In Israel: Mattot
The Lex Talionis
One of the most widespread legal principles in the ancient world was the lex [or “ius”] talionis, the law [or “right”] of retribution. A person who, for example, injured someone was to be punished by suffering the same injury, and a murderer was to be punished by being killed.
This principle was enshrined not only in Roman law, but in the Bible as well: “He who sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall his blood be shed” (Gen 9:6). Similarly, “A man who kills another shall be put to death… And if a man injures his fellow, as he has done, so shall it be done to him: fracture for a fracture, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth: the injury that he inflicted on someone will be inflicted to him” (Lev 24:17-20).
In the ancient Near East, this principle of retaliatory justice was sometimes carried out without regard to the particular circumstances, and sometimes it apparently could be inflicted on someone other than the wrongdoer. A biblical example is the case of Lamech, one of Cain’s descendants; he is quoted as saying, “I killed a man to avenge a wound, and a boy for a bruise.” (Actually, I believe both verbs here are intended in a general or conditional sense: “I would kill,” or “I regularly kill.” But this grammatical nuance is in any case irrelevant to the overall point here.)
Lamech is boasting that the lex talionis isn’t good enough for him: he says he would kill someone as revenge for a mere injury, in fact, he would kill a boy just to avenge a bruise (Gen 4:23). There is no indication that either of these victims is actually the one who injures Lamech—and the thought of Lamech saying that a mere boy had hurt him doesn’t work well with this rough-and-tough boast.
Rather, what Lamech means—and he certainly wasn’t the only one in those times who thought this way—is: “If you hurt me and/or one of mine, your side is going pay for it disproportionately—and it really doesn’t matter to me who I end up killing.” In fact, Lamech continues, if my ancestor Cain was known for his unfair, sevenfold vengeance (Gen 4:15), well, my revenge will be even more lopsided, seventy-sevenfold (Gen 4:24).
The biblical concept of the “blood avenger” also reflects an ancient concept redolent of the lex talionis: the relative of a person whose blood has been shed must avenge the blood by killing the killer. The blood itself calls out, as it were, for justice (Cf. Gen 4:10).
It is against this background that we can assess the true significance of a section of this week’s Torah reading. Here, the Torah distinguishes between murder, whereby someone who kills his fellow with malice aforethought, and a simple mishap, in which someone is killed accidentally and with no prior intent.
Naturally, it was often impossible to establish with certainty what had occurred and under what circumstances without a full judicial inquiry. But how could such an inquiry be undertaken in a world in which the swift justice mandated by the lex talionis was so deeply engrained? How could one stop a blood avenger from doing his work even as the blood itself was calling out for revenge?
That is why this week’s Torah reading mandates the designation of “cities of refuge” in various parts of the land of Israel. When someone died suddenly and under unusual circumstances, anyone who was in danger of being accused of murdering him could escape to the nearest city of refuge (Num 35:9). Those in charge of guarding the city would prevent the blood avenger from entering the city until the judicial inquiry had been completed.
Interestingly, if, at the conclusion of the inquiry, the accused was found to be innocent, he was nevertheless returned to the city of refuge, there to wait until the death of the reigning High Priest. This waiting period may seem unwarranted by current standards: if the man is innocent, let him go wherever he wants!
But in practice, the wait would usually have been a relatively short one, and, moreover, altogether necessary. The principle of blood revenge was so widespread and well established that some such cooling off period was no doubt required to allow the victim’s family to come to terms with their loss. If, on the other hand, the accused was found guilty, he was no longer given any refuge but was punished according to the Torah’s laws.
Shabbat shalom!
Outside Israel: Pineḥas
One and the Same
Last week’s Torah reading ended with Phinehas (the common English spelling of Hebrew Pineḥas) slaying a flagrantly offending couple in the sight of all Israel, thereby turning back God’s wrath. This week’s reading opens with God’s specifying what Phinehas’s reward would be, a “covenant of eternal priesthood.”
Interpreters were puzzled by this reward. After all, the text specifies that Phinehas was Aaron’s grandson. Hadn’t the Torah already said that the descendants of Aaron would inherit the priesthood for all subsequent generations (Exod 28:1-4, 29:1-8, etc.)? If so, it would seem that God was rewarding Phinehas with something that had already been given to him.
Some saw this “covenant of eternal priesthood” as referring not to the priesthood in general, but to the high priesthood; in other words, Phinehas and his descendants would forever serve as high priests in the Temple. Ben Sira, a Jewish sage of the early second century BCE, thus wrote that God “established a law for him, a covenant of peace to uphold the sanctuary—that the high priesthood should be for him and his descendants forever” (Sir. 45:24 [Hebrew ms. B]).
But there was another possibility. Interpreters noticed that Phinehas led an extraordinarily long life. Not only was he around after the death of Moses, but he is presented at the end of the book of Judges as still functioning as a priest in those days, standing before the ark of the covenant (Jud 20:28).
In fact, the Hebrew Bible contains no account of Phinehas’s death. (The old Greek translation of the Bible does contain a brief notice of his passing in Joshua 24:33, but this seems to have been a later addition.) Not mentioning his death, interpreters reasoned, could hardly have been an accidental omission: surely the death of such an honored figure, and someone who had survived so long since the days of Moses and Aaron, would have been marked with honored burial and an extended period of mourning, such as that decreed for his grandfather Aaron.
Interpreters thus came to the conclusion that Phinehas didn’t die. At some point after his last appearance in Jud 20:28, he must have ascended into heaven while he was still alive, just as Enoch and Elijah had. In other words, his “covenant of eternal priesthood” must have meant that he would be immortal and, hence eternal.
Eventually, attention came to be focused on a later figure, the opponent of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, Israel’s great northern prophet Elijah. For all his greatness, he had no last name: from his very first appearance in he was just “Elijah,” without the specification “son of X.” Neither does the Bible contain an account of Elijah’s birth or childhood; he just shows up as a grown man. Could it be that this prophet was none other than Phinehas redivivus? Phinehas—the man who was promised to be a priest forever—might simply have gone somewhere for a few centuries and then made his reappearance under a different name, a name that sounded suspiciously symbolic (Elijah/Eliahu means “my God is the Lord”).
What is more, Phinehas and Elijah shared a particular quality: they were both jealous (or “zealous”) for the Lord. This is what God says of Phinehas in Num 25:13 (“because he has been zealous for his God”), and it is what Elijah says (twice!) about himself, “I have been extremely zealous/jealous for the Lord” (1 Kings 19:10, 14). Surely this could not be a coincidence!
So it was that midrash came to identify Phinehas and Elijah as one and the same person, the priest who never died. After he returned to earth for a time, Elijah/Phinehas took up his place in heaven again; Elijah’s miraculous ascent into heaven on a fiery chariot is recounted 2 Kings 2.
And there, according to tradition, he remains to this day. When will he return to earth? The prophet Malachi reported God’s words on the subject: “For I will send to you the prophet Elijah, before the great and awesome day of the Lord. And he will return the mind of the fathers to their children, and the children’s minds back to their fathers” (Mal 3:12-14). To which Ben Sira added, “and he will reestablish the [lost] tribes of Israel” (Sir 48:11).
Shabbat shalom!
