Parashat Chukat - Moses, the Rock and the Land of Israel

Read this weeks Torah portion and ask yourself the question “How many people die in this weeks portion?”

You should easily come up with at least 2; the text clearly talks about the deaths of Miriam and Aaron. What’s less clear is that the answer is really in the hundreds of thousands. This portion is the transition from the generation that stood at Sinai to the one that will enter the Land of Israel. Keep that in mind, I’ll get back to it shortly.

The event that I wanted to talk about was the incident with Moses and the rock. The story goes like this. The people complain to Moses and Aaron that they have no water. Moses asks G-d what to do. G-d tells him to assemble the people before a rock, and instruct the rock to give forth water. Moses assembles the people, but when it comes time to speak to the rock, he gets angry at the people and hits the rock instead. Because of this incident, G-d decrees that neither Moses nor Aaron will get to lead the people into Israel.

This raises several obvious questions. Why such a major punishment for such a seemingly minor crime? There are many explanations available for this issue. But even if you accept those explanations, you still have to ask why Aaron got the same punishment; he didn’t seem to do anything.

The explanation I like says that the relationship between hitting the rock and not being allowed into Israel is not once of a punishment for a crime, but one of demonstrating a decision.

It takes a very different kind of leader to bring a group of slaves out of Egypt than it does to take a nation into a holy land. Moses was the right man for the former, but G-d decided he was not the right man for the latter. The incident with the rock didn’t condemn Moses, it proved G-d’s point.

Throughout the desert wanderings, whenever water was needed, Moses would always hit a rock to get it. Picture the scene, the nation is thirsty and demanding water. Moses strikes a rock and water flows out. The scene suggests that it’s through Moses’ power that the water flows. However, that’s not what the people think. The people watching that were the same ones who stood at Mount Sinai; they knew that the water comes from G-d, Moses is just the conduit.

In the incident in this week’s portion, the people observing the scene were not at Mount Sinai. They view Moses’ miracles as coming from his power. They knew about Sinai and G-d, but they sense something different.

G-d was setting up this event at rock to be the Mount Sinai for the next generation, where everyone would see the power of G-d. But after 40 years of acting in a particular way, Moses didn’t seize the opportunity. Through no fault of his own, Moses reinforced the people notion that the miracles come from Moses, not G-d.

This is why Moses (and similarly Aaron) could not go into the Land of Israel; G-d knew that if they did, the people would worship them like gods.

In chapter 4 of Deuteronomy, we get a retrospective of this event. Moses says to the people that he’s not going to enter the Land, but you are. And when you get there don’t make any idols. The relationship between those 2 statements might not be clear, but in the context of the above, the passage should be understood as follows. “If I were to enter the land you would worship me. So I’m not going to enter. But you are, and when you get there don’t worship anything else (other than G-d).”

Moses was the greatest of all leaders in human history, but he wasn’t the right man to lead the people into Israel. There’s an important lesson here, when selecting a leader, be sure to select the right one, not the best one.

Shabbat Shalom