Sticks & Tassels - Numbers 15

Chapter 15 seems kind of just thrown together, and TB says that the placement of chapter 15 has caused many scriptorians to think that it was out of place, but he disagrees and so does the IM. TB’s coverage of this chapter is 3 lectures long, so 3 hours long, but honestly most of it either covers topics that were covered previously or gets weirdly political. I have to remember that this was recorded in 2016 at the end of Obama’s term and it makes sense that he’s a deeply Republican man who strongly supports Israel so I will take his political opinions with a grain of salt. All this to say I didn’t find his commentary on this chapter very useful and so I won’t recommend it too much here.

The first 26 verses are reiterating the various sacrifices that the people of Israel need to offer in various situations, but I’m not going to go over them here because they were covered pretty extensively in Leviticus. The IM suggests that the sacrificial offerings are again reiterated here because “the laws of sacrifice, which brought about atonement and reconciliation with God, were reiterated at this point in Moses’ account because in Israel’s state of rebellion they provided the way to come back into God’s favor.” They had just had two huge rebellions which costs many lives and removed promised blessings from a significant portion of the population for their entire mortal lives. The first rebellion was refusing to go take the promised land in battle when God commanded them to and the second was going to fight that battle after God commanded them not to. These are the reasons they lost their opportunity to go to the promised land in their lifetime and why God re-emphasized the importance of the various sacrifices to the people. It’s also why at the end of chapter 15, “the Lord commanded wandering Israel to fringe the borders of their garments so that when they looked upon the fringes they would be reminded of the commandments of the Lord.”

These fringes were called “zizith” which means “tassel” and was a sky blue thread that was “the serve as a memorial sign to the Israelites, to remind them of the commandments of God, that they might have them constantly before their eyes and follow them, and not direct their heart and eyes to the things of this world, which turn away from the word of God, and lead astray to idolatry.” There are a lot of these types of items in Judaism that I can think of offhand that appears to accumulate over time, like the phylacteries, the little boxes they put on their foreheads with a scripture inside as a constant reminder of God’s word. The IM says that the light blue color of the “zizith” is symbolic of the heavens, “and so symbolizes the spiritual realm or godliness.”

The middle part of chapter 15 is about a man who collects firewood on the Sabbath and is subsequently put to death. The man was caught gathering firewood on the Sabbath in order to make a fire but he was arrested before making that fire and brought before Moses and Moses didn’t know what to do so he went to God and asked for guidance and God told Moses that the man should be executed by stoning. The problem was that the law only says not to kindle a fire, it doesn’t say anything about gathering wood for a fire. TB notes that this is similar to gathering manna on the sabbath, the sin is also in the gathering of manna so likewise the gathering of the wood would be considered a sin in this instance, just like the gathering of manna was a sin on the Sabbath.

The problem is that the penalty for violating the sabbath is not death but being cut off from God’s people, so expulsion so it seems like this punishment didn’t fit the crime. But what I think is important to note here is that God was the one who mandated the death sentence, not Moses. So God obviously knew something about this guy in particular that made him an enemy to God’s plan for an obedient Israel. Verse 31 notes that this man “despised the word of the Lord,” which is something only God could know because it is about his personal commitment to righteousness and following the commandments. Maybe some of the outward actions and words of this guy might have shown contempt for God, but clearly he had deeper hatred for God and the commandments than the people knew if God Himself required his death. Something I think about is in the Book of Mormon, how the vast majority of men who lead the Lamanites to war against the Nephites were disgruntled apostates who made it their life’s mission to destroy the Nephites, their freedoms, and their religion. In that sense, it would have probably been better it those who hated God and the Nephites had been executed by God’s orders when they were doing small rebellions before it got to the big ones. It would have been better for both the Nephites and the Lamanites. It’s an interesting contrast between upholding the law of Moses here and upholding the law of Moses in the Book of Mormon. I’m going to have to think about the pros and cons of the ways that they did it differently and similarly.