Journey’s End: The God of Physics and the God of History

The forty years in the Wilderness are coming to an end. In this week’s Torah reading, Matot and Masei, we are reminded of the great themes of the Israelite epic, which begins in Genesis and culminates in Moses’ last speech, filling the book of Deuteronomy as Israel prepares to enter the Promised Land.

Moses’ Acceptance of His Fate

In Matot, God reminds Moses that he will be “gathered to his kin” soon after defeating the Midianites (Numbers 31:1-2, JPS). Moses’ silence is sublime. He never protests, never makes excuses, never pleads his past service in his defense, never suggests that God will undermine His own reputation by being harsh with His greatest prophet.

It is not as though Moses is incapable of challenging God, and even changing His mind. When God threatens to destroy the Israelites over their failures, Moses intervenes successfully on their behalf (e.g., Exodus 32:9-14, JPS). When God pronounces his doom, however, Moses continues his dedication to his people and their destiny. His brother Aaron also reacted in silence when two of his sons were stricken for offering “strange fire” in the Tabernacle (Leviticus 10:1-3, JPS)—and again later when he, like Moses, was told he would die soon (Numbers 20:23-29, JPS).

Moses—the most humble of men (Numbers 12:3, JPS)—is focused instead, even in the face of imminent death, on encouraging his people to understand their past and destiny, and their relationship with the Eternal.

The Priestly Vision: God of Physics

Moses is guided by two of the overriding themes of the entire Israelite epic.

One is the idea that the created world is in the image of an intelligent creator. The “priestly” school that contributed to the Bible introduced this God of physics at the beginning of Genesis (Genesis 1:1-2:3, JPS). There, ordered step by step, the universe is structured out of chaos; ultimately, it reaches its culmination in humankind, made in the image of the Creator (Genesis 1:26-27, JPS). The Tabernacle and later the Temple, along with the rituals of creating and restoring structure, are imbued with the Priestly vision, fostering a harmonious order—a world of shalom.

Earlier chapters have taught us about the mobile sanctuary as the dwelling place of God (e.g., Exodus 25:8-9, JPS). Its architecture and rituals are described in painstaking detail. The vision behind them is that holiness involves affirming life over death, and life is about maintaining order and organization in the face of all the natural and human-made forces of corruption and destruction.

The land of Israel will be, like the Tabernacle, a holy place. There, the Israelites can live as a free and holy people. Free in the sense of not being bullied by others; holy in the sense of staying faithful to the covenants they have with God, including accepting the revealed law at Sinai (Exodus 19-20, JPS).

Challenges to Israel’s Shalom

Moses then deals with a series of challenges to the shalom of Israel.

There are other nations who wish to destroy Israel before or after its arrival. Others may wish to corrupt Israel by leading them into their own idolatrous ways. Moses insists on the defeat of the Midianites, many of whom attempted to entice the Israelites into abandoning their sacred calling (Numbers 31:1-54, JPS). Moses warns that aggressive idolators in the holy land may be a constant source of threat. Such adversaries are to be defeated in the name of maintaining the holiness of Israel—and not for the sake of material gain or bloodlust. Moses provides that much of the booty taken from the Midianites be used to support the priests of Israel rather than being retained for material profit for the conquering soldiers (Numbers 31:25-54, JPS).

Israel was organized into tribes. They would have to come together and cooperate in the face of external adversaries. When two tribes, Reuben and Gad, said they wanted to stay on the east side of the Jordan—they were cattle herders, and apparently the location was suited—Moses was at first concerned that they were withdrawing their might from the nation as a whole (Numbers 32:1-15, JPS). But the Reubenites and Gad agreed to a compromise; they would first contribute to the conquest of the holy land, and only then go back across the river to settle (Numbers 32:16-33, JPS). So principled compromise is one method of allocating land among the tribes.

In other cases, land is allocated by lot (Numbers 33:54, JPS). Once allocated, the tribes should continue to work together, but stay within their own territorial lanes. Men and women were encouraged to marry within their tribe, to avoid the tendency that intermarriage must otherwise create of destabilizing holdings. In the five daughters of Zelophehad episode, they approach Moses to claim their father’s inheritance since he died without sons, leading to a divine ruling allowing daughters to inherit in such cases to preserve tribal land holdings [Numbers 27:1-11 and 36:1-12, JPS].

The J Vision: God of History

Moses also addressed another theme of the Bible: the drama of human history. The J school that contributed to the Bible provided the second Genesis story; it focuses on the first man and woman challenging and disrupting the orderly world of the first Genesis story (Genesis 2:4-3:24, JPS). A human being is not only imbued with the divine spark, it is also made of material substance—the same material that was chaotic before God shaped it. Humankind, like God, has free will—and is capable of using and misusing it; of destroying shalom, or of producing the highest harmony, by choosing to accept and abide by the laws that God has crafted for humankind. The Israelites are chosen to be the test case for integrating God’s vision of an orderly world. At the burning bush, the God of physics and the God of history came together: the Eternal creator of the Universe is the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 3:1-15, JPS).

In (Numbers 33, JPS) Moses reviews in detail the waystations in the Wilderness. History did not end with the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21-31, JPS). Revelation did not end at Sinai. The generation that left Egypt and dwelled in the desert—like Moses himself—accomplished great things, even if they did not cross into the promised land. They courageously rose up in full view of the tyrants in Egypt; they pressed on into the Red Sea; they accepted the legal formulas for a divine human order; they built the Tabernacle and transported it across the desert; they honored its rituals; they raised the generation that made the second crossing, to become a free people in their own land. Along the way, even to the arrival at the Jordan, they continued to receive revelations from God through Moses himself.
(Note: some scholars attribute the waystation account to the Priestly school. It is not as though Priestly school was only concerned with ritual and J only with history. The manner in which the Priestly school tended to address history was lists of genealogies, of Tabernacle specifications, and perhaps the list of waystations in the Wilderness. In any event, it is likely that the bible was received, edited and supplemented through a long course of time, and we should not overestimate the precision with which different sources can be identified).

The Great Generation and the Covenant

The great generation that rose up, left Egypt, accepted the revelation at Sinai, and raised the generation of reconquest—was not the generation that entered the Holy Land. They reacted with anxiety, not confidence in themselves or God, when the scouts brought back their gloomy reports about alleged giants populating the promised land (Numbers 13:25-33, JPS). The great generation can be criticized for not overcoming their slave mentality. But another possibility: they were exhausted. Almost anyone would be after the trauma of captivity, the risk of their rising up, the peril of the crossing, the battles in the desert against predatory neighbors, hearing the voice of God, witnessing rebellions, sustaining plagues, building a magnificent Tabernacle, learning and practicing all the prescribed rituals—knowing the severe consequences of error. In Pirke Avot, we are told that in learning Torah, we are not expected to complete the task, but we are not excused from beginning (Pirke Avot 2:16, not biblical but rabbinic). As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has observed, there is only so much anyone can do in a lifetime. There is only so much even an entire nation can accomplish. How much more has any generation of any people accomplished than the great generation that passed away in the Wilderness? How much more has any prophet or leader accomplished than Moses, who,  like them departed without entering the Holy Land?

At the beginning of Matot, Moses pronounces on the law that vows to God must be kept, and so must promises among people (Numbers 30:2-17, JPS). Promise-keeping on both sides is the essence of covenants—including the covenant between God and the Israelites. The covenant—to observe the human legal order created by the Eternal One—is the product of human history: the Israelites, through their captivity, have learned the value of freedom and the necessity of looking after the vulnerable and the stranger. Looking ahead, the covenant contemplates that Israelite society, and eventually human society, will be imbued with the spirit and mind of the God of shalom—among all nations, all creatures, all things.

The next book, Deuteronomy – which scholars attribute to a distinct school, D, the Deuteronomist – is the product of authors or editors who were not of the Priestly or J disposition. Rather, they focused on the historical past and real-world future of the people of Israel. If they remained faithful to God’s order, they would remain free in the promised land. If not, foreign invaders and conquerors would turn their life into ashes and dust.

Since the time of Moses’ last works and words, the people of Israel have worked wondrous deeds to retain, interpret, and build upon the law from Sinai. In captivity and exile, their intellects and imagination enabled them to debate the details of Temple worship when the last temple was destroyed, Jerusalem laid low, and most of the Jewish population dispersed. Since then, the Jewish people have suffered from being on the wrong end of far too much human history. But the idea of a graceful, elegant, moral, and musical order to the world—that has stayed alive.

Moses the historian reminds them again of their history: the covenant with the forefathers, their captivity in Egypt, their redemption by God, and the desert journey that has brought them to the edge of the Jordan. The covenant is the essence of their past, and their ability to keep faith with the covenant will be the driving force behind their future triumphs and losses.

In the Jewish imagination, all of history is moving towards the Messianic age, in which human history will finally ascend into the harmony of the first chapter of Genesis (Genesis 1, JPS). Humankind will finally achieve in history the vision of the Priestly school—of universal harmony that includes all nations. With this serenity, people will look back at history and see that all the striving and suffering has an ultimate and sacred destination.