QUESTIONS AND COMMENTARY ON PARASHAT NASO'
1. How does the Nazirite in Numbers 6 differ from the Suspected Adulteress
in Numbers 5? How are the two figures interrelated?
Deborah
Numbers 5 begins by
commanding a state of holiness in the camp of Israel: men and women who are
unclean are to be exiled outside its borders. God says to Moses: "You shall put
out both male and female; you shall put them outside the camp, that they may
not defile their camps in the midst of which I dwell" (Numbers 5:3). All those
who are impure: the ones with skin diseases, the ones with a discharge and the
ones defiled by a dead body, are to be placed outside the boundaries of where
God's chosen people live, and where God dwells among them. The sins of the
unclean almost always have the opportunity to be removed; through ritual
washings, waiting periods, through restitution and sacrificial offerings. The
unclean could then be restored to their community and into the presence of God.
But what about the woman
whose husband has become jealous; suspicious that she has gone astray, removing
herself from under his protection and his authority? Is there any restoration
back into the community for her? Or is her fate one like a leper never healed -
to stand on the outskirts of her former home forever looking in?
The woman is told to come
before the priest at the tent of meeting and to offer a sacrifice devoid of oil
and frankincense. Unlike the usual more elaborate offerings, hers lacks joy. It
bemoans her possible guilt and the pain of her husband; for the sacrifice is
brought by her husband: "He shall bring the offering required for her,
one-tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil on it and put no
frankincense on it because it is a grain offering of jealousy, an offering of
remembering, for bringing iniquity to remembrance" (Numbers 5:15). There is to
be no sweet aroma that rises into the heavens.
The priest then takes the
woman from her husband and she is brought before God. Once her hair has been
shamefully and mournfully uncovered, the priest removes earth from the
sanctuary floor and places it in holy water from the laver. The offering is
placed in her hands while the priest holds the water in his: "The bitter water,
it is called, that brings a curse" (Numbers 5:24).
The priest charges her to
accept an oath upon herself. If she is innocent she can go free. Beginning with
this assumption, the priest says: "If no man has lain with you and if you have
not gone astray to uncleanness while under your husband's authority, be free
from this bitter water that brings a curse" (Numbers 5:19); but if guilty the
priest says to her: "The Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people
when the Lord makes your thigh waste and your belly swell. And this water that
brings a curse shall go into your stomach and make your abdomen swell and your
thigh waste away" (5:21-22). God causes the woman to become that oath among her
people. She becomes the living curse within the chosen people. And the woman
must say the double "Amen, Amen" - affirming the consequences of either her
guilt or innocence.
The curse is then written on
a scroll (with God's name) and scraped into the water, which the priest makes
her drink. She drinks the water out of a ceramic vessel (also used for
purification of skin diseases), not the one made of the usual gold. The magical
element of drinking a potion has been transferred onto the God of Israel whose
supreme authority and omniscience will judge her sin that no witness has seen.
Not a human, not an angel, not one of the gods, but the Lord of Israel will see
into her soul. She tastes the unpleasant earth in her mouth reminding her of
the possible guilt of her actions. If she is guilty, the plague will come upon
her, one inducing infertility, or perhaps, abortion if she has become pregnant
from the secret adultery she has committed. The suspected adulteress is unique
among biblical characters - hers is the only case in biblical law where the
outcome of a hidden sin depends on a miracle; on God's intervention. If she is
innocent, she will be free to bear children.
This suspected wife, now
holding her unadorned offering in her palms, standing before God in a shameful
situation, with her hair uncovered, seeking divine judgment, offers a reverse
picture to the person described in the following chapter: the holy Nazirite,
who at the end of his or her period of separation, also stands before the
priest, palms out, with an elaborate offering: its recipe consists of a boiled
shoulder of a ram, one loaf of unleavened bread, a thin cake, and a shorn head.
The woman of the jealous husband is compelled by law to swear her oath for
divine evaluation, while the Nazirite under no compulsion, chooses to set him
or herself apart for divine blessing. The Nazirite voluntarily vows to sanctify
him or herself for a limited time to God (Numbers 6:2).
The exact reason for making
this vow is unknown. The biblical passage does not explicitly tell us why
someone might choose this kind of ascetic life temporarily. The verbal form of
Nazarite, lehazzir (its root nazar), means to restrict.
Interestingly, the word for vow - neder,
is a variant of the root nazar. Neder: to vow, implies devotion,
commitment, pledge - all the positive aspects of the Nazirite, whereas, nazar means to restrict, abstain,
self-deny. The Nazirite becomes a combination of one committed and devoted to
self-denial and restrictions for the purpose of sanctification to God.
Solomon Astruc, in the 14th
c., in Midreshei Hattora, he says the sin is not in becoming or ceasing to be a
Nazirite, but what precedes the Nazirite vow - the previous inability to
discipline desire. This may remind us of the woman who precedes the Nazirite in
the scriptures - the woman suspected of adultery who might not have restrained
her delights, her pleasures in a man other than her husband. Could the Nazirite
vow, following promptly after the adulteress be a gracious offer necessary for
the person, like the adulterous woman, to restrict herself and vow abstinence
and be restored to holiness through the vow? Or could these two paradigms be
juxtaposed to relay the general solution for humans when tempted? Could this
Nazirite vow be thus a necessary but extreme medicine for spiritual ills as
determined by Astruc? Perhaps also, this is an opportunity for the suspected
adulteress to experience the notion of a voluntary vow for the purpose of
holiness (whether it offers complete restoration or not): It grants her the
chance for the exact opposite of her oath of compulsion by the priest for her
suspected sin.
2. In Parashat Naso' we hear of
God's command to the priests to offer a blessing over the people (Numbers
6:22-27). In these verses, the verb for blessing (barakh) appears first with reference to the priests and then with
reference to God. What does the character of the priestly benediction teach us
about the types of blessing? What spiritual lesson can we learn?
Jonathan
In the midst of Parashat Naso', God commands Aaron and
his descendents to offer the following blessing over the people of Israel.
May the LORD bless you and keep
you.
May the LORD deal kindly and
graciously with you.
May the LORD bestow favor upon you
and grant you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26
In verse 23, Israel is to
offer the blessing. In verse 24, God is supposed to bestow the blessing. Who bestows
the blessing? Israel or God? In seeking to offer an answer to this question,
the 15th century Spanish commentator, Abarbanel offers an insightful
statement about the types of blessing:
"Blessing" is a homonym referring both to the good emanating from God to
his creatures, as in "And the LORD blessed Abraham with all" (Genesis 24) and
the blessing proceeding from humans to God above in the sense of praise, as in
"And David blessed the LORD (1 Chronicles 29). Then there is the blessing given
by one person to another which is neither to be compared to the abundance of
grace emanating from God nor to the praise proceeding from his creatures, but
rather constitutes a supplication by the author calling on God to bless the
person concerned. Into this category falls the priestly blessing . . . They merely invoke the divine blessing on
Israel.
Nehama Leibowitz, Studies
in Numbers, 63.
Here Abarbanel follows
Rashbam and others in arguing that the priests invoked divine blessing upon
Israel. They are the agents of divine blessing. Abarbanel's comments, however,
provide us with an interesting perspective on the nature of blessing. For Abarbanel, blessing operates in three
ways. First, God's bestows blessings on creation. Second, humanity blesses God
through praise. Third, humans invoke God's blessing on others.
We participate, thus, in
blessing in three ways: as receivers, bestowers, and invokers. Thinking about
blessing in these three ways reminds us that we cannot spend our life only
playing one or two of these roles. The importance of this can be seen in Kefa's
comments in his first epistle where he exhorts his readers to "repay evil [or]
. . . insult . . . with blessing because to this you were called so that you
might inherit a blessing" (1 Peter 3:9). Throughout our life we will be called
to act in each of these three ways - sometimes receiving blessing, other times
blessing God, and other times invoking God's blessing on others. This is life
as a member of God's people.
Learning 
