Torah Posting: בחקתי
Three parshiyot ago, I brought up the distinction between חקים (chukim, “decrees”) and משפתים (mishpatim, “judgments”). The latter are laws that proceed logically from rational principles. The former are more mysterious; God declares them, and the people must follow, whether they understand why or not. Here at the end of the book of Vayikra, I feel the contemporary reader is probably quite familiar with the feeling of confronting a hok by now, because this book is full of decrees that don’t settle well in the rational mind (of today).
Hopefully, we’ve established by now that making all this make rational sense — as though the Torah were some kind of scientific textbook that explains the universe — is a foreign approach to this text, such that, frankly, I’d prefer that cultures who can’t help but do this keep their hands off.
That’s not to say it isn’t a struggle for Jewish people, and indeed it’s probably most accurate to say that a global hegemonic bend toward rationalism is how text got turned into a sacred object in this culture at all. But in the Jewish tradition, chukim and mishpatim live side by side, parallel dimensions of God’s will that must be integrated. Zen person that I am, I liken the process to that of the koan, or public case, though of course any Talmud scholar is familiar with that without needing to import any Eastern stuff. Sometimes, the only way to understand is just to roll the absurdity around in your mind for a while until, someday, it clicks. In a nutshell, that’s the function of the Torah in Jewish life.
The final parashah of the book of Vayikra is בחקתי — Behukotai, “in My chukim,” as in, “[you’d better] stay within them.” Let’s conclude this book with that intention about koans in mind.
This parashah is a continuation of the divine monologue we ended with last week, but it’s pretty clear why the sages would draw a division here. This final parashah of the book begins with a big sweeping description of the arrangement between the people and God with respect to keeping all these laws we’ve just received. If the people do as instructed, God will maintain the balance of nature, provide for the people abundantly, and shelter them and the land with peace. They will have to defend themselves, but they will do so easily. They will reproduce fruitfully, and their supplies will not run out. Best of all, God will establish God’s Dwelling — a Temple — amongst them and be ever present in their midst. “וְהָיִ֥יתִי לָכֶ֖ם לֵֽאלֹהִ֑ים וְאַתֶּ֖ם תִּהְיוּ־לִ֥י לְעָֽם׃” — “And I will be the Divine for you, and you will be the people for Me.”
Of course, the “but” comes next.
If the people break this covenant, some quite awful punishments are laid out. The first one mentioned is terrible illness. Planting seeds will come to nothing because enemies shall eat it as they defeat the people through war and terror. If that doesn’t do the trick, and the people still fail to uphold these commandments, they will be punished sevenfold, a quantity that calls back to the very first parashah, when God imposes it to put an immediate stop to vengeance against Qayin after the first murder in history.
That is, God will ensure that these sins are never committed again. God will make the skies like iron and the ground like copper. No amount of work will produce anything. And if that still doesn’t work? Sevenfold again. Wild beasts will ravage the land, eat the children and cattle, decimate the people. And if this doesn’t work? Sevenfold again. God will bring a sword against the people. Does that mean human enemies… or does that mean, like, a God-sword? If the people withdraw into their cities from this sword, a plague will drive them back out and into enemy hands. No matter how hard the people work to bake bread to feed themselves, they will never be satisfied. If this doesn’t work? Sevenfold AGAIN.
The people will be reduced to cannibalizing their children. Their idolatrous temples will be destroyed, and their lifeless bodies shall be tossed upon the ruins. The cities and sanctuaries will also be ruined. God will ignore any sacrifices of propitiation. The land will become so desolate that the enemies will be too appalled to bother conquering it. And finally, the people shall be scattered amongst the other nations and gradually cut down.
The land shall remain barren to make up for the Shabbat years the people did not observe when they were living there faithlessly. The people living in diaspora will live in terror of their oppressors. Those who do not perish will mourn what has happened and try to repent for the sins of their ancestors. Only after enough of that will God remember the covenant with Ya’akov and Yitzhaq and Avraham. Accordingly, they will not be destroyed outright.
Which one of these outcomes would you say came true?
To me, this foreshadows my thesis of the entire Bible, which I may or may not have already shared at this point, but in any case, I can’t say it enough times: The Hebrew Bible is a story about what happens to an ancient people when, over many centuries, they become too concerned with worldly power to attend to their spiritual needs, and their society collapses. That scattered remnant prophesied here thousands of years ago is my people. Me. I have repeatedly tried to show here that we are not the ancient Israelites in the Torah. We are a different people now. But we are in the Torah. We are the Torah’s terrible future. And the road back from here is dark and difficult. But God remembers us.
The last chapter of Vayikra takes a fairly jarring turn from these powerful visions to more matters of priestly accounting, lest we forget who wrote this part. It’s pretty gross accounting, in fact. It sets the prices, in silver shekels, that are equivalent to the lives of human beings at various ages and genders, followed by the accounting for animals and property, according to the reckoning of the priests. The context, it seems from the commentaries, is when people want to offer something to God — up to an entire human being — in exchange for some outcome in their life. Animals, you know how that goes. They get offered up. But in the case of people and property, those must be made fungible through money (which goes to the priests, of course). We don’t do human sacrifices, after all.
Why on Earth does not just this parashah but the entire book of Vayikra end on this note, rather than on the thunderous note of the chapter before? I’d venture to say it’s more foreshadowing. We just got the big solemn warning about what happens if we become so concerned with human affairs that we forget God, and then the priests turn right back to counting their money and weighing it against human souls. This is God giving them the proper valuations, of course. But will any human priesthood be able to uphold these standards? A hereditary priesthood seems like a pretty good racket.
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