Not in your Life

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In the second section of Numbers 19 (vv 14-22) no specific role is projected for priests. It is required only that "a pure man ('fs tahor)" perform the rite of lustration. The implications of this shift will be discussed in the COMMENT, below. Quite possibly, the lustration rite prescribed in the latter section of this chapter had a popular rather than a priestly origin. Baruch Levine, Numbers (p 458)

10: the alien who resides among them. What is of greatest interest in this verse is the reference to resident aliens. The verse emphasizes that the foregoing, namely, the preparation of the water of lustration from the ashes of the burned cow, is to be a permanent statute not only for Israelites, but for the ger, the alien resident within the Israelite settlement. The status of the ger was explained in the NOTES on Num 9:14 (cf. Num 15:15). This term designates non-Israelites who came from foreign lands, or whose families had done so at an earlier time.

Two questions are raised by the inclusion of the alien in the requirement of purification: (1) Was the corpse of a non-Israelite also a source of impurity? (2) Would a non-Israelite be contaminated by contact with a corpse, in the same way as would an Israelite? The wording of v 11 would seem clearly to assume as much, for it speaks of corpses and bones "belonging to any human being (Leko/ nepes 'adam)," and v 14, below, also uses the term 'adam generically. Although later Jewish law restricted the provisions of this chapter to Israelite dead, the original intent of the law was to deal with all death occurring within the bounds of the Israelite settlement.

12. He must purify himself. The hithpa'el form yitl:wtta' links this law with the provisions of Num 31:19-24, and in general with the overall provisions of Numbers 31 relevant to the disposition of the spoils of war. In Num 31: 19 and 23 we also find this unusual hithpa'el form, which elsewhere occurs only in Num 8:21 (and metaphorically in Job 41:17).

The laws of Numbers 31 require Israelite warriors who had killed human beings in battle to remain outside the encampment for seven days and to undergo purification in two stages, just as is provided in Num 19:16. ... Inevitably, the provisions of Numbers 31 represent a direct application of the laws of the present chapter.

Numbers 19 provides a unique instance in priestly legislation of riddance rites entirely separate from the Sanctuary and its sacrificial altar. Consider the following of its features: the slaughter of the red cow took place outside the encampment. The cow was totally incinerated in a single procedure. The ashes yielded by the incinerated cow were to be stored in a pure place outside the encampment, not within the Sanctuary, as was customary for consecrated substances. The pattern of purifications on the third and seventh days is likewise unique, and is mentioned again only in Num 31:19-23, in connection with purification after battle, a rite clearly modeled on the legislation of Numbers 19.

The operative magical principle in the rites of Numbers 19 is sympathetic: death rids the community of death! Ashes represent annihilation and are, therefore, effective when applied to persons and objects defiled through contact with the dead. The mixture of ashes and living water had a primarily practical basis: in liquid form, this mixture could be applied to persons and objects. The operative cultic principle is substitution.

The hidden agenda of Numbers 19 is the cult of the dead. Directly relevant to its provisions are the laws of Lev 21:1-15 forbidding that Israelite priests come into contact with the dead in the funerary process. Numbers 19 establishes the severe impurity of the corpse, contact with which defiles all Israelites, not only priests, of course. But whereas no initial prohibition was placed on Israelites generally, who were permitted to be present at burials, priests were allowed to attend only to the burials of consanguineous relatives. Rabbinic law endorsed the same dispensation for the wife of a priest. The high priest enjoyed no exemptions whatsoever, and was forbidden even to attend to the burial of his own parents!

It seems inescapable that the priestly regulations of Leviticus 21 were aimed at eliminating a funerary role for the consecrated Israelite priesthood and at distancing funerary rites from the Sanctuary and its cult. We encounter a policy that, if fully implemented, would prevent any cultic celebration of death and would make of burial, and all that went with it, a nonpriestly activity, a duty resting with the family of the deceased. As a corollary, it is proper to see in the legislation of Numbers 19 an attempt to prevent the establishment of cults of the dead in biblical Israel, and to uproot them where they existed.

Cults of the dead, properly speaking, involve propitiation of the dead through sacrifice and other forms of ritual activity, as well as by magic. By their very nature, cults of the dead exhibit two complementary objectives: first, they are aimed at affording the dead what they seek, namely, an agreeable afterlife. Second, in so doing, cults of the dead seek to ensure that the powerful dead will not forget the living and will act benevolently rather than malevolently toward them, especially toward their own descendants. Ultimately, a society or community that celebrates a cult of dead ancestors considers the dead part of the community and the family. Their approval is required for the major decisions of the community, and their presence is desired at major events in communal life. The priestly program expressed in Leviticus 21 and Numbers 19, and in other biblical sources to be examined presently, rejects all of these attitudes. The dead have no power, and they are no longer members of the ongoing community. Their exploits during their lifetimes are a source of inspiration and guidance to their descendants, but the community itself looks forward to the future and consigns ancestors to the realm of memory.

Do we have evidence of royal or other cults of the dead in biblical Israel? The evidence is not unequivocal, but it is sufficient to allow for the conclusion that a royal cult of the dead was operative in biblical Israel, but that objection to it arose in the near-exilic and exilic periods.

The sources in 2 Kings document a reversal of customary practice by establishing a new category of impurity associated with the dead, the same type of impurity as is legislated in Numbers 19! It would appear that the severe impurity of the dead legislated in Numbers 19 had not been the norm in preexilic times. There had been objection to certain aspects of cults of the dead, as we shall see, though some form of a royal cult of the dead had been authorized, if my reading of Jeremiah 34 is correct. But the author of Ezekiel 43, whether or not he was the prophet himself, is announcing a new policy. It came to legislative fruition in Numbers 19 and Leviticus 21, in the restrictions there imposed on the priesthood. The new direction may have been dictated during the reign of Josiah.

And yet the needs addressed by cults of the dead are primal in their force. Israelites inevitably engaged in rites that would qualify as worship of the dead, notwithstanding deep-rooted objections from priestly and prophetic quarters. In its purest forms, biblical monotheism was incompatible with cults of the dead. To empower the dead with lasting influence over the living would serve to undercut the power of the God of Israel, as perceived by his worshipers. The worshiped dead also became divine, at some point, because the ongoing process of worship tends inevitably to attribute divinity to the objects of worship.

In summary, certain notions of the impurity of the dead and serious objections to cults of the dead go far back in the Israelite mentality. Nevertheless, the specific category of impurity legislated in Numbers 19, and the restrictions on priestly activity prescribed in Leviticus 21, seem to reflect a religious movement that is heralded in Ezekiel 43 and generated by the policies of Josiah, and that was to gain in strength during the postexilic period of the Second Temple. Thus in Isa 57:9 and 65:3-7 we find cryptic ~eferences to worship of the dead, to which there is intense objection, and iri Hag 2:12-14 we have an explicit protest against the pollution caused by contact with the dead. Similarly, in Num 9:9-14 we find a provision allowing those impure subsequent to contact with the dead to defer the celebration of the paschal sacrifice. Numbers 1-20: A New Translation (Anchor Bible Series, Vol. 4A) by Baruch A. Levine (Author) pp 458-479 see complete PDF here.

... the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.

Anthropological and historical research also began, in the nineteenth century, to put together a picture of the heroic since primitive and ancient times. The hero was the man who could go into the spirit world, the world of the dead, and return alive. He had his descendants in the mystery cults of the Eastern Mediterranean, which were cults of death and resurrection. The divine hero of each of these cults was one who had come back from the dead. And as we know today from the research into ancient myths and rituals, Christianity itself was a competitor with the mystery cults and won out—among other reasons—because it, too, featured a healer with supernatural powers who had risen from the dead.

All historical religions addressed themselves to this same problem of how to bear the end of life. Religions like Hinduism and Buddhism performed the ingenious trick of pretending not to want to be reborn, which is a sort of negative magic: claiming not to want what you really want most.

The basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety , to deny the terror of death .

Since the main task of human life is to become heroic and transcend death, every culture must provide its members with an intricate symbolic system that is covertly religious. This means that ideological conflicts between cultures are essentially battles between immortality projects, holy wars.

Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles—my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project. The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. From introduction to Ernest Becker . The Denial of Death by Sam Keen .

On Baruch Levine: Baruch A. Levine: A Brief Biography

and Baruch Levine, Bible scholar who helped grow Judaic Studies at NYU, dies at 91 - New York Jewish Week