Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Exodus 22:25

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Exodus 22:25

- Hello, everybody. I’m glad to be in touch with you and feel your presence online. I’ll try to keep as calm as I can despite all the anxiety whirling around, and the best, I suppose antidote is to focus on study, on Torah, and take my mind off everything else. So we start with Chapter 22, and Chapter 22 has a very important principle of ethical behaviour when it comes to self-defense. Very relevant. It starts off like this, “If in secret,” the term literally means to tunnel in, is to, but it is to do something deceptively, and, “and the thief is found trying to come into your house.” So he’s tunnelling in, or coming in some other way into your house. And you defend yourself, you attack the man, you kill him, you are not guilty of murder. Now, that sounds a very broad statement. Recent years, in parts of the so-called civilised world, there have been a lot of debates about how you can defend yourself. And in America, one couple who simply stood at the entrance to their house with guns in their hand were prosecuted, even though they didn’t fire them, and this was considered to be going beyond the bounds of self-defense. So it’s a highly topical subject, this one. But what’s interesting is that verse two qualifies it, and it qualifies it in a very ambiguous and unusual way. It says, “If the sun has risen,” on the situation, and he kills him, he is guilty, and , he must pay, and if he hasn’t got the money to pay compensation, he is considered to be responsible. Now, what the rabbis were concerned is that this should, doesn’t seem to make sense, if it’s a matter of daylight or sunlight or darkness, surely the issue is if a person fears for his life, or her life, and they come and they interpret this in a very different way.

They interpret it to say this. if the situation is as clear as the sun’s presence, as clear as daylight, that this guy is genuinely trying to kill you, you fear for your life, you may shoot in self-defense. But if it’s not clear, if you are uncertain, you can’t assume that anybody breaking in wants to kill you, they may just be breaking into steal, and therefore to kill them for that would not be legitimate. So it’s a question of, what are the grounds for self-defense? Can you just kill anybody because you think they might be coming at you, or can you fire only when you’re absolutely certain that your life is in danger? And so this is an example of, shall we say, the oral law, rabbinic interpretation, trying to clarify what it means. This is not a question of, at night you can shoot, at daytime you can’t. It’s, what are the circumstances? But in principle, you may kill somebody if you fear for your life, because that is self-defense. Now, what happens? Here we’re talking about the context of somebody breaking in, and usually to steal, and that’s why the next line is about stealing, and that in itself clarifies the first statement. In other words, this is a thief breaking in. Now, normally when thieves break in, they only break in in order to steal, but if you fear they might do more, then you may defend yourself. Verse three goes like this, when a thief does break in, and he does steal stuff from you, and if it is still in his possession, from an ox to a donkey to a sheep, and he is found in possession of them, he must pay twice compensation. So the fine for stealing something is to have a payment of what is called “kefel”, double, a double amount as a fine for stealing.

Now the interesting thing is, if you remember last week, we talked about what happens when somebody is dealing with stealing an ox or a sheep. And in stealing an ox and a sheep, the fine, the fine can often be very steep. But why is there a difference between an ox and a sheep? Why is one five and the other one is four? And the answer the rabbis try to give is, there are different reasons. One of them is, look, an ox is much more valuable. An ox isn’t just a food, it’s also a working animal. Whereas a sheep is not necessarily, or a goat, a working animal. The other one is, that with a sheep you can carry it on your shoulders and run away, with an ox it’s much more difficult, and therefore, in a sense it’s a greater crime for an ox, big stuff, than it is for a small one. Here, what’s interesting is, all animals are put on the same level. They’re saying, if they are found in his possession, whether it’s an ox or a donkey or a sheep, and they’re still alive, then , he has to pay this double lot. The question of course is, what happens if he’s killed them already? And, can we find them? Can we not find them? Shelly has said that under US law there wouldn’t be a fine for stealing, there would be jail time, a thief may kill so that there is no witness to the theft and he doesn’t have to go to jail. Well, that’s very interesting, because in Jewish law, the punishment for theft is, you must pay back, either pay back the full amount, or work to pay it back. The idea of kefer, of double, is a moral fine. In other words, it’s a fine for your moral dereliction of morality, it’s not part of the compensation packet so much as a matter of morality.

Romaine says, “Clarity and ethics can cause confusion, how does the Torah address this? Thank you.” Well, that’s the very question, yes, there is a constant battle between ethics, clarity and the law, which is why in the discussion in the Torah all the time about the right behaviour, you have two words that are repeated tsedek and mishpat. Mishpat means the law. The law has to be obeyed, but the law has to be obeyed in combination with kindness, justice and an ethical point of view. So to give a silly example, which I’ve given before, so forgive me for repeating it, somebody who steals bread in order to feed his family and comes before the court, the court must find him guilty because he has stolen somebody else’s property, that is a crime. But at the same time, the judge has a moral obligation to see that this man’s family are not starving. So there you have the interaction between the ethics and the law. In the Torah, uniquely, law does not stand by itself. So let’s move on now to a different subject, which in a sense goes back to an earlier one, and that is ki aver, in number verse number four, . Literally this means, if a man consumes a field or a vineyard, but normally men don’t go into vineyards to consume the hole or to do damage, they will go in maybe to eat something. And so, this is talking about animals doing damage under, in a sense, the responsibility of the owner.

Now, last week we began this issue of animal damages. And I pointed out that in the Talmud in the volume called Bava Kamma, the first gate of civil law, it opens with a discussion of damages. What are the categories of damage? There is the shore, the ox, the guy we dealt with last week. There is the bor, the pit, the thing we dealt with last week. There is the yaaver here. And yaaver means, essentially, here in this context, when an animal goes into a field and eats and causes damage and destroys. So it’s destruction in that sense. Some people say that this in the Gemara argument refers to tooth, that is eating, as opposed to the previous example which was goring. But there is another interpretation of this word in the Gemara, and that is to do with fire, something that could move, unlike a pit which is static, and this is where we get the idea of, let’s say shooting arrows that go damage somewhere else, a fire that starts in your house and then leads to another house, who is responsible for that? So these are the four general principles of damage. This one here is now dealing with livestock eating. And again, the question is, are we going to be able to find a reason for splitting these laws into two sections? So going back to number four, to begin with, if a man causes, and that’s the conventional translation, although it’s not literal, causes his animals to go into somebody else’s field, and he allows his animals to go there, and they’re grazing and having a good time, and he doesn’t have to feed them, they might have been starting to eat in one field, which was his property, but then he allows ‘em to go into another field next door to it, which is somebody else’s, he has to pay compensation with the best quality of crops that he has. Now, this is another very interesting idea, that in judging compensation, particularly in matters of agriculture, but not necessarily so, there are three different standards of quality of crop. There’s itit, the best, there’s beinani, the average and there’s iburit, the worst. Now, when we’re getting compensation, what do we compensate with, the best, the average? Which would seem logical in one sense. Or the worst? And so, here the Torah is specifically saying, there is clearly a difference between compensation, and that is a difference between the quality of the field he at, you can’t expect compensation at highest quality food when really all he’s eating is the worst, the least possible and the badly cultivated. So we then say that in number four, he has to pay from the best of what he has when it comes to compensation.

Number five, we have the final category of damages. When fire spreads, and spreads into somebody else’s field and consumes their corn. But this is, interestingly enough, differentiating the different kinds of corn in the field. There is gadish, which has several meanings, one of them is that it’s already been cut down and is being stacked. Another is kamar, it’s still growing out of the ground. Or, indeed it is, this is the one that is standing, as opposed to gadish, or sader, or it is just generally damaging what’s growing and cultivating even at a low level in the field, even the shoots that are only just coming out. So you have these different levels of compensation, and we say that , that the person has to pay the person who owned the animals, or who caused the damage initially, if it’s not animals, let’s say it’s an arrow, or a rocket, the person who set the rocket off, and that’s very relevant at the moment, of course is responsible for the consequences. So here we’ve had these four categories of damages, that they are, in a sense representative of different kinds of damage that we would find today, we would judge damages, judges would judge damages on certain conditions, circumstances, and then also come to conclusions about compensation. Except of course in the United States of America, the damages can be so ridiculous, billions and millions and millions and millions, that they seem to have lost all control of logic and legal common sense. Shelly asks again, “Is the best of your field in verse four, supposed to be a deterrent?” No, it’s not supposed to be a deterrent, deterrent is paying back in compensation. It’s supposed simply to mean you have to pay with the best quality that you have, if we are talking about agriculture.

Or alternatively, if the damage is not to a field, it’s damage to a car or anything like that, you have to put it right, pay for the repairs, and pay for the best quality repairs, not pay for some guy who’s just an amateur to fix your car for you. So all these laws have a relevance to us today, even if they talk about oxen and sheep and so forth. So let’s go on then to the next. This now is the beginning of a series of laws about what happens when either you lend something to somebody else, or you rent something to somebody else, or there is some other transaction in which your property comes into the possession of another person. And the question then is, is that person being paid to look after this, or is he just doing a favour? Because there’s a difference. If he’s doing a favour, we don’t treat it as seriously as we would if the person was doing this for money. So let’s start with number six. When a person gives his neighbour kesef or kelim, silver or vessels, b'shmor to look after, and they are stolen, if the thief is found, then , he pays this regular compensation of double. So the owner is not responsible, the thief is responsible, but the implication is, if this is l'shmor, he is just a shomer, for safekeeping, and they’re stolen, you can’t really blame him if they were legitimately stolen, because his job is simply to look after it. So you have the shomer, the person who is looking after something, and it is for free. If the thief cannot be found, then nevertheless the shomer has to appear before the judges. And here you have the use of Elohim as being clearly judges, not just God. But on the other hand, as he is going to do, he is going to have to take an oath. And an oath is something you take before God, you swear to God that you have not done anything wrong. Now, in those days this was a very important way of finding evidence to take an oath, because they took oaths very, very seriously.

Taking an oath was taking God’s name in vain, which in those days was a serious offence. Now, not as much as it was once upon a time, but nevertheless, this is how, in those days, they were able to get more evidence by bringing pressure to bear on somebody who they hope or want to confess. So this is an important tool that is used in the Torah, and of course this tool, as you can see, has been handed down from the Bible to the judicial system, where you have to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which of course nowadays, people don’t take as seriously as they used to once upon a time. So here we have a situation where, in verse seven, the thief is not found, the person who was looking after this object appears before the judges, and he takes an oath, that that he personally did not have anything to do with this. He didn’t himself steal it, he didn’t invite somebody else to steal it, he is in no way responsible for this theft, and therefore he can’t be held responsible. And then the Torah goes on to clarify what this idea of taking an oath is. And it says in verse eight, for any kind of error, mistake or crime, anything that’s done, something wrong has been done. Whether it’s to do with , whether it’s to do with an ox or an ass, or a sheep, or a garment, or any kind of object that is missing, when somebody can say, this is the object here we are talking about, this is the object that is missing, they go before the judges again, both of them will come together and , and whoever the judges find is guilty, then he will have to pay twice as a fine, in other words, to the neighbour. But we use the oath to try to determine who was responsible, who is guilty. Is it the owner, is it the carer? What is it?

And similarly, in verse nine, if a man hands over an ox, or a donkey or an ox or a sheep, or any kind of animal to keep , and the animal dies in his possession, or nishbar, or is injured, or nishba, is carried off and stolen, cattle thieves, and there’s nobody to see, once again, they both have to take an oath that neither 'em are responsible, , and the owner has to take that as the reality. There’s no evidence that the other guy did wrong, and therefore there is no penalty. If somebody’s prepared to swear “I didn’t do wrong”, then we are prepared to accept that. Whereas , but if the animal was actually stolen by the guy who was looking after it and that emerges, then obviously he must pay compensation. On the other hand, , if the animal was killed by a wild beast, a lion jumped on it, then he must bring evidence, and he doesn’t have to repay or replace the animal that was killed, because wild animals attacking are beyond his control. So you have these different degrees of taking oaths in order to clarify what actually happened. So these are cases that we are dealing with what we call somebody who is looking after an object for somebody else, not being paid for it, he’s doing a favour, but nevertheless the animal is gone, it’s disappeared, it’s stolen, that’s what we deal with. Now we come to, in verse 13, another example. If a man actually borrows. So he is not actually saying, look after this for me, he asks, I want to borrow this object from you. Borrow the lawnmower, and it is broken, or dies if it’s an animal, and it’s not around anymore, you have to pay compensation. Because, the guy’s doing you a favour, something has gone wrong with it, and therefore, you are responsible for it. But that is only if they were not there at the time. But if this happened while the owners were there, they were standing together in the field, . But if it was hired for payment, then , he has to pay for the damages. So you have these different categories.

You’ve got the person who merely looks after something, you’ve got the person who borrows something, and then you’ve got the person who rents something. These are the different categories. There are two things I want to go back on at this particular moment, before we get into a different category of damages. One of them is, you will have noticed that the Torah keeps on switching. One moment, it’s , the next minute it’s , the next minute it’s . And obviously the question rises as to whether these aren’t just three different writers writing this law, and the rabbis get round this by saying, no, the whole point of this is to say we’re dealing with livestock, we’re dealing with heavy livestock, medium-sized livestock, animals that are used for draught, for carting things, like horses. But we’re not going to mention a horse, 'cause it’s not a kosher animal here. Mind you, a chamor is not a kosher animal, but probably it’s because chamor was the most common animal around at that time, horses were a rarity, and usually only used by aristocrats. And it’s all kinds of animals, domesticated animals, that might be in some way taken, and this of course would include chickens and other animals of that kind. So that’s one issue. But the other issue, which Philip has raised, isn’t it a long shot to translate Elohim as judges? Well, in one sense you might say it is, but in the other sense, the term is used so often when we are talking about people interacting with people, and people needing clarification by a judiciary. Now, God is, in a sense not a judge, at least not in terms of humans and running their legal system constitutionally. So how would you go to God? Well, possibly you might go to God by turning up at the temple and going to the high priests.

But usually when that happens, and in other parts of the Torah, as we are going to see, this does happen, it specifies appearing before the priests. And so, if you are not appearing before the priests, then the only other people you can appear before are going to be other humans who are in this position of authority. So in this sense, the word Elohim does not just mean God, it means authority. Having dealt with this particular area, we now go on to another one which I always find problematic, and we’re moving away from the rigidity of civil law, if you like, to another one which is allied to it, and that is sexual damage, issues such as rape, issues such as seduction, issues such as breaking a marriage contract. This is mentioned several times. And so in this particular case, only one issue is being mentioned, because this is the issue of, in a sense, deception, and we’ve been dealing with lying, deception and theft. The question of rape is going to come under a different section which deals with physical assault on another body. I a man seduces a virgin, not rape here, we’re not talking about rape. Rape has a different word altogether in Hebrew. If a man seduces a virgin, she’s not been engaged, so there’s been no contract that is going to be violated with somebody else, it’s a seduction, he lies with her, sleeps with her, he has to marry her. Now, this raises a whole lot of issues. How can you force somebody to marry if she doesn’t want to?

And isn’t a person being rewarded by saying you must marry her? And what is the difference between whether she is orasah, engaged, or not engaged? So the way of looking at this is to say, that in that period of time, a virgin, a young girl, was part of a family, and until she becomes a fully fledged independent woman, that is to say she reaches majority at 12 and a half, she is the possession, in a sense, still of the father. And technically that applied in biblical times to the boy as well, until 13 he was not independent, at 13 he was independent. Nowadays we have a different world altogether, because people stay with their parents much longer than reaching sexual maturity, and there is a term that’s used in the Talmud, when you are dependent on your father’s table. If you are dependent on the home, then you still have to do what the homeowner tells you. At the same time, the question of whether he can compel you to get married is a different matter. We are going to see later on that although a father can, underage girls, engage them to another family, they don’t get married until they reach majority, it’s a kind of a commitment, long-term engagement, but when they reach majority, then they have the right to say, I don’t want to marry this guy. Whether fathers in India and other places like that would agree to that, is a different matter, but that was the the law at the biblical time. So in verse 15, we’ve had this seducer, the seducer must marry her. But what happens if the father doesn’t want to? He says, I don’t like this guy, I think he’d be very bad for her, I think he’s a criminal, the horrible guy. So if the father refuses to give her to him, and indeed if she refuses, he that is the seducer has to pay financial compensation, because father will get much less for his daughter if she’s not a virgin, than he would if she is a virgin.

So there are, and were in those days, financial ramifications. We might not like that today, and of course nowadays we abide by civil laws, and no longer by religious laws, but nevertheless, this does establish a certain principle that don’t go around seducing young ladies. It also works on the assumption that there wasn’t sex before marriage. And until recently of course, that was also part of civil law, that if a person breaks his agreement to marry somebody, then he has to pay compensation, and is found guilty of a crime. We now move out of that area altogether. And you’ll notice that in the text in front of us, you have a strange letter in Hebrew in brackets, and that strange letter in brackets is the letter samech, and samech stands for . And there are only two forms of, shall we say, grammatical distinction in the text of the Torah we have. When you open the text of the Torah and you see these columns in writing, there is no punctuation, no grammatical signs that are obvious. There are only two, there’s when a paragraph ends open, and when a paragraph ends closed. That is to say, it is the visual gap that says, this is a different paragraph. Usually the different paragraph is a change of subject, but not necessarily. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. And here where you have the letter samech at the end of a Hebrew line, that means it’s closed, there’s no gap, one thing runs right into the other, it’s all to be taken as part of a whole. Even though you might think these things are not connected, the fact is they are connected, and they’re connected, as we earlier learned, because they are a religious crime, as well as a civil crime.

Q&A and Comments:

Sorry, I’m just looking at the questions to see if there’s anything else.

Q: “Would you review what the four categories of damages are?”

A: Yes, the four damages are shor, the ox, bor, the pit, maaver is when, and by the way, shor the ox is when an ox gores, it’s either goring or a pushing over, attacking, it’s an assault. Whereas the third one, maaver, meaning tooth, is when animals cause damage doing what they do normally, naturally you can’t expect them to do anything else, if a cow gets into somebody else’s field, of course it’s going to eat. And the last one, hever, which is normally accepted as meaning fire, the fire burning, but also some opinions in the Gemara was it was more a question of tooth as opposed to fire. But those are the four categories, essentially. There’s ox, there’s pit, there is an animal that eats, and there is fire that moves out from one place to another. And so we come to 17. 17 has always upset me. It is . And you’ll notice, the English translation here says, “Do not tolerate,” as opposed to do not let her live. Now, if it would be she has to be killed, then the term would be, as we are going to see shortly, the death penalty should apply. But here, that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that women, sorry, it’s not fair to only use the term woman, this applies to any form of magic, should not be part of your community. We don’t want magic to determine, or indeed superstition to determine how you behave.

Now this is very clear, and time and time again the Torah is going to go on saying, don’t pay any attention to sooth sailors, to magicians, to witches, to any of these kinds of people. And so is a general term to somebody who deceives, because it is a form of deception. In Hebrew, you call it grabbing you and distracting you while the magic goes on. And this is a fundamental principle, and yet it is amazing that in Judaism today, there’s so much superstition, there’s so much relying on hocus pocus. I just don’t get it, all evil eyes and curses, and all kinds of things like that people pay a lot of attention to. But you know, in the United States of America, astrology is the most popular item in the press, and online, for people trying to find solutions to their problems. So we haven’t progressed in 3000 years. 18 is the next one here. If you have sex with an animal, this is considered to be a capital offence. But again, I find this a problem. If humans are humans, and some have different tastes, that’s their business. But nevertheless, this is another way of saying, we consider this to be the sort of behaviour that normal, good human beings do not participate in.

And similarly , in 19, that somebody who worships other sacrifices to other gods should be put in cherem. Cherem means, essentially, not excommunication, which is something that Christianity has, and apparently was applied to Spinoza, but there’s an argument about that. Cherem means we don’t want you here, go somewhere else, this is not how we want our particular community to run. And that was considered the major punishment to give, just get out of town, you want to do something, do it somewhere else, don’t do it here. But having said that, and having gone through all these civil damages, we now come in verse 20, without a break, to something which has got nothing to do with compensation, with punishment, with fines, with justice. This is one of 23, 23 different references in the Torah, to the stranger. In verse 20, “Not only should you do wrong,” is a term that’s used in the Torah to mean make somebody feel uncomfortable, is when you insult or humiliate somebody with words. So don’t make somebody feel unwanted. Don’t put pressure on him, don’t oppress the stranger Because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Now, a geir, a stranger.

In fact, in the Torah, the Torah does not make any distinction between a stranger who is non-Jewish and a stranger who is Jewish and converted. The term converting doesn’t appear in this period, there’s no such phrase, there’s just the alien, or somebody from outside who is coming to live in your society. After all, the Jews in Egypt did not convert to another religion, they remained Jews, but they were called geirim, because the term geir means to spend time somewhere without being a permanent resident. And so this is a general statement about somebody, an outsider, somebody who’s not one of yours, being made to feel uncomfortable. Now, if you bear in mind how often you hear that kids from different backgrounds in schools are made to feel unwanted, unwelcome, are teased, are bullied, this seems to be a fundamental feature of human beings, that we are bullies, that we have capacity for bullying. And so, it’s very important that the Torah is saying, I don’t want you to bully people or make them feel uncomfortable. And not only the stranger, but , a widow and an orphan, who are both in an inferior position, they’re made to feel unwanted, either because the husband has died, they have no means of support, they need charity, and the yatom, and the orphan, has no father, it is our obligation not to make them feel uncomfortable and to help them. This is a very fundamental principle.

And in verse 22, it goes further, and it says, if you do oppress somebody in this category, somebody who is weaker than you, poorer than you, if they cry out to God, it is so painful that they cry in suffering, then anybody who does that, their wives will become widows, their sons will become orphans. Now, this is rather hard to accept, but remember that the Torah consistently uses threats to try to get people to toe the line, and because people were very worried about whether God approved in those days, nowadays, not so much. This is another way of saying two things. One of them is, I consider, God considers this a very, very important fundamental principle, and the other thing is saying, God does not approve of you for doing something like this. So these words extend the depth of feeling in the Torah to anybody who oppresses another person, whether they are a non-Jew coming from the outside, or whether they’re a Jew within the community who’s fallen on hard times, or is made to feel an outsider, or somebody who is unwanted. Let me just have a check again to look at the other questions that have cropped up.

Romaine says, “This seems to be a mixture of subtle moral behaviour,” subtle moral behaviour, such as kindness to a stranger, angry edicts of justice. Yes, precisely, that’s what it is. And that’s why the Torah constantly uses different words to describe its rules. There is, as I mentioned, doing the right thing, tsedek, mishpat, doing the legal thing that you have to do, then you have the idea of chesed, of kindness. All these three ideas are constantly interconnected, and that’s why they are dotted through the text, and not put as a one single separate area, but in order to emphasise the importance for everything.

Q: “Wasn’t having sex one of the ways of getting married in biblical times?” If so, the girl would’ve had the right to think that having sex with this man meant he was marrying her.

A: You use the words deception. Shelly, that is an absolutely excellent point, without any question it’s an excellent point. Yes, having sex was one of the ways of acquiring a wife. The three that are mentioned in the Talmud, but mentioned here, kesef, one of them is kesef, shtar and bi'er. Kesef, you could acquire a wife through giving her money, paying compensation, that’s where the ring comes from, originally. Shtar is through a document which protects her rights and defines her status. And sex is having sex. The rabbis, when they were discussing these biblical laws, add the line that we would give to anybody who tried to marry somebody simply by having sex, so clearly they did not approve of that idea whatsoever. But you raise an interesting point about what the girl would think, and therefore you are right that this could well be, and could and should, and does apply to deception. That’s why the word yifateh is used in describing this law. If you go back to the, verse 15 here it says, “If a man seduces,” and that is, deceives in some way, the woman, not in simply persuading her to have sex with him, but it’s more, it is an actual act of seduction and deception.

So thank you everybody, that’s where we’ll call it a day for this week, and hope to see you again next week.