Moses, Strikes the Rock

Do miracles enhance faith? Rashi and Maimonides’ diametrically opposed positions on this question lead them to very different explanations for Moses’ sin. In between them is Ibn Ezra, who has a secret as to how miracles work and why Moses failed to perform his correctly. Avvat Nephesh, in the 14^th century, rejects his predecessors’ explanations, and instead critiques Moses and Aaron’s passivity and lack of leadership; they waited for God to provide answers instead of taking initiative.

The biblical authors knew that Moses did not lead the Israelites into the promised land, but the question of why preoccupied them.

An offense against YHWH that explains the severe punishment of their exclusion from the promised land.

Hint: The story follows the red heifer ritual, i.e., the laws of corpse contamination, and the death of their sister Miriam.

Moses, on his last day, recites two poems—the Song of Moses and Blessing of Moses (Deut 32, 33). In this spirit, the eighth century Tiberian Pinchas Hakohen poetically describes Moses excusing his sins and offering alternatives to his death.

In Numbers 20, when the Israelites are without water, God tells Moses to get water from a stone, which he does by striking it, and is punished. Yet in Exodus 17, Moses does the same thing and the story ends positively. What is the relationship between these two accounts? Remarkably, R. Joseph Bekhor Shor says that they are two accounts of the same story.

If the people are thirsty for lack of water, why complain to Moses that they “have no grain or pomegranates”? Together with other textual anomalies, this narrative discontinuity suggests that interwoven into the water-at-Merivah story is a fragment from a different story: the missing opening verses of the non-Priestly account of the spies.