OH, when will we ever learn?
Offerings played a huge role in the life of Israel, and this week’s double parashah, Chukkat Balak, begins with another type of offering, the Red Heifer. The heifer had to be burned up completely with its blood and offered “outside the camp”, far from the holy center, the Tent of Meeting. Its ashes were mixed with fresh spring water (Mei Niddah), water of purification. A ritually clean person would dip a bunch of hyssop into the mixture, sprinkle it on the impure person on the third and seventh days. After the seventh day of sprinkling and bathing, the person was declared clean. This ritual was to treat contamination from contact with the dead. Outside the camp” was the zone designated for the most severe cases of ritual impurity, such as lepers (Lev. 13:46), the remains of sin offerings (Lev. 4:12), executions (Num. 15:35), and the scapegoat.
Notice the paradox here: the ashes of the pure heifer were used to purify the impure, and anyone who handled the dead heifer or its ashes became ritually impure. This is a חוק Khoke — a divine statute to be obeyed without a logical explanation. Our sages say that the Red Heifer was meant to atone for Israel’s sin of the Golden Calf, but how could the ashes of one calf reverse the sin of another?
This theme would be repeated in Number 21. After the Edomites, descendants of Esau, Jacob’s twin brother, wouldn’t allow their relatives, the Israelites, to pass through their territory, the Israelites were forced to go the long way around and became discouraged. They spoke against Moses again…“Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness where there is no bread, no water, and we despise this ‘worthless food’ ”. They were referring to God’s gift of “Manna”!
The result – GOD sent venomous serpents among the people, and many died. They went to Moses and admitted that they had spoken against God and him, and again, instead of reacting against them, Moses interceded for the people and followed God’s instruction: he made a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and whoever had been bitten and looked up at it was healed. In either situation, did the heifer that became impure cleanse the person, or did the bronze serpent on the pole heal the infected person?
How many objects in our lives do we attribute to being a source of healing and power?
Christianity teaches in the book of John that Jesus Christ, pointing to his death on the cross, compared himself to the snake lifted up in the wilderness, and that everyone who believes in him would have eternal life.
Was the bronze serpent God? Did it have the power to heal? No, it had no power! In fact, it had to be torn down about 700 years later by King Hezekiah, because Israel was burning incense and worshipping Moses’ bronze serpent, which they had named Nehushtan, meaning “that worthless thing”. How could Jesus, whom we know as Rabbi Yeshua, have compared himself with “this worthless thing” that had no power? He loved the Torah and wanted his people to return to it and to trust in the God of their fathers, who held all power in His Hands. Also, didn’t the “ashes” of the red heifer cleanse the people, not its blood?
We tend to worship what we can see and replace our invisible God with “a worthless thing”. The serpent that GOD had commanded Moses to make had become an idol over time. The Israelites had lived in the pagan culture of Egypt for hundreds of years and had been bombarded with one superstitious ritual after another. God was directing their attention away from these false rituals by giving them ones that would redirect them back to the God of their fathers, whom they had forgotten.
Today in Israel, the Orthodox Jewish community wants to reinstate the sacrificial system and declare that they have found what they believe to be the perfect Red Heifer. Can a red heifer offered on the Temple Mount today save our people? Or is that man’s way of telling God what we want Him to do instead of doing what He asked?
Although the elements differ, the theme of the red heifer and the venomous snakes can be compared to the ritual of the Sota in Numbers 5:11-31, in which a husband who suspected his wife of adultery had to bring her to the priest. He concocted a drink from dust gathered from the floor of the Tabernacle, adding it to ordinary water. She had to drink it to prove her innocence or reveal her guilt. I believe in all these cases, God was dealing with a people who had been immersed in superstitious beliefs prevalent in the pagan religions of that day. These stories in the Torah warn us to be very careful about never making worthless objects the source of God’s power.
Don’t we realize how easy it is to replace God with things like a cross, a mezuzah, a Torah scroll, a black stone, a rabbit’s foot, a horseshoe, a crystal, and on and on?
Our people today have been living in the diaspora among pagan cultures for thousands of years. We are still believing in superstitions that are rooted in pagan beliefs, and we have forgotten God’s words, rooted in wisdom and truth. Our prophet Hosea said in 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
In Numbers 20:2 -12, the people of Israel once again complained that there was no water to drink. God told Moses to take his rod, gather the assembly, and he and Aaron were to speak to the rock, and it would bring forth water for the congregation to drink. But instead of speaking to the rock, Moses struck it twice. God told the two men, “Because you did not believe me to sanctify Me in the eyes of the people of Israel, you shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.” I don’t think that Moses lost the right to enter the land for simply losing his temper. How could speaking to or even striking a rock ever have produced water?
God was directing attention away from Moses, Aaron and even Miriam, who were, over time, considered gods by the people. If they had entered the land with the Israelites, who would get the credit, who would be sanctified in the eyes of the people – God or them?
Chapter 20:13 continues: “This is the water of Merivah because the people of Israel strove with God and He was sanctified in them (Et Adonai v’yikadesh bam).” Who was the “them” by whom He was sanctified (set apart) – was it Moses and Aaron, or was it the people of Israel? Our sages differ in their opinions about this, but like Rabbi Ibn Ezra, I believe it was the Israelites, because they were formed specifically by God to be a nation with a calling… to be Ohr L’goyim, a Light to the Nations!
We may not realize it yet, but when we, Israel, as a nation or even as individuals within this nation, forget our calling and lose our sense of purpose, the world suffers on every level. Whenever we forget our role, as we have so often done throughout the centuries, God sends “serpents” to bite the people, reminding us that His sanctity, His Name, is affirmed through our behaviour!
That is an awesome responsibility, and many don’t want it. God’s Name, YHVH, is always at the heart of the matter. His name represents everything about Him. It’s like being born into a royal family. The name of that family is held in high esteem, and when anyone within the family desecrates their name by their poor choices and bad behaviour, the family’s name is tarnished, not just theirs. God, the true King, gave Israel His code of behaviour for us to bring to the world, and He will not allow His Name to be tarnished by anyone or anything.
Chapter 20:24 says, “Let Aaron be gathered to his kin: he is not to enter the land that I have assigned to the Israelite people, because you ‘rebelled’ מְרִיתֶ֥ם m’ritem against My command concerning the waters of Meribah.” M’ritem specifically refers to rebelling against “father or God”. The double parashah ends with Balaam, a Gentile prophet who quietly rebelled against God’s specific orders and an Israelite man and a Midianite woman who paraded their rebellion before the entire community. We already know how God dealt with rebellion in Parashat Korach. King Balak was simply following the custom of his day when he hired the prophet Balaam to curse his enemy. Balaam consulted with the God of Israel, who responded, “Do not go with them. You must not curse those people, for they are blessed.” Like the previous rituals that had no power, could any man curse Israel? Of course not!
The end of this parashah shows us how Israel can be its own worst enemy. Our actions have consequences. The Torah is brutally honest and tells us that Israel fell when they began to commit harlotry in Shittim with the daughters of Moab, Balak’s people, the one who hired the prophet to curse them. That didn’t work, but what followed did. The Israelite men were enticed by the Moabite women and the sexual rites of the Moabite gods, and so, rebellion entered the camp once again, causing a plague to take the lives of 24,000 people until Pinchas, Eleazar’s son, stepped in and stopped the plague from spreading, through an act of zeal for God, thus making atonement for the people of Israel. God saw his heart and honoured his deed.
The Torah shows us that only God controls Israel’s fate. No matter how hard they try, no human can curse what God has blessed. God was showing Balak, who represents modern-day governments, Balaam, who represents modern-day religions, and the people of Israel, who represent humanity, that He alone holds Ultimate Authority. We would all do well to heed His warnings.
God isn’t asking for perfection from us. He is our Father, and we are His beloved children, Jew and Gentile alike. The haftarah in Micah 6: 5-8 states very clearly what God is asking from us: “O My people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him; so that you may know the righteous acts of GOD. ‘With what shall I come before GOD, and bow myself before GOD on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will GOD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? …GOD has told you what is good, O human, and what He requires of you – only to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your GOD.”
The formula of replacing God with worthless things is threaded throughout this double portion and has followed us from that day to this.
Look at the world today…living in obvious rebellion against God’s instructions that were meant to protect us from the curses of the modern-day Balaams and Balaks. When the consequences of our rebellion affect us, we complain; we form committees to fight the injustice and hatred against us, we blame governments, and ultimately, we blame God. Then, after many of our people have suffered and died, we cry out for a saviour. When will we ever learn that God has given us everything we need to save ourselves from ourselves!
Shabbat Shalom
Peggy Pardo