On Sacred Heads and Sullied Wombs: Bouncing Between Leviticus and Numbers

Lee, Bernon

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-55095-4_3

Bernon Lee⁴

Part of the book series: Postcolonialism and Religions ((PCR))

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Abstract

In this chapter, Lee expands the emergent logic of exclusion in the previous chapter by drawing into the web of prized possessions the offerings (of things and persons) in Leviticus 21–22 and the protected entities of the rulings and procedures of Numbers 5–6 on purity, sexual impropriety, and Nazirite ordination. Lee contends that the reader’s ‘wandering viewpoint’ invents a network of analogies of binary distinctions, as it grows Israel’s social-religious boundaries through and across these laws and rites. The result, at the chapter’s conclusion, is an expanded web of guarded things and spaces—houses, heads, wombs, camps, and offerings—that correlate categories of abjection at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and morality. As before, Lee has in focus the vulnerability of readerly correlations across texts.

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Notes

1.
On gap-filling in the interstices of textual segments as a phenomenon of reading see, again, Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 182–95. The ‘hermeneutic code’ of Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay (trans. Richard Miller; New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 19, 75–76), in recognizing this aspect of a reader’s participation, envisions the formulation of enigmas and suspense as an operation in some tension with the grouping of actions already encountered under generic terms (a walk, a meeting, greeting), the function of his ‘proairetic code.’
2.
Martin Noth, Numbers: A Commentary (trans. J. D. Martin; Old Testament Library; London: SCM, 1968), 6, 44–45. For similar sentiments, see, among others, George Buchanan Gray, Numbers (International Critical Commentary; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), xxiv; Rolf Rendtorff, The Old Testament: An Introduction (trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 147.
3.
Noth, Numbers, 1–2. Certainly, Noth’s comments are the strongest statement in this vein. But scholarly deliberations elsewhere on the structure of Numbers are often preceded by acknowledgment of the difficulty to the task, due in no small measure to the complex historical development of the text. Beyond Noth, see Calum Carmichael, The Book of Numbers: A Critique of Genesis (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 26–27; Nathan MacDonald, ‘The Book of Numbers,’ in A Theological Introduction to the Pentateuch: Interpreting the Torah as Christian Scripture (ed. Richard S. Briggs and Joel N. Lohr; Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 115–18; Adriane Leveen, Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 22–23, 25; Thomas Römer, ‘Israel’s Sojourn in the Wilderness and the Construction of the Book of Numbers,’ in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. Robert Rezetko, Timothy H. Lim and W. Brian Aucker; Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 113; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 427; Jean-Louis Ska, Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch (Winona Lake; Eisenbrauns, 2006), 35–36; Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), xiii; Rendtorff, The Old Testament, 147–50; Philip J. Budd, Numbers (Word Biblical Commentary 5; Waco: Word, 1984), xviii–xxi; Gray, Numbers, xxii–xxvi.
4.
Noth, Numbers, 2.
5.
Römer, ‘Israel’s Sojourn,’ 427.
6.
S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (9^th edn.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1913), 60; Noth, Numbers, 1–4; Gray, Numbers, xxiii–xxiv; Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 195–97; Budd, Numbers, xx–xxi; Dennis T. Olson, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New: The Framework of the Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch (Brown Judaic Studies 71; Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), 121; Milgrom, Numbers, xiii–xv; Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 1–20 (Anchor Bible 4a; New York: Doubleday, 1993), 64–66.
7.
Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament, 196–97; Budd, Numbers, xxi; Olson, The Death of the Old, 118, 122; Milgrom, Numbers, xiv, 34, 359; Levine, Numbers 1–20, 65.
8.
Noth, Numbers, 5–6.
9.
In this chapter the capitalized term ‘Priestly’ bears reference to texts, themes, and concepts ascribed to literary sources designated by both the sigla ‘P’ (Priestly source) and ‘H’ (the Holiness Legislation) of the established nomenclature in modern biblical criticism. The term, here, is not specific to either literary strand. Where desired, greater specificity in source-critical analysis shall make distinction between those sources by reference to the established terminology. The capitalized form ‘Priestly’ as a designate of literary sources is also to be distinguished from the categorical and generic denotation of matters sacerdotal inherent to the adjective ‘priestly.’
10.
The language and the sentiments here are those of Thomas Römer, ‘Israel’s Sojourn,’ 436–41. For similar perspectives on Numbers consisting largely of the latest material supplementing earlier texts in the final shaping of the Pentateuch, see Reinhard Achenbach, Die Vollendung der Tora: Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Numeribuches im Kontext von Hexateuch und Pentateuch (Beihefte zur Zietshrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 3; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), 442–635; idem., ‘Numeri und Deuteronomium,’ in Das Deuteronomium zwischen Pentateuch und deuteronomistischem Geschichtswerk (ed. Eckart Otto and Reinhard Achenbach; Forshungen zur Religion und Literartur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 206; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 123–34; Christophe Nihan, ‘The Holiness Code between D and P: Some Comments on the Significance of Leviticus 17–26 in the Composition of the Torah,’ in Das Deuteronomium zwischen Pentateuch und deuteronomistischem Geschichtswerk (ed. Eckart Otto and Reinhard Achenbach; Forshungen zur Religion und Literartur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 206; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 121–22; idem., From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of the Book of Leviticus (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 25; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 570–72; Eckart Otto, Das Gesetz des Mose (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 201–04; idem., ‘Scribal Scholarship in the Formation of Torah and Prophets: A Postexilic Scribal Debate between Priestly Scholarship and Literary Prophecy—The Example of the Book of Jeremiah and Its Relation to the Pentateuch,’ in The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance (ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 174 n. 12; Konrad Schmid, The Old Testament: A Literary History (trans. Linda M. Maloney; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 177–81. See also the essays of Christian Frevel, Thomas Pola and Aaron Schart (ed.), Torah and the Book of Numbers (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe 62; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). Frevel’s introduction to the volume (pp. 1–37) offers a concise and judicious summary of the main positions on the pivotal role of Numbers in the final editorial shaping of the Pentateuch. In contrast, Israel Knohl, ‘Who Edited the Pentateuch?’ in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (ed. Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid and Baruch J. Schwartz; Forschungen zum Alten Testament 78; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 359–67, ascribes to H (HS, Holiness School, is Knohl’s preferred choice of a siglum) the final editorial touches, including Numbers 5:1–4 and 27:12–14, in drawing together the major blocks to form the Pentateuch. On the compromise between Deuteronomic and Priestly redactional sentiments in the formation of the Pentateuch/Hexateuch, see Erhard Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 189; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990); Thomas Römer and Mark Zvi Brettler, ‘Deuteronomy 34 and the Case for a Persian Hexateuch,’ Journal of Biblical Literature 119 (2000): 401–19; Eckart Otto, ‘The Pentateuch in Synchronical and Diachronical Perspectives: Protorabbinical Scribal Erudition Mediating between Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code,’ in Das Deuteronomium zwischen Pentateuch und deuteronomistischem Geschichtswerk (ed. Eckart Otto and Reinhard Achenbach; Forshungen zur Religion und Literartur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 206; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 14–35; Reinhard Achenbach, ‘The Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Torah in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.E.’ in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. (ed. Oded Lipschits, et al.; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 253–61; Konrad Schmid, ‘The Late Persian Formation of the Torah: Observations on Deuteronomy 34,’ in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. (ed. Oded Lipschits, et al.; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 237–51.
11.
The notion of a priestly sponsored theocracy behind the theological flavoring of Numbers is most pronounced in the arguments of Achenbach, Die Vollendung der Tora, 557–59; idem., ‘Numeri und Deuteronomium,’ 132–34; idem., ‘The Pentateuch,’ 253–85.
12.
For concise notations of the literary developments involving all or some of the texts mentioned below, see Römer, ‘Israel’s Sojourn,’ 428–30; Nihan, From Priestly Torah, 570–72; Schmid, The Old Testament, 177–78; Otto, Das Gesetz, 202–03.
13.
It cannot be overstated that my approach—in keeping with diachronic interests in inquiry—eschews facile harmonistic maneuvers in favor of attention to the inconsistencies and the divergent rhetorical agenda between texts on similar or proximate subject matter. I do not envision a unified and consonant entity at the terminus of an extensive series of editorial combinations. The loose ends, indeed, are of grave importance to my approach. However, the postulation of provenance and the sequence of literary development between texts—and thus, the direction of influence—is beyond the scope of this chapter. Rather, it is the disquieting effect of the ‘cacophony’ and the reader’s exertions of will (to meaning) in taming the text that pique my interest.
14.
Schmid, The Old Testament, 178; Römer, ‘Israel’s Sojourn,’ 428.
15.
The prophet’s introductory remarks of Deuteronomy 4:1–4, pointedly, follow the lengthy summary of Israel’s sojourning in Deuteronomy 1:19–3:29.
16.
Otto, ‘The Pentateuch,’ 20–23, makes the argument eloquently. His brief statement on page 21 is to the point: ‘In the Pentateuch’s plot Dtn 4,44–26,68 was the mosaic interpretation of the Sinai-torah in Ex 20–24. Lev 26,46; 27,34 closed the Sinaitic law as the basic revelation in the Pentateuch, which also in a synchronic perspective downgraded Deuteronomy into a secondary legal corpus. Num 36,13; Dtn 1,1 separated Deuteronomy from the legal stipulations of the Tetrateuch and Dtn 1,1–5; 4,1–44 functioned as the hermeneutical key for the deuteronomic law as mosaic interpretation of the Sinai-torah.’
17.
Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language (trans. Richard Howard; New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 60. The term déjà lu, ‘the already read,’ is the Barthesian designation for all things previously heard, seen, and read that come to bear on the reader’s experience with and through the text. The encounter, thus, is always with a host of images, texts and iterations often untraceable and anonymous.
18.
Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 15–20.
19.
Ibid., 18.
20.
Ibid., 19.
21.
Here, Douglas rests her argument on the theoretical productions of Suzanne Langer and Immanuel Kant. For a similar sensibility to sixteenth-century scientific discourse, see Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, 1970), 17–45. Convenientia—the Foucaldian term for the calculus of the age—finds in the universe a ‘whole system of mirrors and attractions,’ a tapestry of mutual emulation and resemblance across cosmic phenomena (pp. 28–29). Learning, in this milieu, is the ability to collate and read the signs of similitude and to uncover the laws that govern the likenesses. Something of this thinking, if Douglas is right, is at work in Leviticus.
22.
Milgrom’s scheme (Numbers, xxiii–xxiv, 359) places this procedure for reinstatement at the center of a chiasmus in Numbers 6:1–21: A, introduction (vv. 1–2); B, prohibitions (vv. 3–8); X, defilement (vv. 9–12); B’, completion (vv. 13–20); A’, summary (v.21). The required removal of those impure through contact with dead bodies and genital emissions is extraneous to legislation in Lev 13:1–15:33 which specifies removal only for those with epidermic infections (ṣrw‛; see Lev 13:46). Israel Knohl sees in this innovative feature an initiative of the Holiness Legislation to expand the sacred realm to encompass the precincts of the camp (Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995, 184–85]). If this, indeed, is the case, then the metonymy betwixt ‘camp’ and the Nazirite’s head of this legal complex is a part of Knohl’s putative rhetoric of legal innovation, an effusion of the tabernacle’s sanctity.
23.
Milgrom, Numbers, 37, with reference to Lev 15:16a, argues that škbt zr‘ means ‘semen.’ Levine, Numbers 1–20, 192, prefers the translation ‘a layer of semen’ in conforming to his understanding of the phrase in Lev 18:20. In either case, the application of the term is concise and, being such, contributes to the location of the contagion to the pubic region in the case of Numbers 5:11–31.
24.
Milgrom, Numbers, 350, follows Numbers Rabbah (9:24) and Tosefta (Sotah 3:1–19) on this point.
25.
I am struck by the paronomastic correspondence between zera‛ (‘seed’) and ṣārû(a)‛ (‘scales disease’), a phonetic resemblance that underscores the kinship of 5:1–4 and 5:11–31, and of the items as defiling substances in the cultic economy.
26.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 182–195.
27.
See Lev 5:14–6:7; Josh 7:1; 2 Kings 16:14–17; 2 Chron 26:16–18; 28:19–25. My rendition ‘malfeasance’ reflects the later, broader use of the term in the sense of a general act of ill faith against the deity, a violation of covenantal stipulation: see Lev 26:15; Ezek 14:13; 17:18, 20; 18:24. On m‘l as sacrilege and the related uses of the term, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (Anchor Bible 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 345–61; idem., Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 16–21; Baruch A. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in Ancient Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 91–101.
28.
Properly understood, ‘malfeasance’ (desecration) in Num 5:6 most likely has to do with the misappropriation of the (holy) divine name under the pretext of a false oath in the act of defrauding another (see Lev 6:2–7): so Milgrom, Numbers, 34–35; Noth Numbers, 46. Alternatively, the term here may designate a breach of trust in a broader sense without the precise meaning of ‘sacrilege’ as it most certainly does in Num 5:12: see Levine, Numbers 1–20, 188. None of this, however, subtracts from the ability of the conceptual pairing—‘malfeasance’ and ‘defilement’—to spur readerly speculation of a connection in Num 5:5–10 to the theme of impurity in the larger legislative sequence.
29.
My enumeration follows the English. The Hebrew has these verses as Lev 5:14–26.
30.
On the use of ‘malfeasance’ to denote sancta trespass, see above (n. 28).
31.
So, among others, Levine, Numbers 1–20, 187–91; Milgrom, Numbers, 34–35; Gray, Numbers, 41. That Num 5:5–10 supplements Lev 6:1–7 is evident in the former’s attention to the unique circumstance of a deceased defrauded party and its abbreviated references to the varieties of fraud and the requisite offering of Lev 6:1–7. On the relationship between the laws, see Budd, Numbers, 56; Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 368; Noth, Numbers, 47.
32.
Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 363–64, concocts this explanation with reference to Lev 5:17–19, which prescribes a guilt offering on suspicion that sancta trespass has occurred.
33.
4Q394 1 II, 16–17; 4Q394 3, 8–10.
34.
Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 365–73.
35.
On the conjunction and the semantic overlap of ‘oath’ and ‘vow,’ see Milgrom, Numbers, 488–90.
36.
The supplementary capacity of Num 5:5–10 is evident in the law’s attention to the unique circumstance of a deceased defrauded party and its abbreviated references to the varieties of fraud and the requisite guilt offering of Lev 6:1–7.
37.
It might be noted that the hermeneutical effort to this interpretation is not unlike that which extends a concise signifier for sacrilege—m‘l, ‘malfeasance’—to cover any variety of covenantal infraction.
38.
Douglas, Leviticus as Literature, 199–208, makes a similar move by associating the blasphemy of Leviticus 24 with the desecration of the sanctuary in Leviticus 10 in her parsing of the book’s structure.
39.
So noted by Nihan, From Priestly Torah, 482.
40.
On the distinctive traits of H, see Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 168–98; J. Joosten, People and Land in the Holiness Code: An Exegetical Study of the Ideational Framework of the Law in Leviticus 17–26 (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 67; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 5–9; Nihan, From Priestly Torah, 559–62. On the dependence of H on P’s literary and theological heritage, see Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 111–23; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22 (Anchor Bible 3a; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1349–52; Nihan, From Priestly Torah, 401–545.
41.
Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 1–23.
42.
The following comparison is indebted to the detailed observations of Jacob Milgrom (Numbers, 355; Leviticus 17–22, 1814–15). The correspondences across texts have been noted in early Jewish exegesis (see Sifre [Numbers] to Num 6:6–8; Numbers Rabbah 10:11) and, in varying degrees, by modern scholarship: Gray, Numbers, 63; Paul Heinisch, Das Buch Numeri (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1936), 30; Noth, Numbers, 55; Budd, Numbers, 70–71; Levine, Numbers 1–20, 221; Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, ‘How Should We Read Hebrew Bible Ritual Texts?: A Ritualistic Reading of The Law of the Nazirite (Num 6, 1–21),’ Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 23(2009): 80.
43.
Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1814–15.
44.
Hilary Lipka, ‘Profaning the Body: HLL and the Conception of Loss of Personal Holiness in H,’ in Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible (ed. S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim; Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 465; New York and London: T & T Clark, 2010), 97–98.
45.
The expansive thinking across categories here, perhaps, is not unlike Kristel Clayville’s account of Charles Darwin’s widening of the familial bonds of affection (Kristel A. Clayville, ‘Landed Interpretation: An Environmental Ethicist Reads Leviticus,’ in Leviticus and Numbers [ed. Athalya Brenner and Archie Chi Chung Lee; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013], 14–15). Clayville’s gathering of the personified ‘land’ under the communal umbrella mimics Darwin’s extension of a ‘basic bond of affection and sympathy’ germane to immediate groups of kin to more distant relations. The impetus for the enlargement of ‘kinship’ is an affective energy predicated on an acute awareness of one’s ‘own intrinsic value,’ which ‘then generalizes and analogizes from that awareness to include others’ (p. 15, my emphasis). The new equivalence, then, is not so much an invention ex nihilo as it is an imitation of an earlier connection, a likeness already manifest.
46.
The initiative of one Micah in the hill country of Ephraim (Judges 17) comes to mind.
47.
Discussions in rabbinic exegesis take this as a premise: so Sifre (Numbers) to Num 6:21 and Numbers Rabbah 10:24. For a similar position on this point in modern scholarship, see Gray, Numbers, 71; Levine, Numbers 1–20, 226; Milgrom, Numbers, 50.
48.
The list picks up on elements of one in Lev 21:18–20, which disqualifies priests from participation in the sacrificial cult. The absence of a similar list in Lev 5: 4–7, according to Milgrom, is due to the fact that the passage addresses priests, a party not involved in the selection of the animal for slaughter (Leviticus 17–22, 1873).
49.
Neither the additional detail in the Aramaic Versions of a pot (dwd’) as the receptacle for the flesh of the sacrificial beast nor the likelihood that the flames are those of a separate hearth, not the sacred altar, detracts from the juxtaposition of the sacrifice and the hair at this juncture in the text. On the illegitimate use of embers from a different hearth, see Gray, Numbers, 68; Milgrom, Numbers, 49.
50.
Gray, Numbers, 68–69; A. H. McNeile, The Book of Numbers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 35; William Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (New York: Shocken, 1972), 332; Eliezer Diamond, ‘The Israelite Self-Offering in the Priestly Code: A New Perspective on the Nazirite,’ Jewish Quarterly Review 88 (1997): 6–18.
51.
David P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 143; Rolf P. Knierim and George W. Coats, Numbers (Forms of Old Testament Literature 4; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 89; de Hemmer Gudme, ‘How Should We Read,’ 76–77.
52.
Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 175–86, 189–96, outlines a similar transgressive imaginary to H’s expansive vision that conflates, among other things, holiness and moral behavior. See also Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1397–1404, 1409–14; Nihan, From Priestly Torah, 545–47, 559–62.
53.
The reference to the guilt offering by ‛šmh—‛šm being the common term of choice (Lev 5:15–16, 18–19; 6:5–6; Num 6:12)—raises the question of whether the abstract sense of ‘blame’ or ‘penalty’ apart from an offering (Lev 4:3; 22:16; 2 Chron 28:10, 13) is in view. Thus, Milgrom, Cult and Conscience, 63–66, construes the word to obtain to the financial value of the ‘purloined’ priestly emolument that must be repaid. On the balance, ‛šmh clearly designates the sacrifice in Ezra 10:19 in reparation for m‘l (‘malfeasance’ pertaining to desecration; Ezra 9:2; 10:10) in accordance with the specifications of Leviticus 5:14–19. Furthermore, the additional requirement of a fifth to the capital value is in keeping with the stipulations of Lev 5:14–19. At the very least, the broad strictures of the guilt offering are in view even if the animal offering is not required in Num 6:16.
54.
Similarly, restorative rites for those exposed to dead bodies alone among the three sources of pollution mentioned in Num 5:1–4 are missing in Leviticus 13–15, an omission remedied in Numbers 19.
55.
Jacob Milgrom considers this a case where tardiness in the performance of the mandated rites of cleansing elevates the level of pollution generated, obliging the commission of a purification offering, ḥṭṭ’t, for the removal of impurity from the tabernacle (Milgrom, Numbers, 161).
56.
On the complex literary history of the law, see, B. Baentsch, Exodus, Leviticus, Numeri (Handkommentar zum Alten Testament 2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1903), 363–64; Michael Fishbane, ‘Accusations of Adultery: A Study of Law and Scribal Practice in Numbers 5:11–31,’ Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974): 25–46; Herbert Chanan Brichto, ‘The Case of the Sota and a Reconsideration of Biblical “Law,”’ Hebrew Union College Annual 46 (1975): 55–70; Tikva Frymer-Kensky, ‘The Strange Case of the Suspected Sotah (Numbers V 11–31),’ Vetus Testamentum 34 (1984): 11–13; Jaeyoung Jeon, ‘Two Laws in the Sotah Passage (Num. v 11–31),’ Vetus Testamentum 57 (2007): 182–85. For a concise overview of the interpretation of Num 5:11–31 in modern scholarship, see Richard S. Briggs, ‘Reading the Sotah Text (Num 5:11–31): Holiness and a Hermeneutic Fit for Suspicion,’ Biblical Interpretation 17 (2009): 288–319. Among other postulations, the law has been considered a conflation of procedures leading, separately, to the determination of guilt (vv. 16–24) and innocence (vv. 27–28); of a rite requiring direct divine judicial intervention (vv. 19, 21) and another where judgment is mediated by magical water (vv. 26–27); and of a case with grounds for suspicion (vv. 12–13, 29, 31) and a second of unsubstantiated jealousy. Three times, the law is introduced (vv. 12–13; 14; 29–30); twice, the woman partakes of the potion (v. 24; 26–27) and submits to adjuration with an oath (vv. 19, 21b–22; 21a). There is a trend toward a view of the law as an orchestrated drama leading the reader through multiple aspects of a single procedure—the studies by Fishbane, Brichto, and Frymer-Kensky just named are in example. The ethical ramifications of the rite have been the subject of discussion in a stream of studies in recent years: Alice Bach, ‘Good to the Last Drop: Viewing the Sotah (Numbers 5.11–31) as the Glass Half Empty and Wondering How to View It Half Full,’ in The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible (ed. J. Cheryl Exum and David J. A. Clines; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 26–54; Bonna Devora Haberman, ‘The Suspected Adulteress: A Study of Textual Embodiment,’ Prooftexts (2000) 20: 12–42; Deborah L. Ellens, ‘Numbers 5.11–31: Valuing Male Suspicion,’ in God’s Word for Our World I: Theological and Cultural Studies in Honor of Simon John de Vries (ed. J. Harold Ellens, Deborah L. Ellens, Rolf P. Knierim and Isaac Kalimi; Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 388; London: T & T Clark, 2004), 55–82; Roland Boer, ‘The Law of the Jealous Man,’ in Voyages in Uncharted Waters: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Biblical Interpretation in Honor of David Jobling (ed. Wesley J. Bergen and Armin Siedlecki; Hebrew Bible Monographs 13; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 87–95; Susan Niditch, ‘My Brother Esau is a Hairy Man’: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 121–32; Briggs, ‘Reading the Sotah Text,’ 288–319.
57.
Milgrom, Numbers, xxiv–xxv, 351, moves in this very direction. Other arguments in a similar vein come into discussion subsequently.
58.
Frymer-Kensky, ‘The Strange Case,’ 20–21, proposes that the woman’s ‘fallen thigh’ (vv. 21b, 27b) refers to the condition of a prolapsed uterus placing pressure on the cervix. While the details of the malady as a consequence of guilt (an aborted fetus, sterilization, etc.) remain obscure, the region of the anatomy (and its relation to the nature of the crime) in view is clear.
59.
The analysis by Ellens identifies four spheres of interest in the husband’s malady of a ‘jealous spirit’: the vagina, the womb, the community, and the male perpetrator (Ellens, ‘Numbers 5.11–31,’ 76–77).
60.
‘Effusion’ understands the nominal construct form škbt to derive from the causative expression of the verb with the sense of ‘to pour out’: BDB 1012; HALOT 4:1379. Accordingly, Levine (Numbers 1–20, 192) opts for the translation ‘layer of semen’ as part of a euphemism for sexual intercourse; Milgrom (Numbers, 37) simply takes the phrase as referring to seminal fluid.
61.
Harry M. Orlinsky, ‘The Hebrew Root ŠKB,’ Journal of Biblical Literature 63 (1944): 40.
62.
Niditch, ‘My Brother Esau,’ 123.
63.
Ibid., 123.
64.
On the conception of the uterus as a mere receptacle in a monogenetic construal of reproduction in parts of rural Turkey, see Carol Delaney, ‘Seeds of Honor, Fields of Shame,’ in Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (ed. David D. Gilmore; Washington DC: American Anthropological Association, 1987), 35–48. The vulnerability of the womb by this view is inseparable from the conception of the seed as bearer of ‘the essential identity of a man’ that leaves ‘an indelible imprint which no amount of washing can erase’ (p. 42). For a similar interpretation of the ‘contaminating’ properties of semen in biblical rules for sexual congress, see Eve Levavi Feinstein, Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 64–65, 95; Sarah Schectman, ‘The Social Status of Priestly and Levite Women,’ in Levites and Priests in Biblical History and Tradition (ed. Mark Leuchter and Jeremy M. Hutton; Ancient Israel and Its Literature 9; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 87–88. On the trope of ‘contaminating seed’ and the matter of genealogical purity in Lev 21:1–15 and related texts, see Christine E. Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 27. On the phallocentric conception of sexual intercourse and the stigmatization of the penetrated party in homoerotic encounter, see Michael Carden, ‘Homophobia and Rape in Sodom and Gibeah: A Response to Ken Stone,’ Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 82 (1999): 85–88.
65.
Bach, ‘Good to the Last Drop,’ 27–28.
66.
Ibid., 36.
67.
And so Feinstein, Sexual Pollution, 45, sets the graphic denotation of sexual intercourse and its qualification as ‘defilement’ here in Numbers 5 in the emotive domain of ‘disgust.’
68.
Bach, ‘Good to the Last Drop,’ 37.
69.
Ibid., 40. Text in italics is Bach’s.
70.
Haberman, ‘The Suspected Adulteress,’ 24. See also Bach, ‘Good to the Last Drop,’ 33–34. Noteworthy is the Mishnah’s postulation that the place of forced disrobement is the same as that of purification rites for the parturient and those with scales disease, evidence perhaps of a degree of association across the categories of ‘uncleanness’ in the Amoraic imagination.
71.
The suggestion by R. Judah that the uncovering of the woman’s bosom be aborted if her breasts be deemed attractive confirms the erotic undertones to the Mishnaic commentary on the rite.
72.
Calum Carmichael finds double entendre in the loosening (pr’) of the woman’s hair (Carmichael, The Book of Numbers, 38; see v. 18). The act is one of shaming and a gesture to the Nazirite’s sacred overgrown locks (Num 6:5; also pr’). The point of the doublespeak, for Carmichael, is a semicryptic allusion (in the law of Numbers 5) to Tamar’s tabooed sexual stratagem in pressing Judah to perform his ‘sacred’ obligation to her as a levir (Gen 38:12–30).
73.
This also is the conclusion of Feinstein, Sexual Pollution, 47.
74.
The meaning of this term is uncertain: BDB 319–21; DCH 3: 237; HALOT 1: 319–20; TWOT 1: 288–90. A rundown of various arguments is available in Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1806–07. The possibilities include victims of rape, harlots, sacred prostitutes, a woman profaned, or any woman with experience of sexual intercourse. It has been suggested, with asyndeton between ḥllh and znh in verse 14b, that the term is hendiadys for the ‘promiscuous woman’ (znh). Feinstein, Sexual Pollution, 94, follows Milgrom (p. 1807) in noting the position of the term between the promiscuous woman (znh) and the divorcee (grwšh) in verses 7 and 13–14. Its place, by her reckoning, suggests a status above that of the promiscuous woman, a woman guilty of sex out of wedlock without the sense of habituality.
75.
Ezekiel (44:22) closes this gap, allowing priests to marry only the widow of a priest.
76.
John E. Hartley, Leviticus (Word Biblical Commentary 4; Dallas: Word, 1992), 348; Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1805.
77.
The expected consequence here (in accord with the result of deviant sexual behavior in Lev 18:20, 24 and Num 5:19–20) is defilement, not desecration. This, so Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1818, is a case of the Holiness Legislation’s (H) tendency to imprecision in its choice of terms. But ḥll’s (‘to desecrate’) appearance in this instance is in keeping with the wider legislation’s orientation to the sanctity of the sanctuary precincts and the distinction between priest and laity in the broader context: so Nihan, From Priestly Torah, 483–86. Desecration follows defilement. Eve Levavi Feinstein (Sexual Pollution, 94) follows Milgrom (Leviticus 17–22, 1810)—quite contrary to the majority opinion represented by, among others, Hilary Lipka (‘Profaning the Body,’ 100)—in construing ‘desecrate’ a metaphor for ‘disgrace’ in this verse. The father’s disqualification from cultic service, in Milgrom’s view, is the father’s self-perception. The disturbance to the decorum of the sacred realm, if this view is correct, is no less palpable.
78.
The metaphorical application of the verb znh and its nominal counterparts (zwnh and znwt) is well recognized: see, for example, Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Hermeneutics of Holiness: Ancient Jewish and Christian Notions of Sexuality (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 47–52; Lipka, ‘Profaning the Body,’ 98–100; Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 41–43; Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1462; Phyllis Bird, ‘To Play the Harlot: An Inquiry into and Old Testament Metaphor,’ in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (ed. Peggy Day; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 75–94.
79.
Harold Bloom, Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 19. My emphasis.
80.
Ibid., 21.
81.
To the point is Steed Vernyl Davidson’s observation that Rahab the ‘prostitute’ is kept outside Israel’s camp (‘Gazing [at] Native Women: Rahab and Jael in Imperializing and Postcolonial Discourses,’ in Postcolonialism and the Hebrew Bible: The Next Step [ed. Roland Boer; Semeia Studies 70; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013], 83–84; see Josh 6:23). The Israelite house/camp analogy and the sullying effects of foreign/illicit sexuality and religiosity resonate in Joshua 6.

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Lee, B. (2017). On Sacred Heads and Sullied Wombs: Bouncing Between Leviticus and Numbers. In: Marginal(ized) Prospects through Biblical Ritual and Law. Postcolonialism and Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55095-4_3

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