Surprisingly, God never says "Because you hit the rock..." Which is why I thoroughly reject that interpretation, as it has so many fundamental problems with it, including, most basically, the logic that suggests, "Because you hit the rock, you will die and not enter the land - not alive, or even to be buried there."
Anyway, the four terms are explained in greater detail here, but I'll summarize them here for ease of reference.
לא האמנתם בי - Lo Heemantem Bi - You did not have faith in Me, or you did not cause the people to have faith in Me
להקדישני - L'hakdisheini - to sanctify Me - you did not cause a Kiddush Hashem
מריתם פי - M'ritem Pi - you rebelled against My mouth (My words?)
מעלתם בי - Ma'altem Bi - You desecrated against Me
When reading through the segment of Bamidbar 20:7-13, three of these phrases can easily be understood. The one which I find most troubling, and difficult to understand is the 3rd - מריתם פי. How did Moshe and Aharon rebel against God's mouth? God told them to take a staff, gather the people, and bring forth water! Check, check and check! All 3 were done!
As the designated chapter of Pirkei Avot study for this week happens to be Chapter 5, I was reading through it, when the following epiphany came to me.
משנה מסכת אבות פרק ה
משנה ו
[*] עשרה דברים נבראו בערב שבת בין השמשות ואלו הן פי הארץ ופי הבאר ופי האתון והקשת והמן והמטה והשמיר והכתב והמכתב והלוחות ויש אומרים אף המזיקין וקבורתו של משה ואילו של אברהם אבינו ויש אומרים אף צבת בצבת עשויה:
The Mishnah describes how ten things were created during twilight post the 6th day of Creation. (It also mentions a few additional items after the original list of 10). The first three are all described as the mouth of something - and the three items happen to appear in last week's parsha (Korach), this week's parsha (Chukat) and next week's parsha (Balak). The mouth of the earth, the mouth of the well, and the mouth of the donkey.The next items are the rainbow, manna, the staff, the shamir (a kind of worm), the font, the writing (presumably in the 2 tablets), and the 2 tablets.
Moshe encountered some of these in his lifetime, and of those he encountered - or existed during his life - he glorified them and raised the honor of God through them in a significant way.
The mouth of the earth - Moshe told everyone who was challenging him that "If an act of creation is done by God, and the earth opens up and swallows all the challengers, you'll know that God sent me."
The mouth of the donkey - though Moshe did not see or experience the donkey's speech, he writes in the Torah that God opened up the mouth of the donkey, which spoke to Bilaam.
Manna - Moshe is the biggest defender of the manna, telling the people they should keep Shabbat when the manna doesn't fall on Saturday, and telling the people every time they complain about the manna (how sick they are of eating the same thing every day) that they don't appreciate what God is doing for them!
The staff - no matter which staff this refers to, Aharon's or Moshe's (though it is most likely Moshe's), Moshe certainly raises the role of the staff to be something admired by the people, as he take pains to indicate that any miracle seemingly performed by the staff in actuality comes from God.
The tablets (and the font and writing) - Moshe breaks the first tablets, true, but the Talmud claims that God said to Moshe "Yasher Koach!" - in other words, your breaking the Tablets was the right thing to do! That Moshe lovingly crafted the second set of Tablets, and that he took pains to make sure the second set were preserved, is undeniable. He clearly honored the tablets in whatever way he could.
Which leaves us with Pi Ha'b'er - the mouth of the well. And here is where it gets sticky. Because God says "You did not have faith in Me (or cause the people to have faith in Me) to sanctify Me to the eyes of the people." And the truth is, while Moshe can take the credit (or demerit) of hitting the rock, Aharon is left in the lurch, because what did he do? He was told to gather the people, and speak at/to the rock.
So we have to look at what was said. And what was said was המן הסלע הזה נוציא לכם מים - Will we be drawing water from this rock for you?
Ramban is of the view that this is where Moshe and Aharon went wrong, because they said will WE be bringing forth water, when they should have said, "See how GOD will bring forth water." In Aharon's not objecting to this language, he is complicit in taking the credit for it. But worse than taking the credit, they're not attaching a sanctification of GOD to the role played by the Mouth of the Well.
And so, maybe, the מריתם פי is referring to this idea - that the MOUTH mentioned by God refers to the mouth of the well mentioned in this Mishnah in Avot, the only mouth that - at least in this episode - is not sanctified by Moshe and Aharon as being this fantasmagorical creation of God.
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