Kommentar zu Bamidbar 25:17

צרור — This grammatical form is similar to זכור and שמור: it expresses the idea of continuous present action — You must [constantly] show enmity toward them.

צרור את המדינים, "harass the Midianites!" Why did the Torah write both: "harass, and smite them?" Our sages in Bamidbar Rabbah 21 were aware of this and said that although normally the Israelites are bound by the injunction in Deut. 20,10-19 to offer people whom they planned to attack peace, and offer them a chance to emigrate or surrender before actually attacking them, not to destroy their fruit-bearing trees, etc., in this instance these injunctions were lifted. The nation had shown itself to be so debased that no special consideration had to be shown to it. We must also understand what the Torah meant when speaking of "revenge" in 31,2 where the details about the punitive campaign are introduced. We would have expected the reverse, i.e. that the Israelites would consume the booty of their enemies as described in Deut. 20,14. Surely, this would have been more in the nature of revenge and the Midianites would have experienced more distress when they saw themselves losing all their possessions. Does not the Torah describe a people who has been cursed as being consumed by its enemies (Leviticus 26,16)?

צרור את המדינים, “Harass the Midianites!” On the one hand, the word צרור is in the singular mode, whereas the word following i.e. והכיתם is in the plural mode. This is a hint to Moses that seeing he will give the necessary orders and select the soldiers that campaign will be credited to him, although, naturally it would require quite a few people to wage the actual war. The reason why Moses, personally, should not go with those soldiers is the fact that he had been raised and given refuge in Midian and the hand that had been fed by the Midianites should not now turn and bite that hand.

V. 17. צרור וגו׳, eigentlich zusammendrängen, zusammendrücken, jemandes Kraft beschränken. Den Midjaniten gebührt צרור, dass ihr ihre Macht brechet, und והכיתם אותם: und es wird euch noch die Aufgabe werden, einen Kriegsschlag gegen sie auszuführen (siehe Kap. 31).

צרור את המזינים, “the commandment to harass the Midianites and not the Moabites, was because whatever the Moabites had done, they had done because they had believed that they had a legitimate reason to fear for their lives from the Israelites. Furthermore, the Israelites had already taken possession of lands which used to be theirs before Sichon had conquered it from them in war.

Another difficulty is the justification offered by the Torah in verse 18: "for they have been harassing you, etc." Why did the Torah have to spell out the reason? According to those of our sages who stated that the injunction not to destroy the fruit-bearing trees had been lifted, the Torah felt compelled to justify this. According to Tanchuma the words כי צררים are to be understood as a reference to what the Midianites were about to do to the Israelites and the command to wage war against them first was an illustration of the halachic principle that if someone intends to kill you, don't wait, but kill him first. I believe this is a homiletical explanation.

צרור את המדינים, “Harass the Midianites!” The use of the infinitive mode tzaror, indicates that this was not a command to be carried out immediately. We know this from the fact that the details for the preparations of the punitive expedition against Midian have only been spelled out in Numbers 31,2. It has been mentioned here in order to put at ease the mind of the Israelites who had lost 24000 men of military age due to the involvement of Midianite women at the instigation of their husbands in a quarrel that had not concerned them at all, and they appeared to have gotten away with that.

I believe that the key to the correct interpretation of this episode is the fact that G'd gave the command to harass the Midianites not at the time it was to be implemented but sometime before it. The implementation was commanded only in 31,2. In other words the command we deal with in our verse does not address itself to the time of the act of revenge.

We must therefore assume that what G'd had in mind with this command was the rehabilitation of the Israelites. We have already written at length on Leviticus 18,3 that the urge to engage in illicit sex is a natural urge, difficult to combat especially when fantasy is supported by visual contact with the object of one's desire. It is extremely difficult to control one's fantasies. If someone has indulged his fantasy and has actually had forbidden sex, he cannot expect the atonement process to begin until he has rid himself of his desire, and has banished his fantasies. I have commented on this already in connection with Genesis 4,7 where the Torah told us that sin couches at the door and man displays a hankering after it. At the same time the Torah assured Cain that he could master these impulses. In the situation of which the Torah speaks, the Israelites who had not actually indulged in sex with the Moabites had certainly fantasized about doing so. Many of the elite even had become צמוד, attached, to Baal Pe-or as the Torah told us, i.e that they suffered from this powerful desire to commit the sin (compare 25,3). G'd intended to cure the Israelites of the pull exerted on them by this sin in order to remove the plague from them. We know from Deut. 4,3 that the plague did not come to an end until all the people who had worshiped the Baal Pe-or had died. It is quite clear that in that verse in Deuteronomy the Torah did not speak about the 24.000 who were reported as having died in Numbers 25,9. The 24.000 people mentioned there were all from the tribe of Shimon. According to Bamidbar Rabbah 20 [I have not found this. Ed.], these people died because they wanted to kill Pinchas. The text says that they were killed because they worshiped the Baal Pe-or. This proves that not only the 24.000 people mentioned in 25,9 died. Verse 18 in our chapter proves the same point when relating the pestilence to Baal Pe- or.

It seems dear that the principal issue that caused Pinchas to kill Zimri was not the fact that he had committed idol worship of the Baal-Pe-or, but his sleeping with a Midianite woman. Moreover, the plague occurred because of the people who indulged in sexual intercourse with the Moabites, and the Torah says that Pinchas atoned for the children of Israel, i.e. that his deed led to the arrest of the plague so that it did not kill the entire nation. Some of the people who were saved by Pinchas' deed had entertained idolatrous thoughts, others had engaged in illicit sex, something that G'd does not overlook. G'd now advised the Israelites to harass the Midianites, etc. The idea was to implant in the Israelites a hatred against the people who had caused them to commit their respective sins. They were also to develop a revulsion against anything that appeared good and permissible which these people had to offer to the Israelites such as the fruit of their orchards, etc. They had to realise that anything which originated with people such as the Midianites was disaster in disguise. Psalms 139,21 teaches us that David taught himself to hate people who hated G'd. The word משנאיך, "those who hate You," in that verse may be read as משניאיך, "those who cause You to be hated." People who cause us to hate G'd's statutes and who cause us to violate them are no different from people who tell us outright to hate G'd. Shabbat 114 elaborates on this theme. G'd's stratagem was to create within the Israelites a positive revulsion towards the thought of committing the sins which had caused the debacle at Shittim. Once the Israelites had trained themselves to hate sin, their affinity to G'd would become something natural and the process of atonement could commence.

This is basically what the word צרר in our verse is all about. The Israelites were to develop a feeling of צר ואויב against the Midianites. They were to perceive them as oppressors and enemies. As a result, they would develop feelings of hatred against them and anything which emanated from them. This is one path of repentance and it paved the way for ignoring the general injunction of not destroying the adversary's fruit-bearing trees or his water supply. The reason the Torah phrases this commandment in the present tense, tzaror instead of as an imperative tzeror! is to ensure that the feeling engendered amongst the Israelites towards the Midianites would be an ongoing one. The Torah goes on instructing "you shall smite them," i.e. in the future, not immediately. The Torah continues with כי צררים הם לכם, "for they continue to harass you," to make certain that the Israelites' hatred against the Midianites not be based on the casualties the Israelites had suffered already through the Midianites. If that were all, how could the campaign contribute to the rehabilitation of the sinners who were the victims and who had already died? The enmity had to be based on the ongoing machinations of the Midianites to entrap the Israelites into worshiping Baal Pe-or and in indulging in acts such as had been performed by Kosbi. The Israelites had to hate the cause of the sin not merely the sin itself. The reason the Torah singled out Kosbi was because she represented the additional allure of aristocracy plus the fact that she had engaged in her seduction publicly.

It is quite possible that the reason the Torah repeats the fact which we all know already namely that Kosbi was the daughter of the most important Prince of Midian, was to stress that when the Moabite women would observe their princess they would follow her lead in seducing the Israelites by demeaning themselves just as their princess had done. The Torah adds the nuance אחותם, "their sister," meaning that though they themselves were of Moabite origin whereas Kosbi was a Midianite, they considered her as their "sister" ideologically if not biologically. The Torah continues המכה, "who had been slain," to allude to her martyrdom for the cause. She had sacrificed her life for the advancement of the cause of the Moabites as if she had been a biological sister of the Moabites. ביום המגפה, on the day of the plague. This is a reference to the plague which occurred on account of the sin of Baal Pe-or. This teaches that the plague occurred immediately after the sin was committed; the plague was in addition to the 24.000 of whom the Torah reported that they died because they were all members of the tribe of Shimon on account of their threatening Pinchas. At any rate, the thrust of the whole paragraph is to instil the hatred against the Midianites based on purely moral grounds which alone could guarantee that the campaign against them would not only succeed but would not involve casualties by the Israelites.