Chapter 30

Voting: Last day!

Chapter 30 is an interesting chapter – a bit of a Rorschach test, really, because I think you’d be generally likely to see what you expect to see from it.

The bald facts of the chapter, with no emotional content are as follows. It’s about women and their vows and promises. Put simply, in Israelite society a man was required to follow through on all his vows, even if later on it turns out that such vows are unrealistic. In this, we’re still fairly similar today – if one signs a contract with another person, they are obliged to go through with it, or else they will suffer any consequences of failure stipulated in the contract.

Now, having this sort of contract law apply to verbal promises is a little disconcerting for us, but in fact it’s not as big a deal as you might think. Remember, this is a pre-literate society. People who can read and write are very much in the minority, and paper and ink are expensive. Copies of a document take a long time to produce, and require a person to look at them and write or draw what he sees. So few people would need a document to commit to something. On the other hand, some things remain fairly constant, and the need for people to make commitments between them is one such thing. So for the Israelites of this period, it was understood that if you made a promise you had to keep it.

So far so good, but it gets a little more complex. If a woman makes a rash promise, there are some other things that can come into play.

An unmarried woman still living with her parents is under the authority of her father, such that he has the right to countermand any promise that she makes which is rash or unwise (vs 3-5). If he does not countermand it, she is bound to keep it.

Similarly, if she gets married after making this pledge, the power of veto passes to her husband (vs 6-8). Therefore a widow or divorced woman is bound by her promises. A married woman’s husband can annul a promise made by his wife, but if he doesn’t do so at first and then later cancels the promise, he is to be treated as though it was him making the promise (vs 10 -15).

What are we to make of all this?

A modern feminist may look at this passage and deplore the condescension shown. What? A woman is to be always under the control of a man? Why should God be so sexist?

Yet as in many things we see in life, not all is as it seems. An historian looks at this and gasps – at a time when women were property in most cultures, even some quite advanced cultures, a race of nomads is traveling over the desert with a concept of women having complete legal rights! By comparison, a Greek woman had no right to enter contractual agreements except through their kurios[1]. An Israelite woman’s kurios could overturn her contracts if he believed it prudent to do so, but nonetheless she was permitted to enter contracts as she chose nonetheless, and women without a kurios were able to pretty much master their own destinies.

The feminist might well see a religion chaining people here. Forgive me for being different, but here I see a God who wants to push His people to be as accepting and tolerant of others as they are of themselves. No, far from being extra chains for the people of Israel, this was one step towards allowing more equality among His followers. Ultimately God wanted things so that there was no “male or female, jew nor gentile, slave nor free.”

[1] I use the Greek word “kurios” here because it’s a useful concept describing the kind of relationships discussed in Numbers 30. Usually translated “lord” or “master”, a woman’s kurios was her legal keeper. Until she was married, a woman’s kurios was usually her father, or if he happened to be deceased, her eldest brother. After marriage, of course, her husband took over the duties of kurios.