A ROUTE OUTSIDE THE BOX

Torah reading:  Genesis 28:10-32:3

Haftarah:   Hosea 12:13-14:10

The reference in the Prophet Hosea's sermon to the narrative of Jacob and Rachel seems out of place at first glance, especially in the original Hebrew.  A literal translation of the opening verse would read, “And Jacob fled to Aram; and Israel worked for a wife, and for a wife he guarded.”  Modern translators usually fill in a textual blank by writing, “…and for a wife he guarded sheep.”  Biblical Hebrew is a very compact language, and Biblical Hebrew poetry depends heavily on sentence structure, rhythm, and word play for its effect, so poetic highlights are often impossible to express in English.  The next verse is translated, “By (or through) a prophet Hashem brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet he (Israel) was preserved.”  In Hebrew the same verb signifies both “to guard” and “to preserve,” enhancing the parallelism of the two verses.  The Malbim considers (1) this second verse to connect the idolatry of Hosea’s time to the infamous Golden Calf.  In each case, as he sees it, people needed a visible figure to act as a “mediator” between them and Hashem.  In his Guide for the Perplexed, the Rambam (2) stresses that Hashem intended to wean His people away from this symptom of intellectual and spiritual immaturity. 

                In the Haftarah Hosea proceeds to vilify the residents of the Northern Kingdom, or Kingdom of Israel, for worshipping a Canaanite deity symbolized, coincidentally, by a calf. Even before the minting of coins in the ancient Near East, silver ingots of standard weight (3) were commonly used as money; therefore, that people were making images of calves out of silver suggests to me that these were figurines that could be set on a home altar or worn around the neck, and might be kissed as an act of reverence.   The Malbim understands the verb in the conclusion of this verse, translated in some Jewish Bibles as “sacrifice,” to mean “slaughter;” he argues that the Prophet is condemning individuals who slew a king for worshipping the Canaanite deity, yet worship that same deity themselves!

                The “nine dots puzzle” challenges a person to draw a path connecting nine dots arranged in a three-by-three square, using only four straight lines, in such a way that no line passes through an individual dot more than once.  The solution requires extending three of the lines beyond the edges of the square, which many people treat as a “box.”  The Sages who assigned the different Haftarot may have expected the readers and listeners to have a familiarity with the verses preceding the Haftarah, particularly one in which Hosea charges a merchant with having unjust balances, which parallels Jacob’s accusations against his uncle Laban for not only tricking Jacob into marrying the wrong wife but abusing him as an employee.  This insistence on fairness in the marketplace completes the route taken by the Sages in selecting the text for this Haftarah.

(1)    We traditionally refer to Torah scholars in the present tense even long after their deaths, because their words keep them alive in our hearts.

(2)    Rambam:  An acronym for Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Moses Maimonides, a major authority on Jewish law as well as a philosopher and physician.  The Rambam compiled the first codex of Jewish law and served as physician to the Sultan of Cairo in the twelfth century CE.  He is especially admired for his rationalistic approach to scriptural analysis and Jewish legal practice.

(3)    Such as the silver shekel.