Some sacred stories, and most holy days, are complex constructions, layered over time to reflect new meanings, agenda and needs, sometimes obscuring original narratives and purpose. Today’s minor fast day on the Jewish calendar, the Tenth of Tevet, is a case in point. Lesser known by most modern Jews, it recalls the start of the fall of the first temple in Jerusalem, the permeant loss of the Ark of the Covenant, and the start of the Babylonian exile.
One of the exiles, the prophet Ezekiel, will help make the day memorable, as he recounts this vision:“O mortal, record this date, this exact day; for this very day the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem!” (Ezekiel 24:2)
Over time however, both the exact date and the reason for the mourning has been muddled - did it happen on the 5th or 10th of Tevet? What about the fast to protest the translation of the Bible into Greek that was held on the 8th of Tevet, or the mourning for the death of Ezra on the 9th of Tevet? In 1950 the 10th of Tevet also became associated with the Holocaust.
This day is what is known as a “memory place”.
Dr. Guy Miron explains:
“The term “Memory Place,” attributed to the French historian Pierre Nora, includes not only spatial but temporal places ..days of commemoration around the calendar. Those days, like physical monuments, help the collective – in our case the Jewish people–to preserve the memory of formative events in its past, which are meaningful for its future.
The “Memory Place” creates an encounter between the individual and the collective and the commemorated object, event, or symbol. This encounter disturbs the daily routine, which, because of its nature, encourages forgetfulness. Like a person who encounters the past by passing from time to time by a physical monument in his neighborhood or visiting a memorial, the past is also encountered when the person faces the temporal “Memory Place” on the calendar. This encounter is cyclic by its nature and with it, the person reflects about the past event, and in a way, even experiences it every year.
The Jewish people, deprived of state life or sovereignty over their land for many generations, could not develop a widespread tradition of physical memory sites...the Jewish “memory culture” developed much more extensively through use of temporal places of memory built around the calendar.”
Today’s chapter meets the calendar in yet another confluence of ‘memory place’ meeting ‘memory object’ - the Ark of the Covenant, its mysterious powers and fate.
In our current narrative, the ark is taken hostage by the Philistines, who quickly realize that it has superpowers that punish them in painful ways. They transfer it from one city to another, and finally realize that they have to get rid of it and send it back north, to the people of Israel. They also realize that just returning the ark is not enough - reparations are due. In a weird move that deserves more attention, they construct iconic images made of gold that represent the plagues they suffered because of the ark’s presence. Those include, oddly, five rats made of gold, and five ‘swellings’ echoing their proctological problems. Whatever these are all about, they are placed in a brand new wagon, alongside the ark, which is then hitched to two cows that just gave birth but have not endured a yoke. The pious Philistines want to make sure that the God of Israel leads the way and wants the ark to be back home so they lock the cows’ calves inside a shack, and send the cows on the path towards Israel, with no one to drive the wagon. The cows, even though their babies are behind them, do not stray, and walk straight on, across the border, to the territory of Judah, where the people of Beit Shemesh, or the House of the Sun, are busy harvesting their wheat.
Some accounts have the cows singing specific praises to YHWH all the way there.
When they arrive, the jubilant Judeans take the gold, use the wood of the wagon to construct an altar, sacrifice the two cows and place the returned ark on a large ceremonial rock.
That turns out to be a big mistake - YHWH’s wrath at the people’s mere looking at or into the ark results in massive deaths:
וַיַּ֞ךְ בְּאַנְשֵׁ֣י בֵֽית־שֶׁ֗מֶשׁ כִּ֤י רָאוּ֙ בַּאֲר֣וֹן יְהֹוָ֔ה וַיַּ֤ךְ בָּעָם֙ שִׁבְעִ֣ים אִ֔ישׁ חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים אֶ֖לֶף אִ֑ישׁ וַיִּֽתְאַבְּל֣וּ הָעָ֔ם כִּֽי־הִכָּ֧ה יְהֹוָ֛ה בָּעָ֖ם מַכָּ֥ה גְדוֹלָֽה׃
“YHWH struck at the people of Beth-shemesh because they looked into the Ark of YHWH; He struck down fifty seven thousand of them. The people mourned, for YHWH had inflicted a great slaughter upon the population.”
And here we have another forgotten and repressed day of mourning in our strange history.
Was the sin of looking at, or even into, the ark, so bad as to merit the death of so many people whose only crime was the jubilant welcome and approach to the sacred?
Whoever wrote this story may have had an agenda - making sure we ask no questions, stay away from the powerful source, and never look too closely at what or who’s behind the curtain, not question what the inner core is all about.
We often learn how to stay away from electrical outlets - or more powerful power sources - the hard way. The terrified people of Bet Shemesh mourn and then do what the Philistines just did - try to figure out how to get rid of this holy thing that is killing them in droves.
So what’s going on here? Why is the ark so dangerous, what’s the story is all about? What does it tell us about the God of Israel whose wrath strikes out at his own people for attempting to secure the icon that best represents him?
In his latest book The Invention of God, biblical scholar Thomas Römer uses etymology and archaeology to explore how the“one God of Israel” evolved, through a process which is “a kind of collective invention.” He points out that the ark was not unique to the Israelites story. It was, for instance, common for pre-Islamic Arabs and nomadic Bedouins to carry holy chests that often contained two sacred stones or the statues of two gods, sometimes male-female figurines. Later on these would be replaced by the Koran. Based on some archeological findings he speculates that the ark itself may have contained two such statues (maybe hinted at through the depiction of the two cherubim) that would later morph to become the two sets of the tablets. The stories about the lethal powers of the ark, according to many scholars, are a later insertion into the Samuel story, but they echo much earlier layers of primal powers associated with the deity, the shrine and and its cultic objects. Was Hanna’s prayer successful because she approached the actual ark, inside the shrine forbidden for most people? Are these tales of terror associated with the mere sight of the ark leftovers from earlier layers that meet our ‘memory places’ as place holders of the power of the divine?
Ariel David, writing in Ha'aretz, reflects on Römer’s research and today’s puzzling chapter:
“These biblical stories may all contain echoes of the ancient cults connected to the ark.
It is difficult to completely untangle the many layers of history and myth contained in this story thousands of years later, but a broader message does emerge.
The Bible appears to describe the ancient Israelites, from Moses onward, as staunch monotheists who sometimes err towards paganism and are punished for their sins by God. But this picture may be the result of mostly self-serving propaganda by the priests and scribes of the late monarchic or post-exilic periods.
The reality emerging today from the combined work of biblical scholars and archeologists is much more complex and diverse. It indicates that Judaism as we know it today evolved slowly and organically, incorporating a variety of influences and religious traditions from the mosaic of cultures that lived side by side in the region.”
The mystery remains as obscure as the fate and whereabouts of the actual ark, still sparking interest among scholars and storytellers today. And although holy arks exist in every synagogue worldwide these days, ‘memory places’ connecting us through time and space to the ancient sacred secrets, containing Torah scrolls and curtained off from casual contact -- the original remains a riddle. For the people of the biblical Bet Shemesh, mourning their losses, desperate to get God out of town, fearing for their lives, this is no theoretical discussion. They call for help which will arrive in the next chapter and offer the ark a resting place for the next two - or maybe many more - decades to come.
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Outstanding post, sensitive, well researched, well written. Valuable contribution to torah.