Death in Numbers 25
The Hebrew Bible is the story of a love affair between Yahweh and his chosen bride, Israel. In return for God’s blessings, the people promise fidelity, yet over and over, they rebel, complain, and bow down to other gods. Sometimes Yahweh is patient. At other times, he punishes them harshly.
One such harsh punishment occurred at the end of the Israelite’s wilderness journey. They were camped along the Jordan River across from Canaan. In between Balaam’s prophecy that Israel would be victorious in battle against the neighboring tribes and the taking a census of the Israeli people, lies the tale of the murder of Zimri and Cozbi, both children of tribal leaders. One was an Israelite; the other Midianite. Moses’s grand-nephew, Phinehas, speared them through. Then, Yahweh blessed him.
Why did Phinehas kill them, and why did their deaths please Yahweh? Is it just another story of gratuitous violence, or is there a point? If so, what is it? What can we learn from it? Does it tell us anything about human nature or our relationship with the holy?
To attempt to answer these questions, we need some background.
Manna in the Wilderness
In the beginning, Yahweh and the patriarch Abraham made a covenant. If Abraham would chose Yahweh as his god, the deity would make of him and his descendants a great nation, and they would live in the land of Canaan and be blessed.
Abraham agreed, and his descendants multiplied. But instead of ending up in Canaan, they ended up as slaves in Egypt. In their misery, they cried out for relief, until finally Yahweh chose Moses to lead them to the promised land.
To get to Canaan, though, they had to travel through the desert. Their journey was difficult, and they were hungry. “If only we had died by the hand of Adonai in the land of Egypt,” they cried, “when we sat by pots of meat, when we ate bread until we were full. But you have brought us into the wilderness, to kill this entire congregation with hunger” (Exodus 16:3 TLV).
So every night, Yahweh rained manna down from the heavens. He instructed them to gather it ground, only as much as they needed, and to keep it only for one day. The people collected the frosty substance that covered the earth, but some took more than their share, and others tried to store it, only to discover that what they kept for the future rotted or became full of worms, yet still they didn’t trust their god. When He told them that on the sixth day, they should gather enough for two days because they were not to work on the Sabbath, some went out to collect the manna anyway. They found that nothing was there.
“Adonai said to Moses, ‘How long will you refuse to keep My mitzvot and My Torah?’” (Exodus 16:28 TLV).
Walking to Canaan
It seems, they refused for a very long time. Not only did they complain to Yahweh, but they resisted Moses’s leadership. At one point, even his brother and sister turned against him. And when the time came for people to enter into Canaan, they refused.
When they were about halfway there, Moses sent scouts to find out what the Canaanites were like. They discovered they numerous and powerful, so much so that the Israelites were unlikely to beat them in battle. Hearing this, most of the people refused to go on. They didn’t want to die fighting.
“Fine,” Yahweh told them. “You can die in the desert. I’ll send your children to Canaan instead.”
So the Israelites wandered through the wilderness for forty years.
Eventually, though, they could not avoid reaching Canaan. Yahweh’s will would be done, after all. Thus, by the end of the book of Numbers, the Israelites were camped outside of that foreign land. They’d had some military victories on the way there, so felt more confident in their abilities, and the other nations, like the Midianites and Moabites, were afraid of them. To derail Yahweh’s people, the foreign leaders sent young women to seduce the Israelite men and entice them to worship other gods, for it was idolatry that Yahweh hated most of all.
Impale the Ringleaders
For a while, the plan worked. The Israelite men were content to bed these women and willingly bowed down to their deity, the Baal of Peor. Yet such idolatry could not last forever, for idolatry was the most hateful thing in Yahweh’s sight. In His anger, His said to Moses:
“’Take all the ringleaders and have them publicly impaled before the Lord, so that the Lord’s wrath may turn away from Israel.’ So Moses said to Israel’s officials,’ Each of you slay those of his men who attached themselves to Baal-peor’” (Numbers 25:4-5 JPS).
That very night, while the men sat weeping in front of the Tent of Atonement, perhaps crying for their loved ones they would have to kill, an Israelite man “brought a Midianite woman over to his companions” (Numbers 25:6 JPS).
Imagine how the Israelites felt. At that time, although we don’t learn of it until later, a plague was raging through the community, killing many thousands of their people. They were convinced they were being punished because they had turned way from their god. Now Yahweh was telling them to take even more lives. In front of this tent of meeting, a place where they might admit their wrongdoings, atone for their sins, they were grieving, crying out, and praying for mercy.
“Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman into his family” (Numbers 25: 6 NRSV).
Zimri and Cozbi Die
What a surprise. One can’t help but wonder what those two were doing there at such a moment. Did they not realize how sacred this meeting was? What did the text mean that the man was bringing the “woman into his family”? Was he introducing her to them? Surely in those days, fathers would choose spouses for their children, so perhaps they had just wed, and was this the moment Zimri was bringing home his bride? At this point we don’t know their names, but later we learn that he is Zimri, and she is Cozbi, and both their parents were chiefs or leaders of their clan. Since they were both of important families, an alliance would not be unusual, at least not at one time. After all, Moses himself had married Zipporah, a Midianite.
Even so, some commentators, such as the Calvinist leader, John Calvin, considered Cozbi to be Zimri’s “harlot,” [1] bu whatever the reason for the couple’s presence, and regardless of whether or not the community felt their reason to be justified, one man, at least, became incensed when he saw them. Phinehas, son of Eleazar, who was son of Aarontook up a spear and rushed after them as they passed “into the private-chamber, and he thrust through the two of them, the man of Israel and the woman, in her private-parts” (Numbers 25:8 Schocken Bible), implying that sexual impropriety was what so enraged Phinehas.
But whatever the pair’s transgression was, their death apparently saved lives, for that plague was killing one Israelite out of four, and now, because of what Phinehas had done, it had ended. The murder of Zimri and Cozbi appeased Yahweh, and the people were saved. Phinehas became a hero, for he had impaled two so that the many would not have to be.
Worshiping Other Gods
Yet was Yahweh truly upset about sexual impropriety and intermarriage, or was something else going on? S. C. Reif, in an analysis of the story, suggests that what infuriated Phinehas was the blasphemous worshiping of another god. To support this thesis, the author cites scholars who believe that Zimri and Cozbi were in a tabernacle at the time of their death, a priestly dwelling that originated during the Mosaic period. That means the two were entering a shrine, and not just any shrine, but a Midianite one. [2]
As we mentioned above, the sin that most enraged Yahweh was idolatry, for if the Israelites continued to bow down to Baal, they would cease to identify as a people. Then, who would worship Him? He had given them the gift of life. Because of him, they were a people. He did not want them to become like everyone else.
Our identity matters. We want a unique history, a unique nature, a unique relationship with the holy. Perhaps Phinehas was trying to assert who he was, an Israelite who would not stand for corruption, would not allow his god to be denied, who was faithful and holy and willing to kill to prove it.
Vigilante Justice
He sets a dangerous precedent, for he justifies vigilante justice. In his article about terrorists who referred to Scripture to legitimate their actions, Roger Friedland gives the example of Yigal Amir who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel in 1993 after Rabin signed the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Amir found inspiration for his deed in the story of Phinehas and his murder of Zimri and Cozbi. [3]
How many others—white nationalists, Islamic terrorists, Jewish extremists—might do the same? During a time of terror, when four percent of your community is dying out, what would you do? Who would you blame? In the United States, 633,000 citizens have died from the coronavirus. That’s two out of every thousand people, which is far less than in our story. Even so, some people are targeting Asians because they blame them for bringing the disease to our country.
For the ancients, things were even more terrifying than for us because they didn’t have a scientific understanding of how disease spreads. All they had was superstition to help them make sense of their peril. They knew that if they could make sense of the situation, if they could find the cause of their suffering, they could stop things before they got worse.
In similar situations, some people blame witches. The Israelites blamed their wayward compatriots. Zimri and Cozbi thus became the perfect scapegoats.
Scapegoating
That’s what makes the text terrifying. It glorifies scapegoating, approves the taking of justice into our own hands. As David Bernat explains, the rabbis have long been concerned about this. After all, when vigilante retribution soon becomes domination rather than justice. [4]
How, then, do we understand such a story? Do we dismiss it as the ramblings of a patriarchal society, or do we take it as some message from a god? If so, what kind of god might that be? Is there any way this story can teach us to love one another, to treat one another kindly?
In her article about feminist midrashim, Ronit Irshai retells the midrash of Tamar Biala who imagines what it would be like for a young woman today who sits in a congregation and listens to the reading of the Ten Commandments. On that day, she hears them differently than ever before, and she notices in them an absence. Although the ancient rabbis went to great lengths to explain that women were there at Mt. Sinai, and that they are included in the commandments, the “you” that begins each one is in the masculine form. [5]
This was quite common in the Scriptures. Numbers 25, for instance, opens with the phrase, “the people profaned themselves by whoring with the Moabite women” (Numbers 25:1 JPS). Clearly, “the people” were not female. The entire chapter is written this way, as if the Israelite women were invisible.
Retelling the Stories
In Biala’s mirash, the young woman notices that “you” are to keep the Sabbath and do no work, and so are the son and daughter and the slave, but there is no mention of a wife. Is she thus exempt from this prohibition, expected to work that day and every other?
Even more clear was the prohibition against coveting one’s neighbor’s “wife.” Could that be written to a woman, as well? Surely not. So is she free, then, to covet whatever she wants?
As the woman in the synagogue thinks these thoughts, she becomes afraid. It seems sacrilege to doubt the Torah this way. But as she sits trembling, the Holy One speak to her: “How long have I waited for you to come and ask me?” the divine one says. And the Holy One explains to her that Moses had separated himself from his wife, Zipporah, so he forgot that the women were there among them, and he forgot that they, too, had needs and desires, “and so he did not include them in that prohibition,” and when the woman wonders if Moses could be so blind, then how could the rabbis who interpret the text be any wiser, the Holy One answers, “From a bet midrash that has no woman, nothing whole will emerge.” [6]
In Biala’s midrash, it is not God who makes women invisible, but Moses in his human frailty. Ishrai argues that this is not so radical an idea, that Biala draws on the teachings of the rabbis of old. For instance, the tradition has long wondered about the absence of women on that day on Mt. Sinai. Explanations abound to show how women are included, so Biala’s critique is not so radical. [7]
The Lens of Love
So perhaps we, in looking at this story in Numbers 25, can draw on tradition. For instance, though some lauded Phinehas as the first zealot, and while Josephus admired his passion, the rabbis have long questioned Phinehas’s action. After all, he committed the murder on his own, without a trial. He judges their behavior and decides on the appropriate punishment. “His precipitous, unilateral, extrajudicial execution of Zimri and Cozbi contravenes basic Rabbinic principles of justice.” [8]
Yet God blessed Phinehas’s act. How can that be understood?
What if the story of Zimri and Ccozbi were not about God’s desire for us to rout the villains and kill them, but rather God’s desire to love us and for us to love God? What if God prefers mercy to wrath? Might it be that, instead of stopping the plague because Phinehas did the right thing, God stopped the plague because She realized that if She didn’t, a further bloodbath would ensue, that the people would impale the heads of dozens of men? Maybe if the plague ended, they would stop trying to look for someone to blame.
Of course, it never works that way. We are endlessly looking for someone to blame. For some white men and women living in the United States, Asians make the perfect scapegoats. For the Israelis, the Midianite men and women were the perfect enemies.
We seek someone to blame when things go wrong. Some of us seek religious justification for our violent acts. Texts of terror, like the murder of Zimri and Cozbi, are perfect for this. Yet this is not who God is. These texts reveal who we are, and they don’t make us look very good.
Beginning to Understand
It makes sense, to retell the stories. Perhaps we might build a shrine to Zimri and Cozbi who died, perhaps, because they dared to love. Love has long been suspect by humans. When we reach out to create peace, as Rabin did, we may die. Jesus, who preached love, lived only three years after he started his ministry.
The Jewish faith has much to teach us. It embodies rich values, speaks of love for self, and neighbor, and God, and it invites us to be pure in heart and to take care of one another. Let us read that into the stories we hear, the stories we tell, and if a text must be reinterpreted, let us do so out of love.
What might God tell us about the story of those two putative lovers? Perhaps God would say, “I have been waiting for so long for someone to understand the fear and desperation that drove Phinehas without glorifying his action. I have been waiting for so long for someone to see how much I love them all, the ones who died, and the ones who killed.”
Might we not be the ones who begin, at least, to understand?
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- Calvin, John, “Commentary on Numbers 25:6,” Calvin’s Commentary on the Bible, 1840, 57, https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/cal/numbers-25.html.
- Reif, S. C., “What Enraged Phinehas?: A Study of Numbers 25:8,” Journal of Biblical Literature, Jun., 1971, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Jun., 1971), 200- 206, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3263760, accessed 8/24/21.
- Friedland, Roger, “Religious Terror and the Erotics of Exceptional Violence,” Anthropological Yearbook of European Cultures, 2005, Vol. 14, Gender and Nation in South Easter Europe (2005), pp. 39-71, 56, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43234706.
- Bernat, David, “Pinchas’ Extrajudicial Execution of Zimri and Cozbi,” The Torah.com, https://www.thetorah.com/article/pinchas-extrajudicial-execution-of-zimri-and-cozbi, accessed 8/24/21.
- See, for example, Furst, Rachel, “The Ten Commandments: A Gender Analysis,” My Jewish Learning, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-ten-commandments-a-gender-analysis/, accessed 8/28/21.
- Irshai, Ronit, “And I Find a Wife More Bitter Than Death,” (Eccl 7:26): Feminist Hermeneutics, Women’s Midrashim, and the Boundaries of Acceptance in Modern Orthodox Judaism, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring 2017), pp. 69-86, 83, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jfemistudreli.33.1.06.
- Ibid 84.
- Bernat.