a small drash on the wood-gatherer

[cellio]

Saturday morning the torah-study group got to the passage in Sh'lach L'cha about the man who was found gathering wood on Shabbat (Num 15:32+). They find him, bring him to Moshe and Aharon, and God pronounces a death sentence. (I assume this passage is part of the proof-text for the 39 categories of forbidden work on Shabbat, though I know that mostly comes from the tasks involved in building the mishkan.)

Later, in the talmud, the rabbis will interpret capital punishment in such a way that it's nearly impossible to actually execute someone. (Rabbi Akiva said that a court that executes one person in 70 years is a bloodthirsty court.) Tractate Sanhedrin gives the following conditions that must apply before a capital case can proceed: there must be two eye-witnesses (circumstantial evidence doesn't count); they must warn the person that he is about to commit a capital offense; he must acknowledge this and state he intends to do it anyway; they must see him do it very soon thereafter. (There are other requirements about the composition of the court, the questioning of witnesses, and the implementation of the sentence, too.)

If I understand the process correctly, the rabbinic and midrashic process is such that because this is the law and this person was actually executed, then all of that must have happened even though the torah doesn't tell us about it. (That's ok; there's lots of stuff the written torah doesn't tell us directly.) So if that's the case, and if this isn't just a parable inserted into the torah, then how could there be any question? Why did the men not know how to proceed, and why did Moshe have to turn to God for a judgement?

That wasn't actually my question on reading this. The question back-formed when I noticed a detail.

A small thing in the Hebrew caught my eye. Where it says that the people who found the man brought him to Moshe and Aharon, the verb is "karov" (or maybe slightly different vowels, but that's the word). This word means "bring" as used here, but it also means "draw near". There is a movement in Orthodox Judaism today called "kiruv", which is all about bringing non-observant Jews closer to Judaism. This is what the Lubavichers are doing when they approach people on the street during Sukkot and ask if they've shaken the lulav today, or when they hand out Chanukah kits in December, and so on. But the real work of the kiruv movement, as I understand it, runs deeper: invite people to spend a Shabbat (or several) with you and they may see the beauty of Shabbat and work harder to achieve it themselves next time. Or something like that.

So in modern Hebrew, at least, there is a sense of "outreach" in this word, of helping the person become closer to God in the only ways available to us now that we don't have the temple. Remember the temple offerings? The word for that is "korban". Same word, and that's biblical Hebrew. So I think this is a legitimate connection in the text.

I had always read this story with the witnesses as accusers or police or something of that sort. But maybe that's not it at all. Per rabbinic process they already knew the rules, but maybe their appeal to Moshe and Aharon was one of kiruv, not judgement. Maybe they were saying something akin to "this person is obviously misguided; please help him".

If so, doesn't that make the decree even harsher? Whence repentance in all of this? But we aren't told anything about the man; had he repented (he had the opportunity to do so) the decree may have been averted. Maybe that's why Moshe and Aharon didn't act immediately but waited for judgement from God -- even though the man had (presumably) already acknowledged warnings from the witnesses, they wanted to give him one last chance.

I have no idea if this is a legitimate interpretation, and I'm not advocating it so much as noting the possibility, but there it is.

The story comes right after a passage telling us "one law for everyone" and right before the commandment to wear tzitzit as a reminder of the mitzvot (this is the second paragraph after the Sh'ma in the service). In the next chapter, Korach and his band will lead a fateful rebellion against the authority of Moshe and Aharon.