Numbers

A Commentary

Martin Noth

• Verlag: Westminster John Knox Press
• Jahr: 1969
• ISBN:
  9781611645842
• Thema: Theology & Religion
• Thema: Biblical Studies

In this examination of Numbers, Martin Noth explores the community of the twelve tribes, the organization of the Levites, various divine ordinances, and other important themes in the book of Numbers. Also included is an appendix on daughters' rights of inheritance.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

III

FURTHER SOJOURN IN THE
WILDERNESS: 11.1–20.13

1. DISAFFECTION OF THE PEOPLE IN THE
WILDERNESS: 11.1–35

11 ¹And the people complained in the hearing of the LORD about their misfortunes; and when the LORD heard it, his anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed some outlying parts of the camp. ²Then the people cried to Moses; and Moses prayed to the LORD, and the fire abated. ³So the name of that place was called Taberah, because the fire of the LORD burned among them.

4 Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving; and the people of Israel also wept again, and said, ‘O that we had meat to eat! ⁵We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; ⁶but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.’

[7 Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. ⁸The people went about and gathered it, and ground it in mills or beat it in mortars, and boiled it in pots, and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. ⁹When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it.]

10 Moses heard the people weeping [throughout their families,] every man at the door of his tent; [and the anger of the LORD blazed hotly, and] Moses was displeased. ¹¹Moses said to the LORD, ‘Why hast thou dealt ill with thy servant? And why have I not found favour in thy sight, that thou dost lay the burden of all this people upon me? ¹²Did I conceive all this people? Did I bring them forth, that thou shouldst say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries the sucking child, [to the land which thou didst swear to give their fathers?”] ¹³Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me and say, “Give us meat, that we may eat.” ¹⁴I am not able to carry all this people alone, the burden is too heavy for me. ¹⁵If thou wilt deal thus with me, kill me at once, if I find favour in they sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.’ ¹⁶And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel, [whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them;] and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you. ¹⁷And I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit which is upon you and put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it yourself alone. ¹⁸And say to the people, “Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the LORD, saying, ‘Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt.’ Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat. ¹⁹You shall not eat one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, ²⁰but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, [because you have rejected the LORD who is among you, and have wept before him, saying, ‘Why did we come forth out of Egypt?’ ” ’] ²¹But Moses said, [‘The people among whom I am number six hundred thousand on foot; and] thou hast said, “I will give them meat, that they may eat a whole month!” ²²Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, to suffice them? Or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to suffice them? ²³And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Is the LORD’S hand shortened? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.’ ²⁴So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD; and he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and placed them round about the tent. ²⁵Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was upon him and put it upon the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did so no more. ²⁶Now two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested upon them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. ²⁷And a young man ran and told Moses, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.’ ²⁸And Joshua the son of Nun, the minister of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, ‘My lord Moses, forbid them.’ ²⁹But Moses said to him, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’S people were prophets, that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!’ ³⁰And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

31 And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and it brought quails from the sea, and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and a day’s journey on the other side, round about the camp, and about two cubits deep on the face of the earth. ³²And the people rose all that day, and all night, and all the next day, and gathered the quails; he who gathered least gathered ten homers; and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. ³³While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague. ³⁴Therefore the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had the craving. ³⁵From Kibroth-hattaavah the people journeyed to Hazeroth; and they remained at Hazeroth.

THIS CHAPTER consists of a short narrative, ending in the explanation of a place-name (vv. 1–3), of a long story in expansive style which likewise ends with the explanation of a place-name (vv. 4–34), and of a concluding note about Israel’s itinerary (v. 35). Apart from this last verse, the chapter deals with the factor of the people’s disaffection and complaints concerning the miseries of the sojourn in the wilderness. This factor is the main one in the Pentateuchal theme of the journey through the wilderness. This theme is invariably dealt with in factual, individual narratives. The long central portion of the present chapter is not, in itself, a unified whole. It includes two separate elements, first the people’s complaint about the lack of meat and how it was heard and answered, and secondly Moses’ complaint that alone he is incapable of bearing the ‘burden of the people’ and the divine assistance in this case, too. Not only have these two elements not been woven together, but there is even a clean break between one section and another. We must, therefore, reckon with literary juxtaposition, although it is not a case of two formerly independent ‘sources’ having been worked together. For the story of Moses’ complaint does not stand on its own, but presupposes the narrative of the people’s disaffection, which provides the necessary factual occasion for Moses’ complaint (one can accept quite arbitrarily the supposition that the story of Moses’ complaint had its own exposition, now completely lost). It is, therefore, difficult to divide up the whole passage between the J and E ‘sources’. One must, rather, explain the facts on the assumption of a basic narrative, found in vv. 4–13, 18–24a, 31–34, into which a later hand has, in literary fashion, inserted vv. 14–17, 24b–30. This basic narrative, connected, clearly but not very skilfully, by v. 4 to the brief narrative in vv. 1–3, is probably Yahwistic. The insertions, which likewise use the divine name Yahweh throughout, are among the later additions to J and have left the basic form undisturbed, with the single exception that, between v. 13 and v. 18, they have suppressed what was probably a brief sentence of the original narrative.

[11.1–3] The only factual element in the contents of the brief narrative of vv. 1–3 is the place-name Taberah. Doubtless there existed, in the wilderness between Egypt and Palestine, a locality of that name which was still known to the Israelites in the period after the conquest. About its location we know nothing further (it is difficult to make anything of the late collection of names in Deut. 9.22f.). The original meaning of the name is likewise quite uncertain. It is possible to regard it as derived from the root b‘r = ‘to remove’ (perhaps also ‘to graze’) or as connected with the Arabic ba‘r = ‘dung’, ‘dirt’. The meaning presupposed in the present passage, ‘(place of) burning’, from b‘r = ‘to burn’, is very probably secondary, but forms the basis of the whole passage. Here the ‘fire of Yahweh’ once burned (a fire miraculously occasioned by Yahweh); this must be derived from a measure of punishment from the period in which that locality in the wilderness could at one time have been of significance for Israel, i.e. after the exodus from Egypt. The reason for the punishment must have been the great sin of Israel at that time, disaffection and complaint. The narrator is unable to give any specific reason for such disaffection and complaint; his wording is highly unusual, while in v. 1a he compares the people with ‘those who have something to complain about’* (this strange expression has perhaps a particular meaning which it is no longer possible to discover). The fire sent by Yahweh in his righteous anger reaches only the edge of the camp (Israel as a whole certainly survived this judgment) and is then withdrawn as a result of an intercessory prayer by Moses (vv. 1b–2); however, the name of the place in question, called forth by this phenomenon, has remained (v. 3).

[11.4–34] The extended narrative of the sending of the quails, which follows in vv. 4–34, is likewise determined in its present form by the explanation of the place-name at the end (v. 34). There was a place in the wilderness called qibrōt hat-ta’^awā, concerning whose location also nothing is known, nor can anything reliable be derived from Num. 33.16f. or Deut. 9.22f. either. The original meaning could have been something like ‘the graves at the boundary’ or else ‘the graves of the Ta’awa tribe’. That is quite uncertain; what is certain, however, is that the significance which the present writer, or the tradition recorded by him, derives from the name, namely ‘the graves of desire, of craving’, is forced and artificial and is not the original meaning. From this, however, it seemed clear that at this place a divine judgment (‘graves’) had once taken place as punishment for a sinful ‘craving’ and that this had happened in Israel’s nomadic period after the exodus from Egypt; v. 4, with reference to v. 34, at once mentions a ‘(strong) craving’ (hit’awwū ta’^awā), which introduces the whole incident. This ‘craving’ is at once defined as consisting of a desire for meat to eat. Thus the story is brought within the great theme of the divine guidance in the wilderness, a guidance which manifested itself above all in the giving of food and drink in the midst of the unproductive terrain that lay between Egypt and Palestine. Yahweh cared for his people in this situation, but the people ‘craved’ again and again something more and something better, as seemed to emerge, in the present context, from the (later) naming of this place. Thus the theme of the people’s murmuring is particularly firmly rooted in the present narrative.

[11.4–6] Since (in terms of the explanation of the place-name) it is a ‘craving’, an unjustified and sinful desire, that is dealt with here, the responsibility for this is put upon a ‘rabble’ (literally ‘a gathering of people’) which has mingled with Israel (the suffix of qirbō refers back to hā‘ām of vv. 1–2, and this is evidence that, from a literary point of view, vv. 1–3 and vv. 4ff. belong together; for this idea cf. Ex. 12.38). The Israelites are affected by this disaffection and they now give concrete expression to their desire by demanding meat to eat. They express this desire by weeping ‘again’. With this word ‘again’ reference is made to an earlier, analogous occurrence. The link is presumably with the Yahwistic manna story, to which an allusion is also made in v. 6b. There was such a story; parts of it have been worked into the P-narrative in Ex. 16 by an editor,* and there remains only the now unanswerable question as to whether J had already introduced the manna narrative before the Sinai pericope (as P has with the ‘quails and manna’ theme) or whether the redaction of the entire Pentateuch under the influence of P removed the J-fragments on the manna theme and that originally J’s manna story stood immediately before Num. 11. In the latter case, J would have presented an impressive intensification in the people’s murmurings. Earlier, in response to the people’s ‘weeping’, Yahweh had provided the manna on which they were to live from then on. Now they are tired of the manna (v. 6b) and they allow themselves to be led by the ‘rabble’ into ‘weeping’ ‘again’ and demanding meat to eat, the latter with reference to the good life in Egypt which they have had to leave behind (v. 5); there, it is true, there was no meat either, but there was any number of fish and a pleasantly varied selection of vegetable products, in contrast to the monotony of the manna which ‘leaves the throat dry’,* that is, kills the appetite (v. 6).

[11.7–9] Linked with the mention of the manna, there is (vv. 7–9) a description of its appearance and use which is much more detailed than the short note in Ex. 16.31b, but which, the present context not being concerned with manna at all, must be regarded as a secondary addition. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this is factually correct information about the manna from the ‘manna-tamarisk’ of the Sinai peninsula.†

[11.10–13] Moses is enraged at the people’s desires (the phrase about ‘Yahweh’s anger’ is premature and breaks the sequence of thought; it is certainly a later addition); however, he turns in the first place not to the people but to Yahweh with reproachful questions (vv. 11–13). Before he comes to the point in question (v. 13), namely that the people are demanding of him (here Moses applies to himself the general question of v. 4bβ) the fulfilment of their demand, which is impossible of fulfilment by a human agency, for meat to eat, he complains first of all in general terms that the people—with claims which are perhaps sometimes justified, but which are usually (as in the present case) unjustified in view of the difficult situation of the wilderness sojourn—are an unbearable ‘burden’ to him, and that by placing this burden upon him Yahweh has ‘dealt ill’ with him (v. 11). Bold as this statement certainly is, it is surpassed in v. 12 by the assertion, cast in the form of a rhetorical question, that he, Moses, is, after all, not the people’s mother and is, therefore, not obliged to fulfil maternal duties towards them. Implicit in this is the very unusual idea that Yahweh himself is Israel’s mother. In view of the usual avoidance in the Old Testament of personal concepts of the relationship between God and people, such as are known in the religions of the surrounding peoples, even the statement that Israel is Yahweh’s son is rare (Ex. 4.22; Hos. 11.1). It is, however, extremely rare to express the connection between Yahweh and Israel by the idea of motherhood, thereby, even indirectly, attributing to Yahweh the concept of femininity (cf., nevertheless, expressions such as those in Isa. 49.15; 66.13). In v. 12bα the image alters slightly while Moses complains that he is supposed to be the nurse charged by the mother with the care of the child (in spite of its masculine form, ’ōmēn must, in the context, have a feminine sense). In the closing words of v. 12, the image is entirely abandoned; here it is obviously a question of an addition, which links to the term ‘take (in the bosom)’, ‘carry’, the idea of being led to the promised land.

[11.14–17] Vv. 14–15 contain a new thought, to which, so far, no expression has been given, namely that Moses cannot carry alone the burden he has to carry, otherwise he would rather be killed by Yahweh in view of his unfulfillable task. From the point of view of form, this is simply the continuation of the speech of Moses to Yahweh that was begun in v. 11, and the catchword introduced in v. 11b, namely ‘this people’ seen as a ‘burden to be borne’, controls the thought from now on. The beginning of Moses’ speech in vv. 11–13 is then presupposed in vv. 14ff.; the new thought of a division of the ‘burden’ among many shoulders appears, therefore, as a literary addition to the old basic form of the chapter. Vv. 16–17 prepare the ground for vv. 24b–30. Moses receives the command to choose seventy ‘elders’ from amongst the ‘elders of Israel’, the latter obviously conceived of as being very numerous and amongst whom, unless something very special is meant by the expression, one must envisage the heads of the families who, therefore, originally and properly bore the title ‘elder’. In the old days of the tribal ‘organization’ such ‘elders’ were simply the ‘officials’ (the relative clause in v. 16a, which is surely to be regarded as a secondary aside, inserted particularly unskilfully, while it designates the chosen men specifically as ‘officers’—l...