Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary: Three-Volume Set - W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
[MS: Copyrighted material; editing, formats and comments added]
Numbers 31: 17 and Alters Note
Text:
16 Look, these are the ones who led the Israelites by Balaam’s word to betray the LORD ’s trust in the affair of Peor, and there was a scourge against the LORD ’s community. 17 And now, kill every male among the little ones, and every woman who has known a man in lying with a male, kill. 18 And all the little ones of the women who have not known lying with a male, let live.
Alter's Note:
" 17 . kill every male among the little ones, and every woman who has known a man. Moses’s command—one should note that it is Moses’s, not God’s—to perpetrate this general massacre, excluding only virgin females, is bloodcurdling, and the attempts of the interpreters, traditional and modern, to “explain” it invariably lead to strained apologetics. ...
The practice of massacring most or all of a conquered population was widespread in the ancient Near East (the Moabite Mesha stele records a similar “ban” or ḥerem against a defeated enemy, using certain Semitic terms cognate to ones that are employed here), but that is not exactly a palliative.
It is painfully evident that this is an instance in which the biblical outlook sadly failed to transcend its historical contexts.
Many commentators have also puzzled over the fact that Moses, whose own wife is Midianite, should now show such intransigence toward the Midianite population. Either two conflicting traditions are present in these texts, or, if we try to conceive this as a continuous story, Moses, after the Baal Peor episode, reacts with particular fury against the Midianite women (not to speak of all the males) because he himself is married to one of them and feels impelled to demonstrate his unswerving dedication to protecting Israel from alien seduction.
But it must be conceded that the earlier picture of the Midianite priest Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, as a virtual monotheist and a benign councillor of Israel does not accord with the image in these chapters of the Midianite women enticing the Israelites to pagan excesses. "
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[MS: Let us suppose - for sake of discussion here - that we take the hint Alter supplies that since the command comes from Moses and not God, then perhaps we can add to or modify this command to reflect the Jewish Peoplehood's experience over millennia. We reject the wholesale killing of children even in war.
Should we have this debate prompted by the reading of the parsha on our calendar? And thus avoid "strained apologetics" and encourage a Torah and Zionist debate of the highest order about our Jewish Peoplehood?
Alter has many articles about Jewish History as reflected in the Bible. It's both a literary tool, religious messages and a matter of context. It's not simple, but rather it is a critically important element of embracing our national texts. Alter compares this to Shakespeare's use of English history in many plays. See Chapter 2: Sacred History in The Art of Biblical Narrative among others in Sefaria Sheets Robert Alter Collection.
Discussions prompted regularly by the Parsha could be quite thought provoking.
For example:
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) - The fundamental values of the IDF and its code of conduct.
*War Crimes - Laws Against Genocide and Crimes against Humanity: A vast body of laws and thinking were created after the Nazi defeat and the revelation of the Holocaust. Many Jews led this struggle. See Philip Sands memoire and how these laws came to be.
* Humanism as an Intellectual Challenge: Steven Pinker, famous , award winning Harvard scholar, writes about "good without God" and the ideals of the Humanist Movement.(p.410, Chapter 23 in Enlightenment Now. ) Can Humanism create nations who will do good and refrain from evil without a religious foundation? ( pp 451-453)
Israel and Jewish Peoplehood will continue to both study Torah and live - that is: survive - in this fallen world. A saying goes: When the End of the World comes, the Lion shall lie down with the Lamb ... and we must be the Lion, or we shall not be there at all.
Can we learn from both and do we have a responsibility to be sure we are doing so?
This Sheet is written as Israel and Jewish Peoplehood debate Tradition and Democracy and the intense struggle to avoid Sinat Chinam. May this Sheet only contribute to compromise, unity and Tradition in a Democracy, a work in progress.
Yossi Klein HaLevi, a Liberal/Centrist essayist of renown, puts it this way in a remarkable summary of the divisions:
"No people is more capable of turning disaster into triumph than the Jews; and, we fear, no people is more capable of destroying its own achievements. The Torah, which understood our collective strengths and weaknesses, was not subtle: “I have set before you death and life, blessing and curse; therefore, choose life.”
The Israeli success story of the last 75 years was based on a model that made place, however imperfectly and uneasily, for the whole Jewish people. Refining and strengthening that model is the way to continue to choose life."]
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MS: July 30, 2023