Bible Review

In Hebrew hmrw is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so.

For Jacob Milgrom, Moses’ real crime is speaking while performing a miracle, like a mere magician (“Magic, Monotheism and the Sin of Moses,” in The Quest for the Kingdom of God, ed. H.B. Huffmon et al. [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983], pp. 251–265). Milgrom’s analysis, however, presupposes an original text in which God commands Moses to strike the rock! And it relies upon and even extends Yehezkiel Kaufmann’s far-fetched speculation that silence had to be maintained during Temple worship.

This itself is not a new insight, see most recently Katharine D. Sakenfeld, “Theological and Redactional Problems in Numbers 20.2–13, ” in Understanding the Word, ed. J.T. Butler et al., Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 37 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1985), pp. 133–154.

The solution was rediscovered independently by me and the German scholar Erhard Blum in the late 1980s, though we were both anticipated by Rabbi Samuel ben Meir, known as Rashbam, c. 1100 C.E. See Propp, “The Rod of Aaron and the Sin of Moses,” Journal of Biblical Literature 107 (1988), pp. 19–26; Erhard Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 189 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 271–278.

Accordingly, the name Massah-and-Meribah is changed to Meribath-Kadesh (Numbers 27:14; Deuteronomy 32:51; Ezekiel 47:19, 48:28) or Meribah for short. Psalm 95:8–10 also appears to associate Massah-and-Meribah with Kadesh, where God decreed 40 years of wandering for Israel.

The following chapter, Numbers 19, is not obviously relevant to what precedes and follows. Yet it treats what may be the priest’s supreme task: removing, through the red heifer rite, Israel’s blood-guilt, which would otherwise cause its destruction. Thus chapter 19 continues to stress the priesthood’s unique role in maintaining communal purity before God.

Frank Moore Cross, who has exposed in greatest detail the rivalry between priest and Levite, thinks the conflict is specifically between Aaronid priests and Mosaic, or Mushite, priests (Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973], pp. 195–215); see also Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? I do not doubt that there was a Mushite priesthood, but I think its traditions are not preserved in the Bible. In a specifically Mushite text, Moses’ sons would presumably play a greater role.