Mishpatim 5786

Witch or Wizard?

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This week we are reading Parashat Mishpatim (Exodus 21–24), and the mishpatim in question are the laws — that’s what mishpatim means. It used to be common to call chs. 21–23 the Covenant Code, after which ch. 24 talks about making that covenant. A more precise translation of mishpatim might be “rulings”; William Propp, in his Anchor Bible commentary, likes the translation “case-laws” and understands them to be court decisions, i.e., legal precedents — in which case, he says, mishpatim really only applies to 21:1–22:16.

That distinction matters because the mishpat (as I would have called it) that I want to look at this week is 22:17 (v. 18 in Christian Bibles), which starts the very next section:

מְכַשֵּׁפָ֖ה לֹ֥א תְחַיֶּֽה m’khsheifa lo t’ḥayyeh (MT)

Here are some translations of this little verse:

• Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (KJV)

• Wizards thou shalt not suffer to live. (Douay-Rheims)

• You shall not permit practitioners of the black arts to live. (Catholic Public Domain Version)

• You shall not tolerate a sorceress. (NJPS)

• You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live. (NRSVue)

• A sorceress you are not to let live! (Everett Fox)

• No witch shall you let live. (Robert Alter)

Three questions come to mind:

• What does it mean to “tolerate” a sorceress or, more precisely not “making her live” or “keeping her alive”?

• Why is it a sorceress and not a sorcerer? In case you are wondering, the masculine form of the word (מְכַשֵּֽׁף m’khasheif) occurs in Deut 18:10, where we are told that such a person, and others of that ilk, “should not be found among you.” As we read a month ago, Pharaoh had these in his court.

• Why is this law given in this particular context? Up to this point we have been reading laws of the “if … then” sort — casuistic laws, as I think the technical term would be. This is the very first of the apodictic (“just do it”) laws.

It is sandwiched between the casuistic ruling in vv. 15–16 that a man who seduces a virgin must pay the bride-price for her (whether she becomes his wife or not) and the apodictic commandment in v. 18 not to have sex with an animal. (Add one throughout this chapter to get the Christian numbering.) The witchcraft commandment seems to be quite out of context; the Hebrew text makes it a semi-paragraph of its own.

Next, let’s turn to the question of why our verse specifically mentions a sorceress and not a sorcerer. Writes Nahum Sarna in the JPS Torah Commentary:

The same penalty certainly applies to the male practitioner. The feminine specification here probably reflects a historical reality that the clandestine operators of this officially outlawed cult were mostly women.

Why he avoids the word “sorcerer” and says “the male practitioner” I won’t try to guess. He footnotes two sources for the “historical reality” of those female “clandestine operators”: 1 Samuel 28 and Ezek 13:8 ff. But the woman of Endor is not a “witch”; the root כשׁף does not appear in that story, or anywhere in the book of Samuel. As for Ezekiel 13, perhaps 8 ff. is a typo for 18 ff.? In any case, כשׁף does not appear there either, and the first 16 verses of that chapter unleash plenty of anger against males as well. Sarna’s real source would seem to be the commentary of Rashi (given here in my Commentators’ Bible translation):

This applies to both males and females, but the text speaks of the more common occurrence, for there are more sorceresses than sorcerers.

We can say more. Our verse is the only verse anywhere in the Bible where כשׁף appears as a feminine verb. The other five (of which we’ve mentioned two) are all masculine.

Now to the most difficult of our three questions. What exactly are we supposed to do with this witch?

Unless the Bible is suffering from a quite anachronistic bout of political correctness, it is hard to understand why v. 17 doesn’t just say “she must be put to death.” V. 18 has no such problem:

^{Exod 22:18} Anyone who lies with an animal must be put to death [מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת mōt yumat].

Instead, our verse uses the negative of the Piel verb: לֹ֥א תְחַיֶּֽה lo t’ḥayyeh. We find those words once more in the Bible, describing what the Israelites are supposed to do when they conquer a town in the land of Canaan: לֹ֥א תְחַיֶּ֖ה כָּל־נְשָׁמָֽה lo t’ḥayyeh kol-n’shama ‘let not a soul live’. Per Judges 1, that is not exactly what actually happened, but it did happen during the “year and four months” (1 Sam 27:7) that David was a commander in the Philistine army, when he would attack Amalekites and the like but tell King Achish of Gath that he had raided the Israelites. He hadn’t, but he left no man or woman alive (לֹ֥א יְחַיֶּ֖ה lo y’ḥayyeh, vv. 9, 11) to contradict him. Dead men tell no tales.

Our phrase actually is used of God as well:

^{Job 36:6} He does not let the wicked live [לֹא־יְחַיֶּ֥ה lo-y’ḥayyeh]; he grants justice to the poor.

One possible implication of our phrase, then, is that the witch is not merely to be killed but to be eradicated in some even more extreme manner. I’m not prepared to say what that might be.

I suggest that we turn to a different medieval commentator, the 12^th-c. Spanish polymath Abraham ibn Ezra, for an opposite answer to this question. He treats the words “do not keep alive” literally:

The sense is that (if an Israelite) she deserves death. If she is not an Israelite, it is forbidden for a Jew to sell any food to her. The principle is that she may not benefit from a Jew in any way.

Ibn Ezra is known as someone who likes to take the Hebrew of the Bible as literally as possible, and that is what he seems to be doing here. If we were supposed to put this woman to death, the Torah could have said so. Instead, it tells us that she “deserves death.” If this woman is an Israelite, that (for Ibn Ezra) is the end of the matter. If not, it’s forbidden for a Jew “to sell any food to her” or contribute “in any way” to keeping her alive.

As for why this verse is in the context we find it in, Sarna writes:

This phenomenon [of most “practitioners” being women], together with the fact that sorcery and witchcraft are forms of deception, most likely accounts for the association of this law with the preceding rule about the seducer.

I find this explanation somewhat lame. Ibn Ezra’s is barely less lame, but it is somewhat more entertaining:

The rule speaks of a “sorceress,” but applies to a “sorcerer” as well … This follows the rule about seduction of a virgin because the one who is in love with the girl might turn to magic to fulfill his desires.

I have a friend who did that very thing, not far from where I used to live in Philadelphia (though I moved there long after my friend had moved away). He went to Harry’s Occult Shop on 13^th Street and bought a charm to get this girl to fall in love with him. They have been happily married for 40 or 50 years now, so I guess it worked. Is that because Harry was a sorcerer and not a sorceress? I’ll leave that for you to decide.