Hukkat-Balak with Raanan Eichler

I really wonder what does God...

So why does God command Moses and Aaron to, to take Aaron's flowering staff to the rock if they're in, if they're not instructed to use it? And your take on this staff symbolism and how its presence really shapes the understanding of this miracle that we encounter in this week's Parsha.

Okay.

Uh, great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Um, so you kind of gave away the ending a little bit, uh, by calling it Aaron's flowering staff.

Uh, the story of, uh, Mei Merivah, uh, which we, we can translate into English as, uh, strife water, uh, as strife water, um, this is, uh, you know, it's an age-old, uh, crux, uh, the commentary, uh, on Numbers, Bamidbar, by, uh, by Jacob Milgrom in the JPS series.

I think he, he lists 12 different, uh, answers that have been given, uh, since the Middle Ages.

Um, the que- the question people ask is why did Moses and Aaron get such a harsh punishment, uh, when they pretty much did what, uh, God asked them to do? Uh, God, uh, told Moses to take the staff, uh, and to speak to the rock.

Uh, but actually it says, uh, ‹le-dever el ha-seilah›, which can mean...

It would make more sense, uh, to understand it as meaning to, to speak about the rock, um, and, uh, and to make the rock, uh, give its water, and that's exactly what Moses does.

He takes the staff and he speaks about the rock, uh, and the rock, uh, gives it water.

Um, and yes, he does seem to lose his temper and to call them rebels, uh, and, uh, and he strikes the rock twice.

Um, but what's, what's the big deal here? Um, and that's the question that people usually ask.

What people don't ask, uh, is why God tells Moses to take the staff in the first place.

Uh, if he's not supposed to do anything with it, uh, what's the point of taking the staff? Uh, and so in an article, uh, I, uh, proposed a solution to all of this, uh, which is that the staff has to be Aaron's flowering staff, um, which, uh, we read about in Numbers 17, uh, in Korach, um, uh, where, uh, Aaron's staff, uh, sprouts buds and flowers and, um, uh, and almonds, uh, and then it's put in the sanctuary, uh, as a sign to rebellious people that Aaron and his descendants are the sole chosen family, uh, the sole family chosen by God, uh, to be the priests, to hold the priestly office.

Uh, and the staff in our story, in Numbers 20 in Chukat, it has to be Aaron's staff for two reasons.

First of all, because it says the staff.

Okay? So that has to be something that we were just told about, um, and we were just told about Aaron's staff.

And secondly, our story says that Moses takes the staff from before YHWH, from before Hashem, and we were told in the previous story about Aaron's flowering staff that Moses had placed Aaron's flowering staff in front of YHWH, in front of Hashem.

So it's being taken from the exact place that Aaron's staff was put.

Uh, and there are a lot of people who think that no, that, that in our story the staff is not Aaron's staff.

Uh, but I argue for these two reasons that it, it does have to be, uh, Aaron's staff.

And Aaron's staff, according to the Torah, uh, according to the previous story, is not exactly a staff, okay, it's anymore, right? It's already some- more like a tree or like a stylized tree.

It's got, it's got the buds, it's got the flowers, the almonds Now, there's a really interesting thing in terms of archeology, um, which is that we have lots and lots of pictures that were drawn by Israelites and Judahites from the time of the Bible.