In the beginning of the famine in Egypt the people came to Yosef and bought food paying for it with gold and silver. Yosef took all of the money and gave it to Pharaoh. Next they gave him everything they owned. The final thing the people did was give their land and sell themselves as slaves to Pharaoh.
In doing this they were not bitter at all, rather they were very thankful especially to Yosef and said to him, "You have saved our lives! Let us find favor in my lord's eyes, and we will be servants to Pharaoh”, (Genesis 47:18-19). There is room to say that if the people were thankful to Yosef they should have agreed to be his slaves and not Pharaoh's slaves. However, they correctly saw that Yosef was doing all of this for Pharaoh. He didn't want them to be his servants, rather he wanted them to be Pharaoh's loyal, obedient workers. Therefore the thing that would really please Yosef was for them to be good Egyptians who properly served their king.
From this we can understand the sin of Moshe rabbeinu, may he rest in peace. During Israel's wanderings in the desert, after the death of the sister of Moshe, the community finds itself without water. The people quarrel with Moshe because of this, so he inquires of Hashem. Hashem tells Moshe to speak to a rock and it will copiously flow with water for them and all of their needs. Instead he angrily calls them rebels and hits the rock.
The holy One, blessed be He, then says to Moses and Aaron, too, as you did not believe in Me to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this congregation to the land which I have given them, (see Numbers 20:12). Rashi explains that had Moshe spoken to the rock and it had given forth water, it would have sanctified God in the eyes of the congregation. They would have said,"If this rock, which neither speaks nor hears, and does not require sustenance, fulfills the word of the Omnipresent, how much more should we!
King David in Psalm 106 deals with the bad incidents of Israel starting by saying, “We have sinned with our fathers, we have abused and been evil”, (verse 6). The verses concerning this are difficult. The language does require some thought, but the real difficulty is that the description of what happened is so inconsistent with the personality of Moshe. It seems to be saying they provoked him at the quarrelsome waters and Moshe became bad because of them. They had changed his spirit and he told them what he really thought, (see verses 32, 33).
In other words because of all the aggravation, Moshe went sour. His job was to imbue the nation with sanctity so they could properly serve Hashem, but now he could no longer do it. As a result he could not handle a major task like bringing Israel into the Holy Land.
The prime motive of the Torah is to teach the Jews. The hint of Yosef and the starving Egyptians is that the leaders of Israel should only desire that the people be proper servants of their king. And who is the true king of Israel? --- HaKadosh Baruch Hu. This means that if a Jew wants to impress his rabbi, teacher, boss, or big political leader, he should just be a proper Jew.
לע"נ האמא מלכה בת חיים ז"ל נלב"ע טז ניסן תשנ"ח
העלון ניתן לקבל בדואר אלקטרוני וגם באתר http://dyschreiber.blogspot.co
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