Parashat Pinchas (Num 25:10-30:1)
What’s in a Name?
This week, we are reading the section named after Pinchas (he may be Phinehas or פִּינְחָס in your Bible). Amazingly, only five of the 54 Torah portions are named after people — add a sixth if you want to count חיי שרה ‘The Life of Sarah’ — yet in the last four weeks, this is the third one to fall in that category, after Korach and Balak. So I’m going to use this column to offer some thoughts on biblical names. In fact, our focus this week is on names that appear twice. That's right, Alex, I'll take names that appear twice for $500.
Why does that subject come up this week? For one thing, Numbers 26 gives the results of a census, starting with v. 5 and running right through v. 51. Like so much in the book of Numbers, it is organized according to tribes identified by their descent from Jacob’s 12 sons. (Remember that in Numbers Joseph is represented by his two sons and Levi seems to have said “Include me out.”) Not only the tribes but the clans that make up each tribe are also listed.
Those of us who have been taught that the Torah writes very tersely and never wastes a word have to look at this and think that they are not being very terse at all. As an example, let’s jump in right at v. 5, which names Reuben and then lists the clans of that tribe:
5 Reuben, Israel’s first-born. Descendants of Reuben: of Enoch, the clan of the Enochites; of Pallu, the clan of the Palluites; 6 of Hezron, the clan of the Hezronites; of Carmi, the clan of the Carmites. 7 Those are the clans of the Reubenites. The persons enrolled came to 43,730. [NJPS translation]
The same happens for every tribe. The “names that appear twice” here, of course, are the sons of Reuben and the clans named after them. I’m not looking at what we might learn about Israelite notions of genealogy; I’m simply wondering about all the seemingly unnecessary repetition. Reuben had a son named Pallu, and the clan descended from him are the Palluites.
Doesn’t the Torah think I am bright enough to figure that out on my own? “Who is the ancestor of the Hezronites?” is not a very much harder question than “What color is the Beatles’ White Album?”
The only answer I can think of for this incessant repetition is based on the (traditional) notion that “the Torah speaks in human language.” A passage of Torah like this one is not a section where we're going to learn something profound about human behavior or moral lessons. This is a list, and it's a list of names. If we're to remember this list of names, you need what communications theorists would call redundancy. The purpose of the repetition is specifically to repeat the name several times so that we will remember it.
This is a case where I don't think anyone (except perhaps some mystical thinker that I'm unaware of) has found a deeper meaning in the text than the superficial, straightforward information about what the Israelites understood the relationships between their various groups to be.
What I suspect is this. Everyone understood that repetition that created legal significance would be appropriate in the legal parts of the Torah. In a section like this, even the Torah's divine purpose is presumably for the Israelites to remember their ancestry in a particular way. For that, what you need is a memory aid, the kind of redundancy that our chapter provides. It's a totally human communication, not a profound theological one.
And now for something completely different. It might seem like a bit of lagniappe — especially the way I intend to present it — but it also strikes me as a much harder puzzle to solve. I could quote Num 25:14–18, where this name appears twice, but it’s more fun to introduce the name with this brief excerpt (which I’ve just listened to again) from the old Car Talk radio show:
- Hello, you’re on Car Talk.
- Hello, this is Kozebi. I’m calling from [redacted], Maryland.
- Cosby? With a C?
- No, it’s Kozebi. It’s actually a biblical name.
- All right, who was Kozebi?
- Unfortunately, she was a lady of the evening.
- So your parents chose that name for you. Very interesting. Can we talk to your father? [Laughter]
- I think they were rebelling from my grandparents but they never will admit it.
- “Oh, we chose a biblical name for our daughter.” “Naomi?” “No, not exactly.” “Rebecca? “No, Kozebi!” I like it!
All right, I have to admit I like it too. She’ll never be at a loss for conversation when she goes to a party. You can hear in her voice that she really wants some advice about her car, not to spell K-O-Z-E-B-I for the 10,000th time. So I’m taking over the call:
- Hello, you’re on Bible Talk.
- Hello. Why is Kozebi mentioned twice in the Bible when we’re never told the names of some decent women?
- Like who?
- Samson’s mother, for one. See Judges 13.
Tough question, no? In case you don’t remember her, let me jog your memory. Kozebi was not “a lady of the evening” but a woman of broad daylight, a daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of Midian (per Numbers 25) or one of its five kings (per Numbers 31). She was having sex with Zimri son of Salu at the end of last week’s episode when Pinchas, who gave his name to this week’s episode, stabbed the two of them to death.
Hard to imagine this one is about communicative redundancy. Why would it be so tremendously essential to remember this woman’s name? It’s not as if there’s some risk we might run into her again. So I have to wonder why the Torah found it so important to repeat this woman’s name.
I also have to wonder why you would name your daughter Kozebi. I don't mean why would Zur do it. But after you have read the Bible why would you do that to your child? Please, parents, don't do that to your kids. Don't give your daughter a name like Kozebi. In all honesty, I wouldn't give my kid a name like Pallu either, but at least Pallu doesn’t have built-in bad karma, as Kozebi does.
Next week, we will have names galore as we check off the stops on the Israelites’ desert itinerary. Many of them are mentioned twice as well, first when they camp there at the end of one verse and again when they set out from that place at the beginning of the next verse. Those names, at least theoretically, will let us follow the play-by-play of their trip through the wilderness. Why Kozebi and Pallu and the gang are mentioned twice remains a mystery.