Chukat | Leading By Example

 

Our essay this week concerns one of the more famous of the desert episodes - Moses' encounter with the rock.  It is due to this tragic tale that God decrees that Israel's two leaders, Moses and Aaron, will not accompany their people into the Promised Land. In a rare display of divine punishment, God's response to the Lawgiver's crime is immediate and direct.  No amount of prayer or repentance succeeds in changing God's mind and Moses eventually accepts God's judgment.  And yet, although the consequence of Moses' sin is clearly stated by God, the actual nature of his error has been the subject of much debate among the commentators.     

 

Following the nation's complaint about a lack of drinking water, God prepares once again to satisfy the Israelites' needs. 

 

"Moses and Aaron came away from the congregation to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and fell on their faces.  The Presence of the Lord appeared to them, and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'You and your brother Aaron take the rod and assemble the community, and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water.  Thus you shall produce water for them from the rock and provide drink for the congregation and their beasts.  Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as He had commanded him.  Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation in front of the rock; and he said to them, 'Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?' And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod.  Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.  But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron 'Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.'  Those are the Waters of Meriva - meaning that Israelites quarreled with the Lord - through which He affirmed His sanctity."  (Numbers 20:6-13)

 

In analyzing this story we will employ the explanations of three early Torah commentators - Rashi, Rambam and Ramban, in chronological order.  But before looking at these writings we must introduce one important factor critical to our understanding of the story: the concept of Sanctification of the name.  When God chastises Moses and Aaron He claims that they lacked faith in Him and that they failed to sanctify Him.  What exactly does it mean to sanctify God?  We refer to a Biblical source of this idea, Leviticus chapter 22:

 

"You shall faithfully observe My commandments: I am the Lord.  You shall not profane My holy name, that I may be sanctified in the midst of the Israelite people - I the Lord who sanctify you" (verses 31-32).

 

The simple or literal meaning of this text is that mere observance of God's commandments will result in KIDDUSH HASHEM - sanctification of the name.  The idea seems to be that if Jews follow God's will, His name will be publicized throughout the world as the God with a unique law-based relationship with His people.  These verses also contain a reminder that God provides for the sanctity of the people - Israel achieves holiness, separation from the nations, by fulfilling the Torah, a state which in turn identifies the Lord as the one true God. Was this element of holiness absent in the rock episode?  Let us turn to our first commentator.

 

     Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak 11th century) provides us with the most well known understanding of Moses' mistake.  Commenting on the words 'To sanctify Me' of verse 12, Rashi writes:

 

"For if you had spoken to the rock and it had brought forth water I would have been sanctified in the eyes of the congregation, and they would have said: 'If this rock, which does not speak and does not hear, and does not require sustenance, fulfills the word of the Omnipresent, then certainly we should do so.'"

 

According to Rashi, Moses' sin lay in simple disobedience of God's command.  God ordered the leader to address the rock with a request for water but Moses reacted by striking the stone.  Moses' actions have been defended by claims that two points led him to misunderstand God's wishes.  This is not, after all, the first time that God's power has been used to extract water from stone.  Soon after the escape from Egypt when the nation, dropped into the parched desert begs for water, Moses is told

 

"Pass before the people; take with you some of the elders of Israel, and take along the rod with which you struck the Nile, and set out.  I will be standing there before you on the rock at Chorev.  Strike the rock and water will issue from it, and the people will drink."  (Exodus 17:5-6). 

 

Now, finding himself in a similar situation Moses remembered that he had learned the way to get water from a rock - touch it with the Miracle Staff.  His expectation for what is to come is supported by God's instruction to "take the rod and assemble the community."  Why would God tell Moses to get his staff ready if not to repeat his earlier performance?  But, explains Rashi, Moses neglected the end of God's command, "and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water," and that was the sin. Moses and Aaron failed to sanctify God's name because they did not follow His command to the letter.

 

In chapter 5 of his Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, Rambam (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon 12th century) divides his definitions of Kiddush HaShem into two categories - sanctifying God's name through death and sanctifying God's name through life.  Through the first nine paragraphs (halakhot) Maimonides describes the conditions under which a Jew must sacrifice his life to protect the image of Judaism, and when a Jew may violate the Torah in order to save his life.  For example, when threatened with death by a non-Jew unless he perform an act that is contrary to the Jew's Torah, the nature of the act and the circumstances of the threat dictate the Jew's response.  Nevertheless, dying for one's belief is termed a sanctification of God's name - the sacrifice is the ultimate declaration that God's will is the Jew's supreme value.

 

But of course, even in life the Jew has the opportunity to announce God's greatness.  In the following description Rambam takes the interpretation of Leviticus 22 a step beyond its literal meaning. 

 

"There are other things that are a profanation of the name of God.  When a man, great in the knowledge of the Torah and reputed for his piety does things which cause people to talk about him, even if the acts are not express violations (of the Torah), he profanes the name of God.  As, for example, if such a person makes a purchase and does not pay promptly, provided that he has means and the creditors ask for payment and he puts them off; or if he indulges immoderately in jesting, eating, or drinking, when he is staying with ignorant people or living among them; or if his mode of addressing people is not gentle, or he does not receive people affably, but is quarrelsome and irascible.  The greater a man is, the more scrupulous should he be in all such things, and do more than the strict letter of the law requires" (5:11).

 

As their leader, Moses was being watched at all times; as their teacher his every move and utterance was seen by the people as an indirect communication from God.  Beyond following the law exactly as he taught it in order to demonstrate God's will, a man in Moses' position had to rise above the law and display purity of character - never losing patience, getting angry or losing control. Rambam thus identifies the sin of our tale as contained in Moses' terse statement to the people "Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?"  In his introduction to Pirkei Avot (Shemoneh Perakim 4) the philosopher writes:

 

"The Holy One blessed be He censured him for this, that a man of his stature should give vent to anger in front of the whole community of Israel, where anger was not called for.  This behavior in such a man constituted a profanation of the name since he was the model of good conduct for all the people." 

 

Thus, when God declares that Moses and Aaron did not sanctify Him, it is because sanctification of the name requires exemplary behaviour at all times.

 

The first two forms of sanctifying God's name share the same philosophy: by behaving in a holy way the Jew publicizes God's existence in the world.  Non-Jewish people (or indeed other Jews) who witness a Jew's behavior are impressed by a high moral standard, a devotion to ritual and tradition, a sense of purpose, and this reflects well on the Torah and God.  There is a third manifestation of sanctifying God's name which finds expression in the daily prayers and that is simply the declaration that God is great.  The Kaddish, recited several times during each service begins with this statement "May His great name be exalted and sanctified."  The heart of the prayer is this line "May His great name be blessed forever and ever."  Now, it could be that this prayer reflects a promise that the Jews will obey the Torah and thereby automatically sanctify God's name.  Or, these declarations could in themselves represent the sanctification of God's name.  In other words, merely exclaiming that God exists, that God is great, publicizes Him and that fulfills the commandment of Leviticus 22.  With this in mind, we move to the Ramban.

 

Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (13th century) has a fairly long essay on our topic in which he first dismisses the interpretations of his predecessors before presenting his own theory.  In terms of Rashi's understanding, Ramban asserts that God couldn't have really cared whether Moses struck the rock or spoke to it - either way, water from stone is an impressive miracle, it's all the same to the rock.

 

Rejecting Rambam's reading Ramban argues that in His reaction to Moses, God does not rebuke him for being angry but for lacking faith.  The Torah does not suggest that Moses was angry - when he calls the people MORIM (verse 10) he's labeling them 'defiant.' Were God to resent Moses' anger, a more appropriate occasion to chastise him for losing his cool would be following the battle with Midian during which soldiers made off with Midianite women. Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of the thousands and the officers of the hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign.  Moses said to them:

 

"You have spared every female!  Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord's community was struck by the plague" (Numbers 31:14-16).

 

There are other places too where Moses grows impatient with the people but they do not lead to divine rebuke or punishment.

 

Quoting Rabeinu Chananel (11th century) Ramban suggests a different meaning to the story: Moses' sin was in his saying 'Shall WE bring (NOTZI) you forth water,' instead of saying 'Shall GOD bring you forth water' as he and Aaron said when they promised God would give the people meat to eat, and as they said with all the other miracles - they explicitly made it known that God wielded the force behind all supernatural events.  The people might have been misled into thinking that in their wisdom Moses and Aaron brought the water from the rock themselves.  This is why God says 'You did not sanctify Me.'  In the first episode of the water-from-the-rock God stated that He would 'be standing there before you on the rock at Chorev' which meant that the presence of the pillar of cloud guaranteed that God would be credited with the miracle. But here, the people saw nothing, and because of Moses' slip the chance for another opportunity to proclaim God's greatness was lost.

 

In his commentary to Leviticus 22, Ramban does not explain that sanctifying God's name involves publicizing His greatness in the world.  Nevertheless, I feel that Ramban's interpretation of our story accurately reflects the philosophy behind the Kaddish prayer - a decleration that there is no power like God's.

 

Finally, let us return to Rashi for help with the last verse in the story.  "Those are the Waters of Meriva - meaning that Israelites quarreled with the Lord - through which He affirmed His sanctity."  The last two words in the Hebrew text are VA-YEKADESH BAM - God was sanctified through them.  Through whom?  Rashi explains that the deaths of Aaron and Moses as a result of this episode sanctified God's name.  "When the Holy One blessed be He executes judgment upon His holy ones, He is feared and sanctified among mankind."  All the people knew that the leaders had erred and that God, ever present and watchful, intended to punish them for it.  Although Moses and Aaron tragically missed a chance to sanctify God's name, in the end, and through them, His existence and might were declared.