Nehemia Polen
Ed. note: this essay won second place in Hadar’s 5783 Ateret Zvi Prize in Hiddushei Torah.
The Mei Meribah incident—the water crisis that occurred near the end of the Israelites’ 40-year wilderness trek (Numbers 20:1-13)—is one of the most puzzling episodes in the Torah. Just after Miriam’s death, we are told that the people suffer a lack of water, prompting them to quarrel with Moses and Aaron. They complain that they were taken out of Egypt into a “wretched place” with no grain, figs, vines, pomegranates, or potable water. God addresses Moses, telling him and Aaron to gather the people and speak to the rock, which would then yield abundant water. Moses strikes the rock and water indeed flows copiously. But something has gone awry: God tells the two brothers that they “did not believe” in God, and that they would be relieved of their leadership role of bringing the people into the Promised Land.
Generations of commentators have subjected the brothers’ words and actions as presented in Numbers 20:9-11 to minute scrutiny in an effort to identify the exact nature of the misstep that provoked such a swift and harsh response from God. The most well-known view may be that of Rashi, who points to Moses’ striking the rock rather than speaking to it. Nahmanides demurs, noting that God had told Moses to take his staff, which surely suggests using it to strike the rock (compare Exodus 17:1-7). For his part, Nahmanides states that the sin was taking credit for the miracle of bringing water from the rock, rather than attributing it to God. Maimonides believes the sin was Moses’ expression of anger at the people, unseemly for God’s foremost prophet. Several centuries later, Abarbanel surveyed many proposals and rejected them all. As he notes, most suggestions suffer from one or more weaknesses: (a) they focus on the words and actions of Moses, yet both Aaron and Moses were prevented from entering the Land; (b) the punishment seems disproportionately severe; (c) not only does the punishment appear excessive, it does not match the misdeed—for example, if the problem was hitting the rock, in what way was not entering the Land a measure-for-measure response? For his part, Abarbanel argues that the verdict pronounced on Moses and Aaron was actually deferred payback for earlier malfeasance—in Aaron’s case, the Golden Calf, and for Moses, the episode of the scouts (Numbers 13-14), where Moses’s instructions hinted that the conquest would be difficult, thus opening the path to an unfavorable report. But here too, later commentators found Abarbanel’s proposed solution inconsistent with the plain words of Scripture, which attributes the brothers’ deaths in the wilderness to the Mei Meribah incident, not some earlier event (see Deuteronomy 32:51).
In light of this history of bafflement and unpersuasive attempts at solutions, it is no wonder that one recent survey of this topic concludes that the enigma of the Mei Meribah episode is included in the famous biblical assertion that “to this day no one knows where [Moses] is buried” (Deuteronomy 34:6)—that is, no one really knows the sin that precipitated his death.[1]
Dare one revisit this problem, when so many prior attempts have apparently fallen short? I do so emboldened by a text from elsewhere in the biblical canon, hoping that the insights gained there might fruitfully be applied here. But first, a close reading of the Mei Meribah episode, as found in Numbers 20:1-13 (the English translation reflects the interpretive understanding that will be developed herein):
The Children of Israel, the whole community, arrived at the Wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people settled in Kadesh. Miriam died there and she was buried there.
There was no water for the community, and they gathered against Moses and Aaron. They contended with Moses and said, “If only we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord! Why did you bring the Lord’s congregation into this wilderness, that we and our animals should die there? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no place to plant seeds, or figs, or vines, or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!”
Escaping the congregation, Moses and Aaron went to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and fell on their faces. The Glory of the Lord appeared to them.
The Lord said to Moses, “Take the staff, and gather together the community, you and Aaron your brother. Speak to the rock before their eyes that it shall give its water. You will bring water out of the rock and give drink to the community and to their animals.” Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as He commanded him. Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation in front of the rock and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels, shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water came out abundantly, and the community and their animals drank.
The Lord said to Moses and to Aaron, “Because you did not believe in Me, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the Children of Israel, therefore you will not bring this congregation into the Land that I have given them.”
These are the waters of Meribah, where the Children of Israel contended with the Lord and He was sanctified through them.
I have italicized verses 7-11 to highlight that this text block serves a different function in the unfolding narrative. These verses describe God’s response to a pressing crisis that demanded immediate intervention: the miracle of water from a rock. Moses faithfully executed God’s command. The fact that the commentaries, over hundreds of years, could not agree on the putative wrongdoing, each one pointing out weaknesses in the others’ suggestions, implies that they may have been looking in the wrong place. Verses 7-11 portray a crisis intervention, executed faithfully and effectively by Moses.
The missteps are found in verse 6. Moses and Aaron did not proceed “in front of the congregation”—as leaders taking charge of a fraught situation, but “from before the congregation”—that is, they fled the crowd assembled against them. Ibn Ezra says this with characteristic brevity: “they appeared to be running away.” A good example of this usage is Genesis 3:8, where the original couple “hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Another notable occurrence of mipnei (from before) in this sense is in the Flood story, when Noah and his family enter the Ark “mipnei mei ha-mabul” – “ to escape the flood waters” (Genesis 7:7).
Ibn Ezra does not carry this linguistic insight forward; he locates Moses’ failing elsewhere, in allowing the people’s disaffection to interrupt his contact with the Infinite, thereby diminishing the impact of the miracle of water from the rock. The reading I’m advancing suggests that the brothers’ fate is sealed in verse 6, not because of anything that happened or didn’t happen in verses 7-11.
There is a clear indication of divine displeasure in verse 6: the phrase “the Glory of the Lord (kevod hashem) appeared to them.” The appearance of the “Glory of the Lord” in the Book of Numbers signals God’s anger and foreshadows doom. See, for example, Numbers 14:10. The people, having accepted the negative report about the Promised Land, threaten to stone Joshua and Caleb, who insist that the Land is “very, very good.” The kevod hashem appears in the Tent of Meeting “to all the Children of Israel,” and immediately thereafter, God threatens to annihilate them (14:12), a fate that is averted only by Moses’s passionate intercession (14:13-20).
Another instance is Numbers 16:19, the rebellion of Korah and his followers, where the Glory of the Lord appeared to the entire community, followed immediately by God’s threat to “consume them in a moment” (16:21). The biblical “Glory of the Lord,” much like the Rabbinic Shekhinah, has both a benevolent and a threatening aspect. A vision of the Glory can be a sign of divine favor, or it may be an indication that the recipient of the vision has kindled divine anger and is about to be consumed by it. Now, when Moses and Aaron have lost control of the situation and ran to the tabernacle not for sacred service but to seek protection from the people, the kevod hashem appeared not to the people but to them; the two brothers are now the object of divine ire. Their fate is sealed, but before it can be pronounced, the immediate crisis must be dealt with. Settling accounts would have to wait until later. Once the miracle had been accomplished and water flowed in abundance, God addressed both Moses and Aaron, announcing that the two brothers are soon to be relieved of their decades-long leadership roles—decommissioned, sacked (20:12).
In addition to projecting weakness, there was an additional problem with the brothers’ fleeing to the tabernacle for safety. The Tent of Meeting was sacred space, to be entered only for divine service. This issue is brought into sharp relief by a biblical passage about a leader from a much later period, Nehemiah ben Hacaliah.
The post-exilic book of Nehemiah is a memoir of the Jewish leader who, under Persian authorization, directed the restoration of Jerusalem early in the Second Temple period. The book begins with Nehemiah, a high official in the Persian court, receiving news of deteriorated conditions in Jerusalem. He hears that “the survivors who have survived the exile … are in great trouble and disgrace; Jerusalem’s wall is full of breaches and its gates have been destroyed by fire” (Nehemiah 1:3). Gaining the king’s permission to go to the city that he describes as “the place where my ancestors are buried,” he inspires the people to start rebuilding, and institutes important social reforms, including cancellation of debts and return of land to the poor that had been extracted by ruinous taxes and usury. He refuses to take the perquisites of his office, such as the large food allowances that previous governors had apportioned for themselves and their friends. He overcomes opposition, especially from a local official named Sanballat. Sanballat mocked the Jews and tried many stratagems to impede the project of rebuilding the city walls, including efforts to intimidate and entrap Nehemiah. In his final scheme, Sanballat hires a false prophet who informs Nehemiah that he is the target of a murder plot, and urges him to hide in the Temple: “Let us meet in the House of God, inside the sanctuary, And let us shut the doors of the sanctuary, for they are coming to kill you; by night they are coming to kill you.”
But Nehemiah refuses to go to the sanctuary to escape danger, to save his life: “And I said: ‘Should a man such as I flee? Or could someone like me go into the sanctuary and live? I will not go in.’” (Nehemiah 6:11).
As Malbim notes, there are two parts to Nehemiah’s reply. First, if he, as governor, were to flee, he would be showing fear, and the display of cowardice would cause him to lose stature as leader. As Nehemiah puts it later, he realized that the person who claimed to be giving helpful advice was actually a hireling, “that I might be intimidated and act thus and commit a sin, and so provide them a scandal with which to taunt me” (6:13). Secondly, not being a priest, his entry into the sanctuary would constitute trespass, a violation of sacred space by a non-priestly Israelite. Ralbag also notes that it is a capital offense for even a priest to enter the inner sanctuary for any reason other than sacred service.
We may draw two conclusions from this incident: a leader who hopes to establish the people in their land, to lift up their material condition, social values, and spiritual horizons—who desires to instill dignity, vision and purpose—such a leader must act with courage and fearlessness, must never appear to flee from danger, whether actual or imagined. Furthermore, sacred space must be inviolable, must be approached for sacred service only, must never be used as a hiding place, as a pathway of escape. To do so, as Nehemiah understood, would not only lose the people’s respect, it would be a violation of the sancta, an offense against the divine realm. The Torah calls this me’ilah (trespass of the sacred).
With these insights, let us now return to the Mei Meribah episode. The less-than-courageous flight of Moses and Aaron compromised their leadership, and their recourse to the tabernacle as an escape was a misuse of sacred space. Both brothers were equally involved, so both were relieved of their leadership roles. Near the end of Deuteronomy, the Torah reprises this episode and explains that Moses and Aaron could not enter the Land, “because you trespassed against Me (me’altem bi) in the midst of the children of Israel at the waters of Meribat-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin” (Deuteronomy 32:51).
Commentators on the verse struggle to explain the term me’ilah, but in light of the approach developed here, it is natural for the Torah to describe the inappropriate entry into sacred space as trespass or encroachment.
Did Nehemiah learn directly from the Mei Meribah incident, or did he intuit the right thing to do on his own? In any event, seeing how a late biblical book can shed light on a much earlier one underscores the wholeness of Scripture and highlights the power of a fully canonical perspective. It enables us to see the possibility of growth and maturation in leadership over centuries, with clear implications for our own day. We learn that leaders must be selfless and fearless, acting without regard to their own safety or personal gain. The only way to preserve the sacred is by respecting it without any hint of self-interest. The sacred must be maintained for all, for the glory of God and the benefit of humanity and the cosmos. Religion is a call to service, not an avenue of escape. If we wish to lead ourselves and others to the Promised Land, we must aim to be worthy of the task. We must strive to foster divine glory and human dignity in love and not in fear.
[1] Yehudah Nahshoni, Hagut be-Parshiyot ha-Torah (Benei Berak, 1987), 2:651.
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