4 The camp followers with them had a strong craving, and the Israelites also wept again and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic, 6 but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” … 10 Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, all at the entrances of their tents. Then the LORD became very angry, and Moses was displeased. 11 So Moses said to the LORD, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? 12 Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a wet nurse carries nursing a child,’ to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors? 13 Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me, saying, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ 14 I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. 15 If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.” 16 So the LORD said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting and have them take their place there with you. … 24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD, and he gathered seventy of the elders of the people and placed them all around the tent. 25 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders, and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again. 26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, so they prophesied in the camp. 27 And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” 28 And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” 29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29 (NRSVue)
In this week’s lectionary reading from Numbers 11, God takes two key, seemingly contradictory actions. First, God institutes a new leadership structure, having Moses select a group of seventy elders to share the burden of power. Second, almost as soon as this new, God-ordained structure is established, God starts working outside of it. The unauthorized prophesying of Eldad and Medad disrupts any easy reading of the seventy’s function. It suggests that whatever power structures humans might manage to create, God’s work of justice will sometimes require standing outside them.
With contemporary discourse dominated by concern for polarization and exclusion, readers of Numbers 11 may understandably gravitate to the seventy as a symbol of more inclusive leadership. In response to Moses’ struggle to answer the people’s cries on his own, God calls for a body of community leaders that can support Moses and distribute the power. This might be read for an uplifting story, one that presents a victory for representation and, perhaps, even a hint of democracy. When Robert Williamson, Jr. addressed this same text for this blog in 2015, for instance, he celebrated the seventy’s formation as a means of decentralizing power, answering a discontented people’s calls to be heard.
This is a generative and hopeful interpretation that I don’t intend to disparage. Still, reading this same text in 2024, I find myself more cynical about what this new, seemingly more inclusive leadership structure can achieve. My skepticism begins even before Eldad and Medad appear, because it is unclear whether the seventy accomplish anything for their community in this text. This is the only text in the Pentateuch where this group of seventy is directly named, and the extent of their action is to prophesy at the tent of meeting and then stop. Indeed, the text makes sure to emphasize that “they did not do so again” (Numbers 11:25). This one-time prophecy seems rather distant from being a lasting relief for the exhausted Moses.
Furthermore, the seventy elders are prophesying without an audience. They gather at the tent of meeting, away from the camp where the general populace might hear God’s word. As a response to the people’s cries, it is a non sequitur: the Israelites remain in the camp with their same complaints and hunger, while the elders prophesy out of earshot, only heard by each other. This raises an all-too familiar problem: what does a more inclusive leadership accomplish if its activities remain segregated from the people they supposedly represent?
Perhaps these same hesitations motivate the actions of Eldad and Medad, two elders who were “among those registered” but remained in the camp. The text leaves the reason for their exclusion ambiguous. One interpretation in the Midrash Rabbah states that Moses, striving for equal representation, first selected six elders from each of the twelve tribes and then removed two by lot to reach God’s requested seventy. Another possibility is that Eldad and Medad were at first meant to join but declined the role for which they were “registered.” Could they have anticipated that prophecy from the place of power, even under Moses’ reformed structure, would not sustain itself for long?
Regardless of whether Eldad and Medad chose their separation from the seventy, that separation has its advantages. God’s spirit comes to rest upon them, just as it did upon the seventy—but this time, we do not find the textual indication that their prophesying stops. Not only do the unelected, unendorsed Eldad and Medad prophesy continuously, their prophecy emerges from among the people. If a prophet’s role is to speak divine truth to others, so that God’s call might change their hearts and actions, it is only Eldad and Medad who are positioned to fulfill this role. Unlike the seventy, their words have an audience, and this is precisely because they were not called away from the camp.
As with the seventy, the text does not detail the content of Eldad and Medad’s speech, but we do know that they are heard. At the very least, they are heard by enough people that a runner comes to warn Moses, and Joshua calls for Moses to stop them. This capacity to stir things up indicates that, in this text, effective prophecy moves from the margin towards the centre of power, not the other way around. Whereas the prophecy from the tent never reaches the people, the prophecy from the people finds its way to the tent.
In light of the appearance of these rogue prophets, God’s answer to Moses’ earlier complaint is not a simple lending of support. If anything, it more closely resembles a prank. God commands Moses to expand the structure of leadership, and Moses goes through the effort of picking out seventy elders—perhaps going to great lengths to ensure his choices are representative and fair—only for the spirit to tease them with a hint of prophecy and depart to land upon the unchosen. The whole affair reads like a setup for Eldad and Medad’s appearance. Just as the story of the 99 sheep (Luke 15) is really about the 1, it seems that the story of the 70 is really about the 2.
What lesson is God imparting to Moses here? In instituting the seventy, God seems to affirm Moses’ desire for distributed leadership as legitimate. But, at the same time, God provides a reminder: whatever reforms might take place in the formal leadership structure, God is going to keep favouring those outside that structure. Moses himself once lived near the centre of political authority in Egypt, as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but God did not call Moses to his prophetic task until he had fled into exile. This same God who saw fit to use Moses when he became “an alien residing in a foreign land” (Exodus 2:21) now speaks through the unauthorized two after the seventy have fallen silent. The centre might expand, but God’s preference for the margin is not going away.
What does this mean for contemporary politics? Certainly, it is good to have leaders who intend to have power shared. It is God’s intent that Moses assembles a representational body for the people. It is good, too, for God’s followers to pray that God move the hearts of their leaders, and to actively work for more inclusive institutions. But God was never limited to the tent. And, in fact, the work of prophecy is often more sustainable and audible when it is not bound by the constraints of power.
Marginalization, as a process of exclusion imposed upon persons, is of course a tool of oppression. But this does not mean that the margin is only a site of oppression. To minimize its capacity in that way often indicates the arrogance of the centre. (As a cisgender white Canadian, born into the centre, I say this having challenged that arrogance within myself.) Eldad and Medad seem to prophesy effectively not in spite but because of their position on power’s edge.
Inclusion is part of God’s justice, but it is only a part. On its own, it has its limitations. We might recall James Baldwin’s famous warning, as piercing now as in 1963, against integration as a goal unto itself: “Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?” (340). This view from outside the burning structure is an essential one: it insists that there is more we can ask for, more we need, than mere unity. Baldwin recognizes that his country’s maturation and even survival requires much, much more than Black integration into white America: it requires the co-creation of something new.
Likewise, Jasmine Devadason’s recent piece describes a truly radical inclusion that necessarily includes “reimagining” and “dismantling” existing systems, not just expanding them. For this deeper inclusion to occur, perspective and actions from outside those systems are essential. Unfortunately, the inclusion invited by modern political institutions is often of the shallower kind. This is often the form of inclusion offered by the so-called “big-tent” political party, which casts its invitation wide, but largely for the sake of its own self-perpetuation. The idea of an inclusion that dismantles, that involves the margin not just joining the centre but disrupting it, continues to cause confusion and anger among our own modern Joshuas.
In late August, the U.S. Democratic National Convention offered the world a showcase of big-tent politics and its exclusions. Speakers were at pains to emphasize unity throughout, and singers, progressive, moderates, and even elected Republicans took the stage to promote that message. What the big tent could not contain, it turned out, was a single Palestinian speaker, a single word that would challenge the party’s commitment to the bombing of Gaza. While those inside the convention centre walls celebrated party unity, protestors gathered outside mourned and rallied and called for peace. Among them were several faith groups: Muslims, Jews, and Christians, all able to speak from the outside what those within could not.
Faced with ongoing exclusions and marginalizations, what are God’s people to work and pray for? In the times ahead, I hope for answers deeper and more disruptive than an even bigger tent. I hope for diverse answers, ones that call for more just and inclusive systems while recognizing that those systems will never envelop the spirit’s sphere of activity. Moses, in one of his most radical moments, exclaims at the end of this pericope: “Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!” (11:29). What would it mean to fearfully hope for such a world, where the spirit never rests easy, and no political structure sits still for long?
