Bamidbar-Rosh Hodesh (Midrash)

“Bring an Atonement for Me that I diminished the moon!”

As this Sabbath is also the eve of Rosh Hodesh, it seems an opportune occasion to bring a particularly strange midrash related to the New Moon—prompted by a question I was recently asked about this by my friend and loyal reader Mark Feffer. The version below is from Tractate Hullin of the Babylonian Talmud; a shorter version, with only the final section containing the halakhic “punchline,” appears at Shavuot 9a; later on we will discuss parallels in Genesis Rabbah 6.3-4. Thus, in Hullin 60b:

Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi said: Two verses contradict one another: “And God created the two great luminaries” [Gen 1:16], and it is written, “the great light... and the small light” [ibid.]. The moon said before the Holy One blessed be He: Master of the Universe, can two kings wear one crown? He said to her: Go and diminish yourself. She said before Him: Master of the Universe, because I said a proper thing before You, must I diminish myself?! He said to her: Go and rule over the day and the night. She said to Him: Of what benefit is a candle in bright daylight? Of what benefit can I be? He said: Let Israel count days and years by you. She said to Him: the day is also impossible, nor are tekufot counted according to me. As is written: “and they [i.e., both the sun and the moon] shall be for seasons and appointed times, for days and years” [ibid. 1:15]. [He said:] Go and let the righteous be called by your name—Jacob the Small [ Amos 7:5], Samuel the Small [1 Sam 2:19], David the Small [1 Sam 16:11].

The first part of this midrash is based upon an inner contradiction in the account of the fourth day of Creation: the text first speaks of “two great luminaries” and immediately thereafter of “the great luminary” and “the small luminary.” The latter pair of phrase, expressing the obvious fact of the vast difference in intensity of light between the sun and the moon, known to mankind since hoary antiquity, prompted the conclusion that in some primordial era the sun and the moon must have been equal. (Following the approach of Gerald Schroeder’s Science of God and others who try to align Genesis 1 with modern cosmogony, this might correspond to the period when the great masses of super-hot gasses formed by the Big Bang were cooling down into cohesive bodies.) The moon found this situation disquieting; it seemed to her an elemental rule of nature?/society? that there must always be one “king”: that a situation in which authority is shared by two rulers is untenable (even though here, presumably, they both knew that God was the supreme ruler over them both). The corollary would seem to be that competition, not only for material resources or for sexual partners, but for power per se, is an inevitable part of the state of nature.

Did the moon, having brought this to God’s attention, expect to be named the supreme figure in the celestial realm and for the sun to be demoted? In any event, God made her smaller, creating the situation we know today. The moon, justly piqued, complained of this, and God suggested various alternatives: that she rule (i.e., be visible) during both day and night; that the calendar be determined by her. The moon points out that neither of these solutions will work. The last answer given is perhaps the most interesting: making a virtue of smallness, noting that such biblical heroes as Samuel, David, and Jacob (i.e., the Jewish people as a whole) are in various places described as “small.” (Perhaps this is one of the ideas in the parallel in Gen Rab 6.3, where the destiny of Israel among the nations is seen as parallel to that of the moon.)

He saw that the moon was not satisfied [by all this]. So the Holy One blessed be He said to her: Bring an atonement for Me that I have diminished the moon. This is what R. Shimon ben Lakish said: What is different about the goat of Rosh Hodesh, that it is said of it, “[a sin offering] for the Lord” [Num 28:15]. The Holy One blessed be He said: Let this goat be an atonement for Me that I have diminished the moon.

Having seen that none of his suggestions mollified the moon, God instructs Israel to bring a sacrifice every Rosh Hodesh—the moon’s special day—to atone on His behalf! This is a truly bizarre-sounding idea. How can the infinite, perfect, omnipotent and omniscient God require atonement? What is going on here? To begin with, there was an exegetical problem regarding the verse in Numbers 28:15 describing the additional offering brought on Rosh Hodesh: unlike all the other Musaf offerings described throughout Numbers 28-29, which are referred to simply as “a sin offering,” here the odd phrase, hattat la-Shem, “a sin-offering for the Lord,” is used, suggesting that this offering is somehow intended to atone for wrong-doing on the part of God Himself. What sin can God have possible committed? Perhaps the idea is that there was something unjust in the very fact that He created the Universe in such a way that there must be strong and weak, rich and poor (note that, in many cultures, sun and moon symbolize gold and silver), ruler and ruled. More important: by creating all living things—animals, human beings and, by imaginative midrashic extension, even the insensate heavenly bodies—with the instinct for competition rather than cooperation, He has bears ultimate responsibility for the injustices and frustrations that must inevitably follow. Perhaps these harsh facts of life (and could the universe have been created in any other way? One reading of the Garden of Eden story is that an eternal Golden Age was unworkable) are in fact God’s “Original Sin.”

I can only touch very briefly upon another line of interpretation, appearing both in Maharsh”a (R. Shmuel Idels of Ostraha, the most important commentator on the aggadah in the Talmud), and in the previously-mentioned midrash in Genesis Rabbah 6.3: viz. that the moon here symbolizes the Jewish people, whose historical destiny was to assume a “diminished,” politically subjugated role through much of their history. God’s counsel to the moon is also His advice to the Jews: to accept their difficult, “smaller” situation, of having only “reflected“ light in this world (which is compared to night), with a kind of philosophical resignation; and to comfort themselves, (a) with occasional periods of ascent, and (b) with the promise of messianic redemption. (I must admit that this interpretation has perhaps more of a ring of Jewish authenticity, of peshuto shel midrash, than my existential, universal reading proposed above; but I too am a product of my own, more open historical milieu, and perhaps my reading is at least another of the seventy faces of Torah.)

An interesting footnote: Torah Temimah (on Num 28:15) quotes Maimonides in Guide III.46, where he gives rationalistic, non-mythic explanation of the phrase “a sin-offering for the Lord” that prompted this midrash: that the ancient pagans offered a sacrifice to the moon every New Moon, and in order to alleviate possible suspicion that Israel’s Rosh Hodesh also entails sacrifices to a heavenly body, the Torah specifies that it is “for the Lord”—i.e., reaffirming monotheistic theology.

“Your righteousness is a high mountain…”

The midrashim on the two opening portions of the Book of Numbers are unusually lengthy, dwarfing the other eight portions that follow, and leading to speculations on the part of some scholars that this was edited separately from the others. Some say that this prolixity was due to the proximity of the festival of Shavuot—which always falls between Parshat Bamidbar and Naso—providing an obvious occasion for the preachers to indulge in lengthy homilies. Be that as it may, our parsha begins with a rather interesting midrash on the different fates of the righteous and the wicked. Numbers Rabbah 1.1:

“And the Lord spoke to Moses in the Sinai desert…” [Num 1:1]. This is what Scripture says: “Your judgments are like the great deep” [Ps 36:7]. R. Meir said: He draw an analogy to the righteous in their dwelling place: “In a goodly pasture I will feed them, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall be their dwelling” [Ezek 34:14]. And he draw an analogy to the wicked in their dwelling place: “Thus says the Lord God: on the day that he goes down / descends to Sheol, I shall mourn for, I shall cover him with the deep” [Ezek 31:15].

The verse, “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, Your judgments like the great deep,” whose straightforward sense seems to be to illustrate the overwhelming power of God’s righteousness and judgment, which are variously compared to mighty mountains and the primordial depth of the sea, is read here as a study in contrasts: the fate of the righteous, which shall be a pleasant and tranquil, and that of the wicked, whose lives shall end in the darkness of Sheol, the Underworld. (cf. Gen. Rab. 33.1) Thus far our saying seems a conventional one of reward and punishment.

Hezekiah son of R. Hiyya said: With what does one cover this container? With an earthenware lid. So too the evildoers. What is written concerning them: “Their deeds are in darkness, and they say, ‘Who shall see us? Who shall know us?’” [Isa 29:15] And because they are dark, the Holy One blessed be He brings them down to Sheol, which is dark, and covers them with the deep, which is dark, as is said, “and darkness on the face of the deep” [Gen 1:3].

Here, we have the idea of measure for measure: the punishment of the wicked is related to the darkness, which they exploit to conceal their wicked deeds. Their punishment is similarly appropriate. But the idea here seems to be not only that of measure for measure, but that in some sense the very essence of the wicked and their approach to life is captured by this image; those who built their whole lives upon darkness, upon deceiving others. They are creatures of darkness, who reject the life of normal society, the honesty and openness symbolized by light: “Light is sown for the upright.”

This is: “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains” [Ps, ibid.]—the justice that you bring upon the world is renowned like these mountains. But “Your judgment is a great depth”—the judgment that you perform in the world is a “great depth.” Just as the depth is hidden, so is the judgment that you do hidden. How so? When Jerusalem was destroyed, it was destroyed on the ninth of Av, but when it was shown to Ezekiel, this was done on the twentieth of the month. Why? So as not to publicize that day on which it was destroyed. But when one comes to glorify Israel, one publicizes on what day, in what place, in what month, in what year, on what date “… when they went out of the land of Israel saying” [Num 1:1]. What did he say to them “count [literally: lift up] the heads of all the congregation of Israel” [ibid., 2].

It is not fully clear to me why tzedaka is identified with “righteousness,” in the sense of the goodly reward given to the righteous, while mishpat (judgment) is identified with the punishment meted out to the wicked. In any event, that seems the operative assumption of this mishnah, applied in terms of concealment and revelation: even Tisha b’Av was originally a hidden date, concealed, made known only vaguely and after considerable delay, whereas regarding the Exodus, that great and glorious redemptive event, it is specified in detail exactly when it happened.