Moshe Rabenu begins his final address by recalling that when the nation
of Israel was at Horev, the holy One blessed be He, said that they had spent
plenty of time (רב לכם) at this mountain and
that they should now go to the Promised Land. The people are exhorted take
possession of it from the Negev desert to Lebanon and from the sea to the
Euphrates River. Rashi brings a legend
that plenty refers to the many great things and the great reward for the things
that they had done by Mount Sinai. Specifically that they received the Torah,
built the Temple, and appointed the Sanhedrin (see Deuteronomy 1:6).
Other commentaries have a negative understanding of the verse. The Kli
Yakar comments that the people fled from Mount Horev like a child flees from
school. For them the time did not feel like the short time a person feels when
he is doing something he likes. Rather it felt like the long time (רב לכם) a person feels when involved with
something unpleasant. The people quickly forgot the joy of the receiving of the
Ten Commandments; however for Hashem it was constantly present before Him.
Similarly the Benyan Ariel finds this Rashi difficult. He explains that
all of the goodness that was done for them like the manna, fountain of water,
the giving of the Torah, and the exodus from Egypt, they all considered negatively.
The simple explanation, though, is like Onkelos that they had been around the
mountain enough and it was time to move on. The Kli Yakar sees a hint that they
had circled the garden of Hashem but had not yet entered it.
The sending of the spies was in fact a concealed rejection of something
good namely, the Holy Land. One can say that the people were bad, but what was
wrong with the idea itself? Joshua does send spies to Jericho before attacking.
In the mop up after the victory over Sichon, Moshe sends spies to the cities
not yet defeated. However the spies themselves conquer the cities and on this
Rashi comments that these spies said that they are not like the earlier ones
rather they are confident in the prayer of Moshe to wage war (Numbers 21:32).
The campaign to win the Holy Land by Joshua turns out to be a lengthy
one. In addition the borders of Israel enumerated in the Chumash do not even
come close to the Euphrates River. Rashi (Devarim 1:8) explains that if the
nation of Israel had taken possession of the land of Israel right after they
left Mount Sinai that nobody would have contested them. They would not have
needed to go to war if they had not sent out the spies and there would have
been no need for weapons. The Sifre here comments that G-d told them He is not
giving estimates or explanations. When you enter the land you will not need
weapons, just use a compass and divide it.
In the preface before the command to conquer the land of Israel the
Chumash mentions the defeat of the two Amorite kings. The Midrash Tanchuma
comments that Sichon and Og were more powerful the Pharaoh. Sichon was the more powerful that anybody in
the world and that nobody could prevail against him. What did the holy One
blessed be He do? He bent the ministering angels of Sichon and his nation,
toppled them from their place, and gave them over to Moshe. What was the merit
for which they were able to destroy the Amorites? It was the merit of Torah and
the sages that teach it.
At times if a person experiences a miracle he will have the ability to
perform another. There is a legend in the Talmud about Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.
After fleeing from the Romans who wanted to kill him, surviving in a cave on
carobs and water for twelve years, he emerged in peace and much wiser than
before. Noting that he had seen one miracle, he wondered if another could be
done through him. It happened the area that he was standing in had unmarked
graves. At that point an old man told him that all places where the ground is
hard can be assumed to be pure and places where the ground is soft should be
marked.
The message seems to be that at times our knowledge and past accomplishments
will give us the ability for a new achievement and the only thing needed is to
take it. If we fritter away the momentum and enthusiasm with silly calculations
and estimates, it may be a long time before we can get even part of what we
could have had, if we had simply seized the moment. This is what is meant by
Ben Azai, “run to a small mitzvah and flee from a transgression because one
mitzvah drags in another mitzvah and a sin leads to another sin. The recompense
of a mitzvah is a mitzvah and the recompense of a sin is a sin (Pirkei Avot
4:2).
לע"נ, הדוד ,שמואל
בן נח ז"ל נלב"ע ט"ו אב תשס"ט,
Acknowledgements to websites:
תורת אמת, וויקיטקסט, http://dictionary.reference.com/,
http://hebrewbooks.org/,
וגם בדואר אלקטרוני
ניתן באתר http://dyschreiber.blogspot.co.il
Bibliography:
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