Leviticus and Numbers

8 From the Well in Midian to the Ba‘al of Peor

8 From the Well in Midian to the Ba‘al of Peor Attitudes to the Marriage of Israelite Men and Midianite Women Yonina Dor A Personal Contextual Note My interest in the subject of this essay is first and foremost scholarly and academic, but also political and ideological. Let me explain. I am an Israeli, born in Tel Aviv. My grandfather was an ordained rabbi; after returning from the synagogue on Shabbat morning, he would give me lessons in the Teaching of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot). This was one of the sources for my love of ancient Jewish writings and my decision to work on Bible research. As a follow-up to the Zionist-Socialist education in the Youth Movement, I later chose to be a Kibbutz member. I am, until this day, a member of Kibbutz Yagur, near Haifa. Over the years, however, my deep interest in the biblical text became tinged with moral and ethical criticism of sociopolitical positions found in it, especially in the light of the struggle for peace and equal rights and against a policy of occupation and suppression. My Ph.D. dissertation, supervised by Professor Sara Japhet at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, dealt with the separation and exclusion during the Restoration period, and was later modified into a book called Have the Foreign Women Really Been Expelled? (Hebrew; 2006). This research fits well with my constant study of the Hebrew Bible, especially the interest in passages that, beyond the text itself, contain aspects of social justice. This is the case in my 141 work on the status of the sojourner (‫גר‬, ger), the destruction of the native people of the land, and the issue of foreign women. Part of my work was training teachers for teaching the Bible at schools. In that, too, I was interested in issues of ethics and social justice. In my publications within this area, I present Bible teaching in Israeli state (secular) schools as an opportunity to educate students on biblical values, but concurrently as a chance to criticize outdated values and to reject them. My aim in exposing this complexity that I discern in the biblical text is to reinforce humanist-democratic education in Israel, where Bible study—in this or the other form—is obligatory in all schools, including secular ones. Beyond studying the biblical text and its background, looking for live, relevant links between the ancient texts and our reality in the Israel of the here and now, as well as introducing critical, academic, and ethical discussions on issues in the texts, is a need of the utmost importance for me. This need was increased by my encounters with students learning to be Bible teachers at schools and with pupils of the same schools—many of whom still accept biblical texts absolutely literally, including nationalistic, racist, antidemocratic messages that I consider obsolete. Such ideas should be openly discussed in every learning framework in the hope that they will promote humanistic education. I believe that, ultimately, the Bible’s status in Israeli culture will become stronger when the encounter with its ancient materials creates a discourse on issues of justice and morality. From this place, I can now move to the article itself, and I hope that various moves I undertake in it are thus made clearer. *** There is a vivid contrast between the story of the marriage of Moses and Zipporah the Midianite woman (Exod. 2:16-22) and the story of Ba‘al Peor (Numbers 25 and 31) in both atmosphere and content. I shall begin my discussion with (1) a description of Moses’ conflicting attitudes toward marriage to Midianite women in these two key stories, and follow it with (2) a discussion of various attempts to explain the contrast between them. I shall (3) remark on the characterization of Midianite women, and finally (4) present my own conclusions on the attitude to marriage with Midianite women in the Hebrew Bible. 142 | Leviticus and Numbers Moses’ Conflicting Attitudes to Marriage with Midianite Women As we shall see, Moses’ attitudes toward marriage of Israelites with Midianite women are hardly consistent, from his own marriage onwards. In the following we shall trace his conflicting attitudes and attempt to explain them. MOSES AND ZIPPORAH The episode described in Exod. 2:16-22 is based on a type-scene of a meeting between a foreign man and a local woman by a well, a meeting which leads...