Parshat Matot
Moral Correctness Doesn’t Quite Do It
R. Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg brings our attention to Moshe’s repeated invocation of the phrase lifnei Hashem in his response to the tribes of Gad and Reuven. In Bamidbar 32;20-22, Moshe says it four times, if you go before Hashem to the war, if every armed man of you goes before Hashem, if the Land is conquered before Hashem, then your land will be your inheritance before Hashem.
What is he doing?
HaKetav VeHaKabbalah likes the explanation of R. Azariah Figo, Moshe reacts here to how they articulated their offer to be at the forefront of Benei Yisrael during the war, until the rest of the nation secured their parts of the Land. They accepted Moshe’s original objection, and agreed they had to bear an equal share of the burden [shivayon ba-netel, to use a currently politically charged phrase], as a matter of proper human morality.
[A moment of discussion with my younger self. When I was in graduate school, a professor with whom I had significant tension, thought one always had to know the library a figure from the past had and worked with; in the case of R. Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, it is a good point, because we have seen him cite the Vilna Gaon, R. Wolf Heidenheim, R. Azariah Figo, and more. I disliked that professor too much to learn the lesson from him at the time, but I can learn it now...]
God Has to be a Part of It
Good as far as it went, R. Mecklenburg hears Moshe responding, but you didn’t mention Hashem, Who, first, objects to avel, to people who take without giving what they should. Moshe wants them to know they can’t be doing it only because that’s how nations work, everyone gives what they can for the good of the whole, they have to be doing this because God wants it.
Then you will be nekiyyim me-Hashem u-mi-Yisra’el, will have fulfilled your responsibilities both to Hashem and your fellow Jews, and then the land you took on the east side of the Jordan will be yours both because the Jewish people agreed to split the Land that way, and also will be lifnei Hashem, the Land it pleases God for you to have.
In verse twenty-three, Moshe warns that if they don’t do this, they need to know their sin to God. I think I have usually read this verse to mean they will sin if they do not go to the war, but R. Mecklenburg applies it to their motives when they do go to war. He admonishes them to know that if they go to war solely to fulfill their human morality obligations to their brethren, they will still have sinned to God.
Because our job is to do what’s right, sure, but it’s to do what’s right as part of our relationship with God, as part of making this world a more Godly place. An element the men of Gad and Reuven recognized and accepted in verse twenty-seven, when they, too, said they would go lifnei Hashem.
Revenge Well Served
In 31;2, Hashem links the vengeance against Midian to Moshe’s death, Moshe is to oversee the war, then pass away. R. Samson Raphael Hirsch spots a signal from Hashem to Moshe, to let him know he has significant unfinished business. Moshe had put energy into conveying to the people two pillars of the Torah, tzeni’ut, discretion in all matters, including sexual, and faithfulness to Hashem. The Midianites had lured the Jews into breaching both. Moshe had to fix it.
The word Hashem uses, nekama, translates to English as revenge, but R. Hirsch lays out types. Some revenge comes to reestablish justice, to restore what evildoers have wrecked. Revenge can also help the person administering the revenge regain ideals lost. Nekama be-, revenge on or at, is the first type, says R. Hirsch, but Hashem here calls for being nokem me-et, from, the Midianites, a way of saying the “revenge” comes for the Jews, to let them actualize their declaration of distance from Midianite values and worldview, to remember they/we are different, hold to different ideals.
[The deep point I fear I failed to convey fully is that sometimes restoration of our own values demands of us that we strike at those who purveyed the corrupted values. Had the Jews left the Midianites intact, just returned to a life of tzeni’ut and avodat Hashem, it would not have been enough, R. Hirsch is saying. To restore themselves to whom we had been, the Jews had to take violent action against those who stood for those other values. A longer conversation, but an important one, about the need, at least sometimes, to extirpate evil, not just stand for good.]
Removing Vows
For reasons we don’t have space to fully explore here, the Torah gives a father and/or a husband the right to nullify certain of a woman’s vows [it’s easier to explain with the father, because it lasts only until she’s twelve and a half, so the Torah is giving the father some supervisory rights over a young woman who is not yet fully adult; with the husband, it’s mostly about vows that would interfere or affect the marital relationship, but there’s more to be said].
The father’s nullification always uses the verb of hana’ah [restrains, constrains, disallows], e.g. 30;6, where the husband also has hafarah, annul, such as in 30;9. Malbim says hana’ah connotes coercion, the father requires the daughter to act in violation of her vow, where hafarah refers to removing the thought of whatever it was. He points us to Rambam’s Laws of Vows 13, where hafarah involves the husband saying the vow is nullified, and bittul comes with requiring her to act in contravention of it.
With hafarah, she can still choose to adhere to whatever she committed to, just not with the force of the vow (if she took a neder not to eat meat, let’s say, after the husband is mefer, she can still not), where the mevatel will have her eat some meat. Rambam does agree the husband and father eventually have the same halachot, because 30;17 groups them.
Other authorities disagreed with Rambam, thought the Torah put them back together to show there is no distinction between hana’ah and hafarah. For them, the linking of father to husband was to remove another possible distinction, between denying the vow or upholding it, a topic I am not going to address right now.
[Malbim doesn’t address the why, why the Torah would use different verbs if they were all going to end up being the same. I think he means us to understand these distinctions do exist, even if the Torah and halachah eventually removed them. I think he implies the father’s main way to nullify a pre-teen’s vow is by having her act in the way she would not, I think because the father’s reaction to her vows is supposed to be about protecting her from herself. With the husband, it might be about him not wanting her to have a vow on her record, lest she violate it, but the behavior itself is not objectionable to him. So he might choose one or the other.]
How to find our way to ourselves, in Parshat Matot: by remembering to relate what we do to our service of God, by restoring our best selves after we fall, sometimes by punishing/removing the cause of our downfall, and by ensuring we give the force of a vow only to what we should.
