Scrollers Preview - Parashat Mattot 2014

We have come to the penultimate parasha of the Book of Numbers.  The Israelites are at the threshold of the Promised Land. The next book, Deuteronomy, consists of Moses’ final speech to the Israelites. There, Moses summarizes and remembers incidents from earlier books. But the end of the Book of Numbers is really the end of the narrative of the Torah.

This parasha includes a whole chapter concerning vows, especially the status of women’s vows.  We have a long chapter recounting a war of revenge against the Midianites, who had lured our Israelite men into having sex with their women and worshiping their idols. Lastly, we have the story of why the Reubenites, Gadites, and the ½ tribe of Mannasseh are granted holdings outside of Canaan, on the East side of the Jordan river.

Reading this parasha, we become highly aware of the power of words to impact reality. Oath-taking or making vows is not such a common experience for us in our time. However we still have that sense of our words having weight. We feel guilty when we aren’t able to fulfill a promise. Relationships can fall apart when we go back on our word. In Torah, certainly, words have great power. “God spoke to Moses saying, speak to the Israelites and command them” is one of the most common phrases in the Torah. We take on God’s word when we enter the covenant.  In our parasha, the Reubenites, Gadits and Mannassites give their word that they will go with the rest of their people to conquer the land before they return to the east side of the Jordan, and both Moses and God have faith that they will be true to their word. And we’ll see that the haftarah also is about words, as God commissions Jeremiah as a prophet who will speak the words God puts in his mouth.

Perhaps it is fitting that before we cross over the Jordan, and before Moses’ entire book of words to us in Deuteronomy, we have a parasha about our own words. We may think that we are getting something once we cross over – land to conquer and possess – but maybe words are all we ever really have.