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The Flesh Still in Their Teeth and the Measure of Justice

The quail were still in their mouths when the plague hit. The Mekhilta reads the wilderness to learn how God measures punishment against the size of a sin.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Before They Swallowed
  2. One Plague, Two Kinds of Death
  3. A Canaanite and a Principle
  4. Who Gets Punished First
The Flesh Still in Their Teeth and the Measure of Justice Click for full size

Before They Swallowed

The meat was still in their mouths when the killing began. Not after they swallowed. Not the next morning. The quail were caught between their teeth, the grease still on their fingers, when the wrath of God burned through the camp at Kibroth-hattaavah, the graves of craving.

That timing is the starting point for one of the most precise pieces of moral analysis in ancient Jewish literature. The rabbis of the Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael, the tannaitic commentary on Exodus shaped around the third century CE in the school of Rabbi Yishmael, were not satisfied with a God who swings a single blunt instrument at a crowd. They went into the wilderness story with calipers.

One Plague, Two Kinds of Death

The phrase that stopped them was in Numbers 11:33: the flesh was still between their teeth, it was not yet cut off, and the anger of the Lord burned against the people. Read the surrounding verses carefully and a problem appears. The same plague did not kill the same way, and the people it killed were not all guilty of the same thing. Some collapsed immediately. Others lingered and suffered longer. The sages drew a line through the dead.

The relatively decent person, the man who had been swept up by the collective appetite without being its driving force, ate the quail and was struck at once. Violent and fast, the punishment was proportional: bad, but quick, emptying him out and letting him go. The person whose craving ran deeper, who had instigated and inflamed the complaint about manna and meat from the beginning, ate the same food and was not struck immediately. The flesh stayed in his teeth. The punishment extended itself to match the sin, reaching back into the person who had turned a manageable hunger into an organized demand against heaven.

A Canaanite and a Principle

The second thread in this analysis is more technical. Rabbi Eliezer, working in the same tannaitic tradition, examines a passage in the Torah where God punishes a Canaanite's sin along with the sin of the Israelite who sinned through him. The Canaanite was the occasion of the transgression but not the Israelite. The Israelite made the choice. But both are punished in the Torah's reckoning.

Rabbi Eliezer pressed the principle: if God holds a bystander accountable for enabling a sin he did not himself commit, what does that imply about the instigator? And then the inference worked backward to the quail. The person who craved and clamored and organized the demand was more culpable than the person who simply followed the crowd's example. The punishment reaching them while the flesh was still between their teeth was calibrated to that additional culpability.

Who Gets Punished First

The third teaching extends the analysis outward into a principle of divine justice that operates across the whole Torah. When God punishes, He punishes the instigator first. Not last, not equally mixed into the mass punishment, but first and specifically. The person who set the sin in motion carries a priority in the reckoning that follows.

The Mekhilta builds this case through a series of biblical comparisons. In the stories of punishment that run from Egypt through the wilderness, the pattern holds. The leader of a transgression receives the first blow. This is not mercy toward the followers. It is a precise accounting that distinguishes between the person who moved and the person who was moved, and assigns consequence accordingly.

The calipers the sages applied to the wilderness story were not instruments of cruelty. They were instruments of justice, and the distinction matters enormously. A God who applies the same punishment to the man who organized the craving and the man who simply craved, to the one who threw the first stone and the one who threw the last, would be a God of brute force. The Mekhilta's God measures. He reads the difference between a man who craved and a man who led others to crave. He arrives before the swallowing is finished, and the timing is not arbitrary.

MekhiltaExodusDivine JusticeMiraclesWildernessSinMeasure For Measure
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Mekhilta Tractate Vayassa 4:12Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Mechilta, translated by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein · CC-BY

This midrash of the Mekhilta dwells on the plague that struck Israel after the people demanded meat in the wilderness and were buried under a storm of quail. Scripture says (Numbers 11:33) "the flesh was still between their teeth" when the wrath of the L-rd burned against them. The rabbis read the verse closely to learn how the punishment was measured out, since the same plague did not strike everyone in the same way.

The sages teach that the relatively "kosher" person among the complainers, the one whose craving was less corrupt, ate the quail and was struck at once with violent illness that quickly emptied him out. The truly wicked one, by contrast, suffered a drawn-out agony lasting up to thirty days before he died. The verse's phrase "an extremely sore plague" hints at this prolonged death, so the measure of suffering matched the measure of guilt.

The midrash then notices an oddity in (Numbers 11:35), which says the people "journeyed from Chatzeiroth and abode in Chatzeiroth." How could they both leave a place and remain in it? From this the rabbis learn that the camp set out and then turned back to wait at Chatzeiroth for the sake of Miriam, who had been stricken with tzaraat (see the following chapter). The whole nation paused its march to honor her, a reward for her own waiting at the Nile when Moses was an infant.

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Mekhilta Tractate Nezikin 7:6Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Mechilta, translated by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein · CC-BY

R. Eliezer says: Scripture speaks of a Canaanite (as opposed to a Hebrew) man-servant. You say this, but perhaps it speaks of a Hebrew? (This is not so, for) it is written here "his man-servant or his maid-servant," and elsewhere, (Leviticus 25:44) "From them (the Canaanites) shall you buy a man-servant or a maid-servant." Just as there, the Torah speaks of the Canaanites, so, here. Variantly: man-servant is being likened to maid-servant, and maid-servant to man-servant. Just as "maid-servant", (she may be sold as a maid-servant,) whether adult or minor, so "man-servant," adult or minor, to exclude a Hebrew man-servant, who although (he may be sold as) a man-servant when he is an adult, may not (be sold as) a man-servant when he is a minor. And to exclude a Hebrew maid-servant, who, although she may be a maid-servant when she is a minor, may not be a maid-servant when she is an adult, (leaving her master, as she does, with the advent of pubertal signs.) R. Yitzchak said: I might understand that (also included is) a servant of two partners or one who is half-free, half-slave; it is, therefore, written "his man-servant or his maid-servant." Just as the first implies a servant that is entirely his, so, the second, to exclude the servant of two partners or one that is half-free (half-slave). R. Yishmael says: Scripture speaks of a Canaanite man-servant, it being written (Exodus 21:21) "for he (the servant) is his money." Just as his money is his for all time and he exercises complete control over it, (so, the servant being spoken of), to exclude a Hebrew man-servant, who, though under his complete control, is not his for all time, (leaving, as he does in Yovel), and to exclude a servant of two partners or one who is half-free (half-slave), who, though he is his for all time, is not under his complete control.

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Mekhilta Tractate Pischa 7:16Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Mechilta, translated by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein · CC-BY

The Mekhilta articulates one of the most powerful principles in all of rabbinic theology through a deceptively simple logical argument. The principle: God's capacity for good always exceeds His capacity for punishment.

The argument begins with an observation about divine justice. When God punishes, He punishes the instigator first. The one who initiated the transgression bears the first blow. This is the pattern throughout Scripture, the serpent is cursed before Adam, Egypt's gods are struck before Egypt's people, the ringleaders fall before the followers.

The Mekhilta applies its kal va'chomer, its argument from lesser to greater. Punishment is God's "lesser measure." It is not what He prefers. It is not His default mode. Beneficence, reward, blessing, mercy, is His "greater measure." It is the dominant force in the universe. If even in the lesser measure of punishment, the initiator is addressed first, then how much more so in the greater measure of beneficence must the initiator of a mitzvah be rewarded first!

The implications cascade outward. The person who starts a charitable initiative receives blessing before those who follow. The one who begins a tradition of prayer, of study, of kindness, stands first in line for divine reward. Priority in punishment establishes priority in reward. And since God's generosity is always greater than His severity, the reward for initiating good must vastly exceed the punishment for initiating evil.

This is the Mekhilta's optimistic theology in its purest form. The universe is tilted toward mercy. The scales are rigged in favor of those who act first for good.

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