Pestilence: Leprosy vs. Black Goo - Metzorah - Mythic Torah

Welcome back to Mythic Torah, my regular article investigating monsters, heroes and gods in the weekly Torah reading. This week's reading is Metzorah, the 5th reading of the book of Leviticus, that deals with purity/impurity laws surrounding leprosy in people and houses, as well as menstruation.

The Venom Symbiote, Spider-man 3

There's a common science-fiction trope in which a black, viscous substance infects people and takes over their bodies. X-files, Helix, Prometheus and Spider-man all feature a threatening Black Goo that corrupts and spreads with a reason and purpose we can't really comprehend.

The black oil functions as disease given corporeal form, a physical manifestation of our greatest fears about illness, as human beings get infected and lose control of our bodies. This ichor can't be reasoned with or spoken to, it is a faceless, relentless force that can never be entirely gotten rid of.

Magic: the Gathering has its own example of this trope that is particularly relevant for our Torah portion of Metzorah - the Phyrexian oil. Magic's Phyrexians are an infectious, invasive force that consumes and compleats people, animals, plants and whole worlds and environments. It is a living, intelligent disease that corrupts not only living beings but rocks and planets, and as long as a single drop survives Phyrexia can be reborn.

Metzorah stands in interesting contrast with this trope. Our Torah reading is concerned about illness, and in particular Tzara'at (translated as leprosy but certainly not our modern disease that has the same name) that can infect both people and houses, rendering both impure and requiring various diagnoses and rituals to remove the problem.

And yet we never get a sense that the Tzara'at is a being, or is caused by a being, acting with intention. Where the Black Goo acts as if it has intelligence, one that may be beyond our comprehension, Tzara'at is presented without personality or a sense of purpose - it just happens.

This might strike you as obvious - and indeed it may fit well with our modern sense of disease - but it is not the only way that sickness is presented in the Bible.

Let me introduce you to Resheph, the god/demon of disease.

From the Deep - Here Be Dragons! - Habakkuk 3

Habakkuk 3: 8, 15
8] Was your wrath against the rivers (neharim), O Lord?
    Was your anger against the rivers,
    or your indignation against the sea (yam),
when you rode on your horses,
    on your chariot of salvation?

15] You trampled the sea with your horses,
    the surging of mighty waters.
 

ח  הֲבִנְהָרִים, חָרָה יְהוָה--אִם בַּנְּהָרִים אַפֶּךָ, אִם-בַּיָּם עֶבְרָתֶךָ:  כִּי תִרְכַּב עַל-סוּסֶיךָ, מַרְכְּבֹתֶיךָ יְשׁוּעָה

טו  דָּרַכְתָּ בַיָּם, סוּסֶיךָ; חֹמֶר, מַיִם רַבִּים

Welcome back to From the Deep, your weekly look into the primordial chaos monsters of the Bible and Jewish tradition.

This week we're moving on to a new prophet, the little read minor prophet of Habakkuk. The third and final chapter of this book is described in the first verse in a similar manner to a psalm "a prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, on the Shigionot", and it uses the word "sela" a word used elsewhere only in the book of psalms.

The third chapter describes God marching to war with pestilence and fire around God's feet. But who God fighting against? According to verse 8 it seems to be the Rivers / the Sea.

Where does this image come from and what does it mean for us?