Maimonides explains it as the accumulation of incidents where Moshe allowed human anger to overtake his otherwise unquestioned loyalty and obedience to God’s word. 

 

Abarbanel also sees it as the culmination of preceding events in the life and career of Moshe. Other commentators, such as Rabbi Meir Simcha Cohen of Dvinsk, Latvia, hesitant to place the entire burden of this strange incident on Moshe alone, attributes the fact that Moshe would not lead the Jewish people into the land of Israel as being not so much a punishment of Moshe but a reality that for this new generation of Jews.  They never experienced Egypt and since they saw Moshe as a distant almost supernatural personality, Moshe could no longer be effective as the leader of Israel. 

 

The incident described in this week’s parsha is the catalyst for his not entering the Land of Israel, but not really the true cause of his exclusion from further leadership of the people. In effect, this latter line of thinking portrays Moshe, the greatest of all humans, as being subject to the grinding gristmill of  generational history and events. However we will deal with this incident, it will always remain  rationally perplexing to us.

 

There is a debate amongst the thinkers and scholars of Israel as to whether the youthful Moshe is to be held blameless for slaying the Egyptian taskmaster. Rashi points out to us that Moshe slew him by the use of his tongue, pronouncing the ineffable name of God, so to speak. Moshe then came to realize the power of words, especially of holy and sacred words. 

 

That is why he composed the final book of the Torah in order that those holy words would have an eternal and powerful effect in guiding and teaching all later generations of the Jewish people. Being able to kill someone with a stick, a spear, a gun or a bomb is unfortunately a natural and everyday occurrence in human life. 

 

Being able to destroy an enemy by pronouncing a holy word – the name of God, so to speak – is a completely different and supernatural event. Perhaps this is the basis for understanding the punishment of Moshe for hitting the rock instead of speaking to it. Hitting the rock, miraculous as it may seem to some, will be interpreted by others as somehow being natural and ordinary, a magical trick.

 

 Hitting the rock employs man-made tools and thus when human action is involved the presence of God is often hidden, if not even disregarded. Speaking to the rock, like speaking to the Egyptian taskmaster in holiness and faith, is not subject to rational interpretation. That would have been the supreme sanctification of God’s presence, so to speak, in human events. And, alas, perhaps therein lies the shortcoming that Heaven saw in Moshe’s response to the lack of water in the desert for the Jewish people.

 

Shabbat shalom

Rabbi Berel Wein