NOTES for Num 15:1-41
The Book of Numbers often repeats the same norms and rules of ritual purity that we find in Leviticus, and describes the same order of sacrifices. In Leviticus, however, they are presented more systematically; in Numbers the relevant rules and prescriptions are scattered among different chapters and included in the context of historical events connected with the people’s journey from Sinai to the promised land. One could say that what we have here is a history of the Torah, the history of the emergence of particular prescriptions that are presented systematically in Leviticus in a form convenient for the priests’ daily use of these texts. Yet there is also something here that goes beyond history as such.
Among other things, the Book of Numbers lets us see how the Torah enters history and how history gives rise to the Torah. Stoning someone for violating the Sabbath: what is that? Needless and senseless cruelty? Excessive religious zeal? Mindless formalism? Under some conditions, undoubtedly. But in a military camp? The question is not so clear-cut. Military discipline is military discipline; in an army, especially one engaged in warfare, everything is much stricter than in civilian life.
No leniency is possible here: in wartime one cannot act at random and hope that everything will somehow work out. Is the Torah, then, extremely strict? Perhaps, at least when this is necessary. In other situations it is different. During the Maccabean wars, for example, strict Sabbath observance cost some rebels their lives: they refused to fight, not, of course, because God forbids taking up arms, but because the Sabbath excludes every activity.
And it was then, during the Maccabean wars, that it was decided that taking part in military action during war did not violate the Sabbath, since human life might be at stake, and it is more important than ritual prohibitions. The Torah does not confine life within rigid external bounds; it shapes life from within and supports it like a kind of spiritual skeleton, without which human life would spread out like jelly. Its concrete manifestations may be as varied as the life it directs.