דמות הצל של משה רבנו

And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face. (Numbers 16:4)What did he hear? Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of Rabbi Yonatan, he heard that they suspected him of adultery.I heard from my grandfather (the Baal Shem Tov) an explanation of the Talmud's statement: “Your rabbi, Moses, was either a thief or a swindler,” and of the verse: “And it came to pass, when Moses went out to the Tent, that all the people rose up and stood, every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses” (Exodus 33:8). And especially, that they suspected him of adultery.He explained it as follows. Moses was born [with the inclination] to be totally wicked, with every possible vice. However, he transformed and broke all of these bad character traits, and worked to acquire only good ones.This is all that [the Baal Shem Tov] said, yet his holy words can be explained as follows. It is known from the mystical intentions of the incense offering that the letters mem hey shin, when spelled out in full, have the numerical value of ma’ves – death. [But when] they are rectified they become ha’emes – “the truth.” Moses embodied both aspects – goodness, which is the truth, and complete evil, which is death. However, the people did not grasp or perceive the truth. They saw only his aspect of evil; that is, the letter combination alluded to in his name that spelled out death. This is why “they looked after Moses.” They looked only at the aspect of his backside, and thus they suspected him of adultery, for he was indeed born with all the worse character traits.Degel Machane Ephraim, Ki Sisa