P

arshat Bamidbar takes 
up the story as we left 
it toward the end of the 
book of Shemot. The people 
had journeyed from Egypt to 
Mount Sinai. 
There they 
received the 
Torah. There 
they made the 
Golden Calf. 
There they were 
forgiven after 
Moses’ passion-
ate plea, and there 
they made the Mishkan, the 
Tabernacle, inaugurated on the 
first of Nissan, almost a year 
after the Exodus. Now, one 
month later, on the first day 
of the second month, they are 
ready to move on to the second 
part of the journey, from Sinai 
to the Promised Land.
Yet, there is a curious delay 
in the narrative. Ten chap-
ters pass until the Israelites 
actually begin to travel (Num. 
10:33). First there is a census. 
Then there is an account of 
the arrangement of the tribes 

around the Ohel Moed, the 
Tent of Meeting. There is a 
long account of the Levites, 
their families and respective 
roles. Then there are laws 
about the purity of the camp, 
restitution, the sotah, the 
woman suspected of adultery 
and the nazirite. A lengthy 
series of passages describe the 
final preparations for the jour-
ney. Only then do they set out. 
Why this long series of seem-
ing digressions?
It is easy to think of the 
Torah as simply telling events 
as they occurred, interspersed 
with various commandments. 
On this view, the Torah is 
history plus law. This is what 
happened, these are the rules 
we must obey, and there is a 
connection between them, 
sometimes clear (as in the 
case of laws accompanied by 
reminder that “you were slaves 
in Egypt”) sometimes less so.
But the Torah is not mere 
history as a sequence of events. 
The Torah is about the truths 
that emerge through time. 

That is one of the great 
differences between ancient 
Israel and ancient Greece. 
Ancient Greece sought truth 
by contemplating nature and 
reason. The first gave rise to 
science, the second to phi-
losophy. Ancient Israel found 
truth in history, in events and 
what God told us to learn from 
them. 
Science is about nature, 
Judaism is about human 
nature, and there is a great dif-
ference between them. Nature 
knows nothing about freewill. 
Scientists often deny that it 
exists at all. But humanity is 
constituted by its freedom. We 
are what we choose to be. No 
planet chooses to be hospitable 
to life. No fish chooses to be a 
hero. No peacock chooses to be 
vain. Humans do choose. And 
in that fact is born the drama 
to which the whole Torah is a 
commentary: how can freedom 
coexist with order? The drama 
is set on the stage of history, 
and it plays itself out through 
five acts, each with multiple 

scenes.
The basic shape of the nar-
rative is roughly the same in 
all five cases. First God creates 
order. Then humanity creates 
chaos. Terrible consequences 
follow. Then God begins again, 
deeply grieved but never losing 
His faith in the one life-form 
on which He set His image and 
to which He gave the singular 
gift that made humanity god-
like, namely freedom itself.

THE ‘FIVE ACTS’
Act 1 is told in Genesis 1-11. 
God creates an ordered uni-
verse and fashions humanity 
from the dust of the earth into 
which He breathes His own 
breath. But humans sin: first 
Adam and Eve, then Cain, then 
the generation of the Flood. 
The earth is filled with vio-
lence. God brings a flood and 
begins again, making a cove-
nant with Noah. Humanity sin 
again by making the Tower of 
Babel (the first act of imperi-
alism, as I argued in an earlier 
study). So God begins again, 

The Ever-Repeated Story

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

88 | MAY 18 • 2023 

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH