פרשה: חקת · עלייה: רביעי (נצח)

אחיך ישראל, אתה ידעת "your brother Israel; you are aware, etc." The reason that Moses underlined the brotherly connection between Edom and Israel was to remind Edom that the discomfort of travel Israel experienced now was not due to recent events but to their respective ancestor and that he considered both Israel and Edom as being involved in this equally. Abraham's descendants were supposed to experience exile according to Genesis 15. However, only the descendants of one of Isaac's sons had paid the price by being enslaved in Egypt. Esau and his descendants had not experienced any of that suffering. The least the Edomites could do now was to display some degree of brotherliness by allowing the Jewish people passage to their own heritage. Compare Bereshit Rabbah 82, on Genesis 36,8 where it is explained that the reason Esau emigrated was that he did not want to pay the debt Abraham had contracted for at the covenant between the pieces.

אתה ידעת, these words were Moses' reminder to Edom that they had been well aware of the decree which was part of the above-mentioned covenant that Abraham's descendants were to be enslaved in a foreign country for an extended period. This was something that only the descendants of Esau knew about. All the other pagans had considered the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt as one of the many accidents of history, and had thought that if the family of Jacob had not voluntarily migrated to Egypt they would never have wound up as slaves.

וירדו אבותנו, "our ancestors descended, etc." This was in addition to the exile they experienced in Egypt. We have to understand this in light of Shabbat 10 where we are told that a person should not show favoritism to one of his children over the others; had Jacob not spent five pieces of silver more to make a coloured coat for Joseph our ancestors might not have had to descend to Egypt and to have wound up in exile there." Tossaphot already question that statement saying that G'd had decreed this exile long before Joseph and his brothers had been born, going back to the covenant between the pieces in Genesis 15. They answer that but for Jacob's' open display of discrimination between his sons, the decree could have been fulfilled in some other country where it would not have been accompanied by nearly the same degree of cruelty that the Jews experienced in Egypt. The fact that the location where G'ds's decree came true was Egypt added untold suffering. This is why Moses described the migration to Egypt as a "descent," adding וירעו אותנו המצרים, how the Egyptians had mistreated the Jewish people

Moses also conveyed to the Edomites by his lengthy explanantion that the Israelites had paid the debt arising from that covenant in full and that this was why they were now entitled to take possession of the land of Canaan. When Moses added the words ימים רבים, he meant that it had taken the people a long time to discharge their debt under that covenant in full.

ויאמר ה׳…על גבול ארץ אדום. G'd said to Moses…on the border of the land of Edom, etc. The reason the Torah described the location as the border of the land of Edom was to show that the proximity of the wicked Edomites contributed to Aaron's death at that time. I have found a somewhat puzzling statement in the Yalkut Shimoni on our verse (item 764). The Midrash accuses: "because you befriended yourself with the wicked," Aaron died as a result of the Israelites (or Moses and Aaron?) befriending Edom." Thus far the Yalkut. It is clear to me that this is a reference to the words על גבול. This also explains why the Torah added the word לאמר in our verse. G'd commanded Moses to tell the Israelites about this little detail, i.e. that because they made a point of befriending the wicked this contributed to the untimely death of the righteous. But for that incident Aaron might have lived a few months longer although death had been decreed for him previously.

There may also be a moral/ethical dimension to our verse. We know from Shabbat 10 that Moses and Aaron will lead the Israelites to the Holy Land at the time of the resurrection as we explained earlier. The future redemption ushering in that idyllic era will be the redemption from the exile under the yoke of Edom, which symbolises the kingdom of Satan. The word גבול maybe a reference to the time when G'd puts an end to the rule of the kingdom of Satan and delivers it into the hands of Israel. Aaron's dying at this time and at the border of the kingdom of Edom, was to remind the Israelites of the glory in store for them in the distant future. This is why the Torah also mentioned that Aaron joined אל עמיו, "his people," something we would have assumed even if the Torah had not spelled it out. It is an allusion to the time "Aaron's people" would inherit the lands of Edom.

על אשר מריתם את פי, "because you rebelled against My word, etc." According to the words of the Midrash which I have quoted in connection with my commentary starting on verse 8, Moses had been instructed to teach the rock a chapter of the Torah as a result of which it would release its water. Moses and Aaron had failed to do so. In this instance, the Torah seems to blame Aaron for this and to justify his death now by his failure to sanctify G'd on this occasion. The reason is that when Moses failed to carry out G'd's instructions it was up to Aaron to rectify Moses' error. His failure to do so constituted an act of rebellion against G'd. Concerning the other 3 failures of Moses we described above in the name of the Midrash, Aaron was guilty of agreeing with Moses by not having objected or attempted to correct Moses. Whereas Moses alone was guilty of striking the rock, it was also only Moses who had refused to address the rock the Israelites had chosen. It was also only Moses who had called the Israelites rebellious and challenged them about producing water from a specific rock they had chosen. G'd told Moses in Deut. 32,48 to get ready to die on Mount Nevo, telling him that this was because he and Aaron had trespassed in connection with the water of strife (Deut. 32,51). According to the Midrash the Torah's reference in Deut. is to Moses' challenge to the Israelites: "shall we produce water for you from this rock?" In view of this why did G'd use the plural when He said על אשר מעלתם? If Aaron was not involved in that act why was he held responsible for words spoken by Moses? Granted that he shared responsibility in the matter of striking the rock, something which contravened Moses' and Aaron's joint שליחות, mission. However, how could Aaron have anticipated and therefore have prevented Moses from saying the words המן הסלע הזה נוציא לכם מים? The answer is that G'd included Aaron in the collective responsibility for the failure of the mission because basically both he and Moses had erred jointly.

והפשט את אהרן את בגדיו, "and strip Aaron of his garments." The fact that the Torah wrote the word את twice, both in connection with Aaron and in connection with his garments suggests that there were two separate "strippings." We might have thought that the garments that Aaron was to be stripped of were the priestly garments, not his personal clothing. This is why the Torah also had to write: "strip Aaron" to indicate that he was to be stripped also of his personal garments. It was only concerning the priestly garments that the Torah continued: והלבשתם את אלעזר בנו, "and put them on his son Eleazar. Had the Torah merely written והפשט אהרן את בגדיו, I would not have had the extra word את from which I could have deduced the proper meaning of the verse. On the other hand, if the Torah had only written והפשט אהרן בגדיו (without either word את), I would have simply understood that Aaron was to be stripped naked, and the words את בגדיו would have become meaningless.

We may also interpret these words slightly differently. The words הפשט את אהרן refer only to his personal clothing. The Torah added the words את בגדיו to teach us that he would immediately be robed in different garments. This is what the Yalkut Shimoni on our verse had in mind when the author wrote: "While Aaron was being undressed he was immediately enveloped by the clouds of glory." As a result, Aaron was never in a state of undress even while Moses undressed him as parts of the clouds of glory enveloped any part of his body from which Moses removed his clothing.

וילחם בישראל. He fought against Israel. The reason the Torah had to write the words בישראל, instead of עם ישראל as it did in Exodus 17,8 when Amalek is reported as attacking Israel, may be that in this instance the Israelites themselves were the cause that the Canaanites attacked them. They had sinned. The words: וישב ממנו שבי, "he took a prisoner from among them," the word ממנו suggesting that the reason Israel was attacked at this time was Israel itself. Israel's sin at this time was their share in causing the premature death of their High Priest Aaron on account of the events at "the waters of strife." Psalms 106,32 attributes G'd's anger to the people when the Psalmist exclaims: "they angered the Lord at the waters of Merivah and Moses suffered on their account." Naturally, David did not only refer to Moses but also to Aaron who shared in that mission. He singled out Moses by name as he was the principal involved.

וישב ממנו שבי, "and took a captive from amongst them." We need to explain why the Israelites did not appear troubled by the fact that they suffered a defeat at the hands of a single Canaanite nation. We could have expected them to extrapolate that if a single Canaanite nation could inflict a defeat upon them, what would happen when they would face all seven Canaanite nations? After all, we find precisely such a reaction by Joshua when he suffered a defeat at the hands of the inhabitants of the town of Ai (Joshua 7,5-9).

According to our sages in Bamidbar Rabbah 19,20 the people described here as "the Canaanite" were in reality the Amalekites. The reason they were described as Canaanites was that they dressed up as Canaanites in order to confuse the Israelites. This is the reason that when the Israelites had prayed to G'd to deliver the attacker into their hands they had referred to the wrong nation in their prayer. When they found out that the attackers had not belonged to the seven Canaanite nations they were not overly concerned at the minor victory enjoyed by the Aamalekite at that time. Their losses had been negligible [a single maidservant according to tradition. Ed.]. Another reason they were not overly concerned was the fact that as long as they did not try and enter the Holy Land, i.e. at a time when the measure of sin of its inhabitants was full, they did not worry that G'd would deliver them into their hands when the time was ripe. Our sages offer a variety of reasons for all this.

אם נתן תתן, "If You will surely deliver, etc." The reason the Israelites repeated the words נתן תתן, is due to the fact that they were not certain which nation they were talking about. They said "if" i.e. if this nation is one of the seven Canaanite nations, all well and good. If not, Israel asked that G'd should nevertheless תתן, give that people into its hands, etc. There is a comment in the Midrash Lekach Tov according to which the first נתן refers to G'd handing back the prisoner the Amalekites had captured.

וידבר העם באלוקים ובמשה, The people spoke out against G'd and against Moses. Although the people were perfectly aware that everything Moses did he did at the command of G'd, this did not prevent them from speaking out against him as they felt he should not have agreed with G'd's route for them but should have pleaded that G'd lead them through a more hospitable country. It would appear that the people's complaints in this instance did not justify G'd decreeing a major punishment as was the case when they had complained after hearing the majority report of the spies in Numbers 14,3. At that time the Israelites had demanded to return to Egypt. This time they "merely" indulged in slander against Moses and G'd. G'd punished them by letting snakes loose against them, seeing snakes symbolise slander ever since the time Eve was tricked by a snake into eating from the tree of knowledge (compare Taanit 8).

ונפשנו קצה מלחם הקלקל, "and we loathe the light bread." Perhaps they thought that the reason the arduous detour around the land of Edom bothered them so much was because they did not have the kind of food that would enable them to endure such a march more easily. People who travel on foot prefer to eat "heavy" food which is not easily digested as their very walking helps the digestive process. As soon as food has been digested one feels hungry again. Since the mannah was so easily digested they believed that the feeling of an empty stomach made it more difficult to endure the march. This is the reason the Torah introduced their complaint by mentioning the detour around the territory belonging to the kingdom of Edom. Our sages in Bamidbar Rabbah 19,21 say that the people who said all this were the remnants of the earlier generation who had nothing to look forward to but death in the desert during the coming months as they were destined to die before the Israelites would enter the Holy Land. They were fed up with their very lives. The same did not apply to the younger generation who had much to look forward to in the immediate future.

את הנחשים השרפים, the fiery snakes. It appears that as a result of the continued complaints by the Israelites against G'd and Moses, He sent the very beasts against them which their לשון הרע had given birth to. We have explained on numerous occasions that the מזיקים, destructive forces in our world, are nothing but the creatures we cause to come into being through our sins. The incident of the serpents in this paragraph proves how true the words of our sages in Taanit 8 are when they said that in the messianic future the other wild beasts will ask the serpent why it kills with a poisonous bite seeing it does not even get a physical satisfaction out of the damage it causes; the serpent replies with the verse (Kohelet 10,11)אין יתרון לבעל הלשון, "the slanderer does not get anything out of his slander." It asks: "why not ask the same question of the slanderer? What does he get out of spreading lies against people?" את הנחשים השרפים, the fiery serpents, etc. It seems quite appropriate that seeing the Israelites continued to slander G'd and Moses, that G'd sent the serpents created by these slanderous remarks against those who had caused their existence, against the slanderers themselves as per the Talmud in Taanit. In this instance the complaints of the Israelites gave birth to two kinds of serpents. The one called נחש has a poisonous bite which destroys the body, whereas the bite of the one called שרף burns the soul. The meaning of the word וישלח here is that G'd allowed the evil creations of the people's slanderous remarks to be turned against them. We find a similar use of that word in Job 8,4 וישלחם ביד פשעם, "He expelled them by means of their sin." In this instance the נחשים were the result of their slander against Moses, whereas the שרפים were the result of the Israelites having misrepresented what G'd had done. The Midrash too mentions that the שרפים were the punishment for what they said against G'd, as these serpents burn the soul.

התפלל אל השם, "pray to the merciful G'd, etc." In this instance the meaning of the word התפלל is equivalent to a call for forgiveness of the sin. There is a difference in the accessibility of forgiveness if one prays for it before the guilty party has experienced afflictions or if one has waited until after he has experienced afflictions. Once the guilty party has already become the victim of the destructive forces he himself has created and which have come home to roost, he needs to marshall some merit in order for these destructive forces to be called off. Shabbat 32 has this to say on the subject: "A person should make a point of asking for mercy before he falls sick because once he has fallen sick they say to him: 'produce some merit and you will be freed from the sickness.'" This is why the people of the generation of the desert (also known as the דור דעה, the generation blessed with knowledge) were astute enough to ask Moses to pray before asking him to remove the destructive serpents. They wanted Moses to invoke his own merits on their behalf.

את הנחש, the serpent. They wanted that G'd should remove even the relatively minor problem, the deadly bite of the snake that attacked only the bodies. If they had mentioned the שרף or the נחש השרף it would have sounded as if they were only concerned about not having their souls destroyed but would have been content to die a merely physical death, i.e. a normal death. By mentioning only the נחש, the people made it plain that they did not want to die a natural death of the body, and if so, they certainly did not want their souls to die. They were also careful to speak of the נחש in the singular to indicate that they did not want a single snake to remain.

עשה לך שרף, "make a fiery snake for yourself, etc." Our sages in Avodah Zarah 44 have this to say on the peculiar word לך, for yourself, in our verse. "The Torah says לך to tell us that Moses was to construct the serpent using his own funds. The reason for this was that a person may not forbid the use of something which is not his." Thus far the Talmud. The meaning of these words is that seeing Moses had made the serpent using his own funds it became his personal property. No one has the right to forbid others something that is not his. [The problem was that in the days of King Chiskiya (Kings II chapter 18) the people appear to have offered incense to this copper snake Moses had made, and to prevent them from doing so King Chiskiyah broke this snake into little pieces. Ed.] Seeing Moses had made this copper snake, the leaders of subsequent generations had been unable to destroy this snake or to forbid the people to worship it in some form. This explanation of the words עשה לך is one that emerged in the course of historical developments. At this time it is hardly likely that G'd meant for Moses to pay for the snake out of his own funds in order that at a later time the kings or religious leaders should be unable to forbid the people to use it as an object of worship. We must understand why G'd would have phrased His instructions so that we could have understood them to mean that Moses pay for the snake. We must also try and understand why G'd called it a שרף, whereas what Moses made is described as נחש (verse 9). Furthermore, we must try and understand why G'd decreed that an object such as this, which resembled a form of idol, had to be made altogether and why looking up to it would heal a person who had sustained a bite. Our sages in Rosh Hashanah 29 claim that as long as the Israelites looked heavenwards this was a demonstration of their faith in G'd, etc. If indeed this was all that G'd had in mind, why did He not order them to look straight at heaven instead of looking at the snake as an intermediary?

In accordance with what we have explained earlier that the reason that both נחשים as well as שרפים attacked the people was because they had slandered both Moses and G'd, we can understand G'd's instructions as meant to counteract both kinds of sins. G'd told Moses to "make for yourself a snake," meaning that with regards to the slander the people were guilty of against Moses himself he was to make a נחש, whereas with regard to the people having slandered G'd he was to make a שרף. It was important for the people to recognise that their sin was twofold, that they had slandered G'd as well as Moses. I will explain this in detail later on.

Moses was astute enough to construct a copper snake (נחש נחשת) for had he not made the snake out of copper (the same word as נחש) the Saraph G'd had commanded him to make [without specifying the material it was to be made of, Ed.] would not have symbolised both sins. This is why the Torah described what Moses actually made not as a שרף but as a נחש נחשת. The animal itself symbolised the slander against G'd, whereas the material from which Moses constructed it symbolised the slander against Moses the people were guilty of.

As to the overall meaning of the whole episode, it remains for us to explain why Moses' prayer did not suffice to remove both kinds of snakes from the Israelites so no one would be bitten and require a cure. Clearly, G'd had found that the people on whose behalf Moses had prayed had not repented, or at least had not not been sufficiently penitent. This is spite of the fact that they did say חטאנו, "we have sinned in having spoken out against the Lord and against you" (verse 7). The most important element of repentance is an undertaking not to again become guilty of the sin one asks G'd to forgive. The people had failed to mention such an undertaking on their part. This is why their affliction had not been removed. G'd in His wisdom and His desire to cure the Israelites, invented the stratagem of the artificial snake placed high above the people to give them a chance to either repent properly and not be bitten or to be bitten to awaken them to the need to repent properly. He commanded them to look up to the snake which would result in their being cured.

Their looking at the snake was meant to symbolise seven different things.

1) Kohelet 10,11 attributes a snake's biting to it having been incited. The incitement for the snake to attack humans are their sins. When there is no such incitment, לחש, the snake remains silent, harmless. We are to learn from this that if we keep our tongues silent and do not whisper (לחש) slanderous remarks, the snake will be as harmless as the reproduction Moses had made and placed on a pole.

2) The Israelites would be prompted to recognise the nature of their sin. We are told in Tikkuney HaZohar chapter 13 concerning a certain serpent found nesting in a tower that this was the angel of death which is compared to a serpent and had seduced original man. Placing this replica of a serpent on a pole was to symbolise the serpent which is found in a high place. The people were to recognise that their slanderous comment had been responsible for placing the serpent in such a high position. They had been guilty of exactly what the original serpent had done when it made slanderous remarks about G'd who is so High. They were also to remember how they had slandered Moses when they realised what material Moses had made the serpent of.

3) They were to realise the difference between a serpent which crawls on earth, which is the lowest of the low and brings death in its wake, and the serpent constructed by Moses and placed high on a pole which brought life in that it revived people who had been bitten by the deadly poison of a snake. This should remind the people that they had spoken out against the mannah and had professed their preference for bread grown in the ground. Concerning such comments the prophet Isaiah exclaimed in Isaiah 5,20 "Ah, all those who call evil good and good evil, etc."

4) The copper snake on the pole was designed to awaken in the Israelites the need to do Teshuvah concerning their complaint that G'd had led them through a desert in which their needs could not be provided instead of leading them on a route where there was grain and regular bread. They were to realise that the reason G'd who dwells in the heavens had done so was to make them totally dependent on Him for their sustenance and all their other needs and that there is no other source on which they could rely. G'd managed to make this point very clear by refusing to heal the people who had been bitten unless they raised their eyes and looked at the copper snake on the pole, i.e. in the direction of their Father in Heaven. This is what the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 29 meant which we quoted earlier. The Talmud had only omitted to draw the comparison with the nature of the people's slander, etc. and that G'd wanted the people to rely on Him just as a son relies on the table of his father morning, noon, and night. If G'd had led the people through civilised country they would not have experienced this closeness to G'd as they would have bought their supplies. In that event their whole lifestyle would have been one that would have estranged them from realisation that G'd cared for them every step of the way.

5) G'd also wanted to counter the criticism implied in the people's reference to their having been led through inhospitable country which required miracles in order to keep them alive. We have a principle that one does not rely on miracles because miracles have a habit of failing to materialise when one needs them most. It is a fact that people who deny G'd's miracles endeavour to demonstrate by all kinds of deceptive devices that what are claimed to be miracles are in actual fact natural occurrences which had to occur at that particular time and at that particular place. The argument of these heretics is based on the fact that the so-called miracle occurred only once and only in a particular location. Inasmuch that the people might have harboured similar thoughts, G'd determined to demonstrate that He could maintain such miracles on a permanent basis by supplying the Jewish people with all their needs through miraculous means for a period of 40 years. Bamidbar Rabbah 19,23 describes that Moses threw the copper snake into the air and that it remained suspended there without being supported from the ground. Any person, who had been bitten (even if not by a snake) who would look up at it and would acknowledge that he had been wrong in denying miracles and who now believed that the reason that G'd had led the people through the desert had been in order to demonstrate His ability to perform miracles on a regular basis, would be healed.

6) G'd wanted to demonstrate the power of true penitence. Our sages in Yuma 86 have said that if someone is a truly penitent person even his former sins will be accounted as merits for him, i.e. not only will he have his sins forgiven but they will be turned into meritorious deeds. In our situation a person who had been bitten and who looked up at the copper snake observed that the very symbol of death, the snake, now kept silent although by definition every kind of snake is guilty of voicing slander. The fact that this very snake now had turned into a life-giving force rather than the reverse taught the repentant sinner this valuable lesson about the power of repentance.

7) G'd wanted that every individual Jew experience His miracles as something which had happened to him personally. This occurred when the person who had been bitten experienced the cure by looking up at the copper snake.

והיה כל הנשוך, it would be that everyone who had been bitten, etc. When the Torah here used the word והיה which denotes something joyous rather than the word ויהי which suggests something sad, this was to show the positive effect of having been bitten. A person who had to look up at the copper snake because he had been bitten learned seven lessons in faith. This was certainly a joyous experience for him. The reason the Torah wrote כל הנשוך, "everyone who had been bitten" without adding the word "by a snake," is that even people, who had sustained snake bites before the snakes had proliferated and Moses had made the copper snake as a result of the people's slanderous remarks, were healed also if they looked up at the copper snake. The reason the Torah added the conjunctive letter ו at the beginning of the word וחי was to inform us that looking up at the copper snake also cured those people who had been bitten by a שרף by the kind of snake that burned their souls.