Stephen
Terry, Director
For What Nation Is There So Great?
Commentary
for the November 6, 2021, Sabbath School Lesson
"Phinehas, son of Eleazar, the son of
Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his
hand and followed the Israelite into the
tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and
into the woman's stomach. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped;
but those who died in the plague numbered 24,000." Numbers 25:7-9, NIV
Our lesson this week focuses on
the events that occurred at Baal Peor. Superficially this story is a simple
morality lesson about the dangers of worshipping other gods, and many take it
as such and delve no further. But the story is fraught with problems, problems
that Jewish Rabbis and Talmudic Scholars have long been aware of and struggled
to explain. The text in Numbers, chapter 25, tells us that women who worshipped
idols seduced Israelites into worshipping them, too, by offering their bodies
sexually to Israelite men. To deal with the problem, Israel kills every man and
woman belonging to the people who tried to trip them up in this way. But female
virgins are to be spared.
In some ways, this is a
retelling of the fall in the Garden of Eden, making women the reason men are
led astray. Women are portrayed as cold and calculating temptresses, while poor
men, victims of their hormones, are unable to resist their wiles. This theme
remains common in modern Christianity where sermons against women tempting men
through dress and manners are far more common than sermons about men keeping
their pants zipped. It is often the hidden accusation that underpins Headship
Theology as well. With a few exceptions like Ruth and Esther, women from
Delilah to Bathsheba, as well as Gomer, Hosea's wife, are depicted as
promiscuous temptresses carried away by their lasciviousness. Although there are
plenty of lascivious men, public sentiment, even within the modern church,
leans toward a boys-will-be-boys permissiveness. In the Baal Peor incident, we
hear nothing from the women about what went on, not from the Israelites, who
must have been aggrieved if their men folk were
straying, or from the outsiders, whose sisters and daughters were forming
relationships with Israelite men. One might think that the resulting war was
brought on because the Israelites discovered a nefarious plot to separate them from
God, but Phinehas killing the daughter of a powerful tribal chief alone could
be enough to ignite a war. As when Jacob's sons avenged the rape of Dinah, the
Israelites were more than happy to go to war over sexual indiscretions. We do
not hear what happened to Dinah after that. Was she forced to lead the sad life
of an unmarriageable nun after she had lost her virginity and her brothers
killed the man who offered to marry her? She just disappears into the void
inhabited by most of the women of the Old Testament.
But obvious patriarchy is only
one of the problems in the Baal Peor incident. The text vacillates over where
these temptresses came from. It cannot seem to decide whether they are Moabites
or Midianites. If they are Moabites, they are descendants of Lot through his
incest with his daughters. God had previously told the Israelites to leave the
Moabites alone because of this kinship to Israel through Lot.[i]
Because of this, one could see how an Israelite might feel comfortable entering
a relationship with a Moabitess. It becomes even more confused when Moses
proclaims that no Moabite can become a part of the congregation of Israel for
ten generations because of Baal Peor.[ii]
But he had little problem with welcoming in the virgins they spared at Baal
Peor. And despite this command to exclude the Moabites, a generation later,
Ruth the Moabitess married Boaz, and she became a direct ancestor of Jesus.
If the women were Midianites
instead, that poses other problems. Moses' wife Zipporah was Midianite. One
could see how Zimri, the Israelite slain by Phinehas, even if Moses confronted
him, could have asked of Moses, "But aren't you married to a Midianite?" While
such a confrontation is only speculation, it could certainly explain why he
felt it would be no problem to bring the woman into the camp in full view of
Moses.[iii]It
could also explain Moses failing to intervene directly and why Phinehas felt he
had to act. In doing so, he secured the priesthood for his descendants.[iv]
However, he could not pass on his zeal. One of his descendants, Eli, had two
sons who were crooks and thieves, stealing from those who came to worship at
the sanctuary. One of those sons was even named after Phinehas. The other was
named Hophni, and both were slain in battle while failing to protect the Ark of
the Covenant from their enemies. While Phinehas at Baal Peor may be seen as a
high point of faithfulness, Phinehas, the son of Eli, represents a low point
with the loss of the Ark. Being branded a Moabite did not prevent Ruth from
having a profound part to play in the eventual incarnation of the Messiah, from
her womb also came the line of Davidic kings who, although they had some
Moabite blood in their veins, ruled over Israel. So, simply giving the name of
a hero of the faith to someone does not guarantee they will not betray the
faith placed in them, nor does one's circumstances prevent rising to great
heights through the power of God.
Whether, as some
believe, Moses wrote all of this in such a confused manner, or it was some
editor or editors attempting to compile a unified text from disparate sources
is a battle that may never be resolved in this life. We cannot interview Moses,
nor can we discover who those ancient editors would have been. Some attempts
have been made to do so using the tools of literary criticism to ferret out authors
of source documents, but even then, there remains enough ambiguity about some
passages that it is impossible to decide which original writer wrote them. For
the biblical literalist, this creates no end of problems. Such individuals deny
even the possibility of conflicts in the text. As apologists, they claim to
have the truth and any inconsistencies are only apparent and caused by wrong
interpretations. This can be problematic. It implies that the text is
indecipherable without an apologist to interpret it for you. One then becomes
dependent on those who dispense and enforce those interpretations as opposed to
coming directly to God and through the Holy Spirit, discerning the truth for
oneself.[v]
This is strikingly like the position of the Medieval church prior to the
Reformation, when all religious thought was required to submit to the authority
of Rome. Rome had the truth and therefore, all else was heretical.
When we actually investigate the
early church through extant writings, we discover that, while bishops may have
vied for supremacy over one another, that simpler time also had a great deal of
confusion over issues that still resonate today, such as the ordination of
women, the observance of practices long observed by the Jews, and whether or
not someone can approach God directly for truth as opposed to having it parsed
out to them by the church. During that chaotic, but exciting time, despite the
apparent confusion, the baptisms and accretions exploded and even some in the Roman Imperial household were joining the
Christians.[vi]
There was no need, as was later done, to force people into fellowship at the
point of a sword. That same sword dispatched heretics right and left when they
dared to wish for a personal faith not dependent on clergy to sort out.
The Reformation may have
introduced some Ante-Nicene messiness back into the
church. But that messiness is the point rather than an artifact of unbelief. It
is the point about Numbers, chapter 25, and its narrative about Baal Peor as
well. We think we have an idea of what God wants, and we codify it into dogma
to clean up the messiness. The Jews codified everything in fine detail over
centuries.[vii]
We are prone to do the same. The tenets of what is acceptable and what is not
are now twenty-eight in number with little promise that there will not be more
as well as fine tuning of the existing points to enable the identification of
every heretic within our ranks. If tongues are swords, which in some ways they
are, the blood freely flows on social media as those who take
up verbal arms against the heretics are more than happy to point them
out and pile the firewood around the bottoms of their stakes. Standing around
the pyre, singing hymns, they do not realize that the very music they sing
testifies against them, for harmony is born from diversity, not uniformity. One
cannot even play a simple musical chord if all the notes are identical.
Far from detracting from the
message, the messiness of the Bible tells me that the messiness in my own life
is part of a greater context, and if I will take God's hand, despite my desire
to know everything, even though infinity itself tells me that is impossible, I
can resonate with a great harmony, the symphony the stars have shared with God since
before time. And when I dance into eternity, time itself will fade away.