In this installment, we will look at how wisdom influences the wilderness narrative, in particular how it is (or is not) embodied in the character of Moses.
Torah, Wisely Interpreted
The Moses story grew over time, particularly in the wake of Judah’s political demise in 586 BCE, as the need arose to explain this catastrophe and envision possible futures beyond it. The fictional royal biography modeled on the Sargon birth legend was reemplotted using yet another Assyrian genre, the royal annal, in order to envision a triumphant march home from exile. This new version imagines Israelite society reestablished in the land, albeit still under an imperial umbrella, this time Persian. God assumes the role of king and leader of the Israelite “army,” while Moses is reimagined as a priest rather than a king. Just like kings and prophets, priests deal in torah—in their case, ritual instructions.1 The word torah is used to identify specific ritual instructions such as “This is the torah of the burnt offering” (Leviticus 6:2). It can also refer to a collection of such instructions; Leviticus 7:37, for example, marks the end of a series of instructions for several different types of offering with “This is the torah,” referring to the entire collection even as each individual instruction also has its own “This is the torah” introduction.
In this new version of the wilderness narrative, Moses communicates, interprets, and applies ritual torah in a way that exemplifies wise speech as it is defined across the book of Proverbs. Lady wisdom speaks in ways that are “righteous” or “upright” rather than “contorted or warped” (8:8)—honest and direct, not manipulative and deceitful—and she sets the standard for all who wish to be wise. Wise speech is marked by its outcome as well as its nature. The tongue has power to bring life or death (18:21), and wise speech nourishes and sustains (10:11; 18:20), lifting up not just individuals but entire communities (10:21; 11:11). Moses is never explicitly called “wise,” and the Passover and manna episodes that we are about to consider do not clear the bar for direct influence from the book of Proverbs or any other wisdom text. Yet we need not make a case that the wilderness narrative is influenced by or itself constitutes “wisdom literature” in order to acknowledge that Moses’s character in these episodes is shaped by values that also inform the book of Proverbs.2 These, as discussed above, would have circulated in the culture and constituted a potential resource for any scribe, writing any kind of literature, whether an Egyptian-style corpus of character instruction or a story about a heroic leader.3 The wilderness episodes in question show us a wise and discerning Moses, who uses knowledge and skill to facilitate not only the Israelites’ physical survival but also their formation as a people.
Passover (Exodus 12)
As the Israelites depart from Egypt, the LORD announces that he will protect them from the death of their firstborn, and he informs Moses of the procedure for ensuring their immediate physical safety: the ritual instruction (torah) for Passover. The responsibility for making sure this ritual is properly carried out lies on his shoulders, and the future of the Israelites as a people is at stake. As is the case for Isaiah’s torah, the LORD is the source of the instruction, and he offers thorough guidance that covers not only what to do but why.
When Moses conveys this torah to the Israelites, he does not do so verbatim. What he includes and what he omits tell us something about his character as a leader. The most important elements, given the purpose of the ritual, are here. He tells them how to begin (pick the animal) and includes the most critical step (apply the blood). The idea that they are to acquire an animal by family implies that the blood has to appear on the door of every household. This may not be a complete set of instructions, but it is honest and straightforward, true to what God told Moses. It is even strategic, as it constitutes a framework in which the other details (what kind of animal to choose, how to cook it) can make sense. Moses avoids overwhelming the Israelites with finer details until they understand the gist, increasing the likelihood that they will get it right. He embodies an idea that also happens to find a voice in Proverbs 15:7: “The lips of the wise spread knowledge,” and not just for individual benefit. His wisdom has political implications, because this knowledge is critical if the Israelites are to survive as a people.
Yet Moses does more than just repeat what God told him. He adds details that are not in God’s instruction. His command not to go outside their houses until morning closes a potentially deadly loophole in God’s initial torah, creating an extra layer of protection for anyone who fails to grasp that the blood is what keeps them safe. Moses also specifies that it is to be applied using hyssop, and this detail does more than just fill a procedural gap. Hyssop is used to apply the blood or water when purifying someone with metsoraʿat (Leviticus 14:4–7) or people and objects that have come in contact with a corpse (Numbers 19:18). The use of hyssop in the Passover ritual thus marks it as a purificatory ritual as well as a protective one.
As a protective ritual, Passover keeps the Israelites alive and helps to mitgate their fear of death. Purification rituals, however, prepare someone who has been separated from the community to reenter it. As a purificatory ritual, Passover prepares the Israelites, who are about to emerge from the brutal experience of exile, to reconstitute themselves as community. Moses here wields knowledge with understanding—a value that also plays an important role in Proverbs—and demonstrates an “ability to comprehend meanings and perceive relations and causes.”4 Moses sees that the Passover ritual will do more than just facilitate safe passage out of Egypt. It is also the beginning of a journey toward peoplehood, and he actively interprets it with that goal in mind.
Manna (Exodus 16)
Threat of death follows the Israelites into the wilderness, where they are faced with lack of food and water and have reason yet again to fear for their survival. Fear can easily undermine trust, destroy relationships, and tear societies apart, especially when it manifests as blame, as it does in the manna episode (Exodus 16:3). The Israelites are in danger not only of starvation but also of social dissolution, and what happens next hinges on how Moses responds.
A defensive response would surely be understandable, as their attack was personal and deeply misguided, although this strategy may increase the risk of dissolution. Moses instead acts to minimize that risk and ensure the success of the political project God commissioned him to lead, his strategy consistent with the idea in Proverbs 10:21: “The lips of the righteous shepherd many.” Moses defends himself in the manna episode by helping the Israelites reorient themselves, coming to their aid by teaching and interpreting an initial instruction (torah) given to him by God, just as he did in the Passover episode.
God responds to the Israelites’ predicament by informing Moses of the pending solution (“I will rain down bread for you”) and instructing him how the Israelites should act on it (Exodus 16:4–5, 11–12). This instruction is less detailed than the torah for Passover and, as such, requires more interpretation on Moses’s part. Moses’s answer when they ask “What is it?” is introduced as though it consists of God’s words (Exodus 16:16), but what follows is, yet again, not a verbatim report. It is an elucidation of the expression “a day’s portion in its day” (16:4). Moses adds “some of it” to the command to gather from verse 4, interpreting “a day’s portion in its day” to mean not everything that is there. But how much is “some”? Moses answers this question in three different ways, all of which are grounded in the torah for Passover. The expression “each for whomever is in their tent” parallels the concern for the household as the unit of preparation (Exodus 12:3); “each according to what they can eat” also occurs in Exodus 12:4, where preparation involves making sure there is enough for each member of a household; and “according to the number of your persons” mimics the same verse. As in the Passover episode, Moses uses his knowledge of existing ritual instruction to interpret new instruction so that it might be effectively applied. His extended teaching carries the weight of the initial torah by being framed as though it were part of it: “This is what the LORD commanded.” Moses may not repeat God’s words, but what he says is so much in the spirit of God’s instruction and in service of its ultimate goal that the LORD may as well have said it himself. Torah is here associated as much with Moses as with God.
Moses continues to interpret and teach as the episode unfolds. When the Israelites consult him about why they have double the amount on the sixth day, he clarifies how the torah applies to this unusual circumstance by explaining why (“Tomorrow is a day of rest, a holy Sabbath of the LORD”) and instructing them what to do with the surplus (Exodus 16:23). The miraculous double portion redirects their focus from Moses to God as the one whose job it is to sustain them, and the communal ritual it makes possible, like Passover, strengthens their sense of peoplehood. Yet again Moses extrapolates his teaching about the Sabbath from God’s statement in Exodus 16:5 that the Israelites will find double on the sixth day, but it, too, is introduced as “This is what the LORD said” (verse 23). When the Israelites execute Moses’s instructions, however, they act not “just as the LORD commanded” but “just as Moses commanded” (verse 24). This framing lays bare a claim of equivalence between Moses’s instruction and divine torah itself. The effect is not to collapse Moses and God—Moses’s instruction is clearly distinct from God’s in this story—but to convey that Moses’s speech has integrity. And if his speech has integrity, he has integrity. Proverbs often frames righteous speech as the speech of righteous people, implying a strong link between speech and character (e.g., 10:11; 11:11). Moses’s speech shows that he can be trusted to lead the Israelites in line with the mission God gave him.
Torah, Contorted
Good leadership can indeed mean the difference between success and failure: “Without strategy a people will fall, and there is success in an abundance of counsel” (Proverbs 11:14).5 Moses exercises strategy, if not also cunning, when he interprets torah, as he teaches the Israelites to learn from their experience and draws on his own knowledge to help them navigate it. Yet strategy and cunning are “ethically neutral” and can also be put to questionable uses.6 While the overall impression of Moses is that of a skilled exegete of torah, not all depictions of him are as straightforward as those we have examined so far. The Korah episode, which we are about to consider, shows us a Moses who appears wise but whose speech reveals strategy and cunning that is not exactly above board. These conflicting portrayals remind us that decisions about how to construct a character are made by authors, whose goals influence not only characterization but all aspects of the narrative. We see a similar strategy and cunning in the quail episode, which involves legal exegesis that complements Moses’s use of speech in the Korah episode. These two episodes together raise questions about the motives of the scribes responsible for crafting them, as well as the character of the emerging Torah itself, in ways that suggest a possible context for Jeremiah’s trenchant critique of the scribes, discussed in Part 1.
Korah (Numbers 16–17)
At the heart of the complaint in the Korah episode is an idea about the character of the Israelite community to which Korah holds Moses and Aaron accountable: “the entire community, all of them, are holy, and the LORD is in their midst” (Numbers 16:3). We are accustomed to reading Korah as the antihero, but we can begin to see that this story is not quite what it appears if we consider that his idea about holiness is articulated frequently in Deuteronomy and the Holiness legislation.7 Perhaps he is not the rebel he is made out to be.
There is an egalitarian aspect to the idea of communal holiness across all the texts in which we find it, yet there is also a tension, because some depict holiness as graded and exclude the Levites and laypeople from performing ritual on pain of death. Because the latter idea dominates the beginning of the book of Numbers, it is natural to take it as the standard against which to evaluate Korah and to side with the narrator and Moses in their assessments of him. Yet, if we pause to realize that this use of holiness is not a given and stands in tension with more genuinely egalitarian views, we can see that Korah’s objection might be more legitimate than it first appears.8 That realization prompts a different evaluation of Moses’s character as well, at least as it is depicted in this episode.
Moses’s response to Korah’s complaint exhibits a high degree of rhetorical skill, but his strategy for helping the Israelites achieve peoplehood in this case involves working to secure their submission to Aaron. Instead of assuaging their fear, as he does in the manna episode, he exacerbates it and exploits it to this end. Moses does not address Korah’s concern in a straightforward manner; his response is contorted, craftily designed to exercise the very abuse of authority for which Korah critiques him. He begins by shifting focus away from the issue of holiness and toward the issue of authority, or who gets to say who and what is holy—namely, God (Numbers 16:5). Moses may be actively involved as an interpreter of torah when the manna appears, but he seems to step out of the way and allow God to resolve this one alone. This cunning move leaves the impression that he is not responsible for whatever transpires.
There is a duplicity in this response. Ostensibly, the only role Moses plays is to establish the technical means by which the LORD will render his decision—namely, incense ritual (16:6–7). Yet this procedure is anything but neutral. The place where the incense ritual is to be performed (“before the LORD”) and the time (“in the morning”) remind us that, at least in some texts, this ritual is a prerogative strictly limited to Aaron (Exodus 30:7–10; Leviticus 16:12–13; cf. Ezekiel 8), and the early chapters of Numbers establish that they are not allowed to touch the censers needed to perform this ritual, on pain of death (Numbers 3:23, 29, 35, 38; 4:9, 14). This restriction is framed as divine instruction (torah), so Moses may appear to be proposing a test, but he is really daring Korah and his allies to encroach on the sanctuary. The outcome of this ritual is a foregone conclusion: “the unauthorized person who approaches will be put to death” (Numbers 1:51; 3:38).
Moses offers his own refutation nevertheless. In another cunning move, he reframes Korah’s complaint so it appears to be an issue of Levitical ambition instead of a legitimate critique. He addresses the entire group as Levites even though they are not and then lays bare his counteraccusation: “You are seeking the priesthood!” (Numbers 16:10).9 That is not what Korah said. He simply held Moses and Aaron accountable to the idea that the whole community is holy. Yet Korah’s complaint can be taken to imply a claim to the priesthood if it is interpreted in the context of the early chapters of Numbers, which, in their current form, limit access to the holy to Aaron and his descendants.10 This is a case of interpellation, a strategy of forcing an intelocutor to make their case from within an imposed system, based on premises they may not accept. He deploys yet another rhetorical strategy—peritrope—to draw attention away from the negative charges Korah leveled at him and put Korah on the defensive, undermining his credibility. This characterization of Moses is radically at odds with that in the Passover and manna episodes. His cunning rhetorical strategy is here undertaken not to strengthen the Israelites’ sense of peoplehood or equip them to survive their journey through the wilderness but to make an example of Korah and his allies in order to squelch dissent.
Quail (Numbers 11)
Torah can refer to familial, oracular, or ritual instruction but also to law of the sort we find in the three law collections in the Pentateuch. The interpretation, application, and extension of law is not in and of itself problematic; indeed, it is necessary as new situations arise. Law is in this sense a living, breathing institution, evident in the very existence of multiple law collections that interact with one another in dynamic ways.
Yet the need to interpret, apply, and extend creates an opening to manipulate and contort for those with skill but less than desirable character and questionable goals. Words are wielded in the Korah episode in a contorted rather than a righteous and upright way, in order to arrogate power to the high priest rather than nourish the well-being of the entire community. The author of the quail episode engages in strategic and cunning legal exegesis toward the same end.
The Israelites’ complaint in this episode is framed as a “gluttonous craving” (התאוו תאוה, Numbers 11:4), using a verb that also appears in the Decalogue—“Thou shalt not covet” (ולא תתאוה, Deuteronomy 5:21 [ET 18])—in order to frame desire for more than what God provides as a covenant violation. More than just obedience is at stake, though, because the Israelites lament the lack of food they ate in Egypt, and this is interpreted as a rejection of God’s presence among them in the wilderness (Numbers 11:20). The verb used (מא״ס) is the same one that, in the Holiness legislation, frames the curses that will come if covenant provisions are broken: “if you reject my statutes” (Leviticus 26:15, 43–44). But it is the LORD himself who is being rejected in the quail episode, not just the law. It is one thing to violate the terms of a relationship; it is another thing to deny that there is one. The Israelites act as though they have no divine covenant partner, an attitude implicit in the complaint itself: “Who will feed us meat?”
The obvious answer to that question is “God,” but there is more here. Why do the Israelites ask for meat, specifically? Their nostalgia for Egypt does not explain it, because meat is not in the list of foods they remember fondly. The allusion to the Decalogue in their complaint suggests an answer, because the “thou shalt not covet” provision focuses on desire for what belongs to someone else. The quail episode extends this law from property to social prerogatives. Deuteronomy permits Israelites to eat meat at home, as long as they refrain from consuming blood (Deuteronomy 12:20–26), but the Holiness legislation restricts consumption of meat to the sanctuary, where it is slaughtered, prepared, and consumed in a system controlled by priests, who themselves get the lion’s share of the meat (Leviticus 17; Numbers 18:8–19). So a second answer to “Who will feed us meat?” is implicit—namely, Aaron. The Israelites are punished for coveting not only more than what God provides but also what by and large is claimed by the priests. Moses’s contorted speech in the Korah episode squelches potential objection to Aaron’s leadership role as it applies to sanctuary access and control of incense. The quail episode may not mention Aaron explicitly, but it complements the Korah episode in its focus on protecting his role as the mediator of meat.
Featured image: Washington Allston, Jeremiah Dictating His Prophecy of the Destruction of Jerusalem to Baruch the Scribe (1820), Yale University Art Gallery, Wikimedia commons, public domain.
- Ronald E. Clements, “Wisdom and Old Testament Theology,” in Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J. A. Emerton, ed. John Day et al. (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 283–84 wants to find the origins of torah in ritual instructions like these, which then broadened beyond the strictly cultic to the ethical. Yet such ritual torah likely coexisted with other kinds of instruction, whether folk or oracular. ↩︎
- For discussion of how to discern direct wisdom influence, see John L. McLaughlin, “Wisdom Influence,” in The Oxford Handbook of Wisdom and the Bible, ed. Will Kynes (Oxford University Press, 2021), 409–11. Philip Y. Yoo, “The Absence of Wisdom in the Wilderness,” in Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar, ed. John Jarick, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 618 (Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2016), 353–74 makes a case that the wilderness narrative is thoroughly influenced by wisdom insofar as J, E, D, and P all expect the Israelites to be wise; where the term חכם is lacking, it is due to their unwise behavior. I do not share the commitment to the Documentary Hypothesis that informs his analysis, so I would not necessarily agree with his assessment of wisdom influence, and I am interested here in the character of Moses, not that of the Israelites. ↩︎
- On the concept of “cultural repertoire,” which can help account for this, see Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). ↩︎
- Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, Anchor Bible 18A (Doubleday, 2000), 30. ↩︎
- Translation mine, but “strategy” for תחבלות follows Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10–31, Anchor Yale Bible 18B (Yale University Press, 2009), 536. ↩︎
- Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 35, 37. ↩︎
- See Deuteronomy 7:6; 14:2, 21; 26:19; 28:9 (as well as Exodus 19:6) and Leviticus 19:2; 20:7, 26; 21:8 (as well as Leviticus 11:44–45 and Numbers 15:40). ↩︎
- The early chapters of Numbers themselves did not originally contain this idea of graded holiness, which comes into play as part of a revision that disenfranchises the Levites; see the discussion in Angela Roskop Erisman, The Wilderness Narratives in the Hebrew Bible: Religion, Politics, and Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2025), 118–26. ↩︎
- The fact that Moses addresses the entire group as Levites is usually taken as a sign that two different versions of the story have been conflated, one involving the Levites versus Aaron and the other involving laypeople versus Moses, but it is better read as a rhetorical choice on Moses’s part than as a sign of the episode’s literary history; see Erisman, Wilderness Narratives, 132–34. ↩︎
- For the idea that this was not always the case, see Angela Roskop Erisman, “Firstborn, Farmer, Soldier, Spy: The Place of Reuben in Israelite Tribal Discourse,” in The Ancestors of Genesis and the Exodus Tradition: A Festschrift for Thomas Römer, ed. Jean-Daniel Macchi and Christophe Nihan, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 568 (de Gruyter, 2026), 349–65. ↩︎
