Introduction to Bamidbar – Transcript

Sefer Bamidbar Introduction: The Problem of Structure

Introduction to the Book

We are beginning Sefer Bamidbar today and I want to give a kind of introductory class on Sefer Bamidbar in general, really to raise the questions and the problems with its order, more than to offer a solution, and then we will have another class for the first chapter.

As you can see from my table of contents on the screen here, it’s really hard to find one way to split up Sefer Bamidbar into a continuous narrative or a continuous structure. There’s various ways in which it’s continuous, of course, and I will discuss them, but the big problem with Sefer Bamidbar is that the parts internal to this narrative or to these several different themes in the book don’t seem to connect with one another.

Comparison to Other Books

For example, Sefer Shemot, or Sefer Bereishit even easier, even Sefer Vayikra, we could split into two, three, four parts very easily and have more or less each part be contained. Like the beginning of Shemot is the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim, then the story of Matan Torah, then the story of the Mishkan and so on. Same way for Vayikra, we have the beginning story or framing as we called it, and then all the laws which go more or less in order, and then the end, which there’s some difficulty we had about the order in the end, but more or less it’s organized.

In Bamidbar, we have no such kind of organization that we can put simply to the book. We can’t cut up easily the book into parts. You could do that, but the problem that you would have if you do that is that in every single part, for example, you get laws.

The Problem of Mitzvot Throughout the Book

Like you see here, I’ve done, so what I’ve done in my highest level order, in my Chumash, is to split it into different areas and then have numbers for each, and you see how it goes back and forth.

For example, the one kind of parsha which occurs throughout the whole book is mitzvot. There are mitzvot, and when I say mitzvot, I mean a style parsha, which we can see that it’s meant to be a mitzvah. I think mostly mitzvah ledorot, mitzvah is something that is a law to be followed for always, and there’s at least seven such sections, and they occur throughout the book.

So it’s not like you have a part where there’s mitzvot, like within a story where the mitzvot were given, something like we have in Sefer Shemot or Vayikra, and then some stories. No, there’s mitzvot all throughout. So that’s one category which makes it very hard to create a splitting of the book into a coherent part, that each one should have its own coherence. It’s very hard to do that. There are some ideas of solving that, but I’m just presenting the difficulty here.

The Book of Numbers

One other thing that the book is known for, it’s known as the Book of Numbers, or Chomesh HaPekudim. This is in Chazal and the Targum HaShivim called it that way, the Book of Numbers. And we do have along the starts with the counts and really the census of the people as they were going to the desert and really going to Israel, and in some sense that also returns in the end, at least in Parshat Pinchas very explicitly, returns.

So again, there isn’t like the beginning talking about numbers and the later other things. Numbers occur throughout the whole book, or almost throughout the whole book, and we can’t really put one part having to do with that and another part having to do with something else.

The Chronological Framework

There is one other thing, at least, that is a framing that we can sort of have consistently if we decide to prioritize that. I’m not sure that there is a reason to force us to do that. Maybe if you want to have some kind of splitting that splits it up nicely, you would have to do that, which is the chronological order.

Now this book is not entirely chronological because of the mitzvot and things that might not be in their order, but just like the entire series of books from Bereishit all the way until the end of Bamidbar, and of course also Devarim, but that makes it a little more complicated, just like the connection between Vayikra and Bamidbar is complicated, as we’ll see in a second.

There is a chronological progress where it started, you know, the whole story started in Shemot with Yetziat Mitzrayim, and now continues in Sefer Bamidbar, for example, continues more or less picks up from after the Mishkan was created to the next steps, and then sort of follows. Sefer Bamidbar ends all the way at the doorstep of Eretz Yisrael, them entering Eretz Yisrael, Sefer Bamidbar in Arvot Moav.

Sefer Bamidbar takes us all the way through that progress, and that’s one reason why, or at least that’s not really the reason, but that’s one reason why it can be said to be Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of the Wanderings in the Desert. It is the one book that has an almost complete narrative of the wanderings in the desert, all the way from Sinai to Arvot Moav, those are the two bookends of that wandering in Sefer Bamidbar, right. It doesn’t start from Yetziat Mitzrayim, for that you have to go to Sefer Shemot, but it does start after Matan Torah, after the Hakamat HaMishkan in Sinai, all the way to Arvot Moav, which is the last step.

And then you could see the entirety of Sefer Devarim as an elaboration of that last step, as it starts with the speech of Moshe given in Arvot Moav, and then gives us in the last parshiyot the final actual actions of Moshe dying, of the people getting close to enter Eretz Yisrael, but really that part of that narrative is really Sefer Bamidbar gets us all the way there, or almost all the way there, almost to the last moment.

Possible Solutions

So that’s the third way in which Sefer Bamidbar can be split up, and obviously that’s the only way if you want to have some kind of order, it’s the only way, but again, the mitzvot that we have are not necessarily connected, and this is I think the big problem for doing this kind of organization.

The kind of proposal that people have had, or one proposal that people have had, is to try to claim that these mitzvot in each part somehow belong to that story. So in Parshat Korach the stories of, in Parshat Shelach there’s a story of tzitzit, and then there’s the parsha of Korach, there must be some way to putting all these series, all these sections of mitzvot. Maybe we could say something like that’s when these mitzvot were given to Moshe, and just happened to have been in that stage of the story.

Or there’s Midrashim of course that everyone knows about Shelach, Korach, Chukat, that explain the connections between the stories and the mitzvot, some mitzvot. Now that would be another way, although some of them are just midrash, they’re forced, there isn’t an obvious way to connect.

Of course, on the other hand, and this is more explicit in the second half of the book, where we do have the narrative of the people getting close to Eretz Yisrael, and all the conquests of Sichon V’Og, and all the things, the wars that happened on the way to Eretz Yisrael, in those parshiyot, we do have several parshiyot of mitzvot which are explicitly framed in response to situations that were there, like the halachot of Gilad and Midyan, like the halachot of Nachalot, maybe we could see the entirety of the halachot of splitting up the land, and some kind of mitzvot that are explicitly framed.

The only time, the one mitzvah that we had in Sefer Vayikra, which was framed like this, was that we discussed the story of the Mekallel with the old parsha of mitzvah that came in after that, but here in Sefer Bamidbar there are many of the mitzvot that are framed like that, especially in the second half of the book.

So that is one key that might help us make sense of the entirety of the logic of the book, but still you’re going to have mitzvot in every other place which doesn’t really connect to anything. So really it’s these mitzvot that cause the greatest difficulty of this kind in this book, which is why my greatest level of headers looks like this.

Although probably the solution, so to speak, to this would be that if we go to the next level of headers we can see that we should probably somehow more or less just leave the mitzvot on the side and have the basic narrative of the structure, the chronological order of the narrative, and then have the mitzvot as a question subservient to that, and I will review that sense of narrative right now and explain a little bit about it.

The Narrative Structure: Census and Organization

So the beginning of it, of course it’s framed as starting with HaPekudim, with counting the census of the people, but more specifically, and I’m going to say this, more specifically this census really is related to the censuses are usually not made just to know the numbers of people, that’s not a question of curiosity, it’s a question of organization, it’s a question of organizing the people towards some purpose, and it’s specifically here towards the purpose of creating the armies that will go on to conquer the land after this book, after Eretz Yisrael really, but the whole story of the wandering, which we call the wandering, which should be maybe called the march through the desert, is very explicitly framed like this, that’s one framing.

The Mishkan as Central Framework

Now that framing itself comes out of the framing of the story of the Mishkan, and we’ve seen some of this in the stories of the Mishkan in Sefer Shemot. The Mishkan is the center, that’s the center of the Machaneh, the center of the camp, it’s where Hashem, so to speak, goes and walks with them and also goes out to war with them, with the people. Around that is the Machaneh Leviyah, the Machaneh Kohanim, the Leviyim, all of that.

And one very specific thing that Sefer Bamidbar emphasizes, which is really part, in other words, we could see, like I said, one way of seeing it is starting this with the census, another way of seeing this part of the story is that this start is really the completion of the story of the Chanukat HaMishkan, which we had parts of in both Sefer Shemot and in Sefer Vayikra and in Sefer Bamidbar.

The Three Middle Books and Chanukat HaMishkan

So these three books, these three middle books of the Torah, right, if we put Bereishit on one side as like an opening and Devarim on the other side as the ending, then we have the three middle books of the Torah, and there’s one story which repeats itself in all three of them very explicitly.

Of course, there are some mitzvot that are somewhat repeated in all three of them and so on, but there’s one story, a major story that’s repeated in all three of them, or that parts of it appear in each of them, and that’s the story of the dedication of the Mishkan, the Chanukat HaMishkan.

So the Chanukat HaMishkan, the actual standing up, the building of the Mishkan is in the end of Sefer Shemot, the dedication with the korbanot is in Tzav Shemini, the Miluim of Vayikra, and the part, which is really mostly the part of the Leviyim, the dedication of the Leviyim, and also the Chanukat HaNesiyim, right, Behaalotcha Yisrael, which we read in Chanukah, right, this is the parsha of Chanukah, HaMizbeyach, is in Bamidbar.

So that’s probably some secret or some clue to organize these three books around this Mishkan, and as I say, there’s the part of the Leviyim, which can be said to be the most outer part, right, the way in which the Mishkan’s organization spreads out towards the entire camp.

The Three-Part Structure of Sefer Bamidbar

So that’s really the first part of the book, which can be said to go until Parshat Beha’alotcha, more or less until here. In between, in the middle, you have these mitzvot, which some of them we could sort of understand how they connect—like the טמאים should go out of the מחנה—but some of them are harder to explain why they belong here. But that’s what we have here, all the way until here.

The mitzvah of פסח שני we could understand is a mitzvah also—I forgot to say—one of the mitzvot that are explicitly framed as a response to a story. So that’s also one of the secrets, one of the kind of mitzvot that are especially popular in Sefer Bamidbar, although there are some examples of them in Sefer Vayikra and maybe even Sefer Shemot, as we discussed.

Part One: Census and Organization

Now the second part of the story, which can be said to be here—where I started מסעי, but maybe I’ll make a bigger letter of headings to show this part, this kind of split, because it just makes it easier to be able to somehow split the book—is that after all of this, after all of this is set up, that’s how the story goes. After all of this is set up, we have the משכן, we have the people set up around the משכן, now we’re starting to travel to ארץ ישראל.

This is something that happens around the פסח שני, Parshat Beha’alotcha. It describes exactly how it will work and how they went there and how all of it, the whole order with ישראל, all of the stories over there—this is the beginning of the march towards ארץ ישראל. And what happens in that march is really, that’s where we get all the problems.

So we start with תבערה, קברות התאוה, the story of the מרגלים, later the story of the מקושש, maybe the story of קרח, the story of מי מריבה—all of these stories are somehow problems that happened in this second part, not in the first part of the story where they set up. Everything is really beautiful; that’s the part where everything is still perfect.

From Beha’alotcha—we say Beha’alotcha, second half—Beha’alotcha, Shelach, Korach, Chukat, Balak, Pinchas, the story of the זמרי and בני מדין—all of that are problems that are specific to this step of the people marching towards ארץ ישראל and all of their complaints, all of their problems, all of the reasons that caused this march to turn into a kind of wandering of 40 years and so on.

In between, there’s a bunch of mitzvot sprinkled in: the mitzvah of מנחות ונסכים and חלה and קרבנות in Parshat Shelach, mitzvah of ציצית later, mitzvot of תרומות ומעשרות וכהונה in Parshat Korach, mitzvah of טהרת מת—all of these, they’re all organized in groups, as you can see. It’s not like there’s randomly mitzvot; usually there’s like a group, a series of mitzvot that somehow comes in. Maybe we could understand if we find one in each group that belongs to the story, maybe the rest are somehow דרך אגב. I don’t know how to explain this, but that’s the second half, the second part of this book.

There’s a story of בלק ובלעם, which also should be seen as part of that. It’s one of the people that they met on their way—of course a story of success, although there’s some complications in that with זמרי ופנחס and all of that—but somehow a story is part of that. So that’s the second part of the journey of this book and this story.

Part Two: The March and Its Problems

Then we have the third part, which again it’s not entirely clear where to start it, but maybe we could start it only in Parshat Matot, or we could start it already in Parshat Chukat. There’s a question here where we should start this part. But we could call that—in the framing of Sefer Devarim, in Moshe’s speech, it very explicitly frames the desert as these three stages. There’s a stage in הר סיני where everything was great. There’s a stage from Sinai and his staging until קדש ברנע, which is Chukat—which is why that’s the reason to follow משה רבינו in organizing the story this way—is where the curse of the first generation, the problems where they didn’t want to go, they still stopped.

And finally we have new generation and we’re marching towards ארץ ישראל. In that series of stories we have a series of successes. That’s really where we have the second half of the story of the census. Again, the people are counted mostly for the purpose of forming this army that’s going to go to ארץ ישראל. We have נקם את מדין, which we can discuss to which series it belongs. And then we have already here how יהושע is being appointed to be the next leader, although Moshe is dying much later. And we have this series of wars: נקם את מדין, נקם that we have at סיחון ועוג, and some more wars, or avoidance of wars discussed in Parshat Chukat.

So that’s the story where things are starting to go well. They’re starting to win their wars really. Things are starting to work out, and that’s the third part of the story. And that leads us all the way to Parshat Matot-Masei, which is literally the laws of how they will conquer the land, who they will give it and divide it up between them, and so on. And between here we have a bunch of laws again: the הלכות of נדרים at the beginning of Matot, and so on, which we can somehow connect each of them locally to their part of the story, but there isn’t a very great clarity of that.

Part Three: Success and Conquest

So that’s the three-part division of the book that we can have if we want to take this narrative of the traveling to the desert as primary.

So we have the first part until Beha’alotcha, where they’re setting everything up in Sinai.

The second part from Beha’alotcha until the middle of Chukat, or maybe until Pinchas-Matot, which is the wanderings in the desert, all the problems that they had in the desert that they made, their sins, their problems, and so on.

And then the third part is after that curse passed, after that problem passes, when things start going well. They start doing their—there’s this weird stage of wars, which are usually neglected in the stories that we tell, of the successful wars that Moshe led, and the threshold of ארץ ישראל, right, the conquest of עבר הירדן, of Transjordan, and so on, and all the laws that go along together with that. That’s the third part of the book, and that brings us to the end of the book.

So that’s my preface to Sefer Bamidbar.