Ziv: Parashat Tazria 2


Each week, Gad Barnea or Sister Agnès de la Croix (from the Community of the Beatitudes) proposes a reflection on the portion of the Pentateuch that is read in the synagogue (parashat hashavua). This week the portion is from Leviticus 12:1 - 13:59 with the haftarah (additional reading) from 2 Kings 4:42 - 5:19. They call their reflection “ziv” – a ray of light.

ziv tazria2I have made my soul calm and quiet…

Faithful readers of the Ziv already know that the leprosy described in our paracha is not the kind of physical illness more or less close to the Hansen disease we know today, but rather as a spiritual symptom. A house, or clothes cannot be touched by leprosy, as we know it today… As a consequence, tradition explains that this affliction is the result of gossiping or other kinds of sin. Now, there is a passage in the Tanach where it seems that things are not that simple. We are told of a well-behaving king who is nevertheless struck by this “tsaarat”… king Uzziah : “In the twenty-seventh year of the rule of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Uzziah, son of Amaziah, became king of Judah. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Amaziah had done. But he did not take away the high places, and the people still went on making offerings and burning them in the high places. And the Lord sent disease on the king and he became a leper, and to the day of his death he was living separately in his private house” (2 Kings 15:3-5) Why does this King get punished with such a disease ? The book of Chronicles, in a parallel passage, mentions: “But when he had become strong, his heart was lifted up in pride, causing his destruction; and he did evil against the Lord his God; for he went into the Temple of the Lord for the purpose of burning perfumes on the altar of perfumes. “ The midrash (Lv Rabba 16) explains that this is the reason why the king became a leper: not only he offered the incense as if he were a priest (others did the same, 2 Sam 8:17), but he did it with pride: when the priests of the temple tried to stop him, he became angry, and, says the Bible, “Azariah, the chief priest, and all the priests, looking at him, saw the mark of the leprosy on his forehead”. The forehead is considered as a symbol of the arrogance of thoughts. The Torah, describing the king that would rule over the people of Israel, stated : “His heart may not be lifted up over his countrymen, and he may not be turned away from the orders, to one side or the other” (Dt 17:20). This is the prayer of King David : “Lord, there is no pride in my heart and my eyes are not lifted up; and I have not taken part in great undertakings, or in things over-hard for me.” (Ps 131:1). We understand here the price of humility which tradition stresses again and again. In the Middle-ages, Rashi (on his commentary on Hos. 1:2) explains this passages using three other excerpts of the Scriptures (we can see here an exemple of an exegeses based on the midrash); he explains that when King Uzziah was struck by the disease, the earth was shaken : “The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa; what he saw about Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earth-shock.“ (Amos 1:1) This earthquake is described by another prophet : “And the bases of the door-pillars were shaking at the sound of his cry, and the house was full of smoke (Isa 6:4), and in the prophet Zachariah : “And the valley will be stopped ... and you will go in flight as you went in flight from the earth-shock in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah.” (Zech 14:5) When the king became a leper as a result of his anger, the earth trembled as if to swallow him. Rashi establishes a connection with the story of the rebellion of Korah and his followers, that were engulfed in the earth and burnt because of their pride and rebellion. A last commentary says that the priest uses hyssop to purify the leper because there is no more lowly a plant than the hyssop … Shabbat shalom.

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