(1) On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, ה׳ spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: (2) Take a headcount of the whole Israelite company [of fighters] by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. (3) You and Aaron shall record them by their groups, from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms.
(12) When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, (13) and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, (14) beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget your God ה׳ —who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; (15) who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraphim, serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; (16) who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end— (17) and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.”
דֶּבֶר DEVER
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- pestilence, plague
- murrain, cattle disease, cattle-plague
(א) וַיֹּ֤אמֶר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה בֹּ֖א אֶל־פַּרְעֹ֑ה וְדִבַּרְתָּ֣ אֵלָ֗יו כֹּֽה־אָמַ֤ר ה׳ אֱלֹקֵ֣י הָֽעִבְרִ֔ים שַׁלַּ֥ח אֶת־עַמִּ֖י וְיַֽעַבְדֻֽנִי׃ (ב) כִּ֛י אִם־מָאֵ֥ן אַתָּ֖ה לְשַׁלֵּ֑חַ וְעוֹדְךָ֖ מַחֲזִ֥יק בָּֽם׃ (ג) הִנֵּ֨ה יַד־ה׳ הוֹיָ֗ה בְּמִקְנְךָ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּשָּׂדֶ֔ה בַּסּוּסִ֤ים בַּֽחֲמֹרִים֙ בַּגְּמַלִּ֔ים בַּבָּקָ֖ר וּבַצֹּ֑אן דֶּ֖בֶר כָּבֵ֥ד מְאֹֽד׃
(1) ה׳ said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says ה׳, the God of the Hebrews: Let My people go to worship Me. (2) For if you refuse to let them go, and continue to hold them, (3) then the hand of ה׳ will strike your livestock in the fields—the horses, the asses, the camels, the cattle, and the sheep—with a very severe pestilence.
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- word, speech.
- matter, affair.
- business, occupation.
- something, anything.
The Hebrew word midbar, wilderness, has the same root as the word dabar/davar, meaning "word" or "thing." It has the same letters as medabber, "speaking." It is in the wilderness that the Israelites hear revelation, the word or speaking of God.
Among the precepts of Mosaic religion is one that has more significance than is at first obvious. It is the prohibition against making an image of God, which means the compulsion to worship an indivisible god . . . [This] was bound to exercise a profound influence. For it signified subordinating sense perception to an abstract idea; it was a triumph of spirituality over the senses; more precisely, an instinctual renunciation accompanied by its psychologically necessary consequences . . . It was certainly one of the most important stages on the way to becoming human.
When we undertake the exodus and wander into the world, in order to found a new society elsewhere, we discover the world as the Desert. The flight leads nowhere, until we stop in order to find our bearings beyond the world. When the world has become Desert, man is at last in the solitude in which he can hear thunderingly the voice of the spirit that with its urgent whispering has already driven and rescued him from Sheol [the domain of death]. In the Desert, God spoke to the leader and his tribes; in the desert, by listening to the voice, by accepting its offer, and by submitting to its command, they had at last reached life and became the people chosen by God.
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons Judaism has no counterpart to the word 'secular' - a word derived from the Latin seculum, meaning 'the world.' In Western civilisation, religion is unworldly or otherworldly. No such concept could exist in Judaism. God is not set over and against the world, nor is religion a retreat from the world. Instead the opposite of kadosh, holy, is chol, which literally means sand. Sand is what the holy is not. It blows this way and that, never stable, or rooted, or capable of sustaining life.
(1) Happy is the man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, or taken the path of sinners, or joined the company of the insolent; (2) rather, the teaching of God is his delight, and he studies that teaching day and night. (3) He is like a tree planted beside streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, whose foliage never fades, and whatever it produces thrives. (4) Not so the wicked; rather, they are like chaff that wind blows away.
- What are the spacious, ownerless places in your life?
- How have we, as Jews, remained connected to the wilderness after becoming a settled and (mostly) urbanized people?