Did Moses Become Celibate?

For a survey of traditional approaches with an emphasis on Philo’s reading, see Elad Filler, “Moses and the Kushite Woman: Classic Interpretations and Philo's Allegory,” TheTorah (2018).

Sifrei Numbers 99, Midrash Tanchuma, Warsaw ed., Tzav 13.

This midrash is found in a number of places. See e.g. b. Shabbat 87a. There it is claimed that Moses had decided on his own to become celibate, but God endorsed this plan by saying, “you remain here with Me.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. Joseph Kaspi.

For more on his exegesis, see Avigail Rock, פרשנות המקרא של רבי יוסף אבן כספי: דרכי הפרשנות ומהדורה מדעית מבוארת של מצרף הכסף לבראשית [R. Yosef Ibn Kaspi's Biblical Exegesis: Exegetical Methodology and a Critical Annotated Edition of Mazref la-Kesef on Genesis] (Ph.D dissertation: Bar-Ilan University, 2007).

Ibn Kaspi also writes at length against the explanation proffered by Onkelos and others that Cushite woman means beautiful woman. For simplicity’s sake, I have quoted here only ibn Kaspi’s criticism of the midrashic interpretation of the verb לקח (to take or to marry), and not his criticism of the midrashic reinterpretation of the adjective Cushite.

An allusion to the comment found more than once in the final section of Judges (e.g. 18:1) about how the Israelites behaved without a king.

While ibn Kaspi does not mention Rashi by name in this comment, in other passages he ridicules Rashi’s Torah commentary. See Eric Lawee, Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), especially p. 253.

An allusion to Gen 18:25.

Presumably an allusion to Christians and the New Testament.

There is obvious hyperbole here but the major criticism stands. Saying that the text does not report the divorce, that it reports the marriage, and that Miriam and Aaron were upset about the divorce that was not reported and not about the marriage that was reported is hard to accept as a peshat reading.

While he does not say so explicitly, perhaps he is alluding to the Talmudic saying (b. Sukkah 52a) “כל הגדול מחברו יצרו גדול הימנו—anyone who is greater than another has a greater [sexual] drive."

Philo (Hypothetica 11) and Josephus (Jewish War 2.120–121, Ant. 18.21) both claim that the Essenes were celibate, though it is debated whether this is really reflected in the evidence from Qumran. See, for example, the discussion in Paul Heger, “Celibacy in Qumran Hellenistic Fiction or Reality? Qumran's Attitude toward Sex,” Revue de Qumrân 26.1 (2013): 53–90.

See, for example, Rabbi Yosef Karo’s comment: מצות פרי' ורבי' גדלה עד לשמים ואין ערוך אליה בכל המצות—the mitzvah of procreation is a mitzvah as lofty as the heavens, greater than all the other mitzvot (Responsa, Laws of Ketubbot 14).

See e.g. b. Ketubbot 61b and Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Ishshut chapter 14.

The Franciscans, founded just a few decades before ibn Kaspi’s birth, included “the Order of Friars Minor,” which ibn Kaspi renders here as צעיר.  The word דורש is ibn Kaspi’s term for the “preaching friars,” the Dominicans.  I am grateful to my friend, Professor Daniel Lasker, who helped me decipher these terms correctly. Ibn Kaspi often confronts Christians and their Bible interpretations in his commentary. See e.g. his commentary to Gen 1:26 and Gen 49:10, and see Shalom Tzadik, “מוסר טבעי ותורת משה בהגות של ר' יוסף אבן כספי” [Natural Law and the Law of Moses in the Thought of R. Josef Ibn Kaspi] Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah 83 (2017): 161-174.

Commentary to Gen 35:22. Kimhi may have been influenced by Abraham ibn Ezra who, toward the end of his life after he had been living in Christian Europe for many years, claimed that Gen 35:22 teaches that Jacob became celibate. He writes: הניח הצאן והתבודד לעבוד את ה' ולא שכב עם אשה—he stopped tending sheep, he secluded himself to worship God and he stopped sleeping with women (יסוד מורא וסוד תורה, ed. by Joseph Cohen and Uriel Simon, second edition [Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2007], p. 151). See also ibn Ezra’s shittah aheret commentary on Gen 35:22 (in Mikraot Gedolot ha-Keter, ed. by M. Cohen, pp. 84-85).

Nahmanides’ comment deals with a medieval debate about what happens to Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11. A number of medieval Jewish commentators (e.g., Radak, Ralbag, Abarbanel) say that she was not killed, but became, essentially, an Israelite nun, who dedicated herself to serving God. That, they say, is why the Bible emphasizes that “she never knew a man” (Judg 11:39). See discussion in, Elisheva Baumgarten, "‘Remember That Glorious Girl’: Jephthah's Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture,” Jewish Quarterly Review 97 (2007): 180-209. Nahmanides vehemently rejects this interpretation of the Jephthah story, ואלה דברי רוח, “this interpretation is folly” (commentary to Num 27:29). His argument, essentially, is that if it were a story about a woman who remained celibate and dedicated her life to the service of God, there would be nothing lamentable about such a decision:

ח"ו שיהיה חק בישראל לתנות לבת יפתח ארבעת ימים בשנה מפני שלא נשאת לבעל והיתה עובדת את ה' בטהרה.

God forbid that [we interpret] that they chanted dirges for Jephthah’s daughter four days every year (see Jud 11:40) because she never married but served God in purity.

David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979), 27.

Another way, as Berger shows, was to claim, perhaps with some justification, that not all the allegedly celibate Christian clerics were celibate.

Very unromantically he writes: “המעשה ההוא הכרחי בטבע לנו, כהרקת המקוה והרקת המעים, אין הבדל ביניהם כלל אצל הטבע—[Sexual] activity is necessary for our nature, just like urinating and defecating. From the point of view of the nature of human beings there is no difference.” Maimonides also promoted this approach to sexuality, which originated with Aristotle. For a strident Jewish critique of this approach, see the commentary of Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal; 1800-1865) to Exod 21:10.

This is also the view of Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir; c. 1080-c. 1160), who cites a bizarre midrash from a controversial collection, Divrei ha-Yamim shel Moshe Rabbenu (The Chronicle of Moses, our Teacher) that says that Moses served as king in the land of the Cushites for 40 years and married a queen there, but never consummated the marriage. Rashbam himself spoke out against this collection in his commentary to Exod 4:10. Yet here he cites it approvingly. Ibn Ezra (longer commentary to Exod 2:22) also rejected the legitimacy of this midrash collection. The text of Divrei ha-Yamim shel Moshe Rabbenu is found in Adolph Jellinek ed., Beit ha-Midrash, volume 2 (reprint edition Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1967), pp. 1-11. The specific story about Moses’ reign as king in the land of the Cushites is on pages 6-7. Aside from the fact that this midrash is far from the plain meaning of Scripture, it does not readily solve the textual problems. See the discussion in my Rashbam’s Commentary on Leviticus and Numbers (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2001), pp. 199-202, and in Sarah Kamin, “The Polemic Against Allegory in the Commentary of Rabbi Joseph Bechor Shor,” in Jews and Christians Interpret the Bible (second edition, Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), Hebrew section pp. 89-112.

Before ibn Kaspi, this interpretation of the syntax had appeared in the Bible commentary of Rabbi Joseph Bekhor Shor (end of the 12^th century). It also underlies Rashbam’s understanding of these four words. On Rashbam’s understanding of this phrase, see my Rabbi Samuel ben Meir’s Commentary on Genesis (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1989), pp. 420-421, and my Rashbam’s Commentary on Leviticus and Numbers, p. 199. ibn Kaspi was probably not acquainted with the commentaries of either Rashbam or Bekhor Shor.

This second understanding is followed by the New Jewish Publication Society, in the translation quoted at the beginning of this essay.