The culture wars continue in the wilderness; more blood will flow this time. And at the risk of betraying the official party line of Adonai and Moses - today’s complicated and cruel chapter challenges and questions loyalty to what the Torah seems to endorse as proper and proud. Below the Bible Belt is about uncovering uncomfortable truths, bias and beliefs that may no longer serve our moral compass. At the very least today’s story makes me curious the forceful pull that so strongly seduced our ancestors - away from the invisible and often angry deity that led them from slavery to the desert, and yet failed to nourish their deepest need for love.
Perhaps it was no contradiction for them - they found divine wherever there was beauty, not paying too much attention to the laws?
The backstory, briefly:
The people of Israel, almost at Canaan, are curious about the people of Moab and Midian, the locals they encounter on their way. Despite tensions and politics, the populations mingle, hang out in the markets, the Hebrews seduced by the ways with which those ancient people embody their love of the divine. One of the beloved local deities is called Baal Peor, and though forgotten through the ages he is well preserved in the book that saw him as a dangerous idol and successfully sought to annihilate anybody who worshiped This Gaping God of Holy Holes.
More about Peor in a bit but first the rest of the story.
The Hebrews, successfully seduced, worship Peor along with the women of Moab (specifically mentioned) who invite them into their sensual ceremonies where faith and fornication seem to go, literally, hand in hand. Embodied religion was not uncommon in the ancient world, as even the Golden Calf incident will prove.
Clearly Adonai and Moses are mad, and jealous, dispatching violent and conflicting orders with steps to stop this mass desertion, all involving killing those involved.
In the midst of this mayhem one of the leaders of the tribe of Simon steps into the main stage in front of the Tent of Time, along with a princess from Midian, perhaps a priestess.
Zimri and Cosbi are getting it on in public, in front of the people, who are peeping and weeping. The public sex act, perhaps a wedding, seems to be what’s known as Hieros Gamos - the Ritual of Sacred Union, acted out by priests and priestess of different pagan religions and cults everywhere to symoblize the union of the masculine and feminine, earth and heaven, life and death.
But one Levite, Pinchas, Moses and Aaron’s nephew, takes the law into his hands, outraged by the mingling of faiths and public pagan spectacle he spears and kills both of them, instantly stopping the so-called plague or mass killing that was unleashed by Adonai’s wrath.
For this lynching, Pinchas is rewarded by Adonai with a lifetime leadership position, thanked for defending our tribal honor. Later on a divine decree is announced to declare war on Midian as retribution (remember Balaam the Midianite?) and leave none of them alive:
“For they assailed you by the trickery they practiced against you—because of the affair of Peor and because of the affair of their sister Cozbi, daughter of the Midianite chieftain, who was killed at the time of the plague on account of Peor.”Ba 25:18
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If you are confused about the fact the Moses is married to a Midinite please check out what we wrote about Midian back in chapter 10.
But who’s Peor exactly? The English translation is often ‘The Lord of Holes’. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible offers these highlights:
“Baal Peor: A local god, mentioned only in the Old Testament, associated with the mountain of Peor in the land of Moab, associated with the Canaanite Ba’al , God of Fertility... The name Peor is related to Heb P'R, 'open wide', connected perhaps to ‘'mouth of the netherworld”. Ugaritic myth tells of Baal’s annual descent to the underworld, coinciding with the yearly withering of nature in autumn and winter. Like other gods who die and resurrect he too will rise again” ..and what will help him are the offerings given to him by worshippers, poured to him through holes they dig in the ground. The other reasons he is known as Lord of Holes is that his worship included using our bodily orifices - all of them - in ways that elevate the sensual into the sacred.
“The sexual rites connected with the cull of the Baal of Peor have to do with the aspect of fenility...It can be related to the myth of Baal describing how (the bull) Baal during his stay in the netherworld makes love to a heifer, mounting her up to eighty eight times.”
Was this what Zimri and Cosbi were doing in public, 88 times, that so angered Pinchas?
And Is this what’s at the root of the cultural wars still dividing pious people torn between conservative and liberal camps? Sex is and can be holy - but it can be abusive, addictive, violent and harmful. How can we reclaim the holy of the holes? the love that is not rooted in terror and rage?
Deep below the surface of our divergent politics on women’s rights, queer justice, body positivity and free love hides an ancient deity still feasting on our bodily fluids and perhaps waiting for reconciliation between book and body, head and holes, profane and pure.
Perhaps more appreciation for this forgotten god and the libidinal aspects of our personal and public erotic tensions will in some way help us sanctify desire and not keep ending up with fear fueled domestic violence that pits us against each other in the so-called name of love of god/s?
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Thank you, Amichai, for today’s conversation. I am learning and questioning on deeper levels than ever before as we dive Below the Bible Belt in community with you. Yasher koach to you for this tremendous labor of love!
Thank you, Amichai, for today’s conversation. I am learning and questioning on deeper levels than ever before as we dive Below the Bible Belt in community with you. Yasher koach to you for this tremendous labor of love!