Robert Alter - Introduction to Numbers - pp.677-681
"This generation that cannot free itself from the slave mentality .... also constitutes the beginnings of a people meant to realize a grand historical destiny. Imagery and acts of martial prowess, reinforced by sheer numbers that daunt the other nations of the region, and more pacific images of well-watered vegetation luxuriantly burgeoning, are associated with the assembled tribes of Israel.
Many of these terms are introduced in poetry, and it is the striking poetic insets in Numbers that account for much of its distinctive quality among books of the Bible. ...
The more typical convention of biblical literature is to insert a relatively long poem at the end of a book, as happens with the Blessing of Jacob at the end of Genesis and with the Song of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy, or after a climactic narrative event, as in the instance of the Song of the Sea in Exodus. Here, however, we are given snippets of what look like very ancient Hebrew poems at unpredictable points in the narrative, together with one relatively extended sequence of poems (it is not really a single continuous poem), Balaam’s oracles ....
It is worth reflecting on the ancient character of the poems and what role that plays in the narrative panorama of Numbers. The first of these is a highly fragmentary quotation from a vanished work, the Book of the Battles of YHWH: “Against Waheb in a whirlwind and the Wadis of Arnon, / and the cascade of the wadis that turns down toward Ar’s dwelling, / and clings to Moab’s border” (21:14–15). ...
These opaque lines are followed, two verses on, by the Song of the Well: “Rise up, O Well! / Sing out to it. / Well, that captains dug, / the people’s nobles delved it, / with a scepter, with their walking stick.” No one has offered a convincing explanation of what this is all about, and it is an interesting question why such scraps of old verse should have been incorporated in the Book of Numbers. ...
I would like to propose that these fragments of old poems are introduced into the narrative of Numbers at least in part in order to produce an “antiquity effect.” There is no way of knowing whether Hebrew audiences in, say, the ninth century B.C.E. were still familiar with the Book of the Battles of YHWH, or whether it was already a lost work, surviving only in remembered fragments or perhaps tag ends of manuscript. The point, in any case, of the fragmentary quotation, triggered in context by the geographical references, would have been to evoke a distant moment in early Israelite history, suffused with the aura of the historical era of the story’s setting in the thirteenth century B.C.E.
One may surmise that the Book of the Battles of YHWH was deemed too anthropomorphic or too mythological in character to be included in the canon that was evolving. ...
The Song of the Well might possibly recall a particular incident of discovering water in the wilderness, but, more prominently, it evokes a whole nomadic way of life in the desert, and in its extreme brevity, it looks more like the refrain of an old song than the complete text.
Later in chapter 21 (verses 27–30), a third ancient poem is introduced, beginning with the words “Come to Heshbon, let it stand built, / may the city of Sihon be unshaken.”
The brilliant centerpiece among these citations of archaic poetry is the oracles of Balaam (chapters 23 and 24), which follow the story of Balaam and his she-ass .... The very figure of Balaam is part of the antiquity effect cultivated in this narrative. This selfsame soothsayer is the principal character in an inscription discovered in Jordan in 1967, written in a language that is a close relative of Hebrew, with Aramaic elements, and dating from the eighth century B.C.E.; and so we may infer that he was known as a seer of fabled powers in the traditions of this region, perhaps going back to tales told centuries earlier. His appearance in Numbers, pronouncing blessings on Israel in lofty poetic language, sets this story of Israel on the threshold of its entrance into the land in the large context of the archaic traditions of the region. "
Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
[MS: Edits, formatting and insertions above are MS supplied. All of Alter's The Hebrew Bible is available for under $75 from Amazon. Discussion of Alter's work, including his Introductory essays and Notes that amplify his translations, are in the Sefaria collection: Robert Alter - MS Sefaria Sheet Collection, linked here.]
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War against Hamas: Nine Months
MS:
We are an ancient, historic People, as old as the Bible. We do not forget lessons learned. We teach them to each generation.
Nine months after October 7th, the war against Hamas and for the recovery of all of the hostages continues. The IDF fights on.
We shall always bear our Traditions in mind and we shall prevail.
