter here, and do not in fact think that it is all that relevant to Numbers, but for some reflections on how it works hermeneutically in a case where it most assuredly is relevant, in Genesis 1–11, see my “The Hermeneutics of Reading Genesis after Darwin,” in Reading Genesis after Darwin, ed. Stephen C. Barton and David Wilkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 57–71. 9.  Walter Brueggemann, “The Exodus Narrative as Israel’s Articulation of Faith Development,” in Hope within History (Atlanta: John Knox, 1987), 8–9. Brueggemann’s focus here is Exodus, but it seems to me even more appropriate to Numbers.

ONE: The Figure in the Wilderness

1.  It was first published in 1896. The revised New York edition (c.1908) is available in Henry James, The Figure in the Carpet, and Other Stories, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin, 1986), 355–400. 2.  James’s New York preface is reprinted in Figure, 44–46; citation from 46. Kermode’s introduction in the same volume (7–30) discusses the tale as a series of jokes, while also noting its significant influence on a whole range of critical disciplines including reader-­response theory (26–28). 3.  Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 3–10 citation from 9–10. 4.  See, e.g., Mihály Szegedy-­Maszák, “Henry James and Reader-­Response Criticism (The Figure in the Carpet),” Neohelicon 27, no. 1 (2000): 61–68. 5.  See Stanley Fish, “Why No One’s Afraid of Wolfgang Iser,” in Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 68–86. Fish’s account has been rather influential, but a salutary caution here is argued by Zoltán Schwáb, who, in “Mind the Gap: The Impact of Wolfgang Iser’s Reader-­Response Criticism on Biblical

Notes to Pages 17–21   255

Studies—A Critical Assessment,” Literature and Theology 17 (2003): 170–81, shows that Iser operates with much the same kind of open-­endedness to multiple readings that concerns Fish. 6. Steiner, Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say? (London: Faber & Faber, 1990), 1–50, especially 39, 49. We shall return to these comments below. 7. Steiner, Real Presences, 17. 8.  Most famously in the “prefaces” written subsequent to his fiction, and also the 1884 essay “The Art of Fiction” (repr., Henry James, The Art of Fiction, and Other Essays [New York: Oxford University Press, 1948]). 9.  This is a phrase drawn from Ricoeur’s treatment of “the rhetoric between the text and its reader” (164–66) in his Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); cf. especially the statement that “the illusion is endlessly reborn that a text is a structure in itself and for itself ” (164); “structuré en soi et par soi” (3:239 in the French original, for which a more dynamic translation could easily be “self-­structuring in and for itself ”). 10.  See Gordon J. Wenham, Numbers, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Leicester: Inter-­Varsity, 1981), 14–18; or Wenham, Exploring the Old Testament, vol.1, The Pentateuch (London: SPCK, 2003), 104. 11.  See the discussion in chapter 3 below on Num. 10:35–36 for a further interesting point about “books” in this context. 12.  See Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible 4A (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 47, citing b. Sotah 36b, also Mishnah tractate Yoma 7:1. 13.  Franz Rosenzweig, “The Unity of the Bible: A Position Paper vis-­à-­vis Orthodoxy and Liberalism,” repr. in Scripture and Translation, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, trans. Lawrence Rosenwald with Everett Fox (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 23. 14.  Rosenzweig, “Unity of the Bible,” 23, and clarified by an editorial note (n. 4). It is also cited by Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, rev. ed., OTL (London: SCM, 1972), 42, although one wonders how many of von Rad’s readers have had ears to hear Rosenzweig’s subversive point. 15.  Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 129. 16.  Dennis T. Olson, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New: The Framework of the Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch, Brown Judaic Studies 71 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), 31. 17.  See Olson, Death of the Old, 43–53, entitled “The Case for the Book of Numbers as a Literary Unit.”

256   Notes to Pages 21–24

18.  John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, vol. 1, Israel’s Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 451. 19.  See many essays in the substantial volume edited by Thomas Römer, The Books of Leviticus and Numbers, BETL 215 (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), including Hendrick Jacob Koorevar, “The Books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, and the Macro-­Structural Problem of the Pentateuch,” 423–53, which raises comparable cautions to our own assertions about any significance of the boundaries of the book of Numbers, though Koorevar seems quite confident about redirecting attention to a differently constructed set of somewhat impermeable boundaries. 20.  John Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study, 2nd ed. (London: DLT, 1996), 100–101, entitled “A Literary Interpretation of the Canonical Method.” For Barton, Childs’s approach was one “literary” approach alongside many other kinds of approach to the Old Testament, which substantively recasts Childs’s project into something it had not previously been. The complexities of adequately assessing Childs’s work are admirably handled by Daniel R. Driver, Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church’s One Bible, FAT, 2nd ser., vol. 46 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). 21. Driver, Brevard Childs, e.g., 125–36. 22.  For an accessible presentation of this point see Nathan MacDonald, “The Book of Numbers,” in A Theological Introduction to the Pentateuch: Interpreting the Torah as Christian Scripture, ed. Richard S. Briggs and Joel N. Lohr (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 113–44, especially 118–20. A collection of essays attempting to work out its plausibility and possible significance is Christian Frevel, Thomas Pola, and Aaron Schart, eds., Torah and the Book of Numbers, FAT, 2nd ser., vol. 62 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). 23.  Konrad Schmid, The Old Testament: A Literary History (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 177. 24.  This is discussed more fully in chapter 6 below. 25.  For a lucid analysis of how such Jewish approaches traditionally bypass these kinds of questions see Benjamin D. Sommer, “Dialogical Biblical Theology: A Jewish Approach to Reading Scripture Theologically,” in Biblical Theology: Introducing the Conversation, ed. Leo Perdue (Library of Biblical Theology; Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 1–53 and 265–85, especially 13, though, as he goes on to illustrate, this does not mean that editorial decisions, addressed by an interpreter in source-­critical mode, might not be deemed significant (cf. 29–50). 26. Twenty-­ nine volumes, published by InterVarsity, 1998–2010, and described in terms of the glossa ordinaria in the illuminating study of Karlfried Froehlich, “Martin Luther and the Glossa Ordinaria,” in Biblical Interpretation

Notes to Pages 25–27   257

from the Church Fathers to the Reformation, Variorum Collected Studies Series (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 8:29–48, especially 29–30. 27.  So Neusner, the very scholar who supervised a translation of it! (cf. Jacob Neusner, Sifré to Numbers: An American Translation and Explanation, 2 vols., Brown Judaic Studies 118–19 [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986], 1:1–3, section titled “The Problem of Defining Sifré to Numbers”). The citation here is from Jacob Neusner, Rabbinic Literature: An Essential Guide (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), 63. 28. Origen, Homilies on Numbers, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009). 29.  E.g., Bede, “On the Resting-­Places of the Children of Israel,” in Bede: A Biblical Miscellany, trans. with notes and introduction by W. Trent Foley and A. G. Holder (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 29–34, on Numbers 33, a treatment apparently independent of Origen’s famous homily on this subject, noted below, and rather more interested in the “historical sense” of the chapter. Bede’s biblical commentary varied between addressing biblical books (e.g., Genesis, where he wrote a running commentary up to Gen. 21:10) and answering specific thematic questions, frequently architectural in nature (thus writings on the tabernacle or temple), which then generated commentary treatments (such as of Exod. 24:12–30:21 in addressing the tabernacle). 30.  See vols. 3–6 of his collected OT commentaries, which organize their treatment of much of the legal material by way of the Decalogue: John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, trans. Charles William Bingham, repr. ed., vols. 3–6 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005). 31.  In this regard see the illuminating discussion of the construction of “Mosaic discourse” in Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism, Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), esp. 16–19 and 39–40. 32.  See n. 28 above. 33.  See the preparatory chapter 1 of Steiner, Real Presences, entitled “A Secondary City,” 1–50. Note in particular this: “The central source of the triumph of the secondary is . . . [that] we crave remission from direct encounter with the ‘real presence’ ” (39). 34.  David L. Stubbs, Numbers, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009). 35.  Perhaps it is also worth suggesting that the exegetical excursus sections of Barth’s Church Dogmatics also demonstrate a willingness to work seriously but not seriatim with scripture. The question of what is really being achieved by his recurrent appeal to scripture in this way is explored in chapter 4 below.

258   Notes to Pages 28–30

36. Olson, Death of the Old, 18. Keil’s commentary, “The Fourth Book of Moses (Numbers),” is available in C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, trans. James Martin (10 volume reprint; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), vol. 1, The Pentateuch, 647–841. 37. Olson, Death of the Old, 9–13. Cf. the following: “By 1911 the source critics had won the day” (13). 38.  George Buchanan Gray, Numbers, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1903). 39. Olson, Death of the Old, 13–20; with reference to Gressmann’s Die Schriften des Alten Testaments (1914), though Olson actually indicates that the substance of Gressmann’s treatment of Numbers is more fully presented in an earlier work: Mose und seine Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913). See Olson, Death of the Old, 201n15. 40. Olson, Death of the Old, 20–30. This section effectively runs as far as Wenham’s 1981 commentary (Numbers) as a modern exemplar of a thematic approach. 41.  J. de Vaulx, Les Nombres, Sources Bibliques (Paris: Gabalda, 1972). 42. Olson, Death of the Old. Rarely has a book’s overall thesis been so precisely captured in its title. 43.  Dennis T. Olson, Numbers, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1996), 7–8. 44.  Won W. Lee, Punishment and Forgiveness in Israel’s Migratory Campaign (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 47. Knierim’s own view is presented briefly in Rolf P. Knierim, “The Book of Numbers,” in his The Task of Old Testament Theology: Method and Cases (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 380–88, and more fully in the work noted below (n. 46). 45. Lee, Punishment and Forgiveness, 279. 46.  Rolf P. Knierim and George W. Coats, Numbers, FOTL 4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 135. 47.  Mary Douglas, In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers, JSOTS 91 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993), 116. Several of her further essays on the book are found in Mary Douglas, Jacob’s Tears: The Priestly Work of Reconciliation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 48.  For a helpful review of the literature here see Olivier Artus, “Le problème de l’unité littéraire et de la spécificité théologique du livre des Nombres,” in Römer, Books of Leviticus and Numbers, 121–43. Artus focuses on Olson and Lee, relegating Douglas’s work to a footnote. 49. Klaus Seybold, Die aaronitische Segen: Studien zu Numeri 6.22–27 (Neukirchen-­Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1977), 54, quoted in Gordon J. Wenham, Numbers, Old Testament Guides (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 40.

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50.  Philip J. Budd, Numbers, Word Biblical Commentary 5 (Waco, TX: Word, 1984), xxv–xxvii. 51. Budd, Numbers, xxx–xxxi. 52.  Eryl W. Davies, Numbers, New Century Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), lvii–lxvi. 53.  Martin Noth, Numbers, OTL (London: SCM, 1968), 11. 54.  Timothy R. Ashley, The Book of Numbers, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 8. 55.  Thus Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Numbers: Journeying with God, International Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 1–2. 56. Stubbs, Numbers, 26. 57.  Josef Forsling, Composite Artistry in the Book of Numbers: A Study in Biblical Narrative Conventions, Studia Theologica Holmiensa 22 (Åbo, Finland: Åbo Akademi University Press, 2013). 58.  John Barton, The Nature of Biblical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 164. 59.  For more on the methodological problems of Barton’s sweeping generalization here see R. W. L. Moberly, “Biblical Criticism and Religious Belief,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 2, no. 1 (2008): 71–100. 60.  There is much for biblical interpreters to learn in this regard from Sarah Coakley’s rendering of theological inquiry as the training and shaping of our imaginative and spiritual desires: God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay “On the Trinity” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 61.  Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 349.

TWO: Trust and Suspicion

1.  Christian scholars who denigrate the Old Testament, or, worse, the God of the Old Testament, for supposedly Christocentric reasons often seem stunningly oblivious to this kind of anti-­Jewish element of their work. The most worrying such example I have come across is Adrian Thatcher’s blunt comment on the God of the Old Testament (specifically in connection with “Ezekiel’s God” as received by “a generation of readers influenced by critical study of the Bible”): “In the name of Jesus Christ this God needs to be removed from the moral and religious consciousness of such humanity” (The Savage Text: The Use and Abuse of the Bible, Blackwell Manifestos [Chichester: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2008], 87). Is he not troubled that such an opinion keeps ugly company down through history?

260   Notes to Pages 36–43

2.  Menachem Kellner, “And Yet, the Texts Remain: The Problem of the Command to Destroy the Canaanites,” in The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites in Jewish Thought, ed. Katell Berthelot, Joseph E. David, and Marc Hirshman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 153–79. 3.  Ibid., 153. The further citations here are all taken from pp. 153–54. 4.  Ibid., 170. 5.  Ibid., 171, and summarizing his final paragraph on 171. 6.  Such debates about the book’s origin are these days entwined with the proposed Reichsautorisation of the Torah in the Persian period, or “imperial authorization.” See, among others, Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson, eds., The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007). 7.  This is one burden of my account in The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretive Virtue, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010). 8.  This discussion is drawn from, and in some ways develops, my “Juniper Trees and Pistachio Nuts: Trust and Suspicion as Modes of Scriptural Imagination,” Theology 112 (2009): 353–63. 9.  Yann Martel, Life of Pi (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2002), 57. 10.  Ibid., 64. 11.  Ibid., 302. 12.  Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), 237–78. 13.  See Mark Allan Powell, Chasing the Eastern Star: Adventures in Biblical Reader-­Response Criticism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 57–74. Powell talks in terms of a reading that assumes what the text assumes and that is interested to learn what the text then adds, though this may need some nuancing with respect to Christian readings of the Old Testament, and perhaps reflects Powell’s own New Testament–related focus. Nevertheless, I still think this cate­ gory can be a useful ad hoc way of cutting across a dense theoretical debate without especially prejudging the more philosophical issues at stake. 14.  C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 19. Less widely noted is a later statement in which he attributes more or less this advice to Matthew Arnold (ibid., 120). 15.  Stephen Spender, “Remembering Eliot,” in T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work, ed. Allen Tate (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967), 46, and cited also in Barton, Reading the Old Testament, 148. 16.  T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday, repr. in The Complete Poems and Plays (London: Faber & Faber, 1969), 91.

Notes to Pages 43–47   261

17.  This Eliot story has often been noted in biblical studies, though apparently only by those not much interested in the quoted line’s role in Ash Wednesday, nor the intertextual resonance with Ezekiel 37 for which it paves the way, e.g., Dennis Nineham, The Use and Abuse of the Bible (London: SPCK, 1976), 250. 18. Barton, Reading the Old Testament, 164. 19.  From “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (NIV; ESV), to “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth . . .” (NRSV), and even Everett Fox’s “At the beginning of God’s creating . . .” (cf. Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses: A New Translation with Introductions, Commentary, and Notes, vol. 1 of The Schocken Bible [Dallas: Word, 1995], 11). 20.  I refer the interested reader to my study of trust in and through this passage in Virtuous Reader, 113–27. Among the many and various resources about trust discussed there, note particularly Richard B. Hays, “A Hermeneutic of Trust,” in The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 190–201. 21. See Virtuous Reader, 106–13, in dialogue with the work of Hans Frei. 22. Voltaire, Candide; Or, Optimism, 1759, repr. in Voltaire, Candide, and Other Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 99–100. 23.  Unless otherwise noted, biblical quotations throughout this book are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). On occasion, I will alter NRSV by replacing “the Lord” with YHWH. 24.  See my “Reading the Sotah Text (Numbers 5:11–31): Holiness and a Hermeneutic Fit for Suspicion,” Biblical Interpretation 17 (2009): 288–319. On the details and early history of interpretation see Lisa Grushcow, Writing the Wayward Wife: Rabbinic Interpretations of Sotah, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 62 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). For a constructive and thorough exegetical analysis that remains within the orbit of the sexual subject matter of the passage see Hilary Lipka, Sexual Transgression in the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Bible Monographs 7 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 102–21, arguing that the text “presents adultery as a crime that violates both religious and communal boundaries.” 25. Noth, Numbers, 52. 26.  Alice Bach, ed., Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1999), 461–522, incorporating five significant articles. 27.  See Alice Bach, “Good to the Last Drop: Viewing the Sotah (Numbers 5.11–31) as the Glass Half Empty and Wondering How to View It Half Full,” in The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, ed. J. Cheryl Exum and David J. A. Clines, JSOTS 143 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 26–54, esp. 52. 28. Budd, Numbers, 67; Ashley, Numbers, 122; W. H. Bellinger, Leviticus, Numbers, New International Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament 3

262   Notes to Pages 47–48

(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001), 198. The reference to “self-­described” here is to the nature of the commentary series cited. 29.  Ronald B. Allen, “Numbers,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 2, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 744. 30. Ashley, Numbers, 124. 31.  Dorothy Irvin, “Numbers,” in The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Catherine Clark Kroeger and Mary J. Evans (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 77. She also notes, rather oddly, that “this ordeal seems to be slanted in favor of the woman.” Her contribution is a rather strained attempt to fulfill the optimistic requirements of a one-­volume commentary that is both encouraging to women readers and also a careful scholarly analysis of the texts in their original (i.e., authorial) contexts. 32. Wenham, Numbers (1981), 85. 33.  See my survey in Briggs, “Sotah Text,” 302–6. On the contrasting issues raised by avowedly evangelical and avowedly feminist approaches see my “Hermeneutics by Numbers? Case Studies in Feminist and Evangelical Interpretation of the Book of Numbers,” in Tamar’s Tears: Evangelical Engagements with Feminist Old Testament Hermeneutics, ed. Andrew Sloane (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 65–83, from which some of the above points are taken. 34.  For a different but not unrelated nonliteral reading, availing itself of the theological resources of typology, see Nathan MacDonald, “ ‘Gone Astray’ Dealing with the Sotah (Num 5:11–31),” in Walters, Go Figure!, 48–64. As will become clear in later chapters, I think MacDonald’s reading is one model of exactly what is needed in Christian theological interpretation. 35.  Briggs, “Sotah Text,” especially 306–11, much of which I summarize here. 36.  The language of suspicion (qana’), which is prominent in chapter 5, is usually translated as being “jealous” (e.g., NRSV). 37.  I cite here my own conclusion from Briggs, “Sotah Text,” 311. 38.  See chapter 4 below. 39. Lee, Punishment and Forgiveness, 217, and 213–79 more generally. 40.  The basic sense of the verb (‘aman) that interests us here is the hiphil— he’emin—meaning “to believe” or “trust,” depending on the preposition that follows (l– indicating “believing that” and b– indicating “believing in”). The hiphil sense of “trusting in” occurs twice in Numbers, in the two verses discussed here. The niphal usage (ne’eman; faithful; established) is unique in the book to 12:7, as will be noted. For completeness: the qal sense occurs at 11:12 (generally translated as a substantive, “nurse”), and the adverbial sense occurs in repeated form at 5:22 as “Amen. Amen.” Precise figures for overall Old Testament occurrences depend on various construals of the text, but are approximately as follows: 7x

Notes to Pages 49–55   263

qal, 51x hiphil (of which 23x with b– and 17x with l–), 46x niphal, and 30x as “amen.” 41.  For an instructive parallel, note that the study of Olivier Artus, Etudes sur le livre des Nombres: Récit, histoire et loi en Nb 13,1–20,13 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), restricts itself to chapters 13–20 in its exploration of a thesis not unlike Olson’s regarding death and renewal. 42.  Garrett Green, Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination: The Crisis of Interpretation at the End of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 21. 43. Green, Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination, 203; cf. more generally Briggs, Virtuous Reader, 107–8. 44.  Jeffrey Stout, The Flight from Authority (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 147. 45.  Jeffrey Stout, Ethics after Babel (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1988), 163. 46.  Paul Ricoeur, Freud & Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 27.

THREE: “Fraught with Background”

1.  Only mentioned elsewhere in Deut. 9:22 in clear dependence on this verse. 2.  Angela R. Roskop, The Wilderness Itineraries: Genre, Geography, and the Growth of Torah, History, Archaeology, and Culture of the Levant 3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011). Roskop offers a probing reading of “itinerary” texts as Israelite “annals,” ideological works engaged in a creative but constrained attempt to map the journey to the promised land. There is, though, no reference to “Taberah” in her whole discussion. 3.  The phrasing is not identical, but is close: wayyiqrā’ shēm-­hammāqōm hahu’ in v. 3, and the same with an object marker before the shēm in v. 34. The only closely related phrasing elsewhere in Numbers is at 13:24: “That place was called . . . ,” which is lammāqōm hahu’ qārā’, with no shēm. 4.  gonguzō (or occasionally diagonguzō). See John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Numbers, Septuagint and Cognate Studies 46 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 160. 5.  It is a hithpolel participle kemit’onnîm, with the prefixed k-­ probably meaning “like.” The verb only occurs elsewhere at Lam. 3:39 (“Why should any who draw breath complain?”).

264   Notes to Pages 56–58

6.  J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-­Stories,” in Tree and Leaf (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975; first published 1964), 54. 7.  The world of faerie is weakly remaindered in the post-­Disney Western imagination as a world of cute fairy stories where the protagonists are miniature doll-­like creatures with minimal powers and slightly quirky senses of humor. But the long and powerful tradition of faerie aspires to an altogether darker and more difficult map of the universe, most famously captured, of course, in Spenser’s Fairie Queene (1590–96). For a lucid discussion of the difficulties of defining “Faery,” see Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis (London: SPCK, 2005), 15–18. 8.  The key framework for Frei’s argument is found in Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 1–16. 9.  Ibid., 10. 10.  Ibid., 12. 11.  In my own view the most helpful specific discussion is that of George Hunsinger, “Afterword: Hans Frei as Theologian,” in Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, by Hans W. Frei, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New Haven: Oxford University Press, 1993), 233–70. Other useful resources on Frei’s approach include Mike Higton, Christ, Providence & History: Hans W. Frei’s Public Theology (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), esp. 136–50; Ben Fulford, Divine Eloquence and Human Transformation: Rethinking Scripture and History through Gregory of Nazianzus and Hans Frei (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 191–271. 12.  See his essay “The ‘Literal Reading’ of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?,” in Theology and Narrative, 117–52, esp. 122–23; and perhaps most clearly his Types of Christian Theology, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 125 (cf. also 84). 13.  Although Barr often made this point in connection with his discussions of “fundamentalism,” a convenient survey of his concerns may be found in his 1989 article “Literality,” reprinted in Bible and Interpretation: The Collected Essays of James Barr, vol. 1, Interpretation and Theology, ed. John Barton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 111–26. The point is helpfully developed by Barton himself in his concern to emphasize the primarily literary focus of historical-­critical inquiry as it is usually practiced in biblical studies; cf. Nature of Biblical Criticism, 69–116, esp. 101–16, where he opts for “plain sense” as the meaning in view.

Notes to Pages 59–67   265

14.  A prominent advocate of this argument is N. T. Wright, in The Resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK, 2003), 20–23, although Wright’s account appears not to understand Frei very helpfully. 15.  Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953; first published in German in 1946). 16.  There is no textual justification for the common suggestion that a year reference has dropped out here. See further the discussion that follows. 17.  So Levine, Numbers 1–20, 295; though Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), xii, suggests that chapters 7–9 are flashbacks recalled during the governing time-­frame. 18.  Mark S. Smith, “Matters of Space and Time in Exodus and Numbers,” in Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs, ed. Christopher Seitz and Kathryn Greene-­McCreight (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 182–207, esp. 193–98. 19.  Arguably Milgrom’s self-­confessedly puzzled discussion of chronology falters for unwillingness to make such a distinction between what happened and what the text says. Milgrom, Numbers, xi. 20.  Hobab (a Midianite) is presented as Moses’ father-­in-­law (v. 29); cf. also only Judg. 1:16 and 4:11 (though in Judges he is a Kenite). The complication is that the father of Zipporah, Moses’ wife, is Reuel in Exod. 2:18, although he is then in turn Jethro in Exod. 18. Various attempts to harmonize this data posit that perhaps Reuel is a clan name, that one or more of these names describes Moses’ son-­in-­law, and that the Kenites are one clan within the confederation of Midianites—on all of which see Milgrom, Numbers, 78. Most likely the history cannot be reconstructed, and little is gained by wondering which textual designation is “right.” 21.  Elsewhere only found in Ps. 107:21–26, 40, where it occurs seven times. 22.  This paragraph summarizes the discussion offered by John Barton, “What Is a Book? Modern Exegesis and the Literary Conventions of Ancient Israel,” in The Old Testament: Canon, Literature and Theology; Collected Essays of John Barton, SOTSMS (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 137–47, esp. 137–38. 23.  There is a comparable reminder that manna was real food in Exod. 16:31. 24.  The word is hitqaddeshu—a hithpael reflexive imperative. Milgrom, Numbers, 384–86, offers a discussion of what this might mean under the rubric of “sanctification: preparation for theophany,” suggesting that it is a technical term used to refer to purification through bathing. This may perhaps take him some distance from the presenting concerns of a text set in the wilderness.

266   Notes to Pages 67–71

25.  E.g., Calvin: “By taking from him some portion of His Spirit to distribute amongst the others, He inflicts upon him that mark of disgrace which he deserved” (Four Last Books of Moses, 4:24). Calvin recognized that this was a minority view. 26. Origen, Homilies on Numbers 6.2.1. 27.  See, e.g., m. San. 1:6, and for further details Milgrom, Numbers, 86–87. Note that the Targum repoints yāsāphu as yāsuphu, hence “and they did not stop,” perhaps to lead into the later tradition; cf. Tg. Ps-­J. 11:26. 28.  Roger D. Cotton, “The Pentecostal Significance of Numbers 11,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 10 (2001): 3. He closes the article with, “Numbers 11 has great significance for Christians today” (10). 29. Wenham, Numbers (1981), 109. 30.  The word is vayyitnabbe’u, a hithpael form of the verb “to prophesy,” defined in this way by, for example, BDB, 612. 31.  John R. Levison, “Prophecy in Ancient Israel: The Case of the Ecstatic Elders,” CBQ 65 (2003): 504–5. 32.  As Milgrom (Numbers, 92) notes, ba-­‘am is literally “among the people,” with the implication that it is only some who are struck here, perhaps the “rabble” identified in v. 4. While commentators divide over whether this is the way to read the passage, it is doubtful whether it would resolve the issues raised here in any case. 33.  Whether it will stretch as far as Origen’s reading of it using the Septuagint’s “tombs of lust” as representing the flesh being put to death by the death of Christ is a point we shall consider when we come to Origen’s famous reading of chapter 33 (cf. Origen, Homilies 27.12.3). 34. Gray, Numbers, 98. Even so, Gray could not really demarcate J and E here, and Levine calls the whole a “coherent” and “fused” ( JE) narrative (Numbers 1–20, 327–28), so in practice it is not so straightforward. 35.  So Benjamin D. Sommer, “Reflecting on Moses: The Redaction of Numbers 11,” JBL 118 (1999): 601–24. 36.  Pamela Tamarkin Reis, “Numbers XI: Seeing Moses Plain,” Vetus Testamentum 55 (2005): 207–31. She sees Moses leading God on to taking responsibility for the people in the midst of his judgment, and thereby performing a quail’s “broken-­wing act,” feigning injury (228–29). Readings are rarely impossible, but this one strikes me as implausible. 37.  Ellen Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 2001), 202–8. 38.  Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 381; cf. also 363–69.

Notes to Pages 71–76   267

39.  In fact “While they were at Hazeroth,” at the beginning of 12:1, is part of 11:35 in Hebrew, and could be translated as “and so they stayed at Hazeroth.” 40.  See Gray, Numbers, 120, and the additional evidence of Deut. 1:1 in the LXX, which translates it there as Aulōn (“courts, enclosures”); cf. Wevers, Notes, 182. The general cautions of Roskop, Wilderness Itineraries (see n. 2 above) remain also pertinent. 41.  Some emend “Cush” to “Cushan,” putting it in the vicinity of Midian according to Hab. 3:7, and thereby allowing the wife of Numbers 12 to be Zipporah, but overall this is not a compelling proposal. 42. This matter and many others concerning Numbers 12 are treated at greater length, with full reference to other discussions, in my Virtuous Reader, 45–69. On the question of Moses’ wife see esp. 55–59. 43.  E.g., Cain Hope Felder, “Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 135–37. 44.  Phyllis Trible, “Bringing Miriam out of the Shadows,” Bible Review 5, no. 1 (1989): 170–90; repr. in A Feminist Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy, ed. Athalya Brenner, Feminist Companion to the Bible 6 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 166–86. 45.  Rita J. Burns, Has the Lord Indeed Spoken Only through Moses? A Study of the Biblical Portrait of Miriam, SBLDS 84 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 46–48. 46.  On humility in this verse see further Briggs, Virtuous Reader, 45–69. 47.  The Hebrew of the beginning of v. 6 is problematic on any reading, but the overall sense seems discernible. See, e.g., Levine, Numbers 1–20, 329–31. 48.  Dennis T. Olson, “Between Humility and Authority: The Interplay of the Judge-­Prophet Laws (Deuteronomy 16:18–17:13) and the Judge-­Prophet Narratives of Moses,” in Character Ethics and the Old Testament: Moral Dimensions of Scripture, ed. M. Daniel Carroll R. and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 57. 49.  See, for instance, the New Testament topos of “blaspheming against the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 12:31//Mark 3:29 and comparably Luke 12:10). 50. Sakenfeld, Numbers, 83. 51.  Milgrom points out that spitting in the Old Testament lacks any sense of magical power but is basically a matter of humiliation, citing Deut. 25:9 and Isa. 50:6 (Numbers, 98). 52. Auerbach, Mimesis, 15. 53.  Ibid., 14–15.

268   Notes to Pages 76–79

54.  See chapter 2’s discussion, above, of Lewis, Experiment in Criticism. 55.  In Yvonne Sherwood’s words: “We would rather keep hold of the Hebrew Bible’s supreme literary prize” than explore Auerbach in his own context: see her “Abraham in London, Marburg-­Istanbul and Israel: Between Theocracy and Democracy, Ancient Text and Modern State,” Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008): 127; and cf. 122–32 for her probing analysis of Auerbach’s political context. I note especially her plaintive reflection that “Biblical commentary on Gen. 22 often feels like an earnest excursion into etymology and archaeology, strangely cut off from questions of religious, existential, social and political resonance” (149). While Sherwood’s response is via the high seas of theory, and mine is not, this is close to many such comments regarding commentary on Numbers that I have found myself making in the present book. 56. Auerbach, Mimesis, 11–13, but drawing on the whole of “Odysseus’ Scar,” 3–23. 57.  Sherwood, “Abraham in London,” 127, citing various classical scholars. 58. Auerbach, Mimesis, 23. 59.  Sherwood offers a compelling reading of Auerbach’s literary framework as a manifestation of his theo-­political commitments to theocracy in the face of Nazism and the holocaust (“Abraham in London,” 127–32). This seems a likely account of why he argues as he does, but does not add up to an evaluation of the resultant literary merits of so doing. 60. Auerbach, Mimesis, 14, and in some of the citations just offered. 61.  The most useful account of Auerbach’s work for those with theological/ hermeneutical interests is John David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), esp. 83–113, a chapter entitled “The Figure in the Fulfillment: Erich Auerbach.” Dawson offers an overview of some aspects of his main argument in his article “Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Christian Identity in Boyarin, Auerbach and Frei,” Modern Theology 14 (1998): 181–96. 62.  On Dante as the pivot, note also the strikingly strange significance attributed to him in Auerbach’s book-­length study Dante: Poet of the Secular World, trans. Ralph Manheim (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961; repr., New York: New York Review of Books, 2007; first published in German in 1929). 63.  The figural/figurative distinction is a particular focus of Dawson, “Figural Reading,” esp. 188. 64.  Writing about Auerbach’s use of terms like “historicity” and “historical reality,” Dawson says, “For Auerbach, these terms do not designate the occurrence-­ character of events—the fact that they ‘take place.’ Rather, by historical reality or

Notes to Pages 79–86   269

historicity, he refers, as does Boyarin, to the concrete, material reality of persons and events in the past.” Christian Figural Reading, 10. 65. Auerbach, Mimesis, 16. 66.  Ibid., 48. 67.  Ibid., 47–48. 68.  Erich Auerbach, “Figura,” in Selected Essays of Erich Auerbach: Time, History, and Literature, ed. James I. Porter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014; first published in German in 1938), 96. This passage is also part-­cited, in a slightly less transparent translation, in Mimesis, 73. 69.  Auerbach, “Figura,” 100. 70.  So Mike Higton, “The Fulfilment of History in Barth, Frei, Auerbach and Dante,” in Conversing with Barth, ed. John C. McDowell and Mike Higton, Barth Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 120–41, esp. 123. Higton’s piece offers helpful ways of seeing how (and how far) Frei drew from Auerbach. 71.  And thus as Dawson notes, helpfully, the metaphor of “eclipse” works rather differently for the two authors: for Auerbach what is eclipsed is God (by humans, after Dante, in temporal terms), whereas for Frei what is eclipsed is the narrative that brokers reality to us, in conceptual terms; cf. Dawson, “Figural Reading,” 191. 72. Dawson, Christian Figural Reading, 216. The complexity of Dawson’s concluding discussion is directly attributable to his laudable attempt to isolate ways in which “the classic Christian figural reader’s claim that God has chosen to lead human beings into new modes of life” (217) either does or does not implicate Christians in negative evaluations of Jewish beliefs and practices; hence his comment cited above that this is not the cause of “unqualified celebration.” At the very least, he successfully shows ways in which this multifaceted issue does not lead inevitably to supersessionism. 73.  Auerbach, “Figura,” 78.

FOUR: “What Did You Go Out into the Wilderness to See?”

1.  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, 14 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75), IV/2, 478–83 (hereafter CD). Barth in fact uses this very example as an occasion to comment on the hermeneutical issues at stake in taking a “history” narrative and reading it with a “tested and critical naivety” (479). 2.  The word only occurs in verbal forms in the passage, from the verb tor, “to seek out,” “spy out,” or “explore” (BDB). Given the context, therefore, “to

270   Notes to Pages 87–90

scout” seems a fair translation, and hence “scouts.” Contrast the use of language of “spying” (ragal) in Num. 21:32, and in the Deuteronomic version of this incident (Deut. 1:24, on which see below). 3.  Michael Widmer, Moses, God, and the Dynamics of Intercessory Prayer, FAT, 2nd ser., vol. 8 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 236–328. Cf. also Keith Condie, “Narrative Features of Numbers 13–14 and their significance for the meaning of the Book of Numbers,” Reformed Theological Review 60, no. 3 (2001): 123–37. 4. Barth, CD IV/2, 479. 5.  Of the present story Condie highlights that “the human attribute at the centre of this story is trust, or lack thereof ” (“Narrative Features,” 136). 6.  The redoubtable redactional analysis of Reinhard Achenbach is thorough as always, though not in fact located in his main study (Die Vollendung der Tora: Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Numeribuchs im Kontext von Hexateuch und Pentateuch, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Altorientalishe und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 3 [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003]), but in a separate article: “Die Erzählung von der gescheiterten Landnahme von Kadesch Barnea (Numeri 13–14) als Schlüsseltext der Redaktionsgeschichte des Pentateuchs,” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 9 (2003): 56–123. 7.  E.g., the fact that Moses does the sending in v. 3. See especially Milgrom, Numbers, 100. 8.  This is a frequent feature of source analyses and is one of the reasons why the present work does not see them as indispensable to the tasks of theological interpretation. 9.  Richard S. Briggs, “On ‘Seeing’ What God Is ‘Saying’: Rereading Biblical Narrative in Dialogue with Kevin Vanhoozer’s Remythologizing Theology,” Southeastern Theological Review 5, no. 1 (2014): 61–82. 10.  It occurs approximately twenty times in the Old Testament and first appears in Exod. 3:8, 17. 11.  Nathan MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 7–9. 12.  The word is ‘ephes, an unusual word for “however” which is possibly particularly strong; cf. BDB 67. 13.  Most likely Num. 13:33 was drawing upon some sense of the mythically sized Nephilim without making reference to Gen. 6:4 as a prior canonical text, though it is not implausible that the tradition retained in Gen. 6:1–4 was known, even if not a part of any book of Genesis at the time Num. 13 was written. Note that Gen. 6:4 explicitly says the Nephilim were on the earth “in those days—and

Notes to Pages 91–94   271

also afterwards,” to indicate that this reference within the preflood narrative may be correlated with postflood narratives. As to what the Nephilim actually were, the text of Numbers does not say, and simply requires the reader to know that one would not wish to engage them in combat. 14.  For a lucid exposition of this theme as it relates to interpretation in particular see Timothy Houston Polk, The Biblical Kierkegaard: Reading by the Rule of Faith (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 49–90. 15.  Though the literature is full of speculation as to the reason for this form of abasement, including the intriguing suggestion that this is a way of marking that it is YHWH who will respond and not them. For a thorough discussion see Widmer, Moses, 268. 16. The absence of Joshua to this point leads inevitably to the source-­ critical suggestion that we have been dealing with a “Calebite” source in amongst the other texts. With Joshua and Caleb then taken as representing the North (Ephraim) and the South ( Judah), respectively, it then becomes possible to talk of northern and southern traditions being merged in the final account. Is this what happened? Possibly, though the light it sheds on the final text is provisional, and also not extensive. 17.  Milgrom notes the rabbinic view that it perhaps refers to the guardian angel associated with any land (Numbers, 109). 18.  For a full review of the historical-­critical issues here see Widmer, Moses, 236–53. 19.  This is one reason why, speaking in terms of the historical development of the text, it is clearly plausible that the prayer is a later composition to fit the moment, though to point that out in the midst of engagement with the substance of the text is rather akin to saying “it’s only a model” when Camelot comes into view on the cinema screen. 20.  See Benno Jacob, who shows in The Second Book of the Bible: Exodus (New York: Ktav, 1992) that the precise enumeration of the thirteen attributes apropos the text of Exod. 34 is disputed. 21.  For a full analysis of the ways in which Num. 14:18 does and does not echo Exod. 34:6–7 see Nathan C. Lane, The Compassionate but Punishing God: A Canonical Analysis of Exodus 34:6–7 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010), 50–59, where it is called “the most complete rehearsal of the credo found in the Hebrew Bible” (50); cf. Widmer, Moses, 309. 22.  The major treatment of this issue is Katharine D. Sakenfeld, “The Problem of Divine Forgiveness in Numbers 14,” CBQ 37 (1975): 317–30, which emphasizes forgiveness as divine preservation of the covenant.

272   Notes to Pages 95–103

23.  As per the “Calebite” theory noted above. 24.  It is a particular achievement of Widmer’s account of Num. 14 that he demonstrates ways of reading the text both in historical-­critical terms and canonical terms (Moses, 236–80). 25.  Cf. Ashley, Numbers, 260–61, which lists the Talmud’s version from Arakin 15b. 26.  In connection with chapter 33, for instance. A most illuminating mythopoetic reading is offered by Bernard F. Batto, “The Reed Sea: Requiescat in Pace,” in In the Beginning: Essays on Creation Myths in the Ancient Near East and the Bible, Siphrut 9 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 158–74. For Batto, the “red sea” functions as something like the “sea at the end of the world,” representing death or the end of hope, and it is time to lay aside the standard critical attempt to talk about “the reed sea.” One might say that Batto offers a way of understanding such references in our narrative in ascriptive terms, rather than descriptive terms. 27. Olson, Death of the Old, esp. 144–52. Cf. chapter 1 above in the present book. 28.  Levine suggests “pounded them to pieces” (Numbers 1–20, 371–72). 29.  On the level of such a general observation Lee’s work is helpful (Punishment and Forgiveness, esp. 213–79), though his book defends the centrality of chapters 13–14 at the cost of a rather excessive polemic against Dennis Olson’s alternative proposal. 30.  For a thorough study of a whole range of other comparative Old Testament texts see Aaron Schart, “The Spy Story and the Final Redaction of the Hexateuch,” in Frevel, Pola, and Schart, Torah and the Book of Numbers, 164–200. Schart is very helpful on the details of various recensions, but brief to the point of noncommittal evasion in all of one concluding paragraph on “theological implications” (197). 31.  Another relevant Old Testament source is Moses’ brief recounting of the episode later in the book of Numbers itself, at 32:8–13, though this neither diverges from nor adds much to the account in chapters 13–14. 32.  Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1961), 159. Kaufmann’s book is an abridgment and translation (by Moshe Greenberg) of the seven-­volume Hebrew original published from 1937 to 1948. 33. Barth, CD IV/2, 378, in the theme statement for the whole of §65 (pp. 378–498). Further page references are in the text. 34. Barth, CD IV/1, 358, in the corresponding theme statement for §60.

Notes to Pages 104–107   273

35.  This excursus is not our focus, but it does make for an odd account with respect to “sloth.” Strangely, Barth does not mention 2 Sam. 11:1, the obvious verse that makes the story a candidate for slothful illumination, as it were, and the passing reference to 11:2 (466) is given no weight. Rather, David’s sin in the passage is clearly presented by Barth in terms more redolent of the pride that was his focus in IV/1—“in a sudden act of wicked arrogance” (465)—and is only drawn tangentially toward “sloth” by Barth’s depiction of David’s various deeds in the story as “primitive and undignified and brutal” (465), or in other words, as not in any way appropriately kingly. It is then perhaps a tale of the sloth of the moral order, rather than David? 36.  This approach is explicitly broadened by Barth to relate to all four Old Testament readings from §65, but perhaps one might go even further and suggest that this paragraph is one particularly lucid statement of how Barth reads the Old Testament in general in the Church Dogmatics? 37.  At the end of his teaching in Bonn, forced to depart from Germany, Barth is quoted as saying, “Listen to my last piece of advice: exegesis, exegesis and yet more exegesis!” Cited in Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 259; cf. 255–59 for a discussion of the context. 38. James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 203. On Barr’s lack of sympathy with Barth on the question of natural theology, to the point where he appears unable actually to see what Barth is saying, see the gentle rejoinder of Anthony C. Thiselton, “Barr on Barth and Natural Theology: A Plea for Hermeneutics in Historical Theology; Review Article of J. Barr’s Biblical Faith and Natural Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 47 (1994): 519–28. 39.  This is Walter Brueggemann’s characterization of Barr’s style in Barr’s lengthy 1999 study The Concept of Biblical Theology. See Brueggemann, “James Barr on Old Testament Theology: A Review of The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 22 (2000): 68. Christopher Seitz uses the same two terms—“embarrassing” and “ad hominem”—in the same connection: Christopher R. Seitz, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-­Testament Bible, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 45n40. Seitz’s whole discussion of alleged “preju­ dicial ‘dogmatic’ predisposition” (43–48) is relevant to our discussion, though with a slightly different focus. 40.  Note the useful discussion of Barth as “forerunner” to the “recovery” of theological interpretation in recent times, in Daniel J. Treier, Introducing

274   Notes to Pages 107–111

Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 11. On pp. 14–20 Treier talks variously of Barth as “pioneer,” “contemporary inspiration,” “influence,” “motivation,” and “model” for the more recent work he surveys. 41.  Donald Wood, Barth’s Theology of Interpretation, Barth Studies Series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), xii. Wood’s discussion is an excellent account of Barth’s early views up to and including CD I. Sadly, his approach leaves untouched the question of how later volumes of the Dogmatics operate interpretively, despite his reference to Hans Frei’s “well-­known preference for the later volumes of the Church Dogmatics over Barth’s prolegomena” (Wood, Barth’s Theology of Interpretation, 41n137), in reference to Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, e.g., viii. This particular earlier/later issue with Barth is in part the focus of the account of David F. Ford, “Barth’s Interpretation of the Bible,” in Karl Barth: Studies of His Theological Methods, ed. S. W. Sykes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 55–87. 42.  One is familiar, for example, with the parallel claim that the discussion of “Man and Woman,” and especially of family life, in CD III/4 (§54), is overly constrained by Barth’s own personal circumstances. 43.  See also further my discussion in Virtuous Reader, 167–92, esp. 188–92. 44. Barth, CD IV/3/1, §70 (434–61). The only scriptural passage adduced to this discussion concerns Job’s three friends, whose falsehood exemplifies “the pious lie” (453; cf. 453–61). For an appreciative though ultimately critical reading of Barth here see Susannah Ticciati, Job and the Disruption of Identity: Reading beyond Barth (London: T&T Clark, 2005). 45.  This task is beyond us here, though relevant to the theological reading of scriptural texts about sin. Among the resources I have found helpful here are Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); Christof Gestrich, The Return of Splendor in the World: The Christian Doctrine of Sin and Forgiveness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); Marguerite Shuster, The Fall and Sin: What We Have Become as Sinners (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). Still outstanding is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3, DBWE 3 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997). 46. Benoît Bourgine, L’Herméneutique Théologique de Karl Barth: Exégèse et dogmatique dans le quatrième volume de la “Kirchliche Dogmatik,” BETL 171 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003). Page references are in the text; translations are my own. I am conscious of the possibility of having missed further discussion of it in Barth scholarship, but Bourgine’s was the only substantial discussion I was able to discover.

Notes to Pages 112–118   275

47. Though he also defends the much-­contested view that Barth’s Fides quaerens intellectum (in 1931) represented a turning point in that work, and Bourgine seeks to characterize only the latter, post-­1931 approach (99–129). 48. Stubbs, Numbers, 130 (see n. 18). Barth’s only other extended discussion of Numbers concerns the Aaronic blessing in chapter 6, which Stubbs does cite (Numbers, 78). 49.  His Catholic project may have had its own reasons for restricting the theological interlocutors to those from the early centuries of the church. Barth and all other modern theologians are absent. 50.  See de Vaulx, Les Nombres, 177. 51.  De Vaulx, Les Nombres, 169–70, with full references to these and more. 52. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, 194; followed, admittedly, by the judgment that de Vaulx “was not always successful” in bridging between traditional and critical approaches. 53.  Indeed, arguably, critical objections to readings characterized by faith commitments generally have to reach back to the nineteenth century to find actual examples—probably to the kinds of project represented by the nevertheless still frequently illuminating commentary of Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary. However, it will strike any reader of Keil and Delitzsch that while they are persistently trenchant about historical accuracy and general spiritual value of the text, they are hardly ever prone to making use of Christian theological categories, even when the New Testament positively invites one to do so (see, e.g., Commentary, 740n1, regarding Num. 20:8). 54.  Alison Searle, “The Eyes of Your Heart”: Literary and Theological Trajectories of Imagining Biblically, Paternoster Theological Monographs (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008), 39, but see especially her whole discussion of “defining ‘imagination’ ” in the Bible, in dialogue with the works of Garrett Green and others, and making some intriguing observations about how Bible translations frequently disguise imaginative dimensions of human perception in their translation choices (32–40).

FIVE: “It Is the Text That Swallows Up the World”

1.  See chapter 3 above for a discussion of time and chronological markers in the book of Numbers, which is presupposed here. The waw-­consecutives in 20:14, 22 might indicate the continuous narrative flow of chapter 20, but since they also occur all the way through chapters 15–20, this is inconclusive.

276   Notes to Pages 119–122

2.  Multiple options are lucidly summarized in Christian Frevel, “The Book of Numbers—Formation, Composition, and Interpretation of a Late Part of the Torah: Some Introductory Remarks,” in Frevel, Pola, and Schart, Torah and the Book of Numbers, 1–37, esp. 6–24. 3. Douglas, In the Wilderness, 83. A more striking (although more obscure) example of authorial focus from the same author is her “Reading Numbers after Samuel,” in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld, ed. Robert Rezetko, Timothy H. Lim, and W. Brian Aucker, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 113 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 139–53, which could easily pass as an exercise in intertextual reading, but is in fact couched deliberately in terms of authorial reflection on a prior text. 4. Thomas L. Brodie, “The Literary Unity of Numbers: Nineteen Atonement-­Centered Diptychs as One Key Element,” in Römer, Books of Leviti­ cus and Numbers, 455–72. 5.  I am not particularly persuaded by Brodie’s proposal, but the relevant issue here is that saying “one cannot imagine an author or editor constructing this complex literary pattern,” which I cannot, is not in fact the only point at issue. 6.  Childs’s use of the label may be found in Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, 79, which includes clear examples pertaining to Leviticus (187) and Deuteronomy (212). Barr’s slightly repetitive concerns in response occupy his Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 75–84, 130–71 (and elsewhere); see esp. 161–62, though this particular passage makes little sense without reference to his whole discussion (and, arguably, even then is simply an expression of an opinion). 7.  See James W. Watts, Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch, Biblical Seminar 59 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999). 8.  Ibid., 123. 9. Levine, Numbers 1–20, 383. 10.  Both here and earlier, in vv. 1–16, there is a discussion to be had concerning which of Num. 15 and Lev. 1–7 is the earlier text, the conclusions of which might then require different language in terms of which is supplementing which. While plausible arguments either way may be found in the literature, it seems more likely overall that Num. 15 builds upon and develops Lev. 1–7. 11.  I summarize and slightly simplify the discussion of Reinhard Achenbach, “Complementary Reading of the Torah in the Priestly Texts of Numbers 15,” in Frevel, Pola, and Schart, Torah and the Book of Numbers, 201–32, esp. 205–6 and n. 17. 12.  This distinction can admittedly be overdrawn, but see, for example, Tzvi Novick, “Law and Loss: Response to Catastrophe in Numbers 15,” Harvard

Notes to Pages 122–124   277

Theological Review 101, no. 1 (2008): 1–14, which offers a comparable reading pertaining to a time of exilic crisis, but at the last moment remarks that while it is “impossible” to know if this could have been redactionally intended, it would easily have been read this way in the exile. Novick even thinks the wood-­gatherer episode “ironically . . . conveys a message of survival” on this account (14), because it looks to continuation beyond catastrophe. 13. Olson, Numbers, 90–101, esp. 97–101. 14.  See James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 782–83; also, ranging more widely regarding the tassels, see Michael Carasik, The Commentators’ Bible: The JPS Miqra’ot Gedolot; Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2011), 115–16. 15. Olson, Numbers, 99. 16.  Ibid., 100. 17.  Joel S. Baden, “The Structure and Substance of Numbers 15,” Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013): 351–67, esp. 356, and citation from 367. 18.  An aside: I have pondered at some length where or whether to deal in this connection with the tour de force of Calum Carmichael, The Book of Numbers: A Critique of Genesis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). Carmichael pursues the argument that both the narratives and the laws of Numbers represent a systematic, sustained, and somewhat combative response to the narratives of Genesis. The result, if I have understood it correctly, is an intertextual minefield. For example: the passage about gathering wood on the Sabbath is related to Joseph’s dream about sheaves of grain (Gen. 37), where “the stalks for the sheaves had been gathered for an idolatrous purpose” (81). Carmichael is insistent: “The rule can be understood, I suggest, only by viewing it as exploring the issues involved in Joseph’s dream” (83). One could multiply examples through the entirety of Carmichael’s book. Well, the discerning of contextual links does not get much more divergent than this, and to that extent it could illustrate the point being made here about diversity. I feel bound to report, though, that what it actually illustrates is the almost limitless capacity for readers to fit texts into theories. It is a quite extraordinary project, and no further attention can be given to it here. 19.  Here Budd, Numbers, 176; though, as Milgrom notes, the penalty is different, which rather suggests that this is a weaker link than it might look at first sight (Numbers, 125). 20. Olson, Numbers, 100. 21.  Jean-­Pierre Sonnet, “Nb 20,11: Moïse en flagrant délit de ‘main levée’?” in Römer, Books of Leviticus and Numbers, 535–43. Sonnet does not use the language of intertextuality: that is my own point building upon his intriguing suggestion.

278   Notes to Pages 125–132

22.  More specifically, Thomas W. Mann, “Holiness and Death in the Redaction of Numbers 16:1–20:13,” in Love and Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, ed. John H. Marks and Robert M. Good (Guilford, CT: Four Quartets Publishing, 1987), 181–90. 23.  Quotations from Ibid., 182, 190. 24.  Adriane Leveen, “ ‘Lo We Perish’: A Reading of Numbers 17:27–20:29,” in Frevel, Pola, and Schart, Torah and the Book of Numbers, 248–72. Quotations that follow are from 271. 25. Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 363; cf. more generally 356–80. 26. Watts, Reading Law, 29. His survey of public reading is duly attentive to all the various critical caveats and queries about how such texts might have functioned in ancient Israel. 27.  Ibid., 157. On this see further the probing study of Assnat Bartor, Reading Law as Narrative: A Study in the Casuistic Laws of the Pentateuch, Ancient Israel and Its Literature 5 (Atlanta: SBL, 2010). Her focus is on how narrative approaches to law allow one to penetrate to matters of inner motivation. In connection with our own discussion, Bartor’s interest is actually in reading individual laws for their narrative elements (5), rather than addressing any particular canoni­ cal horizon. 28. Watts, Reading Law, 161. 29.  Ibid., 49. 30.  Interestingly, Bartor, Reading Law as Narrative, says almost nothing on these texts either. 31. Artus, Etudes sur le livre des Nombres, 259; my translation and paraphrase. 32.  Cited in chapter 1 above, and picked up by Olson, Numbers, 4 (quoted here), 91, 101. 33.  Though it does not appear in, for example, Richard Dawkins’s account of the problems of the Old Testament, or in Adrian Thatcher’s concerns over the “savage text” that the Bible might be viewed as; cf. Dawkins, God Delusion, 237–78; Thatcher, Savage Text. It would be interesting to know why. 34. For an account that delineates specifically theological questions in dialogue with these other categories, see Richard S. Briggs and Joel N. Lohr, “Introduction: Reading the Pentateuch as Christian Scripture,” in A Theological Introduction to the Pentateuch: Interpreting the Torah as Christian Scripture, ed. Richard S. Briggs and Joel N. Lohr (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 1–18. 35. Levine, Numbers 1–20, 410, after struggling to see the sources on 405–6. 36.  See Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 133–37. “Composite Artistry” is the title of the chapter wherein he discusses Numbers 16 (131–54).

Notes to Pages 132–136   279

37. Ibid., 135–36. The words and the point are Alter’s, though I have extracted them from a longer passage that also makes other points with these words. 38.  For a careful discussion of the precise vocabulary of Exod. 19:6 see Jo Bailey Wells, God’s Holy People: A Theme in Biblical Theology, JSOTS 305 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000), 47–55. 39.  Oddly described in Moses’ direct address to Korah as “Korah and all his followers,” presumably lifted word for word from v. 5, though in the process blurring the perspectives of author and lead character. 40.  So Milgrom, Numbers, 131–32. 41.  This is the felicitous translation of Fox, Five Books of Moses, 738, from the repeated verb srr, which occurs only half a dozen times in the OT, twice here, and is cognate with sar, “prince.” Most translations offer “lord it over,” appropriately. 42.  The strangely dialectical way in which the glory of YHWH is on the one hand ominous (“a tremendum”) and on the other hand life giving (or at least justice administering) is the subject of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s sensitive study of “the glory of the Lord” (Herrlichkeit), arguing that the language of glory is an attempt to render in human terms the mysterious presence among humans of God’s essentially uncontainable being: see especially his The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 6, Theology: The Old Covenant, trans. John Kenneth Riches (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 31–86; and esp. 44 on this passage of Numbers. 43.  Even so, the phrase is striking and unusual, although commentators often note that it becomes common in later literature, occurring over 100x in the book of Enoch. A close parallel is 2 Macc. 3:24: ho tōn pneumatōn kai pasēs exousias dunastēs (NRSV: “the Sovereign of spirits and of all authority”). The emphasis is somehow related to sovereignty extending beyond Israel, and Num. 16:22 takes its place in the complex discussions relating to divine names and theological development, often attributed to a nobly internationally minded P here. For discussion of the wider material see Matthew Black, “Two Unusual Nomina Dei in the Second Vision of Enoch,” in The New Testament Age: Essays in Honor of Bo Reicke, vol. 1, William C. Weinrich (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984), 53–59. 44.  “Dwelling” or “tabernacle.” It never means “tent” in the singular, and is singular in this verse. The more normal word for “tent” (‘ohel) is used in v. 26 and elsewhere. 45.  She’ol, the abode of the dead, is only mentioned here and in v. 33 in the whole of Exodus–Deuteronomy, with the single exception of Deut. 32:22. 46. Levine, Numbers 1–20, 428, citing, e.g., Exod. 15:12.

280   Notes to Pages 137–142

47.  Philip S. Johnston, Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament (Leicester: Apollos, 2002), 72. 48.  Levenson adds: “There is no equivalent prolongation of the fulfilled life precisely because it is fulfilled.” See Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 78; cf. 67–81. 49. Levenson, Resurrection, 40–41. He thinks one cannot really escape the sense of violent intrusion into the normal order that the language of Numbers 16 suggests. 50.  Greta Hort, “The Death of Qorah,” Australian Biblical Review 7 (1959): 2–26; cited, for example, by Ashley, Numbers, 320; cf. also Wenham, Numbers (1981), 138. 51.  Adriane Leveen, Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 129. See more extensively 120–31. 52.  The choice of focal passages in the present book means that I will not be called upon to explain the notorious problem of the meaning of ‘eleph in Num. 1–4; 26; 31; and elsewhere (including here in 16:49), traditionally and sometimes clearly meaning “thousand,” and leading to the celebrated problem of large numbers in the book. I note only that the simplest view is that the word has changed meaning from a lost earlier sense (perhaps in some contexts referring to a military unit of some sort) to a mathematically definite sense sometime between the origi­ nal census tallies and the production of the book. Hence, with regard to verses like 16:49, “a very large number” is probably an appropriate way of taking the text. 53.  Cf., e.g., Milgrom, Numbers, 140. 54.  The wording is not straightforward: the thrust is that the complaints “may cease” (so Milgrom, Numbers, 315), rather than specifying who will bring the complaining to an end. Fox offers a usefully literal “that their grumbling may be finished from me” (Five Books of Moses, 746). 55. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 134. 56. Milgrom, Numbers, 143. 57. Leveen, Memory and Tradition, 134. 58. Gray, Numbers, 217, offers a remarkably wide-­ranging set of examples. 59.  Numbers 19 serves as the test case for Eugene Rogers’s probing reading of Thomas Aquinas’s approach to scripture, wherein the trials and rewards of Thomas’s understanding of the “literal sense” are given sympathetic exposition in dialogue with questions of character and prayer. See Eugene F. Rogers Jr., “How the Virtues of an Interpreter Presuppose and Perfect Hermeneutics: The Case of Thomas Aquinas,” Journal of Religion 76, no. 1 (1996): 64–81; slightly revised as “How Aquinas Reads Scripture,” in Aquinas and the Supreme Court: Race, Gender,

Notes to Pages 143–146   281

and the Failure of Natural Law in Thomas’ Biblical Commentaries, by Eugene F. Rogers Jr. (Oxford: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2013), 97–117. 60.  This is on occasion known as a distinction between “emic” and “etic” categories, respectively. 61.  These hermeneutical categories, derived from Paul Ricoeur, are now sufficiently well known that they are more appropriated than sourced from his actual writings (ironically, since in a sense they thus derive from the world in front of Ricoeur’s texts)—e.g., a textbook organized around this approach but without reference to Ricoeur is W. Randolph Tate, Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated Approach, 3rd edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008). Actually finding the three categories in Ricoeur’s text is complex, since they serve a range of rhetorical functions in his own accounts of myth, narrative, distanciation, and appropriation. But one could get a long way with his Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Lewis S. Mudge (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), especially in “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” 73–118, esp. 98–104, where, note, “world of the text” serves for “world in front of the text”(!); see also Mudge’s introductory essay “Paul Ricoeur on Biblical Interpretation,” 1–40, esp. 25–27; and an interview with Ricoeur: “World of the Text, World of the Reader,” in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdés (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 491–97. A good digest of the whole conceptuality is Dan R. Stiver, Theology after Ricoeur: New Directions in Hermeneutical Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 89–94, under the rubric “Distanciation of a Text.” For a user-­ friendly account see Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching among Exiles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 59–61. 62. Wenham, Numbers (1981), 134. 63. Gray, Numbers, esp. xlvii–lii. 64.  Ibid., 186–218. 65.  Ibid., 236–41. 66.  See especially the essays gathered in Douglas, Jacob’s Tears. The reading of priestly editors as “politically subversive” is offered on 78–87. 67. Sakenfeld, Numbers, 102–3. 68. Budd, Numbers, 190–91. His discussion of Numbers 16 adds only a brief further reflection on the Yahwist’s interests and how the Yahwist would have been heard in the seventh century. 69. Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative, 135, 136. 70.  Ibid., 136. 71. Douglas, Jacob’s Tears, 18; having cited various incidents from Numbers 16, among others, in the run-­up to this characterization. 72. Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative, 137.

282   Notes to Pages 146–150

73.  George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), 118. 74.  For a thoughtful analysis of this very issue see Jason A. Springs, Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology, AAR Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion Series (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Springs is troubled by the lack of nuance in the phrase cited above from Lindbeck (he describes it as “rhetorically unfortunate,” 64; cf. his fine discussion on 63–84), but as a rule of thumb I think it remains helpful, and with regard to the Christian interpretation of scripture down through the ages I am not sure Springs’s concerns suggest otherwise (whereas he is particularly concerned about its implications in dialogue across religious traditions). 75.  The discussions of Frei and Auerbach in chapter 3 above are germane at this point and help to explain why the categories are theological rather than, say, sociological, although again there is a certain messiness and overlapping between possible ways of categorizing here. 76.  Citations from Ambrose, Letter 14 Extra Coll.; Basil, Concerning Baptism, Q. 8; and Augustine, City of God, 10.8; all taken from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, ed. Joseph T. Lienhard, ACCS 3 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001), 227–33. 77.  One significant discussion is Kathryn E. Tanner, “Theology and the Plain Sense,” in Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, ed. Garrett Green (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 59–78; in a festschrift for Hans Frei, no less, suggesting that we might be advised to switch “literal” for “plain” sense to rescue some clarity from the confusion. A useful map of options is offered by Stanley Hauerwas, “Why ‘The Way the Words Run’ Matters: Reflections on Becoming a ‘Major Biblical Scholar,’ ” in The Word Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays, ed. J. Ross Wagner, C. Kavin Rowe, and A. Katherine Grieb (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 1–19 (see esp. 15). 78.  It is not even the only reading of the text in the Mishnah: see also Pirkei Abot 5:17, which rules Korah’s dispute as outside the category of those useful for the sake of heaven. This is understood to mean that Korah was arguing on the basis of pride and power rather than any point of principle: see the discussion in Jonathan Magonet, “The Korah Rebellion,” JSOT 24 (1982): 3–25. 79. Calvin, Four Last Books of Moses, 6:98–122. Citations from 114–15, 117. 80. Gray, Numbers, 209–11. 81.  Thomas B. Dozeman, “The Book of Numbers,” in New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, vol. 2, ed. L. E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 141. 82.  See below. Malcolm B. Yarnell III writes of “the facile treatment given to the doctrine by contemporary theologians and historians,” at the beginning of his

Notes to Pages 150–157   283

study Royal Priesthood in the English Reformation, Oxford Theology & Religion Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3. 83.  Thomas B. Dozeman, Holiness and Ministry: A Biblical Theology of Ordination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 84.  Quotations from Dozeman, Holiness and Ministry, 96. 85. Olson, Numbers, 117–19. 86.  And, mutatis mutandis, a Jewish theology of priesthood could make comparable progress, with suitably different theological results. This is not the place to set out a full Christian theology of priesthood, though more than the brief sketch that follows would obviously be helpful. On the figural resonances that sustained the early adoption of this Christian language see the illuminating study of Bryan A. Stewart, Priests of My People: Levitical Paradigms for Early Christian Ministers, Patristic Studies 11 (New York: Peter Lang, 2015). 87.  Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 314. One of Luther’s key discussions is his On Christian Liberty. Handling the term “Protestant” here would only take us too far afield, much as would pausing over the word “brethren.” For further options see Cyril Eastwood, The Priesthood of All Believers: An Examination of the Doctrine from the Reformation to the Present Day (London: Epworth, 1960). 88.  See Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles from the Latin ed. of 1559, Library of Christian Classics 20 and 21, repr. ed. (London: SCM, 1961), 4.4.9 in the context of 4.4 generally. 89.  George R. Sumner, Being Salt: A Theology of an Ordered Church (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2007), 31. 90.  Ibid., 17n13. 91. Stubbs, Numbers (Brazos), 142–47. 92.  Douglas Farrow, “Melchizedek and Modernity,” in The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, ed. Richard Bauckham et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 299–300. Note especially his comment: “We live in an era shaped quite decisively by the rejection of priests and kings” (294).

SIX: “The Rock Was Christ”

1.  In the previous chapter readers were invited to consider Aquinas’s reading of Numbers 19 via the work of Rogers, “Virtues of an Interpreter,” which clarifies many important issues concerning the “literal sense” and theological reading of that particular chapter.

284   Notes to Pages 157–162

2.  See Tibor Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb: Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art and Literature, Studies in Literature and Religion (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), esp. 1–4. Fabiny’s study entitled “Reading Scripture” (45–77) offers a fine overview of inner-­biblical figuralism, though with only passing reference to 1 Cor. 10 (see 70). 3.  The core of the theological and hermeneutical analysis presented in this chapter was first set out in my article “ ‘The Rock Was Christ’: Paul’s Reading of Numbers and the Significance of the Old Testament for Theological Hermeneutics,” in Horizons in Hermeneutics: A Festschrift in Honor of Anthony C. Thiselton, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Matthew R. Malcolm (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 90–116, which also contains some further reflections on the nature of theological interpretation in dialogue with issues in contemporary hermeneutical theory. 4.  Two other references also occur in descriptions of territorial boundaries: Num. 34:3 and Josh. 15:1. 5. The standard account of modern-­era archaeological investigation is C.  Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence, The Wilderness of Zin, repr. of the updated 1936 ed. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003); the findings were origi­ nally published in 1915. 6. Levine, Numbers 1–20, 487. Gray sees 20:1 as indicating that Israel was still at Kadesh some thirty-­eight years after the events of chapters 13–14 (cf. 13:26), reading 20:1 as saying that Israel was “dwelling” there (since it uses the verb yāshab) (Numbers, 256–60). 7. Roskop, Wilderness Itineraries, esp. 277. 8.  Ibid., 286–87. 9.  Trible, “Bringing Miriam out of the Shadows,” 166. 10.  For all these texts see also Burns, Has the Lord Indeed Spoken Only through Moses?, and the incisive analysis of Wilda C. Gafney, Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 76–85. 11.  She is also listed in the genealogy of 26:59; see Burns, Miriam, 85–90, highlighting that the memory of her thus lives on in priestly circles. 12. Burns, Has the Lord Indeed Spoken Only through Moses?, esp. 46–48. 13.  See the helpful overview of Christine Trevett, “Wilderness Woman: The Taming of Miriam,” in Wilderness: Essays in Honour of Frances Young, ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah, Library of New Testament Studies 295 (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), 26–44. 14.  Trible ends her article with the striking “midrash”: “Sing to the Lord. . . . Patriarchy and its horsemen God has hurled into the sea” (“Bringing Miriam out of the Shadows,” 183).

Notes to Pages 162–166   285

15.  Susan Ackerman, “Is Miriam Also among the Prophets? (And Is Zipporah among the Priests?),” JBL 121 (2002): 47–80, esp. 47–48. 16.  The word often has a connotation of legal contestation. 17.  I wonder if this undercuts slightly the interesting reading of Diana Lipton, who focuses on the way in which the people in Numbers 20 move from being an ‘ēdāh to a qāhāl, which she takes as indicating that “the necessary conditions had been met for the Israelites to go on alone,” no longer needing Moses’ leadership. See Diana Lipton, “Inevitability and Community in the Demise of Moses,” Journal of Progressive Judaism 7 (1996): 79–93; quotation from 92. 18.  The verb is not placed emphatically: nōtsî’, the hiphil imperfect plural of yātsā’, “to go,” or “come out,” but the focus is nevertheless on what Moses (and Aaron) will do. 19. This widely quoted comment is always attributed to the eighteenth-­ century rabbi Shmuel David Luzzato (e.g., as cited by Stephen K. Sherwood, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Berit Olam [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002], 171), though I have been unable to trace a clear source for it. 20. Milgrom, Numbers, 448–56. 21.  For emphases similar to Milgrom’s see Won Lee, “The Exclusion of Moses from the Promised Land: A Conceptual Approach,” in The Changing Face of Form Criticism for the Twenty-­First Century, ed. Marvin A. Sweeney and Ehud Ben Zvi (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 217–39, arguing that Moses’ role as leader of the people, in the combined priestly and prophetic offices which he holds, is undermined by his question. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld also emphasizes the problems raised by Moses’ question, in “Theological and Redactional Problems in Numbers 20:2–13,” in Understanding the Word: Essays in Honor of Bernhard W. Anderson, ed. James T. Butler, Edgar W. Conrad, and Ben C. Ollenburger, JSOTS 37 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), 133–54. 22. Gray, Numbers, 262. 23. Levine, Numbers 1–20, 483–84, 490. 24.  See the discussion in chapter 2 above, as well as comments in connection with the same word at 14:11 in chapter 4 above. 25.  Moses’ identity is effectively so strongly tied to being the leader of the people that the prohibition on leading them in ends up meaning that he will not enter the land at all, a point that is explicit in Deut. 1:37 (and more poetically in Ps. 106:32). 26.  So Levine, Numbers 1–20, 484. Levine consistently uses “JE” to mark his understanding of a modified traditional source-­critical distinction. 27. One example is Knierim and Coats, who find here an attempt to undercut J’s exodus election theology, by offering a variant rendition of the

286   Notes to Pages 166–171

water-­from-­the-­rock episode (Numbers, 228–29). This may not be entirely illuminating regarding the questions raised for most readers by the two accounts. 28.  For which see R. W. L. Moberly, Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 75–105, including a note that prompts the point made here about comparing the Exodus and Numbers narratives (79n9). 29. Wenham, Numbers (1981), 150–51, does recognize this, but then goes on to make definite comments about what act counted as this. 30.  The quotations are from Anthony C. Thiselton, Thiselton on Hermeneutics: The Collected Works and New Essays of Anthony Thiselton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 802, drawing upon Gadamer, to whom we shall come in a moment. 31.  Hans-­Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd, rev. trans. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Sheed and Ward, 1989). 32.  Ibid., 308, 341. 33.  Knowing “how to go on” is Wittgenstein’s famous phrase about the appropriate framing of epistemological claims, and again points away from any simple model of understanding first and then wondering what difference it makes; cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), §151, §179. 34. Thiselton, Thiselton on Hermeneutics, 37, 802. 35.  Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 181. 36. Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 5–9 and elsewhere. 37.  The image of exerting “pressure” is helpfully articulated in C. Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” Pro Ecclesia 11, no. 3 (2002): 295–312. Rowe attributes it in turn to Brevard Childs’s Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (London: SCM, 1992); see Rowe, “Biblical Pressure,” 308. The exact phrasing varies in Childs’s writings—I cannot trace a particularly clear instance in the 1992 book, for example—but this is certainly one of Childs’s emphases. For a relatively clear example see his “The Nature of the Christian Bible: One Book, Two Testaments,” in The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age, ed. Ephraim Radner and George Sumner (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishers, 1998), 115–25: “The biblical text itself exerts theological pressure on the reader” (124). 38. Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 190–91. 39.  For some helpful initial thoughts on what is often called (after James Barr’s book of this name) “the semantics of biblical language,” see the cautionary analysis of Peter J. Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), 75–108, whose focus is the literary

Notes to Pages 171–179   287

dimensions of the issue. Francis Watson himself earlier critiqued several oddities in Barr’s work in his Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (London: T&T Clark, 1997), 17–29. 40.  To appropriate the words of Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 183. 41.  Ibid., 129. Watson says “prophet” rather than “text,” though it is the prophetic text that is in view. 42.  Ibid., 163n61, offering a clear statement of what Watson describes as “a central concern of the [i.e., Watson’s] present work.” 43.  Ibid., 275, italics original. 44.  Ibid., 298. 45.  Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 607. 46.  Gary D. Collier, “ ‘That We Might Not Crave Evil’: The Structure and Argument of 1 Corinthians 10.1–13,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 55 (1994): 55–75, esp. 60–61. 47.  Ibid., 63. 48.  A survey of major proposals is incorporated into the discussion of Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, “1 Corinthians,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 695–752; see 722–27. Note also Thiselton’s excursus “Paul’s Allusion to the ‘Rock Which Went with Them,’ ” in 1 Corinthians, 727–30. 49.  See especially the discussions in chapters 1 and 5 above. 50.  For Watson, Numbers offers a narrative that correlates “desire and death.” See Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 363; cf. his suggestive overall reading of the book, 356–80. 51.  The issues are admirably summarized in Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 740. 52.  Peter Enns, “The ‘Moveable Well’ in 1 Cor 10:4: An Extrabiblical Tradition in an Apostolic Text,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 6 (1996): 23–38; see also Bruce N. Fisk, “Pseudo-­Philo, Paul and Israel’s Rolling Stone: Early Points along an Exegetical Trajectory,” in Israel in the Wilderness: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Tradition, ed. Kenneth E. Pomykala, Themes in Biblical Narrative 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 117–36. The basic data is conveniently gathered by Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 620–21. 53.  For full details see the fascinating study of Germain Bienaimé, Moïse et le don de l’eau dans la tradition juive ancienne: Targum et midrash, AnBib 98 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1984).

288   Notes to Pages 180–182

54.  Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1997), 161. Hays’s more thorough (though still exploratory) treatment of “figural reading” in the Gospels indicates several lines of inquiry congruent with the present argument, and signals an indebtedness to Frei and Auerbach that the present work shares completely. See Richard B. Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014). 55.  Both cited in the substantial discussion of Anthony Tyrell Hanson, Jesus Christ in the Old Testament (London: SPCK, 1965), 16–23, on 20 and 21 respectively. 56.  The point is interestingly made by Rowe, “Biblical Pressure,” 297. 57.  Jon D. Levenson, “The Exodus and Biblical Theology: A Rejoinder to John J. Collins,” in Jews, Christians, and the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures, ed. Alice Ogden Bellis and Joel S. Kaminsky, SBLSS 8 (Atlanta: SBL, 2000), 268. 58.  This is the burden of much of Levenson’s own work on the nature of interpretation: to demonstrate that supposedly neutral biblical scholarship is effectively a “historicist evasion” of the claims of the text. Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), esp. 1–32 and 82–105. 59.  See Bruce H. Grigsby, “ ‘If Any Man Thirsts . . .’: Observations on the Rabbinic Background of John 7,37–39,” Biblica 67 (1986): 101–8, esp. 107, citing also Qoh. Rab. 1:9, §1, the midrashic commentary on Ecclesiastes: “As the first redeemer caused the spring to arise (Moses at Horeb), so the last redeemer (Christ at Calvary) will cause water to rise up.” 60.  Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 61.  See in particular Mitchell, Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics, x, and 108, quoted here. 62.  Such as is explored in the key study of Leonhard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, trans. Donald H. Madvig (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982; first published in German in 1939; 2nd, enlarged ed., 1969). An excellent “anatomy” of options in this area is provided by Tibor Fabiny, “Typology: Pros and Cons in Biblical Hermeneutics and Literary Criticism (from Leonhard Goppelt to Northrop Frye),” in Visiones para Una poetica: En el cincuentenario de “Anatomy of Criticism” de Northrop Frye, ed. Luis Galván, thematic issue of Rilce: Revista de Filología Hispánica 25, no. 1 (2009): 138–52. 63.  See Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), esp. 152–60 and 192–201. She dates the earliest accounts of “typology” as such to 1840, and notes the argument

Notes to Pages 182–187   289

that typology is only distinguished from allegory in the wake of post-­Reformation rejection of allegory (193n20). 64.  Ibid., 153. 65.  Note the use of this phrase in the title of the illuminating set of case studies offered by K. E. Greene-­McCreight, Ad Litteram: How Augustine, Calvin, and Barth Read the “Plain Sense” of Genesis 1–3 (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). 66.  As in the fine discussion of C. Clifton Black, “Trinity and Exegesis,” Pro Ecclesia 19, no. 2 (2010): 151–80, esp. 166–70, where he notes Greene-­ McCreight’s work Ad Litteram. 67.  I have developed this and subsequent sections of the argument further in Briggs, “These Are the Days of Elijah.” 68. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. 69.  Frank McConnell, introduction to The Bible and the Narrative Tradition, ed. Frank McConnell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 6, in dialogue with Frank Kermode’s contribution to the volume, which also contained the origi­ nal publication of Frei’s article “The ‘Literal Reading’ of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition.” 70.  See Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008). 71.  Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), esp. 195–96. 72.  Ellen F. Davis, Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 72. 73.  Robert Louis Wilken, “Allegory and Old Testament Interpretation,” Letter & Spirit 1 (2005): 12. 74.  Ibid., 21. 75. Douglas, In the Wilderness and Jacob’s Tears, but more on a general level of recontextualizing the text into later political debates, and not with reference to traditional theological categories of typology or figuration. 76.  MacDonald, “ ‘Gone Astray’ Dealing with the Sotah (Num 5:11–31),” 60. 77.  One may sample the very different profile of allegorical interpretation of Numbers in patristic times via the helpful survey article of Hendrik F. Stander, “The Patristic Exegesis of Moses Striking the Rock (Ex 17.1–7 & Num 20.1– 13),” Coptic Church Review 12, no. 3 (1991): 67–77. 78.  Hans-­Georg Gadamer, “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem,” in his Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 3–17. 79.  See here more generally my “What Does Hermeneutics Have to Do with Biblical Interpretation?” Heythrop Journal 47, no. 1 (2006): 55–74.

290   Notes to Pages 187–195

80.  Cf. Wilken’s striking citation of a medieval Spanish exegete that “the New Testament stands on its own; it does not need allegory” (“Allegory and Old Testament Interpretation,” 12). A comparable insight runs through Henri de Lubac’s probing analysis entitled “Spiritual Understanding,” reprinted in Scripture in the Tradition (New York: Herder and Herder, 2000), 1–84, which is actually extracted from the conclusion to his 1950 book Histoire et Esprit, to which we shall come in chapter 8 below. De Lubac shows elegantly how it is wrestling with the Old Testament in Christian perspective that forces awareness of the fecundity of traditional patristic and medieval interpretive options. This piece may serve as a lucid introduction to the overarching argument of his four-­volume masterwork Medieval Exegesis (ET vols. 1–3; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998–2009; first published in French, 1959–64), excerpts of which constitute the remainder of the edited volume Scripture in the Tradition.

SEVEN: “ ‘Peace, Peace,’ When There Is No Peace”

1.  Whether Genesis or its constituent narratives are at hand for Numbers to refer to, as such, is a question far too vast to explore here. I try to phrase matters as noncommittally as possible. 2.  Numbers definitely did not have Tolkien on hand. My point of course is that intertextual resonance does not actually require prior availability. (Text critics, meanwhile, will note that in Tolkien’s text, Gandalf says, “You cannot pass!,” whereas in the film version this is changed to “You shall not pass.”) 3.  Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21–36: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 4B (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 110. 4.  Numbers 21:2, 3 are the only two uses of this vocabulary in the book, often rendered in English as herem. 5.  See the admirable discussion of Roskop, Wilderness Itineraries, 193–215, incorporating full review of earlier scholarship, and also seeing “Hormah” as a wordplay, though in the end claiming that 14:39–45 is “a rewrite of Num 21:1–3” (200). A detailed reconstruction tied to seeing Numbers mediating between Deuteronomy (esp. 1–3) and earlier traditions is offered by MacDonald, “Book of Numbers,” 128–43. 6. Milgrom, Numbers, 467. Milgrom is clearer than many that this goes back to the Talmud, but the point in general is made by most scholars. 7.  See also the discussion of 16:22 in chapter 5 above (with 12:13 being the other instance). The eight uses in the book of Balaam are 23:8, 19, 22, 23; 24:4, 8, 16, 23—all in Balaam’s oracles.

Notes to Pages 195–200   291

8.  Seven times by the narrator (22:9, 10, 12, 20, 22; 23:4; 24:2), three times by Balaam (22:18, 38; 23:21), and once by Balak (23:27). Elsewhere see 6:7; 10:9–10 (3x); 15:40–41 (4x); 16:9; 16:22 and 27:16, discussed before; 21:5; and 25:13. Of these 10:9, 10; 15:41 (2x); 22:18; and 23:21 are the compound YHWH ‘elohîm. Statistical data is facilitated by the comprehensive study and tabulations of Terrance R. Wardlaw, Conceptualizing Words for God within the Pentateuch: A Cognitive-­Semantic Investigation in Literary Context, Library of Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament Studies 495 (London: T&T Clark, 2008). 9.  See the painstaking discussion of Gray, Numbers, 307–13. 10.  Sometimes admittedly he is only marginally involved elsewhere, though the general observation is more secure with respect to narratives in Numbers, where his absence in 22–24 is particularly notable. 11.  A full transcription, translation, and probing study of the two combinations is offered by Levine, Numbers 21–36, 241–75. 12.  See further the discussion in chapter 8 below. On the reception of Balaam in variant traditions see the collection of essays in George H. van Kooten and Jacques van Ruiten, eds., The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam, Themes in Biblical Narrative 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 13.  John J. Collins, The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); Barton, Nature of Biblical Criticism. 14.  English versions append the final verse (v. 19 in BHS) to 26:1, but this makes little substantive difference—see below. 15.  John J. Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence,” JBL 122 (2003): 3–21; also in edited but substantially similar form as Collins, Does the Bible Justify Violence?, Facets (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004). The issues are not taken up directly in his 2005 book Bible and Babel, though several passages of that book touch on relevant concerns about appropriate ethical frameworks in dialogue with biblical interpretation, e.g., 69–73 on postcolonialism, 86–91 and elsewhere on gender, and 148–51 on postmodern ethics. 16.  This reflection on Num. 25 as problem text, and the whole of the chapter that follows, is adapted from its original appearance as “The Zeal of Readers in Defence and in Dissent: Phinehas’ Spear, the Covenant of Peace, and the Politics of Hermeneutics,” in The Temple in Text and Tradition: A Festschrift in Honour of Robert Hayward, ed. R. Timothy McLay, Library of Second Temple Studies Series 83 (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 113–39. 17. Milgrom, Numbers, 212. 18.  Elsewhere in the Pentateuch only in v. 5 of the present passage; and also in the recounting of this incident in Ps. 106:28. It has a similar sense in its only other appearance, Ps. 50:19.

292   Notes to Pages 200–203

19. Milgrom, Numbers, 212, noting the covenantal possibility. He offers a lengthy excursus exploring the suggestion of G. E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Genera­ tion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), that there is an underlying message concerning sacred prostitution and/or funerary rites, whereby Israel engages in the practices of a purported cult of the dead (including sexual intercourse) to seek an end to the plague. Milgrom concludes that there is no evidence in support of this theory, and neither do sufficient details of the text fit it (Numbers, 476–80). 20. Milgrom, Numbers, 213. 21.  Ibid., 477. 22.  Thus classically Gray, Numbers, 380, with further complications mooted. Almost all critical commentaries advert to this analysis, including those such as Achenbach, who operate with different sigla and reconstructions but still divide vv. 1–5 from vv. 6–15—cf. Achenbach, Die Vollendung der Tora, 425–42; cf. 637, dividing between the hexateuchal and pentateuchal redaction. See also, in particular, Levine, Numbers 21–36, 279–80, although for reasons we shall note below in discussing Levine’s reading of the passage, some problems arise from it. For a recent review of source-­critical theories see Josebert Fleurant, “Phinehas Murdered Moses’ Wife: An Analysis of Numbers 25,” JSOT 35 (2011): 285–94. Fleurant’s own view, summarized in the article’s title, relies on reading the definite article in v. 6 (to be discussed below) as a giveaway reference to Zipporah. One finds oneself wanting to say, as so often with source-­critical reconstructions, C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas l’exégèse. 23.  As in “a certain Midyanitess.” Fox, Five Books of Moses, 784. 24.  It will not be until v. 15 that the woman in question is named as Cozbi, which might point to a particular woman being in view, though note the interesting (if speculative) suggestion of Harriet C. Lutzky, “The Name ‘Cozbi’ (Numbers XXV 15, 18),” Vetus Testamentum 47 (1997): 546–49, drawing on the oddity of the naming of Cozbi in terms of how few women are named in scripture, and thus setting out to find potential metaphorical significance in the name. She concludes that it is drawn from roots connoting sexual attraction (kzbII, also an Akkadian counterpart) and that it offered a range of metaphorical associations in the passage, suggesting reference to particular West Semitic goddesses (Astarte; Asherah) in the context of idolatry. Indeed, concludes Lutzky, “the name Cozbi . . . may have alluded to a false god (Cozbi as goddess)” (548). It is perhaps more likely that it is inner-­biblical resonance of the Hebrew names that would be of significance in the story world. 25. Milgrom, Numbers, 214. 26. Fox, Five Books of Moses, 784.

Notes to Pages 203–208   293

27. Calvin, Four Last Books of Moses, 4:238; with the editor cross-­referencing his 1 Corinthians commentary in n. 1. 28. Milgrom, Numbers, 216. 29.  V. 14 uses the root nkh (to slay) twice, lost in the entirely defensible NRSV decision to alternate “slain” and “he was killed.” The root is then used three further times in vv. 15, 17, and 18, and perhaps that repetition is worth trying to capture with a more consistent translation. 30.  So, speculatively, Milgrom, Numbers, 218. 31.  Ibid., 218. 32.  Although this does not stop people from trying: see Jonathan Grossman, “Divine Command and Human Initiative: A Literary View on Numbers 25–31,” Biblical Interpretation 15 (2007): 54–79, which rightly recognizes the validity of the question about how to get from the one end of the Midianite story to the other, and certainly offers one reading that does so, although whether this in fact tells us about why the chapters take the form they do is debatable and, in the end, unprovable. 33. Olson, Numbers, 152–56. 34.  Robert Hayward, “Phinehas—The Same Is Elijah: The Origins of a Rabbinic Tradition,” Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978): 22–34. 35.  Ibid., 33. 36.  Feldman shows, though, that it certainly occupied Josephus: Louis H. Feldman, “The Portrayal of Phinehas by Philo, Pseudo-­Philo, and Josephus,” Jewish Quarterly Review 92 (2002): 315–45. Philo, in contrast, is not at all critical of Phinehas; while, with Pseudo-­Philo, Feldman follows Hayward’s point above. On Philo see also David Lincicum, “Philo on Phinehas and the Levites: Observing an Exegetical Connection,” Bulletin of Biblical Research 21 (2011): 43–50, arguing that one cannot deduce Philo’s understanding of sacred violence in his own day from his comments on Phinehas. 37.  In fact Numbers 25 does receive brief attention in Dawkins, God Delusion, 278–79, but largely for the threat spoken in v. 4. Phinehas is not mentioned. 38.  References in the text are to Collins, “Zeal of Phinehas.” 39.  He references Edward Said, “Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution: A Canaanite Reading,” Grand Street 5, no. 2 (Winter 1986): 86–106, thus pointing to postcolonial perspectives as one key here. 40.  One may in fact wonder if in the end it is 1 Maccabees’ reading of Numbers 25 that is the text most in view in Collins’s piece. That would be a worthwhile question to pursue, but introduces further layers of complexity regarding constructions of the canonical that we cannot enter into here.

294   Notes to Pages 209–213

41.  This is lost a little in the 2004 Fortress Press reprint of the piece, which switches to “justify” as its title verb. 42.  See Danny W. Davis, The Phinehas Priesthood: Violent Vanguard of the Christian Identity Movement, PSI Guides to Terrorists, Insurgents, and Armed Groups (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010). Davis probably overestimates the link between a few vigilante extremists and any self-­defined “movement,” and the name may not be their own self-­description, but the appeal to Numbers 25 is clearly not the primary explanation for their existence, so much as an ad hoc identification. 43.  Walter Houston, “The Character of YHWH and the Ethics of the Old Testament: Is Imitatio Dei Appropriate?,” Journal of Theological Studies 58 (2007): 7. A high-­profile book that Houston criticizes for often doing exactly this is David J. A. Clines, Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible, JSOTS 205: Gender, Culture, Theory 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995). 44.  Athalya Brenner and Archie Chi Chung Lee, eds., Leviticus and Numbers, texts@contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013). There is no editorial comment to the effect that this was mandated; indeed rather to the effect that this emerged as the group went about its work. The three papers cited here are Anthony Rees, “Numbers 25 and Beyond,” 163–77; Nāsili Vaka’uta, “Indicting YHWH,” 179–87; and Wil Gafney, “A Queer Womanist Midrashic Reading of Numbers 25:1–18,” 189–98. A fourth is discussed below. 45.  Gary A. Anderson, “Biblical Origins and the Problem of the Fall,” Pro Ecclesia 10 (2001): 17–30. 46. Levine, Numbers 21–36, 292. 47.  Ibid., 294. 48.  Ibid., 302. 49. Ibid. 50. Stubbs, Numbers, 201. 51.  Ibid., 202. 52. Milgrom, Numbers, 215; cf. 477. 53. Stubbs, Numbers, 201. 54. Wenham, Numbers (1981), 188. 55. Calvin, Four Last Books of Moses, 4:236–37. 56.  Though interestingly, again, not Calvin, whose only reference to Christ in connection with this passage is to Christ’s restraining of his disciples from zeal. Cf. Luke 9:54–55; Calvin, Four Last Books of Moses, 4:237. 57.  Dozeman, “Book of Numbers,” 200–201.

Notes to Pages 213–219   295

58.  Waldemar Janzen, Old Testament Ethics: A Paradigmatic Approach (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994). Page references to this work are in the text. 59.  This is the comment cited by Collins, “Zeal of Phinehas,” 13, and dismissed by appeal in turn to 1 Macc. 1. 60.  I have explored this at length in Richard S. Briggs, “Biblical Hermeneutics and Scriptural Responsibility,” in The Future of Biblical Interpretation: Responsible Plurality in Biblical Hermeneutics, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Matthew R. Malcolm (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 51–69. See also the excellent discussion of A. K. M. Adam, “Integral and Differential Hermeneutics,” in Faithful Interpretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 81–103. 61.  Yonina Dor, “From the Well in Midian to the Ba‘al of Peor,” in Brenner and Lee, Leviticus and Numbers, 141–61. 62.  Cf. also Num. 10:29, though, as we have seen before, the precise identification of members of Moses’ family tree here is not straightforward. 63. Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, 1:504. 64.  Ibid. He is drawing here in part on Paula M. McNutt, “The Kenites, the Midianites, and the Rechabites as Marginal Mediators in Ancient Israelite Tradition,” Semeia 67 (1995): 109–32. 65.  Thomas B. Dozeman, “The Midianites in the Formation of the Book of Numbers,” in Römer, Books of Leviticus and Numbers, 284n65. 66.  Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 304. 67.  Ibid., esp. 202–15. 68.  Lytta Bassett, Holy Anger: Jacob, Job, Jesus (London: Continuum, 2007; first published in French in 2003), 16. 69.  Markus Zehnder and Hallvard Hagelia, eds., Encountering Violence in the Bible, Bible in the Modern World 55 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013); cf. especially the editors’ preface, vii–viii. There are a couple of noble exceptions, but most of the (often helpful) hermeneutical discussion is limited to interaction with other biblical scholars. Incidentally, there is effectively no coverage in this volume of the classic “problem” texts of violence in the book of Numbers. 70.  See, among others, Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, Northwestern University Press Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974). For the relevant background to his life see Charles E. Reagan, “Biographical Essay,” in Paul Ricoeur: His Life and Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 4–51.

296   Notes to Pages 219–227

71. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 286. 72.  Anathea Portier-­Young, “Drinking the Cup of Horror and Gnawing on Its Shards: Biblical Theology through Biblical Violence, Not around It,” in Beyond Biblical Theologies, ed. Heinrich Assel, Stefan Beyerle, and Christfried Böttrich, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 295 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 387–408. Near the beginning of this piece she refers to Collins’s SBL treatment of the topic (390–91). 73.  Ibid., 407. 74.  The summary is mine, but the illustration is from Portier-­Young, “Drinking the Cup of Horror,” 406–7: “For soldiers who had experienced and even committed atrocities in war, there is tremendous value in learning that Scripture knows their horror and shame” (407). 75. Collins, Bible after Babel, 161. 76. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism, 84.

EIGHT: Blessing for an Unfinished Journey

1. Olson, Death of the Old, throughout, but see esp. 83–124, with a convenient summary on 125. 2.  A helpful (though notably inconclusive) review of issues about Nazirites is offered by Levine, Numbers 1–20, 229–35, which finishes by noting, “One of the most interesting areas for further study is the search for groups of Nazirites. . . . Whether groups of votaries developed, and what form these groups would have assumed and what role they would have played, are questions that remain to be explored” (235). 3.  On its relative absence from earlier Christian traditions see Nathan MacDonald, “A Trinitarian Palimpsest: Luther’s Reading of the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6.24–26),” Pro Ecclesia 21, no. 3 (2012): 299–313, esp. 304–8. 4. Stubbs, Numbers, 69–79, is a commendable exception here, as several pages of his account are given over to “the meaning of blessing.” 5.  Daniel W. Hardy and David F. Ford, Praising and Knowing God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 81. This quote and some of the surrounding paragraph were also in my “The Book of Genesis,” in A Theological Introduction to the Pentateuch: Interpreting the Torah as Christian Scripture, ed. Richard S. Briggs and Joel N. Lohr (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 32–33. 6.  David F. Ford, Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 156.

Notes to Pages 227–233   297

7.  I will not offer a full study of blessing here, but I note a comparable sense of creation as a kind of “framework” for thinking about blessing in Claus Westermann, Blessing in the Bible and the Life of the Church, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), a book which seems slightly less persuasive regarding specific acts of blessing. 8.  A standard critical issue in discussion of the text is whether it might have been the words recited by Aaron at Lev. 9:22, at the inauguration of the newly completed sacrificial provision. A pursuant issue is then who displaced which texts where and why, a discussion of which appears to offer little prospect of blessing anybody. 9. Barth, CD III/2, 578–87, in an excursus on the beginning of “allotted time.” 10.  Ibid., 580. 11.  Ibid., 582. 12.  Recall here the subtle discussion of Dawson concerning how far Christian figural reading in general is implicated in “supersessionist” judgments, in his Christian Figural Reading, 207–18, and noted above in our chapter 3 (n. 72). 13.  I am indebted here to the fine discussion of MacDonald, “Trinitarian Palimpsest,” 310–13. His governing image of a “palimpsest” attempts to allow both a prior integrity of the text in its pre-­Christian context(s) and its function in newly understood Christian contexts, and is perhaps not incompatible with the critical language of intertextuality appropriately understood. MacDonald notes resonance with Christian Trinitarian reading of the blessing found in Gen. 1:26–28. 14.  The odd thing is, of course, that Barth would not have been such a reader. 15.  Levine provides full details, transcription, and discussion of various interpretive possibilities: Numbers 1–20, 236–44. Levine dates the discovery to 1980 (238), and other sources give dates as late as 1983; but I am indebted here to the first-­person recollections of the woman who found the amulets: Judith Hadley, in her paper “False Reading, False Reporting, and Just Plain False: Some Problems with Hebrew Inscriptions,” presented at the SOTS Winter Meeting in Cambridge, UK, January 2015. 16.  This latter option is pursued with helpful results in R. W. L. Moberly, “On Learning to Be a True Prophet: The Story of Balaam and His Ass,” in New Heaven and New Earth: Prophecy and the Millennium; Essays in Honour of Anthony Gelston, ed. Peter J. Harland and Robert Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 1–17; also, with wider-­ranging implications, in his Can Balaam’s Ass Speak Today? A Case Study in Reading the Old Testament as Scripture, Grove Biblical Books B10 (Cambridge: Grove Books, 1998).

298   Notes to Pages 233–236

17.  Cf., for example, Num. 31:8; Josh. 13:22; 24:9–10; and the striking NT condemnations of 2 Pet. 2:15 and Rev. 2:14. 18.  The careful play with “seeing” is noted by Robert Alter in his all-­too-­brief comments on the literary achievements of the story. Art of Biblical Narrative, 104–7. 19.  See, for example, Fox, in Five Books of Moses, 781, who nevertheless also says, “Few moments in the Torah, to my thinking, can compare. . . . [In] the poetry of this section . . . we are treated to an elevation and intensification of poetic language” (778). 20. Olson, Numbers, 140–51, with the “hope” phrase used as the title of this whole section. 21.  Ibid., 151. 22.  Dozeman, “Numbers,” 170–96. 23.  Mary Douglas, “Balaam Delivers God’s Blessings on All Israel,” in Jacob’s Tears, 88–107. 24.  See n. 16 above and, anticipating some of the themes of his wider study, R. W. L. Moberly, Prophecy and Discernment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. 138–49 on the Balaam narrative and exploring questions of discernment, or “seeing God.” 25. E.g., Michael S. Moore, The Balaam Traditions: Their Character and Development, SBLDS 113 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), which focuses on roles of the key agents in various cultural contexts across biblical and nonbiblical texts. In both Römer, Books of Leviticus and Numbers, and Frevel, Pola, and Schart, Torah and the Book of Numbers, there are various discussions of 22:1, but the only substantive piece on Balaam is all about its contribution to the evaluation of broader literary and redaction issues: Jonathan Miles Robker, “The Balaam Narrative in the Pentateuch/Hexateuch/Enneateuch,” in the latter volume, 334–66. 26.  On that reception see, in addition to the essays in van Kooten and van Ruiten, Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam, the wide-­ranging celebration of possibilities in John T. Greene, Balaam and His Interpreters: A Hermeneutical History of the Balaam Traditions, Brown Judaic Studies 244 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992). 27.  One witness, rather little noted of late, is Joel Chandler Harris, whose short story “Balaam and His Master” appears in his 1891 collection Balaam and His Master, and Other Sketches and Stories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), 7–44. Harris is more famous as the author of the Brer Rabbit stories, and here pursues something of a figural reading of Balaam in dialogue with American slavery. I am inclined to suggest that this fictional yet serious piece offers a form of (figural) engagement with the Balaam narrative that is at least as illuminating as the more normal modes of academic biblical commentary.

Notes to Pages 237–243   299

28.  Carolyn J. Sharp, Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 134–51, a section entitled “Oracular Indeterminacy and Dramatic Irony in the Story of Balaam.” Quotations are from 151 and 150, respectively. 29.  David Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah: Anti-­Prophetic Satire in the Hebrew Bible, Brown Judaic Studies 301 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 29–41; quotation from 41. 30.  And indeed has been so classified: it is the major focus of Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah; cf. esp. 93–159. 31.  Phyllis Trible, “The Book of Jonah,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 7, Daniel and the Minor Prophets, ed. L. E. Keck et al. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 471. 32. Douglas, Jacob’s Tears, esp. 103–6. 33.  Here I must acknowledge a wonderful exception that partly stimulated what follows: Jacqueline Lapsley, “ ‘Am I Able to Say Just Anything?’ Learning Faithful Exegesis from Balaam,” Interpretation 60, no. 1 (2006): 22–31. 34.  On the “staging” of God’s word see the elaborate exploration of a “theo-­ dramatic” model for the work of theology in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005). 35.  Lapsley, “Am I Able to Say Just Anything?,” 27. 36. Leveen, Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers, 55. 37.  For Sharp it was the blessing that was hyperbolic, but I think the point extends to her reading of irony as such too; see n. 28 above. 38.  Cf., for the sake of argument: Can a tree falling in a forest be revelatory if no one witnesses its fall? 39.  As one of the great architects of “ressourcement,” de Lubac still insisted: “I have not introduced, it must be reiterated, any sort of archaism. . . . Nothing is more vain and fruitless than such attempts to return to one of these ancient stages of growth that history makes it possible for us to know.” See the preface to his Medieval Exegesis, vol. 1, The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Mark Sebanc, xxi. 40.  ET in Origen, Homilies on Numbers, 168–83. It is the longest of the homi­ lies, though they do vary quite markedly in length, and it is not the longest by much. Paragraph numbers are included in the text. 41.  Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture according to Origen, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007; first published as Histoire et esprit: L’intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène [Paris: Aubier-­Montaigne, 1950]).

300   Notes to Pages 243–251

42.  Unsurprisingly, since his later, four-­volume Medieval Exegesis grew out of the writing of this book on Origen. 43.  De Lubac, History and Spirit, 219. 44.  I am indebted here to Tom Greggs, “Exclusivist or Universalist? Origen the ‘Wise Steward of the Word’ (CommRom. V.1.7) and the Issue of Genre,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9, no. 3 (2007): 315–27. Greggs’s particular question concerns whether Origen’s “universalism” is evenly held across his sermons and other forms of writing. 45.  In passing, note that there could hardly be a clearer indication that for Origen the “spiritual sense” does not serve to suggest that there was no historical reference; see also de Lubac, History and Spirit, 132–34. 46.  A useful summary introduction to Origen’s life and work is Thomas P. Scheck’s translator’s introduction to Homilies on Numbers, xix–xxxii, esp. here xxiii–xxiv. 47. Roskop, Wilderness Itineraries, 225. 48.  I am not familiar enough with the literature to comment on how far this resonance is taken up in Jewish spiritual writing. 49.  H. A. Williams, The True Wilderness (1965), to which I have access in the Library of Anglican Spirituality edition (London: Cassell, 1994), which contains a helpful context-­setting introduction by Susan Howatch (vii–xi). 50.  Ibid., 29–34. He does not in fact make use of Numbers anywhere in his book. 51.  Ibid., 34. 52.  See Stephen Prickett, Narrative, Religion and Science: Fundamentalism versus Irony, 1700–1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). The context is Prickett’s defense of irony against all “reductive” interpretive schemes. 53.  Ibid., 205. 54.  David Mitchell, Black Swan Green (London: Sceptre, 2006). 55.  David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (London: Sceptre, 2004). Mitchell’s first and also his most-­recent novel at the time of writing—Ghostwritten (London: Sceptre, 1999) and The Bone Clocks (London: Sceptre, 2014)—also model thought-­ provoking levels of figural resonance between their component narratives. 56. Mitchell, Black Swan Green, 371.

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I N D E X O F S C R I P T U R A L PA S S AG E S

References in bold—in Numbers and 1 Corinthians—indicate primary commentary sections; individual verse references within these sections and their accompanying endnotes are not noted. Genesis 1–11, 254n8 1:1, 20, 43 1:26–28, 297n13 3, 103 3:1, 45 6:4, 90, 270n13 22, 59, 77, 79, 268n55 25:30, 192 36:1, 192 37, 277n18 Exodus 2, 161 2:15–22, 215 2:18, 265n20 2:21, 72 3:8, 270n10 3:17, 270n10 6:21, 134 6:24, 134 6:25, 202 12:38, 66 15–17, 55, 96 15, 161

15:12, 279n46 15:20, 72, 161 16–18, 96 16, 166 16:1–3, 123 16:3, 66 16:6–25, 123 16:31–36, 123 16:31, 265n23 17, 159, 162, 164, 166 17:1–7, 166 17:1, 178 17:5–6, 163 17:6, 163, 178, 179 17:7, 165 17:9, 163 18, 265n20 18:2, 72 19–Numbers 10, 19 19, 132 19:6, 132–33, 150, 279n38 24:12–30:21, 257n29 25–Leviticus 27, 12 32–34, 96, 103 32:6, 24, 173, 174 321

322   Index of Scriptural Passages

Exodus (cont.) 33:11, 67 34:6–7, 94, 271n21 34:6, 94 40:17, 60 Leviticus 1–7, 276n10 4:13–31, 121 9:22, 297n8 10, 139, 211 10:1–2, 139 10:8, 142 13, 75 26, 21 27, 21 Numbers 1–10, 2, 21, 52, 53, 55, 176 1–9, 128 1–4, 25, 280n52 1, 20, 29, 223 1:1, 30, 60, 63 1:18, 60 2, 63 4:5, 64 5, 225, 230, 248 5:11–31, 12, 45–48, 186 5:14, 45–46, 204 5:17, 46 5:24, 46 5:27, 46 5:28, 46 5:29, 47, 204 6, 10, 13, 223, 224, 227–31 6:2, 225 6:7, 291n8 6:22–27, 51, 225–31, 232 6:24–26, 248 7–9, 265n17 7, 230

7:1, 60–61 9:1, 60–61 9:15–23, 63 10–14, 117 10–12, 54, 59, 82 10, 53, 62, 82 10:1–10, 62–63 10:9–10, 291n8 10:10, 30 10:11–36:13, 29, 48 10:11–28, 63 10:11, 60–62, 65 10:29–34, 63–64 10:29, 295n62 10:33–36, 64 10:33, 64–65 10:34, 64, 65 10:35–36, 53, 64–65 11–25, 2 11–14, 96 11–12, 4 11, 24, 25, 52, 53–55, 65, 68, 70–71, 75, 166, 174, 176, 179, 266n28 11:1–3, 4, 53, 54–56, 62, 65, 66 11:1, 55, 66, 174 11:2, 55, 67, 122 11:3, 54, 55, 69 11:4–35, 55 11:4–10, 66 11:4–6, 55 11:4, 174, 266n32 11:5, 90, 162 11:6–9, 65 11:10, 55, 65, 67, 69 11:11–23, 66–67 11:11–15, 55 11:16, 65 11:17, 67 11:18, 90 11:20, 90, 162

Index of Scriptural Passages   323

11:24–30, 67–69 11:24–29, 66 11:26–30, 144 11:26, 65 11:29, 69, 73, 138, 204 11:31–35, 69–71 11:34, 55, 174, 263n3 12, 26, 49, 73–75, 87, 161, 200, 267nn41–42 12:1–3, 71–73 12:1, 71, 267n39 12:2, 200 12:3, 71, 75 12:4–9, 73–74 12:6, 200 12:7, 12, 49 12:8, 93 12:10–15, 74–75 12:10, 72 12:11, 74 12:13, 290n7 12:14–15, 26 12:16, 71, 75–76, 89 13–21, 128 13–20, 128 13–14, 5, 7, 25, 29, 48, 51, 64, 85–87, 100–2, 104, 106–10, 112–14, 128, 228, 272n29, 272n31, 284n6 13, 88, 91, 104, 133, 270n13 13:1–24, 104 13:1–16, 87–88 13:2, 90, 94 13:3, 270n7 13:6, 113 13:16, 83 13:17–20, 88 13:21–25, 89 13:21, 160 13:23, 48

13:24, 263n3 13:25, 105 13:26–29, 89 13:26, 76, 284n6 13:27, 48 13:28–33, 90 13:28, 48, 88, 90 13:30–33, 89–90 13:32, 114, 137 13:33, 48, 270n13 14–17, 55 14, 61, 95, 109, 111, 114, 117–18, 133, 248 14:1–4, 90–91 14:2–3, 162 14:2, 96, 97, 105 14:3, 97 14:4, 92 14:5–10a, 91–92 14:5, 105–6, 132, 162 14:6, 113 14:10b–12, 92–93 14:10, 95, 134, 162 14:11–20, 105 14:11–12, 94 14:11, 12, 48, 97, 114, 285n24 14:12, 94, 99 14:13–19, 93–94, 110 14:14, 87, 178 14:16, 174 14:18, 271n21 14:20–25, 95–96, 98 14:20, 109 14:25, 99 14:26–35, 95, 96–99 14:29, 95, 105 14:30, 95 14:33–34, 85 14:33, 117 14:34, 60, 89

324   Index of Scriptural Passages

Numbers (cont.) 14:35, 91 14:36–45, 99–100 14:36, 114 14:37, 114 14:39–45, 290n5 14:42, 86, 139 14:43, 91 14:44, 64 14:45, 192 15–20, 275n1 15–19, 119–29 15–16, 52, 117 15, 8–9, 52, 117, 120–25, 127, 142, 147, 194, 195, 276n10 15:1–16, 121, 276n10 15:1, 121 15:16, 123 15:17–21, 121 15:17, 121, 123 15:22–31, 121 15:22–23, 121 15:30, 124 15:32–36, 121 15:35, 127 15:36, 127 15:37–41, 121 15:37, 121 15:38, 122 15:40–41, 291n8 16–20, 125 16–19, 138 16–17, 128, 144 16, 12, 25, 52, 76, 92, 118, 122, 123, 125, 129, 131–32, 135, 137, 139, 141–42, 144, 146–49, 151, 153–54, 162, 167, 278n36, 280n49, 281n68 16:1–35, 131

16:1–4, 132–33 16:1, 131 16:2–26, 163 16:2, 131, 136 16:3, 122, 129, 131 16:4, 162 16:5–19, 133–34 16:5, 279n39 16:9, 291n8 16:19, 135, 162 16:20–30, 134–36 16:22, 149, 153, 279n43, 290n7, 291n8 16:26, 279n44 16:27, 130 16:29, 136, 148 16:30, 130, 136 16:31–35, 136–38 16:33. 279n45 16:35, 131 16:36–40, 138–39 16:37, 134 16:41–50, 139–40 16:48, 150 16:49, 130, 280n52 17, 118, 141 17:1–13, 131 17:1–7, 140–41 17:5, 140 17:8–11, 141 17:10, 140, 163 17:12–19:22, 120 17:12–13, 125, 141–42 18, 142, 144 18:1, 142 18:8, 142 18:19, 152 18:20, 142 18:25–32, 141

Index of Scriptural Passages   325

18:25, 142 19, 125, 142, 157, 280n59, 283n1 20–21, 161, 194 20, 9, 49, 61, 65, 73, 92, 114, 118, 124, 126, 157–60, 165, 166, 169, 181, 193, 201, 248, 275n1, 285n17 20:1–13, 128, 159, 161, 165 20:1, 49, 60–61, 117–18, 159–62, 163, 178, 179, 284n6 20:2–13, 162 20:2–8, 162–63 20:2, 159, 162, 178 20:3, 125, 165 20:8–9, 162 20:8, 159, 275n53 20:9–11, 163–65 20:11, 49, 124, 159 20:12–13, 165–67 20:12, 12, 49, 191, 201 20:13, 191 20:14–21:35, 191 20:14–17, 192 20:14, 192, 275n1 20:18–21, 192 20:22–29, 162, 192 20:22, 275n1 20:24–29, 178 20:24, 165 20:26, 203 20:28, 60–61, 118 21, 24, 191, 192, 194, 195, 232 21:1–3, 192, 290n5 21:2, 290n4 21:3, 290n4 21:4–9, 193 21:4–7, 174 21:4, 192 21:5, 291n8

21:6, 193 21:9, 194 21:10–20, 193 21:14, 194 21:16, 179 21:21, 193 21:26, 193 21:27–30, 193 21:32, 270n2 21:34, 200 22–24, 10, 51, 191, 195, 196, 202, 211, 223, 224, 231–41, 248, 291n10 22, 193 22:1, 30, 193 22:2, 195 22:4, 202 22:7, 202 22:9, 291n8 22:10, 291n8 22:12, 291n8 22:18, 291n8 22:20, 291n8 22:22, 291n8 22:38, 291n8 23–24, 13 23:4, 291n8 23:8, 290n7 23:19, 290n7 23:21, 291n8 23:22, 290n7 23:23, 290n7 23:27, 291n8 23:28, 195 24, 213 24:2, 291n8 24:4, 290n7 24:8, 290n7 24:15–19, 211

326   Index of Scriptural Passages

Numbers (cont.) 24:16, 290n7 24:23, 290n7 25, 10, 24, 191, 195, 197–99, 205–7, 209–11, 213–17, 219–20, 224, 235–38, 291n16, 293n37, 293n40, 294n42 25:1–18, 210 25:1–5, 202, 211, 292n22 25:1–3, 195, 199–200 25:1, 174, 203 25:3, 200 25:4–5, 200–201, 203, 204 25:4, 293n37 25:5, 203, 291n18 25:6–18, 201 25:6–15, 202, 292n22 25:6, 201–2, 203, 292n22 25:7–9, 202–4 25:8, 199, 216 25:10–13, 204 25:11, 216 25:12–13, 213 25:13, 291n8 25:14–15, 205 25:15, 292n24 25:16–18, 205–6 25:17, 293n29 25:18, 205, 293n29 26, 2, 20, 29, 128, 206, 223, 235, 280n52 26:1, 206, 223, 291n14 26:59, 284n11 27–36, 223 27–30, 206 27, 128, 223 27:13–14, 165 27:14, 160 27:16, 135, 291n8 28–29, 30, 223

30, 223 31, 205, 206, 215, 224, 280n52 31:1–12, 205 31:6, 63 31:8, 298n17 31:15, 205 31:16, 196, 205 32, 224 32:8–13, 100, 272n31 32:13, 60, 97 33, 10, 25, 61, 160, 199, 223, 224, 241–47, 257n29, 266n33 33:3, 60 33:16–17, 69, 71 33:18, 60 33:36, 160 33:37–47, 160 33:38, 118 33:49, 199 34–35, 224 34:3, 160, 284n4 36, 128, 223 Deuteronomy 1–3, 290n5 1, 87–88, 100 1:1, 71, 267n40 1:3, 60 1:21–22, 87 1:22, 101 1:24, 270n2 1:37, 285n25 9:22, 69, 263n1 10:5, 141 18:3, 203 25:9, 267n51 31, 127 32:4, 178 32:15, 178 32:18, 178

Index of Scriptural Passages   327

32:22, 279n45 32:51, 160 34, 20, 178 Joshua 5:12, 178 13:22, 298n17 15:1, 284n4 24:9–10, 298n17 Judges 1:16, 63, 265n20 4:11, 265n20

95, 100 95:7–11, 100 95:8, 165 105, 70 105:40, 70 106, 70, 174 106:14–15, 70 106:28, 291n18 106:30, 201 106:32, 285n25 107:21–26, 265n21 107:40, 265n21

1 Samuel 1, 225 8, 103 10, 68 18, 68 19, 68 25, 103

Proverbs 3:5–6, 43

2 Samuel 11:1, 273n35 11:2, 273n35

Jeremiah 6:14, 218 8:11, 218

1 Kings 8:9, 141

Isaiah 7:9, 114 11:9, 37 50:6, 267n51

Lamentations 3:39, 263n5

2 Kings 18–19, 44 18:4, 194

Amos 2, 225

2 Chronicles 5:10, 141

Micah 6:4, 161, 162

Nehemiah 8, 127

Habakkuk 3:7, 267n41

Psalms 50:19, 291n18 78:17–31, 70, 174

1 Maccabees 1, 198, 208, 295n59 1:26, 208

328   Index of Scriptural Passages

2 Maccabees 3:24, 279n43 Wisdom of Solomon 16:2–14, 174 16:7, 194 Matthew 2:2, 234 3:2, 207 11:7–15, 207 12:31, 267n49 17:12, 207 Mark 3:20–27, 92–93 3:28–30, 93 3:29, 267n49 4:34, 74 Luke 9:54–55, 294n56 12:10, 267n49 John 3, 194 3:14, 194 7, 93 7:37–39, 180 8, 93 Romans 11, 26 1 Corinthians 8–10, 172 10, 24, 157–59, 169, 172–77, 186, 284n2 10:1–4, 179 10:3–4, 179

10:4, 9, 168, 177, 179 10:5–11, 179 10:6, 70 10:7, 24 10:8, 203 15:1, 58–59 15:3–5, 58–59 15:13–15, 58–59 2 Corinthians 3, 172 Galatians 3:6–9, 170 3:14, 170 4, 186 Ephesians 1:18, 114 5:31–32, 186 Hebrews 1:1–2, 184 3, 100 3:5–19, 100 3:5, 100 3:6, 100 3:12–19, 100 5:4, 141 6:1–8, 100 9:4, 141 2 Peter 1:19, 234 2:15, 298n17 Revelation 2:14, 298n17 11:3, 105 22:16, 234

GENER AL INDEX

Achenbach, Reinhard, 270n6, 292n22 agency, divine and human. See initiative, divine and human Allen, Ronald B., 47 Alter, Robert, 132 Anderson, Gary A., 211 the ark, 64 Artus, Olivier, 128, 258n48, 263n41 ascriptive realism, 6–7, 56–59, 77–83, 146–47, 179, 250 Ashley, Timothy R., 46–47 Auerbach, Erich, 59, 76–83 Bach, Alice, 46 background, 76–83 Baden, Joel S., 123–24 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 279n42 Barr, James, 58, 107, 120, 264n13, 273n38, 276n6 Barth, Karl, 7, 59, 83, 86–87, 102–13, 228, 257n35, 269n1, 273nn35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 274nn41, 42 Barton, John, 32, 43, 256n20, 264n13, 265n22 Bartor, Assnat, 278n27 Batto, Bernard F., 272n26 Bede, 257n29 Bellinger, W. H., 46

blessing, 13, 225–41 book of Balaam, 195–96, 231–41 books defined as textual units, 19–26, 64, 175–76 Bourgine, Benoît, 111–12, 275n47 Briggs, Richard S., 260n7, 262n33, 267n42, 278n34 Brodie, Thomas L., 120 Brueggemann, Walter, 273n39 Budd, Philip J., 46 Calvin, John, 148–49, 152, 212, 266n25, 294n56 canonical intentionality, 120 Carmichael, Calum, 277n18 Childs, Brevard S., 20–22, 113, 120, 256n20, 275n52, 286n37 christological reading, 176, 185–86, 212 church, 101 Coakley, Sarah, 259n60 cohesion/coherence in narrative, 8, 69, 119–31 Collier, Gary D., 174–75 Collins, John J., 197–98, 207–9, 220, 291n15, 293n40 commentary, ix–x, 14, 23–27, 40 complaining, 55, 66, 71, 96–97, 139 Condie, Keith, 270n5 329

330  General Index

construal, 88, 98, 106 credulity, 44–45

Grossman, Jonathan, 293n32 Grushcow, Lisa, 261n24

Dante, 77–78, 80–81 Davis, Ellen F., 185–86 Dawkins, Richard, 40 Dawson, John David, 82, 268n61, 268n64, 269nn71–72 death, 69, 125–26, 136–38, 161–62, 203 de Lubac, Henri, 243–44, 290n80, 299n39 descriptive narrative, 56–57 de Vaulx, J., 28, 113 difficult texts, 2, 32, 35–39, 46, 129–31, 197–98 dogmatics, 106–11 Douglas, Mary, 29–30, 119, 145–46, 236, 276n3 Dozeman, Thomas B., 150–51, 235

Hadley, Judith, 297n15 Harris, Joel Chandler, 298n27 Hays, Richard B., 170, 288n54 Hayward, Robert, 207 hermeneutical theory, 51, 168–69, 187–89 Higton, Mike, 269n70 history/historical, 57–59, 78–79 history-like, 57 holiness, 12, 149–51, 165–67 Hort, Greta, 137 Houston, Walter, 210 humility, 73

Eliot, T. S., 42–43, 261n17 ethics, 101, 210, 213 evangelical interpretation, 46–47 expected readings, 41 faerie, 264n7 Farrow, Douglas, 154 feminist reading, 46–47, 72, 161–62 figural reading, 4, 59, 77–83, 157, 288n54 Fleurant, Josebert, 292n22 Ford, David F., 226–27, 274n41 Frei, Hans W., 57–59, 77–82, 146–47, 264nn8–12, 274n41 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 168–69 geographical markers, 54, 159–61, 192–93 Green, Garrett, 50

imagination, 43, 51, 114, 249–50 initiative, divine and human, 88 intercession, 67, 75 interpretive categories, 142–43 irony, 236–38 Irvin, Dorothy, 47, 262n31 Jacob, Benno, 271n20 James, Henry, 16–19 Jesus Christ, 81–83, 228 Jewish interpretation, 36–37, 177–81 judgment, 69–70, 74, 98–99, 135 Kaufmann, Yehezkel, 101, 272n32 Keil, C. F., 275n53 Kellner, Menachem, 36–38 Kermode, Frank, 254n2 Kierkegaard, Soren, 91 Koorevar, Hendrick Jacob, 256n19 Lane, Nathan C., 271n21 large numbers, 139, 203, 280n52 law and narrative, 126–29

General Index  331

Lee, Won W., 29, 48, 272n29 Leveen, Adriane, 125–26 Levenson, Jon D., 280nn48–49, 288n58 Levering, Matthew, 185 Levine, Baruch A., 211–12, 272n28, 296n2 Levison, John R., 68 Lewis, C. S., 42, 76, 260n14 Lindbeck, George A., 146, 282n74 Lipka, Hilary, 261n24 Lipton, Diana, 285n17 literal sense, 7, 58, 147–48, 182–83, 215–16, 253n7, 280n59, 282n77 literary artistry, 132, 145, 249–50 Luther, Martin, 152, 229 Lutzky, Harriet C., 292n24 MacDonald, Nathan, 186, 262n34, 297n13 Mann, Thomas W., 125 Martel, Yann, 40 Mendenhall, G. E., 292n19 Milgrom, Jacob, 212, 265n17, 265n19, 265n24, 267n51, 271n17 Mitchell, David, 250–51 Mitchell, Margaret M., 181 Moberly, Walter, 236 Moses’ sin, 164–67 new, 183–85. See also Old and New Testaments Noth, Martin, 46 Novick, Tzvi, 276n12 Old and New Testaments, 82, 111–12, 158, 182–88 Olson, Dennis T., 21–22, 28–29, 122–23, 206, 223, 235

Origen, 10, 24–26, 67, 241–47, 266n33 parataxis, 119–21 Pauline hermeneutics, 172–81 peace, 218–19 Pentateuchal criticism, 20, 23 politics, 217–21 Polk, Timothy Houston, 271n14 Powell, Mark Allan, 41, 260n13 pride, 103, 108–9 priests, priesthood, 68, 144–45, 149–54, 213, 225, 227–28, 282n82, 283nn86–87 problem texts. See difficult texts prophets, 67–68 realism. See ascriptive realism resurrection narratives, 59 revelation, 239–40 Ricoeur, Paul, 33, 51, 255n9, 281n61 Rosenzweig, Franz, 20 Roskop, Angela R., 54, 160–61, 263n2, 290n5 Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob, 271n22 Schart, Aaron, 272n30 Searle, Alison, 114, 275n54 secondary world, 56 Seitz, Christopher R., 185, 273n39 self-examination, 49 Sharp, Carolyn J., 236–38 Sherwood, Yvonne, 268n55, 268n59 sloth, 102–6, 108–10 Smith, Mark S., 61 Sommer, Benjamin D., 256n25 Sonnet, Jean-Pierre, 124 spirit, 67–68 Springs, Jason A., 282n74 Star Wars, 184

332  General Index

Steiner, George, 17, 257n33 Stout, Jeffrey, 51 Stubbs, David L., 112–13, 153, 212, 275n48 subject matter (Sache) of text, 6, 16–18, 85–86, 107, 177 Sumner, George R., 152 suspicion, 38–40, 44–51 Christian, 50 Tamarkin Reis, Pamela, 266n36 Tanner, Kathryn E., 282n77 temporal markers, 60–61, 63, 159–61 texts exerting “pressure,” 286n37 as not self-structuring, 18, 255n9 reconstructed, 123–24 Thatcher, Adrian, 259n1 Ticciati, Susannah, 274n44 Tolkien, J. R. R., 56 Treier, Daniel J., 273–74n40 Trible, Phyllis, 161

trust, 11–12, 39–44, 48–51, 73, 91–92, 114, 165–67 truth/truthfulness, 57–59, 78 typology, 157–58, 182, 288n62 Verdun altarpiece, xi violence, 203–20 Voltaire, 44–45 Wardlaw, Terrance R., 291n8 Watson, Francis, 170–72 Watts, James W., 127–28 Wenham, Gordon J., 47, 68, 212 Widmer, Michael, 271n15, 271n18, 272n24 wilderness, 12–13, 246–51 Wilken, Robert Louis, 186 Williams, H. A., 247 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 286n33 Wood, Donald, 107, 274n41 Young, Frances, 182

Richard S. Briggs is lecturer in Old Testament and director of biblical studies at Cranmer Hall, St. John’s College, Durham University. He is the author of a number of books, including The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretive Virtue.