The Seven Books of Moses: Inner Parsha - Behaaloscha

Apropos the portion: “And when the Ark traveled,” the Gemara cites that which the Sages taught in a baraita. It is stated: “And when the Ark traveled and Moses proclaimed: Rise up, God, and Your enemies will scatter and those who hate You will flee from before You.” And The Holy One, Blessed be He, made signs in the Torah for this portion, above and below, i.e., before and after it, in order to say

that this is not its place, as the previous portion does not discuss the nation’s travels. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says: It is not for that reason that signs were inserted. Rather, the signs are there because this portion is considered a book unto itself.

Who is the tanna who disagrees with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi? It is Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel. As it was taught in a baraita that Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: In the future, this portion will be uprooted from here, where it appears, and will be written in its proper place. And why was it written here, even though it discusses the travels of the children of Israel, and the portion before it does not? It is in order to demarcate between the first punishment and the second punishment. What is the second punishment that appears immediately afterward? It is the verse: “And the people complained wickedly in God’s ears, and God heard and became angry, and the fire of God burned in them and it consumed the edge of the camp” (Numbers 11:1). What is the first punishment? It is the verse: “And they traveled from the mountain of God [mehar Hashem] for three days” (Numbers 10:33), and Rabbi Ḥama, son of Rabbi Ḥanina, said: That they turned from after God [me’aḥarei Hashem] and hurriedly fled Mount Sinai. The Gemara asks: And if so, where is the proper place for this paragraph? Rav Ashi said: In the portion of the flags, where there is a description of the manner in which the Jewish people traveled through the desert.

כמתאוננים, on account of the difficulties of the journey. They did not actually complain in their hearts as they had nothing to complain about. They only voiced complaints as a form of testing G’d.

רע באזני ה׳ means a pretext that was evil in the ears of the Lord, i.e., that they intended that it should reach His ears and that He might show annoyance. They said: “Woe unto us! How weary we have become on this journey: it is now three days that we have had no rest from the wearisomeness of the march!”

ויהי העם כמתאוננים, “The people were as if looking for a pretext to complain.” The word מתאונן occurs in Lamentations 3,39 where it means “complain.” As the people entered the desert they experienced a variety of uncomfortable sensations. These complaints were very displeasing in the ears of the Lord, seeing they were caused by the fact that instead of marching joyfully towards their destiny and the Holy Land, the people marched only grudgingly. The reason the word מתאוננים is spelled with the prefix כ i.e. a preposition describing something in relative terms, i.e. “as if,” is because at that stage they did not yet dare verbalize their feelings of discontent. They did not want Moses to hear their complaint. This is why the Torah describes G’d as “hearing” unspoken complaints by the people. Moses had not heard these complaints.

ויהי העם כמתאוננים, “the people were like murmurers;” the people were already mourning the potential casualties they would incur when going into battle against the Canaanites in order to conquer their land. They were lacking in faith and dreading warfare.

OUR ANCESTORS TRIED G-D WITH TEN TRIALS IN THE DESERT. Even though the Golden Calf was a sin it is called a “trial” because the notion of a “trial” of G-d is doubt and lack of faith in Him, and the sin of the calf was that they did not believe and trust in Him that they would go securely on their way in the desert through which He had guided them from Egypt until that point.
Rav does not list them chronologically, putting them in pairs instead. But there is difficulty with Rav saying that the trial at their “ascent from the sea” was that of “and they came to Marah” (Exodus 15:23)—how can this be called “ascent from the sea” when it happened three days after they had crossed? And Rambam, whose commentary Rav is quoting here, does not say that the trial at Marah had anything to do with the ascent from the sea.
The Talmud in Arachin 15a, when it says that one of the ten trials was at the ascent from the sea, explains that this trial occurred immediately upon their ascending from the sea: “They said: just as we have ascended at this point, so have the Egyptians ascended at some other point!” And the Talmud quotes the verse “And they rebelled at the sea, at the Red Sea” (Psalms 106:7) in support of this. The Talmud’s count, despite this addition, is balanced by the omission of the trial of the “complainers”.
But why, indeed, does the Talmud not count the complainers? It seems that the Talmud understood the “complainers” (Numbers 11:1) and the “rabble” (Number 11:4) to have been one thing—even though G-d sent fire upon them they were not quieted, “and the rabble in [the nation’s] midst etc.” This is why the verse says that they “went back and wept,” for they returned to the initial complaint of the “complainers”. This accords with the Talmud in Shabbat 116a: R. Shimon ben Gamliel says: in the future, this section [“And when the ark traveled” (Numbers 10:35), which the Talmud is discussing there] will be removed from here and written in its proper place. Why was it written here? To provide a pause between the first story of punishment and the second. What is the second story of punishment? “And the people were like complainers” (Numbers 11:1). The first story of punishment is “And they travelled from the mountain of G-d [Heb. vayis`u mehar Hashem]” (Numbers 10:33), as R. Chama bar Chanina said, for they turned away from G-d [Heb. saru me'acharei Hashem]. Tosafot raise the question that the text still ends up putting two stories of punishment adjacent to one another, and offer a very forced answer. But according to what I wrote earlier, this is precisely the point the Talmud is making: that the “complainers” and the “rabble” are just parts of one story of punishment.
We can show this as follows. For the Talmud there asks “what is the second story of punishment” but does not first ask “what is the first story”, from which we can infer that the Talmud had an idea of what the first story was. And when the line “the first story of punishment is ‘And they travelled from the mountain of G-d’” following that was subsequently put into the text it was not phrased as a question, “what is the first story of punishment”, for it was the redactor of the text who was clarifying for us what the first story was, but the question as it was originally asked in the study hall was only concerning the second story. For the original assumption in the question was that the “complainers” were complaining about the amount of Torah they had learnt at the mountain of G-d—see below—and there is no break in the text [between the punishment of the “complainers” and the punishment of the “rabble”]. The Talmud answers by saying that the second punishment is actually that of the “complainers”, and the entire succeeding text, including the story of the “rabble”, is one long story of punishment.
This is unlike Rashi’s approach, that the Talmud answers that the story of the “rabble” is the first story of punishment, which had started after they turned away from G-d. Tosafot there already take issue with his approach and quote the Midrash Vayechulu saying that the first punishment is that they turned away from G-d because they had learned much Torah at Sinai, like a child running out of school.
[*I found support for this in Midrash Rabbah on parashat Metzora (Vayikra Rabbah 18:4), which asks why Israel was punished with the afflictions of emissions and leprosy and quotes several amoraic opinions. One of them is that of R. Yehudah berabbi Shimon who says that they come from the “complainers”, for the verse there says “until it comes out of your noses and becomes nauseating [Heb. lezara] to you” (Numbers 11:20): “What is zara? It will be zorna and bisna for you.” Matnot Kehuna there explains in the name of Aruch that these are types of swelling and boils. And numerous other amoraim there explain lezara as somehow referring to such things. Now if the “complainers” and the “rabble” were not both part of the same story, how could the midrash say that the source is from the “complainers” and proceed to bring a proof from “it will become nauseating to you”, a verse that was said in the story of the “rabble”? It must be that the whole thing is one story, and this is a strong proof of my position.
Also, I say that the plain meaning of the verses indicates as much, for the text says “and the rabble… went back and wept”, and the meaning of “went back” is that they went back to what they had already been doing. And otherwise, what is the purpose of writing that they “went back” altogether? This is also a clear proof.]
For Rambam and Rav, who see the “complainers” and “rabble” as two separate trials, one might say that they hold like Rabbi in that passage in Shabbat 116a who says that the section “and when the ark travelled” is in its proper place and does not see it as a break between two stories of punishment, and the mishna in Yadayim 3:5 goes according to Rabbi. In any case, I feel that the Golden Calf should not be included in this count at all, for it is a sin, not a trial. In its stead I would count what the Talmud says in Arachin based on the verse “and they rebelled at the sea, at the Red Sea”. And the Torah has seventy facets.

(2) Speak to Aaron and say to him, “When you mount the lamps, let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lampstand.”

(2) בהעלתך lit., WHEN THOU MAKEST [THE LIGHTS] RISE — Because the flame rises upwards (עולה), an expression denoting “ascending” is used of kindling them (the lights), implying that one must kindle them until the light ascends of itself (Shabbat 21a). — Furthermore our Rabbis derived from here (from the expression בהעלתך) that there was a step in front of the candelabrum upon which the priest stood while preparing the lights (Sifrei Bamidbar 59).