{"id":54321,"date":"2019-04-25T13:28:49","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T10:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=54321"},"modified":"2022-11-17T19:40:50","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T17:40:50","slug":"joshuas-purim-chaos-and-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/joshuas-purim-chaos-and-boundaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Joshua’s Purim: Chaos and Boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[536,806,515,792],"acf":{"old_id":"54321","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":49419,"related_cahpter":"206","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The randomness of boundaries challenges our obsession with them","content":"

I was looking for a ‘boring’ chapter to write about, but I can’t find one. Even this technical text about land distribution is full of energy: we find movement everywhere. Look at the land given to the tribe of Zebulun (verse 10) – the lot cast to indicate that they get the third piece of land ‘rises up’ or emerges; in the next verse, the same verb is used for the boundary around their territory, it ‘rises up’ and (I can picture it!) snakes out towards the west until it bumps (“vayifga”) into the dry wadi of Yokneam. <\/span><\/p>\n

To the east, it hungrily returns “towards the sun,” before “rising” again at Yafia. This process is repeated six times for the six remaining landless tribes – and I can just picture in my mind the borders winding around the country, around towns with half-familiar names, through valleys, up mountains, and down to the sea. By the end of the chapter, only Joshua himself is left without a place to call home, and he, too, is given the city of Timnat-Serah for himself. We’ll hear about some of these places again in the book of Judges.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would like to reflect, however, on a tension in these chapters. On one hand, there is something very fixed about borders and boundaries. Borders represent the law, the limits of self-identification; they are absolute and indisputable. Our world today is obsessed with them – read the newspaper for three minutes to see that this is true. <\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, how are these boundaries decided? By chance! The seven tribes in this chapter and the previous one put their names into a lottery, and let Joshua and Eleazar pick randomly. Even the more intentional conquest by Dan, in verse 47, is fairly random: they lose part of their territory so they pick another one by chance, happen to emerge victorious in battle, and rename the new land ‘Dan’. These stories challenge the narrative we have, of everything making sense and coming around for a purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

We’re reading this not so far away from the festival of Purim, where a similar tension plays out. Remember, the lots used by Joshua are the same as the lots used by Haman to decide when to exterminate the Jews – the Hebrew word <\/span>‘goral’<\/span><\/i> is replaced by the Persian word <\/span>‘pur’<\/span><\/i>, which gives the Purim holiday its name. There too, we see a parody of the absolute power of law. King Ahasuerus makes ridiculous laws to subjugate women, to honour his supporters, and to kill the Jews. But when Esther reveals herself to him as a Jew, he claims that the law is absolute – whatever the King has decreed is irrevocable! So he makes a new law to let the Jews fight back.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Purim, we accept the ridiculousness of the absolute, the parody of power, and we can put laws into a healthier perspective. Perhaps reading about the lottery of territories in Joshua, we can learn to do the same with borders.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":54322,"id":54322,"title":"jo19-lottery","filename":"jo19-lottery.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/jo19-lottery.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/joshuas-purim-chaos-and-boundaries\/jo19-lottery\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jo19-lottery","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":54321,"date":"2019-04-25 10:28:37","modified":"2022-11-14 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