God Does Not Want to be Everything (Pt 1)
notes on an apophatic anthropology and the theology of ordination
Moses Gives from His Spirit: Numbers 11 and the Meaning of Holy Orders
Introduction
So the Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you. I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.”
(Num 11:16-17)
This passage describes an ordination service, which has come about because of a fight. In the immediately preceding scene, a worn-down Moses has let God have it, as we say, declaring in no uncertain terms that he is not Israel’s mother, that he can no longer bear the burden of their needs. “I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery” (Num. 11:14-15).
God, thankfully, does not give Moses the death that he wants. Just the opposite, in fact. God calls for a sharing of his life. “Gather seventy elders… bring them to the tent… and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them.”
Moses does as he is told. He gathers the elders and arranges them in a circle around the tent of meeting. Then, as he enters the tent to pray, God does what God said God would do: the elders receive something of Moses’ spirit and break into ecstatic utterances.
Notice, first, the spirit that is shared with the elders is Moses’ spirit, not God’s. Notice, too, that each receives only a part of Moses’ spirit, not the whole. This is why they prophesy just this once—during the ceremony of ordination. One other strange detail is worth nothing: two of the elders, Eldad and Medad, do not come to the ceremony for whatever reason; but they are nonetheless overtaken by the sharing of Moses’ spirit: “they prophesied in the camp” (Num. 11:26).
Their outburst, unsurprisingly, causes a bit of a stir. Joshua, Moses’ right-hand man, urges Moses to stop them, fearing that his lord’s authority will be undermined and cheapened by their exploits. But Moses is unfazed: “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets…” (Num 11:29).
Should Prophets Share Their Spirit? Contrary Readings of Numbers 11
Was Joshua in the right? Did the sharing of spirit actually diminish Moses, at least in the eyes of Israel? Did the elevation of the elders set the stage for worsening conflicts? Perhaps. Think of what immediately follows: the jealousy of Aaron and Miriam (Num 12), the fearful report of the spies (Num 13-14), the revolt of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and the rebellion of the entire people (Num 16).
Some scholars have argued that by agreeing to share his spirit with the elders, Moses did in fact rashly—to his own hurt and the hurt of his people. Elliot Gertel argues that Elijah makes a similar mistake:
The narratives in Numbers 11 (Moses and the elders) and II Kings 1-13 (the impressive but troubling tale of Elisha) provide an astonishing but clear biblical lesson on the dangers of "spiritism." The trials and errors of Elisha may well be related in order to provide insight into the greatness and the foibles of the finest and most venerated of biblical prophets and leaders, Moses. When the Israelites complain about lack of food and Moses suggests that God does not know how to treat prophets, the spirit [ruah] carries excessive food and out-of-control prophecy to the people, as if to say: In your complaining and whining, would you presume that you can better control the uses of ruah? Is it spirit you want, Moses and Israel, for more efficient food distribution and for religious authority? You had better learn now, the hard way, that you could not utilize it better than God.1
In Gertel’s view, Moses’ spirit-sharing provoked rebellion after rebellion, as those who had been empowered by a bit of his spirit were emboldened to defy him. Worse, Elijah’s spirit-sharing had the effect of undermining the legitimacy of prophecy altogether. He finds support for this claim both in the words of Zechariah, who prophesied the end of false prophets who, like Elisha, employed “the hairy mantle” to manipulate outcomes (Zech. 13:1-4), and in 2 Kings’ account of Elisha’s ministry:
Given the double spirit received by Elisha, the biblical narrative does not show him great respect as a top-rank prophet. First, the narrative never calls him a prophet per se; he is referred to in the third person only as a "man of God”… The only one who calls Elisha a prophet [navi] is Elisha himself. Elisha must induce prophecy that is not readily available to him… Indeed, most of Elisha's ministry as prophet, as described in II Kings 4-8, is given over to road show tactics that are impressive but never quite succeed all at once or even once and for all.2
Those like Elisha “who ask for a double portion of God's spirit from someone other than God” are simply “overzealous disciples,” according to Gertel, not true prophets. Their work, even at its best, is always haphazard, and accomplishes God’s work only in a roundabout way. So, he concludes that Israel over time learned that spirit-sharing is simply not worth the trouble: “Such things should be left to God, Who does not want His people to be masters at manipulating spirit, but wants them to be loyal to God, to love God and to trust in Him”—and not in the powers of the prophets.3
Gertel’s reading should not be dismissed. There is much to be learned from it. But other readings are possible. David Frankel, for example, references the possibility that Eldad and Medad stayed away from the tent of meeting because they were humble but immediately rejects it for a startling alternative: “Eldad and Medad refused to go out. They did this in conscious defiance of Moses who chose them to be among his seventy ‘yes-men.’”4 God, in other words, did not reward Eldad’s and Medad’s deference and aversion to leadership; instead, God rewarded their refusal to accept Moses’ control over the Spirit:
The arrangement that God and Moses had made was designed to bolster Moses’ singular authority. All spirit had to be transmitted to others via Moses, and the purpose of this transmission was strictly to authorize subordinates who would serve him… There was no place in this arrangement for individual spiritual voices that might speak independently of the figure of Moses and bring a diversity of opinions into the public domain. Eldad and Medad challenged not only the centralized and exclusive authority of Moses but also, at least implicitly, the attempt to wield political control over the divine spirit… God approves of Eldad and Medad… He rewards them with the bestowal of His spirit, not because of their excessive humility but specifically because of their spiritual audacity. And He gives them of His spirit directly, without the mediation of Moses at his tent. God allows them to prophesy in the midst of the camp because God ultimately endorses the spiritual freedom and pluralism that they seek to promote.5
According to Frankel’s reading, Moses is to be praised because he realized, as every leader must, that “no single party should attempt to hold a monopoly on the divine spirit or place restrictions on its freedom of expression.”6
St Maximus, in his Questions and Doubts (Q1), says that since Moses “became a mediator between God and the people, he at times gives a face to ‘the God and Father’ and at times to our nature.” If we follow that line of thought, we can see how it is true that Gertel’s reading, which concludes that Joshua was in the right, and Frankel’s reading, which holds that Joshua was in the wrong, should be held up against each other, allowed to bear witness to two “sides” of the story. But still other readings are possible, readings which do more justice to the subtleties of Numbers 11, I believe, exactly because they attend more carefully to the relationship between humility, integrity, and the overflow of the Spirit. And in that way, casts new light both on the meaning of ordination and the glories of being human.
On Good and Bad Emptinesses
If the biblical traditions are right, there are two, and only two, ways that open before us: the way of haughtiness and the way of humility. The more we insist on our own way, the more we force others to bend to our demands, the less fulfilled we are, the more alienated we are from our own real desires. To be haughty is to betray our own uniqueness, because what comes to the haughty, finally, is vanity—a bad emptiness. And the only cure for that bad emptiness is the good self-emptying that only the lowly know how to enact.
Martin Buber tells a story of an Hasidic disciple who “cut himself off from the things of the world in order to cling solely to the teaching and the service…” But his rigor leads him into the worst kind of self-deception.
He sat alone fasting from Sabbath to Sabbath and learning and praying. But his mind, beyond all conscious purpose, was filled with pride in his action; it shone before his eyes and his fingers burned to lay it on his forehead like the diadem of the anointed. And so all his work fell to the lot of the "other side," and the divine had no share in it. But his heart drove him ever more strongly so that he remained unaware of his fallen state in which the demons played with his acts, and he imagined himself wholly possessed by God…
This is what it means to be “full of ourselves.” And Moses’ life teaches us that the way to free ourselves from haughtiness is to pour ourselves out in the strengthening and enlivening of others. If, as Rabbi Nachman says: “in him who is full of himself there is no room for God,” then it is precisely where God is given room that we become fully ourselves.
To be Human is to be Christ
Here’s Buber, again, stating the truth of Numbers 11 as clearly as it can be said:
As long as a man sees himself above and before others, he has a limit, “and God cannot pour His holiness into him, for God is without limit.” But when a man rests in himself as in nothing, he is not limited by any other thing, he is limitless and God pours His glory into him.
The Moses of Numbers 11 does indeed rest in himself as nothing, he is empty in the good sense. And exactly for that reason, as Maximus says, he gives a face to God and to our nature in all of its glory. Precisely because he is not full of himself, he can share from the fulness of himself—and that sharing can be the pouring forth not only of his spirit but of God’s. The Moses of Numbers 11, in other words, gives a face to Jesus. More than that: he is Jesus. And we can be, too.
And that, to anticipate my conclusion, is the heart of the matter. Holy orders is a summons into a form of self-giving in care-taking, a pattern of Spirit-saturated ministry that tells the deepest truths of our creatureliness. If the Gospel is to be believed, then all human beings are essentially, inescapably priestly. In spite of what many have been told is true, we are made for loving, compelled by our nature to empty ourselves in compassion for and delight in those God brings into our lives. To live in that way, caring for others as God cares for us, is to be effectively human. And everything, really everything, depends on that effect.
Elliot Gertel, “Moses, Elisha and Transferred Spirit: The Height of Biblical Prophecy? Part II,” Jewish Bible Quarterly 30.3 (April 2002), 171-177 (174).
Gertel, “Moses, Elisha and Transferred Spirit,” 172.
Gertel, “Moses, Elisha and Transferred Spirit,” 175.
David Frankel, “Eldad and Medad Prophesied in the Camp,” TheTorah.com ((2014); available online: https://www.thetorah.com/article/eldad-and-medad-prophesied.
Frankel, “Eldad and Medad Prophesied in the Camp.”
Frankel, “Eldad and Medad Prophesied in the Camp.”