Numbers 25 – Israel at Shittim and the Pinchas Episode
In Numbers 25 the Israelites are in Shittim, which is the last stop on their journey through the desert. They are led there into both idolatry and illicit sexual activity by the “daughters of Moab.” Apparently, this is the doing of the prophet Balaam, whose attempts to curse the Israelites had been thwarted by God earlier, in the account of Balak. This activity angers God who instructs Moses to have the leaders of the people execute all of those who have “associated with Baal Peor.” Presumably the “association” includes both the idolatry and the sexual transgressions.
To this point in Chapter 25, Richard Elliott Friedman attributes the story to the J Source, the Yahwist writers from the southern kingdom of Judah. The balance of the chapter is attributed to the Priestly Source, P.
Continuing, Num 25:6–9 tells us that an Israelite man, whom we later find is a chieftain of the tribe of Shimon named Zimri, brings a Midianite woman, later identified as the princess Cozbi, before the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. This “bringing” is for the purpose of sex and it is done “before the eyes of Moses and before the eyes of all the children of Israel.” The whole community “were weeping at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.”
Friedman suggests the weeping is mourning for the death of Aaron on the basis that the last text we have from the Priestly source is the account of Aaron’s death in Numbers 20:28–29. This seems unlikely, though, since the account of the journeys in the desert include seven stops between Mt. Hor, where Aaron died, and Shittim. Rashi says they were weeping because they realized Moses did not know how to deal with the situation. Chizkuni suggests they were weeping because of the prospect of having many men executed for their transgressions.
Pinchas, grandson of Aaron and son of Eleazar, “taking a spear in his hand, followed (them) into the chamber and stabbed both of them … through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was checked. Those who died of the plague numbered twenty-four thousand.” (25:8-9)
This passage raises a number of questions. First, what “chamber” is referred to? Some commentators conclude that the sex act was performed in public, witnessed by the entire community. But if they were killed in the midst of the act, it seems that it must have been in the “chamber.” If it was in the chamber, though, there would have been no witnesses other than Pinchas. The chamber seems clearly to refer to the Tent of Meeting.
A second question is, what plague? There seems to be no antecedent to the reference to a plague. The punishment prescribed by God for the idolatry and illicit sex is the killing of those involved. No mention is made of a second punishment. But there is a punishment specified earlier for the improper entry into the Tent of Meeting. In Numbers 8:18–19, when God specifies that the Levites will take the place of the first-born, they are given the responsibility for “the service of the Israelites in the Tent of Meeting and to make expiation for the Israelites, so that no plague may afflict the Israelites for coming too near the sanctuary.”
Zimri was not a Levite, he was an Israelite of the tribe of Shimon. If he entered the Tent of Meeting, “coming too near,” that explains the plague. In that case the action of Pinchas, which halted the plague, makes sense.
The execution of the participants in idolatry and sexual immorality is the just punishment for their actions, neutralizing the anger of God. The action of Pinchas neutralizes the plague, which is the prescribed effect of Zimri’s improper entry into the Tent of Meeting.
George Mendenhall, a Christian bible scholar, and long-time professor at the University of Michigan, has a different view of this episode.[1] He proposes a more “historical, comparative, and functional” approach to the text, in contrast to the form-critical or source-critical approach. His assumption is that our texts often create useful explanations for actual events. Useful, in that sense, means that the explanations are created to support religious purposes, desired beliefs, or positions.
In the case of this episode, he suggests that text is crafted around “the historical fact of an extremely critical situation … (which was) subordinated to a later use to demonstrate the legitimacy of a priestly line and the dangers of participating in foreign cults.” (Mendenhall, 106)
Other texts from the region, according to Mendenhall, make it clear that some pestilential disease was endemic to the region throughout the period from 1400–1000 BCE. (Mendenhall, 107) Virtually every source from the Late Bronze Age indicates its presence. The most well-known source, The Plague Prayer of Mursilis, identifies the cause of that plague as the breaking of a covenant. In that case it was between the Hittite king and the ruler of Egypt. There are references to that plague and its cause in several literatures, many seemingly for the purpose of trying to determine appropriate action required to end the plague.
The existence of a plague is a given, for Mendenhall. The question becomes, how can the fact of the plague be used by the later writers to support their religious purposes?
One of those purposes was to associate the cause with a specific non-Israelite group. Mendenhall notes the documented migration of various tribes or bands of people from the north and northeast; the areas of Syria and Anatolia. He believes those people brought the plague with them. They joined an existing confederation of people that was called Midian. It was ruled by Sihon, king of the Amorites. After Sihon’s defeat by the Israelites (Numbers Chapter 21) they joined the population of the Moabites.
This, says Mendenhall, is borne out by the traditions of Number 31, “which describe in detail the extreme care taken to avoid the spread of the plague after the battle against the Midianites.” (Mendenhall, 117) (He refers to Moses’s insistence that all Midianite women who were not virgins be killed.) It was not the sexual activity itself that was problematic in this view. It was the fact that it spread the infection.
When the epidemic broke out among the Midianites, “an appropriate ritual was instituted to remove the ‘wrath’ (of the deity, Baal).” (Mendenhall, 112) The ritual consisted of sacrifices and ritual sexual intercourse with outsiders. (Mendenhall notes that he has no direct evidence for this conclusion but two sources of indirect evidence from Greek history.) There is literary evidence from the area that plagues were associated with heat, and heat was characteristic of sun gods. Propitiation of sun deities was known to include ritual sexual intercourse.
So, the “temptation” of Israelite men by the Midianite women might have been ritual in nature for the purpose of propitiating their deity. The biblical narrative, says Mendenhall, illustrates ritual intercourse only in Moab and Gilead and it is in those areas that there is most evidence of migration from Anatolian sources.
On that reading, the plague was a preexisting condition, not caused by Zimri’s actions. Zimri might have been convinced that his action with a Midianite princess was actually the best way to secure the welfare of the Israelites. But, regardless of his specific motives, the episode provided a useful canvas on which to present and explain two important issues.
First, it created a precedent for the hereditary high priesthood to run through the line of Aaron, Eleazar, and Pinchas. And second, in Mendenhall’s view, “Pinchas represents the transition from covenant to law” from the enforcement by God to the enforcement by human action. In this case there is no social sanction for his behavior, though it is evident that subsequent tradition … approved.” (Mendenhall, 116)
Mendenhall’s approach to this episode is clearly quite different from that of traditional Jewish commentators, but his basic idea that existing events and texts have been used to present newly crafted religious teachings, is plausible. It is evident in many other biblical stories. The flood narrative, for instance, is a well-known example of a story adapted in many cultures, and the stories of the ten Egyptian plagues demonstrate elements of the use of natural phenomena as backdrops for religious teaching.
Mendenhall’s thesis is an intersting alternate view of the actions and motives in the account of Numbers 25.
[1] George E. Mendenhall. The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1973.