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1) Given the Tools to Succeed
Why would Hashem hand Moshe a staff He never meant him to use? קח את המטה", take the staff,” and then speak to the rock. Our chaver Ari Zahtz sharpens this question with a parent's dilemma: you send your son up to study for his bechinah and tell him to take his Nintendo Switch along, then act shocked when you find him playing. Why dangle the temptation in the first place?
The answer may hinge on the definite article. Hashem did not say take a staff, but קח את המטה, the staff, and the Chizkuni identifies it as Aharon's, the very one that had blossomed with almonds a parshah earlier. That staff was never bait. It was a reminder. Aharon's mateh was the symbol of achdus, the shevet that closed the machlokes of Korach and marked Klal Yisrael as one. R. Zahtz suggests Hashem was telling Moshe that, facing the endless complaints of these people, his task was to hold the staff that keeps them whole, not to lash out at the מורים. As we enter Tammuz and the Three Weeks, that blossoming staff is handed to us, too.
2) We Abandoned Moshe When He Needed Us Most
The reason for Moshe's death in the midbar remains a question, despite all the theories our meforshim offer. Rav Soloveitchik zt”l notes that it must, categorically, remain a mystery. Death itself, and Moshe's death above all, belongs to “זאת חקת התורה”, a decree the mind cannot grasp. I.e., we are not meant to understand it.
But one truth, the Rav insists, stands clear: Moshe suffered בעבורם, because of the people. Not, he is careful to say, because they caused his error at the rock. That fault was Moshe's own. They are to blame for something else: When the gezeirah was sealed, Moshe pleaded for it to be torn up, and the Rav says that had the people loved him as he loved them, had they joined their tefillos to his, HaKadosh Baruch Hu would have been forced to relent. But, he explains, they did not join.
R' Soloveitchik hears the whole tragedy in one word. Moshe says ואתחנן, I prayed, in the singular, not ונתחנן, we prayed. I prayed alone; no one stood with me. ויתעבר ה' בי למענכם, Hashem grew angry with me because of you. The leader who had given his life for them was left, at the very end, to daven by himself.
3) Down but Not Out
The Gemara in Berachos asks why Bilam's nevuah was omitted from kerias Shema. After all, Bilam invokes Yetzias Mitzrayim twice, while the section we do recite mentions it only once. R. Moshe Taragin uses the question to open the real drama of Bilam's curse.
Bilam, says R. Taragin, conceded that we had once been chosen. He knew of Har Sinai and the wonders of the midbar. His wager was that after the Eigel and the meraglim, we lost our chosen status. Now, he figured, Hashem had moved on to a younger nation and left the original covenant void, exposing Klal Yisrael to history like any other people. To his dismay, he was forced to admit לא הביט און ביעקב, הן עם לבדד ישכון. The covenant held! We were still Hashem’s choice.
This, R. Taragin notes, is precisely the claim other religions would inherit and weaponize: once chosen, now forsaken. Through centuries of churban and exile, it seemed to hold, and after the Holocaust, it seemed truer than ever. Then, 1948 wiped the smirk from Bilam's face.
4) For a Parshah Shiur: How Does G-d Punish Through the Snakes?
Nechama Leibowitz hangs the question on a single word: the Torah writes וישלח ה' בעם את הנחשים in the sense of releasing something, not sending it on a mission, and from that she argues Hashem never dispatched the נחשים השרפים as agents sent to strike. The snakes were always there, native to that midbar of נחש שרף ועקרב, and it was simply their nature to bite. All along, Hashem had restrained them as one quiet layer of His protection. When the people sinned, He withdrew that layer and let the snakes be snakes. Punishment, on this reading, was not an agent sent but a shield lifted, and the shiur builds itself toward the Amidah's daily thanks for all the harm we never feel. See this beautiful piece cataloged by our chaver Benjamin Yasgur.
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