In 2015, I wrote a post called The Worst Bible Story, which also included my pick for the second-worst bible story, Numbers 25. Right now I'm reading Wilda Gafney's book "Womanist Midrash," which has a section discussing Numbers 25. So let's talk about it.
The book discusses these 3 women or groups of women in connection with this story:
- Women of Moab (Numbers 25)
- Cozbi, daughter of Tzur (Numbers 25)
- Women of Midian (Numbers 25 and 31)
Here's what Gafney says in the book, and my thoughts on it:
---
Lumping together Moab and Midian
Numbers 25:1-2 says the Israelites committed "sexual immorality" with Moabite women, and also participated in the worship of the Moabite gods. ("Sexual immorality" is how the NIV translates it; Gafney does her own translations and puts it as "unsanctioned-intimate-relationships." She says this word can mean prostitution or promiscuity or worshiping other gods.) God and Moses order the Israelites involved to be executed.
Then, Cozbi (also translated as Kozbi), a Midianite women, is publicly killed by Phinehas the priest. And then Moses leads the Israelites into battle to get "vengeance" on the Midianites.
So, Gafney points out, wait a minute. The Moabites were the ones who "seduced" the Israelites, so why are we suddenly talking about Midianites? Why are the Israelites fighting the Midianites in retaliation for this? Gafney says (page 143):
The Moabite women, their God, and the Israelite women and men who joined their community sharing kinship ties and worship have been forgotten. This Midianite woman and her people become the focus of the saga. The Moabites and Midianites are interchangeable; they are all foreigners-- never mind that Israel is migrating through inhabited lands to a settled one, uninvited.
Years and years ago, when I was evangelical and spent my time arguing with atheists over whether the bible has contradictions, I would have reacted to someone pointing out this Moab/Midian issue like this: well, whatever, they were probably the same, right? Why do you want so badly to discredit the bible that you fixate on these little details?
And if I were reading the bible by myself, back then, I wouldn't have even noticed this switch from talking about Moab to talking about Midian. I read with an apologetics mindset, fully believing that there are no errors in the bible, and therefore with blinders on, subconsciously smoothing things over and filling in gaps so I wouldn't notice any errors. Moab and Midian, they're basically the same, right?
For me as a white Christian, this kind of thing would be simply be a philosophical argument over whether the bible is inerrant or not. But people of color have the experience of being lumped in together, even being victims of "mistargeted" racism. For example, someone hates Japan, so they bully a Chinese-American person, as if that's the same thing.
(I mean, all racism is like that though. Taking one bad example and believing it is true of a whole race. It's not like regular racism makes more sense than "mistargeted" racism.)
To believe in inerrancy, you have to racist-ly lump together the Moabites and Midianites, as if they're the same. So of course that's what I did, back then. As a white person you can just do that. But for people of color it's not so simple, because they themselves have been victims of that exact kind of racism.
---
The wedding of Cozbi and Zimri
I was shocked that Gafney reads this part as a wedding. Here's how the NIV version of the bible puts it:
[content note for graphic violence]
Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and into the woman’s stomach. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped ...
The name of the Israelite who was killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri son of Salu, the leader of a Simeonite family. And the name of the Midianite woman who was put to death was Kozbi daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of a Midianite family.
Here's Gafney's translation of the same passage:
Suddenly, a man from the women and men of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his kinfolk, in the sight of Moshe (Moses) and in the sight of the whole congregation of the women and men of Israel, and they were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting! Then Pinchas (Phinehas) ben El'azar (Eleazar) ben Aharon (Aaron) the priest saw; he rose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand. He went after the Israelite man into the tent-chamber, and he stabbed the two of them, the Israelite man and the woman, through her inner-chamber, and the plague was stopped among the people of Israel... The name of the slain Israelite man who was killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri ben Salu, leader of an ancestral house belonging to the Simeonites. The name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi bat Tzur; Tzur was the head of peoples, of an ancestral house in Midian.
Gafney describes this as a wedding where the 2 newlyweds were publicly murdered. Where is she getting that this was a wedding? I never ever read it that way (and you know I've thought about this story a lot, it's my "second-worst bible story").
Here are the parts that lend evidence to the idea that this was a wedding:
- Verse 6- "brought a Midianite woman to his kinfolk." This is very different from the NIV translation which just says "brought into the camp." I checked this website which has a bunch of different bible translations, and many of them include something along the lines of "to his relatives"/"to his brethren". It's like we might say "bringing a girl home to meet your family." In our culture that's a big relationship milestone. It means you're in a long-term, committed relationship, and likely to get married. And in ancient times, they had the idea of the woman leaving her family and "marrying into" her husband's family. So I suppose it does make sense that this would mean they are getting married.
- Verse 8 mentions a "tent" or "tent-chamber." Gafney says, "instead of an Israelite wedding canopy, a chuppah, there is a foreign wedding tent, a qubbah" and "the foreign word occurs only this once in the Scriptures" and has "uncertain meaning."
So, was this a wedding?
---
How I always read the story
Here's how I always read this story:
The Israelites were passing through land where other nations lived, and those sneaky foreign women came and started to seduce the easily-distracted Israelite men. Like, come on guys, focus, why can't you just do what God says? It's not that hard! They were having casual sex (gross! God says sex is only supposed to be in marriage) and starting to worship those foreign gods. This is really bad! God ordered those involved to be executed. Kinda sad for them, but they're gross and sexual and God says they deserve to die, so that's that.
Anyway, when the Israelite leaders are openly weeping because of how bad the people's sin is, some Israelite guy literally comes in right then with some slut he picked up. He walks her right past the front of the camp, to his tent where they are gonna have sex. Come on dude, read the room! What's wrong with this guy? He seriously can't keep it in his pants, even after God has spoken and said this is such a serious sin that people need to be executed for it.
And then, finally, someone does something about it. Finally, someone loves God enough to take action and stop this horrible disobedience against God. Phinehas the priest followed them into the tent where they were having dirty dirty sex and stabbed his spear right through the both of them, and killed them. Wow, that's graphic and violent, but it was the right thing to do. Phinehas is the only one in this story who actually takes sin seriously, like we're supposed to. Wish we could be as courageous and faithful to God as Phinehas.
I read this story, back then, as a good evangelical girl, and it seemed to be about 2 things: casual sex, and worshipping other gods, both of which I knew were obviously bad, and which I couldn't relate to at all. People who committed such sins were one-dimensional caricatures, mustache-twirling villains who were ungrateful to God. Maybe it's a bit extreme to say they deserve to die for that, but, sin is sin, so I felt that God was within his rights to say they deserved to die. Plus, I knew I wasn't going to commit those sins, so it doesn't affect me. (Apologetics seared my conscience with a hot iron.)
Gafney reads this as a wedding, though. And the "worshipping other gods" bit she reads as hospitality from the foreign women, inviting the Israelites to their religious feasts. More on that later.
Rather than being about "hookup culture" with those slutty slutty foreign women, she reads this passage as being about relationships of all kinds. (Another cool thing is the book says this passage is "queer" because it talks about the foreign women having relationships with Israelite men and women.) Living in the same area, getting to know each other. Some even falling in love and getting married.
So Phinehas sprang into action and murdered Cozbi and Zimri because they were an international couple, not because of their dirty dirty casual sex.
That's ... that's horrifying, and my first thought was that if I had read it that way, back when I was a good evangelical teenager, I would have been horrified.
But...
---
If it's about casual sex, or if it's about interracial marriage, how different is that, really?
I looked up some other translations and bible commentaries, to see if Christian scholars read this passage like I had always read it, or if they read it as a wedding, like Gafney does. Yeah, I found many of them using words like "blatant" and "parading"... those are words you would use for casual sex, right? Some guy just can't keep it in his pants, and he wants all the random passersby to know about it, eww.
But wait... in the bible, God forbids the Israelites from marrying people of other nations. Some guy falls in love with a foreign woman, and wants to let the world see his love, wants to marry her... Wouldn't that have been seen as disgusting, in their culture? Wouldn't that have been seen as "blatantly" "parading" his sin in front of everyone? Wouldn't it be seen as something you shouldn't do in polite society?
What we're circling around here is, this is about interracial marriage. Not *exactly* interracial marriage, because they didn't conceptualize race the same way we do today, but if you think about the history of interracial marriage in US society, well, it's the same as what we see in Numbers 25. Black men were lynched for the "crime" of dating a white woman. In "Womanist Midrash," Gafney says Zimri would have been seen as a "race traitor." She says this is a lynching. (She's right.)
"But," you may say, "surely not. Surely if they were just a nice couple, in love, getting married, who happened to be from different nations, the Israelite leaders wouldn't have been so upset about it. Surely people wouldn't have made such a big deal about it, even going so far to say it was good when they were killed. Surely not. Surely it must have been about some worse sin, like casual sex."
Did you, uh, totally miss all the culture wars over same-sex marriage, or what?
Making a big deal about how someone else's marriage which does not affect you is such a horrible sin and they are "blatantly" "parading" it in front of us just by existing... that's pretty much evangelicals' whole schtick.
When I was a good little evangelical teenager, and read this passage... see, here's another horrifying thing. Imagine I had read, in the bible, that this was about a couple being murdered on their wedding day, for the crime of being from different nations and/or religions. ("Womanist Midrash" discusses this passage like that's obviously what it's saying, but I'm not convinced. But imagine if it was more obvious in the biblical text that that's what happened.) What would I have thought?
Good little evangelical Perfect Number would have thought it was sad, but it must have been right for Phinehas to kill them, because the bible says God approved of what Phinehas did, and the bible is always right.
No, not even newlyweds being murdered would have shaken me from my belief in biblical inerrancy. I was a good evangelical. I was an apologetics nerd.
And unfortunately, I have evidence to back that up: Good little evangelical Perfect Number read the book of Ezra, back then. In Ezra 9 and 10, the prophet Ezra finds out that many Israelite men had married foreign women, and he makes a huge big deal about it, sitting around weeping because of other people's families, other people's love, other people's mixed-race children. Then the leaders come together and decide they need to right this wrong; they need to send away these foreign women and mixed children. So that's what they do. Mass divorce and abandonment of their children.
And I read that back then and thought "well, yeah, God clearly told them not to intermarry with the other nations, so, that's what they had to do." I couldn't view it any other way; I couldn't say "wait a minute, this is wrong!" I was a good evangelical.
Years later, I read the Slacktivist's posts on this mass divorce in the book of Ezra. (Links here.) Blew my mind. Why is no one else talking about how the prophet Ezra was a racist bigot who tore families apart? Why is the Slacktivist the only one?
(See also: my Ezra fanfic Love Wins, and related post This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now)
So yeah, you may naively assume that if good evangelicals read this story in Numbers 25 as being about international marriage and a murder at a wedding, rather than about casual sex, they would be more horrified and ready to throw away their belief in biblical inerrancy, but, no. Unfortunately, no.
---
Hospitality
"Womanist Midrash" talks about the hospitality of the Moabite women. This was very surprising to me- "hospitality" is such a positive word, and I had always read the Moabite women's invitations to their religious feasts as a conniving evil scheme. "Mwahahaha, let's entice those people away from their god, and snare them in our evil religious rituals, worshipping our evil gods, mwahahaha."
But the way "Womanist Midrash" describes it, it was like this: The Israelites lived in the same area as the Moabites, and so naturally they began to interact with each other, and get to know each other, and develop close relationships. (Some of them even married each other.) And it was very kind and hospitable for the Moabite women to invite the Israelites to the Moabite religious festivals. Maybe from the Israelites' perspective, the Moabite religious practices weren't that different from their own, so they didn't view it as a big huge "we're abandoning our god" thing.
---
Consensual marriage vs slavery
In the bible, God commands the Israelites to not marry foreign people. But, the Israelites are allowed to marry foreign captive women taken in war (see Deuteronomy 21:10-14). (And Gafney calls this "rape marriage" because honestly this isn't a romantic vision of how love can bloom in the most unlikely of places- no, it's "she's your slave and you can do whatever you want to her" and the bible uses the word "marriage" to describe that.)
So the issue here, the reason Zimri and Cozbi were judged as bad bad sinners whose murder was justified, was because their marriage was consensual. Because they chose each other. If an Israelite man takes a captive woman and enslaves her, makes her give up her culture, rapes her, and calls it "marriage", that is apparently fine. "Do not intermarry with them" just meant you can't have a consensual marriage.
It's horrifying, but at the same time, I can imagine myself as an evangelical, understanding the logic of this. Back then, of course I believed that we must not marry people from other religions, because there would be conflict as a result of each spouse's different beliefs, and the good Christian spouse wouldn't be able to win every single time, and would be influenced away from their correct Christian beliefs. But, isn't that only a problem if you go into marriage with the expectation that you are equals? What if you weren't equals? What if from the very start, the person with the correct religious beliefs dominated, and forced the other to give up their own religion and culture?
That would avoid all those "being influenced by those bad religions" problems, right?
I always heard Christians talk about mixed-faith marriage with this metaphor: The Christian is standing on a chair, and the non-Christian is standing on the ground, and the Christian is trying to pull the non-Christian spouse up, but isn't it so much easier for the non-Christian to pull them down? And that's why it's a bad idea to marry a non-Christian- you think you're going to influence them positively, but in reality, the more likely outcome is they're going to influence you negatively.
What on earth? Christians conceptualizing themselves as higher than everyone else, more moral than everyone else. Like there's nothing we can learn from each other; the Christian is already right about everything, and their non-Christian partner can only sabotage that. What on earth?
You can see how, if you're coming at it from that perspective, maybe it sort of makes sense than "rape marriage" is less bad than consensual mixed-faith marriage.
(Please note, I am a Christian and my husband is not- and I'm glad he's not a Christian.)
---
Did Moses divorce Zipporah?
Cozbi is a Midianite, and after she is killed, Moses leads the Israelites in battle against the Midianites, to avenge... [checks notes] the way the Moabite women were hospitable to the Israelites?
Gafney points out that Moses's wife Zipporah is a Midianite. Or, rather, she says that Zipporah was Moses's wife, and then Moses divorced her (Exodus 18:2) and married another woman. The other woman is apparently mentioned in Numbers 12:1, "he had married a Cushite." I don't totally buy Gafney's interpretation here- I always thought it meant that Zipporah was both a Midianite and a Cushite, and Numbers 12:1 was referring to her. I certainly never was aware of the idea that Moses had divorced Zipporah.
But, at the same time, the bible definitely says that Zipporah and her family are Midianites. (See Exodus 2.) And in Numbers 31, the Israelites go to battle against the Midianites, take the women and children as captives, and Moses is very angry that they allowed the Midianite women to live. He commands that they kill all non-virgin Midianite women, and all the Midianite boys, and "save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (Which turns out to be exactly as creepy as it sounds, my god.)
So, uh, what? Isn't Moses's wife a Midianite? Isn't Moses's wife a non-virgin Midianite woman? (Gafney points out that apparently Moses is unhappy with Midianite women monogamously having sex with their own husbands, what on EARTH.) Aren't Moses's in-laws all Midianites? Whether or not you believe that Moses divorced Zipporah, you still have the big problem of how it could possibly make sense that Moses is so bent out of shape by the Israelites intermarrying with Midian, when he himself did that.
"Womanist Midrash" points out that the bible is inconsistent on the issue of marrying foreigners. There are passages like this one, about how it was such a bad thing that Israelites married Moabite and Midianite women, and then there are plenty of bible heroes who married foreign women and the bible is apparently fine with that. Judah, Joseph, Moses, etc.
And one more thing: Moses commands that the Israelites kill all the boys among the Midianite captives. "Womanist Midrash" draws a connection between this passage and Moses's own escape from being killed as a baby, when the Pharaoh commanded that all the Israelite baby boys should be killed, and Moses's mother hid him and then eventually laid him in a basket in the river where he was rescued by Pharaoh's daughter. This is a beloved bible story; all the kids in Sunday school know about baby Moses in the basket. (Exodus 2:1-10)
Moses, who escaped the "kill all the baby boys" decree, is now saying "kill all the baby boys."
Why do we not talk about this in church?
When Moses's mother saves her baby and puts him in a basket, that's a wonderful tale of courage and heroism which we teach to our children. When Moses commands the Midianite boys to be executed, that's a footnote in an apologetics book, only mentioned in the context of "how do we respond to atheists who say the bible condones violence?" Oh, they had to kill the Midianite boys because [reasons], so, it's fine, move along, nothing to see here.
But these are the same story, Moses's story. When we tell one part without the other, we're spinning the story in a misleading way. We're not being faithful to the bible.
---
Reading the Pentateuch (with a "biblical inerrancy" mindset) is an exercise in maintaining hierarchy
All of this is bringing me back to when I was a good evangelical teenager, working on reading through the whole bible. As I read through the laws that God gave Moses, my thoughts were as follows:
bible: "don't do xyz"
me: "well, yeah, xyz is a sin, they shouldn't do it"
bible: "if anyone does xyz, they must be put to death"
me: "well, maybe that feels a bit harsh, but, really, I'm wrong to feel that way- this is a sin and therefore it *does* deserve to be punished with the death penalty. So, that's fine, keep reading."
Looking back on it now, I feel that the way I read the bible back then was all about brutally maintaining rules and hierarchy. The bible says that people who do this or that bad thing are so bad they deserve to die, and I had to make myself believe it. Make myself believe that was a just law, and that those people were so different from me, I would never do something like that, so I'm safe.
It's very much the opposite of a "black lives matter" mindset. I've seen plenty of hot takes on the internet, white people making arguments about how a black victim of police brutality deserved to die because they weren't perfectly polite, or might have committed some minor nonviolent crime, or used to do drugs, and I think of the way I forced myself to believe it was right when God commanded a man should be executed for gathering sticks on the Sabbath.
Gafney is coming from a very different perspective, focusing on the victims of these laws, those who were oppressed and excluded and punished by the laws given by God and/or Moses.
I wonder if the "inerrant" reading of the bible (ie, you have to believe that all the laws given by God are good) is less of an option for marginalized people who have seen how our society's laws are used as a justification for violence against them and "keeping them in their place."
Thinking about myself, when I was a teenager, reading the last few chapters of Deuteronomy. After Moses finishes giving all the laws to the people, there are a few chapters about the blessings they will receive if they obey, and curses if they disobey. I remember thinking that this section of the bible was kind of repetitive, just hammering on the same points over and over- I felt like "yeah we get it, we should obey God, obviously, this is not that complicated, you don't need to keep saying it over and over."
Just follow these rules. Just repress yourself. Just exclude the people God wants you to exclude. It's not that complicated, why don't people get it?
For Cozbi and Zimri, it wasn't that they were irresponsible and rebellious and easily distracted from God's commands and God's blessings. No. It was because they found love, and they knew it was so much better than the narrow-minded laws that Moses was trying to use to keep everybody in line. Discovering how good it is to connect with other people, to value people, to share with each other and learn from each other and accept each other.
There's a whole world out there. Love the world.
And I'm aware that what I'm saying here- about the law of Moses being used to exclude and punish- is also argued in the bible. In the New Testament, Paul says, "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." He says that the law can only tell you what you did wrong- it can't save you- and that's why we need Jesus.
But, did we really need to wait for Jesus for that? Didn't Cozbi and Zimri already know that love was better than exclusion, and they were killed for it?
---
Conclusion
So. Those are my thoughts on the story of Cozbi and Zimri, which I still maintain is The Second-Worst Bible Story. I was very surprised that Wilda Gafney reads it as a wedding, rather than a story about how bad and wrong it is to have casual sex. I'm fascinated by this interpretation. My own marriage is international, interracial, interreligious. And Christians need to talk about the parts of the bible where the bible "heroes" and/or God do something wrong. The bible is not always right, and we need to talk about that.
---
Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:
Womanist Midrash
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus
The Second-Worst Bible Story
---
Follow-up post: Don't Protect God
Related:
This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now
Everyone Else's Nadab and Abihu Fanfics
The Worst Bible Story
