This week’s annual cycle Torah reading is parsha “Pinchas,” Numbers 30:2 through chapter 32) and – in part at least – it wraps up one of the mysteries in the Torah, how can a people so blessed of YHVH fall so quickly into idolatry, and beset by ‘plague?’

But there is far more, and the issue of “vows” literally envelops the narrative.

As it still does today.

The Erev Shabbat reading:

The Sabbath Day midrash is at attempt to connect a collection of dots that range from broken vows and lying prophets to bioweaponry and ELE asteroid impacts.

The prophet Bilaam really wanted to curse the mixed multitude of Israel, but was explicitly forbidden to do so, on pain of death – as he learned “the hard way.” Only “the word that Elohim puts in my mouth, that I shall speak.” And yet, like so many ancient popes and modern traitors in politics, he thought he was smarter than God Himself, and could find a “workaround.” It cost him.

Today we don’t have a Moses to “hang ’em high,” or a Pinchas to literally run them through, ‘en flagrante delecto,’ with a spear.

Which only makes the potential consequences all the more deadly. And imminent.

The combined two-part reading and Sabbath midrash: