Friday, Nov. 22
Numbers Chapters 30 and 31 Click here to read
I seem to remember some years in elementary school when the teacher used Friday as a review day to draw together and remind us of the lessons of the week. Today is something of a Friday review, with several of the things we’ve already looked at this week coming back.
Remember Balaam?
In Monday’s reading he was the good guy, insisting that he had to be faithful in sharing the words he received from God.
Then on Tuesday we read about how the Israelites were led astray by the Moabites and Midianites: specifically how falling into sexual sin with those foreign women led them into being unfaithful in their service to God.
Those two topics come together today in Chapter 31, where Balaam is killed for his part in advising the seduction of the Israelites.
When the Midianites are defeated, the fighting men are allowed to keep some plunder and young girls, but the males and women must be killed to avoid their corrupting influence.
Chapter 30 returns to one of the lessons we looked at on Wednesday.
While at first glance the rules about women being able to make binding vows seem very different from the question of inheritance, both of them protect the ability of women to act on their own behalf. That ability looks limited by our standards, but is progressive for its day.
What Numbers calls a vow or obligation is what we would call a contract. To be able to conduct business, to hire or be hired, or to purchase anything substantial requires the ability to make an enforceable commitment. If a woman is unable to do that, she is economically limited and completely dependent on a man to act on her behalf.
Under the Numbers rules, a widowed or divorced woman is able to make vows on her own behalf, freeing her to conduct her own business affairs. Even a young woman living under her father’s protection or a married woman has the right to enter into binding vows unless her father or husband promptly acts to nullify them when he learns of them. It isn’t her responsibility to get his approval; it his responsibility to state his disapproval.