yehoshua: for us or our enemies
sholem aleichem,
Hope you are all doing well! I am once again running a bit behind this week, since I’m leaving tomorrow for a trip to visit some friends. It’s unfortunate, because there’s so much going on in this chapter of Yehoshua – with at least three incredibly abrupt tonal shifts. But, I’m trying to remember that I can’t comment on everything, no matter how much I might want to.
This week: Yehoshua 5 (parsha: i talk about the parsha some this week! but you can also check out last year’s commentary on laughter, name changes, and translation.)
This week in summary: The kings of the Amorites and Canaanites hear about the splitting of the Jordan and lose heart. Yehoshua circumsizes all the bnei yisrael at the Hill of Foreskins (seriously!), because the generations in the wilderness did not circumsize. The bnei yisrael observe Pesach, eat unleavened bread, and the manna stops. Yehoshua sees a man standing before him with a drawn sword, who turns out to be a captain of hashem’s host.
Okay, so why had the generation that grew up in the wilderness not been circumsized? The gemara offers two suggestions:
-
due to the weariness of the journey
-
because there was no north wind in the wilderness (this seems to have to do with helping heal afterward)
Why did the north wind not blow? Again, some options:
-
to censure them
-
so that the clouds of glory should not disperse
So far, so obvious. But if circumcision is the sign of the covenant, it’s strange that the bnei yisrael would go generations without performing circumcision. I wonder if there is a connection to the halting of the manna.
Covenants, after all, go both ways. The journey through the wilderness was, in some sense, all about haShem providing for the bnei yisrael: manna to eat every day, a cloud to indicate when and where to move and march.
The bnei yisrael could not cut the covenant (literally) because the north wind was suppressed so that the cloud of glory that was leading and protecting them would not dissipate.
There was, then, a kind of covenantal imbalance: HaShem providing signs of Voix covenant, and the Israelites....mostly complaining, let’s be honest (perhaps justifiably!)
Now, having left the wilderness, the bnei yisrael cut the covenant, start eating food from the land, and HaShem stops providing the manna – the balance of the practice of this covenant has begun to shift to the other side of the holy see-saw.
In another sign of a shift within the covenant, Yehoshua encounters a man holding a sword. Yehoshua asks him: “are you for us, or for our enemies?” The man replies: “No, because I am a leader of the army of haShem.”
When asked if he is for or against the bnei yisrael, a leader of hashem’s army says: no. And not only “no”, but specifically “no because i am a leader in the army of HaShem.”
Amidst all the talk of chosen people (which, spoiler warning, continues in force as we go forward), here we get a very direct claim to the contrary: because I am a leader in haShem’s host, I am not for you (tho to be fair, nor am I for your enemies.)
In Torah study this week we looked at the first covenant with Avraham. At that time, haShem says to Avraham:
after four generations [your offspring] will return [to the land] because the iniquity of the Amorites is not complete until then
This feels different from other Toraitic takes on the return to the land. It’s not “because you are my people” or “because the land is really yours” but rather “because the Amorites – one of the peoples who live there – are continuing to commit some kind of sin.”
The words for the iniquity being “not complete” are לא-שלם, which also has a sense of “not repaid.” There is a (very disturbing) sense here that the return of the bnei yisrael to the land is not about them at all, but about somehow repaying the Amorites for their sins.
The angel is indeed not for the bnei yisrael – the bnei yisrael are simply a tool against the Amorites.
I think that being used as a tool of retribution is never in our interest, it’s not for us at all. Thank god, we have free will: we don’t have to let it happen again.
A yid is in goles. No goles? no yid.
good shabbos, ada