Maps and Meaning: Levitical Models for Contemporary Care

The War Camp and the Returning Warrior

6 The War Camp and the Returning Warrior In this chapter, we turn to the book of Numbers to explore stories that shed light on military life, the trauma of war, the challenges of reentry for demobilized warriors, and the pervasiveness of war themes in civilian life. Following Leviticus’s exploration of priestly and cultic life, Numbers picks up where Exodus leaves off: after crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites spent two years at the encampment in the Sinai, readying themselves for battle and conquest. The remainder of Numbers is devoted to the Israelites’ travels through the wilderness. Throughout this time, the people swam in a sea of complaint, resentment, and rebellion as they longed for the perceived certainty of life under Egyptian slavery. They pined for the past, resisted the present, and regarded the future with terror. When twelve spies scouted out the promised land, ten of them returned with reports of formidable giants, which convinced the people that conquering the land would be foolish at best. God responded with an angry punishment: this generation would spend forty years in the wilderness, where they would die, and their children would inherit the land of Canaan. 149 Military realities pervade the book of Numbers. At the book’s opening, the Israelites are arranged in tribal and military formation around the Ohel Moed, which was the centerpiece of the camp. This presented the community with a visual reminder that cultic and military life were inextricably intertwined. The census, from which the English name of the book is derived, counted only men over age twenty—in other words, those who could fight in the impending military conquest.1 Even prior to the Israelites’ arrival in, and conquest of, the promised land—which is not chronicled until the book of Joshua—Numbers documents military disaster in the form of a battle the people initiated without God’s approval,2 as well as a string of military victories against an assortment of kings and peoples.3 The Israelites’ campaign against the Midianites, in which they acted on God’s command, is especially bloody, prompting instructions about how warriors, weapons, and spoils of war should make the transition back into civilian arenas.4 In the book of Numbers, the word machaneh takes on new meanings. As in Leviticus, machaneh refers to the domesticated sphere of settled Israelite life—to the times between travels when the people pitched their tents in a cluster around the Ohel Moed. Numbers includes many references to machaneh in this sense. Dew and manna fell upon the machaneh,5 and God whipped up a wind that dropped quail onto the machaneh.6 The priest left and then reentered the machaneh in order to prepare the mei niddah that dispersed the pollution of death.7 Similarly, returning warriors purified themselves 1. Numbers 1:2-3. 2. Numbers 14:44-45. 3. See, for example, Numbers 21:21-35. 4. Numbers 31. 5. Numbers 11:9. 6. Numbers 11:31. 7. Numbers 19:7. See chapter 4 for a full description of this ritual. Maps and Meaning 150 outside the machaneh and then reentered it.8 When God sent down a furious fire, it burned the edges of the machaneh, which tells us that the machaneh had clearly defined borders.9 We also learn that, for the marching Israelites, the machaneh was both the place they had left behind and the place toward which they were heading. In the words of Numbers 10:33-34, They traveled from the mountain of the Eternal a distance of three days and the Ark of the Covenant of the Eternal traveled before them for a distance of three days to scout out for them a resting place [that is, their next encampment], and the cloud of the Eternal was above them by day as they traveled from the camp.10 In addition to these meanings, the machaneh now took on military connotations. As the tribes arrayed themselves around the Ohel Moed, they were clearly preparing to march into war. The second chapter of Numbers, in particular, is peppered with military language: for example, the repeated use of le’tzivotam (“according to their troop”) and u’tzeva’o u’fekudeihem (“his troop and their enrollment”).11 Each tribe assembled under its degel machaneh, meaning the flag or standard of each tribe, suggesting the insignia of a warring group.12 The machaneh had become both a...