Fact-Checking the Torah -- Numbers 30:3-16

Your assignment was to read Numbers 30:3-16 carefully.

A woman who makes a neder to the Lord and prohibits something to herself in the house of her father when she is a naarah

And her father hears her neder and the prohibition she places on herself and holds his tongue toward her, all her neders are established and all her prohibitions that she placed on herself shall be established.

If her father dissuades her on the day that he hears any of her neders or prohibitions that she placed on herself, it shall not be established and the Lord will pardon her for her father dissuaded her.

If she is already married and has neders on her or a statement of her own mouth that she prohibited to herself.

And her husband hears, on the day that he heard and holds his tongue, her neders and prohibitions are established that she placed on herself.

If on the day of her husband hearing he dissuaded her and annulled her neder that was on her and what she spoke with her mouth that she prohibited herself, the Lord shall pardon her.

The neder of a widow or divorcee all that she prohibited herself is established.

If she made a neder in the house of her husband or prohibited something to herself with an oath

And her husband heard and held his peace toward her and didn’t prohibit her, all her neders and prohibitions that she placed on herself shall stand.

If her husband absolutely annulled them on the day he heard what came out of her mouth for her neders or prohibitions on herself, they shall not stand, her husband annulled them and the Lord will pardon her.

Every neder and oath of prohibition to oppress the soul her husband may establish it or annul it.

But if her husband actually held his peace toward her for twenty-four hours, all her neders or prohibitions that she places on herself are established, he established them because he held his peace toward her on the day he heard.

If he definitely annulled them after he heard them, he shall bear her sin.

These are the laws that the Lord commanded Moshe between a man and his wife, a father and his daughter when she is a naarah in the house of her father.

 

First, only the vows of a naarah can be annulled.  She is underage.  She cannot be trusted to keep her neder, her performance oath, or her self-prohibition.  That would be “using Gd’s name for nothing.”

Second, these vows can only be annulled by her father or husband, and by her father only while she lives in his house.  If she is bonded out, and designated as a future bride, her husband has to annul her vow. 

BUT the annulment has to happen “on the day he heard it.”  This goes with the idea I discussed before, that a buyer can only claim fraud the day he bought the goods.  “If he held his peace,” he can never after that annul her vow. 

 

This is another example of an exception that proves there was a contrary rule that is unexpressed, but there is another exception that also proves a contrary rule.  The first exception is that these rules apply to a naarah whether married or unmarried.  The contrary, unexpressed rule is that they don’t apply to an adult woman.  She has to keep her vows if made while she was an adult.  If she made them while she was a naarah and her father or husband didn’t annul them, then she still has to keep them. 

The other exception is a widow or divorcee.  If the naarah was designated a bride and the bridegroom dies, even if she is still a naarah, any vows she made without the bridegroom annulling them, or any vows she makes after his death, even if she returns to her father’s house, are binding.

You may have noticed something that seems a little screwy. That's for next week.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Vocabulary Review IV

As usual, the words above the line are the more common ones. 

 

בְּהֵמָה	Domestic animal
אֲדָמָה	Earth, dirt, land
וַיִּתֵּן	He put
אֹתָם	them (direct object)
יְבָרֶךְ	He  blessed (aorist)
לֵאמֹר	To say
פְּרוּ	Be fruitful
רֶמֶשׂ	Creeper
יִרֶב	Multiply (future)
מִלְאוּ	fill
יִּבְרָא	He created
תַּנִּינִם	Serpents
גְּדֹלִים	Big, great, large
רֹמֶשֶׂת	Creeps
כָּנָף	wing
יִשְׁרְצוּ	they shall swarm
שֶׁרֶץ	swarm
נֶפֶשׁ	soul
חַיָּה	wild animal, living thing
עוֹף	flier, bird
יְעוֹפֵף	fly (v)
רְבִיעִי	Fourth
לִמְשֹׁל	To control
נַעֲשֶׂה	We shall make
אָדָם	Man, people
צֶלֶם	Image, form
דְמוּת	Likeness, similitude
יִרְדּוּ	They shall subjugate
דָג	fish
זָכָר	male
נְקֵבָה	female

 

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- broken alarm clock

It happens this time every year.
The robin who normally rouses me at 4:30 a.m. has stopped enforcing his turf.
So I sleep right through until 6 a.m.
Then I rouse a bit and look at the clock and whoops! 
Time to get up and post the blog!

The Carolina wrens are starting to use their "raspberry" call more often and soon they will be scolding in raspy tones.
The chickadees are staking out the area because they expect me to put up the feeder again in late autumn.
The catbird is back, now that the mockingbirds have taken their chicks off, and is guarding the pokeweed berries.
The goldfinch is eating the seeds from my chicory.
The cardinal should soon recover from his yearly molt and grow his crest back.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Tisha B'av

I will not be posting until Wednesday. 

OB -- your money

My garden guru is besieged with letters from people begging his permission to waste money on things he has been saying don't work.  In some cases he's been saying it for decades.  In some cases, the thing actually causes problems instead of solving them.
Enter a book on migraines that you pay $10 plus shipping for.
People, I got all this information for free right about the time I started getting migraines.
It's on WebMD and also the Mayo site.
But I guess some people think that Mayo posts false information when they don't get paid for it.
Here it is free.
1.  Bookmark the Accuweather website for your town.  It has a Migraine tab. 
2.  Keep a diary and mark the first day when Accuweather issues a migraine warning.  When that day arrives, record whether you had a migraine.
3.  Also record what you eat.  Go back and find all the days you had a migraine and see if there's a common food item on all those days.
4.  Also record how much sleep you got.  See my insomnia page for tricks on how to increase your sleep to 7 1/2 hrs in 24.
5.  Also record how much exercise you got.  Exercise may be the one thing that puts you over the top as far as getting enough sleep.  It also helps relieve stress.
6.  Record stresses you had, like being late to work or getting chewed out by the boss or even just having an argument with somebody.

If you're still in the dark, look at all your meds. 
Vasodilators may have to go -- that includes Rogaine and generic minoxidil. 
Herbals -- if your doctor hasn't reviewed these and passed them as OK, talk about it NOW.  They may be interfering with other meds.
Acetaminophen may have to go -- The important thing about acetaminophen is that it's hidden in lots of OTC stuff you wouldn't think of looking at if you get migraines.
Aspirin and other NSAIDs may have to go.  DON'T do this if you're on aspirin for blood clotting until you talk to your doctor.  But if it's causing migraines, since migraines are a sign of increased stroke risk, you and  your doctor need to rethink using aspirin to prevent heart attacks.
Triptans -- for migraine can worsen your health if you are a heart patient.  Your doctor might not know this; the finding only dates back to 2011.  (WebMD)
Anti-depressants -- this is another new result, from 2013.  If you have been taking these for some condition other than depression, they might be involved in your migraines. (Science Daily)  The interesting thing about depression is that exercise, eating right, getting your sleep, and finding a non-drug way of dealing with depression, are all effective and inexpensive compared to drugs.

I know my triggers and I deal with them as best I can.  I have had aura about 6 times in the last 12 months and a real migraine about twice.  I used to get them every month until I got rid of low-dose hormone therapy for  menopause -- which triggered INSOMNIA.  It took about two years to figure things out.  Be patient.  It can get better and so can you..
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY to date

I've been giving you the savings on each DIY item as I discussed it.
So how much has it really saved ME?

Bread	5	1.50	7.50
bagels	1	4.00	4.00
Corned beef	6	5.00	30.00
pastrami	3	5.00	15.00
biltong	2	50.00	100.00
Smoked brisket	2	25.00	50.00
Smoked turkey	3	9.00	27.00
Pickled beets	1	4.00	4.00
sauerkraut	1	0.50	0.50
lox	3	2.00	6.00
Worcestershire sauce	1	1.80	1.80
Dried tomatoes	1	10.00	20.00
yogurt	8	1.00	8.00
Chip dip	1	1.50	1.50
soba	1.5	7.00	10.50
spaghetti	1	1.50	1.50
Tortilla chips	4	2.00	8.00
			295.30

Now notice on bread it doesn't look like I'm saving nearly as much as I claimed.  But there's only one person in my house, and I am trying to follow the USDA My Plate eating program, which has me down to 2 servings of grains a day.  A lot of those servings are being taken up by brown rice, soba, tortilla chips, and so on.  So for each batch of bread, I cut the loaves in half and freeze all but one.  So I'm not making nearly as much bread as you probably eat.

That savings covers half of April up to 1 August, 3.5 months.  I will save nearly $1000 in 12 months at this rate. 

That doesn't count what I save with the rest of my cooking from scratch, or what I save on growing some of my own veggies organically in my back yard.

You want an extra 2K in your bank account at the end of the year?  Avoid the snack food aisle and the prepared frozen food case in the freezer aisle.  Spend your money in the produce section and on fresh or frozen meat and poultry that isn't pre-breaded and stuff.  When you've saved the money, buy your breadmaker.  Eventually you should be able to buy a whole new wardrobe.  Because you're cutting fat from your diet along with cutting the bucks from your grocery receipt.  And you're getting extra exercise making these things instead of just opening a bag or jar.  So not only will that wardrobe be new, it might be a smaller size.
You can't NOT try this.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Deuteronomy 23:22-24, Numbers 30:2-17

Your assignment was to remember Exodus 22:10, and read Deuteronomy 23:22-24 and Numbers 30:2-17.

I have been talking about juridical oaths, oaths taken to make a court trust that you are telling the truth when you give evidence in a case.

Deuteronomy talks about performance oaths.

When you vow a vow to the Lord your Gd, you shall not delay to pay it for the Lord your Gd will definitely require it of you and it would be a sin in you.

If you hold back from vowing there is no sin.

What you put out of your mouth you shall take care to do as you vow to the Lord your Gd the freewill that you spoke with your mouth.

 

Later I’ll discuss that word “pay.”  For now, these verses allow people to bind themselves to do something.  This verse recommends not taking such oaths, but it allows them.  What’s more, Numbers 30:3 allows people to bind themselves not to do something:

When a man makes a neder to the Lord or swears an oath to prohibit something to himself, he shall not delay his word, he shall do according to everything he says.

 

So you can swear that you won’t drink alcohol any more.

Now, people swear to stupid things sometimes.  What do you do then?  Mishnah answers this.  It’s not in Torah.  First, the person who realizes the oath is stupid goes to the court.  They examine whether he would have taken the oath if he knew that he would get into the fix he’s in.  And they can release him from the oath.

They can also punish him for taking the oath in the first place.  I’ll discuss that later because it feeds into a larger subject.

For now, I want you to understand that Jewish law cannot prohibit all oaths.  It cannot even just prohibit performance oaths.  Not all performance oaths are stupid and some have good effects, like swearing off tobacco.  (Won’t get into that rant.)

For next week, I want you to concentrate on Numbers 30:3-16.  I know the first time you read it, you will be confused.  But it helps round out a discussion from a much earlier lesson about a naarah and “exceptions.”

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved