1 See Simeon Chavel, “Law and Narrative in Four Oracular Novellae in the Pentateuch: Lev 24:10–23; Num 9:1–14; 15:32–36; 27:1–11” (Ph.D. diss.; Hebrew University, 2006) 1–2. My thanks to Simeon Chavel for making available to me the introduction and conclusion of his dissertation in draft form. The more extensive discussion of the wood-gatherer story in the third chapter of the completed dissertation reached me too late for it to be addressed in the body of the article, but I have cited to it where relevant. I thank him, as well as Steven Fraade, Christine Hayes, and David Lambert, for their incisive comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

2 See Meir Sternberg's apt description (Hebrews Between Cultures: Group Portraits and National Literature [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998] 534) in connection with the blasphemer story: “the ruling ascends in coverage from ad hominem particularity, alone necessitated by the action as such, to apodictic generality” (parentheticals omitted). For other instances in Numbers in which narrative provides the background to law, see Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993) 78–80.

3 See Chavel, “Law and Narrative,” 9–10.

4 According to a tradition attested both in Philo (Vit. Mos. 2.217) and rabbinic literature (Sifra Emor 14:5 [ed. I. H. Weiss (Vienna, 1862) 104b]; Sifre Numbers 114 [ed. Horowitz (Leipzig, 1917) 123]; b. Sanh. 78b), the unknown was the mode of execution. To the objections to this view raised by J. Weingreen (“The Case of the Woodgatherer,” VT 16 [1966] 361–64, at 362), we may add, first, that there was probably a general understanding well into the Second Temple period that the default form of execution was stoning (on which see Aharon Shemesh, Punishments and Sins: From Scripture to the Rabbis [in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003] 11–20), and second, that were this in fact the purpose of the episode, God should have stated a general rule that violation of the Sabbath is punishable by stoning, in keeping with the analogous cases. Weingreen proposes instead that the story introduces the notion, familiar from later rabbinic law as “fence for the Torah,” of prohibiting something harmless in itself because it might lead to full-fledged violation of the law. Anthony Phillips (“The Case of the Woodgatherer Reconsidered,” VT 19 [1969] 125–28) doubts that such a notion operated in the biblical period, and offers, more simply, that the question was whether gathering wood constituted labor for the purpose of Sabbath law. For further discussion see Wenham, Gordon J., Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC; Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1981) 131–32Google Scholar; Fishbane, Michael, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) 100Google Scholar; Licht, Jacob, A Commentary on the Book of Numbers (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991) 93–94 [in Hebrew]Google Scholar; Grünwaldt, Klaus, Exil und Identität: Beschneidung, Passa und Sabbat in der Priesterschrift (Frankfurt am Main: Hain, 1992) 197–200 (for which reference I am indebted to Simeon Chavel)Google Scholar; Jackson, Bernard S., Wisdom-Laws: A Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 21:1–22:16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) 428 n. 205, 440, 472–73; Chavel, “Law and Narrative,” 158–60, 168–70.Google Scholar A fourth possibility depends on the conclusion of Y. Gilat (), Meqerei Talmud 2: Talmudic Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Professor Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal [ed. M. Bar-Asher and D. Rosenthal; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993] 208–10) that R. Eliezer, who often preserves old, pre-rabbinic legal traditions, saw prohibited Sabbath labors as falling into two categories, one punishable by stoning and the other not subject to the death penalty. (On the common rabbinic view, by contrast, all prohibited Sabbath labors are punishable by stoning, and only additional rabbinic prohibitions are subject to lesser penalities.) If Gilat is correct, and if R. Eliezer's view was prevalent in the biblical period, we may suppose that the people knew that wood-gathering was prohibited on the Sabbath (contra Weingreen and Phillips), but did not know whether it was punishable by execution (i.e., stoning) or by a lesser penalty. God's response serves either to clarify the punishment for wood-gathering specifically, or, more fundamentally, to refute the view that lesser violations of Sabbath are not punishable by death. In any case, none of the above proposals explains why God's decision does not issue a general rule.

5 Philo (Vit. Mos. 2.214) suggests that the verse indicates how the wood-gatherer came to be discovered: some Israelites had left the camp and entered the wilderness in order to pray amid purity and silence. An awareness of the superfluity of the geographical marker may underlie the exegetical manipulation of the story's opening phrase in Sifre Zuta Numbers 15:32 (ed. Horowitz, 287). See also Chavel, “Law and Narrative” 176–82.

6 For a very ambitious explanation of the story's occurrence in Numbers, which does not, however, account for its particular position within the book, see Freedman, David Noel, The Nine Commandments: Uncovering a Hidden Pattern of Crime and Punishment in the Hebrew Bible (with Geoghegan, Jeffrey C. and Homan, Michael M.; ed. Astrid B. Beck; New York: Doubleday, 2000) 47–57.Google Scholar The medieval commentator Abraham ibn Ezra (Num 15:2), and with him many contemporary scholars, e.g., Gray, G. B., (Numbers [ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1912] 182)Google Scholar; Budd, Philip J. (Numbers [WBC 5; Waco: Word Books, 1984] 175)Google Scholar; Artus, Olivier (Etudes sur le livre des nombres. Récit, histoire et loi en Nb 13,1–20,13 [OBO 157; Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997] 55), have suggested that the story serves to illustrate the preceding law (Num 15:30–31), which mandates excision for one who sins intentionally.Google Scholar I offer below a more complex account of the relationship between this law and the wood-gatherer story. Grünwaldt (Exil, 194–95) argues against a link to Num 15:30–31, and instead attributes the story's position to the fact that it takes place “in the wilderness” (Num 15:32); it was therefore conjoined to Num 14, in which the wilderness plays a central role. Is it just possible, alternatively, that the strikingly similar stories of the blasphemer and the wood-gatherer have been transposed? The characterization of the intentional sinner as “blaspheming” in Num 15:30 provides a perfect transition to the blasphemer incident, while references to various forms of Sabbath in Lev 24:8 and Lev 25 passim provide a natural context for the sin of the wood-gatherer.

7 See Milgrom, Jacob, “Tassels,” Beth Mikra 92 (1982) 14–22, at 16 [in Hebrew].Google Scholar

8 Previous narratives, most notably that of the Golden Calf (Exod 32), locate sequences of sin and punishment in the wilderness, but the wilderness, in these cases, plays only an incidental role, as setting. In the spies episode, by contrast, sin and punishment both directly implicate the wilderness. It may be argued that in light of the spies incident, the wilderness retroactively becomes a thematized element, an active factor, in the previous instances of sin and punishment. In the terms that Shemaryahu Talmon employs for his analysis of the wilderness imaginaire in the biblical period (“The Desert Motif in the Bible and in Qumran Literature,” in Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations [ed. Alexander Altmann; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966] 31–63), the “transgression-and-punishment” theme crystallizes in Num 14. For thematizations of the wilderness motif in the post-biblical period, see Najman, Hindy, “Toward a Study of the Uses of the Concept of Wilderness in Ancient Judaism,” DSD 13 (2006) 99–113, and the literature she cites at 99 n. 1.Google Scholar

9 See Nahmanides's comment on Num 15:32: “To this section was attached the matter of the gatherer, because it occurred after the story of the spies, according to the plain sense. And this is the reason that it says, ‘and the Israelites were in the wilderness,’ because it was when the nation tarried there on account of the aforementioned decree that this incident happened.”

10 The indication at the opening of the wood-gatherer story that the Israelites were in the wilderness may, on this analysis, be compared with Gen 11:1: “and all the land was of single tongue and single speech.” As in Num 15:32, the narrator states a fact that the reader would otherwise have taken for granted because it provides relevant background for the events that follow.

11 A body of legislation does intervene between the story of the spies in chapters 13–14 and the storyofthewood-gathererin15:32–36.However,twoofthethreeblocksoflawsinthisunit(15:1–16; 17–21) are explicitly said to apply only in “the land in which you will dwell” (15:2) or “the land to which I am bringing you” (15:18), so that they would have no direct bearing on the question of the legal status of the wilderness generation. On the third set of laws (15:22–31), see infra.

12 After the current article was completed, I discovered that its basic approach was anticipated by Arnold B. Ehrlich in his Mikrâ Ki-Pheshutô: The Bible According to its Literal Meaning (3 vols.; New York: Ktav, 1969 [1899–1901]) 1.268 [in Hebrew]. I translate the relevant remarks: “In accordance with our method, we should ask the following: Why was the story of the wood-gatherer written in the Torah, and why was it adjoined to the spies incident? This question has a single answer, and it is found in this verse (Num 15:34), which says: “it was not clear what should be done to him.” And the explanation is that the Israelites did not know what their status was with respect to the Torah and the commandments, as it was possible that, since they had been rejected by God and condemned to death in the desert, God desired neither them nor their observance of his commandments, in which case they would be exempt from everything. And according to this approach, the incident of the wood-gatherer was written in the Torah to teach that the rejection and excommunication of the desert generation did not exempt them from God's commandments.” Ehrlich's insight has been thoroughly neglected by modern commentators; to my knowledge, only Chavel's (“Law and Narrative” 174–75), among recent treatments of the episode, mentions it, and only briefly, as one among several explanations that have been advanced for the placement of the wood-gatherer story in Numbers 15. The current article thus revives and nuances Ehrlich's position, and bolsters it with additional literary and historical considerations.

13 For comparison of the two stories see also Chavel, “Law and Narrative,” 171–74.

14 Law and narrative divide up the said and the unsaid in a different way slightly further on, in Numbers 19. This chapter is devoted entirely to the law of the red heifer, or, “the law when a person dies in a tent” (19:14). Why does this law occur where it does? It is fairly clear that, as redacted by priestly editors, the biblical account through Numbers 19 covers only the first years of the wilderness period, while Num 20:1 fast-forwards to the final year of this period. (For discussions of the chronology of Num 20:1 that ultimately favor the fortieth year of the wilderness period as its setting, see Milgrom, Jacob, Numbers [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990] 164, 464Google Scholar; Levine, Numbers 1–20 56–57.) It is possible, then, that Numbers 19 implicitly conveys the passage of time during the intermediate period in the wilderness, a period marked only by the death of the wilderness generation. The law's subject matter, the purity regulations associated with deaths that occur in that paradigmatic wilderness dwelling, the tent, communicates the tragedy of a generation's premature demise in the wilderness. The long duration, repetitiveness, and inevitability of this event make it difficult to represent as detailed narrative, but its magnitude precludes a summary account. The law of the red heifer provides an alternative, a non-narrative strategy of indirection. (On the question of whether, on the redacted biblical account, the entire wilderness generation died in this period, excepting Moses, Aaron and Miriam, or whether some continued to live until the census in Numbers 26, contrast Milgrom, Numbers xiii, and Levine, Numbers 1–20, 59–60. My interpretation of the import of Numbers 19 lends support to the latter view, defended by Levine.)

15 My use of the notions of sovereignty and the state of exception derives from Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (trans. George Schwab; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985).Google Scholar Insofar as the wood-gatherer essentially effects an inverted strike, a refusal to not work, the dynamic of violence in this story might also profitably be analyzed in terms of Walter Benjamin's account of the conflict between the state and the striking worker in his “Critique of Violence,” in Reflections (trans. Edmund Jephcott; New York: Schocken, 1978) 281–83.

16 Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 75.Google Scholar

17 For a recent, thorough attempt to separate the compositional layers of Numbers 13–14 and the relationship of this version of the spies story to its parallel in Deuteronomy 1, see Reinhard Achenbach, “Die Erzählung von der gescheiterten Landnahme von Kadesch Barnea (Numeri 13–14) als Schlüsseltext der Redaktionsgeschichte des Pentateuchs,” Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 9 (2003) 56–123. For earlier attempts see the literature cited therein. For a more schematic attempt to establish the composition of Numbers as a whole, see Römer, Thomas Christian, “Israel's Sojourn in the Wilderness and the Construction of the Book of Numbers,” in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. Rezetko, Robert et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 419–45.Google Scholar

18 On the historical background of H's ideology, see Knohl, Israel, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 204–24Google Scholar; Joosten, J., People and Land in the Holiness Code: An Exegetical Study of the Ideational Framework of the Law in Leviticus 17–26 (Leiden: Brill, 1996) 203–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The antiquity of the language of the priestly source (both P and H) relative to that of Ezekiel is conclusively established in Hurvitz, Avi, A Linguistic Study of the Relationship Between the Priestly Source and the Book of Ezekiel: A New Approach to an Old Problem (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1982).Google Scholar See also Rooker, Mark F., Biblical Hebrew in Transition: The Language of the Book of Ezekiel (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Milgrom, Jacob, Leviticus 23–27 (AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2000) 2348–63Google Scholar; Kohn, Risa Levitt, A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, the Exile and the Torah (JSOT Supp. 358; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 85.Google Scholar

19 See Knohl, Sanctuary 92. For objections to Knohl's notion of a Holiness “school” spanning the pre-exilic and postexilic periods, see Schwartz, Baruch J., The Holiness Legislation (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999) 31–32 [in Hebrew].Google Scholar See also Amit, Yairah, “Creation and the Calendar of Holiness,” in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg (ed. Cohen, Mordechai et al.; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997) *13-*29, at *28–*29 [in Hebrew].Google Scholar

20 For these and other instances of the language of Ezekiel in this pericope, see Knohl, Sanctuary 91–92; Achenbach, “Erzählung” 120–22.

21 The parallel to Ezek 20:23 becomes closer if in Ps 106:27a is changed to . This emendation is supported not only by considerations of sense ( would better describe Israel's situation among the nations, and would offer a better parallel to ) and by the fact that the error could be attributed to the influence of in 106:26b, but also by the frequent occurrence of the phrase in Ezekiel. See Ezek 12:15; 20:23; 22:15; 29:12; 30:23, 26; 36:19. In chapters 29 and 30, the refrain describes the exile of Egyptians; otherwise, it refers to Israel's exile. The emendation to may find further support in the Peshitta, which begins Ps 106:27 with wnbdr“and [that] he would scatter.” The relationship between Ezekiel 20 and Psalm 106 is murky, though the fact that the phrases and are both extremely common in Ezekiel (with the first particularly prominent in Ezekiel 20) suggests that Ezekiel 20 may have influenced Psalm 106. On the redaction of Psalm 106, see Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, “Ps 106 und die priestliche Überlieferung des Pentateuch,” in Textarbeit: Studien zu Texten und ihrer Rezeption aus dem Alten Testament und der Umwelt Israels: Festschrift für Peter Weimar zur Vollendung seines 60. Lebensjahres (ed. Klaus Kiesow and Thomas Meurer; Münster: Ugarit, 2003) 255–66.

22 See Kohn, A New Heart 96–104. On the aberrancies of Ezekiel 20 generally see Carol A. Newsom, “Rhyme and Reason: The Historical Résumé in Israelite and Early Jewish Thought,” in Congress Volume Leiden 2004 (ed. André Lemaire; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 215–33, at 224–25. There is no indication, outside this verse, that the “children's” generation committed a sin meriting exile. The sin of Baal Peor, though singled out by Hosea (9:10), seems on all accounts to have been punished by plague alone.

23 See Knohl, Sanctuary 53, 90.

24 See Aryeh Toeg, “A Halachic Midrash in Numbers 15.22–31,” Tarbiz 43 (1973–74) 1–20 [in Hebrew]; Israel Knohl, “The Sin-offerings Law in the ‘Holiness School,’” in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (ed. G. A. Anderson and S. M. Olyan; JSOTSup 12; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991) 192–203. For Jacob Milgrom's dissenting view and Knohl's response thereto, see Jacob Milgrom, “Two Notes on Numbers 15:22–31 and its Purpose,” Tarbiz 60 (1991) 429 [in Hebrew], and Israel Knohl, “Response: to J. Milgrom's Comments on I. Knohl's Article (Tarbiz LIX),” Tarbiz 60 (1991) 431–34 [in Hebrew]. The earlier law of Leviticus 4 discusses only the two permutations (individual and communal) of unintentional sin, so that it does not frame a gap in the way that the reworked version in Num 15:22–31 does.

25 Knohl, Sanctuary 18, 186.

26 The speaker in this section is “neither YHWH nor Moses but—mirabile dictu—a preacher of the law of YHWH as given to Moses,” so that “Num 15:22–31 is a transitional type, charting the move from divine or divinely legitimated exegesis towards independent, human exegesis.” Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation 194, 261. Fishbane cautions that this feature does not by itself yield a precise date for the pericope.

27 See Grünwaldt, Exil 203–4; Chavel, “Law and Narrative” 164–68, 171–74, 185. Chavel ultimately places the story's redaction not in the exilic but in the Second Temple period. While this chronology is hardly incompatible with the interpretation advanced here—the exile, and the theological problems that it posed, persisted long after Cyrus' decree—it may be noted that few of the dating considerations isolated by Chavel require a postexilic rather than an exilic setting.

28 It is important to distinguish two theological phenomena associated with exile. The first (specific to involuntary exile) is the manifestation of God's wrath. The second is the taking up of residence outside the land of Israel. Given the peculiar character of the “exile” decreed in Num 14, namely, that it occurs before the people has even entered the land, the second phenomenon is less relevant for the present study. Note should, however, be taken, of the biblical evidence for the notion that worship of God is chiefly a duty attendant on residence in the land. See Noga Ayali, “The Prayers for ‘Fear of God’ in the Biblical Literature (1 Kgs 8:56–61; Ps 86:1–13; Ps 119; 1 Chr 29:10–19) and the Neo-Babylonian Inscriptions (Nbk. 15; Nbn. 4; Nbn. 5),” Tarbiz 74 (2005)321–69, at 337 [in Hebrew].

29 See the rabbinic interpretation of these verses in Sifre Numbers 115 (ed. Horowitz 128).

30 The ellipsis is Ezekiel's. I have taken the translation from Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20 (AB 22; Garden City: Doubleday, 1983) 362. On these verses see also Eslinger, Lyle M., “Ezekiel 20 and the Metaphor of Historical Teleology: Concepts of Biblical History,” JSOT 81 (1998) 93–125, at 115–16.Google Scholar

31 See also Ezek 4:12, where the prophet indicates that Israel will also stray from the laws of food purity in the exile.

32 The “new covenant” occurs by name in Jer 31:30 alone, but a similar (though not identical) notion may be found in Ezek 16:59–60 and elsewhere. Both Jeremiah (Jer 31:32) and Ezekiel (Ezek 36:26–27) associate the new covenant with God's assignment of a “new heart” to Israel, and the question of covenantal law in the exile is connected, to a degree, with the question of whether Israel will return from the exile through its own will or through divine intervention. On the latter issue see, e.g., David Lambert, “Did Israel believe that redemption awaited its repentance?: The case of ‘Jubilees’ 1,” CBQ 68 (2006) 631–50; Ayali, “Prayers.” On the voiding of the Sinaitic covenant in Jeremiah and especially Ezekiel, see Baruch J. Schwartz, “Ezekiel's Dim View of Israel's Restoration,” in The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Approaches (ed. Margaret S. Odell and John T. Strong; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000) 43–67. See also Isa 50:1, in which the prophet cites (albeit disapprovingly) what was presumably a popular view, that the exile could be understood as a kind of bill of divorce or sale.

33 Thus Thomas M. Raitt (A Theology of Exile: Judgment/Deliverance in Jeremiah and Ezekiel[Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977] 78–80) sees Lev 26:44 as a polemical response to the interpretation of exile in Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Second Isaiah, according to which it marks the rejection of Israel by God and the dissolution of their covenant. Likewise, Daniel I. Block (“Divine Abandonment: Ezekiel's Adaptation of an Ancient Near Eastern Motif,” in The Book of Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Approaches, 15–42, at 17)observes that, while Ezekiel imagines God as abandoning his land and people at the time of the Temple's destruction, Leviticus 26 makes no such assumption. “Lev 26 warns that Yahweh will set his face against, will act with hostility toward, and will send a host of agents of destruction against Israel. . . . But there is no mention of abandoning them. On the contrary, Yahweh affirms that he will not reject () or loathe () them to destroy them.” For more on the dating of Leviticus 26 and the complicated question of the fate of the covenant in exile according to the priestly authors and the sixth-century prophets, see Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27 2337–46, 2363–65; Levine, Baruch A., “The Epilogue to the Holiness Code: A Priestly Statement on the Destiny of Israel,” in Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (ed. Neusneretal, Jacob.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 9–34.Google Scholar While Milgrom rejects most of Levine's claims of exilic interpolations in Leviticus 26, he concedes (2365) that 26:44 is to be dated to the exilic period.

34 See Neh 9:14 for the implicit equation of the Sabbath with the entire corpus of Sinaitic law.

35 On the transformation of the Israelites from Pharaoh's slave to God's, see Lev 25:42, 55, and note the occurrence of the root in Ex 1:13–14 and Lev 25:43, 46, 53. On the Sabbath and its prohibition of labor as a sign of God's selection of Israel, see Ex 31:13–14, Ezek 20:12, 20. On these themes see further Knohl, Sanctuary 14–19, 44, 163, 187; Joosten, People and Land 93–101; Amit, “Creation” *13–*29. A particularly important discussion of the role of the Exodus from Egypt within the theology of H may be found in Joosten, Jan, “Covenant Theology in the Holiness Code,” Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 4 (1998) 145–64.Google Scholar See also Levinson, Bernard M., “The Birth of the Lemma: The Restrictive Interpretation of the Covenant Code's Manumission Law by the Holiness Code (Leviticus 25:44–46),” JBL 124 (2005) 617–39.Google Scholar

36 See Knohl, Sanctuary 196.