בְּאֶרֶץ-יִשְׂרָאֵל קָם הָעָם הַיְּהוּדִי ERETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people

(1) These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.—Through the wilderness, in the Arabah near Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab, (2) it is eleven days from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea by the Mount Seir route.— (3) It was in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, that Moses addressed the Israelites in accordance with the instructions that the LORD had given him for them, (4) after he had defeated Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, and King Og of Bashan, who dwelt at Ashtaroth [and] Edrei. (5) On the other side of the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound this Teaching. He said: (6) The LORD our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying: You have stayed long enough at this mountain. (7) Start out and make your way to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, the hill country, the Shephelah, the Negeb, the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and the Lebanon, as far as the Great River, the river Euphrates. (8) See, I place the land at your disposal. Go, take possession of the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to assign to them and to their heirs after them. (9) Thereupon I said to you, “I cannot bear the burden of you by myself. (10) The LORD your God has multiplied you until you are today as numerous as the stars in the sky.— (11) May the LORD, the God of your fathers, increase your numbers a thousandfold, and bless you as He promised you.— (12) How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering! (13) Pick from each of your tribes men who are wise, discerning, and experienced, and I will appoint them as your heads.” (14) You answered me and said, “What you propose to do is good.” (15) So I took your tribal leaders, wise and experienced men, and appointed them heads over you: chiefs of thousands, chiefs of hundreds, chiefs of fifties, and chiefs of tens, and officials for your tribes. (16) I charged your magistrates at that time as follows, “Hear out your fellow men, and decide justly between any man and a fellow Israelite or a stranger. (17) You shall not be partial in judgment: hear out low and high alike. Fear no man, for judgment is God’s. And any matter that is too difficult for you, you shall bring to me and I will hear it.” (18) Thus I instructed you, at that time, about the various things that you should do. (19) We set out from Horeb and traveled the great and terrible wilderness that you saw, along the road to the hill country of the Amorites, as the LORD our God had commanded us. When we reached Kadesh-barnea, (20) I said to you, “You have come to the hill country of the Amorites which the LORD our God is giving to us. (21) See, the LORD your God has placed the land at your disposal. Go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you. Fear not and be not dismayed.” (22) Then all of you came to me and said, “Let us send men ahead to reconnoiter the land for us and bring back word on the route we shall follow and the cities we shall come to.” (23) I approved of the plan, and so I selected twelve of your men, one from each tribe. (24) They made for the hill country, came to the wadi Eshcol, and spied it out. (25) They took some of the fruit of the land with them and brought it down to us. And they gave us this report: “It is a good land that the LORD our God is giving to us.” (26) Yet you refused to go up, and flouted the command of the LORD your God. (27) You sulked in your tents and said, “It is because the LORD hates us that He brought us out of the land of Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to wipe us out. (28) What kind of place are we going to? Our kinsmen have taken the heart out of us, saying, ‘We saw there a people stronger and taller than we, large cities with walls sky-high, and even Anakites.’” (29) I said to you, “Have no dread or fear of them. (30) None other than the LORD your God, who goes before you, will fight for you, just as He did for you in Egypt before your very eyes, (31) and in the wilderness, where you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you traveled until you came to this place. (32) Yet for all that, you have no faith in the LORD your God, (33) who goes before you on your journeys—to scout the place where you are to encamp—in fire by night and in cloud by day, in order to guide you on the route you are to follow.” (34) When the LORD heard your loud complaint, He was angry. He vowed: (35) Not one of these men, this evil generation, shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers—

(1) The whole community broke into loud cries, and the people wept that night. (2) All the Israelites railed against Moses and Aaron. “If only we had died in the land of Egypt,” the whole community shouted at them, “or if only we might die in this wilderness! (3) Why is the LORD taking us to that land to fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be carried off! It would be better for us to go back to Egypt!” (4) And they said to one another, “Let us head back for Egypt.” (5) Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembled congregation of the Israelites. (6) And Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, of those who had scouted the land, rent their clothes (7) and exhorted the whole Israelite community: “The land that we traversed and scouted is an exceedingly good land. (8) If the LORD is pleased with us, He will bring us into that land, a land that flows with milk and honey, and give it to us; (9) only you must not rebel against the LORD. Have no fear then of the people of the country, for they are our prey: their protection has departed from them, but the LORD is with us. Have no fear of them!” (10) As the whole community threatened to pelt them with stones, the Presence of the LORD appeared in the Tent of Meeting to all the Israelites. (11) And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people spurn Me, and how long will they have no faith in Me despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst? (12) I will strike them with pestilence and disown them, and I will make of you a nation far more numerous than they!” (13) But Moses said to the LORD, “When the Egyptians, from whose midst You brought up this people in Your might, hear the news, (14) they will tell it to the inhabitants of that land. Now they have heard that You, O LORD, are in the midst of this people; that You, O LORD, appear in plain sight when Your cloud rests over them and when You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. (15) If then You slay this people to a man, the nations who have heard Your fame will say, (16) ‘It must be because the LORD was powerless to bring that people into the land He had promised them on oath that He slaughtered them in the wilderness.’ (17) Therefore, I pray, let my Lord’s forbearance be great, as You have declared, saying, (18) ‘The LORD! slow to anger and abounding in kindness; forgiving iniquity and transgression; yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children, upon the third and fourth generations.’ (19) Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to Your great kindness, as You have forgiven this people ever since Egypt.” (20) And the LORD said, “I pardon, as you have asked. (21) Nevertheless, as I live and as the LORD’s Presence fills the whole world, (22) none of the men who have seen My Presence and the signs that I have performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and who have tried Me these many times and have disobeyed Me, (23) shall see the land that I promised on oath to their fathers; none of those who spurn Me shall see it. (24) But My servant Caleb, because he was imbued with a different spirit and remained loyal to Me—him will I bring into the land that he entered, and his offspring shall hold it as a possession. (25) Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites occupy the valleys. Start out, then, tomorrow and march into the wilderness by way of the Sea of Reeds.” (26) The LORD spoke further to Moses and Aaron, (27) “How much longer shall that wicked community keep muttering against Me? Very well, I have heeded the incessant muttering of the Israelites against Me. (28) Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the LORD, ‘I will do to you just as you have urged Me. (29) In this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop. Of all of you who were recorded in your various lists from the age of twenty years up, you who have muttered against Me, (30) not one shall enter the land in which I swore to settle you—save Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. (31) Your children who, you said, would be carried off—these will I allow to enter; they shall know the land that you have rejected. (32) But your carcasses shall drop in this wilderness, (33) while your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness. (34) You shall bear your punishment for forty years, corresponding to the number of days—forty days—that you scouted the land: a year for each day. Thus you shall know what it means to thwart Me. (35) I the LORD have spoken: Thus will I do to all that wicked band that has banded together against Me: in this very wilderness they shall die to the last man.’” (36) As for the men whom Moses sent to scout the land, those who came back and caused the whole community to mutter against him by spreading calumnies about the land— (37) those who spread such calumnies about the land died of plague, by the will of the LORD.

(9) In the wilderness it received the Torah, and thus in the wilderness, without land or soil, it became a nation. It became a body, whose soul was the Torah, and, therefore, could be truthfully called "ממלכת כהנים" "a kingdom of priests," for as the priest in the midst of a single people was this nation to be in the midst of universal mankind, preserving the law of God, and practicing and fulfilling its holy precepts. "גוי קדוש," "Holy nation," was also to be its appellation, for, through the fulfilment of the Divine law, it was to become holy, not participating in the worldly doings of other nations, but preaching the sacredness of humanity by the example of its life. The Torah, the fulfilment of the Divine will, was to be its soil and country, and aim; its national existence, therefore, was neither dependent upon, nor conditioned by transitory things, but eternal as the spirit, the soul and the word of the Eternal One.

(28) 28. The Rabbi: Quite so. The root of all knowledge was deposited in the Ark which took the place of the heart, viz. the Ten Commandments, and its branch is the Tōrāh on its side, as it is said: 'Put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God' (Deuteronomy 31:26). From there went forth a twofold knowledge, firstly, the scriptural knowledge, whose bearers were the priests; secondly, the prophetic knowledge which was in the hands of the prophets. Both classes were, so to speak, the people's watchful advisers, who compiled the chronicles. They, therefore, represent the head of the people.

(29) 29. Al Khazari: So you are to-day a body without either head or heart.

(30) 30. The Rabbi: Thou sayest rightly, but we are not even a body, only scattered limbs, like the 'dry bones' which Ezekiel saw [in his vision] (Ezekiel 37). These bones, however, O king of the Khazars, which have retained a trace of vital power, having once been the seat of a heart, brain, breath, soul, and intellect, are better than certain bodies formed of marble and plaster, endowed with heads, eyes, ears, and all limbs, in which never dwelt the spirit of life, nor ever can dwell in them, since they are but imitations of man, not man in reality.

(10) 10. The Rabbi: Thou wilt have no difficulty in perceiving that one country may have higher qualifications than others. There are places in which particular plants, metals, or animals are found, or where the inhabitants are distinguished by their form and character, since perfection or deficiency of the soul are produced by the mingling of the elements.