Count, But be Careful
In this week’s parsha, God commands Moses to count the people, and each person counted “shall pay the Lord a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled.” Only men twenty years of age and older were to be counted, and each was to give one half-shekel to support the running of the Tabernacle. This money was used “to expiate [lehaper] for your persons.”
For the first time - but not the last- the Torah views the census as an inherently hazardous undertaking. It could, or perhaps would always result in a pandemic outbreak, but that could be prevented by the giving of the half-shekel.
שמות 15:30–11
וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ כִּ֣י תִשָּׂ֞א אֶת־רֹ֥אשׁ בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֮ לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם֒ וְנָ֨תְנ֜וּ אִ֣ישׁ כֹּ֧פֶר נַפְשׁ֛וֹ לַיהֹוָ֖ה בִּפְקֹ֣ד אֹתָ֑ם וְלֹא־יִהְיֶ֥ה בָהֶ֛ם נֶ֖גֶף בִּפְקֹ֥ד אֹתָֽם׃ זֶ֣ה ׀ יִתְּנ֗וּ כל־הָעֹבֵר֙ עַל־הַפְּקֻדִ֔ים מַחֲצִ֥ית הַשֶּׁ֖קֶל בְּשֶׁ֣קֶל הַקֹּ֑דֶשׁ עֶשְׂרִ֤ים גֵּרָה֙ הַשֶּׁ֔קֶל מַחֲצִ֣ית הַשֶּׁ֔קֶל תְּרוּמָ֖ה לַֽיהֹוָֽה׃ כֹּ֗ל הָעֹבֵר֙ עַל־הַפְּקֻדִ֔ים מִבֶּ֛ן עֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה וָמָ֑עְלָה יִתֵּ֖ן תְּרוּמַ֥ת יְהֹוָֽה׃ הֶֽעָשִׁ֣יר לֹֽא־יַרְבֶּ֗ה וְהַדַּל֙ לֹ֣א יַמְעִ֔יט מִֽמַּחֲצִ֖ית הַשָּׁ֑קֶל לָתֵת֙ אֶת־תְּרוּמַ֣ת יְהֹוָ֔ה לְכַפֵּ֖ר עַל־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶֽם׃
And the Lord spoke to Moshe, saying: When thou dost take the sum of the children of Yisra᾽el after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul to the Lord, when thou dost number them; that there be no plague among them, when thou dost number them. This they shall give, every one that passes among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gera:) a half shekel shall be the offering of the Lord. Every one that passes among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give the offering of the Lord.The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give the offering of the Lord, to make atonement for your souls.
“-Az me tseylt nisht, kumt arayn di brokhe
”When you don’t count, a blessing comes” ”
King David and His deadly census
It is this obvious danger that King David was warned about when he commanded his military advisor Joab to “make the rounds of all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Be’er-Sheva, and take a census of the people, so that I may know the size of the population.” Joab was reluctant. “May the Lord your God increase the number of the people a hundredfold, while your own eyes see it,” he told his king. “But,” Joab asked, “why should my lord king want this?” (2 Sam 24:3).
David was not persuaded, the census was taken, but something—we are not told what— convinced David he had made a mistake. “Afterward David reproached himself for having numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned grievously in what I have done. Please, Lord, remit the guilt of Your servant, for I have acted foolishly.’” God refuses to absolve David, and the prophet Gad gives the king a choice of punishment: “Shall a seven-year famine come upon you in the land, or shall you be in flight from your adversaries for three months while they pursue you, or shall there be three days of pestilence in your land? Now consider carefully what reply I shall take back to He who sent me.” David asks that he not fall into the hands of men, and here the Greek translation known as the Septuagint adds a line not found in the original Hebrew: “So David chose the pestilence. It was the time of the wheat harvest.” As a result of this choice, “God sent a pestilence upon Israel from morning until the set time, and 70,000 of the people died, from Dan to Be’er-Sheva.”
A different account of this story is found in the Book of Chronicles (I Chron. 21 et seq). In one of its versions, it is Satan who entices King David to count the population. Joab then decides to count those under the age of 20, in clear defiance of the orders for the census found in this week’s parsha.
יוֹאָ֨ב בֶּן־צְרוּיָ֜ה הֵחֵ֤ל לִמְנוֹת֙ וְלֹ֣א כִלָּ֔ה וַיְהִ֥י בָזֹ֛את קֶ֖צֶף עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֹ֤א עָלָה֙ הַמִּסְפָּ֔ר בְּמִסְפַּ֥ר דִּבְרֵֽי־הַיָּמִ֖ים לַמֶּ֥לֶךְ דָּוִֽיד׃
Joab the son of Zruya began to count, but he did not finish, because there fell wrath for it against Yisrael; nor was the number put in the account of the chronicles of king David.
In addition, there is no mention—in either version of the Davidic census —of the giving of the required half-shekel. This is the basis for several medieval biblical commentaries who explained that the pandemic that followed was because the expiation (kopher) had not been given.
אבן עזרא שמות 30:12
י"א כי המגפה שהיתה בימי דוד בעבור שלא נתנו כופר נפשם
Some say that the plague which occurred in the days of David struck because Israel did not offer a ransom for their soul.
The census & the Evil Eye
Rashi believed the counting invoked the Ayin Harah, the Evil Eye, and this was the cause of the pandemic that followed, though he doesn’t elaborate.
ולא יהיה בהם נגף. שֶׁהַמִּנְיָן שׁוֹלֵט בּוֹ עַיִן הָרָע, וְהַדֶּבֶר בָּא עֲלֵיהֶם, כְּמוֹ שֶׁמָּצִינוּ בִימֵי דָּוִד (שמואל ב כ"ד)
ולא יהיה בהם נגף THAT THERE BE NO CALAMITY AMONG THEM — for the Evil Eye rules when things are counted, and therefore if you count them with na census a pandemic may befall them, as we find happened, in the days of David (II Samuel 24:10 and 15).
As a consequence of King David’s refusal to take a personal punishment for his crime of counting the people, a pandemic killed 70,000 of his subjects. The belief that counting people allows the Evil Eye an opportunity to cause harm was prevalent among the Jews of eastern Europe. They had Yiddish saying: “When you don’t count, a blessing comes” [Az me tseylt nisht, kumt arayn di brokhe].” And Jewish children would protect themselves when being counted while in Polish public schools by whispering “oyf di tseyn”—“on my teeth.”
It Comes from the The Pandemic Gods of the Ancient Near East
The fear of taking a census is actually far older than the Bible itself. It can be found in the writings of Mari, an ancient city in what is now northwestern Syria. The royal archives there contained thousands of letters which were first excavated in the 1930s and include detailed written records of how the census was to be taken. Some of the words that appear on the Mari cuneiform letters are like the Hebrew constructs used in the Bible. For example, “to record” [paqadum] has the same root as the Hebrew root word p-k-d meaning “to count.” The famous Jewish Assyriologist Ephraim Avigdor Speiser (1902–1965) noted that in Mesopotamian lore “the writing down of names could on certain occasions be a very ominous process . . . on periodic occasions, the higher powers made lists which determined who among the mortals was to live and who was to die” (Jon Betz, “A Tale of Two Plague Gods,” Biblical Archeology Review 47. Winter 2021: 58–9).
There must thus have been a time when the ancient Near Easterner shrank from the thought of having his name recorded in lists that might be put to unpredictable uses. Military conscription was an ominous process because it might place the life of the enrolled in jeopardy. The connection with the cosmic “books” of life and death must have been much too close for one’s peace of mind. It would be natural in these circumstances to propitiate the unknown powers, or seek expiation as a general precaution. In due time, such a process would be normalized as a tebibtum in Mesopotamia, and as a form of kippurim among the Israelites . . . And such fears would be kept alive by plagues, which must have decimated crowded camps more than once.
In ancient Mesopotamia, there were several deities associated with plagues and pandemics. Nergal, the king of the underworld, was a god of war who was also responsible for plagues. Around the second century B.C.E. his role was merged with another god, Erra, and the combined Nergal/Erra god-complex became responsible for both war and pestilence. Namtar (literally, “fate”) was another Mesopotamian deity associated with disease, whose role, wrote Jon Betz, “was more similar to that of the grim reaper of modern folklore.” He is described in Sumerian texts as having “no hands, has no feet, [and] who takes away/goes about by night.” Nergal acted as a sort of judge to whom an appeal for clemency could be made, while Namtar had the role of judicial executioner, who could not be reasoned with. “In some ways,” Betz noted,
this dynamic is not unlike that between YHWH and personified pestilence. As in Habakkuk 3, plague and pestilence are sometimes YHWH’s instruments, but elsewhere we find prayers to YHWH against plague and disease. Returning to 2 Samuel 24:10-25 and 1 Chronicles 21:1-30, we can see this distinction. The angel bringing the plague cannot be reasoned with, but YHWH can be. When YHWH is moved to compassion by his people’s suffering, he is the one who tells the angel to halt the plague.
As the centuries passed, the census remained unwelcome, but less than it had been before. In biblical times it was still ominous to be counted, but it became possible to prevent any harm by paying a half-shekel to the Temple. What is strange for us was not strange for our ancestors. As is so often the case, the Torah’s original audience understood these things because they lived them.
