The Distance Between Heaven and Earth

YHWH's Wrath in Numbers 25

One of the key differences between the biblical world and our perceptions can be described as conceptual versus experiential. While we often think of abstract concepts, and describe real-world events as distinct from our subjective experience of those events, in the ancient Near East no such border existed. Objective events and subjective interpretation were one, and this extended to the world of experience being shifted outwards as well. Nature was a living breathing entity, one with the gods, or in the case of biblical monotheism, God. Inanimate objects were anthropomorphic, and personal agendas formed explanations for what we might see as dry apathetic experiences. While this idea requires lengthy development and demonstration, I would like to share one small insight in Numbers 25 which illustrates this idea.

Numbers 25 tells the narrative of Israel straying after the deity Baal-Peor through the Moabite (or Midianite) women. This evoked the wrath of YHWH against Israel and caused a great plague in which 24,000 people died. The plague eventually ended through the actions of Phinehas, who in his zealotry for YHWH, killed one of the leaders of the people who was engaged in the idolatry. This subdued the wrath of YHWH against the people and the devastating plague ended.

In the beginning of the narrative the plague is not mentioned explicitly. After describing the actions with which the Israelites were engaged, verse 3 simply states that “YHWH was incensed with Israel”. YHWH then tells Moses to have the leaders killed “so that YHWH’s wrath may turn away from Israel”. (The Hebrew uses the same term both times – ויחר אף יהוה בישראל... וישב חרון אף יהוה מישראל.) The passage then continues to describe Moses’ command to the judges of Israel to carry our YHWH’s command, and we are then told of Phinehas’ particular zealotry against one of the leaders, Zimri the Simeonite. Verse 8 then states that following his action “the plague against the Israelites was checked”, and that 24,000 had perished.

This is slightly puzzling. The prior verses don’t mention a plague at all, so what plague needed to be stopped? Clearly it is implied that there was a plague prior to Phinehas’ action, but why doesn’t the verse say it explicitly? This is a peculiar literary technique which we don’t find elsewhere.

The answer to this question might be found in verse 11. YHWH tells Moses that Phinehas has “turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in my passion”. The first phrase in the verse “turned back My wrath” mirrors the original statement “so that YHWH’s wrath may turn away from Israel”, with the final phrase “in my passion” (בקנאתי) is clearly wordplay to contrast with Phinehas’ passion (בקנאו את קנאתי), but referring to same wrath introduced earlier. The verse therefore can be read as describing how YHWH would have wiped out the Israelite people in his wrath.

The relationship between YHWH’s wrath and the plague is not merely causal, where YHWH’s wrath brought about the plague. Rather the plague is itself identified with YHWH’s wrath, that it could be said that the wrath itself was killing the Israelites. This explains why the beginning of the chapter did not need to mention that there was a plague, as this is the intention of the statement “and YHWH was incensed with Israel”. A description of YHWH being angry is identical with what we might call the results of the wrath, which brought about the death of thousands of Israelites, and was threatening to wipe them out if not for Phinehas’ action.

This concept might seem mistaken to our modern minds, which differentiate between the motivations of God and the actions He might do. However, for the ancient Near Eastern mind God was nature. When nature turned against them in a vicious plague, an Israelite would not have seen a terrible virus which kills people, but nature itself being angry at the people. If nature can be angry, or conversely, appeased or happy, it is not simply apathetic, but a deity itself. This is YHWH. The world of the gods explains events in this world because they are inseparable, and experiential explanations define the world of ancient Near East as opposed to our abstract or conceptual reductionism. While we might assign heaven to the divine and earth to nature, the biblical authors saw no true distance between heaven and earth.