Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Chukat: Understanding Moshe's Reaction

Something struck me while learning this week's parsha (Chukas).

Moshe had just* experienced a deep personal tragedy, the death of his sister. And he didn't get a moment's pause. The people rose up with the same, tired*, complaint*. One could perhaps understand why Moshe overreacted* in the manner that he did in this one uncharacteristic instance. Yet he still was punished.

Footnotes and Caveats:
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* just: assuming the juxtaposition of events indicates that one followed the other in close proximity, as does the midrash. They were actually in that location for a long time.

* tired: they similarly complained about lack of water early in their wilderness tour, in parashat Beshalach.

* complaint: Sure, they were human and needed water, but they accompanied their request with a complaint and rebellion, and how it would be better had they had died previously.

* overreacted: Assuming that there was something wrong with either striking the rock or with 'hear now, ye rebels'. It is possible that this was not the problem, and it was just a failure of instilling emunah, such that they had the same attitude in the later year as they had in the earlier year.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

* just: assuming the juxtaposition of events indicates that one followed the other in close proximity, as does the midrash. They were actually in that location for a long time.

http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=45410&st=&pgnum=133

Isaac Moses said...

For bonus points: Relate this observation to the previous step in the juxtaposition chain:

http://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/57251/what-do-we-learn-from-miriams-demise-being-juxtaposed-to-the-red-heifer

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