A.
In this week’s parasha we read of the death of Miriam, Moshe’s
sister, in whose merit a miraculous well had supplied the water needed by the bënei
Yisra’él throughout their desert sojourn. Now, the well vanished with her,
and the thirsty and distraught people came to Moshe, demanding water. Moshe, of
course, turned to G-d, and was instructed as follows: קח את המטה והקהל
את העדה אתה ואהרן אחיך ודברתם אל הסלע לעיניהם ונתן מימיו והוצאת להם מים מן הסלע
והשקית את העדה ואת בעירם: ויקח משה את המטה מלפני ד' כאשר צוהו: ויקהלו משה ואהרן
את הקהל אל פני הסלע ויאמר להם שמעו נא המרים המן הסלע הזה נוציא לכם מים: וירם
משה את ידו ויך את הסלע במטהו פעמים ויצאו מים רבים ותשת העדה ובעירם: ויאמר ד' אל
משה ואל אהרן יען לא האמנתם בי להקדישני לעיני בני ישראל לכן לא תביאו את הקהל הזה
לארץ אשר נתתי להם: (“Take the staff and gather
together the community, you and Aharon your brother; and you will speak to the
rock for their eyes, and it will give its water, and you will bring forth for
them water from the rock, and water them and their livestock. And Moshe took
the staff from before Ha-Shem as He had commanded him. And Moshe and Aharon
gathered together the congregation to the face of the rock, and he said to
them, Hear now, ha-morim, is it from this rock that we should bring
forth for you water? And Moshe raised his hand and struck the rock with his
staff twice, and much water came out, and the community and their livestock
drank. And Ha-Shem said to Moshe and Aharon, Since you did not believe in Me to
sanctify Me for the eyes of the bënei Yisra’él, therefore you will not
bring this congregation to the land which I have given them”; XX, 8-12).
The above passage has a number of peculiarities which
beg for explanation:
(1) G-d quite clearly tells Moshe to take the staff
– i.e., some particular staff – and go to the rock – some particular
rock – which he and Aharon were to address. However, after they spoke to the
rock, he – Moshe – was to bring forth water from the rock. In the end, Moshe
asks the yammering mob, “Is it from this rock that we should bring forth
water?” How did he not know which rock was under discussion?
(2) Why does G-d tell Moshe and Aharon to speak to
the rock lë-‘éyneihem, “for their eyes”? Is it not more appropriate to
associate speech with ozneihem, “their ears”?
(3) Why did Moshe strike the rock? Up to this
point, he had been perfectly exacting in his obedience to G-d’s commandments;
why, then, did he suddenly now so brazenly fail to speak to the rock, and
instead strike it?
(4) Come to that, if this was indeed the rank
disobedience which G-d’s rebuke seems to imply, why did the miracle nonetheless
take place, the water obediently gushing forth from the stricken rock?
(5) And what is Aharon’s part in all this? “Since
you did not believe in Me to sanctify Me for the eyes of
the bënei
Yisra’él,” is plural and clearly includes Aharon; later on, in the account
of his death, he is clearly implicated in the charge of “rebelling” against
G-d’s word (cf. v. 24), yet he appears to have done nothing.
B.
In order to propose answers to our questions, we
must first understand the nature of the complaint and the Divine response
thereto.
The Sforno (for our purposes here)
distinguishes between two classes of miracles. There are those which are
literally impossible according to the laws of nature as we perceive and
understand them, and which therefore clearly and obviously demonstrate the
Creator’s mastery over His creation; and there are those which are, in fact, a
function of synchronicity, a series of events causally unrelated which come
together to create a needed effect in a given time and place, equally
miraculous, but mëlubbashim, “cloaked” or “shrouded” within nature,
their miraculous nature becoming known only after the node in space-time in
which they come together has passed and been recognised. In our context, the
conversion of flint rock into water would be an example of the former; the
diversion or redirection of an existing water-source, the latter.
Rashi follows the Midrash Tanhuma in
setting the scene of the incident; panic-stricken at the disappearance of
Miriam’s well, the maddening, infuriating crowd dog the footsteps of Moshe and
Aharon as they move toward an array of rocks, והיו ישראל
אומרים להם מה לכם מאיזה סלע תוציאו לנו מים לכך אמר להם המרים כו' שוטים המורים
את מוריהם המן הסלע הזה שלא נצטוימו עליו נוציא לכם מים (“and Israel were saying to them, 'What is it to you from which
rock you bring forth for us water?' Therefore, [Moshe] said to them, ha-morim... fools
who instruct their instructors [ha-morim eth moreihem], is it from this
rock concerning which we were not commanded that we should bring forth for you
water?”). The comment relies on the creative ambiguity of the Holy Language, in
that morim can be the active partici-ple either of mara (“be
bitter, rebellious, disobedient”) or of hora (“instruct, guide, teach”),
and also superficially resembles the Greek word moría, “stupidity,
senility.”
So, it appears that Moshe and Aharon, trying to do
the right thing, were being harassed and frustrated by the crowd.
C.
Concerning Moshe’s striking the rock, we find a
subtle but fruitful difference of opinion amongst rishonim. The Da‘ath
Zëqénim mi-Ba‘alei ha-Tosafoth suggests in the name of the Bëchor Shor that
G-d told Moshe to bring the staff because he was always intended to strike the
rock, noting the very similar incident recorded in Exodus XVII, when Moshe was
told עבור לפני העם וכו' ומטך אשר הכית בו את היאר קח בידך
כו' והכית בצור ויצאו ממנו מים וגו' (“Pass before the people... and your staff with
which you struck the Nile take in your hand... and you shall strike the rock
and water will come forth from it....”; ibid., vv. 5-6). Thus, they were
commanded not so much to speak to the rock as to speak about it
(the preposi-tion el, “to,” is sometimes used as though it were ‘al,
“on, about”), i.e. תדברו אל בני ישראל לפני הסלע כדי
שיראו הדבר לעיניהם שאני מוציא להם מים מצור החלמיש והם אמרו "שמעו נא המרים
המן הסלע הזה נוציא לכם מים" כלומר למה תריבון עמי וכי אנו יכולין להוציא לכם
מים מן הסלע הזה אם לא ע"י הקב"ה וא"כ דרך תפלה ובקשה הי' להם לבקש
ממנו וגו' (“you should speak
to the bënei Yisra’él before the rock in order that they will see the
thing with their eyes, that I am bringing out for them water from the flinty
rock; and [Moshe and Aharon] said, ‘Hear now, ha-morim, is it from this
rock that we will bring forth water?!, i.e. Why are you quarreling with
me? Are we able to bring forth water from this rock if it is not through the
Holy One, Bless is He? And if so, they were to have asked it of [G-d] in a
prayerful fashion....”). The staff, then, was a symbolic reminder that the same
Divine agency which smote the Nile brought water to Israel. Striking the rock
was not their sin; addressing the crowd angrily was.
The Sforno’s approach is slightly different:
He suggests that the crowd had a bone to pick both with Moshe and with the
Al-Mighty: אמנם המריבה עם משה היתה באמרו שהיתה הנהגתו
בלתי שלמה במה שהביא אותם אל החלק הרע הזה מהמדבר ועל הא-ל ית' היתה מריבתם באמרם
שהוציאם מארץ נושבת טובה אל ארץ מדבר
(“the quarrel with Moshe was that his leadership was imperfect, for he had
brought them to this bad part of the desert;
and with G-d the quarrel was that He had brought them out of a good,
settled country into a desert land....”).
G-d wished to deal with both errors: ובכן צוה הא-ל ית' שיהפוך הסלע למים כאמרו "ונתן מימיו" כלומר
שיהיו המים מן הסלע לא נמשכים ממקום אחר אליו כו' וצוה שזה יהי' על ידי דבור עבדיו
כאמרו "ודברתם אל הסלע" למען יכירו ישראל שהי' זה הנס כו' ובזה ידעו
גודל וטוב המשלח וצוה עם זה שאחר שיהפך הסלע למים יוציא משה אותם המים להם במטהו
כו' (“And so G-d commanded
that the rock be turned into water, as He said, ‘and it will give its water’,
i.e. that the water would be from the rock and not drawn from another place to
it... and He commanded that this would occur according to the speech of His
servants, as He said, ‘And you will speak to the rock’, in order that Israel
might realize that this was [such] a miracle... and through this they would
know the greatness and goodness of the Commander; and He commanded with this
that, after the rock had turned to water, Moshe should bring forth that water
to them with his staff....”). Thus, both purposes would have been served, and
G-d’s name would have been sanctified before the rebellious and frightened
people.
Moshe let himself to be distracted by a scintilla
of anger at the affront to his leadership; as we learn in many
places, צדיק גוזר והקב"ה מקיים. A tzaddiq decrees and the Holy One, Blessed is He,
brings it about; the miracle was still justified.
D.
The Maharal mi-Prag seals the matter: G-d
would not let them lead Israel into the Holy Land because, at this
moment, their faith failed them ודבר זה כי הכו
פעמיים אל הסלע כאשר נעשה להם נס כו' כי עשו מעשה זה דרך כעס ומי שעושה מצות ד'
דרך כעס בפרט כאשר נעשה להם נס כזה כו' אין זה אמונה כי האמונה הוא מי שבוטח בו
יתברך אין לו בו רק שמחה שזה ענין אמונה שמאמין בו ובוטח בו ועם הבטחון השמחה אבל
עם הכעס אין כאן אמונה ומה שהכו פעמיים יורה זה על מעוט האמונה ובטחון בו וגו' (“And this
thing that they struck the rock twice when a miracle had been done for
them...for they did this action in anger, and one who does a mitzva of
Ha-Shem in anger, in particular when such a
miracle has been done for them... is not faith, for faith is [evident in]
one who trusts Him and has only joy [as a result]; for this is the point of
faith, that one believes in Him and trusts Him, and with the trust there is
joy; but with anger there is no faith, and the fact that they struck twice
shows this paucity of faith and trust in Him....”; גור
ארי' לפ"כ י"ב עיי"ש באריכות וע"ע גבורות ד' פ"ז).
The momentary failure to implement this miracle both
as a correction of the yammering crowd’s slight to Moshe’s leadership, and
their anger at G-d (which had, after all, been expressed every single time
they encountered some minor hitch in the desert, despite the miraculous well,
the daily food falling from the sky, and all the other miracles), which came
out in their striking the rock twice, is what rendered them, in the end,
incapable of leadership in the conquest of the Holy Land; for the conquest
would take place, for the most part, through miracles of the second sort, mëlubbashim
in nature, not blatant or obvious until they had occurred – and would
require observation through the eyes of perfect faith to discern. Life in the ארץ אשר ד' אלקיך דרש אתה תמיד עיני ד' אלקיך בה מרשית השנה ועד
אחרית שנה (“Land which Ha-Shem
your G-d cares for; always are the eyes of Ha-Shem your G-d upon it, from the
first of the year to the end of the year”; Deuteronomy XI, 12) demands such
leadership.
So Moshe was instructed to bring his staff, as he
had been in the earlier instance, to strike the rock at the right time; they
were to speak to the rock, and thereby convert it to water, and also to Israel,
to prepare them for what they would see; and Aharon, less directly insulted
than Moshe, should have been a calming influence on his brother, but failed here
out of love and sympathy for Moshe.
ולא קשה מידי.
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