The Barren Place of the Word
Parashat B’midbar, Numbers 1:1–4:20
Rabbi Russ Resnik
We’re doing a lot of counting these days.
The numbers of those afflicted with COVID-19, those who have succumbed to the disease, and those who have recovered, are tabulated and posted daily, as are the numbers projected for these categories in the near future. We’re also counting facemasks, ventilators, hospital beds, and the likely span of months or years before we have a vaccine. Lots of numbers! And it’s all happening in the year 2020, as the USA is taking the head-count mandated for every ten years in our Constitution.
In this setting we commence our reading of the fourth book of the Torah, B’midbar, and immediately confront . . . another head count. The Lord commands Moses, “Take a census of all the congregation of the people of Israel, by clans, by fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male, head by head” (Num 1:2). Rashi notes the date of this command, given in verse 1, “the first day of the second month [Iyar],” and comments:
Because they were dear to Him, He counted them often. When they left Egypt, He counted them (Exod 12:37); when many fell because of the golden calf, He counted them to know the number of the survivors (Exod 32:28); [and now] when He came to cause His Divine Presence to rest among them, He counted them. On the first of Nissan, the Mishkan was erected [Exod 40:1], and on the first of Iyar [one month later], He counted them.
It’s a lovely picture of God as a man who counts and recounts his treasure because it is so precious to him—and the treasure is his people, us. But Rashi, as he often does, seems to be answering an unstated question here. Centuries after Moses, David decides (or is actually incited by the Lord) to “number Israel and Judah” and incurs God’s judgment for doing so (2 Sam 24:1, 10–14). So, why is one sort of census commanded in the Torah, and another condemned? Rashi looks for motive, whether the head-count arises out of God’s love and adds to his glory, or out of ill-conceived human desire.
When David orders his chief-of-staff Joab to conduct the head-count, Joab objects: “May the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?” (2 Sam 24:3). Joab, not always the paragon of godliness, gets it right this time. He contrasts head-counting with simple trust in God. We might wonder how much of our coronavirus head-counting is driven by anxiety, which ultimately is lack of trust in God. Yes, the numbers will help formulate our response to the pandemic, but there’s also something reassuring about reducing the chaos to statistics, even if the statistics change day by day. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Lord tells Moses to take a census b’midbar, “in the wilderness,” a threatening and scary place, a “great and awesome desert, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water” (Deut 8:15). Israel is about to spend an entire generation in this desert (although they don’t know it yet), and so God provides a sense of order by decreeing a head-count before they set out.
But wilderness in Scripture isn’t only a dangerous and imposing place, it’s also a place of heightened encounter with God. We’re in Parashat B’midbar, but the first word of our parasha isn’t B’midbar, it’s Vaydaber: Yaydaber Hashem el Moshe b’midbar Sinai—“And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai.” Of course, Vaydaber is one of the most common terms in Torah, where the Lord is speaking throughout. We wouldn’t expect our parasha to be named after this word, but we shouldn’t miss this word’s significance here either.
In the wilderness God speaks. The Hebrew word for wilderness, midbar, hints at this truth. We can detect in this word the Hebrew root dabar – meaning “word” or “speak”, as in vaydaber. The first letter in midbar, mem, is prefixed to some Hebrew words to signify “place”, as in mikdash—kadash or “holy” preceded by mem to signify “holy place”—or mishkan, the tabernacle or “place of shakhan, dwelling” that Rashi mentions above. And so we can imagine midbar as the place of the word. Wilderness is the place where God speaks. In this barren setting the normal props to human pride and comfort fall away. Our usual distractions are missing. Its very hostility toward the human suits wilderness as the place to hear the divine word.
The earliest account of the life of Messiah opens in the desert. John is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” foretold by the prophet Isaiah (Mark 1:3). Like Moses, John calls the Israelites out to the wilderness to encounter God. They prepare for the encounter by immersing in the Jordan and confessing their sins. Yeshua also goes out to John in the desert and is also immersed, and then goes farther into the desert to be tempted (Mark 1:12–13). After his temptation he goes back to the villages and towns of Israel, but he continually returns to the desolate place or wilderness to seek God and pray (Mark 1:35, 45). As the story goes on, Yeshua takes his followers—us!—out to a desolate place as well (Mark 6:31). Yeshua and his band will continue to serve the needs of the people in towns and villages, but they also withdraw at times to be close with God.
In the wilderness God speaks. Torah is teaching us that it is in places of uncertainty, challenge, and temptation that we find God. The uncertainty we’re facing today can become the source of new understanding and nearness to God. Messiah has already ventured forth into this wilderness and he beckons us to follow him there.