Land or Torah: What Binds Israel as a Nation?

This fundamental question lies at the heart of two stories: God suspending Mount Sinai over the Israelites to compel them to accept the Torah, and Joshua, with the Jordan River suspended over the Israelites, compelling them to accept mutual responsibility for each other's private sins.

Dr.

Tzvi Novick

Dr.

Tzvi Novick

Categories:

Shavuot

Land or Torah: What Binds Israel as a Nation?

Mutual Covenantal Responsibility at Sinai

The famous rabbinic dictum has it that כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה “all Israelites are guarantors one for the other,” or in other words, that each is responsible to "pay" for the sin of the other.^[1] But what is the extent of such responsibility? Under what circumstances does such responsibility arise? Rabbis reflecting on this question were drawn to Deut 29:28, which distinguishes between “concealed things” and “overt things.”

^{דברים כט:כח} הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַי־הוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ עַד עוֹלָם לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת כָּל דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת.

^{Deut 29:28} Concealed things are for the Lord our God; but overt things are for us and for our children ever, to do all the provisions of this Teaching.

On the basis of this verse, the Mekhilta of R. Ishmael (ba-hodesh 5, Horovitz-Rabin ed., p. 219) imagines that the Israelites at Mount Sinai negotiated with God about covenantal responsibility for “concealed things,” understood to mean hidden transgressions.

ר' אומר :להודיע שבחן של ישראל, שכשעמדו כולם לפני הר סיני לקבל את התורה, והשוו כולם לב אחד לקבל מלכות אלהים בשמחה. ולא עוד אלא שהיו ממשכנין זה על ידי זה.

Rabbi says: It^[2] comes to convey Israel’s praises, that when they all stood together before Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, they made their hearts as one to receive the kingdom of God with joy.^[3] And moreover, they made themselves collateral, one against the other.

ולא עוד אלא שנגלה הקב"ה לכרות עמהן ברית על הסתרים, שנאמר הנסתרות ליי' אלהינו. אמרו לו: על הגלויין אנו כורתין עמך ברית ואין אנו כורתין עמך על הסתרים שלא יהא אחד חוטא בסתר ויהא הציבור מתמסכין.^[4]

And moreover,^[5] the Holiness, blessed be He, revealed himself to covenant with them concerning the concealed things, as it is written (Deut 29:28), “Concealed things are for the Lord our God….” They said to him: Concerning the overt things we covenant with you, but we do not covenant with you concerning the concealed things, so that it should not be that one person sins in concealment and the congregation should be taken as collateral.^[6]

According to R. Judah the Patriarch, the Israelites at Sinai, in “receiving the kingdom of God,” unite together, and pledge themselves as collateral for each other. To serve as collateral for the other in this context evidently means to offer oneself as the locus of punishment for the other’s sin. Each Israelite gives God the legal right, as it were, to obtain satisfaction from one Israelite for the sin of another Israelite.^[7]

But the two parties to the covenant do not see eye to eye on the scope of this right. God wishes to have this covenantal responsibility extend even to sins committed in secret. The Israelites push back, and accept responsibility only for sins committed openly.^[8]

Collective Responsibility at Jericho

But the story does not end there. We find evidence in favor of mutual responsibility even for covert sins in Joshua 7. This chapter is set in the aftermath of Israel’s conquest of Jericho. God proscribes the spoils of Jericho, and marks them out for total destruction, but an Israelite named Achan clandestinely steals from them.

^{יהושע ז:א} וַיִּמְעֲלוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מַעַל בַּחֵרֶם וַיִּקַּח עָכָן בֶּן כַּרְמִי בֶן זַבְדִּי בֶן זֶרַח לְמַטֵּה יְהוּדָה מִן הַחֵרֶם וַיִּחַר אַף יְ־הוָה בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.

^{Josh 7:1} The Israelites, however, violated the proscription: Achan son of Carmi son of Zabdi son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of that which was proscribed, and the Lord was incensed with the Israelites.

Although the violation is committed by only one man, and in secret, the verse attributes the sin to “the Israelites” as a whole. Indeed, God exacts punishment from them all in the continuation of the chapter, when the Israelites are defeated in the battle against the city of Ai.^[9]

At some point after Sinai but before Achan’s crime, then, the Israelites must evidently have accepted interpersonal responsibility for concealed transgressions. But when precisely? According to the 3^rd century C.E. amora, R. Shimon ben Laqish (best known as Resh Laqish), it was when the Israelites crossed the Jordan River. To get to his point, we need to establish the context.

Acceptance of Responsibility at the Jordan River

Earlier in the book of Joshua, the Israelites cross through the Jordan River after it has split:

^{יהושע ג:טז} וַיַּעַמְדוּ הַמַּיִם הַיֹּרְדִים מִלְמַעְלָה קָמוּ נֵד אֶחָד הַרְחֵק מְאֹד (באדם) [מֵאָדָם] הָעִיר אֲשֶׁר מִצַּד צָרְתָן וְהַיֹּרְדִים עַל יָם הָעֲרָבָה יָם הַמֶּלַח תַּמּוּ נִכְרָתוּ וְהָעָם עָבְרוּ נֶגֶד יְרִיחוֹ.

^{Josh 3:16} The waters coming down from upstream piled up in a single heap a great way off, at Adam, the town next to Zarethan; and those flowing away downstream to the Sea of the Arabah (the Dead Sea) ran out completely. So the people crossed near Jericho.

This verse describes the way in which the Jordan River split: The river became blocked at the point at which the Israelites entered it, and the waters that flowed to that blockage point from upstream piled up to a great height. How high?

The Tosefta (t. Soṭ. 8:3) records a debate between R. Judah, who says that the waters stood 12 mil high, whereas according to R. Eleazar b. R. Shimon, the waters rose “upward and upward, domes (כיפין) upon domes, to (a height of) around three hundred mil.”

Responsibility to Dispossess the Canaanites (Tosefta)

The anonymous Tosefta continues as follows (t. Soṭ. 8:5):^[10]

עודן בירדן, אמ' להם יהושע: "דעו על מנת כן אתם נכנסין לארץ, שתורישו את יושביה, שנאמר, 'והורשתם את ישבי הארץ מפניכם ואבדתם וגו' ואם לא תורישו והיה כאשר דמיתי לעשות להם אעשה לכם.' ואם אין אתם מקבלין, באין מים ושוטפין אתכם."

They were yet in the Jordan. Joshua said to them: “On this condition are you entering the land, that you dispossess its inhabitants, as it is written, ‘And you shall dispossess [all] the inhabitants of the land; you shall destroy … But if you do not dispossess … ‘then what I planned to do to them, I will do to you.’ (Num 33:52, 55–56) And if you do not accept, the waters will come and flood you.”

According to the Tosefta, Joshua threatens the Israelites as they cross the Jordan: If they do not accept upon themselves the obligation to dispossess the Canaanites, then the waters that have been piling up—in “domes upon domes,” per the preceding section of the Tosefta—will overwhelm them.^[11]

Responsibility for Private Sins (Resh Laqish)

The Talmud Yerushalmi or Palestinian Talmud (y. Sot. 7:5 [22a]) quotes a version of the Tosefta passage, including the tradition of the piling up of the Jordan’s waters “dome upon dome.”^[12] What follows immediately afterward is, like t. Sot. 8:5, a story about a threat issued in the Jordan River, but the nature of the threat is different.

אמר רבי שמעון בן לקיש: "בירדן קיבלו עליהן את הנסתרות. אמר להן יהושע: 'אם אין אתם מקבלין עליכם את הנסתרות המים באין ושוטפין אתכם.'"

Said R. Shimon b. Laqish: “In the Jordan they accepted upon themselves the concealed acts. Said to them Joshua: ‘If you do not accept upon yourselves the concealed acts, the waters will come and flood you.’”

According to Resh Laqish’s revision of t. Sot. 8:5, Joshua in the Jordan compelled Israel under pain of death not to commit to dispossessing the Canaanites, but rather to accept that which, according to R. Judah the Patriarch, they refused to accept at Sinai: communal responsibility for concealed transgressions.^[13] The Talmud continues with the proof for Resh Laqish’s view, from the aforementioned case of Achan.

אמר רבי סימון בר זבדא: "ויאות. תדע לך שהוא כן, שהרי עכן חטא, ורובה של סנהדרין נפלה בעי."

Said R. Simon bar Zavda: “And it is reasonable. Know that it is so, for behold, Achan sinned and a majority of the Sanhedrin fell at Ai.”^[14]

Thus, if in the first stage of Israel’s covenantal history, at Sinai, the people accept responsibility only for sins committed openly, in the second stage, upon entering the land of Israel, they are compelled to accept responsibility also for concealed sins.

God Cancels Israel’s Responsibility

According to the continuation of the passage in the Yerushalmi, this new state of affairs does not endure forever.

אמר רבי לוי: "ביבנה הותרה הרצועה. יצתה בת קול ואמרה: 'אין לכם עסק בנסתרות'"

Said R. Levi: “At Yavneh, the strap was unknotted. An echo came forth and said: ‘You should have no truck with concealed things.’”

The strap is that which inflicts lashes, and for it to be unknotted is for it to be laid aside, so that there is no punishment for the crime in question.^[15] R. Levi asserts on the basis of an “echo”—though the words in fact come from the book of Ben Sira^[16]—that, at Yavneh, God frees Israel from responsibility for covert sins.

Why does God free Israel from responsibility for covert sins specifically at Yavneh? Likely because Yavneh stands, in the rabbinic imagination, for a new form of collective life after the destruction of the Temple. According to R. Levi, Israel maintains responsibility for covert sins until the destruction of the Temple and the consolidation of Jewish life around a new center—an exilic one, if not literally outside the land of Israel—namely, the rabbinic movement at Yavneh.

Communal Life in the Land of Israel

The implicit assumption of the narrative that we have traced, from Sinai to the Jordan River to Yavneh, is that corporate life in the land of Israel involves a categorically more intense form of community than does corporate life outside the land: Responsibility for covert sins only begins upon Israel’s entrance into the land of Israel, and ends with the destruction of the Temple.

A biblical precedent for this assumption is the priestly notion that Israelite sin can have a distinctive, collective effect in the land of Israel.^[17] Israelite sin can so pollute the sanctum that God must abandon it, and abandon his people to foreign conquest and exile.^[18]In this worldview, the Israelites have no choice but to be vigilant about ensuring that their fellow Israelites avoid sin. Nevertheless, the narrative reconstructed above does not reference the notion of defilement of the land.

Joshua’s Conditions

Instead, we may better appreciate the rabbis’ thinking by reference to a different tradition associated with Joshua, that of the “conditions under which Joshua bequeathed the land to Israel.”^[19] According to this tradition, Joshua conditioned the Israelites’ inheritance of the land on their willingness to accept certain rules, most of which set limits on private property rights. One condition, for example, gives individuals the right to gather grasses from anywhere, even another person’s field; another allows someone who is lost amidst vineyards to cut a path forward.^[20]

Both the institution of private property and the notion that mutual responsibility extends only to overt sins rest on the same assumption: Individuals are entitled to their own space, physical or religious, within which they may do as they choose, without the interference of or implications for the community. In both cases, Joshua, the foundational figure for collective Israelite existence in the land, qualifies this assumption. The community has a limited right to infringe on private property, and it has the obligation to ensure that individuals behave properly, even when concealed from the public.

The Bavli’s Suspended Sinai

Resh Laqish’s account of how God compelled the Israelites, in the Jordan River, to accept responsibility for covert sins, is strikingly similar to R. Avdimi’s famous retelling of the giving of the Torah at Sinai, in b. Shab. 88a.^[21]

"ויתיצבו בתחתית ההר". אמר רב אבדימי בר חמא בר חסא: "מלמד שכפה הקדוש ברוך הוא עליהם את ההר כגיגית, ואמר להם: 'אם אתם מקבלים התורה, מוטב, ואם לאו, שם תהא קבורתכם.'"

“And they took their places at the foot of (lit. under) the mountain” (Exod 19:17). Said R. Avdimi b. Hama b. Hasa: “It teaches that the Holiness, blessed be He, set the mountain over them like an overturned tub, and said to them: ‘If you accept the Torah, well and good, and if not, there will be your burial.’”^[22]

In both cases, there are looming masses, described using the root כפ"ף or כפ"ה: the towering waters of the Jordan River, piled “domes (כיפין) upon domes,” and Mount Sinai, set over Israel like an overturned (כפה) tub. Likewise, in both cases, God issues a death threat should Israel not accept a specified element of covenantal responsibility.^[23] We may readily conclude that the suspended mountain at Sinai is genealogically related to, and indeed likely dependent on, the towering waters of the Jordan River.^[24]

Entering the Land or Standing at Sinai?

There is arguably a certain polemical tension between the Bavli’s story of the suspended mountain, where what God compels Israel to accept is the Torah, and Resh Laqish’s account, where the crucial thing is instead collective responsibility for concealed sins in the course of collective life on the land.

At stake may be the question: What, ultimately, is the elemental glue that binds Israel into a people? When we read R. Avdimi’s story in light of that of Resh Laqish, he seems to wish to push back against the view that the land of Israel is what constitutes the people Israel as a nation, and instead to assign this role to the Torah. Of course, we need not decide between these alternatives. On the festival of Shavuot, marking the bringing of the first fruits from the land, and the giving of the Torah, we can appreciate the force of both factors.

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Published

May 27, 2020

Last Updated

April 10, 2024

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Footnotes

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Published

May 27, 2020

Last Updated

April 10, 2024

[1] The earliest attestation of the dictum, in a slightly different form from the traditional one, occurs in Sifra behuqotai 2:5 (Weiss ed., 112b). The dictum also appears in b. Sanh. 27b; b. Sheb. 39a.

[2] The comment appears as a gloss on the beginning of the Decalogue, but the antecedent of “It”—i.e., the specific lemma to which this comment attaches—is unclear. On the redactional character of attributions to Rabbi Judah the Patriarch in tannaitic midrashim see Menahem Kahana, “גופים זרים מ'דבי רבי' במדרשי ההלכה” [External Sources from ‘The School of Rabbi’ in Halakhic Midrash], in מחקרים במקרא ובתלמוד: הרצאות ימי העיון ביובל הששים של המכון למדעי היהדות, [Studies in Bible and Talmud: Proceedings of the Conference Held on the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Institute for Jewish Studies], ed. Sara Japhet (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1987), 69-85.

[3] I understand the copula before והשוו to be an error. In Oxford 151, the copyist accidentally skipped from the first לקבל to the second, omitting everything in between.

[4] The text is from the Munich 95 manuscript, with some abbreviations expanded, and with punctuation.

[5] The text at this point has suffered some corruption in most witnesses. The best medieval manuscript, Oxford 151, has ולא שלכך instead of ולא עוד, and the Genizah fragment has ולא שלך. I presume that something like Oxford 151 and the Genizah fragment, as the lectio difficilior, is original, and that ולא עוד, attested in the Munich manuscript and other medieval witnesses, is later, but the meaning of the original is unclear to me.

[6] For מתמסכן I understand מתמשכן, as in the editio princeps.

[7] See Gen. Rab. 44:5 (Theodor-Albeck ed., 429), where Abraham expresses concern that, just as his covenant displaced Noah’s, so, on account of his descendants’ sins, another may come and displace Abraham’s covenant. God replies with the principle of the righteous as shield (an interpretation of the lemma, Gen 15:1 אנכי מגן לך “I am a shield for you”): “When your children come to transgression of deeds, I will take view of a righteous man who is capable of telling the measure of judgment, 'enough,' and I will take him and atone for you.” In Ex. Rab. terumah 2 and Yalqut Shimoni Song of Songs 984, the same tradition is linked to the terminology of collateralization (משכ"ן).

[8] For one view of how Rabbi Judah the Patriarch reads Deut 29:28, see Aharon Shemesh and Cana Werman, “Hidden Things and Their Revelation,” RevQ 18 (1998), 412–415.

[9] For the importance of the story of Achan as an expression of Israelite collective existence see already Mek. R. Sh. ad Ex 19:5 (Epstein-Melamed ed., 95), and the parallel in Mek. R. Ish. ba-hodesh 2 (Horovitz-Rabin ed., 209). The Achan story appears only in the version in Mek. R. Shimon, which is in turn attested only indirectly, in Midrash ha-Gadol. But the existence of a parallel tradition in Mek. R. Ishmael strongly suggests that the version in Mek. R. Shimon is tannaitic. The evidentiary value of the Mek. R. Ishmael version for the details of the tradition (as opposed to for the basic fact of its existence in the tannaitic period) is compromised by the fact that it is clearly corrupt in all witnesses.

[10] The text is from the Vienna manuscript, with abbreviations expanded, and except for the first two words, which come from the Erfurt manuscript. (The Vienna manuscript reads: עודם בעבר הירדן “When they were yet on the other bank of the Jordan.”)

[11] What is the exegetical basis linking Num 33:52–56 to the crossing of the Jordan? Rashi ad b. Sot. 34a rightly refers to two verses. First, in the introduction to the speech in Num 33:51, God tells Moses: “Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you cross (כי אתם עברים) the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall dispossess, etc.” The Tosefta supposes that the words “when you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan” mark not the beginning of the speech that Moses is to address to Israel, but an adverbial phrase modifying the imperative “Speak,” so that God is telling Moses: You (or whoever is leading Israel at the time) should speak to Israel when you are crossing the Jordan, etc. Thus the speech is supposed to occur in the Jordan River. Second, Josh 4:10 speaks of the priests remaining in the river “until all the words that the Lord had ordered Joshua to convey to the people had been completed, according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua.” The reference cannot (for the rabbinic exegete) be to the command to retrieve stones from the Jordan, or to set up stones in the Jordan, as the preceding verses already address these matters; moreover, Moses never makes any reference in the Pentateuch to retrieving stones from or placing stones in the Jordan. The reference must therefore be to something else that Moses commanded to be done in the river, namely, the issuance of the threat in Num 33:52-56.

[12] In the version in the Palestinian Talmud, the author of this view is R. Eleazar b. Jacob, not R. Eleazar b. R. Shimon.

[13] There is little doubt that the Tosefta’s version represents the earlier version of the tradition about the threat in the Jordan River, and Resh Laqish’s represents the later version. The Tosefta’s version depends on a close reading of a biblical passage (Num 32:52-56; and see n. 11), whereas Resh Laqish cites no verse at all. Resh Laqish’s claim is similar to that of R. Judah b. R. Ilai in b. Sanh. 43b, who asserts that Israel accepted responsibility for concealed transgressions upon entering the land of Israel. But R. Judah b. R. Ilai does not locate this event specifically at the Jordan River, nor does he make reference to any threat.

[14] “A majority of the Sanhedrin” of seventy, thus thirty-six. For the thirty-six casualties at Ai see Josh 7:5. The exegete supposes that it was from Israel’s leadership that God exacted the punishment for Achan’s sin. The formulation (with multiple variants) “x sinned, and y was [punished]” occurs throughout rabbinic literature. See, e.g., Gen. Rab. 25:3 (241); 40:3 (338); 64:2 (701); Lev. Rab. 17:5 (382); b. Pesah. 113b; b. Mak. 11a; and differently, m. Sanh. 7:4; b. Sanh. 44a. For biblical antecedents (but only with respect to the problem of children suffering for the sins of parents) see Jer 31:28; Lam 5:7.

[15] For this expression see also Lev. Rab. 28:1 (448), where the observation is made that one might infer from statements in Ecclesiastes that “there is no judgement and no Judge; the strap has been unknotted.” See likewise y. Bik. 1:5 (64a).

[16] The words from Ben Sira occur in Sir 3:22. Cf. the quotation of this verse, with the attribution to Ben Sira, in y. Hag. 2:1 (73c). As correctly understood in y. Hag. 2:1, the “concealed things” of Sir 3:22 are in fact the hidden ways of God, divine mysteries, not hidden transgressions. On the dual sense of נסתר—hidden divine teachings and hidden transgressions—see Shemesh and Werman, “Hidden Things.” Editor’s note: For more on Ben Sira and the rabbinic attitude towards this book, see “The Wisdom of Ben Sira: How Jewish?” TheTorah (2015).

[17] Thus, for example, in Leviticus:

^{ויקרא יח:כח} וְלֹא תָקִיא הָאָרֶץ אֶתְכֶם בְּטַמַּאֲכֶם אֹתָהּ כַּאֲשֶׁר קָאָה אֶת הַגּוֹי אֲשֶׁר לִפְנֵיכֶם.

^{Lev 18:28}So let not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you.

[18] See the famous account of this notion in Jacob Milgram, “Israel’s Sanctuary: The Priestly ‘Picture of Dorian Gray,’” RB 83 (1976), 390-99.

[19] For this formulation see, e.g., t. B. Qam. 10:27. On these conditions in tannaitic and amoraic literature see Noam Aminoah, “The Enactments of Joshua b. Nun,” Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri 9-10 (1982-93), 301-327; Zev I. Farber, Images of Joshua in the Bible and Their Reception, BZAW 457 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 376-378.

[20] For the first see y. b. Bat. 5:1 (15a); b. B. Qam. 81a. For the second see t. B. Mes. 2:28; b. B. Qam. 81a. Interestingly, some conditions license private use of public property. See, e.g., y. B. Qam. 3:2 (3c). Thus Joshua’s conditions disturb the public/private boundary from both directions. On the possibility that Joshua’s conditions apply to Jewish communities outside the land of Israel see b. B. Qam. 81a.

[21] In a previous contribution, I traced part of the exegetical background to R. Avdimi’s odd claim. See Tzvi Novick, “Standing Under Sinai: On the Origins of a Coerced Covenant,” TheTorah (2015). The current contribution supplements the previous one.

[22] There is one other famous hanging or suspended mountain in rabbinic tradition, at m. Hag. 1:8, which offers the image of “mountains suspended by a hair” to describe bodies of law, like those concerning the Sabbath, whose scope far exceeds the slender foundation that the Bible furnishes for them. These mountains were recently brought down to earth by Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, who showed that the Mishnah’s mountains, הררים, are in fact חררים, wilderness bushes with shallow root systems. See Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, “Mountains Hanging by a Strand? Re-reading Mishnah Ḥagigah 1:8,” JAJ 4 (2013), 235-56.

[23] Perhaps it is also not a coincidence that the root סת"ר, which is central to Resh Laqish’s teaching, occurs also in Song 2:4 (בסתר המדרגה “in the covert of the cliff’), the verse that appears to underlie the teaching about the suspended mountain at Sinai. On the role of this verse see my previous contribution on this topic in thetorah.com.

[24] An appreciation for the presence of t. Sotah 8 behind R. Avdimi’s remark in b. Shab. 88a may shed light on the continuation of the passage. An amora follows Rav Avdimi’s account by observing that it undermines the authority of the Torah: How can the Israelites be bound by the Torah if they did not accept it willingly? Rava responds: They accepted the Torah of their own accord in the days of Esther. As a prooftext, Rava cites Esth 9:27 קימו וקבלו היהודים “The Jews undertook and accepted,” understood to mean: They undertook (willingly) the Torah that they had already (under threat) accepted. (It is notable that in the Yerushalmi too, the moment of compulsion is followed by a later moment that undoes it.) This exegesis occurs also in b. Sheb. 39a, as a light revision of extended passage in t. Soṭ. 7:2-6. Given that t. Sotah 7 and t. Sotah 8 belong to the same extended unit (on which rites must be said in Hebrew, and which in any language), and given that both t. Sot. 8:5 (especially as revised in y. Sot. 7:5 [22a]), which is at the background of R. Avidimi’s statement, and t. Sot. 7:6 (especially as revised in b. Sheb. 39a), which overlaps with Rava’s subsequent statement, concern the topic of collective covenantal responsibility, there is good reason to suppose that the complex from t. Sotah 7 to t. Sotah 8 is a generative matrix for the entire exchange in b. Shab. 88a.