yehoshua: neither add nor subtract
sholem aleichem,
Hope you have all had a good week. It's been a weird one for me -- I had a delightful mini-vacation visiting friends last weekend, and then a very short and overly exciting work week. But, the day off today is giving me some time to polish this newsletter a little bit...
I have been thinking about how different -- and more difficult -- it has been writing these about Yehoshua, compared to the parsha. I think this is in part due to following the story more closely, in part because Yehoshua is a quite challenging book for me politically/ethically, and in part because it is (in some sense) a lower level of sacred text.
Anyway, I'm still figuring it out! Thanks for your patience :)
Before diving in, I also want to mention that last year's parsha commentary -- vayera: yitzchak imenu -- was one of my favorites. Mysticism, gematria, intersex ancestors, transfeminity, and the binding of yitzchak.
This week: Yehoshua 6-8
This week in summary: haShem gives the Israelites instructions on how to breach Jericho. The people follow the instructions, and the walls collapse. They exterminate everything in the city with the sword (except Rachav and those with her). They burn the city down. The Israelites are instructed to not take any of the silver and gold, but one does, and haShem is angry. As a result, haShem lets the men of Ai rout the Israelites. The Israelites undertake a ritual to discover who was at fault. He is stoned and put to the fire, along with his sons and daughters and all his belongings. As a result, the Israelites are able to defeat the men of Ai and burn their city. Yehoshua builds an alter to haShem, offers a burnt sacrifice, and inscribes the Torah on the stone, reading it in its entirety to the people.
So that's pretty brutal. Like I said, I'm still figuring out how to write about Yehoshua without just throwing my hands up every week and saying actually genocide is bad.
Anyway, there are several cases of burning people and/or cities in this section:
- Jericho
- Achan, the Israelite who took of that which was proscribed, along with his family and possessions
- Ai
Between these three, there are five instances where burning is directly mentioned:
- in 6:24, the Israelites (without being commanded to do so by haShem!) burn down Jericho
- in 7:15, haShem commands the Israelites to burn Achan and his family+possessions
- in 7:25, the Israelites carry out that command
- in 8:19 the Israelites set fire to Ai
- in 8:28 they burn Ai down
The first instance of burning here is not commanded by haShem. While he does command the destroying of Jericho's walls by an intricate ritual, the actual burning appears (to my reading of Yehoshua thus far) to be an innovation of the Israelites (and earlier commands -- as far as I can tell -- commanded the dispossession of the people there, not specifically burning.)
HaShem does command the burning of Achan, and afterwards haShem gives the command for the second city in this section (emphasis mine):
you shall do to Ai and her King like you did to Jericho and her king
HaShem's implicit command to burn Ai, in other words, is predicated on the Israelite's actions in Jericho.
When discussing burning in these three chapters, there are four instances of the root שרף (to burn/burn down) and one instance of the root יצת (to kindle/burn). If we add up the gematria of these five roots, we get the gematria of the verse Shemos 8:27
and haShem did as Moshe said, removing the swarms from Paroh and his servants and his people: not one was left behind.
Certainly in context there are some complexities to this verse, as it happens within the entire orchestrated theater of the plagues. At the same time, there's resonance with what we see in the burning of the two cities.
There, in Shemos, Moshe asks haShem to spare the Egyptians and haShem does as he says. Here, the act of the Israelites to burn Jericho is echoed in haShem's next command regarding Ai.
Our choices, it seems, matter: even to the extent of influencing the actions and commands of haShem.
As I wrote last year for vaeschanan about struggling with a violent, destructive g-d:
I'm not satisfied with the standard answers that we can't understand G-d, or that G-d is impersonal, that G-d is void. "The universe is indifferent" is all well and good until you remember that we are part of the universe, and we are only indifferent if we choose to be. Our Torah portion teaches:
כי אל קנא יה אלקיך בקרבך
for your G-d haShem within you is a G-d of passion
G-d is in the universe and beyond the universe. G-d is within us and outside of us. G-d is indifferent, G-d is void. But G-d is also in us and we care, and we love -- if we choose to.
It's up to us. If we want a g-d of love, we have to act with love.
We're taught in Devarim to neither add nor subtract from the commands of haShem: לא תספו ולא תגרעו. The gematria of this phrase corresponds to two verses in Torah: Bereishis 25:15 and Bamidbar 21:19.
Bamidbar 21:19 describes how the well-water haShem provided in the wilderness flowed with the Israelites as they traveled: into valleys, and up to heights. No matter the course they took, the water followed, neither increasing nor decreasing.
Bereishis 25:15 is a list of five names: five children of Ishmael. One of these names is Tema, which Ibn Ezra connects to a verse in Yeshiyahu:
Meet the thirsty with water, You who dwell in the land of Tema; Greet the fugitive with bread.
I wonder if this is what the command in Devarim to not add or subtract is about: that we must realize that you can't follow the word of haShem while playing a zero-sum game with everyone else. When you hoard resources and add to your own wealth, you aren't really adding anything of true value. And when you give resources away, when you share food and water with others, you aren't really subtracting from what is yours.
The story of our people is, in many cases, one of children squabbling over inheritances, and I have to wonder if this is really the will of g-d. After all, when Yehoshua asks the angel "are you for us or against us" the angel answers "no."
לי הכסף ולי הזהב נאם יהוה צבאות - to me the silver and to me the gold, says haShem tzevaos. Even the g-d of armies does not want us to be violently increasing our own wealth at the expense of others. That is, in fact, what leads to the only case in the section where haShem actually commands a burning (as unjust and disturbing and disgusting as that command is.)
And on that note, well..
good shabbos? phew. good shabbos. ada