Numbers, chapter 16:1-18:32

Assembling Against Moses

 

This week’s Torah reading recounts the attempted revolt of Koraḥ and his allies. According to Num 16:3, the rebels “assembled” (vay-yiqqahalu) against Moses and Aaron. The same verb appears again in Num 16:19, where it is said that Koraḥ “assembled the whole band against them.” All this makes perfect sense: Koraḥ was a rabble-rouser bent on building a coalition to challenge the status quo.

But some years ago, an eminent Semitics scholar suggested a different understanding: the root q-h-l in Hebrew (as well as Syriac, a related Semitic language) sometimes seems to mean “argue” or “reprove.” One of the proofs he cited came from a passage in the book of Nehemiah, which reports on a conflict between Nehemiah and the Judean officials; Nehemiah says, “And I set upon them a great qehillah…and I said to them, ‘What you are doing is not right’” (Neh 5:7-9). It seems unlikely that Nehemiah was saying that he rounded up a lot of people to support his side of the argument. Rather, he seems to be reporting that he lodged a great complaint against his opponents, as the passage goes on to detail.

This understanding has some interesting implications. The biblical book of Ecclesiastes is so called because its speaker is called the qohelet in Hebrew. This was long understood to mean that he was a “man of the assembly” (which is why the book was called ekklesiastes, “assemblyman,” in the Septuagint translation). But what assembly was that? There is never any mention of such a gathering in the book itself. So perhaps the author of Ecclesiastes was so called because he had acquired the nickname of “the Complainer” or “the Reprover”—the qohelet—which certainly fits the book’s overall theme.

Now, this same root appears at the start of this week’s Torah reading, “And they (Koraḥ and company) vayyiqqahalu against Moses and Aaron and said to them, ‘Now you have gone too far!’” (Num 16:3). It seems that the Torah isn’t stressing Koraḥ’s success in raising a crowd; he seems to have had a meager 250 followers. Rather than a dangerous rabble-rouser, he was just a complainer. So elsewhere as well, the Hebrew root q-h-l  means “argue” or “reprove” in Exod 32:11, Num 16:19; 17:7, and 20:2.

Shabbat shalom!