Our Parasha this week is bookended by instructions related
to the Tabernacle. It begins by finishing up last week’s instructions to the
various clans of Levites regarding their duties of service and schlepping for
the Tabernacle. And it ends, in Chapter 7, with a long section describing the
chieftains’ gifts for the service of the Tabernacle in a 12-day dedication
ceremony for the altar.
In between these bookends, we have two chapters dealing with
ritual laws that were not included in Leviticus.
Chapter 5 begins with a short section about people with
impurities being removed from the camp, and about dealing with guilt and sin.
Then we have the ordeal of the suspected adulteress, or the “sotah.” And finally,
in Chapter 6, we have the rules regarding the Nazirite, one who voluntarily
takes on a vow to not drink wine and consequentially is not allowed to cut his
hair or come into contact with the dead, even his/her own family members.
In these interior sections of the parasha, the Torah seems
to be tying up loose ends before the Israelites can march on from Mount Sinai
into the next chapter of their journey through the wilderness. Especially the
Sotah and the Nazir are about exceptional circumstances involving people who
end up placing themselves, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, outside the
realm of regular society. The rituals outlined in the text tell us what to do
with such people – how to treat them when they are out of bounds, and how to
bring them back within bounds, if and when that is possible. Both rituals involve the name of God. With the
Sotah, God’s name is written as part of a curse and then washed into the bitter
waters that she is forced to drink. The Nazir presumably invokes the name of
God when s/he utters the vow.
We see here how God is intimately involved with how humans
cross over the boundary in and out of the normative community. Later in the
parasha, Aaron and his sons are instructed on how to bless the people, linking
God’s “Name with the people of Israel.” I’m interested in exploring with you
this phenomenon of God’s Name and how it functions as a curse, a blessing, and
a vow, and as an instrument of shepherding people from one state of being to
another.
