Moses and Multiculturalism. Barbara Johnson

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      CHAPTER ONE

      The Biblical Moses

      And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

      Exodus 3:4

      This chapter is devoted to reading the original story of Moses and noting the many odd things that come up in it. The story stretches over the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, but barely a tenth of that length is devoted to familiar plot elements: the baby in the bulrushes, the killing of the overseer, the burning bush, the liberation from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the rock that gives water, the march through the wilderness to reach the Promised Land, the tables of the law, the Golden Calf. Many chapters are not narrative at all but quote God giving to Moses additional laws, instructions about building the holy Tabernacle, and descriptions of what Levite priests should wear. A smaller number narrate episodes such as Korah’s rebellion or the encounter with Balak and Balaam. Why do we read the Bible so selectively? What is the function of all God’s instructions we tend to leave out? And what about episodes deemed inexplicable?

      One of the most puzzling cruxes occurs on the way from Midian to Egypt, where Moses has been commanded by God to lead the Israelites to freedom. One night, God seeks to kill Moses, whereupon Zipporah, Moses’ Midianite wife, who has accompanied him, picks up a sharp rock, cuts off the foreskin of their son (who also accompanies them), throws the cut-off mass at his (whose?) feet, and declares, “a bloody husband art thou to me” (Exod. 4:24–26). God lets Moses go. What does this all mean?

      In the Pentateuch edited by J. H. Hertz, this passage is glossed in part as follows:

      sought to kill him. An anthropomorphic way of saying that Moses fell suddenly into a serious illness. Many commentators connect this sudden illness of Moses with his postponing, for some reason, the circumcision of his son. Tradition ascribes this omission to the influence of Jethro and Zipporah, who may have desired the circumcision postponed to the 13th year, as was customary among the Bedouin tribes. However, in the previous verse Moses had warned Pharaoh that disobedience of God’s will carried dire punishment with it: and he himself should, therefore, on no account have permitted any postponement of a duty incumbent upon him.¹

      Thus, through this literal and empirical reading of the passage, it seems as though all obscurities have been cleared up, at least enough of them for the consequences of failing to do one’s duty to come through loud and clear.

      The transformation of unclarified questions into useful lessons is even more apparent in the Pentateuch published in 1986 by the Judaica Press, with extracts or summaries of the commentary of Samson Raphael Hirsch.² The more enigmatic, the more didactic, it seems.

      24. [God confronted him.] The same God Who had just sent Moses forth with a most lofty mission, which Moses was preparing to carry out, now abruptly confronted him and considered it better that he should die. The verses that follow make it clear why Moses was so suddenly placed in danger of death. He had neglected to circumcise his son. He had gone forth to accomplish the deliverance whose import would be based solely on milah [the word—B.J.], and now he himself was about to introduce into that people an uncircumcised son. God considered it better to have Moses die than to have him set out on his mission with such an unfortunate example for his people.

      This, it seems to us, should be the interpretation of [“considered it better . . .”] Interpreted literally as [“and He sought (to kill him)”], it would be a very harsh characterization of God. God the All-Merciful never “seeks” to “kill” a man; if it is His will that a man should die, then that man will die. But interpreted in the manner suggested here, this passage teaches us the significant lesson that the plans of God cannot be influenced by any human being. . . . To God no man, not even one such as Moses, is indispensable. . . .

      25. [Hirsch cites a statement by Rabbi Eliezer of Modai in the Mekhita to Parshath Yithro (Exodus 18:1–20:23) to the effect that Yithro had agreed to have Tzipporah marry Moses only under the condition that the first son of this union should remain a heathen and not be circumcised. Also, Hirsch points out that Tzipporah, not being of Jewish origin, may have been naturally reluctant to see her son undergo the pain and the dangers of circumcision. . . . She therefore quickly circumcised her son with her own hands, cast the boy’s foreskin at her husband’s feet and said to him, as Hirsch puts it: “I have done this because you have become a ‘bridegroom of death’ on my account.”]

      26. [According to Hirsch, Tzipporah felt that this incident would ensure the observance of circumcision for all time to come. If even a man like Moses, who had been charged with a Divine mission, nearly lost his life for failing to circumcise his son, what Jew in future would dare be guilty of the same neglect?]³

      Circumcision, then, in Moses’ day as well as in ours, is a sign in the flesh of all newborn males of membership among God’s “chosen people.” It is also a sign of the covenant God established with Abraham and renewed with Moses. In other words, it is the visible sign of belonging; a sign of voluntary submission and sanctification.

      By the time Saint Paul (né Saul) plays around with the flesh and the spirit in order to explain Christianity, the inadequacy of having circumcised flesh without the corresponding circumcised spirit—indeed, the sufficiency of having spiritual faith, whether or not one has a sign of sanctification in the body—the specialness of the body becomes literal, while the spiritual becomes figurative. Judaism, as Paul explains it, is legalistic and literal, but Christian goodness is a spiritual grace that requires no law. If one strictly observes the laws of Judaism, one remains only within the law, but with Christ, one rises above it.

      Moses indeed becomes the mouthpiece of a vast array of detailed laws, as we shall see, but he also appears to be the first user of “circumcision” in a figurative sense. Long before the birth of Christ, and simultaneous with the very origins of biblical Israel, in other words, Moses can cry out to God (twice):

      And Moses spake before the Lord, saying, Behold the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips? (Exod. 6:12)

      And Moses said before the lord, Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me? (Exod. 6:30)

      The Judaica Press edition of the Five Books of Moses avoids the difficulty by translating “uncircumcised” lips as “unpliant” lips. The Hertz edition says, “of uncircumcised lips, i.e., with lips closed or impeded, not properly prepared to deliver an all-important message.”⁴ This constitutes a medical reading of “uncircumcised lips”: the surgical sense of genital cutting is transferred upward to Moses’ already known difficulties with speech. Nevertheless, Moses shows himself a canny manipulator of the figurative potential of even the most surgical meaning of circumcision. As Jonathan Kirsch puts it, “Even something so basic and so concrete as the ritual of circumcision was put to use by Moses as a metaphor for an even more intimate commandment. ‘Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart,’ thundered Moses, СКАЧАТЬ