In the story of Moshe hitting the rock Moshe says to the people, do you think I can draw water from this rock? המן הסלע הזה נוציא לכם מים? I think the Torah is using this phrase of Moshe to put this story into context for us, to teach us who this generation was, what their challenges were going to be, and a great message to learn from it all.
That word המן vowelized the way that it is (pronounced hamin) is an extremely uncommon word, it shows up only one other time in the חמשה חומשי תורה. After Adam and Chava eat from the עץ הדעת Hashem finds them hiding and says המן העץ אשר צויתיך לבלתי אכל ממנו אכלת? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
Both questions are rhetorical, of course Hashem knew that they had eaten from the tree, and Moshe was saying of course I can’t draw water from a rock, it all comes from Hashem. But there are a few other links as well:
For one, the word עץ (70+90=160) and the word סלע (60+30+70=160) have the same gematria which means that they are connected in some way. They both are natural, inanimate objects being rhetorically asked to give forth something that would give the most basic sustenance. And in both cases, there is someone who gets punished, and not with any punishment, both punishments limit access to a specific place.
You may ask, why the need for this parallel? What is it teaching us? I believe that this is meant o amplify the message which we have discussed last year in this parsha (link here, and the written dvar Torah is attached to the email as well).
To recap: we said that the פרה אדומה is really called the פרה אדומה תמימה, and these two adjectives, red and whole were used elsewhere in the Torah. Yakov and Eisav are described with these terms, Yakov is the whole one who sits in tents, and Eisav is red who is out in the field. And interestingly, the Torah gives two examples of how someone would become טמא מת and need the ashes of the cow, if someone dies in a tent or if someone comes across a dead body in the field. And I think that this opens פרשת חקת which is the parsha where the children of the generation that left Egypt come into the foreground. Since their parents all died for the sin of the מרגלים and they were now the generation chosen to enter the land of Israel.
They had a very different relationship with Hashem than their parents did. They would need to work the field, to raise cattle, and to build houses, while their parents had food delivered to their doorsteps, they didn’t need to work, and they had Godly clouds housing them. Their parents were the “incubator” generation and they were the “farmer” generation.
Yakov and Eisav represent this dichotomy, and the פרה אדומה תמימה teaches us that you can purify an encounter with either lifestyle. But this question of living in an incubator or on the farm is older than the birth of the Jewish nation. this is a question that אדם הראשון grappled with, and I think that is what the Torah is teaching us with the word comparison.
Adam lived in a garden that Hashem made, in pure paradise. He had beautiful trees and vegetation, he lived at peace with the animals, and he had a limitless choice of foods to eat. He was in paradise. But that wasn’t good enough, he wanted the fruit he wasn’t allowed to have, and he eats from the tree that Hashem said not to eat from. But when Hashem asks him if he did this, he says something mind-numbing. The מדרש explains Adam’s choice of words as follows, Adam says the word ואכל and I ate from the tree, but in Hebrew the word ואכל can be meant in a future tense as well. the מדרש explains that Adam was telling Hashem “I ate, and I would eat again”. I heard R’ Akiva Tatz explain this puzzling מדרש to mean that Adam didn’t want to live in paradise with God, he wanted to descend into the depths and find God from there. he wanted to shatter the world that he lived in and find Hashem in the broken shards so that he could put the pieces back together and have a relationship with Hashem that he built and not one that was given to him. Granted he should not have made that calculation since Hashem explicitly told him not to, but his intentions were pure on some level.
The message to the Jews in our parsha was to see the plan of Adam and implement it. Adam should not have done that but once he did, we now have the job, not just to sit in the tent, but also to go into the field, into the broken places and piece things together so that we can find Hashem there as well.
Moshe gets punished since he should not have hit the rock, since Hashem had given him explicit instructions as well. But I think the message for the people and the message for us is that even when you see a seemingly dead or inanimate object like a tree or a rock, understand that even from their Hashem can be found and Hashem can make life sustaining food or water come forth. Even when we see ourselves in the lowest of places, it is from there that we can find Hashem.
This was the people’s complaint to Moshe; they have a holy complaint. They call themselves the Kehal Hashem, they understand they are in a bad place, physically thirsty, emotionally drained, frightened and nervous. And they are asking their leader to take care of them and show them how they can strengthen their relationship with Hashem.
We live in a broken world, and this parsha teaches us that we can fix it.