FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS IN THE BIBLE

Instructor: Barbara Sutnick
sutnick@internet-zahav.net

week 3
WHEN MARRIAGE AND LEADERSHIP MIX: MOSES AND TZIPPORAH, DAVID AND MICHAL

The Bible does not shy away from documenting an issue that is known to many families. Many well-meaning husbands and wives, with the best intentions, give a tremendous amount of their time to the community. They serve on boards of directors, blood drives, and bazaar committees. They are constantly at meetings during evening hours and running synagogue programs on Sundays. The number of dinners at which they are honored or are honoring others leaves their families scrambling eggs or bringing in pizza all too often. "Football widows" know all about this as do "Jewish community widow(er)s."

There was no leader more devoted to and more consumed by looking after the needs of his community than was Moses. From intense negotiations with Pharoah for the people's freedom to finessing their escape, it's hard to imagine Moses was at home very much after he returned to Egypt from Midian with his wife and young son (Exodus 4:20). Tzipporah was, we must remember, new in town and a foreigner. It is doubtful that she had many friends to mitigate her loneliness.

When Moses leads the Jewish people out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, it seems that Tzipporah is not even with them. We know this because her father, Jethro, brings her and their children to meet up later with Moses in the desert. Moses had sent them home before the great Exodus which was probably a very wise move intended to protect them (as foreigners) from the upheaval that he knew was at hand. Please read Exodus 18, which documents Moses' reunion with his family.

It is no doubt an exhausted Moses that Jethro, Tzipporah and the boys come upon in the Sinai desert. In less than two months he had already been faced with one war and three medium-sized crises precipitated by shortages of food and water in the harsh desert. Add to these pressures the constant demands of the people that he referee their every dispute. Even so, it seems a bit strange at first that upon hearing of the arrival of his family, that "Moses went out to meet his father-in-law; he bowed low and kissed him; each asked after the other's welfare, and they went into the tent." (Exodus, 18:7) In the words of the text itself one finds no evidence that he even acknowledged Tzipporah and the children's presence. From this we cannot assume that Moses is not happy to reunite with his family. We really must rely on our imaginations, however, for a description of Moses' family reunion, since the commentators are also quite silent about it. Do we picture an ecstatic husband and father immediately running to scoop up his children and then modestly embracing his wife in the privacy of his tent? Conversely, do we project onto the scene a hesitant reception of the family, knowing that Moses can hardly afford the distraction of children and a wife who have missed him. We do know that Jethro and Moses waited until the next day (as per 18:13) to turn to matters of leadership. Perhaps this was to allow for an evening of family reunion among Moses, Tzipporah and their sons. Only our cumulative impressions of their relationship can help us to fill out this image.

It should be mentioned that verse 18:6 is the last time Tzipporah is specifically mentioned by name in the Bible, while Moses is of course prominently featured throughout. It is certainly reasonable to assume that the "first lady" of the Hebrew people shunned the public spotlight. We should remember, however, that she is the only member of the community who, like Moses, had not been raised as a slave. She was of aristocratic birth as well as upbringing and also the daughter of the admirable Jethro. Can we assume that she did not play an important wifely role as Moses' confidante and even occasionally as his behind-the-scenes advisor? The Interpreter's Bible offers an interesting spin on the Bible's relative silence about Tzipporah: "The best wives seem to like it this way, so they can cherish (as a secret too sacred to be profaned by common knowledge) the truth of their real power." (Vol. 1, pg. 963) Still, we can only speculate about what kind of "first lady" Tzipporah was.

It immediately becomes apparent why Moses is so happy to see his father-in-law. Jethro seems to be the father that Moses never had. (Although Moses' natural father was Amram, Moses grew up in Pharoah's palace, having been rescued from the Nile River and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter.) Not only that, Jethro is an effective and experienced leader, a person whose position we know not only from the Bible, but also has been referred to in other ancient Near Eastern texts (see Ginzberg, LEGENDS OF THE JEWS, vol. V, pg. 410). He knows about structuring organizations, delegating responsibility and seeking out "good help." He also knows that an over-burdened, potentially "burnt out" leader who tries to do everything himself can be dangerous for a people. Jethro observes that his son-in-law is overwhelmed by the continual demands of the people to settle their disputes according to the laws of God. Jethro offers good practical advice, and he offers it gently. He tells Moses that what he is doing is "not good" -- softer language than "bad" or some other negative synonym. Their relationship is apparently such that Moses is able to see the wisdom in his father-in-law's words. He implements the plan quickly and without question. (Certainly not all young adults are willing to follow even sensible advice if it comes from their in-laws!) Following Jethro's plan, Moses appoints judges and sets up a judicial system: lower courts and higher courts. Moses can now reserve his energies to act only when needed as a type of "supreme court." After all this, Jethro returns to Midian on his own.

Jethro's advice was good because it was good for everybody. It lessened the tremendous strain on Moses, provided for better service for the people, introduced the idea of identifying and training additional leadership and perhaps even left Moses with more time and energy for his family. We cannot be sure if the latter was a small part of Jethro's motivation or not. If it were, then he was being as considerate a father as he was a father-in-law! (The biblical text, Exodus 18:17-23, mentions only Jethro's concern with Moses' leadership role.)

We encounter another account of Moses' interaction with family, this time with his original family, in Numbers 12. (Please read this chapter.) As the chapter opens, Miriam and Aaron, Moses' brother and sister, are apparently speaking to each other in agitated tones about Moses, concerning "the Kushite woman whom he had married." As a result of this dialogue, Miriam is punished with leprosy by the Lord and is banished from the camp for seven days. Moses begs God to have mercy on her. Such a dramatic punishment of the prophetess Miriam challenges us to try to understand what could have been the nature of the sin that had merited it. Certainly this is not clear in the text. Before you proceed with this lecture, please reread Numbers 12 and think about what you would identify as Miriam's sin. If your ideas differ from what follows, please let me hear from you.

"Kushite" in modern Hebrew refers to a black-skinned person. From the simple words of the text, one possibility is that the sin in question is racism: they are ridiculing Tzipporah who may very well have been dark. Another possibility is that they are dismayed that Moses took a second wife, who is from a Kushite tribe. If they are objecting to the fact that Moses "married out", then their observations would not be very sinful in terms of the Bible's value system. That it was a simple racial slur that triggered God's wrath is difficult to reconcile with the second part of the incriminating remark: "Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?" What is the connection between the two complaints (the Kushite woman + "are we not all three of us prophets"?)? Are they disjointed criticisms by two indignant people looking to be critical? Why does the Lord only express anger at the second complaint and not at the first?

One explanation found in Rashi, is that the word "Kushite" is not at all a put-down of Tzipporah. On the contrary, it refers to the considerable beauty that Tzipporah possessed. Rashi's gloss here is based on the numerical value of the word, according to a system called Gematria. Gematria derives significance from the fact that every Hebrew letter also has a numerical equivalent. For example the first Hebrew letter, "aleph", has the value of 1; the second letter, "bet" is valued at 2, etc. Gematria is based on the notion that if two words add up to the same number then they can be deemed as equivalent in meaning for the purposes of interpreting a text. In our story, the Gematria of Kushite, (KUSHEET when spelled out fully in Hebrew) is K=20, U=6, SH=300, EE=10, T=400, for a total of 736. What other biblical expression also adds up to 736? -- Why the phrase "YiFaT MaREH" (Y=10, F=80, T=400, M=40, R=200, "E"=1, and H=5), which means "very beautiful"! Thus the rabbis connect the description "Kushite" to Tzipporah's beauty, which was "as indisputable as the color black is black"! Does this mean that Miriam's and Aaron's transgression does not include the first phrase? Not necessarily, as we shall see.

Let us first analyze the second part of the complaint, and try to understand why it angered the Lord. After all, Miriam and Aaron are speaking together quietly. They do not incite the people or even air "dirty linen" in public. The contents of their claim is that since they are also prophets, they are no different than Moses. This in and of itself was out of line, since Moses was favored with God's direct communicative presence and they were not. Yet there are additional disturbing nuances that the rabbis find in their words. These nuances also connect the two parts of the complaint.

The majority rabbinical understanding is that Miriam's and Aaron's sin is NOT that they are criticizing Tzipporah, but that both complaints are a critique of Moses. They are upset that he saw fit to send Tzipporah away during the difficult period in Egypt and to pay so little attention to her now. As Rashi quotes from the midrash, "some wives are lovely in appearance and others in deed; while Tzipporah was lovely in both" -- so why doesn't Moses appreciate his wonderful wife? Another midrash brought by Rashi is as follows:

Miriam was standing nearby when Tzipporah heard that [two of the elders] were beginning to prophesy. Tzipporah's reaction to the news was "woe unto the wives of those who have just become prophets, since they will now be reduced to celibacy just as I have been!"

Miriam overhead Tzipporah's cry and then recounted it to her brother, Aaron (vs. 1). They were sorry for Tzipporah, and disappointed with Moses. After all, they said indignantly, "we are also both prophets, and we have not cut off marital relations with our spouses. (vs. 2)" In fact, adds Miriam, "I was a prophetess even before Moses was born! He is taking himself much too seriously with all this self-seclusion." (Avot de Rabbi Natan) This explanation clearly connects the two parts of the siblings' complaint.

It is important to remember that celibacy is NOT requirement connected with religious leadership in Judaism; indeed it is NOT even a positive value! The opposite is true: marriage and parenthood is the expected norm. This is one reason why Rabbi Joseph Kaspi, a medieval Jewish commentator is sharply critical of the above interpretations by his colleagues. He says that if Moses were celibate he would have departed from being "the most perfect man that ever walked the world". Kaspi maintains that Moses took a second wife, a black Ethiopian, for reasons that were his own business, and surely not that of his brother, his sister or of ourselves, the readers!

Returning to the written text itself, God overhears the two-part complaint of Miriam and Aaron. He calls the three siblings into the Tent of Meeting and chastises two of them from out of the Pillar of Cloud. He points out that Moses is a higher level prophet than are Aaron and Miriam, since he receives direct communications from God, without the mediation of dreams or visions. The Lord rhetorically asks them how they could have dared to compare themselves with Moses. The text then confirms the Lord's anger which leaves Miriam leprous in its wake. Moses' eloquent prayer, "God, please, heal her please" (vs. 13) both leads to her cure and illustrates the hierarchy of prophetic status in the family.

God makes it clear to Miriam, Aaron, and the reader, that Moses is in a class by himself. There is a limit to the practical knowledge we are expected to glean from his example. (This calls to mind that famous parental phrase "Do as I say; not as I do!") If Moses needs to separate from his wife in order to free himself up for his unique leadership role, that does not mean that other individuals, or even other leaders and prophets should follow his example. How dare Miriam and Aaron presume that their continuation of normal married life should be held up as an example to Moses! Thus it can be said that one "family values" message we can deduce from this story is that unless you are Moses, you have no excuse for neglecting your spouse in favor of the community. Only Moses, and no other, was meant take such painful sacrifices upon himself and his family.

We notice that on the surface level God seems to relate only to the second part of the complaint. Where does the remark about the "Kushite woman" fit in? The midrashic explanation is an interesting response for those interested in what the Bible and its commentaries can teach us about family relations. Miriam, who seems to have initiated the conversation with Aaron, is NOT guilty of having disapproving ideas about Moses, but rather of discussing them with the WRONG brother. If she felt it were wrong of Moses to be neglecting Tzipporah, she should have spoken to him DIRECTLY, rather than gossiped with her other brother. In a healthy family, sisters should be able to turn to their brothers with caring criticism. Given Moses' track record in responding to advice from family members (e.g., Jethro) there is every possiblity that he would have heard his sister out and considered her words. Thus Miriam's transgression can be placed in the realm of communication in the family: she chose the inappropriate indirect route, rather than the direct one. Please note that Jewish law has absolutely no tolerance for gossip, even if the intent is not malicious and if it remains in the family, as we find here. Evening allowing oneself to hear to gossip is considered a transgression. This story is viewed by rabbinic tradition as a paradigm of the dangers of gossip. Indeed Miriam's punishment of leprosy, MeTZoRa in Hebrew, is poetically connected with the phrase MoTZee SHeM Ra, which is a Hebrew idiom for the spreading of gossip.

Let us relate to one additional example of the mixture of family and leadership in the Bible. We move ahead many years, to the beginning of the period of the monarchy in Israel. King Saul is reigning as the first King of Israel. His daughter, Michal, falls in love with a brilliant young warrior named David, who Saul rightly suspects could one day be his rival. Saul reasons that he can use his beautiful daughter Michal as "a snare," perhaps distracting David so that he falls in battle. Saul sends David to "earn" his bride on the battlefield in a bloody war against the Philistines. David returns victorious and marries Michal (I Samuel 18:20-27). Thus the passionate marriage that Saul had hoped would be the undoing of his rival, ironically results in further cementing David's claim to the throne.

The relationship between David and Michal is a complicated one. It is clearly exacerbated by the fact that as David's political and military star rises, so do Saul's (Michal's father) efforts to kill David. David and Michal are separated for a long time when David is forced to flee for his life from the palace (I Sam. 19: 11-17). Recognizing the danger that her beloved husband is in, Michal helps him to escape. When confronted by her father she lies, telling Saul that David would have killed her if she had prevented his escape.

In the ensuing months and years, David travels around the country garnering followers, building his army, and eventually gaining the necessary popular support to succeed Saul as king. The next time that the Bible records a conversation between David and Michal, the relationship has clearly soured (II Sam. 6:14-23). David has just returned home triumphantly, bringing with him the Ark of God. He joins the people in wild celebrative dancing through the streets. Michal, who is watching his approach from the window "despised him in her heart". She chastises him for acting vulgarly and shamelessly by dancing "uncovered" before all the maid servants. David's retort is sharp. He reminds her that the Lord chose him over her father and that he will continue to "debase himself" in her eyes, assuring her that the rest of the maidens will honor him. Then the narrator tells us that Michal remained childless to the day of her death.

This argument seems to be the kind that takes place between people who are already angry or emotionally estranged from each other. If Michal were still on good terms with her husband as she had been at the beginning, she would have been delighted by his celebrations and indeed have felt a part of them. Similarly, we see David taunting Michal with the fact that she is the daughter of her father, the king whom the Lord rejected in David's favor.

What happened to the loving young couple that caused the unravelling of their mutual devotion? Did the long separation foisted upon them by David's political exile and military pursuits lead to an ebbing of their feelings, or was there a more specific cause? The separation was precipitated and prolonged by the fact that Saul, David's father-in-law was clearly trying to eliminate him. We are told in an unrelated section of the text (when David is taking another wife) that, by the way, Saul had married Michal to another man named Paltiel during David's long absence (I Sam 25:44).

Michal's marriage to Paltiel is indeed puzzling. What had happened to Michal's loyalty to David? Did Saul force her to remarry, in an effort to sever David's link-by-marriage to the throne? Did Israelite law at the time really permit a woman to be divorced through the intercession of her father, rather than by her husband's initiative, which is the accepted tradition? (Only the latter is in keeping with the stated biblical law. See Deut. 24:1-4) Was Saul's remarriage of his married daughter yet another example of his disregard for God's law or did he consider her officially abandoned by her husband when David became an outlaw? (N.B. Abandonment is NOT an automatic end to marriage in Jewish law.) What Michal's feelings were at that time, and throughout her marriage to Paltiel we can only guess.

The rabbis, clearly disturbed at the potential spectre of a forbidden marriage on the part of King David (Jewish law does not permit a divorced couple to remarry if the woman has, in the interim, been married to another man.), explain the problem away. According to the midrash, Michal was so devoted to David that she went through a public marriage to Paltiel in an effort to appease her father and to make him think that David is now unconnected to the throne. This marriage was never consummated, and therefore was never really a marriage at all. In addition, since the divorce was pronounced against the wills of David and Michal, it never had any validity. Taken together, these explanations do satisfactorily address the textual problem from the point of view of Jewish law. What we still do not understand is what led to the disgust that Michal felt and expressed towards David, and the coldness with which he responded.

In sharp contrast to this, the full pathos of poor Paltiel's feelings are eloquently if succinctly portrayed in the words of the Bible (II Sam. 3:13-16). When the now-powerful David demands that "Michal, Saul's daughter" be returned to him, we read that "her husband went with her, weeping after her all the way to Bahurim." Only when the fierce general, Abner, orders him to return home, does he go. Here again Michal is silent in the text. We are given no clue if her grief at her separation from Paltiel mirrors his. David calls her "Michal, Saul's daughter" rather than "Michal, my wife", underscoring the way she has been treated as a pawn both by David and her father. Could Michal have actually grown to love Paltiel during the years she lived with him, and be furious at David for pulling her away from Paltiel in a power play against her father's people? Can we rule out the possibility that Michal had felt so desolate in her abandonment by David during his years as a fugitive, that SHE had been the one to ask her father to annul that marriage by kingly decree and find her another husband.

The marriages of David and Michal and of Moses and Tzipporah, although very different, both seem to have suffered a similar malady. In both cases there was a long separation, necessitated by the duties of public service on the part of the husband. Even when the couples were not physically separated, the "first ladies" were in many ways denied the attentions of their husbands. The problems between David and Michal were terribly exacerbated by the hatred Saul bore for his son-in-law. In contrast, Moses and Tzipporah were emotionally supported in important ways by Tzipporah's father, Jethro. These stories portray a truth that can certainly be confirmed by life experience: marriage cannot flourish when it remains a low priority for one of the partners.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT

1. Describe the scene as you see it in which Moses is reunited with his wife, Tzipporah, and his two sons in the desert.

2. Since both Miriam and Aaron speak out against Moses, how do you explain that only Miriam receives punishment? (Hint towards a possible explanation: The chapter opens with the Hebrew word v'tDaBeR, which literally means "and SHE spoke".)

3. Both Jethro and Miriam criticize Moses. Compare these critiques, referring to their area of concern and style of delivery. To what do you attribute the differences?

4. How do you explain the souring of David and Michal's relationship? At what point do you think it occurred.

5. To what would you attribute Michal's childlessness?

6. How many parallels can you identify between the marriage of Moses and Tzipporah and that of David and Michal? What important differences were there?

7. What lessons, if any, can community leaders learn from these Bible stories about balancing family and public service?

8. How would you paraphrase Miriam and Aaron's two-part complaint (vs 1-2) in accordance with Rashi's midrashic interpretation?

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