A Less-Than-Omnipotent God
This week, it's a double portion in that the Book of Numbers is completed with the reading of Mattot and Masei.
But before we leave this book, I want to address something that a lot of religious people who believe that the Torah is literally from God will parrot, which is "God is omnipotent, omniscient, and exists outside of time and space".
If you have been following my commentaries, you will have see that if this is true, then the primary God of the Torah is not the God tat they are speaking about. And it certainly wasn't the view of the ancient writers and believers.
And that brings us up to something bizarre in Masei, which is the dictate to build "Cities of Refuge".
As we read in Exodus, someone who had unintentionally harmed a pregnant woman while he was fighting with her husband, and if she miscarried, then he pays a fine. The death of the fetus was considered a financial loss and the father would determine the value. That is the Jewish reading of the text, and it should be noted that abortion is not considered a sin in Judaism, although it is also not encouraged.
Furthermore, if the pregnant woman died as a result, then the man will pay with his life.
Yet, in Numbers we are told that someone who commits manslaughter, unintentionally killing someone, can escape and not fear for his life.
The Exodus verse is a direct lift from the Code of Hammurabi. And if you think that the Numbers verse about the establishment of a City of Refuge is any more ethical when dealing with manslaughter, think again.
In the Exodus verse, the man is put to death by the court - a life for a life.
In the Numbers verse, a relative of the deceased can chase down the person who accidentally caused the death and kill him, providing that he doesn't make it to the City of Refuge in time. And the relative can wait outside for as long as he wants, and if the runaway steps outside, or even (according to the Rabbis) hangs over the top of the wall to pick a piece of fruit that is growing right outside the wall, a spear or an arrow by the relative can kill the runaway and it is perfectly fine.
So the runaway has to reside within those walls for the rest of his life, or until the High Priest dies. And if the High Priest dies, then he can leave and nobody is permitted to kill him.
There is a common trope delivered by many fans of the Torah, which is, "God knew that if He was too strict, that the people wouldn't obey Him, so he permitted some unethical behavior."
Putting someone to death for lighting a fire on the Sabbath isn't strict? Beheading those who lived in a community who refused to be a servant of Yahweh isn't strict? Stoning someone to death for saying something bad about Yahweh isn't strict?
Please!
So God permitted revenge killings because if he prohibited them, people wouldn't want to keep His Torah?
And there are those who will shout "Free will trumps everything!", without reading the Torah where the idea is something that Yahweh stomps upon again and again. According to the text, not only does He interfere with free will repeatedly, and He gets angry practically every time someone exercises it.
God permits a relative to kill someone who accidentally killed his father, for example, because His hands are tied, but God help you if you complain about His food!
The "free will" argument is a red herring invented by modern theists who have to answer the question, "If Yahweh was so involved in everyone's lives where He micro-managed almost everything and would occasionally throw tantrums...where did that God go?
Answer: "God removed Himself so that mankind could exercise free will."
So when did Yahweh become so obsessed with free will? This obsession is not mentioned in the Tanach at all.
So why didn't Yahweh forbid revenge killings?
Like so many odd things in the Tanach, the real answer is: "Because the storytellers and the scribes were making those decisions, and Yahweh was but a character in their stories."
Those who embrace theodicy, however, need an answer to feel better about their God. A typical response is, "God knew it was bad, but He also knew that one day, mankind would reject revenge killings, and so He didn't forbid them at that time."
This is, of course, claiming that the person saying this knows the mind of God and has inside information about His impulses - which he doesn't.
And that leaves us with the final question: Would a God that killed thousands for complaining about His food be incapable of enforcing the prohibition against revenge killings?
And since he also killed thousands who exercised their free will to demand that Moses be replaced with someone more competent, or wiping out Sodom because He didn't like their behavior, or tweaking Pharaoh to act in ways that were destructive - let's not use the "free will" argument, because if we are talking about Yahweh, that argument falls flat.
The commandments that endorse revenge killings and turn it into an game of cat and mouse are unethical, which is why modern society considers a revenge killing as what it really is - murder.
God permitted some murder because "that's just how things were back then"?
That's not a God.
And today, we're better than that.
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