AND GOD WOULD SPEAK TO MOSHE FACE TO FACE, AS A MAN SPEAKS TO HIS NEIGHBOR. NOW
WHEN HE WOULD RETURN TO THE CAMP, HIS ATTENDANT, THE LAD YEHOSHUA, WOULD NOT
DEPART FROM WITHIN. (Shemot 33:11)
"FACE TO FACE"
"Face to face" meaning: Present, without intermediary,
as is written, "Let us confront each other", and this is
elsewhere explained, saying, "You heard the sound of words but
perceived no shape - nothing but a voice." Thus, "and God
would speak to Moshe face to face" is an expression describing the
kind of speech - "And he heard the voice speaking to him." Thus
it has been explained to you that the hearing of the voice without the
intercession of an angel is called "face to face".
(Rambam, Guide
for the Perplexed, I, 37)
[Another explanation, this one] in the style of the Midrash: "Face to face" - an expression of anger. Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He, to Moshe: Moshe, I did not tell you [to punish the people] when I was angry and you were conciliatory, nor when you were angry and I was conciliatory. But now I am angry and you are angry; "return to the camp"; read not "v'shav el hamachaneh" [and he - Moshe - returned to the camp], but read it "v'shuv el hamachaneh" ["return to the camp"], if we are both angry who will bring Israel close?
(Rabeinu Bahaye, Shemot 33:11)
Moshe descends Mt. Sinai, and to his amazement he finds the people in the midst of worship of a golden calf, led by none other than by his brother Aharon. In anger, Moshe smashes the tablets, burns the calf, grinds it to dust, casts it upon the waters and gives the Children of Israel to drink. But this is not enough. The people are still out of control: "And Moshe saw that the people were out of control, since Aharon had let them get out of control, so that they were a menace to any who might oppose them." (Shemot 32:25). What exactly did Aharon do to the people? Says Ramban: "For Aharon had let them get out of control - he released them from all advice and rebuke, and they were like sheep dispersed on the mountains (I Kings, 22:17) without counselor or guide." Their despairing of Moshe, the fashioning of the calf and the ecstatic dancing around it, and the destruction of the calf by Moshe, all these left the people in a state of total disarray - "he released them from all advice and rebuke". The people had lost their moral and religious compass, "like sheep dispersed on the mountains"; according to many Midrashim, they engaged in idol worship. In this difficult situation, which he had not encountered from the time he came to know the people, Moshe rises to leadership and takes the following extreme steps:
Moshe stood up in the gate of the camp and
said, "Whoever is for the Lord, come here!" And all the Levites
rallied to him. He said to them, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel:
Each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout
the camp, and slay brother, neighbor, and kin." The Levites did as Moshe
had bidden; and some three thousand of the people fell on that day. And Moshe
said: "Dedicate yourselves to the Lord this day - for each of you has been
against son and brother - that He may bestow a blessing upon you today." (32:26-29)
Moshe cries out the cry of zealotry: "Whoever is for God - to me!" which many years later will be echoed by Mattityahu the Hashmonean, after killing the Hellenist on the altar at Modiin. Those who heed Moshe's call, the sons of Levi, embark upon a round of exceptionally brutal punishment, in which they are charged to " slay brother, neighbor, and kin." The Levite zealots go to the extent of killing their own sons, as can be learned from Moshe's words "each of you has been against son and brother" (Rashbam definitely understood the plain meaning [pshat] as he wrote: "You sent your hands, man against his son and against his brother, for the sake of heaven"). According to the Midrash, this willingness to kill relatives and friends is the subject of the passage referring to Levi in the Parasha "V'zot haberacha": "Who said of his father and mother, "I consider them not." His brothers he disregarded, ignored his own children. Your precepts alone they observed, and kept Your covenant." (Devarim 32:9). From here we learn that the sons of Levi killed not only their children and brothers, but also their fathers and mothers.(According to the Talmud, since it is written that all the sons of Levi answered Moshe's call, it is impossible that that there were idolaters among the sons of Levi, and therefore it cannot be that the fathers and mothers they killed belonged to the tribe of Levi. From this we adduce that the reference is to the father of the mother, maternal step-brothers, grandchildren via the daughter - who are not considered Levites (Yoma, 62b) - but this is certainly not the peshat.) This the nature of such punitive operations; what begins as an order to kill brothers, relatives and neighbors, ends with the indiscriminate slaughter of brothers, parents and sons.(It cannot be argued that parents and children are included in 'kin', for one's tie to his child is much stronger that his tie to his brother, and if Moshe's intent was that they also kill the sons, he would have said so expressly.) We are not surprised that those capable of such wholesale slaughter are descendants of Levi, who led the campaign of vengeance in Shechem, those whose "weapons are tools of lawlessness."
I wish to raise two questions regarding Moshe's behavior in this incident. First, Moshe bases his behavior upon the divine command "Thus says the Lord... each of you, put sword on thigh, etc." - but the text records no evidence of such a command. Secondly, Moshe's cruel and vengeful order does not seem consonant with his efforts to achieve atonement for the sin immediately afterwards - "Now, if You will forgive their sin [well and good]; but if not, erase me from the record which You have written." (32:32) Why could not Moshe have sought to pacify God and present his 'ultimatum' before the slaughter by the sons of Levi? These questions were asked by the Darshanim, and one of them suggests the following sequence of events:
He [Moshe] said before Him: Master of the
Universe, have you before you only the measure of law for all the inhabitants
of the world and for all of your creations upon earth? Shall I descend and
apply the measure of the law - and if they worshipped it with full heart shall
they all perish in a single day? He descended, took the calf and burned it in
fire, as is written "He took the calf... and Moshe stood in the gate...
and said to them, So said God , etc." I call upon heaven and
earth to testify that The Holy One, Blessed Be He, did not tell Moshe to
stand in the gate of the camp and proclaim 'Who is for God - unto me' and to
say 'So said the Lord, God of Israel' - but rather Moshe was a tzaddik and he
learned for himself a kal va'chomer - If I say to Israel, let one kill
his brother and his neighbor and his kin, Israel will say, Did you not teach
us that a Sanhedrin which executes one soul in seven years is called
destructive, how do you kill three thousand in one day? Therefore, Moshe
ascribed the command to the Glory above, as is written, 'So said the Lord,
etc"... then Moshe the tzaddik returned and stood before The Holy One,
Blessed Be He, in prayer. He said to Him, Master of the Universe, you are a
tzaddik and a hassid, and everything you do is in good faith. Because of three
thousand who worshipped the calf with full heart, shall six hundred thousand
- plus those of twenty years of age and younger, and those eighteen years
old and those fifteen years old, and ten, and two, and one, and many aliens and
slaves who joined them - perish!? There will be no end to this. Immediately God
was filled with mercy and was appeased. (Eliyahu
Rabba [Ish Shalom] Parasha 4, beginning with "Why did he merit")
According to this Midrash, the campaign of
zealotry and killing was not carried out for the sake of vengeance and
punishment, but in order to appease the anger of The Holy One, Blessed Be He.
To accomplish this, Moshe thought to punish only those who were directly and
totally involved in the sin of the calf, and thereby to save the rest of the
people (who had certainly also sinned!) from the decree "Let my anger
blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them" There is, then,
a direct connection between "Who is for God - to me!" and "Perhaps
I shall atone for their sin." This and more: God did not order the
above punitive operation; it was Moshe's initiative which was intended to
subdue God's anger and to show Him that the real sinners had been punished
according to the full letter of the law. The reason the Midrash gives for Moshe's
ascribing "and slay brother and neighbor, etc." to God is
that had he issued the order in his own name, the people would have protested
and argued on the basis of the Mishna which says that a Sanhedrin which
executes one person in seven years is "destructive". This rationale
is instructive, in that it no doubt expresses the darshan's reflections
regarding the ostensible contradiction between the serious concern for human
life - as expressed in the Mishna in Sanhedrin - and the disregard for human
life as expressed in the massacre of "three thousand in a single day."
According to this explanation, then, Moshe was not carrying out a divine order; his desire was not to take revenge upon the sinner (otherwise he would have accepted the suggestion to annihilate the nation, for all had participated in the sin). His sole intent was to save the Jewish people and to conciliate between them and their heavenly father. The words placed in Moshe's mouth by the Midrash indicate how deep was his mercy and love for the Children of Israel, and his concern that they not be judged unfairly: "Because of three thousand who worshipped the calf with full heart, shall six hundred thousand - plus those of twenty years of age and younger, and those eighteen years old and fifteen years old, and ten, and two, and one - perish!?" But if Moshe was so fearful for those of ten, two, and one, how could he have ordered the sons of Levi to indiscriminately kill their brothers and relatives?
In conclusion, I would like to suggest that Moshe was indeed not at ease with the order he gave; he was unable to accept its terrible results. This finds expression in his impotence in coping with a surprisingly similar situation - the predicament of idolatry and sexual license with the daughters of Moav, described at the end of Parashat Balak. In this case, Moshe does not stand in the gate and cry out "Who is for God - to me!!" He weeps by the entrance to the Tent of Appointment. The sight before him certainly reminds him of the unbridled and abandoned behavior of the people at the sin of the calf; but his traumatic experience at having killed three thousand people in a single day paralyzes him. All he can do is to weep. Civil war is no longer an option he is willing to consider.
Danny
Statman is a Professor of Philosophy at Haifa Univ.
THE
CONSIDERATE "STRONG HAND" OF MOSHE BREAKING THE TABLETS
Rabbi Meir says: Moshe broke the tablets only because he was ordered to so by the Almighty, as is written, "Which you broke" - All strength to you for having broken [the tablets].
(Avot d'Rabbi
Natan, 2: 3)
All those things sanctified - Eretz Yisrael, Yerushalayim and the Mikdash - are but details and branches of the Torah, and they were sanctified through the holiness of the Torah. Do not suppose that the Mikdash and the Mishkan are in themselves holy, heaven forbid. The Holy One, Blessed Be He, dwells inside his children who worship him. If they, as a man, violate the covenant, all sanctity is lifted from them, and they are like a profane object defiled by a robber. Titus entered the Holy of Holies and was not harmed, for its sanctity had previously been removed. Yet more, the tablets, engraved by the hand of God, were not in themselves holy, but only for you whenever you observe that which is written upon them . . . for nothing in creation has inherent holiness; its holiness is contingent upon Israel's observance of the Torah . . . all the holy sites have no basis in our religion, -- they are holy only inasmuch as they have been sanctified for the performance of the commandments; once the Shekhina departed, sheep and cattle were allowed to ascend Mt. Sinai, even though there the faith originated.
(Meshech Hochma, Shemot 32:19)
Our teacher Moshe illustrated this for us when he smashed the tablets upon seeing that the people had violated the commandment "You shall make no statue nor image". We must understand that the phrase "no statue nor image" does not apply only to the golden calf which Israel fashioned, but to all natural phenomena, such as: nation, land, motherland, flag, army, ideology, persons, etc., when they are elevated to planes of holiness.
(Y. Leibowitz, Seven Years of
Discussion of the Weekly Parasha,, p. 401)
The
word of the Lord came to me: O mortal, when the House of Israel dwelt on their
own soil, they defiled it with their ways and their deeds; their ways were in
My sight like the uncleanness of a menstrous woman. So I poured out My wrath on
them for the blood which they shed upon their land, and for the fetishes with
which they defiled it. I scattered them among the nations, and they were
dispersed through the countries: I punished them in accordance with their ways
and their deeds... I will take you from among the nations and gather you from
all the countries, and I will bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle
clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: I will cleanse you of all your
uncleanness and of all your fetishes. And I will give you a new heart and put a
new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give
you a heart of flesh.
(From the Haftara for Parashat Parah,
Ezekiel 36)
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