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Vengeance
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah
God gives Moses one final act: vengeance. We read in Numbers 31, “Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites; then you shall be gathered to your kin.” Before you die, completely wipe out this people, who led you into life-denying idolatry. It is a reminder of God’s as yet unfulfilled words from Numbers 25, where God said, “Be foes to the Midianites and strike them. For they have been foes to you…”
Moses has it done, after a fashion. He takes God’s words and tells them to the people, with a twist: “Let men be picked out from among you for a campaign, and let them fall upon Midian to wreck the Lord’s vengeance on Midian.” The Israelites listen, and lead a campaign against the Midianites, killing the men and taking the women and children as captives. This is not good enough for Moses. He does not see it as completing the vengeance because it is those very women who led Israel astray. Moses commands the deaths of everyone except for young girls. Moses goes above and beyond God’s command. God told him of the vengeance of the Israelites. Moses speaks of the vengeance of God. He fills in the details of total destruction, takes God’s commandment and turns it into specific actions.
Vengeance, or נקמה, is difficult. Vengeance comes from having been hurt, having been attacked, having had the order of the world, of our lives, ripped apart. To some degree, vengeance is the attempt to both restore the order of the world and ensure the world never gets ripped again.
The idea of vengeance emerges first in the story of Cain. After Cain has already killed his brother, God uproots him from both his home and from God. Cain is scared that this wandering will invite others to kill him. God tells him otherwise - anyone who kills Cain will have sevenfold vengeance taken on him. The way vengeance is used here makes it unclear who exactly will make it happen. Is it God? Cain? The laws of nature? Some court system? Whoever is to do it, it is clear that Cain’s status - someone who has spilled blood on the ground and been sent to wander by God - is a protected status. To kill those wandering is forbidden. To kill those wandering will lead to you being killed.
The next time we find the word for vengeance is in the report of a slave who had been struck with a rod and died immediately. This person must be avenged. Like Cain, this person is powerless and homeless. Perhaps, like Cain, they have also done something wrong, leading to them being struck. But to strike a killing blow is wrong. It breaks the world and only vengeance can repair it.
In our parashah, the Israelites are in an uneasy position, similar to both that of Cain and the slave. They too are homeless and vulnerable. They too are prone to being attacked. But they have more than just the sign of God upon them, they have God with them. When other nations look at the Israelites and try to kill these wandering people, it is God who will avenge them.
God’s vengeance protects us. God’s vengeance keeps the world spinning. As God explains in Ha’azinu, “Mine is vengeance.” God promised vengeance against our enemies and against us as well, should we fail to keep the covenant. God details, just before telling us that we should love our fellow as ourselves, that we should not take vengeance against members of our own people. This idea is connected to the idea of cities of refuge that we find at the end of our parashah. There are safe places for accidental killers to live, to avoid a cycle of cash.
Yet in our parashah, we do take vengeance. Here, Moses translates God’s words for us, telling us that God’s vengeance happens through our actions. In order to transform from the model of Cain, the model of the slave, into the model of the citizen who can afford to rely on God, we have a moment of taking vengeance. Our actions become God’s vengeance. It is a transcendent and terrifying state. It is a state that impurifies. After this final moment of vengeance, this moment of acting for God, perhaps Moses has to die, just as the high priest seemingly has to die in the case of the accidental killer in our parashah. Moses has enacted something godly and the price is his life. The gain is our entry into the land, our becoming a nation in our own homeland.
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