Parashat Chukat

Tammuz 10, 5772 ~ June 30, 2012

by Joel Ackerman

In the middle of this parasha, we fast forward 38 years from the events surrounding the death of Korach and his followers in the previous parasha.   The Torah is silent about this time. No information is given here on any events that occurred during this period.  Instead, we pick up the story in the 40^th year in the desert with the deaths of Miriam and Aaron and, finally, the movement of the Israelites towards the Land.  One wonders what this lengthy period was like.

After the incident of the spies, Moses had told the people that G-d had decided that they would not enter the Land until all those aged twenty and above had died (Bamidbar 14:28-35).  G-d did not mince words:  “Your children will roam in the wilderness for forty years and bear your guilt, until the last of your carcasses in the wilderness.  Like the number of days that you spied out the Land, forty days, a day for a year, a day for a year, shall you bear your iniquities – forty years – and you shall comprehend straying from Me.”

Sholem Asch describes the mood among the people at the beginning of that period in his novel “Moses”:  “They went about with bowed heads, shrouded in sadness.  Until now they had had, in the midst of all their tribulations, an aim and purpose… But now what prospect was there?  For themselves, only death; and for their children, freedom.  Very rare were the spirits among them who could rise to this challenge: to live out all their remaining lives in privation and suffering for the sake of their children.”

And Asch describes Moses’ own state:  “What would be his own fate?  Was he not one of the grown persons who had come out of Egypt?  Was he not himself of the first generation?  The thought made him tremble. He could not entrust the B’nai Israel into other hands.  He must see them into their land.  G-d would be merciful to him and let him live long enough to complete G-d’s work.  And perhaps G-d would relent and shorten the sentence of forty years, hasten the growth of the B’nai Israel, prepare them sooner for the conquest.  He would not cease to pray. 

He would exert himself to keep the B’nai Israel close to the borders of the Promised Land.   He would not force them back into the horrible desert.   He would wander with the tribes between Ezion-Geber and Kadesh Barnea, push his way through to the borders of the Promised Land.”

As we know, G-d did not shorten the sentence, but He was merciful – to a certain extent - for those thirty-eight years.  He did not desert His people.

G-d had told Moses after the incident of the spies: “Tomorrow, turn and journey toward the wilderness, in the direction of the Sea of Reeds” (Bamidbar, 14: 25).  But Moses fudged, and G-d did not call him on it.  Again, Sholem Asch.  Moses prayed for the people and “God vouchsafed to Moses the light of his justice.  And Moses said in his heart that he would not compel the B’nai Israel to leave Kadesh Barnea; he would not compel them to break up camp. Nor, indeed did the cloud above the sanctuary rise in sign of departure.  And even though G-d had bidden Moses to turn back into the wilderness on the morrow, Moses interpreted the word ‘morrow’ to mean ‘after a time.’” He interpreted “in the direction of the Sea of Reeds” to mean “any part of the Red Sea”, and kept close to that arm of this body of water that extended  to Ezion-Geber (i.e., modern Eilat) rather than return to that part near Egypt.

And G-d accompanied his people and found ways to be merciful to them so that they should not become totally overwhelmed with despair.  Rashi comments on the list of places in the journey of the Israelites in parashat Masei (Bamidbar 33:1-49): “Why were these journeys written?  To make known the acts of kindness of the Omnipresent.  For although He decreed upon them to move them about and make them wander in the wilderness, you should not say that they were wandering about from journey to journey the entire forty years and had no rest…. During the entire last thirty-eight years they only journeyed twenty journeys.”

The Torah further states (Devarim 28:4) that neither their clothes nor their shoes wore out.  And in this week’s parasha, our translation of the Torah reports that when the people complained about lack of food and water, G-d sent fiery snakes and serpents that bit them, and many died.  However, Nehama Leibowitz teaches that this translation is incorrect; that the word “vayeshalach” does not mean “sent” but rather “let go”, “released”.  In other words, what occurred here was not that G-d took an action and sent snakes against the people, but that the snakes had always been present and threatening to attack, but G-d had restrained them up to then – but then He stopped restraining them – temporarily, perhaps - to remind the Israelites  that all that time He had been protecting them.

         

And so it went for thirty-eight years.  The older generation lived with the fact that they would die in the wilderness, and so they did, bit by bit.  Their children had to watch this, constantly aware of both the death sentence passed on their parents and the fact that they themselves could not progress until that sentence had been fully carried out.   

And it was not just parents and children.  There was no generation gap.  Those young men 20 or 21 years old were under that death sentence, but those only slightly younger - 18 or 19 - were not.  They waited, conscious of their close call, and they matured under G-d’s protection to become the elders and leaders of the next generation.  

It was a strange and tense time, yet somehow the people worked their way through this, somehow survived it.  Somehow Moses kept at his self-assigned task of leading them and preparing them for that next step.  And as we learn in this parasha, when the time came, they were ready to move.

Shabbat Shalom