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Between Numbers and Ecclesiastes a Verse in Parashat Shelah

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Between Numbers and Ecclesiastes a Verse in Parashat Shelah Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas Parashat Shelah (Numbers 13:1-15:41) – Sivan 5775 (Don’t) Follow Your Heart and Your Eyes: Between Numbers and Ecclesiastes Rabbi Shai Held A verse in parashat Shelah admonishes us not to follow after our hearts and our eyes, while a verse in Ecclesiastes encourages us to do just that. At first glance there appears to be an irreconcilable contradiction between the two texts, but that surface discrepancy may mask what is in fact deep concord. Parashat Shelah concludes with a presentation of the laws of tzitzit, the ritual fringes worn each day by observant Jews (Numbers 15:37-41).1 The Israelites are to “look at it and recall all the commandments of the Lord and observe them” in order to ensure that “you do not go about after (taturu) your heart (levavkhem) and your eyes (eineikhem), after which you go whoring (zonim)” (Numbers 15:39). There are suggestive verbal connections A verse in parashat Shelah admonishes between the laws of tzitzit and the story in us not to follow after our hearts and the preceding chapters of the spies sent to our eyes, while a verse in Ecclesiastes scout the land (chs. 13 and 14). The word encourages us to do just that. taturu, rendered as “go about,” is the same word used to describe the task of the spies 1 For a theological interpretation of mitzvah of wearing tzitzit, cf. what I have written in “Every Jew a High Priest? The Meaning of Tzitzit and the Sin of Korah,” CJLI Parashat Korah 5774, available here. 1 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas Parashat Shelah (Numbers 13:1-15:41) – Sivan 5775 (13:2, etc.);2 similarly, the warning not to go “whoring” (zonim) calls to mind God’s characterization of the people’s faithlessness as “whoring” (zenutkhem) (14:33). Jacob Milgrom explains that “in scouting, the spies ‘whored’ after their eyes and brought a false report. So by wearing the tzitzit, Israel would be prevented from ever again ‘scouting’ and ‘whoring’ ‘after their heart and eyes.’”3 More broadly, Gordon Wenham notes, the Torah alerts the people to “the dangers inherent in following their own whims instead of [God’s] commandments.”4 In light of all this, the guidance offered by Kohelet (Ecclesiastes)5 has struck many readers as shocking: “Enjoy yourself, O youth, while you are young,” he instructs; “let your heart lead you to enjoyment in the days of your youth. Follow the desires of your heart (lib’kha) and the sight of your eyes (einekha)” (Ecclesiastes 11:9a). In the wake of the people’s perfidy, Numbers mandates that they wear fringes to remind them not to follow their hearts or their eyes. But Kohelet appears to advocate the very thing Numbers most fears: Follow your heart and your eyes, he counsels. At least some of the Talmudic Sages found Kohelet’s endorsement of following our hearts and our eyes profoundly disturbing. R. Samuel b. R. Isaac taught: “The Sages sought to suppress the book of Ecclesiastes [that is, they sought to exclude it from the canon—S.H.] because they 2 Accordingly, Everett Fox translates taturu as “scouting-around,” and Dennis Olson renders it as “spy out.” Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Notes (1995), p. 736; and Dennis T. Olson, Numbers (1996), p. 98. 3 Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (1990), p. 127. 4 Gordon J. Wenham, Numbers (1981), p. 149. 5 In what follows, I refer to the character as Kohelet and to the book as Ecclesiastes. 2 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas Parashat Shelah (Numbers 13:1-15:41) – Sivan 5775 discovered therein words which tend towards heresy. They declared, ‘This is the wisdom of Solomon,6 that he said, “Enjoy yourself, o youth, while you are young!’” Moses said, ‘That you not go about after your heart,’ whereas Solomon said, ‘Let your heart lead you’—is restraint to be abolished? Is there no judgment and no Judge?!” The Sages were reassured, however, by what Kohelet says next: “But (ve) know that God will call you to account for all such things” (Ecclesiastes 11:9b). Appealing to these closing words, the Sages exclaim: “Well has Solomon spoken” (Ecclesiastes Rabbah to 11:9). Kohelet’s words in 11:9a so disturbed some Kohelet’s words in 11:9a so early translators that they actively edited disturbed some early translators them; some manuscripts of the Septuagint that they actively edited them. thus read, “Follow the desires of your heart blamelessly and not the sight of your eyes.” The Jewish Sage Ben Sira (2nd century BCE) simply reverses Kohelet’s words, instructing: “Do not follow your heart and your eyes, to go in evil delights” (Ben Sira 5:1). Traditional interpreters often insisted that Kohelet did not mean what he said in 11a to be taken in a straightforward way. Thus, for example, the Talmudic Sage R. Huna suggests that 11:9a represents the words of the evil inclination (yetzer ha-ra), while 11:9b cites the conflicting guidance of the good inclination (yetzer ha-tov) (Yalkut Shimoni). R. Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1164) understands Kohelet to be saying, in effect, “Go ahead and sin (11:9a), and see what happens to you (11:9b)” (comments to Ecclesiastes 11:9).7 All of these approaches assume that Kohelet simply could not be advocating the embrace of 6 Tradition has it that Kohelet and Solomon were one and the same. 7 Cf., similarly, Rashi’s (1040-1105) comments to our verse. 3 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas Parashat Shelah (Numbers 13:1-15:41) – Sivan 5775 enjoyment. Moreover, they all seem confident that the same person could not have held both that we should seek pleasure (11:9a) and that we should be ever mindful of divine judgment (11:9b). Accordingly, they all downplay (or alter) the message of 11:9a and champion 11:9b as Kohelet’s true teaching. Modern scholars often suggest the converse. Since Kohelet could not have sincerely meant what he says in both parts of the verse, they aver, the conclusion must be a later insertion, the “moralistic gloss”8 of a pious editor unsettled by Kohelet’s recommendation of the pursuit of pleasure. “Intend[ing] to protect the text from a libertine interpretation,” they maintain, Kohelet’s editors dramatically softened (and undercut) his words.9 Thus, if traditional commentators often choose 11:9b at the expense of 11:9a, academic interpreters frequently elect the opposite. But are the two parts of our verse really impossible to reconcile? Over the course of the book that bears his Kohelet repeatedly advises his name, Kohelet repeatedly advises his readers readers to enjoy life. to enjoy life. As he puts it, “I praised enjoyment, for the only good a person can have under the sun is to eat and drink and enjoy himself” (8:15). Time and again Kohelet advocates embracing enjoyment: “There is nothing worthwhile for a person but to eat and drink and afford oneself enjoyment with one’s means” (2:24); “the only worthwhile thing there is [for people] is for them to enjoy themselves and do 8 James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes: A Commentary (1987), p. 184. 9 Norbert Lohfink, Qoheleth (2002). p. 139. 4 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas Parashat Shelah (Numbers 13:1-15:41) – Sivan 5775 what it good in their lifetime” (3:12). Crucially, for Kohelet, the embrace of pleasure is not a rebellion against God. On the contrary, Kohelet insists that God wants us to partake of pleasure and enjoyment: “Whenever a person does eat and drink and get enjoyment out of all one’s wealth, it is a gift of God” (3:13).10 As Theodore Perry rightly observes, Kohelet’s invitations to joy “are invariably followed by an insistence that such enjoyment is a gift of God.”11 In view of all this, there is simply no reason to assume that Kohelet could not have said—and meant—what he states in 11:9a. But if Kohelet consistently endorses pleasure and Enjoyment is to embraced enjoyment, why the warning in 11:9b about the day rather than eschewed. of judgment? Interpreters both Jewish and Christian have traditionally understood the ve in 11:9b to mean “but,” thus yielding “but (ve) know that God will call you to account for all such things.” But Bible scholar Robert Gordis argues that in our verse, as often, ve in fact means “and.” In other words, Kohelet instructs us to follow our hearts and our eyes and to know that we will one day be judged. Judged for what? Not, Gordis says, for over-indulgence, but on the contrary, for our refusal to partake of the gifts that God has provided. “For Kohelet,” Gordis writes, “the enjoyment of life becomes the highest dictate of life”; so far from sounding “a warning note against the perils of pleasure,” then, 11:9b in fact “introduces the heart of Kohelet’s viewpoint”: Enjoyment is to embraced rather than eschewed.12 Choon-Leon Seow puts the point this way: According to 10 Cf. also, e.g., 5:17-19; 8:15; and 9:7. 11 T.A. Perry, Dialogues with Kohelet: The Book of Ecclesiastes—Translation and Commentary (1993), p. 164. 12 Robert Gordis, Koheleth: The Man and His World (1951), pp. 325-326. 5 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas Parashat Shelah (Numbers 13:1-15:41) – Sivan 5775 Kohelet, “human beings are supposed to enjoy life to the full because that is their divinely assigned portion, and God calls one into account for failure to enjoy… For Kohelet, [in other words,] enjoyment is not only permitted, it is commanded; it is not only an opportunity, it is a divine imperative.”13 Kohelet promotes neither hedonism nor unbridled pleasure-seeking.
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