Why Sifrei Bamidbar Said the Shekhinah Goes Into Exile With Israel

Most discussions of the Shekhinah, the divine indwelling, place her firmly inside the Temple. The Holy of Holies is her room. When the Temple stands, the Shekhinah is at home. When the Temple falls, the Shekhinah withdraws. Sifrei Bamidbar, the tannaitic halakhic midrash on Numbers compiled around the third century in the school of R. Yishmael, refuses this picture.

The Sifrei teaches that the Shekhinah goes with Israel, even when they are ritually impure, even when they are in foreign lands, even when the Temple is destroyed. The teaching is delivered alongside two other midrashic moves on the closing chapters of Numbers: the calendar restart that follows the Temple's destruction, and the leadership model that requires the leader to walk in front. Three passages map the Sifrei's working theology of divine accompaniment.

The Calendar That Restarts Every Time

Sifrei Bamidbar 64 tracks how the Israelite calendar marks its years. The early chapters of Numbers count from the Exodus from Egypt. In the second year after their going out from the land of Egypt. When Israel entered the land, the count restarted from their entry. When you come to the land (Leviticus 25:2) begins the sabbatical cycles.

When the Temple was built, the Sifrei teaches, the count restarted again from its construction. 1 Kings 9:10 dates an event at the end of twenty years from Solomon's building. When the Temple was destroyed, the count restarted yet again from the destruction. Ezekiel 40:1 dates a vision in the fourteenth year of the city's being smitten.

The teaching is calendrical and theological at once. The Israelite year is not anchored in a single event. It restarts with each new chapter of the covenant. The Exodus restart, the land restart, the Temple restart, the destruction restart. The Sifrei is teaching that even catastrophe is dignified with a calendar position. The destruction is not an end-of-time. It is the start of a new way of counting.

The Leader Who Walks in Front

Sifrei Bamidbar 139 reads the verse describing the leader who will succeed Moses. The verse says the leader will go out before them and come in before them (Numbers 27:17). The Sifrei refuses to read this as a metaphor.

Not as others, the midrash says, who send others in the vanguard and bring up the rear themselves. The Israelite leader, in the Sifrei's reading, walks in front. Moses did. The proof text is Numbers 21:34, where the Holy One tells Moses, Do not fear him, meaning the Amorite king Og, whom Moses was about to confront personally in the front line. Joshua did. The proof text is Joshua 5:13, where Joshua walks up to a stranger near Jericho and asks whether he is for Israel or against. Pinchas did. The proof text is Numbers 31:6, where Pinchas accompanied the army of a thousand from each tribe into battle.

The teaching defines Israelite leadership operationally. The leader does not direct from a tent. The leader walks at the front of the camp into whatever the camp will face. The successor model laid down at the end of Numbers, in the Sifrei's reading, is the same model that Moses, Joshua, and Pinchas had already embodied.

The Shekhinah in Egypt, in Babylon, in Every Exile

The cluster's deepest teaching arrives at Sifrei Bamidbar 161. Numbers 35:34 contains the phrase in whose midst I dwell. The Sifrei seizes the verse.

Beloved are Israel, the midrash says, for even when they are ritually impure, the Shekhinah reposes among them. Leviticus 16:16 had named this directly. Who dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanness. The Shekhinah does not depart when the camp becomes impure. She stays.

R. Nathan extends the teaching. Beloved are Israel, he says, for wherever they are exiled, the Shekhinah is with them. The midrash then catalogs the exiles. Israel was exiled to Egypt, and the Shekhinah was with them. Israel was exiled to Babylon, and the Shekhinah was with them. The Sifrei is teaching, with a directness that startles, that the Shekhinah is mobile. She accompanies the people who carry her name, regardless of the geography they have been driven into.

The teaching reverses the conventional Temple-centric picture. The Shekhinah is not, in the Sifrei's reading, located in Jerusalem and missing from the diaspora. She is with the diaspora, in the diaspora, throughout the diaspora. The Temple was her room. The diaspora is the corridor she keeps walking through alongside her people.

What the Three Teachings Held Together

Read the three passages together and the Sifrei's reading of Numbers becomes legible. Sifrei Bamidbar uses the closing chapters of the book to make three commitments that the rest of Jewish history will lean on.

The calendar restarts after every catastrophe, so the destruction is not an end. The leader walks in front, so the people are not abandoned at the moment of greatest exposure. The Shekhinah goes with Israel into every exile, so the people are never alone in a foreign land. The three commitments are the spine of the consolation the rabbis would later build.